Author: dispatchtimes news

Andy Burnham has been asked to create an “Emergency Register” of civilians willing to sign up for war, according to a post published by the X account “Basil the Great”. The post describes the proposed register as a list of civilians prepared to volunteer for war, but does not identify who made the request, how the scheme would operate or what roles participants would undertake. The account’s author criticised the prospect of involvement in an overseas conflict, writing: “We will not die in a foreign conflict for you.” The post does not include a response from Burnham or indicate whether…

A new online study published in the EvoS Journal: Evolutionary Studies and Higher Education examined how willing people are to engage with a social media post from a creative individual who also experiences schizophrenia. The findings show that women were more inclined to interact than men, particularly when the person’s creative output was not successfully published; when publication success occurred, gender differences disappeared. Mental health stigma remains a broad social issue, characterised by negative stereotypes and prejudice toward those with mental health conditions. Such stigma can foster social rejection, hinder employment and relationships, and deter people from seeking professional help.…

A new study published in JAMA Network Open finds that autistic individuals enrolled in Medicaid have a life expectancy of 64.9 years at birth, about 5.6 years shorter than the overall Medicaid population and roughly 13.8 years shorter than the general United States population. Researchers analysed nationwide Medicaid data and linked it with the National Death Index to form a dataset covering all beneficiaries across the 50 states and the District of Columbia between 2000 and 2020. The study focused on 2,048,046 Medicaid beneficiaries diagnosed with autism, a group that was predominantly male (around 76 per cent) with females accounting…

A six-week, double-blind trial comparing psilocybin with the antidepressant escitalopram in 59 patients with long-standing moderate-to-severe depression has found both treatments reduce the brain’s tendency to interpret ambiguous social cues negatively. Conducted by researchers including Marieke A. G. Martens of the University of Oxford, the study also involved Robin Carhart-Harris and Catherine J. Harmer and was published in Translational Psychiatry. The trial used a facial expression recognition task to track changes in emotional processing. Participants were randomly allocated to two groups. One received two 25-milligram doses of psilocybin three weeks apart, alongside a daily inactive placebo for six weeks. The…

A new study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology suggests that while a person’s baseline testosterone does not simply make them more or less inclined to take risks, the hormone may shape how the body processes the outcomes of past decisions. Researchers measured sweat on the skin during a gambling game to show that testosterone can influence the body’s response to feedback and how that response colours subsequent choices. The experiment recruited 55 young adults, comprising 27 women and 28 men, who completed 100 rounds of the Iowa Gambling Task while researchers monitored electrodermal activity. At the outset, participants provided saliva samples so…

A new study published in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice has found that maladaptive daydreaming is moderately linked to problematic social media use and hypersexual behaviour, with narcissistic personality traits acting as a potential bridge between these behaviours. Researchers Alessia Renzi and Rachele Mariani of Sapienza University of Rome, alongside Filippo Maria Nimbi of eCampus Telematics University, set out to explore how these intense daydreaming episodes relate to compulsive digital and sexual behaviours. Maladaptive daydreaming is not yet an official psychiatric diagnosis, but it shares features with behavioural addictions and obsessive‑compulsive and dissociative tendencies. People who experience it…

A cross-national study on internet diffusion and religious decline has found that as internet access grows within a country, religious affiliation and self-identification tend to fall. The research, published in Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, was led by Miran Lavrič, a full professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maribor, alongside Tibor Rutar. The team assembled data from 81 countries spanning 1990 to 2022, combining national internet usage statistics with six waves of the World Values Survey to track beliefs and values. Scholars have long debated the drivers of secularisation—the historical decline in the social and…

A Brazilian open‑label clinical study at Onofre Lopes University Hospital, affiliated with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, found that treatment-resistant depression patients who improved after weekly subcutaneous esketamine reported higher levels of dissociation, particularly feelings that the world seemed unreal or distant, than those who did not respond. Treatment‑resistant depression is defined as depression that has not improved after at least two adequate trials of standard antidepressants. Esketamine, a form of ketamine, has emerged as a treatment option for some people with this condition. Ketamine was originally developed as an anaesthetic, but researchers later found that it…

A new study published in PLOS Biology shows that neurons born around birth in the olfactory bulb’s granule-cell layer are the ones that encode memories of childhood scents associated with happiness. A linked primer by Chloé Guillaume and Elisa Galliano discusses the same results. In the core experiment, juvenile mice exposed to appealing odours within an enriched, playful environment developed a stronger preference for those smells in adulthood than peers exposed in standard housing. Memories triggered by odours are often unusually vivid and emotionally potent, particularly when formed in childhood. They tend to be autobiographical and linked with positive emotions…

A new study suggests the relationship between using screens to soothe upset children and the development of their cognitive skills often runs in both directions, though the pattern varies from child to child. Published in the Journal of Communication, the research finds that for most youngsters, screen time and cognitive development influence one another over time, while a small minority show patterns in which media use drives cognitive outcomes more strongly. Executive functions, the mental skills that enable planning, sustained attention and juggling multiple tasks, are central to the study. Two core components—cognitive flexibility, the ability to shift thinking or…