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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/puberty-hormones-shape-the-adolescent-female-brain-before-physical-changes-appear/" 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;">Puberty hormones shape the adolescent female brain before physical changes appear</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 15th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study has identified how specific puberty hormones relate to the physical structure and functional wiring of the adolescent female brain. The findings suggest that hormones like estradiol and testosterone are linked to distinct brain regions that support memory, emotion, and spatial awareness. This research was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.70451" target="_blank">Human Brain Mapping</a></em>.</p>
<p>Adolescence is a period of rapid biological and emotional change driven largely by puberty. During this time, the brain undergoes significant development, which scientists suspect is influenced by rising hormone levels. These changes coincide with a higher risk for mental health issues like anxiety and depression, particularly in young females. </p>
<p>Exploring how hormones shape the developing female brain provides evidence that might explain the emergence of these emotional challenges. In the past, studies looking at the relationship between hormones and brain development in adolescents have produced mixed results. Many previous research efforts relied on small groups of participants. </p>
<p>In addition, older studies often focused on only one type of brain imaging at a time. This specific focus can make it difficult to see the full picture of how hormones affect the entire brain. To address these gaps, researchers wanted to look at multiple hormones and multiple brain imaging techniques simultaneously in a very large group of young females.</p>
<p>“Puberty is thought to influence how the adolescent brain develops, shaping social and emotional behavior,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/muskankhetan" target="_blank">Muskan Khetan</a>, a doctoral candidate at the University of Melbourne and the lead author of the study. “Most research has focused on visible physical changes, but hormone changes actually begin earlier, before these signs appear, and we know far less about their effects on the brain.”</p>
<p>Khetan noted that this is an important gap, because hormones may serve as some of the earliest biological signals that puberty has begun. “Using a larger sample than is typical in this area of research, we set out to map how these hormonal changes organize the brain in adolescent girls, thereby helping us to better understand how this developmental period shapes social and emotional development,” Khetan said. “We focused on girls because their hormone patterns during puberty are more complex and have been relatively understudied.”</p>
<p>To conduct the study, the authors analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which is a massive ongoing project tracking child health in the United States. They focused on a specific sample of 3,024 adolescent females. The participants ranged in age from eight to thirteen years old, with an average age of about ten.</p>
<p>The scientists measured the levels of three specific steroid hormones using saliva samples provided by the participants. These hormones included estradiol, which is a primary female sex hormone, as well as testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone. While testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone are often categorized as male hormones, they are present and active in females as well, playing a role in physical growth and brain development.</p>
<p>To understand the brain, the researchers used several different types of magnetic resonance imaging. First, they looked at structural imaging, which measures the physical shape, thickness, and volume of the brain’s gray matter. Gray matter consists of the main bodies of brain cells where information is processed and stored.</p>
<p>They also used diffusion-weighted imaging to look at the brain’s white matter. White matter acts like the brain’s communication highway, consisting of long nerve fibers that connect different regions and allow them to send signals to one another. Analyzing white matter helps researchers understand the strength and organization of these internal pathways.</p>
<p>The team also used functional magnetic resonance imaging to see how the brain operates over time. They measured resting-state connectivity, which shows how different brain networks communicate when a person is just lying still. They also recorded brain activity while the participants completed a specific task that required them to look at pictures of faces and places and remember what they had seen.</p>
<p>With all this data, the researchers applied an advanced mathematical model known as elastic-net regression. This statistical technique allowed them to look at hundreds of brain measurements simultaneously to find which ones best predicted the levels of the three hormones. They trained their model on a portion of the data and tested it on the rest, which helps ensure the results are reliable.</p>
<p>The researchers found that estradiol was most strongly associated with the physical structure of the prefrontal cortex and premotor regions. The prefrontal cortex is located at the front of the brain and helps manage complex behaviors like planning, regulating emotions, and working memory. Higher levels of estradiol were linked to variations in the thickness and folding of these specific areas.</p>
<p>Estradiol also showed a strong relationship with the brain’s resting-state functional connectivity. It was associated with how the visual networks communicated with the thalamus, a deep brain structure that relays sensory information. It was also linked to connections between memory-related brain networks and the caudate, an area involved in learning and action planning.</p>
<p>The two androgens, testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone, showed a different pattern of associations. These hormones were most strongly connected to the structure of the parietal and occipital lobes, which are located toward the back of the brain. These regions are primarily involved in processing visual information and spatial awareness, helping a person understand where objects are in their environment.</p>
<p>Higher levels of both testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone were associated with a thinner outer layer of the brain in these visual and spatial areas. While a thinner brain layer might sound negative, it is actually a normal part of brain maturation during adolescence. The brain typically prunes away unused connections to become more efficient as a child grows.</p>
<p>Dehydroepiandrosterone was the only hormone in the study that showed a relationship with how the brain functioned during the active memory and emotion task. Higher levels of this hormone were linked to increased activity in areas of the brain that process faces and emotions. This suggests that this specific hormone might play a role in how young females react to emotional situations.</p>
<p>Even though the hormones had their own unique associations, the researchers also found some overlapping effects. All three hormones were linked to the structure of the insula, a brain region involved in experiencing internal emotions, and the temporoparietal junction, which helps people understand the thoughts and feelings of others. They were also all associated with the white matter fibers connecting the left and right sides of the prefrontal cortex.</p>
<p>“What stood out was the overlapping effects of these hormones on the brain,” Khetan told PsyPost. “The existing literature tends to draw fairly clean lines, estradiol linked to emotional behavior, testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone to visuospatial processing, but our data showed these hormones also converge on the same brain systems involved in social and emotional processing.”</p>
<p>Khetan explained that this overlap actually reflects well-established biology. “Testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone can be converted into estradiol in the body, where it then acts on the same receptors,” Khetan said. “Seeing that shared biological mechanism reflected in brain patterns was one of the more interesting aspects of what we found.”</p>
<p>The magnitude of these hormone-brain connections is also an important piece of the puzzle. “The core message is that puberty is a sensitive period, and hormonal changes may be reshaping the brain even before physical development is visible,” Khetan explained. “Our study doesn’t directly measure behavior or clinical outcomes, but it shows that these hormones are actively organizing brain systems central to both emotion and visuospatial processing.”</p>
<p>Khetan pointed out that the statistical effects they found were small, which is a common occurrence in hormone research because hormone levels can vary a lot from person to person. Because of this high variability, large studies are needed to identify reliable biological patterns. “In short, puberty is not just about visible physical changes,” Khetan added. “Important hormonal shifts shape the brain, and thereby behavior.”</p>
<p>As with all research, there are some limitations to consider. “This study identifies associations, it does not establish cause and effect,” Khetan noted. “It’s also worth noting that we examined hormone-brain relationships at a single point in time rather than tracking individuals longitudinally, so we can’t yet speak to how these patterns unfold over the course of development.”</p>
<p>Because age and puberty happen at the same time, it can be difficult to separate changes caused specifically by hormones from changes that just happen naturally as a child gets older. “These findings are best read as an early contribution to understanding how hormones shape the adolescent brain, not as a complete picture,” Khetan said. “Translating these brain-level findings into specific behavioral or clinical outcomes will require further research.”</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the researchers only studied females. Because the scientists did not have estradiol measurements for the males in the broader study, they could not compare the two sexes. Future research will need to include both males and females to see if these hormone-brain relationships apply universally.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, the researchers hope to build on this work by examining how biology and life experiences intersect. “Collecting non-invasive hormonal data from adolescents is genuinely challenging, which is part of why this area remains understudied,” Khetan said. “My broader goal is to understand not just how hormone levels change during puberty, but how those changes interact with environmental factors, such as stress or adversity, and with physical development, to shape the brain and mental health over time.”</p>
<p>Khetan is especially interested in what drives individual differences, specifically why some adolescents show greater vulnerability while others remain resilient. “My own research points to two additional layers of complexity: the timing and pace at which hormones rise matter beyond their absolute levels, and the way hormones fluctuate across a month varies between individuals in ways that appear relevant to adaptability and risk,” Khetan explained. “Ultimately, I hope this line of research can help identify early biological markers that flag who may be most at risk, before problems have a chance to emerge.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.70451" target="_blank">Pubertal Hormones and the Early Adolescent Female Brain: A Multimodality Brain MRI Study</a>,” was authored by Muskan Khetan, Nandita Vijayakumar, Ye Ella Tian, Megan M Herting, Michele O’Connell, Marc Seal, and Sarah Whittle.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-just-revealed-a-strange-quirk-in-how-we-exit-train-stations/" 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;">Scientists just revealed a strange quirk in how we exit train stations</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 15th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>An analysis of data collected by a pedestrian tracking system at the Eindhoven Centraal Railway Station in the Netherlands found that, after exiting a train, individuals tend to follow the same walking path as the person directly in front of them. This happens even when they do not know that person and even when such a choice leads to a longer travel time. The research was published in the *<a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2528167123">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>*.</p>
<p>When walking in crowded spaces such as busy streets, train or bus stations, airports, or mass gatherings, people generally try to reach their destination while avoiding obstacles, delays, collisions, and discomfort. Their route is shaped by physical features such as walls, doors, stairs, kiosks, corridors, signs, and bottlenecks. They also respond to crowd density, often avoiding areas that look too congested or slow.</p>
<p>Walking paths are likely influenced by perceived travel time, not only by actual distance, because a shorter route may feel worse if it is crowded. Also, being in a crowd forces people to continuously adjust their speed and direction in response to others moving around them. In such situations, they often follow visible flows of pedestrians because other people’s movement gives information about where a usable path may be. Social groups, such as friends or family members, also shape walking paths because members tend to stay together and follow the same route.</p>
<p>Study author Ziqi Wang and his colleagues used a large-scale, high-resolution dataset of pedestrian paths collected at tracks 3 and 4 of Eindhoven Centraal Railway Station using an advanced overhead pedestrian tracking system based on 3D stereoscopic imaging.</p>
<p>These sensors covered about 1400 m<sup>2</sup> of the station, capturing data at 10 frames per second using overhead depth sensing without recording identifiable images of pedestrians. The system also provided very high spatial resolution, being able to detect changes of around 1 millimeter. In total, between March 2021 and March 2024, the system captured over 30 million pedestrian movement trajectories. This included people disembarking from the trains and the people already present on the platform.</p>
<p>In this analysis, the study authors focused on a subset of pedestrian trajectories where individuals, after getting off a train, had to choose between taking a direct, shorter path to the exit and a longer path that involved circumventing a kiosk in the middle of the platform. The authors analyzed the paths of passengers who exited the train from three specific door zones, including approximately 100,000 passengers.</p>
<p>To ensure they were studying the interactions between strangers rather than people traveling together, the researchers developed a mathematical algorithm to detect social groups. This system analyzed how close people were to each other, how much they matched each other’s speed, and if they moved in the same direction. Once these groups were identified and filtered out, the researchers could focus solely on independent pedestrians.</p>
<p>For each passenger included in the analysis, the study authors recorded their choice of route after exiting the train and the relative order in which they exited. This allowed them to study how individuals and crowds decide what path to take in the presence of congestion, differences in how the space is organized, and how local social dynamics—especially among strangers—affect those choices.</p>
<p>The results showed that, after exiting the train, passengers demonstrated a strong tendency to follow the same path as the person directly in front of them. This “stranger-following effect” happened even in the absence of any social ties, and even when following the stranger led to a longer travel time.</p>
<p>The study authors note that this tendency creates “avalanches” of choices, where sequences of people make identical decisions about their walking paths in succession, leading to strong patterns in collective movement. </p>
<p>To confirm these findings, the researchers built a theoretical routing model to simulate pedestrian behavior. They tested various factors, such as the natural randomness of walking speeds and the tendency of people to follow the majority (herding). However, they found that only by including the “stranger-following effect” could the model accurately reproduce the real-world patterns observed at the station. This indicates that local imitation behavior is the dominant driver of collective route choices in this scenario.</p>
<p>“These findings highlight how brief, low-level interactions between strangers can scale up to influence large-scale pedestrian movement, with strong implications for crowd management, urban design, and the broader understanding of social behavior in public spaces,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of how people choose their paths in crowded areas. However, it should be noted that the study was based on data concerning the movements of passengers exiting trains at three relatively fixed positions and moving towards the station exit. This situation greatly simplified and constrained the routing choices people could make. Results in environments with wider routing and end-goal options might differ.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2528167123">Avalanches of choice: how stranger-to-stranger interactions shape crowd dynamics,</a>” was authored by Ziqi Wang, Alessandro Gabbana, and Federico Toschi.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-classic-psychology-study-on-the-calming-effects-of-nature-just-got-a-massive-update/" 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;">A classic psychology study on the calming effects of nature just got a massive update</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 15th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.102956" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Environmental Psychology</a></em> suggests that watching videos of natural environments, such as forests, helps people recover from stress more effectively than watching videos of urban environments. The findings provide evidence that nature imagery can positively influence a person’s emotional state. This offers a simple way to support mental well-being in spaces where actual nature is out of reach.</p>
<p>Scientists conducted this study to test the reliability of a highly influential experiment from 1991. That older experiment introduced the idea that simply looking at natural scenes could help the human body and mind recover from stress. Since the publication of that original paper, many hospitals, offices, and schools have used nature pictures to help calm people down.</p>
<p>Agnes van den Berg, an environmental psychology researcher at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, led this new collaborative effort. “Although the original study is still widely cited as foundational evidence that exposure to natural environments, compared to urban environments, supports stress recovery, it had never been directly replicated across multiple sites using contemporary methods,” van den Berg noted. “We wanted to examine how robust and reproducible these effects are today, using a preregistered multisite design with a larger and more diverse sample.”</p>
<p>“One aspect we value about this project is that it contributes to the broader movement toward replication and transparency in people-environment research,” van den Berg added. “Classic studies can strongly shape scientific fields and public discourse, so it is important to revisit influential findings with modern open science practices and collaborative methods.”</p>
<p>Ten different research teams across the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden joined forces for this project. They recruited a total of 959 participants for the experiment. The sample was nearly evenly split between men and women, with an average age of 22 years. The scientists assigned each participant to watch a specific set of videos while hooked up to physical monitoring equipment.</p>
<p>First, all participants watched a 10-minute video designed to cause a moderate amount of stress. This video featured reenactments of industrial workplace accidents, such as people slipping or being struck by heavy objects. The scientists added ominous background music to the video to ensure it effectively raised the viewers’ stress levels.</p>
<p>After the stress-inducing video, the scientists randomly assigned participants to watch one of six 10-minute environmental videos. Two of these videos featured natural settings, specifically a forest and a stream. The other four videos showed urban settings, which included busy and quiet pedestrian areas, as well as busy and quiet traffic areas.</p>
<p>Throughout the process, the researchers measured the participants’ psychological and physical reactions. To track emotional states, the scientists asked participants to fill out a questionnaire at three different times. They answered questions before the stress video, right after the stress video, and after the environmental video. The questionnaire measured feelings of fear, anger, sadness, positive emotion, and attentiveness.</p>
<p>To track physical reactions, the researchers used a specialized monitoring device attached to the participants’ bodies. This device measured two different parts of the autonomic nervous system, which is the system that controls involuntary bodily functions. One part is the sympathetic nervous system, often called the fight-or-flight response. This system speeds up the heart and increases sweating during moments of danger or stress.</p>
<p>The researchers measured this fight-or-flight response by tracking changes in skin moisture and heart timing. The second part of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system, often called the rest-and-digest response. This system helps calm the body down after a threat has passed. The researchers measured this calming response by tracking variations in the time between heartbeats, a concept known as heart rate variability.</p>
<p>The researchers found that the stress video worked exactly as intended. After watching the workplace accidents, participants reported feeling less positive and more afraid, angry, and sad. Their physical sensors also showed increases in the fight-or-flight response, confirming that they were experiencing a bodily state of stress.</p>
<p>During the recovery phase, the psychological results generally matched the findings from the original 1991 study. Participants who watched the natural environments reported a much larger increase in positive emotions compared to those who watched the urban scenes. They also experienced a greater decrease in feelings of anger and aggression after watching the forest or the stream.</p>
<p>The physical results presented a more complicated picture. The measures of the fight-or-flight response showed that stress levels decreased for everyone during the recovery phase, regardless of which environment video they watched. Unlike the original study, the nature videos did not lead to a faster reduction in this specific physical stress response.</p>
<p>However, the physical measures associated with the rest-and-digest response did show differences based on the video type. Participants who watched the forest video showed a much faster activation of their body’s calming system. This suggests that the forest setting specifically helped their bodies return to a physically relaxed state more quickly than the urban settings did.</p>
<p>“Our findings suggest that merely viewing nature can support recovery from acute stress, both psychologically and physiologically,” van den Berg told PsyPost. “One does not need to go into real nature to enjoy these effects. The effects were not dramatic or magical, but they were consistent across several measures and across research sites.”</p>
<p>“The findings also provide insight into the mechanisms behind the effects,” van den Berg noted. “In particular, the physiological effects seem to be driven by activation of the so-called ‘vagal brake’, a feedback signal from the stress system that tells the body that all is safe now.”</p>
<p>The researchers hope the public recognizes the accessibility of these benefits. “The broader message is that everyday contact with nature, even if it only involves looking out of the window or at a poster on a wall, may play a meaningful role in supporting mental and physical well-being,” van den Berg said.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the rapid relaxation response was most intense during the first three minutes of the nature videos. Van den Berg admitted she did not expect the physical effects to be so noticeable in a modern demographic. “To be honest, I was kind of surprised that part of the findings regarding the physiological effects of viewing nature were still present in the results,” van den Berg said.</p>
<p>“The sample consisted of nearly a thousand students who are used to viewing videos on social media such as TikTok and Instagram,” van den Berg added. “For this ‘Gen Z’ generation, I expected that it would be rather boring to view a video of a forest for 10 minutes, shot from a stationary point of view.” Despite these modern viewing habits, the physical effects persisted. “Indeed, the ‘all is safe now’ response to nature was strongest in the first 3 minutes of viewing the video,” van den Berg said.</p>
<p>The video of the natural stream did not produce this same calming physical effect. The rest-and-digest response of participants who watched the stream looked very similar to the response of those who watched the busy city streets. The researchers suspect this happened because the stream video featured the loud, fast-moving sound of rushing water, which the participants might have found disturbing rather than relaxing.</p>
<p>While the study provides evidence that viewing nature can aid in stress recovery, the researchers noted some caveats. “One important point is that this study does not imply that nature is a substitute for medical or psychological treatment,” van den Berg explained. “The effects observed were relatively modest short-term recovery effects following an experimental stressor.”</p>
<p>It is also important not to interpret the results as proof that all city environments are harmful. “It is also important not to oversimplify the findings into a strict ‘nature good, city bad’ narrative,” van den Berg added. “Urban environments can also provide a wealth of social, cultural, and psychological benefits, which are not captured by the videos used in our study.”</p>
<p>Future research could expand on these findings by testing a wider variety of natural and urban scenes. “Across the world many researchers are already following up on this seminal study,” van den Berg noted. “Much of this recent work has moved beyond exposure to simulated nature to more ecologically realistic and longitudinal approaches.”</p>
<p>“Preliminary findings provide insight into some of the characteristics of environments that matter most for recovery,” van den Berg explained. “For example, environmental characteristics such as biodiversity, water, soundscapes, perceived safety, familiarity, and cultural meaning may all play a role.”</p>
<p>Van den Berg plans to focus on the personal traits that change how individuals react to natural settings. “Personally, my research interests involve the role of individual factors that may make people more open to the beneficial effects of nature, such as gender, age, levels of acute and chronic stress, childhood nature experiences, and connectedness to nature,” van den Berg said.</p>
<p>Van den Berg shares much of her ongoing work online, including through her agency, <a href="https://www.natuurvoormensen.nl/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nature4People</a>, and she also contributes to a large European project called <a href="https://resonate-horizon.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Resonate</a> focused on building human resilience through nature-based therapies.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.102956" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Psychophysiological recovery from viewing nature and urban settings: A multisite replication</a>,” was authored by A.E. Van den Berg, K. Dijkstra, D. Meuwese, F. Beute, P.M. Darcy, S. Dewitte, B. Gatersleben, C.J. Gidlow, C.M. Hägerhäll, J.A. Hipp, Y. Joye, Y.A.W. De Kort, S.C.M. Lechner, C. Neale, Å. Ode Sang, J. Roe, D.T. Scheepers, K. Smolders, H. Staats, R.S. Steensma, K.J. Wyles, and S.L. Koole.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/age-and-hormones-alter-how-rats-respond-to-psilocybin-2026-03-26/" 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;">Estrogen levels may dictate how the brain reacts to psychedelics, new animal study indicates</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 14th 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>Psilocybin induces different behavioral responses in rats depending on their age and female reproductive cycles. Treating young rats with the drug, however, does not alter their behavior later in life. These outcomes indicate that psychedelic therapies may need to be customized for different patient demographics to ensure they work safely and effectively. The findings were published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropharm.2025.110619">Neuropharmacology</a></em>.</p>
<p>Rates of mood disorders and anxiety disorders continue to rise globally. Standard medications, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, act as the most common first line of defense for these health issues. These daily medications can take weeks or even months to provide noticeable relief. They also fail to alleviate symptoms for a large portion of the people taking them, pushing medical researchers to investigate psychedelic drugs as alternative treatments.</p>
<p>Clinical trials suggest psilocybin might act faster, require fewer doses, and offer longer lasting relief than standard antidepressants. When a person or animal consumes psilocybin, the body rapidly breaks it down into a chemical called psilocin, which enters the brain and attaches to specific docking stations on brain cells called serotonin receptors. Activating these receptors alters consciousness, mood, and perception while promoting neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s physical ability to form new cell connections and rewire old pathways.</p>
<p>Historically, most studies exploring these potential therapies rely almost entirely on adult male test subjects. This blind spot exists even though major depressive episodes are notably more common in women than in men. These psychiatric conditions also frequently emerge during human adolescence, and the teenage years represent a unique period of massive brain development.</p>
<p>During this developmental window, brains undergo a restructuring process where massive numbers of connections between neurons are formed and then intentionally pruned away. Serotonin systems play a massive role in guiding this physical restructuring. Introducing a potent drug that alters serotonin signaling could theoretically disrupt a typical growth trajectory. A.L. Zylko, Matthew S. McMurray, and their colleagues at Miami University designed a study to evaluate these overlooked areas in psychedelic medicine.</p>
<p>The research team observed how rats of different ages reacted to a single dose of psilocybin. The specific psilocybin used in the study was synthesized in a laboratory using bioengineered bacteria. They gave adolescent rats either a harmless water solution or the manufactured drug. They also administered the exact same substances to fully grown adult rats to provide a baseline for comparison.</p>
<p>After administering the substances through a feeding tube, the researchers placed each animal in a clear observation cage and recorded their behavior on video for half an hour. They watched for a rapid, side-to-side shaking movement of the head and body. This behavior, resembling a wet dog shaking off water, is a standard marker used to measure hallucination-like states in rodents. Activating the specific serotonin receptors targeted by psilocybin reliably triggers this distinct shaking motion.</p>
<p>The adult rats displayed a robust increase in this behavior within five minutes of receiving the substance. The adolescent rats, on the other hand, barely reacted at all. They did not show the typical rapid head movements associated with the drug. This outcome was consistent across testing days for both early adolescent and late adolescent test groups.</p>
<p>The researchers then let all the young rats grow to adulthood. They wanted to see if brief exposure to the drug during a sensitive developmental period would change their adult brains in noticeable ways. Once the rats reached maturity, the team ran the subjects through a series of behavioral testing paradigms.</p>
<p>One test placed the animals on an elevated zero maze to measure their anxiety. This apparatus is a raised, circular track featuring open sections without walls alongside enclosed, sheltered sections. Rats instinctively fear exposed heights, meaning animals spending more time exploring the open sections show lower anxiety levels. The team found that rats previously given the psychedelic explored the track exactly like the rats given only water.</p>
<p>Another assessment tested how well the rats could adapt to changing rules. This task measures behavioral flexibility, a cognitive trait often impaired in individuals suffering from severe depression. The researchers restricted the animals’ food intake, then taught the hungry rats to press specific levers inside a testing chamber to receive a sugar pellet. One lever provided a sweet reward most of the time, while the other rarely dispensed an item.</p>
<p>Once the rats learned to favor the reliable lever, the experimenters switched the rules, making the rare lever the highly rewarding one. The animals had to figure out that the environment had changed and alter their strategy. The rats exposed to psilocybin during their youth learned the new rules just as quickly as their unexposed peers.</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers gave these grown rats a fresh dose of the psychedelic. They recorded their behavior to see if early adolescent exposure permanently altered their brain’s sensitivity to the chemical. Again, the early exposure made no difference in their physical response. The matured rats reacted just like adults experiencing the drug for the exact first time.</p>
<p>While analyzing the adult test groups, the research team noticed a clear division between the sexes. Adult female rats exhibited the shaking motion much more frequently than the adult male rats. To understand this difference, the researchers launched a secondary study focusing entirely on the female reproductive cycle.</p>
<p>In female rodents, this process is called the estrous cycle, and it heavily influences the structure and chemistry of the mammalian brain. The cycle involves rising and falling levels of hormones like estrogen. The researchers tracked the cycles of adult female rats for two weeks to establish their individual biological rhythms. Then, they administered psilocybin during two distinct phases of the cycle.</p>
<p>They tested the rats during a phase characterized by relatively low estrogen levels, called diestrus. They also tested them during a phase with peak estrogen levels, known as proestrus. The results showed a clear fluctuation in drug sensitivity that tracked directly with the hormonal shifts. Females in the low-estrogen phase displayed a higher number of shaking responses compared to when they were in the high-estrogen phase.</p>
<p>The researchers note that hormonal changes may alter how serotonin receptors function inside the brain. Estrogen levels might change the exact location of these receptors, pulling them off the cell surface and hiding them inside the cells where the psychedelic chemicals cannot easily reach them. Estrogen might also alter the cellular chain reactions that usually happen immediately after the drug binds to the receptor.</p>
<p>The researchers outline several limitations to their experimental findings. The lack of shaking behavior in the younger rats does not guarantee that the youngsters experienced no effects from the drug at all. Adolescent rats might process the drug physically faster or express the neurological effects through entirely different physical movements than adults. Preliminary tests hinted that the overall baseline number of serotonin receptors does not change drastically between age groups, but the measurement methods used had technical limitations.</p>
<p>Discovering that early exposure does not cause long lasting behavioral harm is a positive result, but the researchers note that developing brains naturally possess high levels of plasticity. These naturally high levels might hide the subtle structural rewiring usually triggered by the drug in adult brains. Future research should test different dosages and examine alternative behavioral markers in developing animals.</p>
<p>Extensively monitoring how developmental age and hormonal cycles change receptor function allows laboratory work to map onto real world conditions. Understanding these specific biological parameters will help medical professionals optimize future psychiatric drug doses for a wider diversity of patients.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropharm.2025.110619">Age- and estrous-dependent effects of psilocybin in rats</a>,” was authored by A.L. Zylko, R.J. Rakoczy, B.F. Roberts, M. Wilson, A. Powell, A. Page, M. Heitkamp, D. Feist, J.A. Jones, and M.S. McMurray.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/from-childhood-to-adulthood-musicians-show-small-but-reliable-advantages-in-sustained-attention/" 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;">>From childhood to adulthood, musicians show small but reliable advantages in sustained attention</a>
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<p><p>Learning a musical instrument may sharpen attention and vigilance from childhood through adulthood, according to new research published in the <em><a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.70068" target="_blank">British Journal of Psychology</a></em>.</p>
<p>Researchers have long debated whether mentally demanding activities—such as playing chess, learning a language, or practising a musical instrument—can enhance general cognitive abilities, such as attention and vigilance, which naturally develop with age. Musical training has been seen as a promising candidate because it requires sustained focus, complex coordination, and multitasking.</p>
<p>However, much of the earlier evidence comparing musicians and non-musicians is difficult to interpret. These groups often differ in background factors like education, socioeconomic status, and personality, making it difficult to determine whether observed differences can be attributed to musical training itself, or instead reflect the pre‑existing characteristics of individuals who are more likely to pursue music.</p>
<p>A research team led by Rafael Román-Caballero of the University of Granada in Spain sought to address this selection bias. The scientists recruited 420 participants between the ages of 8 and 34, drawing from two independent groups—one of Spanish children and adolescents, and one of university-age adults.</p>
<p>Using a rigorous statistical method, the researchers paired each musician with a non-musician who closely matched them on a broad range of personal characteristics, including socioeconomic background, physical activity, video game habits, cognitive hobbies, and personality traits. After filtering the data, they were left with a final sample of 268 perfectly matched participants. </p>
<p>Participants completed a computerized attention task called the ANTI-Vea, which measures several distinct aspects of attention. Most notably, it measures “executive vigilance” (how well a person detects rare events buried among distracting information) and “arousal vigilance” (the ability to sustain alertness and react quickly to sudden stimuli over long periods). </p>
<p>The findings revealed consistent advantages for musically trained individuals across nearly every measure tested. Regardless of their age, musicians responded roughly 36 milliseconds faster on average than their non-musician counterparts—a small but reliable difference that held across the entire age range studied. They were also less prone to lapses in attention—often described as “zoning out”—and showed more stable response times on tasks designed to assess sustained vigilance.</p>
<p>Because the researchers studied a wide age range, they noticed two distinct patterns in how these advantages developed. First, they observed a “threshold effect”; some advantages (like faster reaction times) were present even in the youngest 8-year-old musicians, suggesting that simply starting music lessons and reaching a certain threshold of practice might boost attention. </p>
<p>Second, they observed a “dosage effect,” where some advantages grew more pronounced with age. For example, the ability to filter out irrelevant distracting information—a skill known as executive control—demonstrated a more rapid improvement across the teenage years and into adulthood among those with musical training. This suggests that longer exposure to music may compound its benefits over time.</p>
<p>Román-Caballero and team concluded that their study “provides new evidence that formal musical training is associated with superior attention and vigilance across development. The thorough control of confounding variables in the design was intended to provide a closer estimate of the differences between musicians and nonmusicians in isolation from other factors.”</p>
<p>The researchers caution, however, that the observed effects were relatively small and more modest than those reported in earlier, less rigorously controlled studies. Moreover, because the research measured only a single point in time, rather than following the same individuals over many years, it cannot establish a definitive causal relationship between musical training and attentional advantages.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.70068" target="_blank">Attention and vigilance advantages related to formal musical training across childhood, adolescence and young adulthood</a>,” was authored by Rafael Román-Caballero, Laura Trujillo, Paulina del Carmen Martín-Sánchez, Elisa Martín-Arévalo, and Juan Lupiáñez.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/why-swiping-by-gut-feeling-on-dating-apps-might-lower-your-self-esteem/" 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;">Making snap judgments on dating apps hurts your own perceived value as a mate</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 14th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>Making snap, gut-level judgments on dating apps might leave users feeling worse about themselves than evaluating profiles methodically based on set criteria. A recent study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2025.2555430"><i>Media Psychology</i></a> found that while seeing a high number of potential partners increases feelings of being overwhelmed, it is the intuitive swiping strategy that actually harms users’ self-esteem and perceived value as a mate. These results suggest that the fast-paced design of modern dating platforms carries hidden psychological costs depending on how individuals choose to engage with the app.</p>
<p>Traditional online matchmaking agencies typically rely on lengthy questionnaires and deliberate algorithms to pair users. Modern mobile dating platforms take a vastly different approach, exposing users to a massive pool of seemingly available partners within a single session. Users are invited to evaluate these profiles rapidly with a simple swipe of their thumb. Platform designs, which offer positive social feedback in the form of matches, heavily incentivize this continuous browsing behavior.</p>
<p>Prior research into consumer behavior suggests that having an abundance of options can make decisions harder and leave people feeling dissatisfied. Psychologists often refer to this phenomenon as a tyranny of choice. Under this theory, an optimal environment filled with endless choices increases the pressure to succeed. If a user fails to find a partner or makes a bad choice, they have no excuses left and might blame their own personal shortcomings.</p>
<p>Marina F. Thomas, a researcher at the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences in Austria, led the investigation alongside Alice Binder and Jörg Matthes from the University of Vienna. They set out to test how the sheer number of viewed profiles and the user’s personal decision-making style jointly affect psychological well-being. The investigators wanted to test whether dating apps provide the self-validation users often seek or if the apps simply overwhelm them.</p>
<p>To frame their experiment, the researchers utilized regulatory mode theory. This psychological concept explains that people usually make decisions using one of two primary modes. The assessment mode involves methodically judging options, comparing specific attributes, and trying to make the right, defensible choice. The locomotion mode is action-oriented. People using this mode make quick, intuitive decisions based on gut feelings, primarily trying to keep moving forward rather than overthinking.</p>
<p>To test these dynamics, the researchers recruited 401 undergraduate students for an online experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to view varying pools of dating app profiles. One group viewed a low number of 11 profiles, a second group viewed a medium number of 31 profiles, and a third group viewed a high number of 91 profiles. The photos were presented in a mock dating application specially designed for the study.</p>
<p>The researchers used a two-part method to influence how participants made their decisions. First, participants completed a writing task to prime their mindset. They wrote down personal memories of times they acted as a quick decision maker to spark the action-oriented mode, or they wrote about times they critically compared themselves to others to spark the assessment mode. A control group skipped this writing exercise and received no special instructions.</p>
<p>Following the writing task, participants were given explicit instructions for evaluating the dating profiles. One group was told to evaluate profiles critically, looking at specific physical traits, clothing styles, and perceived social status to make highly justified decisions. The action-oriented group was instructed to swipe intuitively and dynamically, basing their choices purely on first impressions and gut feelings.</p>
<p>After sorting through the mock profiles, participants answered questions designed to measure several psychological outcomes. The researchers assessed their state self-esteem, their fear of being single, how highly they rated their own value as a potential romantic partner, and how overwhelmed they felt. The software also silently recorded the percentage of profiles each participant chose to accept.</p>
<p>The experiment revealed that looking at a higher number of options directly increased the feeling of being overwhelmed. Participants who looked at 91 profiles reported a heavier mental burden than those who viewed fewer profiles. Evaluating more options also resulted in lower overall acceptance rates. Participants became much pickier as the abundance of choices grew, accepting a smaller percentage of the people they saw.</p>
<p>Contrary to the tyranny of choice theory, the sheer volume of profiles did not negatively impact self-esteem or the participants’ fears regarding their relationship status. Instead, the specific way participants made their decisions produced the psychological shifts. The results showed that swiping intuitively based on gut feelings directly led to a drop in self-esteem.</p>
<p>Participants who followed the quick, action-oriented strategy reported lower self-esteem than those who swiped naturally without instructions, as well as those who used specific criteria to evaluate profiles. The intuitive group also rated their own personal value as a mate lower than the other groups did. The research team noted this was an unexpected outcome, as previous theories suggested that highly critical, criteria-based decision-making typically caused more stress and self-doubt in consumer settings.</p>
<p>The authors suspect that making intuitive choices places the entire burden of the decision on the user’s internal feelings rather than observable facts. Because romantic preferences are difficult to perfectly define, relying solely on unexplainable gut instincts might make users feel uneasy. As a result, they might misdirect that unease inward, causing them to doubt their own self-worth. By contrast, relying on concrete traits provides an external buffer that protects the ego from the weight of the decision.</p>
<p>Another possible explanation involves cognitive friction regarding the format of the dating app. A static dating profile primarily displays unmoving photos and brief text, which naturally lends itself to critical evaluation. Pushing users to react quickly and intuitively to static photos might create a mismatch between the task and the mental mode. Users might misinterpret this subtle mental mismatch as a personal inadequacy.</p>
<p>The chosen swiping strategy also influenced when participants started to feel mentally overloaded. For people using strict criteria or swiping naturally, looking at 31 profiles felt about as manageable as looking at 11 profiles. For those swiping based on gut instincts, the feeling of being overwhelmed spiked much earlier, hitting just as hard at 31 profiles as it did when evaluating 91 profiles.</p>
<p>While the experiment provides a detailed window into dating app use, the study has practical limitations depending on its simulated nature. The decisions made during the experiment carried no actual social consequences, meaning participants knew they would not go on real dates with the people they evaluated. In a functioning dating app, users might put varying levels of effort into their choices because real rejections or connections are at stake.</p>
<p>The study also relied on a sample composed largely of young college students evaluating portraits tailored specifically to their demographic. The authors noted that college students often work in environments that reward critical assessment, which might have made the intuitive swiping task feel unusually foreign. Future research should involve more diverse populations encompassing different age groups and educational backgrounds.</p>
<p>Future investigations could also track actual dating app behaviors over time to see how self-reported decision styles hold up outside a laboratory environment. Implementing technology like eye-tracking software could help researchers observe what kind of profile information users focus on naturally. This approach would allow scientists to study natural swiping mechanisms accurately without relying on explicit behavioral instructions.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2025.2555430">Decision-Making on Dating Apps: Is Swiping More Less and Swiping Right Wrong?</a>,” was authored by Marina F. Thomas, Alice Binder, and Jörg Matthes.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/updating-the-multiple-choice-test-reveals-a-hidden-cognitive-advantage-in-women/" 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;">Women score higher than men on fluid intelligence tests when allowed to express uncertainty</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 14th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Traditional tests of intelligence and literacy may be fundamentally flawed because they force test-takers to choose a single answer rather than allowing them to express their level of confidence in different options. When people are given financial incentives and allowed to distribute their answers based on how sure they are, women actually score higher than men. The research was published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/738345"><i>Journal of Political Economy</i></a>.</p>
<p>For decades, psychologists and economists have measured cognitive ability using multiple-choice tests. These assessments score responses as strictly right or wrong. Glenn W. Harrison of Georgia State University, Don Ross of University College Cork, and J. Todd Swarthout of Georgia State University suspected this format misses a vital component of human cognition. Knowing how strongly to believe in an answer is a skill in itself.</p>
<p>The researchers note that the standard format forces people to mask their thought processes. If someone is somewhat confident in an answer but still perceives some risk of being wrong, the rigid format does not capture that nuance. The test format demands absolute certainty even when a person possesses healthy skepticism. </p>
<p>To address this, the team examined the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices test. This assessment presents a grid of shapes with one missing piece and asks the test-taker to identify the pattern. It is widely used to measure fluid intelligence, which is the ability to solve new logic problems without relying on prior knowledge.</p>
<p>The researchers wrote that, “The measurement of intelligence should identify and measure an individual’s subjective confidence that a response to a test question is correct.” They noted that existing tests completely fail to achieve this goal.</p>
<p>The standard version of this puzzle allows test-takers unlimited time and offers no financial motivation. The researchers created a computerized version that offered monetary rewards for correct answers. They divided participants into different groups to test how the structure of the task changed their performance.</p>
<p>In the baseline group, participants took a traditional version for a flat fee of five dollars. In another group, participants were paid based on their accuracy but were still forced to pick just one answer. A third group experienced a radically different test structure.</p>
<p>These participants were given eighty digital tokens to allocate across eight possible answers. If they were completely sure, they could place all eighty tokens on a single choice for a maximum reward of two dollars per puzzle. If they were unsure, they could spread their tokens out over multiple likely answers to guarantee a smaller payout.</p>
<p>This token system measures what the researchers refer to as confidence. In this context, confidence does not mean optimism. It refers to the precision of a person’s belief. A person who places ten tokens on every single answer is safely guarding against risk because they have no idea which shape is correct.</p>
<p>When financial incentives were combined with the ability to express varying degrees of confidence, the results shifted dramatically. In the traditional format, female participants scored lower than male participants. When participants could assign tokens based on their confidence, women outperformed men. </p>
<p>The data showed that female participants were better at calculating the risk of their answers and distributing their tokens efficiently. Knowing when you are unsure is a core part of cognition. The researchers consider this risk assessment to be a fundamental element of fluid intelligence.</p>
<p>The researchers also altered the order of the puzzles. The standard test starts with easy puzzles and gradually progresses to difficult ones. The researchers call this sequence a structured progression, meaning it is an environmental clue that helps a person think.</p>
<p>When the researchers scrambled the order of the puzzles so that difficulty varied randomly, overall performance dropped. The gap in performance between the group forced to pick one answer and the group allowed to use tokens widened even further. This confirmed that the ability to express uncertainty is a distinct cognitive advantage when facing unpredictable problems.</p>
<p>This discovery regarding gender prompted the researchers to revisit other areas where men possess a supposed advantage. They looked at studies regarding competitiveness. Past behavioral studies suggest that women back away from competitive environments, such as workplace tournaments, in favor of flat payment schedules.</p>
<p>The researchers recreated these experiments using the token system and discovered that women were making the mathematically correct risk management choices. Participants had to solve logic problems under a time limit, choosing either a guaranteed payment per correct answer or a tournament style where only the top performer received a large payout.</p>
<p>Men tended to choose the competitive tournament even when it resulted in a monetary loss for them. Men proved to be overly optimistic about their chances of winning. Women evaluated the risk accurately and chose the safer compensation structure, which resulted in better financial outcomes.</p>
<p>The team also looked at financial literacy tests. Standard surveys report that women choose the “do not know” option much more often than men when asked financial questions. This has led to the assumption that women possess lower financial literacy.</p>
<p>The researchers presented participants with a standard question about calculating purchasing power based on interest and inflation rates. When the researchers allowed subjects to use tokens to answer the question, they found that women were just more open about their lack of complete certainty. The bias in their actual knowledge was tiny and not statistically significant.</p>
<p>Many women distributed their tokens broadly, meaning they were aware that they lacked the exact knowledge and guarded their bets accordingly. This behavior signals an intellectual awareness of uncertainty. Someone who knows they are guessing is more likely to seek out a financial advisor or a textbook to learn the correct answer. </p>
<p>Individuals who place all their tokens on a highly incorrect answer represent a much larger danger. The researchers noted that these individuals are completely confident in their incorrect knowledge. These are the people most likely to make catastrophic financial decisions without consulting outside help.</p>
<p>The authors specify that their findings on motivation might involve variables that are difficult to isolate. Participants might bring personal motivations into the laboratory that interact with the monetary incentives offered by the experimenters.</p>
<p>Future studies could attempt to separate these personal drives from the financial rewards to see how they impact token distribution. The research team also plans to further investigate data suggesting that Black participants similarly perform drastically better when allowed to express their confidence through the token system.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/738345">Gender, Confidence, and the Mismeasure of Intelligence, Competitiveness, and Literacy</a>,” was authored by Glenn W. Harrison, Don Ross, and J. Todd Swarthout.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/brain-cells-store-competing-memories-that-drive-or-suppress-alcohol-relapse/" 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 cells store competing memories that drive or suppress alcohol relapse</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 14th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2026.03.023" target="_blank">Neuron</a></em> provides evidence that the brain stores competing memories of alcohol use and the recovery from it within distinct networks of the same type of brain cell. The research suggests that the memory driving a return to drinking and the memory suppressing it exist side by side, competing for control over a person’s behavior. These findings offer a nuanced understanding of how addiction persists and point toward potential new ways to improve treatments for alcohol use disorder.</p>
<p>Addiction occurs when addictive substances hijack normal learning processes, leading to the formation of powerful memories that link certain actions and environments with the drug. Behavioral therapies, such as extinction training, attempt to reduce the urge to seek alcohol by repeatedly exposing individuals to drug-related cues without providing the alcohol reward. However, the clinical impact of these therapies tends to be limited because scientists do not fully understand the physical cellular structures that hold these opposing memories. </p>
<p>“Relapse is one of the most difficult challenges in alcohol use disorder, even after long periods of abstinence or treatment,” said Jun Wang, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics at the Texas A&M University Health Science Center’s College of Medicine. “Alcohol-associated cues and contexts can trigger powerful memories that drive renewed alcohol seeking. We wanted to understand where relapse-related memories are stored in the brain, and how extinction training reduces alcohol-seeking behavior by erasing the original alcohol memory or by creating a competing memory that suppresses relapse.”</p>
<p>Memories are thought to be physically stored in the brain through specific groups of cells called engrams. An engram is a physical change in the brain that represents a memory. It consists of a specific network of brain cells that activate together when an experience happens, and when the brain recalls that memory, the same group of cells fires again. Past research on engrams has mostly focused on fear learning in other parts of the brain, meaning less is known about the engrams that store habits and voluntary actions related to addictive substances.</p>
<p>The researchers designed the study to test whether the memories for alcohol use and the memories for extinction are stored in separate areas or within the same cell populations. They focused on a brain region called the dorsomedial striatum, which helps control goal-directed behaviors. Within this region, they examined a specific type of cell known as direct-pathway medium spiny neurons. </p>
<p>“We were surprised to find that these opposing memories were encoded within the same genetically defined cell type, direct-pathway medium spiny neurons, rather than being separated simply by different neuron types,” Wang said. “Traditionally, many models emphasize broad distinctions between direct- and indirect-pathway neurons, but our findings show that even within one cell type, distinct neuronal ensembles can have very different, even opposite, behavioral functions.”</p>
<p>The scientists conducted a series of experiments using genetically modified mice. They placed the mice in specialized testing boxes equipped with levers and lights. The mice learned that pressing an active lever three times would deliver a small amount of a twenty percent alcohol solution, which was accompanied by a specific tone and a yellow light. After several weeks of this training, the mice underwent nine days of extinction training, where pressing the lever no longer provided the alcohol or the cues. </p>
<p>To track the memory cells, the researchers used a specialized genetic tagging technique. They injected a drug that allowed them to permanently label the specific brain cells that were active either during the initial alcohol learning or during the later extinction training. Following the training phases, the researchers tested groups of four to seven mice to see which memory cells were reactivated during a simulated relapse event. </p>
<p>They found that the brain cells tagged during the initial alcohol learning were highly reactivated when the mice experienced the cues associated with alcohol. The cells tagged during extinction training were not reactivated during this simulated relapse, which provides evidence that alcohol use and extinction training recruit different sets of the same type of brain cell.</p>
<p>The researchers then looked at where these specific cell groups were located within the dorsomedial striatum. This brain region is divided into two distinct areas: the matrix, which generally promotes action, and the striosome, which generally discourages action. By analyzing brain tissue samples, the scientists found that the cells linked to extinction memories were heavily clustered in the striosome areas. These extinction-related cells strongly inhibited dopamine-producing neurons, which helps suppress the urge to seek alcohol. In contrast, the cells linked to alcohol use were spread broadly across the matrix and promoted reward-seeking behavior.</p>
<p>To test whether these distinct groups of cells actively control behavior, the researchers used a technique that allows them to turn specific neurons on or off using custom-made chemicals. They injected viral vectors into the brains of the mice, which safely delivered genetic instructions causing the tagged memory cells to produce specialized receptors. The researchers then injected a chemical that binds to these receptors to either turn the cells on or off. </p>
<p>In tests involving groups of seven to sixteen mice, the authors found that turning off the alcohol-learning cells successfully suppressed the simulated relapse. Activating the extinction-learning cells also reduced the animals’ attempts to seek alcohol. The scientists repeated these tests using sucrose instead of alcohol and found no effect. This suggests these particular memory cells are specific to alcohol and do not generalize to natural rewards.</p>
<p>The authors also wanted to understand exactly how the brain physicalizes the memory of alcohol use. Learning changes the brain by strengthening the synapses, which are the connections between different brain cells. The researchers focused on the connections coming from the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area involved in complex decision-making. By taking electrical recordings from dozens of individual neurons across multiple mice, they found that alcohol use caused a long-lasting strengthening of the synapses connecting the medial prefrontal cortex to the specific cells involved in alcohol learning.</p>
<p>To see if this strengthened connection was the actual memory, the scientists used a technique that controls brain cells with light. They introduced light-sensitive proteins into the brain cells of a new group of mice, numbering seven to eleven per group, that had never consumed alcohol. By shining a specific wavelength of light into the brain through tiny optical fibers, the scientists forced the neurons to fire and strengthened their connections artificially. </p>
<p>This artificial stimulation was paired with specific lights and sounds in the testing chamber. Later, when the researchers played the lights and sounds again, the mice began pressing the lever as if they were seeking alcohol. This suggests that the researchers successfully created an artificial memory of alcohol relapse simply by strengthening a specific brain connection. The authors also replicated these behavioral findings in a small group of rats to ensure the results were not unique to mice.</p>
<p>“One important aspect of the study is that we were able to identify not only the neurons associated with alcohol relapse and extinction, but also a synaptic mechanism that helps store relapse-related memory,” Wang said. “Specifically, we found that communication from the medial prefrontal cortex to striatal neurons was strengthened after alcohol self-administration, and experimentally mimicking this strengthening was sufficient to drive relapse-like behavior. This provides evidence that alcohol-related memories can be physically embedded in specific brain connections.”</p>
<p>“The main takeaway is that relapse and recovery-related learning are not only abstract psychological processes; they are represented by specific groups of neurons in the brain,” Wang explained. “We found that two opposing alcohol-related memories, one that promotes relapse and one that suppresses alcohol seeking after extinction, can be encoded within the same broad type of striatal neuron. This suggests that recovery may depend not only on weakening relapse-driving circuits, but also on strengthening the brain circuits that support extinction and behavioral control.”</p>
<p>While the study provides a detailed look at how the brain stores alcohol-related memories, there are some limitations to consider. The timeline of alcohol exposure in the study was relatively short compared to human addiction, which tends to develop over years. It is possible that the physical nature of these memories changes over longer periods of chronic alcohol use. </p>
<p>“An important caveat is that this study was conducted in mouse models of alcohol self-administration, extinction, and relapse-like behavior,” Wang noted. “These models capture important aspects of alcohol seeking and relapse, but they do not fully reproduce the complexity of human alcohol use disorder. We also do not want readers to interpret the findings as meaning that relapse is controlled by a single brain region or a simple ‘on/off switch.’ Rather, our study identifies one specific circuit and cellular mechanism that contributes to alcohol-related memory and relapse-like behavior.”</p>
<p>Current medical treatments cannot selectively erase or enhance specific memory cells in human patients. However, understanding that recovery involves strengthening a competing extinction memory gives researchers a new conceptual target. Future therapeutic strategies might focus on finding medications or brain stimulation techniques that specifically boost the extinction memory network to help prevent relapse.</p>
<p>“Our long-term goal is to understand how maladaptive alcohol memories are formed, stored, retrieved, and suppressed at the level of specific brain circuits,” Wang said. “We are particularly interested in identifying mechanisms that could selectively weaken relapse-promoting memory circuits or strengthen extinction-related circuits. In the long run, this type of work may help guide new strategies to improve the durability of behavioral therapies and reduce relapse risk.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2026.03.023" target="_blank">Dual-engram architecture within a single striatal cell type distinctly controls alcohol relapse and extinction</a>,” was authored by Xueyi Xie, Yufei Huang, Ruifeng Chen, Zhenbo Huang, Himanshu Gangal, Ziyi Li, Jiayi Lu, Adelis M. Cruz, Anita Chaiprasert, Emily Yu, Nicholas Hernandez, Valerie Vierkant, Runmin Wang, Xuehua Wang, Rachel J. Smith, and Jun Wang.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
<p><strong>This information is taken from free public RSS feeds published by each organization for the purpose of public distribution. Readers are linked back to the article content on each organization's website. This email is an unaffiliated unofficial redistribution of this freely provided content from the publishers. </strong></p>
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