Author: dispatchtimes news

A new umbrella review of research into prenatal acetaminophen use finds little evidence that the common painkiller causes autism or attention‑deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children. While earlier reviews suggested small increases in risk, these associations largely diminished when the analysis concentrated on higher‑quality evidence, with only modest signals remaining in some analyses. The study was published in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. Acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol and sold under brands such as Tylenol, is widely available and used to treat pain and fever. Because it is thought to carry fewer risks for birth defects than many other pain relievers, it…

A new study suggests rapid-acting antidepressants such as ketamine and psychedelics may relieve depression by rebalancing specific immune system pathways in the body and brain, with the ability to predict treatment response. The findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, come from a collaboration led by Gregory H. Jones of the National Institute of Mental Health and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Standard antidepressants often take weeks to ease symptoms, whereas compounds like ketamine and psilocybin can provide rapid relief for those with treatment‑resistant depression. Yet these therapies pose challenges, including the need for repeated dosing and extensive clinical…

The latest research into ghosting suggests the person who stops replying often feels worse about their silence than the other party realises, and a brief reply can significantly narrow this gap. The findings, published in a leading psychology bulletin, come from a collaboration between Sophia Li of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and Coral Zheng, a PhD candidate at Cambridge Judge Business School, who contributed equally to the work. Ghosting, defined as abruptly ending communication without explanation, spans from deliberate relationship endings to ordinary moments of forgetfulness or distraction in digital chats. Li and…

A breakthrough study of 2,204 Chinese fifth graders suggests that girls are not inherently more risk-averse than boys; when cognitive errors and guessing are accounted for, the gender gap in risk-taking actually depends on the size of the potential reward. The researchers’ findings are published in the NBER Working Paper Series. Traditional economic models presume decision‑making is perfectly rational, with choices directly revealing true preferences. By contrast, behavioural economists recognise that people often commit cognitive mistakes or rely on mental shortcuts, complicating how researchers interpret risk attitudes. This measurement challenge is particularly acute with children, whose decision‑making skills and attention…

A team of researchers at the Universidad de Sevilla has found that creatine supplementation can prevent brain inflammation, neuronal damage and disrupted electrical activity in the hippocampus of rats with chronic colitis, in a study published in Brain, Behaviour and Immunity. The damage caused by gut inflammation was markedly more severe in male rats than in females. The study adds to growing evidence of the gut-brain axis, the two-way communication network linking the digestive system with the central nervous system. Inflammatory bowel disease, which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, involves persistent intestinal inflammation and is linked to mood and…

A new study on the genetics of political participation suggests that polygenic scores—genetic propensities for health and psychological traits—can help predict whether people vote or engage in political life. Analysing genetic data from more than 50,000 individuals in the United States and Sweden, researchers found that higher genetic predispositions for cognitive performance and subjective well-being are linked to greater voter turnout, with sibling comparisons indicating some effects may be causal. Political scientists have traditionally emphasised environmental factors such as education, income, and family background to explain turnout. In recent years, however, research using twins, adoptions and molecular genetics has shown…

Musicians appear less prone to the ventriloquism effect than non-musicians, new research led by Matthew Paul O’Donohue at the Queensland University of Technology suggests. The study compared 35 musicians with 35 non-musicians to explore why the illusion occurs, with findings published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. The ventriloquism effect is a multisensory illusion in which a sound is perceived as originating from a nearby visual stimulus rather than from its true source. The brain typically fuses information from different senses and tends to lean on vision when localisation is involved. Musical training is thought to…

A study published in Cerebral Cortex links creative drawing ability to the brain’s white matter wiring, suggesting creativity relies on a broad network of connected systems rather than a single ‘creative centre’. Researchers have long tied creativity to large brain networks involved in imagination, attention and decision-making. But they sought to understand the physical wiring that allows these networks to communicate, focusing on white matter, the bundles that connect different brain regions. Previous findings have been inconsistent; this study aimed to see whether the condition of these pathways relates to people’s ability to produce creative drawings and whether a newer…

A new study examining more than 380,000 adults across Great Britain finds that the life-satisfaction gap between people in romantic relationships and those who are single varies by where people live. The gap is wider in areas where romantic partnerships are more common, the researchers report, because partnered individuals tend to rate their life satisfaction higher in those districts. In social psychology, the term life satisfaction refers to how positively or fulfilment of one’s overall life circumstances is perceived. The study also touches on the concept of person-culture match, the idea that wellbeing can rise when an individual’s traits and…

When the brain rests after learning something new, it actively replays the recent experience to lock it into memory. In a small study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers report that this mental replay involves a trade-off: the brain prioritises the general meaning of an event while weakening the memory of specific details. Led by Nicholas C. Hindy, Ryan Coleman and Surya Rajan Meenakshi Selvam, the team zeroed in on the hippocampus, with a focus on the CA1 region, and proposed that false memories can emerge as a natural by-product of how the mind extracts useful themes from…