The research aimed to better understand the brain-based traits that might underlie authoritarian thinking. Previous studies have documented the psychological characteristics associated with authoritarianism—such as impulsivity, dogmatism, and heightened sensitivity to threat—but few have examined whether these traits are reflected in brain structure. The authors were particularly interested in both left- and right-wing authoritarianism, as research has increasingly recognized that rigid, anti-democratic attitudes can be found at both ends of the political spectrum.

“Research on ideological authoritarianism and other forms of radical political attitudes has been attracting growing attention,” said study author Jesús Adrián-Ventura, a professor at University of Zaragoza and member of the Pseudo-Lab Research Group.

“However, despite increasing reports on its psychological correlates, its integration with neurobiological data remains very limited, in particular regarding left-wing authoritarianism, which remains poorly represented in the current psychological literature. This led us to undertake a study on authoritarianism from a neuroscientific perspective.”

To investigate these questions, the researchers recruited 100 young adults in Spain, mostly university students between the ages of 18 and 30. Each participant completed a series of psychological questionnaires that measured political orientation, authoritarian beliefs, impulsivity, anxiety, and emotional regulation.

Importantly, the researchers used updated scales that assess both traditional right-wing authoritarianism and a recently developed measure of left-wing authoritarianism, which includes dimensions like anti-hierarchical aggression and top-down censorship.

Participants also underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans using a high-resolution 3T scanner. The researchers focused on two structural features of the brain: gray matter volume, which reflects the density of neurons and connections in different brain regions, and cortical thickness, a measure of the depth of the brain’s outer layer. They used whole-brain statistical analyses to identify whether either of these features was associated with authoritarian beliefs.

Behaviorally, the results supported previous findings that people with authoritarian attitudes, regardless of political orientation, tend to act impulsively in emotionally charged situations. Both left-wing and right-wing authoritarians scored higher on “negative urgency,” a trait linked to impulsive actions under distress. However, left-wing authoritarianism—especially the tendency toward aggressive anti-establishment views—was also linked to higher levels of trait anxiety.

“Both left-wing and right-wing authoritarians act impulsively in emotionally negative situations, while the former tend to be more anxious,” Adrián-Ventura told PsyPost.

At the neural level, the researchers found two key structural associations. First, higher scores on right-wing authoritarianism were related to smaller gray matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. This region is known to be involved in understanding others’ perspectives, making moral judgments, and navigating complex social situations.

“Right-wing authoritarianism is associated with a lower dorsomedial prefrontal cortex gray matter volume, a region involved in understanding others’ thoughts and perspectives,” Adrián-Ventura said.

Previous studies have linked activity in this region to political decision-making and reactions to conflicting information. The authors suggest that reduced volume in this area might reflect more rigid thinking styles or difficulties with cognitive flexibility among right-wing authoritarians.

Second, individuals who scored high on the anti-hierarchical aggression component of left-wing authoritarianism showed lower cortical thickness in the right anterior insula. Interestingly, the same region has been implicated in studies examining reactions to political disagreement and emotional responses to moral violations.

“Reduced cortical thickness in the right anterior insula—a region associated with emotional empathy and behavioral inhibition—is linked to increased anti-hierarchical aggressive attitudes (i.e., the preference for violent actions and punishment against perceived authority structures) in the context of left-wing authoritarianism,” Adrián-Ventura explained.

“These neurobiological results were very surprising. Due to the lack of prior studies, our approach was mainly exploratory and data-driven. Still, it is quite difficult to obtain significant results in MR studies when strict statistical thresholds are applied. The obtained medium-to-large effect sizes are therefore striking and demand further scrutiny.”

To further validate their findings, the researchers examined whether these brain differences were also associated with related political ideologies. The gray matter reductions in the prefrontal cortex correlated with higher scores on social dominance orientation, a belief system often linked to right-wing authoritarianism. Likewise, the thinning in the anterior insula was related to endorsement of radical feminist views, which share ideological ground with the anti-authority stance of left-wing authoritarianism.

Although the study breaks new ground by identifying distinct neural correlates for both left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism, it is not without limitations. The sample was relatively homogenous, consisting mainly of young, educated individuals from a single European country. The findings may not generalize to older populations or to people in different cultural and political environments.

“So, new research would be needed to confirm and expand our results in different populations,” Adrián-Ventura noted. “This is particularly relevant in the domain of authoritarianism as this construct tends to manifest within a range of context-dependent determinants (i.e., salient forms of authoritarian attitudes in post-communist or Hispanic American countries, among others, often exhibit specific traits).”

In addition, because the study was cross-sectional, it cannot determine whether the brain differences cause authoritarian attitudes or result from them.

The researchers emphasized that authoritarian beliefs are not solely determined by brain anatomy. Instead, the structural differences may reflect long-standing cognitive and emotional patterns that interact with social and cultural influences. For example, people with a tendency to experience anxiety or act rashly under stress may be more drawn to authoritarian ideologies when they perceive the world as threatening or unstable.

Future research could build on these findings by examining how these brain structures function during political decision-making or when people are confronted with opposing views. Longitudinal studies may also help clarify whether changes in political ideology are associated with structural or functional shifts in the brain over time. Experimental studies could test whether interventions targeting emotion regulation or perspective-taking influence authoritarian attitudes and their neural underpinnings.

“We are dedicated to the scientific study of radical beliefs (e.g., authoritarianism, pseudoscientific doctrines, conspiracy theories, and interventions such as empathetic refutation),” Adrián-Ventura told PsyPost. “In the context of authoritarianism, our goal is to delineate a precise network of psychological associations and its neurocognitive profile. To this end, we will integrate novel behavioral and neuroimaging data—by means of structural and functional MRI—together with new experimental designs.”

The study, “Authoritarianism and the brain: Structural MR correlates associated with polarized left- and right-wing ideology traits,” was authored by Jesús Adrián-Ventura, Diego Avendaño, Anna Miró-Padilla, Anastasia Cherednichenko, César Ávila, Angelo Fasce.

The study was motivated by growing evidence that anxiety is connected to interoception—the awareness of internal bodily states such as breathing, heartbeat, or hunger. Interoception is thought to play a central role in how the brain monitors and regulates physical and emotional states. Previous studies have suggested that people with anxiety may struggle with interoceptive awareness, particularly when it comes to how well they can evaluate or trust their perceptions of bodily signals. However, much of the earlier research was based on small samples, and few studies examined whether these relationships differ between men and women.

“Women have a much higher prevalence of anxiety than men, and the symptom presentation is often quite different,” said study author Olivia Harrison, a Rutherford Discovery Research Fellow and senior lecturer at University of Otago. “We are interested in how signals from within the body (interoception) are altered with anxiety differentially between men and women. We are also interested in whether this may be due to differences in early perceptual processing of these signals, or whether gender differences may only become apparent during metacognition – awareness and insight into one’s interoceptive processing.”

The researchers combined data from four study sites across Europe, bringing together a total of 175 participants, about half of whom were women. All participants were healthy adults and completed a battery of psychological questionnaires, including the Spielberger State–Trait Anxiety Inventory, which measures both current feelings of anxiety (state anxiety) and a person’s general tendency to experience anxiety over time (trait anxiety). Participants also completed a task designed to measure breathing-related interoception.

In the interoception task, participants breathed through a device that occasionally introduced a subtle resistance to inhaling, created by inserting filters into the breathing apparatus. These resistances were designed to be barely noticeable. After each trial, participants were asked to decide whether they thought a resistance had been added and rate how confident they were in that decision. The task was tailored to each person so that the difficulty remained consistent across participants.

Harrison and her colleagues analyzed several aspects of performance: sensitivity (how accurately someone could detect the resistance), decision bias (whether someone was more likely to say “yes” or “no”), metacognitive bias (how confident someone generally felt in their decisions), and metacognitive insight (how well someone’s confidence matched their actual accuracy).

Across all participants, higher levels of state anxiety were associated with lower metacognitive bias—meaning that anxious individuals tended to feel less confident in their judgments, even if their accuracy was unchanged. State anxiety was also linked to reduced metacognitive insight, or a weaker match between confidence and actual performance.

However, when the researchers examined this relationship by gender, they found something striking: the association between anxiety and reduced metacognitive insight was only present in women. For men, there was no significant link between how anxious they felt and how well their confidence reflected their performance. This gender-specific effect was statistically significant and appeared only for state anxiety, not for trait anxiety or depression.

Importantly, the average interoceptive abilities—such as sensitivity to breathing resistance and overall confidence—did not differ between men and women. This means the observed differences were not due to one gender being better or worse at the task, but rather how anxiety influenced their evaluation of their own performance. The researchers suggest that this might help explain inconsistent findings in previous studies, especially those with more female participants.

Harrison and her colleagues also found that trait anxiety and depression were linked to lower metacognitive insight in the group as a whole. However, unlike state anxiety, these relationships did not show a meaningful difference between men and women. This suggests that state anxiety, which reflects how a person feels in the moment, may have a more direct and gender-specific connection to interoceptive awareness than long-term anxiety tendencies or depressive symptoms.

“One of the main take-home messages of the study is that on average, men and women have the same levels of interoception and related insight towards breathing perceptions,” Harrison told PsyPost. “However, the relationship between state anxiety (i.e. in-the-moment anxiety) and interoceptive insight is different between men and women – lower anxiety is related to improved insight while greater anxiety is related to worsened insight only in women, while this relationship did not exist for men. Interestingly, this gender difference was not apparent for either trait (i.e. longer-term) anxiety nor depression.”

Despite the relatively large sample size for this kind of research, the authors acknowledge some limitations. Since the data came from four different sites with slightly different procedures, subtle inconsistencies could have influenced the results. To ensure the findings were not driven by differences across study locations or methods, the researchers conducted sensitivity analyses, which largely confirmed the main results.

The cross-sectional design also limits any conclusions about cause and effect. For example, it remains unclear whether anxiety disrupts metacognitive insight, or whether impaired interoceptive awareness contributes to feeling more anxious. The study also focused only on breathing-related interoception, and it’s not yet known whether similar patterns would be found for awareness of other bodily signals, such as heartbeats or stomach sensations.

The researchers hope their work will contribute to more personalized approaches to mental health. “We are aiming to both better understand anxiety behaviors as well as better target their treatment,” Harrison said. “In particular, we are interested in tailoring treatment options to each individual, to maximize the chances of success.”

The study, “Gender Differences in the Association Between Anxiety and Interoceptive Insight,” was authored by Olivia K. Harrison, Laura Köchli, Stephanie Marino, Lucy Marlow, Sarah L. Finnegan, Ben Ainsworth, Benjamin J. Talks, Bruce R. Russell, Samuel J. Harrison, Kyle T. S. Pattinson, Stephen M. Fleming, and Klaas E. Stephan.

Public Health Ontario recently announced that there have been 173 cases in the province in the past two weeks and 350 cases since autumn 2024. Many cases have required hospitalization. Last year, a child died.

The cause of this resurgence is declining vaccination rates.

Measles is extremely infectious. One person with the measles is likely to infect nine out of 10 of their unvaccinated close contacts. To prevent its spread, we need 95 per cent of the population to be vaccinated.

Anti-vaccine sentiments

Our research examines why parents have hesitated or refused to vaccinate their children. Anti-vaccine sentiment is often linked to a now thoroughly discredited 1998 study that suggested a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism.

But our research on the anti-vaccine movement in Canada from the 1970s to the early 2000s suggests that parents’ concerns about vaccines started much earlier than that study, and that parents worry about far more than autism.

To address anti-vaccine sentiment, we need to listen to parents’ concerns and make it easy for them to get their children vaccinated. We also need to persuade them of the benefits of vaccination, not just for their own children, but for their family members, friends and fellow citizens.

The anti-vaccine literature is not anti-science. It is filled with statistics and references to scientific studies, although the facts are often wrong. Parents who read this literature need more than the simple reassurance of experts that vaccines are safe and effective. They need to be shown evidence and have confidence that their concerns are being taken seriously.

One argument that appeared frequently in the anti-vaccine literature is that rates of infectious disease had fallen before the introduction of vaccines.

While mortality from infectious diseases declined well before vaccination, vaccines played a vital role in further diminishing the toll of infectious disease. Diphtheria is largely unknown today, but before the introduction of widespread vaccination in the years between the First and Second World Wars, it killed hundreds of Canadian children every year.

Another common argument was that vaccines are ineffective. This argument was often used with respect to the measles vaccine. Because some people are inadequately vaccinated (receiving only one shot for example, instead of two), and because the vaccine is not perfect, there will be some cases of measles even in vaccinated people. Fortunately, these people tend to have milder cases.

Anti-vaccine texts frequently contain long lists of scary-sounding ingredients in vaccines, similar to what we see for highly processed foods. Thimerosal (ethyl mercury used as a preservative) attracted the most attention. Thimerosal is no longer used in childhood vaccines in Canada.

The anti-vaccine literature is deeply skeptical about the profit-making motivations of pharmaceutical companies and often mentions past disasters such as the thalidomide scandal that saw thousands of children born with shortened limbs.

While this is not the only example of inadequate safety testing of new drugs, it is clear that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, used since the early 1970s, has a long safety record and has played a vital role in reducing deaths and illness from the measles in Canada and abroad.

Anti-vaccine literature also stressed that there were natural ways of building immunity that could take the place of vaccination. We see this today with claims by United States Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy claims that poor eating habits are behind the spread of measles in the U.S. This is extremely dangerous. Even the healthiest, best-fed child can get extremely sick with the measles. Not all parents can afford nutritious food. And some children can’t be vaccinated because of medical conditions, leaving them extremely vulnerable.

Tragedies of the past

Anti-vaccine parents see vaccines as one of the dangers of our modern, polluted world, and worry that vaccines might have risks that have not yet been recognized. While there are risks with any medical technology, the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the possible dangers.

A century ago, parents mourned the gruesome deaths of children with diphtheria, which caused a membrane to form across the child’s throat, slowly strangling them to death.

Mortality from the measles declined in the first half of the 20th century, but in 1945, there was still one measles death for every 100,000 people in Ontario.

Parents today have little memory of these tragedies, but sadly, they could return. Indeed, a powerful article recently published in the Atlantic Monthly profiled a father who had just lost his six-year-old child to the measles.

Along with scholars like sociologist Jennifer Reich, who has studied contemporary anti-vaccine parents, we see anti-vaccination sentiment as part of a larger societal trend towards individualism. Parents think about what’s best for their own child, rather than thinking about what’s best for their community.

At a time when Canadians are bonding together to fight the tariff threat from the U.S., it would be wonderful if we could also come together to fight the scourge of infectious diseases, including measles. The best way to do this is vaccination.

This is a corrected version of a story originally published on March 18, 2025. The earlier story said “Public Health Ontario recently announced that there have been 195 cases in the province in the past two weeks and 372 cases since autumn 2024” instead of “Public Health Ontario recently announced that there have been 173 cases in the province in the past two weeks and 350 cases since autumn 2024.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Psychedelics are a class of psychoactive substances known for producing profound changes in perception, mood, and cognition. These substances primarily act on serotonin receptors in the brain. Common psychedelics include LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms), DMT (dimethyltryptamine), and mescaline (a compound derived from peyote and other cacti).

Scientific interest in psychedelics peaked in the 1950s and 1960s, but legal restrictions imposed in the late 1960s halted most research. In recent years, however, interest has resurged, with studies investigating the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for mental health conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety—particularly anxiety related to terminal illness.

According to study author Jia-Ru Li and colleagues, research on the antidepressant effects of psychedelics has yielded mixed results. While some studies report strong antidepressant effects, others find no effect at all. The researchers hypothesized that this inconsistency might be explained by differences in study design, especially in how the psychedelic treatment was compared to control conditions. To test this hypothesis, they conducted a meta-analysis.

The researchers searched several clinical trial databases for studies that evaluated the antidepressant effects of psychedelic drugs in adults diagnosed with depression or with a life-threatening illness accompanied by depressive symptoms. Eligible studies had to use standardized, validated rating scales to measure depressive symptoms.

The analysis considered five types of study designs:

• Studies using a non-active drug as a placebo (a non-psychedelic substance with no antidepressant properties);
• Studies using an active drug as a placebo (typically very low doses of psychedelics);
• Pre-post studies without a control group, comparing participants’ depressive symptoms before and after treatment;
• Studies using a waitlist control group, where control participants receive the treatment at a later time;
• Fixed-order designs, in which participants first receive a placebo (without knowing it is a placebo) and then receive the psychedelic treatment in a subsequent phase.

The final analysis included 21 studies: 11 tested the effects of psilocybin, 5 examined MDMA, 3 studied ayahuasca, and 2 assessed LSD.

The results showed that the apparent antidepressant effects of psychedelics varied depending on the type of study design. Studies that used a non-active placebo reported large or medium antidepressant effects for psilocybin and MDMA.

In contrast, studies that used an active placebo reported no antidepressant effects. Studies without control groups and those with waitlist controls also reported large effects for psilocybin. Studies on ayahuasca showed large antidepressant effects, while LSD showed notable effects only in the study using a non-active placebo.

“The antidepressant effects of psychedelics may be overestimated in studies with pre-post single-arm, non-active drugs as placebo, and waitlist-control designs. Restricted sample size, difficulty with establishing blinding for participants, and over expectancy limit the estimation of the antidepressant effect of psychedelic-assisted therapy,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on possible factors producing the discrepancies in reported antidepressant effects of psychedelics. However, it should be noted that the number of studies included in this meta-analysis is relatively small given the number of psychedelics examined and the number of different study designs. This is especially the case for ayahuasca and LSD.

The paper, “The association between study design and antidepressant effects in psychedelic-assisted therapy: A meta-analysis,” was authored by Jia-Ru Li, Kuo-Tung Chiang, Yu-Chen Kao, Chia-Ling Yu, Fu-Chi Yang, Chih-Sung Liang, and Tien-Wei Hsu.

Music therapy is a therapeutic approach that uses music to address the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals. It offers a creative outlet for expression and emotional release. This type of therapy is used to treat a broad range of conditions, including emotional and mental health issues, developmental and learning disabilities, neurological conditions, chronic illnesses, and more. It is also used in elder care, with individuals suffering from dementia, and in palliative care settings.

In music therapy, participants engage in music-based activities such as singing, playing instruments, or moving to music within a therapeutic setting guided by a trained music therapist. Sessions can be conducted individually—tailored to the specific goals and needs of one person—or in a group setting. Group therapy offers a sense of community and support, allowing individuals to feel less isolated. By creating or listening to music together, participants can explore their emotions in a safe environment, which may lead to improved mood and reduced anxiety.

Study author Christine Gaebel and her colleagues sought to evaluate the effectiveness of group music therapy in treating women with major depressive disorder. They hypothesized that group music therapy would not only reduce depressive symptoms but also improve quality of life and mood regulation through music.

They conducted an experiment involving 102 women between the ages of 18 and 65 who were diagnosed with major depressive disorder but had no other severe mental disorders or physical illnesses. Participants were randomly assigned to six treatment groups consisting of 16–18 women each. Fifty-two were assigned to the intervention group (i.e., they received group music therapy), while fifty were placed in a waitlist control group (i.e., they received no treatment during the study but were scheduled to receive it afterward).

Each participant first underwent a 60-minute individual session consisting of an interview, followed by ten weekly 120-minute group music therapy sessions. Each session included welcome music at the beginning and a closing musical reflection at the end. In the main portion of the session, participants were invited to raise personal issues or concerns, which were then addressed through music therapy interventions guided by the therapist.

These interventions included, for example, free musical improvisation, relaxation techniques, and guided imagery accompanied by music. “The selection of the appropriate interventions was based on therapists’ assessments of patient needs and group dynamics. Even if only a single patient raised a concern, the entire group participated in the intervention, which is not a disadvantage, as there is a significant overlap in patient concerns due to the nature of the disorder,” the authors explained.

Participants completed assessments at three time points: before the intervention, immediately after the intervention, and 10 weeks following the intervention. Depression symptoms were evaluated using three different tools: an observer-rated assessment (the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale), a self-report questionnaire (BDI-II), and a momentary assessment of depression symptoms in daily life using a visual analog scale. Participants also completed assessments of emotion regulation (the Heidelberg Form for Emotion Regulation Strategies and the Brief Music in Mood Regulation Scale) and quality of life (the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire).

The results showed that group music therapy did not significantly improve self-rated or observer-rated depression symptoms. However, participants did show improvement in depression symptoms as measured in everyday life. Additionally, emotion regulation strategies and quality of life improved. These effects were more pronounced immediately after the intervention than at the 10-week follow-up.

life using a visual analog scale. Participants also completed assessments of emotion regulation (the Heidelberg Form for Emotion Regulation Strategies and the Brief Music in Mood Regulation Scale) and quality of life (the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire).

The results showed that group music therapy did not result in improvements in self-rated or observer-rated depression symptoms. However, the assessment of depression symptoms in everyday life did improve. Participants’ mood regulation strategies and quality of life improved as well. The effects were larger when comparing the time before the intervention to time immediately after the intervention than when looking at the 10-week follow-up (10 weeks after the end of the intervention).

“GMT [group music therapy] is an economical approach to treat MDD [major depressive disorder], yielding health-promoting effects regarding DS [depression symptoms], emotion regulation, and QoL [quality of life]. Manualization [creating a therapy manual and codifying the procedures of the therapy] and further evaluation of MT [music therapy] is strongly recommended,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the potentials of music therapy for treating depression. However, it should be noted that the study only involved women. Effects on men might not be identical. Additionally, only one of the three measures of depression showed improvements after the therapy, so it remains unclear how effective the examined treatment really is on depressive symptoms.

The paper, “Effects of group music therapy on depressive symptoms in women – The MUSED-study: Results from a randomized-controlled trial,” was authored by Christine Gaebel, Martin Stoffel, Corina Aguilar-Raab, Marc N. Jarczok, Sabine Rittner, Beate Ditzen, and Marco Warth.

Psilocybin is the active compound found in certain psychedelic mushrooms. At higher doses, it can cause altered states of consciousness, but at very low “microdoses,” it does not produce hallucinations. Growing research suggests microdosing may subtly enhance mood and cognition, possibly by promoting the brain’s ability to change and adapt.

Neurofeedback, on the other hand, is a technique that uses real-time displays of brain activity—usually via electroencephalography (EEG)—to teach people how to control specific patterns of neural activity.

The researchers from the University of Groningen wanted to explore whether psilocybin could enhance neurofeedback training by increasing the brain’s plasticity, making it more receptive to learning. Their goal was to examine whether this combined approach could improve executive functions, which include skills like working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control.

To test this, the team conducted a small, early-phase study involving 37 participants. These volunteers were recruited from a microdosing workshop in the Netherlands and were not new to the idea of using psychedelics to support mental functioning. Eighteen were randomly assigned to the experimental group, and 19 to a passive control group. The control group did not receive any training during the core part of the study.

The experimental group first completed a week-long period to adjust to microdosing, using low amounts of Psilocybe mexicana truffles. They then participated in three sessions of neurofeedback training, spaced across one week. Before each neurofeedback session, they took a microdose of psilocybin. During the sessions, participants sat in a lab and received visual feedback based on the level of a specific brain rhythm called frontal-midline theta, which is linked to executive function. The goal was to increase this rhythm over time. Participants used self-chosen mental strategies to try to “turn the feedback square red,” which indicated successful upregulation of the target brain activity.

Both before and after the training period, participants completed a battery of cognitive tests and questionnaires. The researchers looked at both lab-based executive function tasks and self-reported assessments of how well participants managed these skills in daily life. Participants also set personalized goals—such as improving focus, reducing anxiety, or feeling more present—and rated their progress.

The study’s main goal was to test whether this kind of training was practical and safe. On that front, the results were promising. No one dropped out, no one reported negative psychological effects, and participants generally rated the sessions as engaging and meaningful. Most reported a strong sense of connection to the study and were motivated to complete the training, despite finding the neurofeedback somewhat difficult.

In terms of brain activity, the researchers observed a trend toward increased frontal-midline theta across sessions, with a large effect size, although the result was just shy of statistical significance. Within individual sessions, changes were more modest. The findings suggest that participants may have started to learn how to self-regulate the target brain rhythm, but three sessions may have been too few to produce consistent changes.

When it came to standard lab tests of executive function, such as tasks that measure memory updating or response inhibition, the results were mixed. There were no clear improvements in reaction times or accuracy that could be attributed to the training. However, participants in the experimental group reported improvements on questionnaires that asked about real-world executive functioning. These self-reported gains were seen across all four areas measured: working memory, mental flexibility, self-monitoring, and inhibition.

Despite these encouraging findings, the study was focused on determining whether psilocybin-assisted neurofeedback is safe and feasible. Because of this, there are several limitations. Most notably, the study lacked an active control group, which makes it difficult to determine whether the observed improvements were truly due to the neurofeedback and psilocybin, or simply the result of participating in an engaging new experience. Participants also knew they were receiving the active intervention, which could have influenced their expectations and self-reports. Although the study included measures of suggestibility and optimism, which were similar between groups, the researchers acknowledge that subtle placebo effects cannot be ruled out.

Moving forward, the research team recommends that future studies include an active control condition, a longer training period, and a larger sample size to test the durability and specificity of the effects. They also suggest exploring the best timing between psilocybin intake and training, as the acute effects of the substance may temporarily reduce the very brain activity participants are trying to increase.

In sum, this early research shows that psilocybin-assisted neurofeedback is feasible and well-tolerated. But it is still unclear whether it results in improved cognitive functioning. While the study cannot yet prove that the intervention improves brain function in an objective sense, it lays important groundwork for future trials. If confirmed, this novel approach could open new possibilities for treating cognitive symptoms that cut across many mental health conditions.

The study, “Psilocybin-assisted neurofeedback for the improvement of executive functions: a randomized semi-naturalistic-lab feasibility study,” was authored by S. Enriquez-Geppert, J. Krc, F. J. O’Higgins, and M. Lietz.

The research team, made up of scientists from Swansea University and the Medical University of Lodz, wanted to explore whether prenatal hormone exposure might shape future behaviors, like alcohol use, in people who are not alcohol dependent. Earlier studies had shown a link between the so-called “digit ratio” and alcohol problems in clinical populations, but the strength of this association in everyday drinkers was less clear. The current study aimed to fill this gap by measuring finger lengths directly and comparing them to alcohol use in a large sample of university students.

To test their ideas, the researchers recruited 258 students from the Medical University of Lodz in Poland. The sample included 169 women and 89 men, with an average age of about 22. Researchers measured each participant’s height, weight, and finger lengths on both hands. Specifically, they calculated the ratio between the second digit (index finger) and the fourth digit (ring finger), known as the 2D:4D ratio. Lower ratios mean the ring finger is longer than the index finger. This ratio is believed to reflect how much testosterone and estrogen a person was exposed to during early pregnancy.

To assess alcohol use, participants completed the Polish version of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, a ten-item questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization. This tool provides a score from 0 to 40, with higher scores indicating greater risk for harmful drinking. It also allowed the researchers to estimate how many grams of alcohol each person consumed weekly. Participants filled out the form anonymously after their finger lengths were recorded, and their results were grouped into categories based on risk level, from abstinent to possibly addicted.

The researchers found that students with lower digit ratios, particularly on the right hand, reported drinking more alcohol. This relationship was especially strong in men. For example, men with lower right-hand 2D:4D ratios had higher alcohol use scores and consumed more alcohol weekly. These associations were moderate to large in strength. Among women, the associations were smaller but still present. Notably, the left-hand finger ratios did not show any connection to alcohol use.

When the researchers looked more closely at body size, they found that men who were taller and heavier also tended to drink more. However, these physical traits did not explain the link between digit ratios and alcohol consumption. Even after accounting for height, weight, and finger length, the finger ratio remained a significant predictor of how much alcohol someone drank. In contrast, body size measures were no longer associated with alcohol use once digit ratio was taken into account.

The results support the idea that prenatal hormone exposure may play a role in shaping alcohol-related behaviors later in life. A lower 2D:4D ratio is thought to indicate higher exposure to testosterone and lower exposure to estrogen before birth. These hormone levels are believed to influence brain development, including traits related to risk-taking and reward sensitivity. Because alcohol use, especially at high levels, often overlaps with risk-taking tendencies, the researchers suggest that early hormone exposure might increase the likelihood of heavier drinking through this pathway.

Interestingly, the association between digit ratio and alcohol consumption was strongest in the right hand and in men, a pattern that has been seen in other studies. This may reflect sex-specific effects of hormones during fetal development, as men typically have lower 2D:4D ratios than women. The study also reinforces the idea that right-hand measurements are more sensitive to prenatal hormone effects than left-hand ones.

The study does have some limitations. One issue is the imbalance between male and female participants, with nearly twice as many women in the sample. This is common in medical universities in Poland, where the study took place, but it may have influenced the results. Also, while the study focused on alcohol consumption, it did not collect data on other behaviors—such as impulsivity or sensation-seeking—that might help explain why digit ratio and drinking are related.

Another factor not accounted for in the study is genetics. Some genetic variations are known to affect alcohol metabolism and the risk of alcohol dependence. While the study highlights the role of prenatal hormone exposure, it does not explore how this may interact with genetic risk factors. Moreover, alcohol use is influenced by many environmental and social factors that were not part of the analysis.

The researchers also note that behaviors associated with risk-taking peak during adolescence and young adulthood—exactly the age group studied here. Since lower digit ratios are linked to greater risk-taking tendencies, it is possible that the finger length-alcohol use connection reflects a broader personality profile. Future studies could examine whether digit ratios predict not only drinking but also other behaviors, such as gambling, drug use, or reckless driving.

Despite these limitations, the findings add to a growing body of evidence that the roots of certain behaviors may be traced back to biological factors shaped before birth. While finger length alone cannot determine a person’s habits, it may serve as one of many clues about predispositions that interact with life experiences. The researchers hope that further work can clarify how prenatal conditions influence adult behavior and whether this knowledge can help in preventing harmful patterns of alcohol use.

The study, “Is Alcohol Consumption Pattern Dependent on Prenatal Sex-Steroids? A Digit Ratio (2D:4D) Study Among University Students,” was authored by Barbara Ślawski, Anna Kasielska-Trojan, John T. Manning, and Bogusław Antoszewski.

Psychedelics are a class of psychoactive substances that alter perception, mood, and various cognitive processes. Common psychedelics include LSD, psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms), and DMT, which are used both recreationally and increasingly in therapeutic settings to address mental health issues.

The use of these substances often leads to experiences that are considered out of the ordinary or transcendental. These experiences are characterized by profound changes in perception, emotion, and thought processes, often accompanied by visual and auditory hallucinations. Users frequently report a dissolution of the ego, leading to a sense of oneness with the universe or profound spiritual insights. The intensity and nature of these experiences can vary widely depending on the dose, environment, and individual psychology.

Scientific research suggests that psychedelic experiences can have lasting positive effects on mental health, including reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, they can also lead to distressing experiences, especially without proper guidance or in unsuitable settings.

Study authors Will Olteanu and Sam G. Moreton aimed to explore the relationship between psychedelic experiences and moral expansiveness. Moral expansiveness refers to the range of entities (humans, animals, the environment) that individuals consider worthy of moral consideration and protection. The researchers hypothesized that individuals who had meaningful psychedelic experiences would report increases in their moral expansiveness.

Study participants included 201 adults who reported consuming at least one dose of a classic psychedelic—such as LSD, N,N-DMT, psilocybin, or mescaline—within the past decade, but not within the two weeks prior to the survey. They completed the study online via Qualtrics and were entered into a raffle to win one of two AUD $100 gift vouchers.

The survey included assessments of ego dissolution (using the Ego-Dissolution Inventory), mystical experiences (using the revised Mystical Experiences Questionnaire), and self-transcendent positive emotions experienced during participants’ psychedelic trips. It also included an assessment of moral expansiveness using the Moral Expansiveness Scale. Participants completed the moral expansiveness assessment twice: once by recalling a time in their life before the meaningful psychedelic experience, and again referring to their current life.

Results showed that a large proportion of participants reported strong self-transcendent emotions during their psychedelic experience. On average, participants’ moral expansiveness scores were higher after their psychedelic experience compared to before. Those who reported more intense ego dissolution and mystical experiences tended to show greater increases in moral expansiveness.

“This study provides preliminary evidence that meaningful psychedelic experiences are associated with an increase in moral expansiveness. These findings underscore the transformative potential of psychedelic experiences on moral cognition, suggesting that specific experiences during and after psychedelic use play a crucial role in this process,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on individual experiences with psychedelics. However, it is important to note that the study’s design does not allow for causal conclusions to be drawn. Additionally, all data were based on participants’ recollections, including their assessments of moral expansiveness before and after the psychedelic experience. This introduces the potential for recall bias to have influenced the results.

The paper, “Meaningful Psychedelic Experiences Predict Increased Moral Expansiveness,” was authored by Will Olteanu and Sam G. Moreton.

Metacognition refers to the ability to reflect on and control one’s own thought processes. This includes knowing what strategies to use when solving problems, keeping track of progress while completing tasks, and adjusting plans if something isn’t working.

While much research has already shown that physical activity, sleep, and diet can influence cognitive functions like memory or attention, fewer studies have examined whether these habits also affect metacognitive skills. The researchers behind this study wanted to find out whether the same lifestyle factors that shape basic thinking skills might also relate to the higher-level processes people use to guide and regulate their thinking.

“We have long recognized that lifestyle behaviors, particularly physical activity, diet, and sleep habits, are associated with our cognitive functioning,” said study author G. Kyle Gooderham, a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia.

“However, it remains unclear whether lifestyle behaviors are linked to our abilities to monitor and control our cognitive resources and functioning. This fundamental cognitive ability, metacognition, supports cognitive functioning by enabling us to flexibly respond to cognitive demands. Therefore, an association between lifestyle behaviors and metacognition would suggest that lifestyle behaviors are linked to the regulation of cognitive functioning.”

This is especially relevant for young adults, who are generally at their peak in terms of cognitive performance. Despite this, even high-performing individuals may experience variation in how effectively they plan, monitor, and adjust their thinking, and these differences could be related to how they live. Because young adulthood is a period when long-term health habits are often established, understanding how lifestyle connects to metacognition could have lasting implications for both mental and physical well-being.

To investigate this, the researchers conducted two studies using large samples of undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia. In the first study, 1,702 students were recruited, and in the second, 564 students took part. All participants completed a set of online surveys assessing their physical activity levels, dietary habits, sleep quality, perceived stress, and various aspects of metacognitive function.

These surveys had been validated in previous research and included measures like the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (which assesses how well someone understands and regulates their own learning), the Inventory of Metacognitive Self-Regulation (which focuses on problem-solving abilities), and the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire (which captures patterns of worry and confidence about one’s own thoughts).

In both studies, physical activity stood out as a strong predictor of metacognitive functioning. Young adults who reported higher levels of physical activity were more likely to say they understood how their thinking worked, and that they used effective strategies to manage their mental performance. These relationships were especially clear for abilities like planning how to approach a task or evaluating how well a strategy was working—skills often used before or after completing a mentally challenging activity.

Interestingly, physical activity was not linked to metacognitive skills that happen during a task, such as adjusting one’s approach in the moment or staying mentally focused. Nor was it related to metacognitive worry—negative thoughts or anxiety about one’s own thinking. These findings suggest that physical activity may be most closely associated with metacognitive processes that happen before or after a task rather than in real time.

When it came to diet, the results pointed in a different direction. Healthy dietary patterns were related to better online regulation of cognition—the ability to monitor and adjust thinking as tasks unfold. Participants who reported more nutritious eating habits were more likely to indicate they could manage their mental focus and keep track of their progress while working through a problem.

However, diet was not strongly connected to overall knowledge about thinking or to pre- and post-task regulation. This implies that healthy eating might support the flexible mental engagement needed during ongoing cognitive efforts.

Sleep, meanwhile, was most closely linked with metacognitive worry. Participants who reported poor sleep quality also tended to express more anxiety about their thinking, including worries about losing control of thoughts or feeling mentally vulnerable.

However, sleep did not appear to relate to how well participants understood or regulated their thinking in practical terms. This pattern suggests that inadequate sleep may influence the emotional side of metacognition—such as self-doubt or mental discomfort—without necessarily impairing planning or problem-solving skills.

“Physical activity, diet, and sleep are modifiable lifestyle behaviors that impact how we monitor and control our cognitive functions,” Gooderham told PsyPost. “Engaging in healthful lifestyle behaviors may not only directly impact cognitive performance, but also how we use our limited cognitive resources.”

To better understand these patterns, the researchers grouped the different aspects of metacognition into four broader categories: knowledge of cognition, offline regulation of cognition (before or after a task), online regulation (during a task), and metacognitive worry. This allowed them to see more clearly how lifestyle habits matched up with specific types of thinking skills. The results were consistent across both studies: physical activity was related to knowledge and offline regulation, diet to online regulation, and sleep to metacognitive worry.

“Physical activity, diet, and sleep each impacted different aspects of metacognition,” Gooderham said. “This aligns with findings investigating the effect of lifestyle behaviors on cognitive performance, and reinforces the complex relationship between cognition and our lifestyles. Critically, these data offer convergent evidence for the different effects of lifestyle behaviors on cognitive processes and suggest that different interventions can be adopted to target specific cognitive functions.”

But as with all research, there are some limitations to consider.

“First, it would be inappropriate to infer a causal relationship from the data,” Gooderham explained.” The direction of the relationships cannot be determined from the research design, and it is entirely conceivable that cognitive variables are determinants of participation in lifestyle behaviors.

“Second, the study relied on self-report measures of lifestyle behaviors and metacognition. These self-reported variables, including measures of both cognition and lifestyle behaviors, are liable to deviations from objective indices.”

The study, “Metacognitive function in young adults is impacted by physical activity, diet, and sleep patterns,” was authored by G. Kyle Gooderham and Todd C. Handy.

It is quite straightforward that individuals who are ill often rely more heavily on others for support. When someone lacks a support system, navigating illness—and even surviving it—can become significantly more difficult. However, research suggests that social disconnectedness is not just a consequence of illness but also a potential cause of it. People with diminished social connections are at increased risk of developing a wide range of medical conditions.

These individuals appear to be more vulnerable to developing conditions such as depression, dementia, coronary heart disease, stroke, sarcopenia, and other chronic illnesses. Despite growing evidence, data on the full scope of this connection has been limited, partly because socially disconnected individuals are often harder to reach in large-scale studies.

To address this gap, study author Lisbeth Mølgaard Laustsen and her colleagues set out to provide a comprehensive analysis of both relative and absolute differences in the incidence of 11 broad categories of medical conditions, using three distinct measures of social disconnectedness: loneliness, social isolation, and low social support.

Loneliness refers to the subjective feeling of being alone or emotionally distanced from others—a distressing experience where one’s social relationships are perceived as lacking in quantity or quality. Social isolation, by contrast, is more objective, defined by a lack of social interactions or close contacts. Low social support involves having fewer people to rely on for emotional, informational, or practical help. This lack of support can significantly impair a person’s ability to cope with life’s challenges and health issues.

The researchers analyzed data from the Danish National Health Survey, linking survey responses to national health registers. The final analysis included 162,604 participants. Of these, 129,319 responded to the 2017 survey from four Danish regions (Central Denmark Region, North Denmark Region, Region Zealand, and the Capital Region of Denmark), while 33,285 participated in the 2013 survey from the Central Denmark Region. The average participant age was 48 years, and 51% were women.

As part of the survey, participants completed brief assessments of their social connections: the Three-Item Loneliness Scale for loneliness, a four-item scale for social isolation, and a single question about emotional support: “Do you have someone to talk to if you have problems or need support?” The researchers used these assessments to construct a composite measure that captured overall social disconnectedness.

These data were then linked to medical records tracking diagnoses across hospitals and outpatient, inpatient, and emergency settings. The researchers focused on 11 categories of medical conditions:

• Mental disorders
• All-cause dementia
• Circulatory conditions
• Endocrine conditions
• Pulmonary conditions
• Gastrointestinal conditions
• Urogenital conditions
• Musculoskeletal conditions
• Hematologic conditions
• Neurologic conditions
• Cancer

The results showed that lonely individuals were more likely to develop conditions in all 11 categories, compared to those who were not lonely. The strongest association was with mental disorders, where loneliness was linked to more than a threefold increase in risk.

Similarly, individuals classified as socially disconnected—based on the composite measure—had a 2.63-times higher risk of developing a mental disorder. While all other medical conditions also showed elevated risk, the magnitude was generally lower. The weakest associations were seen with cancer, where the results were more ambiguous and in some cases consistent with lower incidence rates.

When examining social isolation on its own, the picture became more complex. While isolated individuals were still at significantly higher risk for mental health conditions, they were at a slightly lower risk for neurologic conditions, and did not show increased risk for several categories, including musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, and circulatory conditions.

“Our results expand existing evidence linking social disconnectedness to elevated risks of mental disorders, dementia, circulatory conditions and musculoskeletal conditions. Notably, we additionally found higher incidence rates of endocrine, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, urogenital, hematologic, and neurologic conditions and cancer although the estimates for cancer were also consistent with lower rates. Contrary to previous evidence, our findings suggest that loneliness is a stronger determinant for subsequent medical conditions than social isolation and low social support,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the links between social disconnectedness and health. However, it should be noted that the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results. While it is possible that loneliness contributes to the development of medical conditions, it is also possible that people suffering from these medical conditions are less able to participate in social activities leading to loneliness and social disconnectedness.

The paper, “Social disconnectedness, subsequent medical conditions, and, the role of pre-existing mental disorders: a population-based cohort study,” was authored by L. M. Laustsen, M. Lasgaard, N. C. Momen, D. Chen, J. L. Gradus, M. S. Grønkjær, M. M. Jensen, and O. Plana-Ripol.

Major depressive disorder often begins during adolescence, a period of intense emotional, social, and cognitive development. Depression in teenagers is not only becoming more common but also tends to recur and interfere with many areas of life, including school, family relationships, and social functioning. In many cases, even when mood symptoms improve with treatment, cognitive difficulties—like trouble with memory, attention, and understanding social cues—can persist. These problems can make it hard for adolescents to return to normal daily activities and may contribute to poor treatment outcomes and higher relapse rates.

In recent years, researchers have become interested in using eye-tracking technology as a non-invasive way to study how the brain processes information. Eye movements, including how often people look at certain parts of an image or how well they can follow a moving object, are known to reflect underlying cognitive processes. For example, smooth and coordinated eye movements require good attention control, while frequent or erratic eye movements might indicate difficulty with focus or information processing. Since brain areas involved in eye control also play a role in cognitive functioning, the researchers wanted to explore whether eye movement patterns could serve as indicators of cognitive problems in depressed adolescents.

The study was carried out by researchers at Central South University’s Second Xiangya Hospital in China. They recruited a total of 113 participants aged 12 to 17 years. Of these, 71 had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, while the remaining 42 were healthy adolescents with no psychiatric conditions. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and those with other medical or neurological issues were excluded. The researchers collected demographic information, assessed depression severity using standardized questionnaires, and evaluated cognitive performance using a battery of neuropsychological tests.

Cognitive testing included measures of memory, attention, language, and social reasoning. For example, the Children’s Depression Inventory and the Hamilton Depression Scale were used to evaluate mood symptoms, while the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) measured various areas of cognitive functioning. Social cognition was assessed using a test designed to measure the ability to detect social blunders, known as the faux pas test.

Eye movement data were collected using a high-precision eye tracker that monitored the dominant eye while participants completed two tasks. The first was a free-viewing task, in which participants were shown a series of neutral images—such as landscapes and geometric shapes—for eight seconds each. The second was a smooth pursuit task, which involved tracking a dot moving in a complex sinusoidal pattern across the screen. The researchers measured various aspects of eye movement, including how many times participants looked at different parts of the image (fixation count), how long their eyes remained still (fixation duration), and how fast and far their eyes moved (saccade measures).

When comparing the groups, the researchers found several differences in both cognitive functioning and eye movement patterns. Adolescents with depression scored significantly lower on overall cognitive performance, particularly in areas related to immediate memory, attention, and delayed memory. They also performed worse on the faux pas test, suggesting difficulties in understanding social situations.

In the free-viewing task, the depressed group showed a smaller average saccade amplitude, meaning their eye movements covered shorter distances as they scanned the images. This could indicate a more restricted or cautious visual exploration pattern. In the smooth pursuit task, which tests the ability to follow moving targets, the depressed group showed more frequent fixations and saccades. These patterns suggest that they may have had difficulty smoothly tracking the moving object and had to compensate with more frequent adjustments.

The most interesting part of the study came from the correlations between eye movement variables and cognitive test scores. In the group with depression, some specific eye movement characteristics were linked to better or worse cognitive performance. For example, more frequent fixations were associated with better immediate memory, while longer fixation durations were linked to poorer memory. Faster eye movements and longer saccade durations were connected with better attention and memory. One measure—the number of saccades in a complex background tracking task—was also positively associated with better performance on the faux pas test, suggesting that how adolescents scan visual scenes may reflect how well they can understand social situations.

These associations were not observed in the healthy group, indicating that the eye movement patterns seen in the depressed group may reflect compensatory strategies or underlying difficulties specific to the condition. For instance, adolescents with depression may rely on faster or more frequent eye movements to make up for cognitive limitations, particularly in tasks that require sustained attention or memory encoding.

The study adds to growing evidence that eye-tracking can serve as a useful tool for understanding how depression affects the brain and behavior. It also highlights the potential for using eye movement data as part of clinical assessments, especially for detecting subtle cognitive deficits that might not be apparent through traditional interviews or questionnaires.

However, the study has several limitations. All of the participants with depression were already receiving treatment, so it is unclear how medications may have influenced their cognitive functioning or eye movements. The groups also differed in age and gender distribution, which could affect the results. Additionally, the tasks used were relatively simple and involved neutral images, which might not fully capture how adolescents with depression respond to more emotionally charged or socially complex situations. The cross-sectional design also limits the ability to determine whether eye movement abnormalities cause cognitive problems, result from them, or develop alongside them.

The researchers suggest that future studies should explore these relationships using more varied tasks, longitudinal designs, and possibly treatment-naive patients. They also emphasize the need to refine eye movement tests to better capture the unique features of adolescent cognitive development.

The study, “The association between eye movement characteristics and cognitive function in adolescents with major depressive disorder,” was authored by Yuanyuan Lu, Lintong Song, Chunxiang Huang, Tianqing Fan, Jinqiao Huang, Leyin Zhang, Xuerong Luo, Yanhua Li, and Yanmei Shen.

Dementia is a growing public health concern worldwide. In the United States alone, about 6.5 million people aged 65 or older were living with dementia in 2022. That number is expected to more than double by 2060. With no cure currently available, identifying risk factors that might help delay or prevent dementia is a top priority.

ADHD is commonly diagnosed in childhood, but more recent evidence suggests that some people develop it in adulthood or continue to have symptoms later in life. Adult ADHD often presents differently than childhood ADHD, and it remains underdiagnosed—especially in older adults.

Previous research has hinted that ADHD and dementia may be connected. Both conditions involve problems with attention and memory, and some of the same risk factors—such as depression, low physical activity, and smoking—are common in both. Family studies also suggest that people with ADHD may be more likely to have relatives with dementia, raising the possibility of shared genetic or environmental causes. However, past studies have produced mixed results, and many questions remain, including whether ADHD medications affect this risk.

This study was designed to take a closer look at whether adults with ADHD are more likely to develop dementia, and to rule out other explanations like medication use or early dementia symptoms being mistaken for ADHD.

The researchers used a large national health database from Israel’s Meuhedet Healthcare Services, one of the country’s nonprofit health maintenance organizations. The database includes comprehensive medical records for about 14 percent of Israel’s population and is considered reliable for tracking chronic health conditions.

The study included 109,218 adults who were born between 1933 and 1952 and had no prior diagnosis of ADHD or dementia before the year 2003. The average age at the start of the study was about 58 years. Participants were followed from 2003 until they died, left the healthcare system, were diagnosed with dementia, or until the study ended in early 2020—an average of 17.2 years.

During this time, the researchers identified who developed adult ADHD and who went on to be diagnosed with dementia. ADHD diagnoses were made by trained professionals using standardized assessments. Dementia diagnoses were made by specialists like neurologists, geriatricians, or psychiatrists, using international diagnostic codes.

The researchers also collected detailed information on each participant’s age, sex, neighborhood socioeconomic status, smoking habits, and a wide range of health conditions, including depression, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, and traumatic brain injury. They also tracked whether participants with ADHD were prescribed psychostimulant medications, such as those commonly used to treat attention problems.

By the end of the follow-up period, 730 participants had received an adult ADHD diagnosis, and 7,726 had developed dementia. Among those with ADHD, 13.2 percent developed dementia, compared to 7 percent of those without ADHD. After adjusting for age, health conditions, and other factors, the researchers found that adults with ADHD were 2.77 times more likely to develop dementia than those without the diagnosis.

This increased risk remained statistically significant even when the researchers conducted additional analyses to test the strength of the findings. For example, they split the data by sex, age groups, smoking status, and whether participants had been prescribed ADHD medications. Across most of these subgroups, the link between adult ADHD and dementia stayed strong.

Interestingly, the researchers did not find a clear increase in dementia risk among adults with ADHD who were treated with psychostimulant medications. This could mean several things. One possibility is that medication helps protect against later cognitive decline. Another is that people who take medication may have more severe symptoms, or that those diagnosed and treated are more accurately identified. Since only about one in five adults with ADHD in the study received medication, it was difficult to draw firm conclusions about its role.

The researchers also examined whether the link between ADHD and dementia might be explained by reverse causation. In other words, could early dementia symptoms have been misdiagnosed as ADHD? To address this, they looked at when ADHD was diagnosed in relation to dementia. The results suggested some overlap between the two, but not enough to explain the entire association.

The study’s lead authors, including researchers from the University of Haifa, Rutgers University, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, say the findings underscore the importance of paying attention to ADHD symptoms in older adults. While ADHD is often thought of as a childhood disorder, it may have long-term consequences for brain health that stretch into old age.

One possible explanation for the link is that adult ADHD reflects long-standing differences in brain function that make it harder for individuals to cope with the effects of aging and disease. In this view, ADHD might reduce what’s known as cognitive reserve—the brain’s ability to adapt to damage without showing symptoms.

There are also questions about whether untreated ADHD leads to other behaviors or conditions, such as smoking, depression, or lack of exercise, that may in turn increase dementia risk. While the study controlled for many of these factors, it’s still possible that other, unmeasured variables contributed to the results.

Like all observational research, this study cannot prove that ADHD causes dementia. It only shows a strong association. Because it relied on clinical diagnoses, it likely missed people with mild or undiagnosed ADHD. The same is true for dementia, which is often underdiagnosed, especially in its early stages.

The study also lacked data on certain factors that could influence brain health, such as lifelong educational achievement or genetic risk. It couldn’t assess how severe ADHD symptoms were, or how long they had been present. And although it included information on stimulant medications, it couldn’t examine other treatments like therapy or lifestyle changes.

Future research should aim to confirm these findings in other populations and explore whether treating ADHD in adulthood can reduce the risk of dementia later on. It may also be helpful to investigate whether certain ADHD symptoms—such as inattention or impulsivity—are more strongly linked to cognitive decline than others.

The study, “Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and the Risk of Dementia,” was authored by Stephen Z. Levine, Anat Rotstein, Arad Kodesh, Sven Sandin, Brian K. Lee, Galit Weinstein, Michal Schnaider Beeri, and Abraham Reichenberg.

The researchers set out to explore a key question: How do changes in gratitude during middle school affect a young person’s mental health? While many previous studies have shown that gratitude and depression are related, most of that work relied on snapshots taken at a single point in time.

Few studies have looked at how gratitude changes during adolescence—a period of life marked by emotional growth, academic pressure, and social challenges. Even fewer have examined how self-esteem might influence the connection between gratitude and depression over time. The new study aimed to fill that gap by following students across three points over two years, beginning in eighth grade and ending in ninth grade.

“As researchers in psychology, we were inspired to explore factors that could affect adolescent mental health,” said study author Liuyue Huang, a researcher affiliated with the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, at the University of Macau

“The emergence of positive psychology offered a valuable perspective, shifting the focus from merely treating mental illness to fostering strengths like gratitude. We saw gratitude as a promising, modifiable factor to enhance well-being and resilience during the critical developmental stage of adolescence.”

For their study, supervised by Professor Peilian Chi, the researchers recruited 660 students from two middle schools in Guangzhou, China. Participants were around 13 years old at the start of the study. Of the original group, 564 students completed all three waves of data collection. At each point, students completed well-established questionnaires measuring their levels of gratitude, self-esteem, and depression.

Gratitude was measured using a six-item scale that asked students how often they felt thankful for people and experiences in their lives. Self-esteem was assessed with the widely used Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and depression symptoms were evaluated using a brief version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. The researchers also collected information on students’ gender, age, and overall life satisfaction to account for these influences in their analysis.

Using a statistical method designed to identify patterns of change over time, the researchers uncovered four distinct “trajectories” of gratitude. These groups differed both in the starting levels of gratitude and in how gratitude changed over the two-year span.

The largest group (about 36 percent of participants) showed consistently low gratitude levels across all time points and was labeled the “low-gratitude-persistence” group. A second group, making up nearly 30 percent of students, started with high gratitude and continued to increase slightly over time—these students belonged to the “high-gratitude-increasing” group.

Another group, comprising about 24 percent, started with high gratitude but showed a decline, labeled the “high-gratitude-declined” group. The final group, about 11 percent of participants, began with low gratitude but improved significantly by the end of the study—this was the “low-gratitude-improving” group.

The researchers then looked at how these patterns related to depression in the final year of middle school. They found that students in the two increasing-gratitude groups—both those who started high and increased, and those who started low but improved—reported significantly lower depression scores than students in the low-gratitude-persistence group.

In contrast, students whose gratitude declined over time did not differ in depression levels from those with persistently low gratitude. This suggests that both the level and the direction of change in gratitude matter for adolescent mental health. Merely starting out with high gratitude did not protect students from depression if their gratitude declined during this critical period.

“We were surprised that the ‘High-gratitude-declined’ group—those who started with high gratitude but saw it drop—didn’t show a lower risk of depression compared to the consistently low-gratitude group,” Huang told PsyPost. “This suggests that maintaining high or increasing gratitude over time might be more critical for mental health than just having high gratitude at one point, highlighting the importance of sustained positive development rather than a fixed state.”

Self-esteem turned out to play a key role in these relationships. When researchers examined whether changes in self-esteem could explain the link between gratitude and depression, they found strong evidence that it did. Students whose gratitude improved—either from a high or low starting point—tended to show increases in self-esteem, which in turn predicted lower levels of depression.

In fact, once self-esteem was accounted for, the direct relationship between gratitude trajectory and depression disappeared, suggesting that gratitude protects against depression mainly by supporting adolescents’ self-worth.

“Our study shows that developing gratitude in adolescents can significantly lower the risk for depression, with self-esteem playing a key role in this process,” Huang explained. “For parents and educators, this means encouraging gratitude practices could be a practical and effective way to support adolescents’ mental health, especially during middle school years when emotional challenges often peak.”

These findings support what psychologists call the “broaden-and-build” theory, which suggests that positive emotions like gratitude help people build psychological resources that can buffer them against stress and negative feelings. In this case, the resource being built is self-esteem.

At the same time, the researchers acknowledge several limitations. All data came from self-report questionnaires, which can be influenced by how participants interpret the questions or how they want to present themselves. The study focused only on students from a specific region in China, so the findings may not apply to adolescents in other cultural or educational contexts. Additionally, the researchers only examined one possible mechanism—self-esteem—leaving open the possibility that other psychological or environmental factors may also influence how gratitude affects depression.

Nevertheless, the study’s strengths—including its relatively large sample size, repeated measurements, and attention to patterns over time—make it an important contribution to understanding adolescent well-being. Future research could expand by including more diverse populations, exploring other potential mediators such as social support or coping skills, and testing interventions that directly aim to boost gratitude and self-esteem.

“We’d like to note that gratitude is a dynamic resource that can be cultivated with practice, and its benefits ripple through self-esteem to improve mental health,” Huang said. “We encourage readers to try small gratitude exercises with the teens in their lives, like keeping a gratitude journal, and to see this as a proactive step toward building resilience in a world full of challenges.”

The study, “Sowing seeds of gratitude: the effect of the trajectories of Adolescents’ gratitude on depression and the mediating role of self-esteem,” was authored by Liuyue Huang, Shan Zhao, Yixiao Shi, Liutong Ou, Hongfei Du, and Peilian Chi.

Stimuli that evoke emotions tend to capture attention and trigger quicker reactions. For instance, forming a first impression of someone might take several seconds, but determining whether a person poses a threat takes less than a second. People generally respond more rapidly to threatening images than to non-threatening ones.

Similarly, sexual images can also trigger emotional reactions and alter attention and response times in a way comparable to threatening stimuli. Some studies have identified what is called a “sexual content-induced delay.” For example, in one study, participants were asked to decide whether a string of letters formed a real word. Results showed they took more time to classify sexual words than non-sexual ones. This delay likely occurs because sexual images capture cognitive priority, distracting individuals from other tasks.

Study author Robert J. Snowden and his colleagues aimed to examine how the presence of sexual images affects performance in a simple perceptual task—specifically, comparing the orientation of two lines. They hypothesized that sexual images would produce a delay in processing the task. The researchers also wanted to explore whether the magnitude of this effect differed between men and women, and whether it changed depending on whether the sexual image matched the participant’s preferred gender. Two experiments were conducted.

Participants in the first experiment included 43 young adults recruited via advertisements around the School of Psychology at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. The average age was 22, and 22 participants were women.

Participants completed a line orientation perceptual task while being shown various images (which they were instructed to ignore). Ten of the images depicted heterosexual couples engaged in sexual activity, ten showed nude or partially dressed women who were not sexually active, ten showed nude or partially dressed men who were also not sexually active or aroused, ten contained people in neutral settings (e.g., people working or shopping), and ten depicted objects (e.g., clocks, boats, gardens). All images were converted to grayscale. Each participant completed 150 trials, with each image appearing three times. Participants also reported their sexual orientation.

The second experiment included 131 young adults, all students at Cardiff University; 58 were women. The overall setup was similar to the first experiment. However, this time, researchers used five images of nude or partially dressed men, five of nude or partially dressed women, and twenty neutral images. Unlike in the first experiment, where the image and task remained onscreen until the participant responded, the presentation time in the second experiment was limited to 150 milliseconds—short enough to prevent participants from shifting their gaze.

As expected, participants’ responses were slower when sexual images were shown. In Experiment 1, this slowing effect was more pronounced in men than in women. The delay was greatest when the image depicted a couple engaged in sexual activity.

In Experiment 2, the magnitude of the slowing effect in men depended on whether the sexual stimuli matched their gender preference. In other words, men’s responses were slowest when the image depicted a woman, faster when it depicted a man, and fastest when the image was neutral. Among women, the slowing effect was similar regardless of whether the image showed a man or a woman, although their responses to neutral images remained faster.

“The study demonstrates greater sexual distraction effects in men than women in a simple perceptual decision task. Furthermore, the distraction effects for men were shown to be category-specific (with a greater distraction from images of females), whereas those of women appeared to be category-non-specific,” the study authors concluded.

The findings shed light on how sexual imagery affects cognitive processing. However, it’s important to note that all participants in the study were young university students. Results may differ in other age or demographic groups.

The paper “Automatic Distraction by Sexual Images: Gender Differences” was authored by Robert J. Snowden, Poppy Midgley, and Nicola S. Gray.

For patients with psychiatric conditions from addiction to mood disorders such as depression, disrupted sleep can often exacerbate symptoms and make it harder to stay on treatment.

Despite the important role circadian rhythms and sleep play in addiction, neuroscientists like me are only now beginning to understand the molecular mechanisms behind these effects.

Sleep and addictive drugs have an entangled relationship. Most addictive drugs can alter sleep-wake cycles, and sleep disorders in people using drugs are linked to addiction severity and relapse. While this poses a classic “chicken-or-egg” dilemma, it also presents an opportunity to understand how the sleep-addiction connection could unlock new treatments.

Circadian rhythms and health

At the center of the connection between sleep and mental health lies circadian rhythms: your body’s internal clock.

These rhythms align your bodily functions with your environment, synchronizing your body to day and night down to the molecular level. It does this through a series of proteins that interact in a feedback loop, turning genes on and off in regular patterns to support specific functions. Although your sleep-wake cycles are the most visible expression of circadian rhythms, these rhythms orchestrate most of your physiology.

If you have ever traveled across time zones, you have likely experienced a common form of circadian disruption called jet lag. This misalignment impairs your sleep and concentration, and can leave you feeling irritable.

While jet lag is a temporary nuisance, chronic circadian disruption such as frequent night shifts can lead to long-term health consequences, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Circadian rhythms, sleep and opioid use

A major focus of my lab is on opioid addiction, a disease that has claimed nearly 80,000 lives a year since 2021 in the U.S. and has limited treatment options.

People addicted to opioids often experience disruptions to circadian rhythms, such as in their sleep and their levels of corticotropin, a key hormone that regulates stress. These disruptions are associated with many negative health consequences. In the short term, these disruptions can impair cognitive functions such as attention and increase negative emotions. Over time this can worsen mental and physical health. Studies of opioid addiction in mice reveal similar disruptions in sleep and various hormonal rhythms.

Importantly, poor sleep is common throughout a person’s experience with opioid use disorder, from actively using to withdrawal from opioids, and even while on treatment. This complication can have profound consequences. Studies have linked sleep disruption to a 2.5-fold increased risk of relapse among those undergoing treatment.

Unlocking the clock for opioid addiction

Using brain tissue from deceased donors and experiments in mice, my team is identifying molecular changes associated with psychiatric disorders in people. We model these changes in mice to explore how they affect disease severity and behavior.

Through genetic sequencing and computer modeling, my lab is able to profile all the RNA molecules in a brain region and understand how their rhythmicity – the peaks and troughs of their activity across the day – changes due to opioids. This provides a complete snapshot of which genes change at what time, allowing my team to peer into the molecular mechanics that may drive opioid addiction.

For example, we looked at two brain regions strongly associated with addiction: the nucleus accumbens and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We found that patients with opioid addiction had completely different gene expression patterns in these brain regions compared with those without addiction. Some genes had adopted a completely different rhythm of activity, while others had lost their rhythmicity altogether.

Genes that lost rhythmicity included those involved in various components of the molecular clock and those linked to sleep duration. This further highlights how circadian disruption is a symptom of opioid use while beginning to uncover its underlying mechanisms.

In work that is pending peer review, my team focused on one major gene that lost rhythmicity in patients with opioid addiction: NPAS2. This component of the molecular clock is highly active in the nucleus accumbens and important for sleep and circadian regulation. We found that blocking functional NPAS2 formation led to increased fentanyl-seeking behavior in mice. Interestingly, we observed that female mice were willing to press a lever more times than male mice to obtain fentanyl, reflecting documented sex differences in opioid addiction among people. In another study, we also found that lack of NPAS2 exacerbated sleep disruption in mice that were administered fentanyl.

Together, our findings reinforce the role circadian rhythms play in addiction. Future work may clarify whether targeting NPAS2 could treat opioid addiction symptoms. Quality sleep isn’t just about waking up refreshed – it could also lead to reduced opioid use and fewer overdoses.

Most prior surveys have asked people if they support increased government spending or if they favor higher taxes. But these questions are usually asked in isolation, without linking the benefits of a program to the costs of funding it. In real-world policymaking, however, spending decisions almost always involve trade-offs. Yale University political scientist Sam Zacher wanted to understand how Americans respond when those trade-offs are made explicit—when a policy benefit is directly tied to who would pay for it.

To do this, Zacher designed a survey that went beyond standard public opinion polls. The survey, fielded in late 2022 and early 2023, included 1,201 participants, with an intentional oversample of high-income respondents. About 382 of the participants had household incomes above $200,000. The survey was designed to measure support for a wide range of economic policy proposals, both in isolation and when paired with specific tax increases. Participants were asked to rate their support on a scale from 0 to 100, with labels indicating levels of support or opposition.

Each respondent was randomly assigned to one of two groups of policy “benefits,” such as increased funding for K–12 education, public pre-kindergarten, housing, health care, and renewable energy. Some proposals were more moderate (like raising the minimum wage to $11), while others were more ambitious (like transitioning to single-payer health care). All respondents saw the same set of “cost” options: five types of tax increases, including higher income taxes on those earning over $200,000 or $1 million, increased capital gains taxes, and an across-the-board tax increase on all incomes. Each policy benefit was also paired with a specific tax cost, forming a “bundle.” For example, one bundled proposal asked whether participants supported raising taxes on households earning over $1 million to fund public K–12 schools.

Zacher’s findings reveal just how sensitive Americans are to these policy trade-offs. Across the board, support for policy benefits was much higher when the cost was not mentioned. But when a tax increase was included—especially one affecting a broad swath of the public—support fell sharply. For example, a majority of Americans expressed support for public pre-kindergarten programs when asked in isolation. But when the proposal required raising taxes on all income levels, support dropped by nearly 30 percentage points.

The public was most supportive of redistributive policy bundles that placed the financial burden on the very wealthy. Proposals that paired tax hikes on incomes above $1 million with increased spending on popular services like renewable energy or public education consistently received majority or even supermajority support. On the other hand, proposals that required tax increases on all income levels—regardless of the benefit—never crossed the 50% support threshold.

Interestingly, support for raising taxes on the wealthy was sometimes even higher than support for the policy bundle itself. This suggests that while Americans may support “soaking the rich,” they can become more skeptical when the tax increase is linked to a particular government program. This effect may reflect general hesitation about complex policy changes or a lack of trust in government implementation.

Zacher also found that Americans’ preferences are shaped not just by their overall ideology or partisan identity, but also by their economic self-interest. Affluent respondents were much more sensitive to the potential costs of redistribution. When a policy proposal would impose direct tax increases on high-income households, support among affluent participants dropped significantly, even when the benefit was widely popular.

This pattern held even within political parties. Among Republicans, the gap between low-income and high-income voters was especially large. Wealthier Republicans were far more likely to oppose redistributive policy bundles than their less affluent counterparts. Among Democrats, the divisions were smaller but still present, especially when policy bundles included progressive tax increases.

The study also explored whether political donors—who often have outsize influence in the policy process—differed in their preferences. Among Democrats, donors and non-donors held similar views overall, though there were some differences on specific policies. For Republicans, donor preferences appeared more moderate than expected, though the small sample size made it difficult to draw firm conclusions.

But as with any study, there are limitations to consider. Zacher’s survey included a specific set of policy combinations, meaning that not all possible trade-offs were tested. The study also focused primarily on economic policies and did not explore issues like immigration or social policy, which can also have redistributive effects. Additionally, because the survey was conducted online, it may have excluded some populations who are less likely to participate in web-based surveys.

The study, “What Forms of Redistribution Do Americans Want? Understanding Preferences for Policy Benefit-Cost Tradeoffs,” was published online on June 14, 2024.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition that includes problems with attention, distractibility, impulsivity, and emotion regulation. These core difficulties can impact many aspects of daily life. Researchers have long suspected that these challenges may also interfere with sexual functioning. Sexual activity, after all, often requires focus and emotional attunement—traits that can be disrupted by ADHD symptoms.

While earlier studies offered mixed results, many had small sample sizes and didn’t assess sexual distress, which is an essential factor in diagnosing sexual dysfunction. The new study sought to clarify these connections using a large sample and validated measurement tools.

To investigate the link between ADHD symptoms and sexual problems, the researchers collected data from 943 adults living in Canada. Participants were recruited through an online platform and completed a set of questionnaires assessing their attention-related symptoms, sexual function, and feelings of sexual distress. Of the total sample, 106 people met the threshold for a likely ADHD diagnosis based on a widely used screening tool developed by the World Health Organization.

Sexual functioning was assessed with the Arizona Sexual Experiences Scale, which looks at several areas including sexual desire, arousal, ability to reach orgasm, satisfaction with orgasm, and physical responses like lubrication or erection. To evaluate distress related to sexual issues, the researchers used a short form of the Sexual Distress Scale, which measures how often someone feels anxious, frustrated, or inadequate because of problems with their sex life.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that greater ADHD symptom severity was linked to more problems with sexual functioning and more frequent sexual distress. Specifically, people with more ADHD symptoms reported greater difficulty reaching orgasm and less satisfaction when they did. These individuals were also more likely to feel worried or upset about their sex lives.

When comparing people with likely ADHD to those without, the differences were especially clear in certain domains. Those with ADHD symptoms reported more problems with orgasm ability and orgasm satisfaction. They also had higher levels of sexual distress overall. However, there were no significant differences between the groups in sexual desire, arousal, or physical readiness for sex, such as lubrication or erection. This pattern suggests that attention-related symptoms may interfere more with the later stages of sexual response, particularly those that require sustained focus or regulation of sensations.

The study also explored whether age, sex, and sexual orientation might influence these patterns. Age did seem to matter: younger participants with ADHD symptoms showed stronger associations with orgasm difficulties than older participants. This might be because ADHD symptoms often decrease in intensity with age.

The researchers also found that sex assigned at birth moderated the relationship between ADHD symptoms and sexual distress. While the association was present in both males and females, it was stronger in males. One possible explanation is that men with ADHD may feel more pressure to perform sexually, and problems with orgasm could carry more emotional weight because of social expectations around male sexual performance.

Another key finding was that individuals with likely ADHD were more than twice as likely as those without to meet the clinical criteria for distressing sexual dysfunction. This means that their sexual difficulties were not just present but also causing meaningful emotional harm. When the researchers looked more closely, they found that the link between ADHD symptoms and sexual distress could be partly explained by emotion regulation difficulties. People with ADHD often struggle to manage intense emotions, and this may make sexual problems feel more upsetting and harder to cope with.

“Taken together, these data support associations between ADHD and distressing sexual function problems, and difficulties with emotion regulation as a potential mechanism underlying ADHD and sexual dysfunction,” the researchers concluded.

However, there are some limitations to keep in mind. The study did not include clinical interviews to confirm ADHD diagnoses, so some participants with high scores might not meet formal criteria. It’s also possible that other mental health conditions, such as anxiety or depression, could account for some of the findings.

Despite these limitations, the results offer new insight into how ADHD symptoms may affect sexual well-being. The study supports the idea that attention and emotion regulation difficulties—core features of ADHD—can interfere with sexual satisfaction and contribute to distress. It also highlights the importance of assessing sexual health in people with ADHD, something that is often overlooked in both clinical and research settings.

The study, “Distressing Problems with Sexual Function and Symptoms of Attention‑Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder,” was authored by Simone Y. Goldberg, Maya C. Thulin, Hyoun S. Kim, and Samantha J. Dawson.

This research stands out from much of the existing literature on sexuality, which tends to focus on problems or risks, such as sexually transmitted infections, dysfunction, or coercion. Instead, the authors sought to better understand what people find positive or rewarding about sex.

Their goal was to give voice to sexual joy and pleasure, and to inform efforts in sexual health education, clinical care, and public health messaging. By asking open-ended questions and allowing people to respond in their own words, the researchers hoped to uncover a richer and more diverse picture of sexual experiences than what is typically captured by multiple-choice surveys.

The research team, led by Debby Herbenick at Indiana University, used data from the 2012 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior. This survey included over 4,000 adults in the United States and used a probability-based sampling method to ensure that the results could be generalized to the wider population. Participants who reported having had partnered sex at some point in their lives were asked to write about their favorite things about being sexual with a partner. Of the 4,030 eligible participants, 2,755 provided usable responses to the open-ended question.

To analyze the responses, a team of trained coders reviewed the answers and developed a set of 22 categories that captured the major themes. These included emotional aspects like intimacy and love, physical sensations such as pleasure and arousal, specific sexual activities, and other dimensions like trust, adventure, or feelings of relaxation. The researchers used a qualitative method known as consensual qualitative research, which emphasizes collaboration among coders and recognition of the context in which responses are given.

Six themes stood out as the most frequently mentioned: closeness and intimacy, specific sex acts, general feelings of physical pleasure, expressions of love or care, giving pleasure to one’s partner, and orgasm. These themes showed up across demographic groups and life stages, although the ways in which people expressed them varied.

The most common theme, mentioned by over 900 people, was closeness and intimacy. Participants described feeling emotionally connected, present, and united with their partner. This could include cuddling, being held, or simply feeling like the rest of the world faded away during sex. Many wrote about the sense of security and warmth that comes from being close to someone they trust and care about. These responses came from both men and women, across a broad range of ages, and highlighted the importance of emotional connection in sexual satisfaction.

The next most common theme focused on specific sex acts. Nearly 900 participants mentioned activities such as kissing, oral sex, cuddling, using sex toys, or trying different positions. Some people enjoyed a combination of acts, while others highlighted a single favorite. These responses pointed to the variety in how people experience pleasure and the different ways they like to express themselves sexually.

About 400 people said simply that sex “feels good”—describing it as pleasurable, exciting, or satisfying. Some talked about the intense physical sensations, while others focused on the mental or emotional boost it gave them. A few contrasted this with past experiences where sex had been painful or emotionally difficult, and emphasized how meaningful it was to now enjoy it in a positive way.

Love and care were another important theme. More than 300 participants said their favorite thing about sex was that it was an expression of love, or that it deepened the emotional bond with their partner. Many wrote about feeling appreciated, cherished, or truly wanted. Others described sex as a way to show affection or maintain closeness during tough times in a relationship.

Around 240 people said they most enjoyed making their partner feel good. For them, giving pleasure—whether through touch, oral sex, or simply being attentive—was deeply satisfying. They described feeling proud, happy, or emotionally moved when their partner responded with moans, laughter, or signs of joy.

Although orgasm was also mentioned, it was less prominent than the other themes, with 231 participants listing it as their favorite part of sex. Some described it as an intense release, others as a shared moment of peak pleasure. A few said they liked to prolong the experience rather than rush to climax.

Other themes appeared less frequently but added depth to the findings. These included feelings of arousal, the calming or therapeutic effect of sex, desire and passion, the thrill of novelty or adventure, physical attraction to a partner’s body, trust, and even enjoyment of kink or BDSM. Some older participants described being celibate and reflected on how their relationship to sex had changed over time.

A few participants expressed negative or indifferent feelings. Some said they did not like sex at all or had never found it particularly meaningful. Others mentioned past trauma, health changes, or loss of a partner as reasons they were no longer sexually active. These responses added a layer of nuance, suggesting that sexual experiences and preferences are shaped by life history, health, and relational context.

The study has some limitations. The responses were collected in 2012, and people’s experiences of sex may have evolved since then, particularly given social and technological changes. The survey only asked about partnered sex, leaving out solo sexual activities like masturbation. And because the open-ended question was placed at the end of the survey, some participants may have skipped it due to fatigue or time constraints. Also, while the qualitative approach allowed for a wide range of responses, the interpretation of those responses inevitably reflected the perspectives of the research team.

Nevertheless, the study adds a significant contribution to the growing field of sex-positive research. By asking people directly what they enjoy about sex—without imposing pre-set answers—the researchers were able to capture the richness and diversity of sexual pleasure across the population.

The study, “What Are Americans’ Favorite Aspects of Partnered Sex? Findings From a U.S. Nationally Representative Survey,” was authored by Debby Herbenick, Callie Patterson Perry, Bethany Lumsdaine, Tsung-chieh Fu, Mary Balle, Owen Miller, Ruhun Wasata and J. Dennis Fortenberry.