Author: dispatchtimes news

A new longitudinal analysis from researchers at King’s College London suggests that childhood intelligence predicts the pace of adolescent brain development. The study, which drew on data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, followed 10,495 participants from around nine or ten years of age across four time points into mid‑adolescence. Participants were tested across three cognitive domains: fluid cognition, crystallized cognition, and matrix reasoning, allowing researchers to see whether different forms of intelligence relate to distinct brain‑development trajectories. Brain imaging captured three facets of development: structural MRI to measure gray matter volume, surface area and thickness; diffusion imaging to…

A new U.S. study finds that a substantial minority of teenage boys engage with figures associated with the so-called manosphere, with those who follow Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson more likely to hold traditional beliefs about manhood. The research, conducted with 601 boys aged 13 to 17, suggests that Tate followers, in particular, show stronger adherence to traditional masculine norms even after accounting for home messages about gender and how masculine the boys perceive themselves to be. The manosphere refers to a loose network of online spaces created around male interests, often painting women or feminism as threats to men’s…

A brain-imaging study published in The Journal of Neuroscience has linked the way memory-related regions in the brain communicate with reward centres to motivational difficulties in young adults who experienced childhood trauma. Among those reporting higher levels of early adversity, weaker activity and connectivity in the hippocampus were associated with a reduced ability to look forward to pleasurable experiences. Anhedonia, the reduced capacity to experience pleasure or to pursue rewarding activities, can be grouped into two types: consummatory anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure in the moment, and anticipatory anhedonia, the diminished motivation to seek future rewards. Neuroscientists have long…

A study on mice has found that inflammatory pain experienced early in life can cause lasting social deficits, linked to an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. The researchers showed that boosting the region’s excitatory neurons, dampening its inhibitory neurons, or applying deep brain stimulation reversed the social deficits. The work was published in Translational Psychiatry and led by Xiangdong Wan of Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University in Beijing. The human brain develops through a complex interaction between genetic instructions and environmental experiences, with the early years being particularly plastic and sensitive to outside influences.…

A new study maps several direct routes between the human thalamus and amygdala that may help the brain respond rapidly to threatening information. The research, published in NeuroImage, identifies the most reliable connections linking the posterior thalamus to the basolateral amygdala and highlights multiple pathways beyond a single route. The work is led by Emmanouela Kosteletou-Kassotaki of the University of Barcelona and draws on 113 healthy, right-handed volunteers with an average age of 24.5 and 65 women. The team used high-resolution diffusion-weighted MRI to estimate the direction of nerve fibres by tracking water movement through brain tissue. They then applied…

A new study suggests that patting a pet dog after a high-pressure mental task may not eliminate the immediate physiological strain, but it appears to prime the body to cope more calmly with a subsequent stressor. The research, conducted in an Austrian university laboratory, found that owners who physically petted their dogs during a five-minute recovery period showed dampened brain and heart responses during a second stress test conducted soon after. Petting a dog as a stress buffer In human psychology, stress buffering describes how supportive social contact can soften physical and emotional reactions to difficult situations. Affectionate touch is…

A new study from Gonzaga University suggests that college students who use cannabis more frequently are less willing to share a hypothetical supply of the drug and are less likely to report using it with others. The research, led by Paul Romanowich, appears in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology and follows undergraduates from a small private university in the Pacific Northwest. Across the United States, cannabis use among young adults has risen as state-level legalization expands. Between 2013 and 2023, the share of 19- to 30-year-olds reporting cannabis use in the prior month increased from 18.3% to 28.7%, while diagnoses of…

Online criticism of meat consumption that frames the issue as a moral failing tends to provoke more defensiveness than criticism framed around cooking ability, according to new UK-based experiments. The research found that private messages from strangers can trigger even stronger reactions than public comments, raising questions about how best to encourage dietary change in the digital age. Researchers say the environmental case for cutting meat often sharpens the moral debate, with livestock farming accounting for a sizeable share of greenhouse gas emissions. Psychological defensiveness, they explain, describes the cognitive and emotional ways people protect their self-image when faced with…

A new study published in Addiction Neuroscience suggests that the brain changes linked to childhood trauma in healthy adults can be obscured or reshaped by years of heavy alcohol use. Researchers found that, while trauma exposure is associated with distinct patterns of brain structure in people without addiction, those signatures largely disappear in individuals with alcohol use disorder. The findings imply that the physical toll of chronic drinking may overwrite early neurodevelopmental marks, complicating efforts to identify neural traces of childhood adversity in addicted populations. To understand how experiences sculpt the brain, the researchers examined different tissue metrics. They looked…

A University of Michigan study finds that romantic partners who spend a weekend caring for a lifelike infant simulator together experience a notable drop in testosterone when they repeat the caregiving task on Monday. The research, conducted by doctoral student Rachel E. Brandon and psychology professor Robin S. Edelstein, suggests that hands-on practice and pre-existing attitudes toward parenting shape how couples biologically respond to shared childcare. Testosterone, produced in both men and women, fluctuates with social context and is linked to trade-offs between mating and nurturing behaviours. While higher levels are often tied to competition and status seeking, lower levels…