Author: dispatchtimes news

A Chicago-area study of adults with borderline personality disorder found that higher consumption of foods rich in saturated fat and added sugar was linked to greater motor impulsiveness, and that intake of saturated fat alone was associated with increased risk-taking on a gambling task. The findings, reported in Nutritional Psychiatry, did not show a connection between diet and the overall severity of BPD symptoms. Borderline personality disorder is marked by intense emotions, unstable relationships and self-image, and impulsive behaviours. While specialized psychotherapy helps many, about half of adults with BPD do not respond fully, highlighting a need for additional approaches…

A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance demonstrates that a brief mirror-box illusion, which convinces people they possess an invisible sixth finger, can quickly alter how they judge what their hands are capable of. The research, led by Denise Cadete of Birkbeck, University of London, found that participants reported needing wider openings to pass through gaps and could span wider blocks after the illusion—efforts that occurred even among those who did not consciously feel the extra digit. The work sits within a broader psychological discussion of affordances—the brain’s automatic calculations of how a…

New, large-scale investigations into intelligence and fertility reveal a subtle and complex picture: higher intelligence test scores are linked to slightly fewer children, a pattern most evident among American and British women. Yet when researchers examine completed fertility and compare siblings within families, the association tightens to a small effect, and in Scandinavia the pattern for men runs in the opposite direction. The research spans several countries and methods, and its interpretation remains hotly debated. The quest to understand this link sits at the intersection of evolutionary biology and modern social life. Intelligence is associated with more schooling, higher income…

Researchers have identified factors in adolescence that may shape how people cope with childhood trauma later in life. A large study published in Stress and Health found that a strong emotional bond with a mother figure and lower levels of sedentary time during adolescence are linked to better adult adaptation after childhood abuse. The longitudinal analysis followed 5,112 participants from adolescence into their twenties and thirties, drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The researchers, led by Yuxiao Zhao of the Shanghai Mental Health Center and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, examined…

A new study in Evolutionary Psychology suggests that sex within romantic relationships can be driven by obligation as well as desire, with duty-based sex appearing more often among those who fear infidelity, view their partner as more desirable, or exhibit higher emotional instability. The researchers say duty sex may act as a relationship-maintenance tactic when couples sense their bond is at risk. Duty sex is defined as consensual sexual activity motivated by a sense of obligation rather than personal desire. It is considered distinct from broader sexual compliance, which covers consensual sex one does not actively want, by focusing specifically…

A new psychology study published in Cognition and Emotion argues that horror is not simply an intensified version of fear but a distinct emotional reaction to events that defy our basic assumptions about how the world works. The research, led by Pamela Marie Taylor, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Global Connectivity at Akita International University, examines how the severity of harm and the vividness of language shape whether people label their response as horror rather than fear. “Horror is one of dozens of English words we have to label our emotional responses to harm, but it remains largely…

A large UK twin study suggests that growing up in a noisy, disorganised home does not directly cause poorer school performance. The research, led by Sophie von Stumm at the University of York and published in Learning and Individual Differences, analysed data from 7,591 twin pairs born in the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s to untangle whether household chaos drives educational outcomes or whether shared family traits explain the link. Household chaos refers to factors such as noise, crowding and a lack of routine in a child’s daily life. While such environments are associated with lower academic achievement in previous…

A Hong Kong neuroimaging study has found that a brain region involved in language and social processing responds less to emotionally meaningful sentences in autistic children than in their non-autistic peers. The left superior temporal sulcus showed a stronger response to sentences describing people in emotional situations than to sentences about objects in non-autistic children, a social-emotional bias that was reduced among autistic participants. The paper, published in NeuroImage: Clinical, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor brain responses while children listened to Cantonese sentences. The researchers recruited 78 right-handed Cantonese-speaking children from mainstream schools in Hong Kong. After excluding…

A new systematic review published in JAMA Network Open finds that news outlets and clinical studies report positive effects of psilocybin therapy at nearly the same rate, but reporters often present benefits as established and extend them to conditions with limited trial backing, revealing a gap between public narratives and the scientific evidence. Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychoactive compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms. When ingested, the body converts it into psilocin, a chemical that interacts with serotonin receptors in the brain to alter mood and perception. Scientific interest in psychedelics has grown since the 1990s after a long regulatory…