Author: dispatchtimes news

Oxytocin alters how the brain learns and recalls information about social hierarchies, boosting neural activity linked to learning rank relationships and improving memory for networks that do not involve the observer. The findings, reported in a recent PNAS study, illuminate the brain mechanisms that help people navigate social environments. The study situates social dominance as a force shaping access to resources, mating opportunities and influence, a feature observed across many species. To operate effectively in such environments, individuals must monitor their own status and the relationships among others, with different brain regions engaged when considering one’s own position versus evaluating…

A longitudinal study led by Jamilah Silver at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that irritability in three-year-olds can actively shape how their parents respond by the time they reach school age, six. The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, shows that heightened irritability at age three predicts greater parental hostility, less emotional support, poorer parent-child relationship quality, and more authoritarian parenting reported by mothers by age six. Conversely, a strained parent-child bond and fathers’ permissive parenting at age three predicted higher levels of child irritability three years later. In clinical…

A cross-national study involving more than 22,000 women finds that heavier social media use is linked to greater openness to sugar relationships, a form of dating in which companionship or intimacy is exchanged for financial or material support. The link is somewhat stronger in countries with looser, more permissive social norms than in those with stricter norms. The researchers define sugar relationships as transactional arrangements in which an older, wealthier partner provides money, gifts or lifestyle support in return for companionship and/or sexual intimacy. Openness, they say, reflects an attitude—whether such exchanges are acceptable or personally viable—not necessarily a commitment…

A new study of German-speaking adults found that recalling parents as overprotective and controlling correlates with stronger impostor feelings and higher vulnerable narcissism. Both traits also linked to higher attachment anxiety and lower trust in others, though statistical analyses suggest the impostor self-concept and vulnerable narcissism are distinct constructs. The work appears in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The impostor phenomenon, also known as the impostor self-concept, refers to persistent feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt despite objective evidence of one’s competence and achievements. People experiencing this phenomenon tend to attribute their successes to luck, excessive effort, or external circumstances rather…

A new exploratory study suggests that how quickly a minute feels may be tied to the body’s resting metabolism, hormone levels and working memory. Researchers compared healthy adults with individuals who have rare mitochondrial disorders affecting cellular energy production and found that both groups judged time with similar average speed and consistency. Yet the biological and cognitive factors linked to time perception differed markedly between the groups, implying energy constraints can shape how the brain and body coordinate our sense of time. Time perception is often described in two dimensions: clock speed, which reflects the baseline pace of our internal…

Researchers at the University of Central Florida have found that genetic mutations linked to Alzheimer’s disease can disrupt the nerves that control muscle movement outside the brain or spinal cord, potentially signalling trouble well before memory problems become apparent. The work, led by Professor James Hickman of the Nanoscience Technology Center and Research Professor Xiufang “Nadine” Guo, was conducted with scientists at the healthcare technology firm Hesperos and funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging. The findings are published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. The study suggests that movement difficulties such…

A new study from the University of Ottawa, published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, shows that how people interpret physical signs of arousal—such as a racing heartbeat—relates to sexual functioning in gendered ways. The researchers found that viewing these sensations positively correlates with higher sexual desire, while fearing them is linked to lower sexual satisfaction in women and to physical sexual difficulties in men. The researchers note that anxiety and sexual arousal trigger similar bodily responses. The sympathetic nervous system gears the body up for action, producing a racing heart, quicker breathing and a surge of blood…

A UK-led study tracking thousands of children from age four to sixteen has found distinct patterns in how genetic influences on thinking, learning and problem solving shift over development. The researchers report that common genetic variants linked to education and test performance become more predictive with age, particularly for high achievers, while rare, gene-disrupting mutations exert their strongest negative effects in early childhood and weaken by adolescence. Cognitive ability refers to a person’s capacity to reason, solve problems, think abstractly and learn, and the study looked at two broad classes of genetic variation that relate to these traits alongside environmental…

A new systematic review published in Deviant Behavior concludes that women who kill their intimate partners are frequently assessed through rigid gender stereotypes by the media, juries and judges. The study, led by Sally Crosland with colleagues at the University of Huddersfield, surveys two decades of research and finds that defendants who do not fit the passive, helpless victim mould attract greater blame and harsher judgments. The authors warn that such stereotypes can obscure the real-world dynamics of domestic abuse, mental health struggles and substance use in courtroom settings. Intimate partner homicide refers to the fatal killing of a current…