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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/men-with-a-sense-of-entitlement-are-three-times-more-likely-to-consider-stealthing/" 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;">Men with a sense of entitlement are three times more likely to consider “stealthing”</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 23rd 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Recent research published in the journal <em>Psychology, Crime & Law</em> suggests that specific deep-seated psychological patterns, particularly feelings of entitlement and a desire to punish others, are linked to an interest in secretly removing a condom during sex. The findings provide evidence that targeted mental health interventions might help reduce this specific form of sexual violence by addressing dysfunctional ways of thinking.</p>
<p>Non-consensual condom removal, commonly known as stealthing, happens when a person secretly takes off or damages a condom before or during sex without their partner’s knowledge or consent. Because condom use symbolizes a mutual agreement regarding sexual safety, secretly altering that agreement transforms a consensual sexual encounter into an act of sexual violence.</p>
<p>“It not only violates consent but also exposes victims to sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies and lasting emotional harm,” said Andrew Allen, a clinical psychologist, member of the Sexual Violence Research and Prevention Unit, and director of the Psychology Clinic at the University of the Sunshine Coast. The emotional fallout for victims often includes diminished sexual assertiveness and profound feelings of betrayal.</p>
<p>To better understand the cognitive drivers behind this behavior, scientists have begun examining the underlying psychological traits of those who perpetrate it. “Further studies are vital because relatively little is known about the psychological factors behind this crime,” Allen said.</p>
<p>The authors of the primary study wanted to explore how stealthing relates to early maladaptive schemas. These schemas are deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and feeling that usually develop in childhood as a result of unmet emotional needs. By acting as a lens through which individuals interpret the world, these ingrained beliefs can lead to manipulative or harmful interpersonal behaviors later in life.</p>
<p>Prior to investigating extreme behaviors like stealthing, scientists often look at broader categories of sexual coercion, such as condom use resistance. Condom use resistance involves a range of tactics, from verbal persuasion to deception, used to avoid wearing a condom during sex. While not all of these tactics are inherently violent, some men use aggressive or manipulative strategies that ignore a partner’s boundaries. The scientists designed their study to see how deeply rooted psychological schemas overlap with both general condom use resistance and the specific act of stealthing.</p>
<p>In the most recent study, scientists recruited 106 men residing in Australia to participate in a 20-minute online survey. The participants were between the ages of 19 and 68, with the majority identifying as heterosexual and currently in monogamous relationships. To ensure the reliability of the data, the researchers included specific attention checks and removed incomplete responses. The survey assessed the participants on 20 different early maladaptive schemas using a widely recognized psychological questionnaire.</p>
<p>The men also answered questions about their past use of tactics to avoid wearing condoms. To gauge the participants’ attitudes toward stealthing without putting them in legal jeopardy, the researchers presented three hypothetical scenarios involving non-consensual condom removal. One scenario involved simply taking the condom off, another involved breaking it intentionally, and the third involved continuing to have sex after the condom accidentally slipped off. The participants then rated their level of sexual arousal in response to these scenarios, as well as their intent to engage in such acts.</p>
<p>The findings indicated that men who possessed an entitlement or grandiosity schema were highly responsive to the stealthing scenarios. “The first was a sense of entitlement or grandiosity, in other words believing that rules don’t apply to you; and men who showed this pattern were more than three times more likely to report arousal and intent to engage in stealthing,” Allen said. The results suggest that feelings of superiority can lead individuals to justify taking sexual access regardless of their partner’s autonomy.</p>
<p>Additionally, the researchers observed a link between stealthing arousal and another specific pattern of thinking. “The second was punitiveness, or the tendency to punish others for not complying with your wishes, which is associated with lacking empathy and being judgmental,” Allen said.</p>
<p>In the context of sexual encounters, this might manifest as a desire to secretly remove a condom as a form of covert retaliation against a partner. “We anticipated the entitlement finding but the role of punitiveness, suggesting that some men may be drawn to [non-consensual condom removal] as a form of retaliation against a partner, has not been documented previously,” Allen noted.</p>
<p>The study also found that men who felt highly confident in their ability to negotiate and apply condoms properly tended to report less arousal toward the stealthing scenarios. “On the flip side, the study found that men with greater confidence in condom use were less likely to commit [non-consensual condom removal],” Allen said. “This suggests that practical sexual health skills may lower the risk factors and increase safety for partners.” Interventions focusing on healthy sexual communication could help counteract the negative influence of maladaptive schemas.</p>
<p>These findings build upon another recent study published in the journal <em>Psychology & Sexuality</em>, conducted by the same authors in collaboration with the Cairnmillar Institute in Victoria. In that research, scientists investigated how stealthing relates to the dark triad of personality traits, which includes narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Machiavellianism involves a manipulative and cynical worldview, while narcissism is characterized by grandiosity and self-importance. Psychopathy involves a lack of empathy, high impulsivity, and callous behavior toward others.</p>
<p>The researchers surveyed 221 men to see if these specific personality traits predicted an inclination toward non-consensual condom removal. Similar to the newer study, the participants read hypothetical stealthing scenarios and answered questions about their arousal, past behaviors, and future intentions. “We previously found links between narcissism, psychopathy and stealthing,” Allen said.</p>
<p>Psychopathy emerged as the strongest predictor of intending to secretly remove a condom. The scientists noted that the impulsivity and lack of concern for others associated with psychopathy align closely with the coercive nature of stealthing. Narcissism also played a significant role in predicting these intentions, which is consistent with the newer study’s findings regarding entitlement. “Basically, all of these traits reinforce a consistent picture of self-serving beliefs and disregard for a partner’s autonomy increasing the risk of offending,” Allen said.</p>
<p>A related study published in <em>Personality and Individual Differences</em> examined the broader concept of sexual deception, which encompasses various ways people lie to secure sexual encounters. A team of scientists surveyed 1,769 adults, including a mix of men, women, and non-binary individuals, about their past use of deceptive tactics. The participants answered questions regarding whether they had ever lied about their age, income, sexually transmitted infection status, or the number of past sexual partners.</p>
<p>The researchers found that men and women engaged in sexual deception at similar overall rates, but the specific topics they lied about tended to differ. Men were more likely to mislead potential partners about their wealth, occupation, and physical appearance. Both men and women frequently lied about their total number of past sexual partners, while a concerning percentage admitted to lying about having been tested for sexually transmitted infections.</p>
<p>The study also revealed that participants belonging to sexual minority groups sometimes lied about their sexual orientation, likely as a safety measure to avoid stigma or prejudice. Much like the studies on stealthing, this broader research on sexual deception identified specific personality traits linked to manipulative behavior. Individuals with high levels of sexual narcissism and compulsive sexual behavior were more likely to use deceptive tactics to obtain sex. The authors suggest that people with intense sexual urges might feel that obtaining sex justifies the use of deception.</p>
<p>While these studies offer detailed insights into the psychological mechanisms behind sexual deception and stealthing, there are some limitations to consider. The reliance on self-reported online surveys means that some participants might not have answered completely honestly. This is particularly relevant when asking individuals about behaviors that are highly stigmatized or illegal, which might lead people to underreport their true actions or intentions. In addition, online data collection carries an inherent risk of participant misrepresentation, even when attention checks are utilized.</p>
<p>The cross-sectional design of these studies also means that scientists can only observe associations at a single point in time. This prevents them from determining whether possessing a specific personality trait directly causes a person to engage in stealthing or sexual deception. The sample sizes in the primary stealthing studies were also relatively small, which tends to limit how broadly the findings can be applied to the general population. It remains possible that systemic differences existed in unmeasured variables that the surveys failed to capture.</p>
<p>Future research could benefit from using larger and more diverse groups of people over an extended period. Scientists suggest that tracking behaviors over time might help establish a more direct cause-and-effect relationship between ingrained personality schemas and sexual violence. Examining past instances of stealthing alongside deep-seated psychological beliefs could provide additional insights into the predictors of this behavior. Providing monetary incentives or shorter surveys might also help researchers recruit a wider variety of participants.</p>
<p>At the individual level, the current research indicates a need for clinical interventions that specifically target entitlement-related beliefs. “Psychological treatment programs could specifically address these two cognitive patterns, while community prevention efforts could include them in consent education and challenges to unhealthy gender norms,” Allen said. Addressing the broader cultural norms that enable sexual coercion will be necessary to support healthy relationships and long-term behavioral change.</p>
<p>The study, “The relationship between early maladaptive schemas and non-consensual condom removal in an Australian sample,” was authored by Andrew Allen, Tahlia Brown, and Jonathan Mason.</p>
<p>The study, “Investigating the relationship between non-consensual condom removal and the dark triad of personality,” was authored by Timothy S. P. Cousins, Andrew Allen, and Jonathan Mason.</p>
<p>The study, “Blatant sexual deception: Content, individual differences, and implications,” was authored by Flora Oswald, Devinder Khera, Kari A. Walton, and Cory L. Pedersen.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-brisk-walk-might-boost-your-creativity-an-hour-later/" 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 psychology research suggests a brisk walk can boost your creativity an hour later</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 23rd 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>Taking a brisk walk might do more than just get your heart rate up; it could also give your imagination a measurable boost about an hour later. A recent study tracked physical movement and creative thinking in real time, finding that a specific window of moderate exercise is associated with generating more original ideas. The researchers published their results in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000386">Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology</a>.</p>
<p>Human creativity is a cognitive skill necessary for navigating daily life. We constantly face open-ended problems that lack obvious solutions. Solving these unstructured issues requires the production of completely original and useful ideas. </p>
<p>Researchers often split this mental ability into distinct domains, such as verbal creativity and figural creativity. Verbal creativity involves generating novel responses to language-based prompts. Psychologists often test this by asking people to list unusual uses for common household objects, like a cardboard box or a brick. Figural creativity involves tasks like taking a fragmented shape and completing it to form an original drawing.</p>
<p>Past research shows that physical movement benefits both physical wellness and mental health. Scientists have observed that single bouts of exercise can elevate general cognitive functions, including attention and memory. Many studies also suggest a link between aerobic activity and enhanced creative thinking. </p>
<p>The exact parameters of this relationship remained undefined in the existing scientific literature. Researchers did not fully understand the exact intensity, duration, or timing of exercise needed to optimize a person’s creative performance. Establishing these specific details can help clarify how physical exertion biologically alters brain function. </p>
<p>Christian Rominger, a health psychology researcher at the University of Graz in Austria, led a team to investigate this gap in the literature. Rominger and his colleagues wanted to identify the natural patterns of movement that precede sparks of imagination. Traditionally, studying all possible combinations of exercise duration and intensity in a laboratory setting poses a massive logistical challenge. </p>
<p>There are almost infinite ways to combine different workout lengths, exertion levels, and rest periods in a controlled setting. To solve this problem, the team utilized a data-driven strategy known as a bottom-up approach. They simply observed people in their natural environments without imposing any specific exercise rules, letting the data reveal the most common patterns. </p>
<p>The team designed an observational study tracking 157 young adults over a five-day period. To measure physical activity, participants wore small sensor devices on their chests. These sensors continuously recorded acceleration and altitude changes, logging movement data 64 times per second. </p>
<p>To measure creativity, the participants downloaded a specialized application onto their smartphones. This application prompted them at random intervals up to twelve times a day to complete short cognitive tasks. Some prompts tested verbal creativity, while others examined figural creativity. Participants had exactly sixty seconds to type out an original idea or submit a digital drawing. </p>
<p>This method of testing people dynamically as they go about their real lives is called ecological momentary assessment. It provides a more accurate picture of daily cognition compared to artificial laboratory experiments. Independent raters later scored all the submitted ideas based on their originality. By relying on human consensus, the team ensured the grading process reflected true creative novelty. </p>
<p>The chest sensors allowed the research team to accurately classify daily movement into distinct intensity levels. They used metabolic equivalents, which measure how much energy a person expends compared to sitting still. Sedentary behavior simply involved resting. </p>
<p>Light physical activity included easy movements like casual walking inside a house. Moderate physical activity encompassed brisk walking, playing a casual sport, or heavier chores. Vigorous activity captured high-intensity actions like running, swimming, or cycling. </p>
<p>The team broke the movement data down into one-minute segments. By analyzing these tiny increments, they could map out the exact duration and intensity of physical activity preceding every single smartphone creativity prompt. They looked at the movement history up to one hundred minutes before each alert sounded. </p>
<p>The bottom-up analysis revealed a highly specific window for elevated verbal creativity. Engaging in ten to twenty-five minutes of moderate physical activity consistently predicted higher performance on verbal tasks. This positive association peaked when the moderate exercise occurred about sixty to seventy minutes before the creative prompt. </p>
<p>The researchers note that this built-in delay might allow the body a chance to recover. This recovery period could leave the brain in a physiological state highly suited for generating novel ideas. Immediate benefits directly after a bout of exercise were less pronounced in the data. </p>
<p>Not all movement predicted a boost in imagination. Exercising at a light intensity for five to twenty-five minutes was associated with lower verbal creativity scores. This negative relationship proved strongest when the light activity happened about seventy-five minutes before the cognitive task. </p>
<p>The researchers did not find any statistically significant association between sedentary behavior and creative output. The authors speculate that because sitting is so common in modern daily life, it does not trigger any unusual fluctuations in within-person cognitive performance. Vigorous exercise also failed to show a consistent predictive pattern for generating original ideas. </p>
<p>Similarly, figural creativity did not show strong associations with any exercise parameters. This suggests that verbal and visual thinking might rely on different physical triggers. To verify their initial discoveries, the research team conducted a second study with an entirely independent group of 76 participants over four days. </p>
<p>They tracked verbal creativity using the same chest sensor and mobile application setup. The team applied Bayesian statistical methods for this second phase. This advanced mathematical approach allowed them to use the numerical results from the first study as prior information. By feeding this prior information into the new data analysis, the researchers could test the true strength and reliability of their previous observations. </p>
<p>The second study successfully replicated the main observations for verbal creativity. The positive link between moderate exercise and a delayed spike in verbal creativity proved highly robust against the new data set. The negative association following light physical activity also replicated successfully. </p>
<p>The statistical analysis showed very strong evidence supporting the theory that a brisk, twenty-minute walk will likely lead to better verbal problem-solving an hour later. The replication strengthens the idea that exercise intensity and timing manipulate specific cognitive outcomes. </p>
<p>The authors specify that these findings are exploratory and heavily rely on observational methods. The study tracked natural daily behavior rather than randomly assigning participants to specific gym routines. Because of this design, the researchers cannot confidently claim that moderate physical activity directly causes the changes in creativity. </p>
<p>It remains possible that other external variables, such as a person’s immediate environment or underlying genetics, influence both their urge to move and their mental sharpness. The participant pool also primarily consisted of healthy young university students residing in Austria. Future research must evaluate more diverse age groups and populations with differing baseline fitness levels. </p>
<p>The researchers state that these preliminary insights should act as a detailed guide for randomized controlled trials. Such experimental studies could eventually help doctors and sports psychologists prescribe exact exercise regimens intended to facilitate mental flexibility and cognitive health. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000386">The Exercise of Creativity: Examining the Connection Between Physical Activity and Creative Ideation Performance in Real Life —A Bottom-Up Approach</a>,” was authored by Christian Rominger, Andreas Fink, Mathias Benedek, Bernhard Weber, Corinna M. Perchtold-Stefan, and Andreas R. Schwerdtfeger.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/what-happens-when-people-get-downvoted-on-reddit-scientists-uncovered-a-surprising-answer/" 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;">What happens when people get downvoted on Reddit? Scientists uncovered a surprising answer</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 23rd 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>Receiving a thumbs-down on social media does not push people away from the conversation, but instead tends to encourage them to post more while softening their tone. A new study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437261417657" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Marketing Research</a></em> provides evidence that negative peer feedback prompts users to remain engaged rather than retreating into isolated communities. These findings suggest that allowing downvotes on social platforms might help moderate extreme discussions without silencing individual voices.</p>
<p>Social media platforms continuously experiment with ways for users to interact and evaluate the posts of their peers. While almost all platforms feature a button to express approval, few allow people to explicitly express negative feedback. Recently, major networks like YouTube and X have explored adding dislike or downvote features to help regulate content.</p>
<p>“We started thinking about this after hearing about YouTube hiding the dislike count, and Twitter (now X) and TikTok testing downvote-style features,” said <a href="https://www.jessica-fong.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jessica Fong</a>, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business who is transitioning to the University of Maryland College Park. “We looked into the literature and it became clear there wasn’t much empirical evidence around the effects of downvotes on UGC. At the same time, there’s a lot of discourse about polarization and social media and dislikes have some pretty interesting implications, like whether allowing dislikes pushes users into echo chambers.”</p>
<p>UGC refers to user-generated content, which includes any comments or posts created by the platform’s community. Managers often worry that negative feedback might push these users into isolated groups of like-minded individuals. These isolated groups are often called echo chambers, which occur when people only interact with others who share their exact views. When individuals exist entirely within an echo chamber, it tends to increase political and social division.</p>
<p>To understand how negative feedback actually changes behavior in a real online environment, the scientists looked at Reddit. Reddit is a massive online message board organized into thousands of specific communities. These communities, known as subreddits, are places where users discuss everything from breaking news to niche personal hobbies. On Reddit, people can either upvote a post if they like it or downvote it if they dislike it.</p>
<p>The platform calculates a visible score for every comment by subtracting the downvotes from the upvotes. Additionally, each user has a public reputation score called karma. A person’s karma goes up when they receive upvotes across the site and goes down when they receive downvotes. The authors chose this environment because discussions are highly opinion-based, and the feedback system is publicly visible.</p>
<p>By analyzing how people react when their scores drop, the researchers aimed to see if negative feedback alters how often people post, where they post, and the emotional intensity of their writing. To explore these questions, the researchers tracked a sample of 17,525 Reddit users over a period of 61 days. They monitored these individuals on a daily basis to capture their ongoing habits.</p>
<p>The team collected data on nearly two million comments across more than 32,000 different subreddits. For every comment a user made, the scientists recorded the text, the community it belonged to, and how its upvote and downvote score changed over the following two weeks. Studying the direct impact of downvotes is complicated because people who post highly controversial opinions might naturally attract more negative feedback and also just post more often in general.</p>
<p>To isolate the specific effect of receiving negative feedback, the scientists used a psychological concept known as left-digit bias. Left-digit bias is the human tendency to pay the most attention to the first number in a sequence. For example, a price dropping from ten dollars to nine dollars feels much more significant than a drop from eleven dollars to ten dollars.</p>
<p>The authors applied this concept to Reddit karma. They assumed that a user would notice a drop in their karma much more if the first digit changed, such as falling from 101 to 99, compared to a drop from 102 to 100. Even though both examples represent a loss of two points, the change in the first digit makes the penalty feel much larger. By comparing users who experienced this highly noticeable drop in karma to those who experienced a less obvious drop of the exact same size, the researchers could measure how noticeable negative feedback changes behavior.</p>
<p>The scientists found that experiencing a noticeable drop in karma actually increases a user’s likelihood of posting again. “Downvotes don’t silence users. On Reddit, users who get downvoted actually post more afterward, not less,” Fong said. Rather than quitting the platform out of frustration, the users increased their overall content creation.</p>
<p>“We were initially surprised to find that getting more downvotes makes users post more on average. This pushed us to look more into the mechanism,” Fong said. “We find that people tend to post more because they’re trying to recover their reputation, which on Reddit is in the form of karma. They tend to post more after getting downvotes until their karma recovers to the level of before they got those downvotes.”</p>
<p>Next, the research team looked at where these individuals chose to post after being downvoted. A common worry is that people will leave the community that rejected their opinion and seek out an echo chamber where everyone agrees with them. The data provides evidence that this does not happen. Users continued to comment in the exact same communities where they received the negative feedback.</p>
<p>“Downvotes don’t appear to create or encourage echo chambers,” Fong said. “We don’t find evidence that users abandon the communities where they were downvoted. They keep engaging there while also branching into new spaces.” This detail is highly relevant for social media companies, as it implies that downvotes do not automatically cause people to segregate themselves into divided groups.</p>
<p>Finally, the authors analyzed how negative feedback changed the actual words people used. They wanted to know if getting downvoted made people double down on extreme opinions or if it encouraged them to soften their language. To measure this, the scientists used a machine-learning language tool to scan the text of the comments. This tool identifies the main topics of a sentence and assigns an intensity score based on how emotional or extreme the wording is.</p>
<p>For this part of the study, the researchers looked at what happened when a specific comment’s score dropped from a positive number into the negatives. They found that when an intensely worded comment was downvoted below zero, the user tended to moderate their tone the next time they mentioned that same topic. “Downvotes tend to moderate the tone of what users say next, especially when their original post was emotionally charged,” Fong said.</p>
<p>While these findings present an interesting perspective on platform design, there are some limitations to consider. “Our study is a case study on Reddit, so we must be careful in interpreting these effects on other social media platforms,” Fong said. “We expect these effects to generalize to settings where there is some kind of reputation, like on Reddit, but looking at whether these effects replicate in other settings would be an interesting avenue for future work.”</p>
<p>Looking ahead, the researchers are already expanding this line of inquiry. “My coauthors, Varad Deolankar and S. Sriram, are working on another project related to user-driven content and polarization, except this time we were interested in looking at content consumption rather than production,” Fong said. “We ask, how does the content platforms serve users, and how users interpret that content, drive polarization of beliefs?”</p>
<p>The research team is currently exploring how individual biases interact with platform algorithms. “This is ongoing work, but so far we find that people tend to put less weight on information that conflicts with their prior beliefs,” Fong said. “And this bias contributes to polarization nearly as much as algorithms do (algorithms have been commonly blamed for contributing to polarization).”</p>
<p>The authors are also looking into how different site metrics influence these outcomes. “We also ask whether the engagement metric a platform chooses to optimize (‘likes’ versus dwell time) matters. We find that it does,” Fong said. “Dwell-time-maximizing algorithms produce less polarization than like-maximizing ones. Part of the reason is that users dislike content that opposes their views but spend just as much time reading it as content they agree with, so an algorithm that maximizes dwell time is going to serve more opposing articles than articles that maximize likes.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437261417657" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Effect of Downvotes on Content Creation: Evidence from Social Media</a>,” was authored by Varad Deolankar, Jessica Fong, and S. Sriram.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/higher-body-mass-index-in-youth-linked-to-altered-brain-connectivity/" 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;">Higher body mass index in youth linked to altered brain connectivity</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 22nd 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>Children and adolescents with a higher body mass index show distinct differences in their brain activity and the ways different brain regions communicate with one another. These neurological patterns point to a reduction in the brain’s natural inhibitory systems, which might make it harder for to change deeply ingrained habits. The findings were recently published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2025.2111476"><i>Clinical Neurophysiology</i></a>.</p>
<p>The human brain continues to develop and rewire itself heavily throughout childhood and adolescence. The frontal cortex, a brain area responsible for impulse control and complex decision making, is among the last regions to fully mature. During this lengthy developmental window, the brain is highly sensitive to environmental factors. Such external influences include nutrition, physical activity, and overall body weight.</p>
<p>Animal models have shown that diets high in fat and sugar can disrupt the delicate equilibrium of the brain. Brain cells communicate using a mix of excitatory signals that increase activity and inhibitory signals that quiet activity down. Proper brain function relies on maintaining a steady balance between these two forces.</p>
<p>In rodents, researchers found that obesity related diets damaged specialized inhibitory cells in the frontal cortex. These cells are typically wrapped in a protective mesh called a perineuronal net. High fat diets appeared to erode this protective mesh, leaving the inhibitory cells vulnerable to damage.</p>
<p>When these inhibitory cells fail to function properly, the brain loses its ability to hit the neurological brakes. This results in a state of hyper-excitability. A research team wanted to see if human youths with higher body weights exhibited neurological patterns similar to this disinhibited state.</p>
<p>Amy C. Reichelt, a researcher at Western University and the University of Adelaide, led the investigation. She worked alongside Benjamin T. Dunkley from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, as well as a team of other specialists. Together, they designed a study to directly measure brain activity in young volunteers.</p>
<p>The researchers recruited 32 children and teenagers, ranging in age from eight to 19 years old. They calculated each participant’s body mass index, a standard medical metric based on a ratio of height to weight. The cohort was divided into two groups based on how their body mass index compared to standard growth charts for their specific age and sex.</p>
<p>One group consisted of 15 youths with a lower body mass index, falling within average ranges. The other group included 17 youths with a higher body mass index, falling into the overweight or obese categories. Both groups were matched as closely as possible for age and height.</p>
<p>To measure brain activity, the team used a noninvasive imaging technique called magnetoencephalography. This technology relies on highly sensitive sensors to detect the tiny magnetic fields generated by the electrical activity of neurons. This method offers incredibly detailed information about the timing and rapid frequency of brain waves. It can track neural oscillations millisecond by millisecond.</p>
<p>Instead of asking participants to perform an active cognitive puzzle, the researchers had them undergo a resting state scan. Participants laid in the scanner and watched a computer generated, abstract video landscape for five minutes. This neutral video helped the subjects stay still while allowing their minds to wander naturally. The approach allowed the scientists to record the brain’s spontaneous background activity.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed the resulting brain wave data, focusing on rhythmic oscillations. They found that the youths with a higher body mass index exhibited notable differences in high frequency rhythms known as gamma brain waves. Gamma waves are fast electrical rhythms generated when excitatory and inhibitory cells engage with one another.</p>
<p>In the higher body weight group, gamma activity was highly elevated across many different cortical lobes. The researchers found the boldest effects in the posteromedial cortex and the temporoparietal junction, which are areas involved in directing attention. Elevated gamma activity is often interpreted as a sign that the brain’s natural inhibitory systems are not exerting enough control.</p>
<p>The team also looked at aperiodic activity, which is the constant background electrical static in the brain. They measured the slope of this background noise, a common metric that scientists use to gauge the overall balance of excitation and inhibition in neural tissues. The higher weight group had a shallower slope, pointing to a relative lack of neural inhibition.</p>
<p>These background noise differences were most prominent in the frontal cortex and midline parietal regions. The frontal cortex is deeply involved in top down cognitive control and mental flexibility. Alterations here suggest a potential difficulty in regulating impulses and adjusting to new rules.</p>
<p>Beyond isolating localized brain areas, the researchers examined how specialized brain networks communicated with each other. The brain relies on interconnected webs of regions passing information back and forth. For example, the default mode network is active during internal thought, while the central executive network handles focused working memory tasks.</p>
<p>The salience network is another structural web, responsible for detecting relevant stimuli in the environment and deciding what the brain should pay attention to. The researchers mapped the connections between these distinct networks by looking at how their signals synchronized. In youths with a higher body mass index, they observed weakened communication in lower frequency brain waves like delta and theta rhythms.</p>
<p>Specifically, there were reduced connections between the salience network and networks responsible for driving motivated behaviors. Conversely, the same group showed unusually strong connections in high frequency gamma waves. These tighter high frequency bonds appeared between the default mode network and the central executive network.</p>
<p>This specific combination of weakened low frequency bonds and enhanced high frequency bonds points to an overall loss of efficiency. The typical pathways used to coordinate thoughts and behaviors appeared reorganized in the higher weight group. This could mean the brain is working harder to transmit the same amount of information.</p>
<p>The researchers note several caveats to their experimental approach. Body mass index is an imperfect tool, taking only height and weight into account. It cannot distinguish between muscle mass and adipose tissue. This means it does not always provide an exact reflection of an individual’s body fat percentage.</p>
<p>The relatively small number of participants also means these results should be viewed as preliminary. The observational design of the study means that the researchers cannot state that a higher body mass index caused the brain functioning changes. It remains entirely possible that preexisting brain differences made certain youths more susceptible to excess weight gain.</p>
<p>The scientists also did not track the participants’ daily diets, physical activity levels, or perform behavioral cognitive tests. As a result, the real world implications of these neural shifts are not yet known. It remains a mystery how these specific brain wave patterns translate to daily decision making, academic performance, or emotional regulation.</p>
<p>Future research could incorporate detailed dietary tracking and extensive cognitive assessments alongside brain imaging. The researchers suggest that weakened inhibitory signaling in the frontal cortex could directly influence decision making around food over the long term. Without robust inhibitory control, individuals might find it much harder to resist eating highly palatable foods.</p>
<p>Over time, this could create a feedback loop where dietary habits alter brain development, which in turn entrenches those same dietary habits. Understanding how body weight relates to adolescent brain development might eventually help medical professionals design better strategies for supporting both mental and physical health.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2025.2111476">Elevated body mass index in youth is associated with neural disinhibition and internetwork functional dysconnectivity: A magnetoencephalography study</a>,” was authored by A.C. Reichelt, E. Daskalakis, J. Cohen, K.G. Solar, M. Saberi, M. Ventresca, M. Ali, R. Zamyadi, V. Bhat, S.E. Scratch, J. Hamilton, and B.T. Dunkley.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/tiktok-disproportionately-served-anti-democratic-videos-during-the-2024-election-study-finds/" 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;">TikTok disproportionately served anti-Democratic videos during the 2024 election, study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 22nd 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study provides evidence that TikTok’s recommendation system tends to expose users to more conservative and anti-Democrat political content than liberal material. This ideological imbalance occurs regardless of a user’s initial political interests, suggesting that automation plays a significant role in modern information access. The research was published in the scientific journal <em>Nature</em>.</p>
<p>Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi’s <a href="https://www.ai-and-society.com/" target="_blank">AI and Society Lab</a> conducted the new research to explore how automated internet systems shape what political news the public sees. Experts debate whether internet polarization is driven by people seeking out their own preferred viewpoints or by computer algorithms pushing extreme content to keep users engaged. </p>
<p>Corresponding author Talal Rahwan noted the difficulty of answering this question on older platforms. “Our previous work studied recommendation algorithms on YouTube, and a persistent challenge was disentangling algorithmic influence from user self-selection,” he told PsyPost.</p>
<p>TikTok offers a helpful environment for testing algorithmic influence because its primary interface relies heavily on automation. “TikTok’s For You page, where the algorithm drives nearly everything users see, offered a uniquely clean setting to study that question, especially with the 2024 election making political content on the platform increasingly consequential,” Rahwan added. </p>
<p>To gather data, the researchers created 323 automated bot accounts to act as artificial users, a method sometimes called a sock puppet audit. Between April 30 and November 11, 2024, the scientists launched 21 new accounts each week. Each bot was assigned an age between 22 and 24 to mimic the habits of young adult voters. </p>
<p>The research team used location-masking software to virtually place these phones in specific parts of the country. They assigned the bots to New York to represent a reliably Democratic area, Texas to represent a reliably Republican area, and Georgia to act as a competitive swing state. The scientists used physical smartphones running Android software and reset the phones to factory settings after each weekly test. This process ensured the app could not track the devices across different weeks.</p>
<p>The accounts first went through a training phase to teach the app their supposed political tastes. Some bots watched up to 400 videos from known Republican creators, and others watched up to 400 videos from Democratic creators. The bots viewed each of these training videos for exactly one minute. In Georgia, the authors also included a set of neutral bots that skipped this political training phase entirely, acting as a control group of users with no political interest.</p>
<p>After the training phase, the accounts switched to the main feed to see what the algorithm would recommend. The bots watched the first ten seconds of each recommended video before moving to the next one. Across the entire 27 weeks, the researchers collected more than 280,000 recommended videos. They successfully downloaded the text transcripts for 40,264 of those videos, giving them a massive dataset of spoken content to analyze.</p>
<p>The authors used an ensemble of artificial intelligence language models to classify the political nature of the transcripts. They combined the outputs of three different models to prevent any single program from skewing the results. Human political science students validated the accuracy of these automated programs. The tools determined if a video was political, if it related to the upcoming election, and if it supported or opposed a specific party.</p>
<p>The findings suggest a distinct asymmetry in how political content is delivered on the platform. Accounts trained on Republican videos received about 11.5 percent more content aligned with their own party compared to the Democratic accounts. At the same time, the Democratic accounts were exposed to roughly 7.5 percent more cross-party content. </p>
<p>Co-author Yasir Zaki explained the broader implications of these numbers. “TikTok’s feed isn’t a neutral window into politics,” he said. “The platform’s recommendations treat Democrats and Republicans differently, consistently, across states, and in ways that can’t be explained by differences in how people engage with the content.”</p>
<p>Hazem Ibrahim, also a researcher at New York University Abu Dhabi, noted the specific nature of these results. “The skew was specifically concentrated in anti-Democratic content being pushed to Democratic-leaning accounts, rather than a generic ‘more Republican content’ effect,” Ibrahim said. </p>
<p>The topics of these recommended videos were also highly separated. “We were also struck by how the asymmetries clustered in particular policy domains, specifically, immigration, crime, and foreign policy for Democrats and abortion for Republicans, rather than being spread evenly across political content,” Ibrahim added.</p>
<p>To see if real people noticed these trends, the researchers surveyed 1,008 active United States TikTok users online. The survey asked participants if they perceived any changes in the political tone of their feeds over the past year. The online sample skewed slightly Republican and consisted mostly of adults between the ages of 25 and 34. </p>
<p>The survey responses provided evidence that lived experiences matched the automated bot experiment. Republican respondents were significantly more likely than Democratic respondents to report seeing positive political content that agreed with their views. When asked open-ended questions, conservative users frequently mentioned an increase in optimistic, pro-Trump posts on their daily feeds.</p>
<p>Rahwan highlighted the rigorous statistical testing behind the findings. “The gaps are averages across hundreds of experiments over six months that held up across three states and survived 48 robustness checks, on a platform serving political content to tens of millions of young voters daily, that consistency matters,” Rahwan said. </p>
<p>Robustness checks are mathematical tests used to ensure findings hold true under various conditions. Still, Rahwan noted that exposure does not equal influence. “That said, we measure exposure, not persuasion, so we can’t say this changed anyone’s vote,” he added.</p>
<p>Zaki also emphasized that the research does not prove the company intentionally programmed its software to favor conservatives. “We are not saying TikTok deliberately chose to favor Republicans, our study documents a pattern in outcomes, not intent,” Zaki said. </p>
<p>The automated accounts were specifically designed to represent new users interacting with the platform for the first time. “We also study content exposure, not attitude change, and our bots simulate new users with short engagement histories, so long-tenured users may have different experiences,” Zaki said.</p>
<p>The gap could also result from basic supply differences in the types of videos that political creators chose to upload during the election cycle. In addition, the study only looked at English language videos. This leaves out the experiences of Spanish speakers and other minority language communities in the United States. </p>
<p>The researchers plan to expand this work through their research group, which can be found online at ai-and-society.com. “We’d like to combine bot audits with real user data, develop methods to capture visual and audio political messaging beyond transcripts, and run cross-platform comparisons,” Ibrahim said. “The big open question is connecting these exposure patterns to downstream effects on attitudes and behavior.”</p>
<p>The study, “Systematic partisan content skews in TikTok during the 2024 US elections,” was authored by Hazem Ibrahim, HyunSeok Daniel Jang, Nouar Aldahoul, Aaron R. Kaufman, Talal Rahwan, and Yasir Zaki.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/wildfire-smoke-linked-to-rising-pediatric-mental-health-emergencies/" 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;">Wildfire smoke linked to rising pediatric mental health emergencies</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 22nd 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>Fine particulate matter from wildfires is associated with a rise in mental health emergencies among children and teenagers, according to a recent multi-country analysis. The researchers observed that emergency department visits for conditions like anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia increased after days with higher wildfire smoke exposure. These results were detailed in a paper published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00571-8"><i>Nature Mental Health</i></a>.</p>
<p>Fine particulate matter consists of microscopic droplets and bits of ash suspended in the air. These particles are incredibly small, measuring about thirty times smaller than the width of a single human hair. Because of their tiny size, they can be inhaled deeply into the lungs and easily pass into the bloodstream. </p>
<p>Children and teenagers are uniquely vulnerable to this type of air pollution. Young people breathe a higher volume of air relative to their body size compared to adults. They also have less efficient bodily systems for detoxifying harmful chemicals, and their rapidly developing brains are highly sensitive to environmental stressors. </p>
<p>Smoke generated by wildfires is different from the usual air pollution found in cities. Wildfire smoke contains a higher concentration of oxidative compounds and toxic chemicals created by burning vegetation and organic matter. The particles in wildfire smoke also tend to be smaller than those from car exhaust, allowing them to travel farther in the wind and penetrate deeper into human tissues. </p>
<p>The study was led by Yiwen Zhang, a public health researcher at Monash University in Australia. The research was jointly supervised by Monash University epidemiologists Yuming Guo and Shanshan Li. The research team initiated the project to better understand how physical exposure to smoke affects the brain. </p>
<p>Many previous studies on wildfires have focused on the psychological trauma of surviving a disaster. The researchers wanted to isolate the specific biological impact of inhaling the pollution itself, rather than the stress of the fire event. Examining the air pollution allows for a more precise measurement of how the dose of smoke relates to sudden changes in mental health. </p>
<p>The researchers analyzed hospital records from 2004 to 2019 across Australia, Brazil, and Canada. The massive dataset included more than 3.1 million emergency department visits for youths under the age of twenty. To estimate smoke exposure, the team used advanced computer atmospheric models and machine learning programs to separate wildfire smoke from general urban pollution across 845 different communities. </p>
<p>The team employed a time-stratified, self-controlled study design. They compared the local air quality on the exact day a child visited the hospital to the air quality on similar days in the same month when that child did not need emergency care. This method allowed the researchers to hold constant individual family traits, such as genetics or socioeconomic status, throughout the study period. </p>
<p>The analysis revealed a consistent association between spikes in wildfire smoke and hospital visits for pediatric mental health issues. For every extra microgram of wildfire particles per cubic meter of air, emergency department visits for all mental health conditions increased by 1.4 percent. This elevated risk lingered over the six days following the initial smoke exposure. </p>
<p>The strength of this association varied noticeably across different psychiatric conditions. Diagnoses of schizophrenia showed the strongest response, with a 3.7 percent increase in emergency visits following smoke exposure. Emergency visits for anxiety arose by 3 percent, while depression-related visits increased by 2.6 percent. </p>
<p>The research team estimated the total annual burden of these smoke events on the healthcare system. Across the three countries, wildfire smoke contributed to an estimated 22,459 mental health emergency visits each year over the study period. Out of all the air pollution-related mental health visits, smoke from wildfires was responsible for a disproportionately large share given how rarely fires occur compared to daily urban pollution. </p>
<p>The researchers noticed that certain demographic groups faced higher risks. Boys experienced a stronger association between smoke and general mental health disorders compared to girls. However, girls showed a higher risk specifically for schizophrenia emergencies during heavy smoke days. </p>
<p>Age also played a role in how children reacted to the environmental hazard. Young children under the age of five experienced a heightened vulnerability across most mental health categories. The researchers noted that mental health conditions in very young children are rarely recognized early, mostly because symptoms often appear as behavioral outbursts or physical complaints. </p>
<p>Socioeconomic factors modified the risk of a mental health emergency heavily. Communities with lower average incomes and highly urbanized areas experienced a much higher burden of smoke-linked hospital visits. Frequent exposure to regular, non-wildfire air pollution also made children more vulnerable when a sudden wave of wildfire smoke rolled into their neighborhood. </p>
<p>Among the three tested countries, the geographical differences were striking. The association between wildfire smoke and mental health emergencies was highest in Brazil. Meanwhile, the data from Canada did not yield a statistically significant connection for the youth population. </p>
<p>The researchers suspect this discrepancy involves a combination of chronic stress, inequality, and healthcare access. Brazil frequently experiences massive agricultural and forest fires, creating sharp spikes in severe pollution. That country also faces high income inequality, and the public healthcare system lacks the resources to treat the vast majority of severe mental health cases. </p>
<p>The biological mechanisms underlying the link between smoke and mental health are an active area of investigation. When tiny particles enter the brain, they might trigger inflammation and disrupt the biological barrier that protects the central nervous system from toxins. The pollution might also interfere with the complex hormone systems that regulate mammalian stress responses. </p>
<p>Aside from direct chemical irritation, the air pollution could worsen mental health through indirect pathways. Thick smoke alters weather patterns, reduces ambient sunlight, and often keeps children trapped indoors. These environmental shifts can easily disrupt sleep schedules, and poor sleep is a well-established trigger for various emotional and psychological disorders. </p>
<p>The authors noted several limitations regarding their dataset and analysis methods. The study only included data from three nations, meaning the findings might not represent the entire global population completely. The researchers also relied on average air pollution levels across entire communities, which could mask differences in individual exposure. </p>
<p>Certain families might stay indoors, run air purifiers, or live in better-sealed homes, altering their true pollution intake. Because the grid resolution of the atmospheric models cannot capture every local variation, the scientists believe their current estimates of the health risks might actually be on the conservative side. Diagnosing mental health in toddlers is also notoriously difficult, meaning the true number of young children affected might be underreported. </p>
<p>Future research on climate hazards will require more detailed tracking of individual patients. Additional studies could incorporate localized exposure sensors to provide more exact measurements of what children are breathing. Investigators also hope to examine how other climate-driven stressors, such as extreme heat and climate anxiety, combine with air pollution to shape the well-being of future generations. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00571-8">Wildfire-sourced fine particulate matter and mental disorders in children and adolescents</a>,” was authored by Yiwen Zhang, Shuang Zhou, Rongbin Xu, Zhengyu Yang, Wenzhong Huang, Paulo H. N. Saldiva, Wenhua Yu, Gongbo Chen, Micheline S. Z. S. Coelho, Tingting Ye, Yanming Liu, Pei Yu, Eric Lavigne, Jiangning Song, Yuming Guo, and Shanshan Li.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/brain-scans-shed-light-on-why-women-develop-romantic-feelings-for-ai-companions/" 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 shed light on why women develop romantic feelings for AI companions</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 22nd 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Two studies in China found that female university students are most likely to become romantically interested in artificial intelligence agents that are both physically attractive and highly interactive. The perceived interactivity of a virtual agent also affected the patterns of brain activity the students displayed during their interactions. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06613-5"><em>Humanities and Social Sciences Communications</em></a>.</p>
<p>Virtual agents are computer-based systems that can interact with people or digital environments in a partly independent way. They can answer questions, give instructions, make recommendations, perform tasks, or simulate conversation. Some appear as simple chat windows, while others feature a voice, an animated character, or a specific role inside a digital game or virtual world.</p>
<p>These systems use artificial intelligence to interpret text, speech, or other data to choose responses that fit a user’s request. Modern examples include customer service bots, virtual tutors, digital assistants like Siri, and video game characters. Unlike a simple script, an advanced virtual agent can adapt its behavior to different situations. However, it does not truly understand or feel emotions, as its actions rely entirely on its programming and training data.</p>
<p>As virtual agents become more sophisticated, users increasingly develop parasocial relationships with them. These connections are considered parasocial because they are completely one-sided. A person can develop deep feelings for a virtual agent, but the computer program cannot genuinely reciprocate those emotions. Recent years have seen a rise in romantic parasocial relationships with programs designed to simulate emotional companionship and intimacy.</p>
<p>Study author Siyu Jin and her colleagues note that previous researchers view these one-sided relationships as an extension of real-life bonds. This is because the human brain often struggles to distinguish between real and simulated social interactions on a neural level. To explore this further, the researchers conducted two separate experiments.</p>
<p>The first experiment aimed to explore how perceived interactivity and physical attractiveness affect female students’ romantic interest in a virtual agent. The participants were 117 female students from a university in central China. The researchers divided the students into four groups. Each group individually engaged in conversations with a male virtual character that featured a different combination of high or low physical attractiveness and interactivity.</p>
<p>The students interacted with a virtual agent designed to act as an empathetic former friend in scenarios involving mutual support and romantic confessions. In the low interactivity groups, participants simply read through written text. In the high interactivity groups, a sophisticated language model powered dynamic, responsive conversations. Afterward, the students rated the agent’s physical attractiveness, the quality of the interaction, and their romantic interest.</p>
<p>The second study included 42 female students who were currently in real-life romantic relationships. The goal was to record the brain activity linked to romantic feelings for a virtual agent. The researchers used highly attractive virtual characters with varying levels of interactivity, and they also used photos of each participant’s actual boyfriend as a real-world comparison. A specialized brain imaging technique tracked the students’ neural activity while they recalled memories of the agents and their boyfriends.</p>
<p>The first experiment showed that students developed the strongest romantic connections when the virtual agent was both physically attractive and highly interactive. When the character’s visual appeal was low, the quality of the conversation did not change the participants’ romantic interest. However, when the character was highly attractive, a responsive and dynamic conversation greatly increased the students’ romantic feelings.</p>
<p>The brain scans revealed that highly interactive artificial intelligence triggers neural patterns very similar to those produced by real-world romantic love. Interacting with a highly responsive virtual agent increased activity in brain regions associated with high-level thinking, emotion regulation, and social understanding. At the same time, this high interactivity suppressed activity in the supramarginal gyrus, a brain region that helps humans distinguish between their own emotions and the emotions of others. </p>
<p>Because advanced language models often mirror a user’s own inputs, the boundary between the human and the machine can blur. The researchers suspect that participants may have temporarily suspended their self-awareness, projecting their own feelings onto the program. This neural blurring effect could explain why highly interactive digital characters evoke such strong, human-like romantic attachments.</p>
<p>“In the current era of artificial intelligence, this research enhances our understanding of a novel form of romantic relationship,” the study authors concluded. They added that the findings provide a foundation for designing safer digital interactions, formulating ethical guidelines, and assessing the mental health impacts of virtual companions.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of how humans bond with modern technology. However, it only focused on short-term interactions driven by immediate surface-level features like physical attractiveness. Future studies focusing on long-term digital relationships might yield different findings about how these emotional connections evolve over time.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06613-5">Falling in love with AI virtual agents: the role of physical attractiveness and perceived interactivity in parasocial romantic relationships,</a>” was authored by Siyu Jin, Fang Xu, Zihui Yuan, Gengfeng Niu, and Zongkui Zhou.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-discover-the-brains-memory-center-starts-full-and-prunes-itself-down-to-optimize-learning/" 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;">Neuroscientists discover the brain’s memory center starts “full” and prunes itself down to optimize learning</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 22nd 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A newly discovered developmental process reveals that the brain’s primary memory center starts out with an excess of tangled, random connections that get pruned away to form a highly structured, efficient network as an animal grows. These physical and functional changes optimize the brain’s capacity to store and retrieve memories over a lifetime. The study detailing this transformation was recently published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71914-x" target="_blank">Nature Communications</a></em>.</p>
<p>The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped region deep within the brain that handles memory formation and spatial navigation. Within this region lies a specialized circuit called the CA3 network. This area acts as an autoassociative memory system, meaning it helps the brain recall a complete memory from just a tiny fragment of information. For example, the network allows a person to remember an entire childhood kitchen just from the smell of a single spice.</p>
<p>To accomplish this feat, nerve cells in this region communicate through electrical and chemical junctions called synapses. The brain’s elasticity allows these connections to grow stronger or weaker over time as an animal learns new things. While researchers understand how this network operates in an adult brain, the way it physically takes shape after birth has remained unclear.</p>
<p>Researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria wanted to understand how this vital memory network develops. Two competing philosophical and biological models framed their approach. The first model is the tabula rasa, or blank slate theory. This concept suggests that the brain starts with very few connections and slowly builds them up as the animal experiences the world.</p>
<p>The opposing model is the tabula plena, or full slate theory. In this scenario, the brain begins with an overabundance of connections that are gradually trimmed away, leaving only the most necessary pathways. Neuroscientist Victor Vargas-Barroso led the investigation to find out which model correctly describes the developing hippocampus. Vargas-Barroso worked alongside Peter Jonas, a professor of life sciences at the institute, to map the circuitry of the mouse brain.</p>
<p>To trace the wiring of this brain region, the research team examined mouse brains at three distinct developmental stages. They looked at mice shortly after birth, during adolescence, and in adulthood. The team used an advanced recording technique called multicellular patch-clamp recording. This method allowed them to monitor the tiny electrical signals of up to eight individual nerve cells at the exact same time.</p>
<p>By stimulating one cell and listening to the responses of the others, the team could map exactly which neurons were communicating with one another. To physically see these connections, they filled the cells with a specialized dye. This allowed the researchers to reconstruct three-dimensional models of the nerve cells using high-resolution microscopes. In total, they tested more than seven thousand potential connections between nerve cells.</p>
<p>Through this mapping process, the researchers observed a massive shift in how the cells were linked. In the youngest mice, the nerve cells were densely packed with connections that seemed to form at random. As the mice grew into adulthood, the total number of connections dropped. The network shifted from being highly localized and dense to becoming sparse, widespread, and highly structured.</p>
<p>“This discovery was quite surprising,” Jonas said in a press release. “Intuitively, one might expect that a network grows and becomes denser over time. Here, we see the opposite. It follows what we call a pruning model: it starts out full, and then it becomes streamlined and optimized.”</p>
<p>The physical shapes of the neurons also changed in unexpected ways. Nerve cells have two main types of branches: axons that send signals and dendrites that receive them. The team found that the signal-sending axons actually grew shorter and less complex as the animal aged. </p>
<p>In contrast, the signal-receiving dendrites continued to grow and develop more receptor sites. This means the trimming process was heavily one-sided, mainly affecting the outbound communication cables of the nerve cells. In the adult mice, the remaining axon connections became clumped into specific, specialized patches rather than being spread evenly.</p>
<p>Beyond the physical wiring, the team discovered a major shift in how the cells transmitted electrical messages. In the immature brain, single connections between cells were incredibly strong. A single signal from one neuron was often enough to make the receiving cell fire off its own electrical pulse. Researchers refer to this as a near-detonating effect.</p>
<p>In adult mice, these individual connections became much weaker. A single incoming signal was no longer enough to trigger a response in the receiving cell. Instead, the adult nerve cell required simultaneous signals from multiple different neighbors to reach the threshold for firing. </p>
<p>This shift means the mature brain relies on integrating multiple pieces of information at once, rather than reacting strongly to a single input. The brain moves from a system that relies on timing to a system that detects spatial coincidences. To see how these physical changes affected memory, the researchers built a computer simulation of a network with one hundred thousand neurons. </p>
<p>In the computer simulation, they tested how different types of connectivity influenced the network’s ability to recall stored patterns. The results showed that moving from a dense, highly reactive network to a sparse, weaker, and wider network actually maximized the system’s memory storage capacity. A specialized network of weaker connections proved much more efficient at retrieving information.</p>
<p>Jonas suspects that starting with a massive tangle of connections allows neurons to link up quickly in early development. This brain region does not just store visual, smell, or sound information in isolation. It links all these sensory inputs together into a cohesive memory. </p>
<p>“That’s a complex task for neurons,” Jonas explained in the release. “An initially exuberant connectivity, followed by selective pruning, might be exactly what enables this integration.” Without this dense starting point, neurons would be too far apart to find each other, making communication nearly impossible.</p>
<p>While these results offer a new understanding of brain maturation, the study has a few limitations. The researchers conducted their mapping on thin slices of brain tissue. Because they only looked at specific slices, they could not observe long-distance connections that run across the entire brain. The exact biological mechanisms that drive the physical trimming of the axons also remain unidentified.</p>
<p>Future research will need to explore what triggers this selective pruning process. Scientists suspect that specialized immune cells in the brain might act as the biological shears that cut away the excess connections. Specific types of inhibitory nerve cells that develop during adolescence might also play a role in this physical remodeling.</p>
<p>Researchers also want to use live imaging techniques to watch individual synapses appear and disappear over time in a living animal. This live imaging could reveal whether the structured patterns seen in adult brains are pre-programmed by genetics or carved out by the animal’s daily life experiences. Currently, it is not clear how the brain knows which connections to keep and which to cut.</p>
<p>The findings might also shed light on human development. Humans develop episodic memory relatively late, around two years after birth. This developmental milestone roughly matches the timeline of the adolescent mice in this study. </p>
<p>This timeline might help explain infantile amnesia, which is the inability of adults to remember events from their earliest years. The memories might form in the dense early network, but they become inaccessible once the brain prunes its connections. Further studies in the human brain will be necessary to confirm if our own memories follow this exact same developmental path.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71914-x" target="_blank">Developmental emergence of sparse and structured synaptic connectivity in the hippocampal CA3 memory circuit</a>,” was authored by Victor Vargas-Barroso, Jake F. Watson, Andrea Navas-Olive, Alois Schlögl, and Peter Jonas.</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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