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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-explores-how-virtual-girlfriend-experiences-tap-evolved-relationship-motivations-in-the-digital-age/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Study explores how virtual “girlfriend experiences” tap evolved relationship motivations in the digital age</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 3rd 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Virtual “girlfriend experience” platforms may be booming because they give people easy, customizable access to intimacy in ways that speak to some of our deepest psychological drives for connection, attraction, and control. This is the argument at the heart of a new review published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-026-00475-5"><em>Evolutionary Psychological Science</em></a>.</p>
<p>Désirée Popelka and colleagues offer a broad theoretical account of how intimacy has transformed alongside technology. They trace the girlfriend experience (GFE) from in-person escort services to online platforms like OnlyFans and, more recently, AI companions. What unites all of these, across every era and format, is the simulation of a romantic relationship: emotional attention, conversation, the feeling of being valued by someone.</p>
<p>What shifts is how you access it. In-person GFE comes with real costs in money, effort, physical presence, and selectivity. Online versions strip away physical contact and scale up through subscriptions. AI companions go even further, offering interactions that are continuous, on-demand, and molded entirely around the user.</p>
<p>The authors argue that this progression matters because it lets people have something resembling a relationship while sidestepping most of what makes relationships hard, including rejection, conflict, and the need to compromise.</p>
<p>Central to their argument is the idea that virtual GFE plugs into several motivational systems that have been widely discussed in evolutionary psychology. These platforms tap into sexual novelty and variety-seeking by providing access to a range of partners and scenarios without any social fallout. They appeal to preferences for youth and physical attractiveness, since both OnlyFans content and AI companions tend to revolve around idealized partners. They also offer something that looks and feels like genuine companionship, with conversation, support, and a sense of being heard.</p>
<p>There’s also control. Users can steer the interaction, shape how a partner responds, and sidestep the uncertainty and risk of rejection that color real relationships. The authors argue that it is this combination of sexual, emotional, and control-related motives that helps explain the appeal of virtual GFE.</p>
<p>The paper also argues that these technologies alter the usual dynamics of mate selection. In everyday relationships, both partners choose each other, and access to desirable partners depends on social and personal factors. Digital platforms weaken these constraints. OnlyFans reduces barriers by making personalized attention more widely available. AI companions remove partner choice entirely by simulating a responsive partner who aligns with the user’s preferences. The authors suggest that this shift could influence how people evaluate partners and relationships, although they stress that direct evidence is still limited.</p>
<p>Another argument concerns the balance between wanting connection and wanting independence. The authors suggest that virtual GFE allows people to experience closeness without the obligations that come with real relationships. This may be especially relevant for individuals who are sensitive to rejection or who prefer predictable interactions. At the same time, they raise the possibility that repeated exposure to these low-effort interactions could make the demands of real relationships feel less appealing or more difficult to tolerate.</p>
<p>The authors emphasize that much of the current evidence is indirect or incomplete, and that many of their claims are intended to guide future research rather than settle existing debates.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, they outline several directions for research.</p>
<p>Does virtual GFE replace real relationships, or slot in alongside them? Do its effects on loneliness and well-being look different depending on the person? How does it shape expectations about partners, attachment styles, and responses to rejection? How do real-world partners feel about their significant others using AI companions; does it register as a kind of infidelity? And does the constant availability and personalization of these tools lend itself to compulsive use?</p>
<p>The broader goal is to get a clearer picture of what digitally mediated intimacy is doing to how we relate—to technology, to each other, and to ourselves.</p>
<p>This review “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-026-00475-5">Outsourcing Love: an Evolutionary Approach to the Virtual Girlfriend Experience</a>” was authored by Désirée Popelka, Renzo Bianchi, and Bruno Lemaitre.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-links-identity-politics-to-lower-mental-well-being-among-progressives/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New study links identity politics to lower mental well-being among progressives</a>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12966" target="_blank">Sociological Forum</a></em> suggests that participating in identity politics tends to be associated with lower levels of mental well-being among political progressives. The findings indicate that focusing on social identity and collective protest might explain why progressive individuals report more depression and anxiety than their conservative peers. </p>
<p>Over the past decade, scientists have observed a growing mental health gap between people with different political ideologies. Specifically, data provides evidence that progressives generally report lower mental well-being than conservatives. George Yancey, a professor of sociology at Baylor University, wanted to explore the reasons behind this expanding divide. </p>
<p>The inspiration for the study originated outside of the academic sphere. “I was doing some consulting work and asked by a lawyer about possible detrimental effects of antiracism training on the participants in the program,” Yancey explained. “I have previously studied the relative lack of effectiveness of those programs as it concerns attitudinal change but had not considered whether they, and the identity politics that motivate them, may lower well-being.”</p>
<p>This thought process coincided with emerging data on psychological health. “When I saw research showing the decline of well-being among the young starting about 10 years ago, my interest was piqued even more,” Yancey noted. “When I saw the data in the Baylor Religion Survey, I recognized that I could test out hypotheses about the possible relationship of adherence to identity politics and well-being.”</p>
<p>The gap in mental health widened notably around 2012. This period coincided with a cultural shift sometimes referred to as the Great Awokening, which describes a time when public attention heavily shifted toward systemic oppression and the struggles of marginalized groups. </p>
<p>Yancey noticed that this cultural shift heavily emphasized identity politics. Identity politics is a political approach where people form alliances and prioritize activism based on their shared social identity, such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. He designed this study to test if focusing on these identity-based issues might be connected to the declining well-being of politically progressive individuals. </p>
<p>To investigate these questions, the researcher analyzed data from the 2021 Baylor Religion Survey. This survey provided a representative sample of adults in the United States. The initial sample included 1,336 individuals. The data was mathematically weighted to adjust for nonresponse, resulting in a final group of 1,248 respondents. </p>
<p>The survey asked participants a variety of questions to measure their mental well-being. Participants rated their feelings of depression, which included indicating how often they felt sad or down. They also rated their anxiety by indicating how often they felt worried, tense, or restless. </p>
<p>Finally, the survey measured the participants’ sense of personal control over their lives. Sense of control refers to how much individuals believe they can solve their own problems rather than feeling completely helpless. All of these individual responses were combined to create self-assessed scores for depression, anxiety, and personal control. </p>
<p>To measure political beliefs, respondents rated their overall political orientation on a scale ranging from highly conservative to highly progressive. The survey also included specific questions to gauge engagement with identity politics. One variable asked about a person’s willingness to participate in political protests specifically intended to address racial inequality. </p>
<p>Another question asked if respondents believed the government should enact stronger laws protecting the rights of sexual minorities. To provide a comparison to identity politics, the researcher also measured class-based progressive views. This was done by creating an index of questions asking if the government should provide public goods like health care and free college tuition. </p>
<p>Using statistical models, the researcher examined how these different political views related to mental health. The initial calculations showed a consistent pattern in the data. General progressive political beliefs were strongly linked to lower well-being across depression, anxiety, and sense of control. </p>
<p>Introducing the specific identity politics measurements completely changed the mathematical relationship. The researcher found that participating in racial inequality protests and supporting sexual minority protections explained the lower well-being scores. In statistical terms, this effect is known as mediation. </p>
<p>Mediation happens when a specific factor completely accounts for the relationship between two other variables. In this study, general progressive ideology only predicted depression and a lower sense of control because it was tied to identity politics. Once the researcher factored in the identity politics variables, the general link between being progressive and feeling depressed or helpless vanished. </p>
<p>When looking specifically at anxiety, the identity politics measures did not completely erase the connection between progressive views and lower well-being, though they accounted for a very large portion of the relationship. Yancey pointed out that the findings aligned with his initial expectations. “Not really surprising,” he said. “I went into the research considering if the growth of identity politics may have contributed to the recent decline of well-being, and this research suggests that it is a possibility.”</p>
<p>The same effect did not happen with the class-based political measures. Desiring higher government spending for health care and college did not explain the well-being gap. This suggests that people who hold progressive economic views but avoid identity politics tend to have mental health levels similar to the rest of the population. </p>
<p>To ensure the findings were robust, the researcher also ran an additional analysis using a mathematical technique to account for missing survey responses. This increased the sample size for the models to 1,131 individuals. The results remained consistent, strengthening the evidence that identity politics variables largely account for the lower well-being reported by political progressives.</p>
<p>The researcher suggests that identity politics requires constant attention to systemic injustice. This focus on external societal forces that an individual cannot easily change tends to lower their internal locus of control. Locus of control is a psychological concept describing how much power people feel they have over the events in their own lives. </p>
<p>While the study provides evidence of a link between identity politics and lower well-being, Yancey notes that the survey data was collected at a single point in time, meaning the direction of the effect remains unknown. “I am not making a causal assertion since directionality cannot be determined with static survey data,” Yancey said. “But there appears to be a relationship between identity politics and well-being.”</p>
<p>“Whether it is that identity politics attracts individuals with low levels of well-being or adherence to identity politics reduces well-being, we need to include in the calculation of promoting identity politics the possibility that those active in it have lower well-being,” Yancey explained. “Identity politics may bring an additional cost of either promoting a system that caters to lower well-being or creating lower well-being itself.”</p>
<p>The researcher wants to ensure the public does not view these results as absolute proof of psychological harm. “I am not claiming that we know that identity politics leads to lower well-being,” Yancey noted. “Ideally, longitudinal or experimental research can arise to answer that question. Readers should know that all I have done is document an association of identity politics and lower well-being.”</p>
<p>Future studies will be needed to track individuals over several years to see if adopting identity politics precedes a decline in mental health. “If I can find the funding, I would love to investigate whether there is a causal relationship with an experimental design on the impacts of the adaptation of identity politics,” Yancey said. “With enough funding, it would be possible to explore this with longitudinal analysis as well.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12966" target="_blank">Identity Politics, Political Ideology, and Well-being: Is Identity Politics Good for Our Well-being?</a>,” was authored by George Yancey.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/both-men-and-women-view-a-partners-financial-investment-in-a-rival-as-a-major-relationship-threat/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Both men and women view a partner’s financial investment in a rival as a major relationship threat</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 3rd 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106816" target="_blank">Evolution and Human Behavior</a></em> suggests that people experience the strongest romantic jealousy when they watch their partner give resources to a potential rival, regardless of gender. The findings provide evidence that giving away resources is viewed as a serious relationship threat by both men and women. This research highlights how our emotional alarm systems react more strongly to a partner’s active investment in someone else rather than a partner passively receiving attention.</p>
<p>Scientists initiated this research to test traditional evolutionary ideas about human mating in a more realistic setting. Evolutionary theory proposes that men and women face different historical challenges when it comes to reproduction and survival. For early human men, a partner’s sexual infidelity posed a risk of unknowingly raising another man’s child. </p>
<p>For early human women, a partner’s emotional infidelity threatened the loss of time, protection, and resources for their own children. Because of these different historical pressures, scientists suspect that modern men and women might trigger jealousy in slightly different ways. Men are often expected to be more reactive to cues of sexual interest from rivals, while women are expected to be more reactive to cues of emotional investment or resource sharing. </p>
<p>Most past research on this topic relied on simple surveys asking people to imagine hypothetical cheating scenarios. Scientists wanted to move beyond these imaginary situations and observe actual behavior in a controlled environment. “The aim was testing if romantic jealousy could be evoked with economic game paradigms in couples, to extend what is universally found using the classical forced choice hypothetical sexual and emotional infidelity scenarios,” explained lead researcher Ana María Fernández, a professor at the University of Santiago de Chile. </p>
<p>They designed an interactive experiment involving real money to see if financial decisions could mimic the ancient threats of resource loss and mate poaching. Mate poaching is a term used in psychology to describe situations where a person intentionally tries to attract someone who is already in a committed relationship. “As an experimental psychologist, this allowed me to extend mind-based methods to the use of experimental economics as a proxy for jealousy inducement,” Fernández noted.</p>
<p>To test these ideas, the researchers recruited 79 heterosexual couples for a laboratory experiment. This resulted in a total of 158 individual participants. The participants were around 30 years old on average and had been in their current relationship for at least six months. </p>
<p>The couples arrived at the lab together but were seated in the same room separated by a physical partition. They then played a computer-based financial exercise known as a dictator game. In a standard dictator game, one person is given a set amount of money and decides how to split it with another person, who has no choice but to accept the offer. </p>
<p>In this modified version, participants believed they were interacting online with their real-world partner and an opposite-sex stranger. The stranger acted as a potential romantic rival. After each round of the game, participants rated their feelings of jealousy on a scale from one to five. </p>
<p>The researchers created two main experimental scenarios. In the investment scenario, participants watched their partner give 75 percent of the available money to the rival, keeping only 25 percent for the participant. This was designed to trigger female jealousy by mimicking a partner diverting resources to another woman. </p>
<p>In the receiving scenario, participants watched their partner receive a large sum of money from the rival. The partner actively accepted these resources. This was designed to trigger male jealousy by mimicking a rival attempting to steal the partner away. </p>
<p>The data revealed that the investment scenario caused the highest levels of jealousy for all participants. Both men and women felt highly threatened when their partner actively gave money to a rival. “We found that a romantic partner allocating more resources to a stranger than oneself is a situation that produces jealousy, regardless of gender,” Fernández said. </p>
<p>The researchers noted that actively giving money requires thought, intention, and sacrifice. Because of this, both men and women interpreted the investment scenario as a major warning sign of a partner slipping away. The anticipated gender differences did not fully emerge in the receiving scenario. </p>
<p>The researchers predicted that men would become much more jealous than women when their partner received money from a rival. Instead, men and women displayed very similar, relatively low levels of jealousy in this situation. “We got a weaker effect when trying to model male jealousy by the partner receiving resources from an opposite sex stranger, although we made it explicit that the partner accepted these resources,” Fernández explained. </p>
<p>The scientists noted that passively receiving money might not send a strong signal of sexual betrayal. A partner might accept resources from a rival just to gain a free benefit, which does not necessarily mean they are sexually interested in the rival. To ensure the jealousy was specifically about their own romantic relationship, the researchers also included several control scenarios. </p>
<p>In these control rounds, participants watched random strangers give or receive money. By including these extra scenarios, the scientists could verify that the jealousy stemmed from a direct threat to the participant’s own romantic bond. “Other than the generalized jealousy at third-party allocation, we found that some of the control conditions indicate that jealousy was not elicited simply by observing unequal allocations or interactions with opposite-sex others,” Fernández pointed out. </p>
<p>She added that the feeling was very specific to relationship threats. “Rather, jealousy was strongest when the resource movement carried a clear relational threat: for women, the partner’s allocation of resources to a female rival,” Fernández observed. A subtle gender difference did appear during the control scenarios. </p>
<p>Women reported feeling jealous when they watched any committed man give money to a single woman, even if that man was a total stranger. This provides evidence that women might be generally more vigilant about the ways men distribute resources, treating it as a broad social warning sign. Finally, individual personality traits played a significant role in the emotional reactions. </p>
<p>The scientists asked participants to complete questionnaires about their personal relationship insecurities. These questionnaires measured digital jealousy, which is the anxiety people feel about their partner’s online interactions. They also measured attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. </p>
<p>Attachment anxiety refers to a deep fear of abandonment and a constant need for reassurance. Attachment avoidance describes a tendency to push others away to stay emotionally independent and avoid vulnerability. People who scored high in digital jealousy and attachment anxiety experienced much more jealousy across all the different game scenarios. </p>
<p>This suggests that a person’s natural disposition greatly influences how intensely they react to relationship threats. While this experimental design offers a fresh perspective on romantic emotions, it does have some limitations. The laboratory setting and the exchange of small amounts of money might not fully capture the intense pain of a real-world betrayal. </p>
<p>Participants might also have adjusted their answers to appear more socially acceptable on the self-reported surveys. Additionally, the sample consisted mostly of young, educated, and heterosexual couples. This limits how well the findings can be applied to older adults, different cultural groups, or non-heterosexual relationships. </p>
<p>Improving the experimental conditions is a priority for the research team. “I would like to improve the condition of reception of resources from a third party, to conclude whether this can be modeled and replicated from the literature on sex differences in jealousy,” Fernández said. Tracking couples over a longer period of time could also help explain how jealousy changes as relationships mature. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106816" target="_blank">Resource allocation and romantic jealousy: An experimental test of sex differences using economic games</a>“, was authored by Ana María Fernández, María Teresa Barbato, Michele Dufey, Belén Zavalla, and María Luíza Rodrigues Sampaio de Souza.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/brain-scans-of-800-incarcerated-men-link-psychopathy-to-an-expanded-cortical-sur/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Brain scans of 800 incarcerated men link psychopathy to an expanded cortical surface area</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 2nd 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>Individuals with high levels of psychopathy tend to struggle with feeling concern for others, and new research links these psychological traits to specific structural properties of the brain. A recent analysis of brain scans from over 800 incarcerated men reveals that those scoring high for psychopathy possess an expanded brain surface area and a compressed organizational layout of their brain tissue. The resulting paper appears in the journal <i><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2026.100695">Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science</a></i>.</p>
<p>Empathy is not a single characteristic. It involves several distinct psychological skills that allow people to navigate social situations. Cognitive empathy allows a person to actively understand the perspective or mental state of someone else. Empathic concern is the emotional ability to actually feel sympathy or care for another person’s well-being.</p>
<p>In clinical psychology, psychopathy is typically characterized by a severe lack of these empathic traits. It is also distinctively categorized by high levels of manipulation, impulsivity, and antisocial behavior. Historically, researchers seeking to understand the biological roots of psychopathy have examined the physical structure of the brain.</p>
<p>Most previous imaging studies looked at overall gray matter volume. Gray matter is the darker tissue of the brain that contains the main bodies of nerve cells. It handles the processing of information, in contrast to white matter, which acts as the communication cables connecting different regions.</p>
<p>Overall gray matter volume is a combination of two distinct anatomical features. These features are cortical thickness, which refers to the ultimate depth of the brain’s outer layer, and surface area, which describes the total expansive sheet of the folded brain tissue. Because these two structural properties develop differently during a person’s life and are influenced by different genetic factors, looking at them separately can yield a much more precise biological picture.</p>
<p>To build a detailed map of how empathy and psychopathic traits align with brain anatomy, lead author Marcin A. Radecki worked alongside senior researchers Kent A. Kiehl and Luca Cecchetti. Radecki holds affiliations with the University of Cambridge and the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. Kiehl operates through the Mind Research Network, and Cecchetti conducts research through the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca.</p>
<p>The team wanted to evaluate an exceptionally large sample of participants to find specific associations between empathy profiles, psychopathic behavior, and the physical shape of the brain. They gathered data from 804 adult men incarcerated in correctional facilities across the southwestern and midwestern United States. The mobile scanner allowed researchers to reach a much larger population of incarcerated individuals than would normally be possible in a traditional hospital setting.</p>
<p>To evaluate empathy levels in these men, the team relied on a standardized self-report questionnaire called the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. This survey asked participants to rate how well certain statements described them. The process generated specific scores for both perspective taking and empathic concern.</p>
<p>The team also calculated a formal score for psychopathy using detailed diagnostic clinical interviews and institutional file reviews. This standard assessment index is known as the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. The diagnostic tool is broken down into two main structural categories.</p>
<p>One category measures interpersonal and affective traits. These include characteristics like superficial charm, grandiosity, and a persistent lack of remorse. The other category captures lifestyle and antisocial traits, including behaviors like impulsivity, irresponsibility, and a documented history of widespread criminal behavior.</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers utilized the mobile magnetic resonance imaging scanner brought directly to the correctional facilities to capture detailed pictures of each participant’s brain. By processing these brain scans with specialized analytical software, they could calculate the exact thickness and surface area of the brain’s outer tissue. The software divided the brain into hundreds of tiny parcels to allow for highly detailed regional mapping.</p>
<p>In analyzing the psychological data, the researchers found divergent, distinct relationships between the different forms of empathy and the categories of psychopathy. The interpersonal and affective psychopathic traits were uniquely linked to lower empathic concern. In contrast, the antisocial and lifestyle traits were uniquely associated with an impaired ability to take another person’s perspective.</p>
<p>The brain imaging results offered surprising insights into the physical structure of the cerebral cortex. Men who met the clinical threshold for high psychopathy possessed an increased total surface area of the brain. This structural expansion was particularly prominent in specific regions of the brain dedicated to social and emotional processing.</p>
<p>These brain areas included the superior temporal region and the auditory cortex, alongside regions belonging to the paralimbic system. The paralimbic system acts as a highly integrated bridge between the brain’s emotional centers and its higher-level cognitive structures. Changes in these regions matched up strongly with prior established templates of how the brain handles social interactions and sensory processing.</p>
<p>These physical brain structure differences were strictly related to the psychopathy scores and were not directly associated with the self-reported empathy survey scores. The discovery of an expanded surface area stands in direct contrast to some past anatomical imaging studies. Earlier research often reported reductions in overall brain volume among highly psychopathic individuals.</p>
<p>The authors suggest that separating out surface area from generalized volume provides a highly sensitive measurement of antisocial traits. Surface area is driven by different cellular mechanisms during brain development, such as how nerve cells migrate and fold into ridges over time. These underlying developmental mechanisms operate independently of the factors that determine the actual thickness of the cortical layer.</p>
<p>Beyond taking regular measurements of area and thickness, the team also investigated the macroscale organization of the brain using structural gradients. The brain is organized along continuous topographical maps that represent a transitional space. These maps span from primary sensory areas, which handle basic senses like vision and movement, all the way to complex associative areas.</p>
<p>These gradients help scientists understand how structurally distinct the brain’s basic sensory functions are from its higher integrative processing centers. In the men with high psychopathy, this natural structural gradient of cortical thickness was visibly compressed. A compressed gradient indicates a reduced physical differentiation between the opposite ends of the brain’s organizational spectrum.</p>
<p>Essentially, the structural layout connecting different functional sensory and associative networks was less segregated and pulled closer toward a centralized average. The compression of brain gradients observed in these men mirrors findings seen in other major psychiatric conditions. Similar losses of structural differentiation have been documented in studies evaluating schizophrenia and depression.</p>
<p>The authors note several limitations to their current study that provide directions for continued investigation. Because empathy was assessed using a simple self-report questionnaire, the psychological scores might be influenced by a high degree of social desirability bias. The test subjects might have lacked the psychological awareness required to evaluate their own empathic deficits accurately.</p>
<p>A performance test that asks participants to recognize facial expressions or interpret tone of voice could potentially uncover stronger links to the actual structure of the cortex. The self-reported empathy data did not map onto the brain structures in a way that produced statistically sound correlations. The physical imaging results corresponding solely to the empathy questionnaire measurements were not statistically significant in the general analysis.</p>
<p>Additionally, the subjects in this project were exclusively incarcerated adult men. Differences in brain structure layout and basic empathetic capacity are known to vary between the sexes based on a variety of environmental and developmental factors. The researchers caution that these particular brain trait relationships might not generalize to women or to individuals with psychopathic traits living freely in the general population.</p>
<p>Future research should aim to include diverse populations outside of the correctional system to see if the anatomical patterns hold true universally. Scientists also need to investigate the actual microscopic cellular mechanisms that drive the folding and expansion of the brain during early growth. Understanding exactly how and why the cortical surface area expands in these individuals could eventually inform early treatment programs meant to foster empathy and reduce severe antisocial behaviors.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2026.100695">Cortical Structure in Relation to Empathy and Psychopathy in 800 Incarcerated Men</a>,” was conducted by a large team of international researchers. It was authored by Marcin A. Radecki, J. Michael Maurer, Keith A. Harenski, David D. Stephenson, Erika Sampaolo, Giada Lettieri, Giacomo Handjaras, Emiliano Ricciardi, Samantha N. Rodriguez, Craig S. Neumann, Carla L. Harenski, Sara Palumbo, Silvia Pellegrini, Jean Decety, Pietro Pietrini, Kent A. Kiehl, and Luca Cecchetti.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/transgender-individuals-face-higher-rates-of-discrimination-and-violence-than-ci/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Transgender individuals face higher rates of discrimination and violence than cisgender sexual minorities</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 2nd 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>Transgender people report higher rates of discrimination and violence across Europe compared to individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. These disparities remain relatively consistent regardless of how progressive a country’s national equality laws might be. The findings were published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2024.2440856"><i>International Journal of Transgender Health</i></a>.</p>
<p>For decades, academic and demographic studies have grouped sexual and gender minority populations together under a single umbrella. This broad categorization assumes a shared set of social challenges. However, lumping diverse populations together can obscure the specific risks faced by distinct groups. Public and political opposition to transgender rights has intensified across several countries in recent years.</p>
<p>During this same period, legal rights regarding sexual orientation and same-sex partnerships have generally advanced. Because of this diverging political landscape, researchers wanted to isolate the specific experiences of transgender people. Jacob Evje, a researcher at the University of Oslo in Norway, led the investigation alongside his colleagues Sam Fluit and Tilmann von Soest. The research team aimed to identify exactly how everyday encounters with prejudice differ between gender minorities and sexual minorities.</p>
<p>To answer these questions, the researchers utilized data from an extensive survey of minority populations in Europe. The dataset included responses collected in 2019 from more than 138,000 individuals across 30 different countries. Within this massive sample, about 85 percent of the participants identified as cisgender and lesbian, gay, or bisexual. A cisgender person is someone whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth.</p>
<p>The remaining participants identified as transgender, meaning their gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. This group included transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary individuals. Nonbinary is a term used to describe people whose gender identity does not fit strictly within the categories of man or woman.</p>
<p>The survey asked participants about their experiences with discrimination across seven different areas of everyday life over the previous twelve months. Participants noted if they had been treated unfairly when looking for a job, at work, or when buying or renting a home. They also recorded instances of discrimination by healthcare workers, by school personnel, at restaurants, and at shops.</p>
<p>In addition to these daily encounters, participants answered a question about extreme hostility. They were asked how many times they had faced physical or sexual attacks over the previous five years. The researchers applied statistical models that could account for individual factors, like age and financial struggles, at the same time as national policies.</p>
<p>The results revealed substantial differences in everyday social environments. Transgender participants reported encountering discrimination in far more areas of life than cisgender participants. Specifically, 58 percent of transgender individuals reported facing discrimination in at least one setting during the past year. In contrast, 40 percent of cisgender lesbian, gay, or bisexual participants reported the same negative experiences.</p>
<p>These differences appeared across every single environment measured by the survey. For example, almost 28 percent of transgender respondents reported discrimination from healthcare or social services personnel. Only about 10 percent of cisgender sexual minorities reported unfair treatment in similar medical settings. Finding employment showed a similar gap, with nearly 13 percent of transgender people reporting discrimination while job hunting compared to roughly 3 percent of the cisgender group.</p>
<p>Reports of physical and sexual attacks followed a matching pattern. Forty percent of transgender participants had been attacked at least once in the past five years, compared to 25 percent of the cisgender respondents. Five percent of transgender respondents reported being targeted by physical or sexual attackers more than ten times.</p>
<p>The research team also looked at the legal and political environments in the 30 countries studied. They incorporated an established index that scores European nations on their legal protections and human rights records regarding sexual and gender minorities. A high score indicates a country has robust anti-discrimination laws and marriage equality, while a low score indicates a lack of basic human rights protections.</p>
<p>For context on the political divide, the researchers noted highly variable scores across the continent. Malta achieved the highest equality score in the data set, reflecting comprehensive legal recognition and state-funded medical care. By contrast, North Macedonia had the lowest score, reflecting a severe lack of basic protections against hate-motivated violence.</p>
<p>Living in a country with higher legal protections was linked to slightly lower levels of reported discrimination for all groups. However, strong national equality scores did not change the frequency of violence reported by participants. The gap in violence experienced by transgender versus cisgender individuals actually expanded slightly in countries with lower legal protections.</p>
<p>The researchers expanded their analysis to see how overlapping personal traits influenced these negative encounters. They specifically looked at whether participants belonged to an ethnic minority group or lived with a disability. Having a minority ethnic background predicted higher levels of discrimination and violence across the entire sample. These negative impacts were magnified for transgender people of color.</p>
<p>Transgender individuals with a disability reported some of the highest instances of violence and unequal treatment. The authors suggest this reality stems from compounded societal prejudice. Transgender people with disabilities often face medical barriers and restricted capacity to express their identities safely in public spaces.</p>
<p>The team also broke down the data by specific gender identities within the transgender group to see who was most at risk. They found that transgender women and nonbinary individuals reported more physical and sexual violence than transgender men. Violence against transgender women has frequently been highlighted in distinct regional reports, and this broad data supports those continuous patterns of harm.</p>
<p>When it came to general discrimination, transgender men and women reported experiencing unfair treatment in roughly the same number of life domains. Nonbinary participants reported discrimination in slightly fewer areas of daily life than binary transgender individuals. The data indicates that safety and social acceptance vary widely even within the transgender community itself.</p>
<p>The authors noted a few limitations in their methodology. The survey relied on a single question to measure experiences of violence, which might not capture the full context or severity of these attacks. Additionally, the discrimination measure counted the number of different environments where unfair treatment occurred, rather than how often it happened. A person facing daily discrimination in just one area, like their workplace, would receive a lower score than someone who experienced isolated incidents in three different settings.</p>
<p>The data relied on predefined survey options for self-reporting ethnic minority status and disability. This restricted approach might obscure important differences in how various specific minority groups experience prejudice. Data coding rules from the original survey design also led to the exclusion of individuals who identified as intersex. The researchers noted that many intersex people also identified as transgender, meaning a distinct segment of the community was left out of the final analysis.</p>
<p>Going forward, the authors recommend tracking these experiences over time to see how shifting political climates affect public safety. They also suggest that public programs designed to reduce prejudice should be tested separately for different demographic groups. Policy makers cannot assume an intervention that helps cisgender sexual minorities will automatically improve the lives of transgender individuals.</p>
<p>The study, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2024.2440856">“Transgender people experience more discrimination and violence than cisgender lesbian, gay, or bisexual people: A multilevel analysis across 30 European countries”</a>, was authored by Jacob Evje, Sam Fluit, and Tilmann von Soest.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/how-video-gaming-habits-shape-our-cognitive-profiles/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">How video game habits act as a window into cognitive health</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 2nd 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>Video gaming often sparks debate over its potential harms and benefits. A new study reveals that cognitive difficulties are linked to problematic gaming habits rather than the act of gaming itself. While individuals at risk for gaming addiction show reduced working memory, those who play recreationally may actually exhibit enhanced attention. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108878"><i>Computers in Human Behavior</i></a>.</p>
<p>The World Health Organization officially recognizes gaming disorder as a medical condition. This diagnosis describes a persistent inability to control gaming habits. For individuals with this condition, playing video games takes precedence over daily activities despite negative life consequences.</p>
<p>Psychologists often study behavioral addictions through a dual-system framework. This model suggests that human behavior is guided by a balance between a goal-directed system and a habitual system. The goal-directed system involves conscious planning and mental flexibility. The habitual system relies on automatic responses that often persist even when they conflict with a person’s goals.</p>
<p>Executive functions are the mental tools that support the goal-directed system. These functions allow people to hold information in their minds, switch between tasks, and suppress impulsive urges. On the other side of the equation is implicit sequence learning. This is an automatic process where the brain extracts patterns from the environment without conscious awareness.</p>
<p>Lead author Krisztina Berta and her colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary wanted to map how these two cognitive systems function in different types of gamers. They aimed to identify the mental mechanisms that separate healthy recreational gaming from addictive behavior. To achieve this, the team designed an experiment to test both executive functions and automatic habit learning.</p>
<p>The researchers recruited 114 participants and divided them into three distinct groups. The first group consisted of non-gamers who did not play video games at all. The second group consisted of recreational gamers who played at least 14 hours a week but did not report addiction symptoms.</p>
<p>The final group included individuals at risk for gaming disorder. These participants played heavily and scored high on a standardized screening questionnaire for gaming addiction. The researchers mathematically adjusted their data to account for the total weekly hours spent playing. This step ensured that any group differences were related to addiction severity rather than just the amount of time spent holding a controller.</p>
<p>Participants completed a series of computerized psychological tests. To measure simple working memory capacity, participants listened to sequences of numbers and tried to recall them in order. A second memory task required participants to count specific shapes on a screen and remember the final tallies.</p>
<p>The researchers also tested a different type of working memory called updating. In this assessment, participants watched letters flash on a screen one by one. They had to press a key when the current letter matched the one shown exactly one or two steps earlier.</p>
<p>To measure inhibitory control, the team used a rapid-fire response task. Participants were instructed to press the spacebar when a blue star was replaced by the letter P and to withhold their response when the letter R appeared. Another test measured cognitive flexibility by asking participants to categorize virtual cards according to rules that changed without warning.</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers evaluated automatic habit formation. Participants viewed four circles on a monitor and pressed corresponding keys as images of dog heads popped up. The images followed a hidden, alternating sequence. As participants subconsciously learned the pattern, their reaction times naturally sped up.</p>
<p>The testing revealed distinct cognitive profiles for the three groups. Individuals at risk for gaming disorder performed worse on the basic working memory tasks than both non-gamers and recreational gamers. They struggled to store and recall strings of numbers and shapes.</p>
<p>While the at-risk group showed normal overall performance on the memory updating task, they made more specific errors. They recorded a higher number of false alarms by pressing the button when they should have waited. This pattern points to increased impulsivity and a potential lack of behavioral control.</p>
<p>In contrast, recreational gamers showed signs of enhanced mental readiness. During the inhibitory control test, the recreational gamers successfully hit the spacebar in response to the target letters more often than the non-gamers. Because the researchers controlled for total playtime, this heightened attention seems uniquely linked to healthy gaming habits.</p>
<p>Results for the habit-learning assessment were not statistically significant among the specific groups. Non-gamers, recreational gamers, and at-risk individuals all learned the hidden dog patterns at roughly the same rate. This finding challenges the assumption that addictive behaviors are universally driven by an overactive habit-learning system.</p>
<p>The researchers also looked at how conscious control and automatic habits relate to one another. Across all participants, there was a negative relationship between inhibitory control and habit learning. When the brain exerts less conscious effort, automated habits predictably gain more influence over behavior.</p>
<p>There was also an unexpected positive relationship between basic working memory and habit learning for non-gamers and at-risk individuals. The researchers suspect that people in these two groups might use their working memory capacity to compensate for other cognitive gaps during automatic tasks. In contrast, recreational gamers did not show this overlapping relationship.</p>
<p>The study relied on a single observation period rather than tracking participants as they aged. This cross-sectional design means the research cannot reveal whether gaming disorder causes working memory deficits. It is equally possible that individuals with preexisting memory and attention challenges are simply more prone to developing gaming addictions. Longitudinal research will be needed to track how cognitive profiles shift over time.</p>
<p>The researchers also noted that their diagnostic categories relied on self-reported questionnaires. Some participants may have lacked self-awareness or answered in ways that made their habits seem less severe. Confirming these test results in clinical populations with formal diagnoses will help validate the conclusions.</p>
<p>Additionally, the cognitive tasks used basic shapes, numbers, and letters. Gamers might show different levels of focus or impulsivity if the tests featured sounds and visuals pulled directly from popular video games. Future experiments might use virtual reality environments to test how addiction-specific triggers alter cognitive performance in real time.</p>
<p>Overall, the research highlights that routine video game play is not inherently harmful to higher-level thinking. Cognitive struggles appear selectively in individuals who have lost control over their hobby. By understanding these mental blueprints, psychological professionals can design better interventions tailored to those dealing with behavioral addictions.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108878">Game on or gone too far? Executive functioning and implicit sequence learning in problematic vs. recreational gamers</a>,” was authored by Krisztina Berta, Zsuzsanna Viktória Pesthy, Teodóra Vékony, Bence Csaba Farkas, Orsolya Király, Zsolt Demetrovics, Dezső Németh, and Bernadette Kun.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/why-your-daydreams-might-be-just-as-bizarre-as-your-nighttime-dreams/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Dreams and daydreams share unexpected patterns of bizarreness</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 2nd 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>People often assume that nighttime dreams are much stranger than the thoughts that drift through our minds during the day. A new study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103965"><em>Consciousness and Cognition</em></a> shows that waking mind wandering is just as densely packed with bizarre elements as dreaming, though the nature of the weirdness differs. The findings suggest that both states share a similar foundation of spontaneous offline simulation, challenging old ideas about the strict boundaries between sleep and waking consciousness.</p>
<p>Spontaneous thoughts make up a large portion of our inner mental lives. When our attention drifts away from the task at hand, our minds wander freely through memories, fantasies, and hypothetical scenarios. Nighttime dreaming operates in a largely similar way, unfolding without our direct, deliberate control. Psychologists and neuroscientists have long debated whether dreaming and waking mind wandering exist on a fluid spectrum or represent entirely different categories of experience.</p>
<p>A central point of debate has been the concept of bizarreness. Dream bizarreness refers to the unusual, unlikely, or physically impossible events that happen while we sleep. Common examples include encountering deceased relatives, noticing a familiar room in the wrong city, or suddenly gaining the ability to fly. Some researchers view these strange occurrences as proof that dreaming is fundamentally disconnected from waking life. Others propose that dreaming is essentially just a more intense version of waking mind wandering.</p>
<p>One leading psychological theory suggests that both states are governed by how much cognitive control we exert over our minds. During focused tasks, our thoughts are tightly constrained. During daytime mind wandering, those deliberate constraints loosen, allowing thoughts to drift. In sleep, those constraints are thought to become even weaker, resulting in unguided transitions. If this framework holds true, researchers expected dreams to feature much more discontinuity and bizarreness than daytime thoughts.</p>
<p>To test these ideas, philosophers and consciousness researchers Manuela Kirberg and Jennifer Windt from Monash University in Australia designed a new investigation. Past research often relied on simple questionnaires asking participants to rate the overall strangeness of an experience on a single scale. Kirberg and Windt wanted to look closer at the specific types of unusual elements that populate both states to see exactly how the boundaries of reality bend when the mind goes off script.</p>
<p>The researchers used a method called a self-caught design to capture natural experiences as they happened in daily life. Twenty-one participants recorded one daytime mind wandering episode and one nighttime dream every day for a multi-week period. Participants used a smartphone app to log an audio description of their thoughts or dreams immediately after waking up or noticing their attention had drifted.</p>
<p>This approach yielded 379 distinct audio reports. By having external judges evaluate the transcripts rather than relying on participant self-ratings, the study provided a more objective measure of unusual mental content. The judges broke down each report into individual elements, such as specific people, locations, actions, and objects. They then categorized any oddities into three main types of bizarreness: incongruity, vagueness, and discontinuity.</p>
<p>Incongruity happens when elements are mismatched or simply impossible, such as a dog breathing fire. Vagueness occurs when a location or identity is completely undefined. Discontinuity refers to sudden jumps in time or space, like a person popping out of nowhere. The investigators also measured the density of these unusual traits by calculating the percentage of bizarre elements compared to normal elements within the reports.</p>
<p>When looking at the reports as whole stories, dreams did appear weirder. About half of the dream reports contained numerous strange elements, compared to only a third of the mind wandering reports. This surface-level analysis confirmed the traditional idea that sleep produces wilder thoughts than wakefulness.</p>
<p>Zooming in on the density of the individual elements revealed an entirely different pattern. The researchers found that roughly eight percent of all dream elements were bizarre, compared to nine percent of the elements in mind wandering episodes. Waking mind wandering and nighttime dreaming contained nearly the exact same concentration of strange features. The two states just express that strangeness in different ways.</p>
<p>Beyond the unusual features, the researchers noticed that actions dominated the content of both states. Rather than just seeing passive images, people actively simulated themselves doing things. Additionally, social interactions and other characters made up about a fifth to a quarter of the content in both types of reports, showing that we simulate social worlds whether we are awake or asleep.</p>
<p>In dreams, incongruity and vagueness are incredibly widespread across all categories of thought. Dreamers frequently report contextual mismatches, like finding a childhood bedroom tucked inside a modern office building. Dreams also feature very specific subtypes of bizarreness that never appeared in the daytime mind wandering reports. These unique dream features included fused identities, where a single character possesses the combined physical or personality traits of two completely different people.</p>
<p>Dreams also exclusively featured ongoing transformations. In a sleep state, a friend might slowly morph into a coworker, or a moving train might smoothly shift into a car. These slow, blended mutations give dreams a highly combinatorial narrative structure. The resting brain slowly stitches different memory fragments together to maintain an ongoing, if somewhat illogical, storyline.</p>
<p>Waking mind wandering is highly fragmented by comparison. The researchers found that discontinuity was twice as frequent in daytime thoughts as it was in sleep. When the waking mind wanders, it jumps abruptly from one topic or location to the next. Objects and people do not slowly transform. Instead, they simply vanish and are replaced by completely new, disconnected thoughts. Waking spontaneous thought behaves more like rapidly changing television channels than a blended movie.</p>
<p>The researchers observed that strange elements in daytime thoughts were mostly concentrated around changes to the self. A person might imagine themselves in a different career or looking slightly older. Dreams featured these same alterations but pushed them to impossible extremes. A dreamer might inhabit a completely different body or become a fictional cartoon character in their sleep.</p>
<p>The study provides a highly detailed look into the nature of spontaneous thought, but the methodology does carry certain limitations. The sample size of individual participants was relatively small, even though they submitted hundreds of reports combined. The researchers also noted that participants recorded their experiences at home, meaning there is no brain activity data to confirm exactly which sleep stages produced the dreams.</p>
<p>Participants also submitted longer descriptions and higher quantities of nighttime dreams than daytime wandering episodes. Because people typically remember dreams from the late morning hours just before waking up, and those late-stage dreams are known to be especially unusual, the study might have captured a specific subset of highly vivid dream logic.</p>
<p>Recognizing exactly how these two conscious states diverge and overlap will help scientists better understand how the human brain pulls apart and recombines memories to simulate reality. Future studies could explore how an individual’s age might alter the frequency and strangeness of their unguided thoughts. The relationship between age and the qualitative aspects of spontaneous thought is still poorly understood, providing a fertile ground for upcoming research.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the findings show that analyzing mental bizarreness is like turning a kaleidoscope. Depending on the exact angle or scale of measurement, a completely different pattern of similarities and differences emerges. Nighttime dreams cannot simply be dismissed as inherently more bizarre than daytime daydreams. A nuanced approach is required to fully grasp the limits of human imagination.</p>
<p>The study, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103965">“The kaleidoscope of bizarreness: The analysis of first-person-reports shows the relationship between dreaming and mind wandering to be complex,”</a> was authored by Manuela Kirberg and Jennifer Windt.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/combining-alcohol-with-cocaine-rewires-the-brains-relapse-pathways-differently-than-cocaine-alone/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Combining alcohol with cocaine rewires the brain’s relapse pathways differently than cocaine alone</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 2nd 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02198-w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neuropsychopharmacology</a></em> provides evidence that using cocaine and alcohol together alters the brain pathways responsible for drug relapse. The research suggests that the specific brain circuits driving a return to cocaine use in single-drug scenarios are no longer the primary drivers when alcohol is involved. These findings indicate that treating polysubstance use might require completely different medical approaches than treating isolated cocaine use.</p>
<p>Scientists conducted this research to better understand how the brain changes when multiple addictive substances are consumed. Most laboratory models of addiction focus entirely on a single substance, such as cocaine. However, the vast majority of people who struggle with cocaine addiction also consume alcohol, often drinking sequentially after a period of using cocaine.</p>
<p>To explain the motivation behind the study, researcher Lori Knackstedt provided some background. Knackstedt is a professor of psychology at the University of Florida, a researcher at the Center for Addiction Research and Education, and holds titles as a UF Term Professor (2017-2020) and a UF Research Foundation Professor (2023-2026).</p>
<p>“Despite years of research, there are still no FDA-approved medications for cocaine use disorder,” Knackstedt said. “While many compounds reduce cocaine-seeking in rodent models of cocaine use disorder, these compounds fail to reduce cocaine use in humans.”</p>
<p>“One reason for this discrepancy may be that 50-90% of humans with cocaine use disorder consume alcohol on the same day that they consume cocaine,” Knackstedt explained. “Alcohol and cocaine produce both similar and opposing effects on neurobiology.”</p>
<p>“Thus, our research program is aimed at determining whether rodents taking both cocaine and alcohol have distinct neuroadaptations from those that consume only cocaine,” she added. “If this is true, then different treatments may need to be used in people who use both drugs compared to only cocaine.”</p>
<p>Previous studies on single substances have established that a specific neural pathway plays a significant role in triggering a relapse. This pathway connects the prelimbic cortex, an area of the brain responsible for decision making, to the nucleus accumbens core, a region heavily involved in processing rewards. When scientists block the signals between these two brain regions, animals usually stop seeking cocaine.</p>
<p>The researchers designed their experiment to test if this exact same brain circuit still controls the urge to seek drugs after a history of using both cocaine and alcohol. To answer this question, the scientists studied 84 rats over a series of controlled experiments.</p>
<p>First, the animals underwent surgery so researchers could insert specialized biological tools into their brains. These tools, known as chemogenetics, allow scientists to selectively turn specific brain pathways on or off using a specially designed chemical injection.</p>
<p>Following recovery, the rats were placed in specialized chambers and trained to press a lever to receive small, intravenous doses of cocaine. The animals participated in these daily sessions for two hours at a time until they consistently self-administered the drug. The drug delivery was paired with specific lights and sounds to create strong environmental cues.</p>
<p>Afterward, the rats were divided into two main groups and returned to their home cages. One group received standard drinking water, while the other group received a choice between water and a liquid containing twenty percent alcohol for six hours. This setup models the human behavior of using alcohol sequentially after cocaine.</p>
<p>Next, the animals went through a process called extinction training. During this phase, pressing the lever no longer provided any cocaine or triggered any lights or sounds. Over a period of at least ten days, the animals gradually learned to stop pressing the lever, mimicking a period of drug abstinence.</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers conducted a test to measure the reinstatement of drug seeking behavior, which is the laboratory equivalent of a relapse. They exposed the animals to the lights and sounds that were previously paired with cocaine to trigger an urge for the drug. Right before this test, the scientists gave the rats the specialized chemical to either block or stimulate the neural pathway connecting the decision making center to the reward center.</p>
<p>The researchers found that blocking this brain pathway had different effects depending on what the animals had been drinking in their home cages. In the rats that only consumed water, turning off the neural pathway successfully prevented them from pressing the lever to seek cocaine. This outcome matches previous studies involving only one substance.</p>
<p>In the rats that consumed both alcohol and cocaine, blocking the exact same brain circuit failed to stop their drug seeking behavior. These animals continued to press the lever at high rates when exposed to the cocaine-related cues. This suggests that the combination of alcohol and cocaine shifted the control of relapse behaviors to a completely different, currently unidentified brain network.</p>
<p>To verify that their biological tools were working properly, the researchers examined the animals’ brain tissue under a microscope. They looked for the presence of a specific protein that naturally builds up inside brain cells when those cells are highly active. By measuring the levels of this protein, the scientists confirmed that their chemical injection successfully quieted the targeted brain cells in both groups of animals.</p>
<p>During this tissue analysis, the researchers also looked at the basolateral amygdala, an almond shaped structure deep in the brain linked to processing emotions and environmental cues. They found that animals with a history of alcohol use showed heightened cellular activity in this emotional center during the relapse test. This provides evidence that chronic alcohol consumption tends to make certain brain areas more sensitive to triggers associated with other addictive substances.</p>
<p>In a separate experiment, the scientists tried artificially stimulating the pathway connecting the decision center to the reward center rather than blocking it. They wanted to see if boosting the communication between these brain regions would increase the intensity of drug seeking behaviors. To do this, they used a different version of the chemogenetic tools designed to excite the neurons rather than silence them.</p>
<p>The researchers found that stimulating this brain circuit did not increase lever pressing or overall physical movement in either the single-drug or the multiple-drug group. The animals pursued the drug cues at the same rate regardless of whether the brain pathway was artificially stimulated.</p>
<p>“We were surprised that while we could suppress relapse to cocaine seeking by inhibiting the brain pathway from the prefrontal cortex to the nucleus accumbens, stimulating the same pathway did not increase relapse further,” Knackstedt told PsyPost. “This implies that there is a ceiling for the ability of this pathway to control relapse.”</p>
<p>While the study provides helpful new insights, there are a few potential limitations and misinterpretations to consider. The specific timing of the substance use in this model only represents one way humans consume these drugs.</p>
<p>“This study assessed only one pattern of cocaine-alcohol polysubstance use, one where cocaine is taken first and alcohol second,” Knackstedt explained. “Humans also engage in simultaneous cocaine-alcohol use, which may produce different effects on the brain.”</p>
<p>Additionally, the exact mechanisms behind the increased activity in other brain regions remain unexplored. Future studies will need to identify exactly which new brain pathways take over the relapse process when alcohol and cocaine are combined.</p>
<p>Moving forward, Knackstedt and her team plan to “continue to assess neurobiological changes in response to cocaine-alcohol polysubstance use in efforts to find medications to reduce cocaine use in this condition.” Ultimately, the main takeaway for the average person is “that polysubstance use, the use of more than one addictive drug within a period of time, can change the brain in unique ways,” Knackstedt noted.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02198-w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The role of the prelimbic cortex to nucleus accumbens core projection in the reinstatement of cocaine-seeking after cocaine-alcohol polysubstance use</a>,” was authored by Javier R. Mesa, Sydney Y. Dick, Kassandra Greenan, Lizhen Wu, and Lori A. Knackstedt.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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