The holidays are stressful. Good thing having sex and/or masturbating reduces stress and helps you sleep. So drop what you’re doing and get on the gift of getting off with these Cyber Monday sex toy deals at Amazon.

Womanizer OG $159.99 (Was $199)

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Our best overall sex toy pick, the Womanizer OG has lots of intensity levels, can be used for clitoral stimulation or on your G-spot, and its Smart Silent tech keeps things discreet. The Womanizer OG takes all that is good in a bullet vibrator and all that is good in a clitoral stimulation toy and combines it into a versatile, wunderbar vibrator that you can use on multiple erogenous zones. Twelve levels of Pleasure Air intensity and three vibration modes separately can lead you to all kinds of new highs. You’ll want to buy it over and over and over until the neighbors complain … about all the packages on the porch.

Lubricant deals

• selfmade Intimacy Serum $14 with 50% off coupon
• Nécessaire The Sex Gel $20 (Was $25)
• Hello Cake Toy Wonder $15.19 (Was $18.99)
• Playground Date Night, Natural, Water-Based Personal Lubricant $20 (Was $25)
• Playground Mini Escape, Natural, Water-Based Personal Lubricant $20 (Was $25)
• Playground Love Sesh, Natural, Water-Based Personal Lubricant $20 (Was $25)
• Hello Cake Silicone Lube $14.40 (Was $18)

Toy deals

• We-Vibe Chorus Couples Vibrator $167.20 (Was $199)
• Womanizer Wave 2in1 Stimulation Showerhead $95.20 (Was $119)
• Womanizer Starlet 2 $39 (Was $49)
• Hello Cake Male Stroker Dual Entrances $15.98 (Was $19.98)
• Hello Cake Spin Stroker $44.80 (Was $56)
• Hello Cake Flutter Vibe $27.98 (Was $34.98)
• Hello Cake Buzzy Butt $29.98 (Was $31.99)
• Hello Cake Pretty Big Dil $22.40 (Was $28)
• Hello Cake Oral Stroker $15.98 (Was $20)
• Hello Cake Tush Pops $25.60 (Was $32.99)
• Hello Cake Little Sucker $23.98 (Was $29.98)
• Hello Cake Little Massager $23.99 (Was $29.99)
• Hello Cake Silicone Penis Ring $18.39 (Was $22.99)
• Hello Cake Vibrating Stroker $23.98 (Was $29.98)
• Hello Cake Vibrating Cock Ring $28.79 (Was $35.99)

The post Sneak away for some arousing browsing … of the best Cyber Monday sex toy deals appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

Tess Olmsted stopped eating sugar when she was just 12 years old. She had previously been treated for obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, and soon found herself following rituals around eating. “For me it was never, ‘Oh I need to get skinnier,’” she recalls. Once she started to diet, she simply couldn’t stop.

Two years later, on a summer day in 2019, her father saw her on the family’s patio wearing a loose-fitting swimsuit. He soon noticed how little Tess was eating and insisted she see the pediatrician. During a subsequent appointment with a specialist, he recalls, the family learned that Tess’s blood pressure and heart rate were dangerously low. She was admitted to a hospital in life-threatening condition.

Across the United States, up to 2 million adults have had anorexia, a mental health condition in which a person severely restricts their food intake, often due to an intense fear of gaining weight. Almost 1 percent of all U.S. women will experience anorexia at some point in their lives. Patients are developing the condition increasingly early in life—sometimes as young as 8 years old—and new figures suggest that symptoms in children worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to increased numbers of hospitalizations. At one treatment center in Michigan, the admission rate of young people aged 10 to 23 more than doubled during the pandemic’s first year.

These sobering developments are due, in part, to the fact that there are no drugs or devices approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat the condition. For adults, there are three first-line treatments: an adapted form of cognitive behavioral therapy, known as CBT-E; a structured psychotherapy designed with patient input; and an approach that combines psychotherapy with nutritional support. Studies have shown that these approaches can help more than 50 percent of patients. But experts acknowledge that the studies are not high quality. Patients with anorexia are hard to engage in treatment, and as a result, studies are small and drop-out rates are high.

For patients younger than 18, one psychological intervention—family-based treatment, or FBT—has emerged as a leading evidence-based treatment in randomized clinical trials. The approach takes up to a year, and for part of that time, parents assume total control over planning, preparing, and supervising the child’s meals. In one clinical trial, nearly half of patients maintained a full recovery a year after follow-up.

Since family-based treatment was rolled out in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, many families say that this intervention has helped their children. Even so, some experts warn that it’s not for everyone. Parents may be ill-suited for acting as full-time chefs and meal-planners, and they may not be financially able to take time away from work to do the therapy. And critics point out that the approach blurs the boundaries between home and hospital while failing to probe the condition’s psychological causes.

“At least in my case, FBT definitely backfired,” said a 19-year-old from Texas, who said her mental health got worse while she was in treatment. (The young woman asked to remain anonymous due to the stigma that surrounds eating disorders.)

When the Olmsteds eventually tried FBT, they also struggled with the demands of the protocol, which sparked fighting, tension, and even calls to the police. But Tess and her parents say the end result was worth the tribulation: Family-based treatment really worked. “I don’t want to go overboard,” Tess’s dad, Kevin, said. “But it probably saved her.”

Anorexia nervosa occurs when a person loses more than 20 percent of their body weight within a six-month period or has a BMI of less than 18.5 in adults (although BMI is increasingly seen as a flawed criterion for assessing health). The condition can disrupt menstrual periods and cause a soft light hair, called lanugo, to grow on the body. Anorexia can lead to kidney and heart problems, and even death. The condition is distinct from bulimia nervosa, a condition in which patients overeat and then empty their stomachs by vomiting or using laxatives. But patients can slip from one condition to the other with time.

Anorexia is one of the hardest psychiatric illnesses to treat, partly because of what psychologists call its “egosyntonic” nature—it offers those who suffer from it unique rewards, which make them value their illness. In one study, for example, patients said the weight-loss allowed them to feel safe, structured, and in control. Others described their dieting as a unique skill that made them special, even superior to other people.

“When you have someone who’s successfully restricting, they don’t necessarily see too many downsides of it,” said Zafra Cooper, a professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and an emeritus professor of clinical psychology for the University of Oxford Department of Psychiatry.

The condition was first described by a Parisian neuropsychiatrist, Ernest-Charles Lasègue, in 1873. He described an illness he called hysterical anorexia, in which a female patient gripped by emotional suffering, would abstain from food. Around the same time, a British doctor, William Withey Gull, described a similar condition occurring primarily in young women and characterized by “extreme emaciation.” Gull prescribed milky foods, soup, eggs, fish, or chicken every two hours accompanied with a shot of brandy.

Doctors came to view parents as having a pernicious role in the illness and urged their exclusion from care. This is perhaps not surprising, said Daniel Le Grange, a professor in the psychiatry department at the University of California, San Francisco. The mental health field has a long history of blaming parents, mothers in particular, for a child’s diagnosis, he said. Practitioners even developed a specialized vocabulary to express this supposed problem: “the ‘schizophreno-genic mother,’ ‘autisto-genic mother,’ ‘anorexi-genic mother,’ and so on.”

By the 1960s, anorexia was thought to affect about 1 in 10,000 women, although under-reporting and lack of awareness are likely to distort any long-term surveys. At the time, information about the illness was still not available in medical schools, said Patricia Santucci, who has been a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and is a founding member of the Academy for Eating Disorders. This left practitioners ill-prepared for what they would encounter, she added: “All of a sudden, you got out in practice. And you said, ‘What’s going on here? What is this thing?’”

Providers would try to reshape patients’ behavior through punishments and rewards, according to Andrea Marks, a pediatrician who published a paper on the history of anorexia treatments in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 2019. Throughout the 1980s, struggling patients would typically be hospitalized and put on a feeding tube. As they gained weight and started feeding themselves, they could earn privileges such as unsupervised time in the bathroom and visits from friends and family. Still, Marks writes, patients often found themselves stuck in a cycle of recovery, relapse, and return to the hospital.

In the 1980s, an innovative approach emerged. Salvador Minuchin, the famed Argentine-born therapist who cared for troubled teens by focusing on their families, had devised a model for treating anorexia, as had a group of therapists in Italy. Gerald Russell, a psychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital in London, wanted to verify the two groups’ claims in a clinical trial, hoping to figure out if families might be able to help their loved ones achieve a more durable recovery.

Russell developed an approach that lasted 12 months or longer that included all members of the household. The treatment steps used in that trial later evolved into family-based therapy’s three main phases: The first is re-feeding, in which parents are tasked with making all decisions about the child’s food consumption and exercise. After the child has regained the weight, they are able to assume responsibility for their own eating—a change that marks phase two. In phase three, the family and psychologist review the outcome.

In family-based therapy, anorexia is viewed as an external threat, akin to a medical illness that must be vanquished. Parents are called on as helpers while therapists guide them through the process. Professionals do not try to explore what caused the illness, and above all, they must not suggest that it’s the parents’ fault. This refusal to place blame on parents “was really a profound sea change in our field,” said Le Grange, who joined the Maudsley Hospital team in 1986 just as Russell and his colleagues were preparing to analyze the results of a pivotal study comparing FBT with individual therapy.

Russell’s study was a randomized controlled trial of 80 patients between the ages of 14 and 55. Fifty-seven had anorexia and 23 had bulimia. As it turned out, patients who had developed anorexia when they were younger than 18 and had lived with the condition for less than three years and then received family therapy showed markedly better outcomes than their peers who had been randomized to individual therapy: six out of 10 had a “good” outcome, according to the authors, compared with one out of 11 in the individual-therapy group. The results were published in 1987.

Five years on, the team revisited the 80 patients. Some did not want to participate and three had died, but many were doing better, the team found. Although differences between the two approaches had diminished over time, the early onset patients allocated to family therapy maintained a slightly higher weight and more regular menstrual periods than those who’d had individual treatment.

The Maudsley Method, named after the institution where it originated, was born. In Britain it’s known as Maudsley family therapy and in the U.S., where, with some minor differences, it was championed by Le Grange, as FBT. Forty years after its inception, FBT remains the leading evidence-based treatment for young people under 18.

The therapy has obvious advantages over alternatives such as hospitalization, practitioners say. For one, kids can stay in school and continue to live with their families, allowing for a more normal adolescence. There’s also much to be gained from giving parents a bigger role in their child’s recovery, said Renee Rienecke, who trained with Le Grange and is now the research director for the Eating Recovery Center and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University in Illinois: Parents “can really use the best weapon against the eating disorder, which is their love for their children.”

But roughly 70 clinicians certified in family-based treatment, the U.S. is not in a position to provide FBT to the hundreds of thousands of teens with anorexia, experts say. And even when FBT works, the process is not easy — for kids, parents, or therapists.

Christina Olmsted decided to take temporary leave from her job as a marketing executive, and Kevin Olmsted quit his role at a wine company to become his daughter’s main carer. In 2020, he wrote a book about helping Tess recover, “Scared Dad Feeding” (an homage to the FBT classic, “Brave Girl Eating”). Kevin describes how under FBT his daughter was obliged to eat whatever he and his wife put on her plate. One of her parents sat with her during every meal and for an hour afterwards to make sure she didn’t purge what she had eaten or hide the food away. She ate five times a day—three meals and two snacks—and had to gain 1 to 2 pounds per week.

Kevin went to elaborate lengths to boost her diet. He’d add an extra yolk to omelets, mix in two tablespoons of heavy whipped cream and an ounce and a half of Benecalorie, then fry the mixture in two tablespoons of butter. “Once I came to know that the demon of anorexia was a terrorist, who would stop at nothing to kill my daughter, who would know nothing of compromise or diplomacy, I then knew no amount of fighting dirty was off the table,” he wrote.

The Olmsteds shut the world out and disappeared for six months, something not every family is able to do. “It’s a luxury to treat this, just so we’re clear,” Kevin said to Undark. “Just to be able to swing at a pitch in this ballpark takes so many resources it’s ridiculous.”

The process was rough for Tess, who still recalls how it felt to be so closely monitored. Sometimes she would butt heads with her mother. She was too preoccupied with the illness to engage with her friends during senior year of high school and wasn’t able to play on the lacrosse team. “It was just a really difficult time,” she said.

Therapists can struggle, too. During the first phase of FBT, the clinician weighs the child at the start of each session. This practice, along with the need to offer dietary advice, makes some professionals uncomfortable. The family must also eat a meal together at the clinician’s office. “You have to be ready for anything,” said Rienecke, “for food being thrown across the room, for kids screaming and running out of the office. For a lot — a lot — of crying.” She continued, “oftentimes the kid just hates you at the beginning of treatment.”

In online discussions, young people sometimes vent their frustration with the approach. Family-based therapy “is the WORST” wrote one person on an eating disorder support forum. “I don’t understand how this could work,” the post continued. “When people control me and suffocate me, it triggers me tenfold.”

And sometimes parents’ desire to save—and control—their child goes too far, according to therapists and patients.

The 19-year-old from Texas said she began FBT in 2022. She had already been hospitalized once and relapsed while doing stints with different outpatient psychotherapists. She had experienced anorexia for four years and was almost 18, too old for family-based treatment. Nevertheless, her parents were able to sign up for a virtual program.

“Family-based therapy became more like family-based trauma,” the woman wrote on a Reddit forum for anonymously discussing eating disorders earlier this year. As her parents assumed the roles of dieticians and therapists, home started to feel like a hospital, she later told Undark. Her father was heavily involved in her care, even though she believes his earlier comments about her physical appearance had helped trigger her disorder. She said that during the therapy, her mental health deteriorated. She had thoughts of suicide and she started to self-harm.

What FBT failed to account for, the woman recently told Undark, is that for nearly five years, her eating disorder had actually given her some relief from difficult emotions. Her parents seemed to believe that weight regain alone would erase any feelings of depression and anxiety, she said. Weight gain is important, she acknowledged, but not without psychological healing.

Le Grange is aware that FBT has been carried too far by some parents but said it is fortunately rare. “Clinicians should always be on the lookout for a parent who takes a license to be critical and unkind to the young person.”

A survey by Australian researchers suggests that some parents also have doubts about FBT. In an interview, one father noted that the treatment’s focus was entirely on food. In his experience, however, his child’s restrictive eating was a symptom of a deeper problem. “What’s going on underneath?” he asked. “What’s causing all this?”

There are other criticisms, too. The therapy is “based on the idea that the young patient has no control,” said Riccardo Dalle Grave, who is head of a department of eating and weight disorders in Villa Garda Hospital in northern Italy. “The goal is to engage the parents, not the young patient. I was always in doubt about this.”

And yet some patients find that weight regain offers a path toward improved wellbeing. As Tess gained back weight, she was able to think more clearly. Eating an extra portion or a snack no longer felt like a catastrophe. “I really just figured out, such minor things didn’t mean as much as I used to think they did when I was younger,” she said.

Around the same time as the Maudsley Method emerged in London, researchers at Oxford University began working on a different model, focusing on adults. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, was developed in the 1970s by Aaron Beck, a researcher in Pennsylvania. It probes patients’ reactions to specific situations and posits that their interpretations of reality may be maladaptive or distorted. In the U.K., CBT has been approved for treating conditions ranging from childhood anxiety to adult schizophrenia, and it is recognized as clinically effective by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the government approval body.

In 1981 Christopher Fairburn, a now-retired lecturer at Oxford, had shown CBT’s possible efficacy for bulimia. He applied it to anorexia, with results he described as “mixed.” Over time, Fairburn and his colleagues realized that anorexia tended to migrate. Patients might start out restricting food but then develop symptoms of bulimia, for example, if a patient’s psychological issues went unresolved. So they developed an approach that could work across different eating disorders, adding modules as necessary to target core problems like poor body image, perfectionism, or low self-esteem, and described this type of CBT as “enhanced.” In the U.K., CBT-E, as it’s known, is a second line treatment for teens, to be tried when family therapy fails.

While cognitive therapy typically has a timeframe of 20 weeks, CBT-E can take longer, up to 40 weeks to allow for weight regain. Clinicians and patients may explore the pros and cons of the need for change. Patients may say things like, “‘I don’t know who I’ll be, I won’t have control,’ all those sorts of things—‘I’ll lose my identity,’” said Cooper, who was recently given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Eating Disorders.

CBT-E also has three phases, but it inverts their emphasis: The first phase involves helping patients think afresh about their condition and analyze the pros and cons of change. Only then are patients urged to address their eating habits. Under this model, parents are viewed as helpers, said Dalle Grave, the director of the eating disorder unit at Villa Garda Hospital.

Cara Lisette, who is 33 and lives in the U.K., suffered from anorexia for 20 years, cycling through hospitalization, in-patient care, and outpatient support. She first encountered CBT-E in 2011, but had no rapport with her therapist. When another clinician suggested CBT-E three years ago, Lisette decided to give it another try. This psychologist seemed to understand her better and was kind. Lisette said she was older and in a better position to be receptive.

Lisette describes how enhanced CBT was tailored to her illness. “Stuff like the body image distortions and things that people get when they have anorexia are quite unique,” she said. “I think it really takes into account just how people’s brains work a little bit differently when they have an eating disorder compared to something like anxiety disorder.”

While still finishing her own treatment, Lisette began her own training as a CBT therapist, and now uses cognitive therapy with children.

Evidence for the effectiveness of CBT-E for young people with anorexia is based on just a couple of non-randomized studies. In 2013, Dalle Grave published an account of 46 young patients with a mean age of 15-and-a-half, aiming to see if they could complete the treatment as out-patients. Almost two-thirds did so and their weight increased substantially, with 13 teens reaching an almost normal weight. The authors saw the findings as making a compelling case for comparing CBT-E and FBT in randomized controlled trials.

In a non-randomized comparative study of 12-to-18-year-old patients, led by Le Grange and Dalle Grave that was published three years ago, FBT and CBT-E came out as just about equally effective.

Le Grange, Dalle Grave, and a Norwegian colleague are now collaborating on the first ever randomized-controlled trial comparing CBT-E and FBT for adolescents with eating disorders, based at Oslo University Hospital. Initial enrollments are in January next year but obtaining a full picture will take years, Le Grange said: “It’s going to be a while.”

“I’m seeing younger and younger and younger patients,” said Suzanne Straebler, a CBT-E eating disorder therapist providing therapy to people with anorexia. “These are babies, right? They are children, and here they are with full blown eating disorders.” In the past, she said, her clinic in New York would occasionally see an 11-year-old patient. Currently, the clinic is treating several 8-year-olds.

Researchers believe the Covid-19 pandemic and protracted school closures are the likely culprits, creating an uncertain environment, where everything seemed out of control. Isolated at home and unable to meaningfully engage with friends, teachers, and the wider society, vulnerable youth trained their focus on exercise and food intake, said Jessica Van Huysse, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan. These conditions made it easier to carry out restrictive behaviors, she noted, “and then that’s a rabbit hole, right?”

“Eating disorders tend to thrive in secrecy,” Straebler observed. She is also concerned about the ability of social media to disseminate dieting fads to young people online.

While some children have been able to fully recover through CBT-E or FBT, the consensus is that more research is needed. “Our therapies are okay, they’re an option,” said Straebler, “but they’re not as good as they need to be. So we need more research, more funding.”

Additionally, clinical trials often enroll people with a single psychological disorder, Cooper said. But in the real world, patients may struggle with multiple conditions. Tess, for example, had a history of OCD and anxiety before she developed anorexia.

Neither FBT nor CBT-E, the researchers admit, is good enough, or sufficient on its own.

“I want to go on paper that I’m not an FBT evangelist. I’m a scientist,” said Le Grange. He estimates that in real world settings, FBT works for 60 to 65 percent of children. He asked: What can be done for those who aren’t helped?

Even those who do gain weight may continue to struggle, said Kevin Olmsted. He compared FBT to pulling a child from the mud and taking them to dry land. The therapy brings patients back to a stable weight where they’re healthy and safe. But they will still have plenty of psychological work to do.

Tess is now 18, and a full recovery remains elusive. In August, as she prepared for college, she noted that she’s in a much better place, but she struggles to balance her social life, schoolwork, and eating. Anorexia can fuel an all-or-nothing approach to life, which can be dangerous, she said: “It’s definitely still a battle—but it’s a different battle.”

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, call or text the National Eating Disorders Association at 1-800-931-2237.

The post The challenge of providing treatment for children with anorexia appeared first on Popular Science.

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As technology evolves, AI-generated images of human faces are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from real photos. But our ability to separate the real from the artificial may come down to personal biases—both our own, as well as that of AI’s underlying algorithms.

According to a new study recently published in the journal Psychological Science, certain humans may misidentify AI-generated white faces as real more often than they can accurately identify actual photos of caucasians. More specifically, it’s white people who can’t distinguish between real and AI-generated white faces. 

[Related: Tom Hanks says his deepfake is hawking dental insurance.]

In a series of trials conducted by researchers collaborating across universities in Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK, 124 white adults were tasked with classifying a series of faces as artificial or real, then rating their confidence for each decision on a 100-point scale. The team decided to match white participants with caucasian image examples in an attempt to mitigate potential own-race recognition bias—the tendency for racial and cultural populations to more poorly remember unfamiliar faces from different demographics.

“Remarkably, white AI faces can convincingly pass as more real than human faces—and people do not realize they are being fooled,” researchers write in their paper.

This was by no slim margin, either. Participants mistakenly classified a full 66 percent of AI images as photographed humans, versus barely half as many of the real photos. Meanwhile, the same white participants’ ability to discern real from artificial people of color was roughly 50-50. In a second experiment, 610 participants rated the same images using 14 attributes contributing to what made them look human, without knowing some photos were fake. Of those attributes, the faces’ proportionality, familiarity, memorability, and the perception of lifelike eyes ranked highest for test subjects.

The team dubbed this newly identified tendency to overly misattribute artificially generated faces—specifically, white faces—as “AI hyperrealism.” The stark statistical differences are believed to stem from well-documented algorithmic biases within AI development. AI systems are trained on far more white subjects than POC, leading to a greater ability to both generate convincing white faces, as well as accurately identify them using facial recognition techniques.

This disparity’s ramifications can ripple through countless scientific, social, and psychological situations—from identity theft, to racial profiling, to basic privacy concerns.

[Related: AI plagiarism detectors falsely flag non-native English speakers.]

“Our results explain why AI hyperrealism occurs and show that not all AI faces appear equally realistic, with implications for proliferating social bias and for public misidentification of AI,” the team writes in their paper, adding that the AI hyperrealism phenomenon “implies there must be some visual differences between AI and human faces, which people misinterpret.”

It’s worth noting the new study’s test pool was both small and extremely limited, so more research is undoubtedly necessary to further understand the extent and effects of such biases. But it remains true that very little is still known about what AI hyperrealism might mean for populations, as well as how they affect judgment in day-to-day lives. In the meantime, humans may receive some help in discernment from an extremely ironic source: During trials, the research team also built a machine learning program tasked with separating real from fake human faces—which it proceeded to accurately accomplish 94 percent of the time.

The post Some people think white AI-generated faces look more real than photographs appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

The benefits of friendship go far beyond having someone to confide in or spend time with–it can also protect you from physical and mental health problems. For example, people with good friends recover more quickly from illnesses and surgeries. They report higher well-being and feel like they live up to their full potential. Additionally, people with good friends report being less lonely across many life stages, including adolescence, becoming a parent and old age.

In fact, friendships are so powerful that the social pain of rejection activates the same neural pathways that physical pain does.

Behavioral scientists like me have tended to focus our research about friendships on their benefits. How to cultivate these powerful relationships hasn’t been as deeply researched yet. Understanding more about what people look for in a friend and how to make and sustain good friendships could help fight the loneliness epidemic.

Traditional conceptions of friendship

Previous generations of behavioral scientists traditionally focused on the notion that people form friendships with those who are similar, familiar and in close proximity to them.

When you look at all the friendships you’ve had over your life, these three factors probably make intuitive sense. You’re more likely to have things in common with your friends than not. You feel an increased sense of familiarity with friends the longer you know them–what psychologists call the mere exposure effect. And your friends are more likely to live or work near you.

Researchers in this field have also typically divided friendship preferences based on gender. The dichotomy suggests that women prefer one-on-one, emotionally close and face-to-face friendships, while men prefer multi-person, task-oriented and side-by-side friendships, with the focus on a shared activity.

Again, when looking at your own friendships, these findings may seem intuitive. Women on average prefer to engage in activities that allow for self-disclosure and sharing secrets, such as spending time one-on-one talking about their lives. Men, on the other hand, tend to prefer to engage in activities that are group-based and have a clearly defined outcome, such as playing sports together. Findings such as these show that gender and preferences on how to connect are important in friendships.

But these explanations of friendship do not address the most important aspect of making friends–choosing the individual people you want to turn into your pals. Friendship decisions are not random. There are many people who are similar, familiar, in close proximity and have similar preferences as you. Yet few of these individuals end up being your friends.

So, in a world full of possibilities, how do people pick those who will become their friends?

New ways to think about friendship

Within the last decade, researchers have begun investigating the roots of friendship preferences beyond the classic descriptions.

For example, social scientists see there are strong preferences for friends to be loyal, trustworthy and warm. Additionally, researchers find there are preferences for friends who help you solve specific kinds of problems and are generous and caring with you instead of others. These preferences help people navigate making friends, given limited reserves of time and effort. In short, they help you find the best possible friends you can in a world full of friendship possibilities.

Social scientists have also learned that, while there are some important gender differences in what people want in friends, it is not accurate to say that men and women want one kind of friendship over another. In fact, when we take a more holistic approach and consider broader categorizations of emotional closeness and tasks, the gender differences in these preferences are reduced. And of course, people don’t exclusively pick between face-to-face and side-by-side friendships. Instead, it is more likely that they focus on what they want from their friends and let these needs guide how friendships form.

Ultimately it’s your individual preferences that guide you toward the people who will best meet your particular social needs. With a little luck, you’ll find buddies who can lend a hand when you need one and support you in reaching your goals. In all, your preferences are the key to finding friends who can buffer against feeling lonely and provide you with the social, emotional and health benefits of friendship.

When you’re looking for friends

It’s hard to provide clear guidelines for improving friendships because the research about friendship preferences is still developing. But there are some clear points for consideration:

1. Determine what you value in friends. Do you want one-on-one, emotionally close friendships or multi-person, task-oriented friendships? Depending on your preference, different kinds of activities will be helpful for finding others who fit the bill and cultivating these friendships.
2. Know that it will take time to make close friendships. Research suggests that it takes 30 hours of interaction to make a casual friend, 140 hours to make a good friend and 300 hours to make a best friend.
3. Consider what you bring to the table. Everyone has unique strengths they bring to their friendships. Research shows that, when you’re able to demonstrate that you have characteristics people want in friends, you’re able to make more satisfying friendships.

Understand friendships to understand loneliness

Considering the nuances of friendship preferences will be extremely important in reducing not only loneliness, but other related public health crises. For example, loneliness is associated with likelihood of attempting suicide. Recent surveys have found that men are suffering big declines in the number of close friends they have, as well as experiencing higher rates of suicide compared to women.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s recent recommendations for fighting the loneliness epidemic focus on public policies and infrastructure. But fostering community spaces for connection–such as parks, libraries and playgrounds–prioritizes the preferences of those who favor the one-on-one, emotionally close and face-to-face connections more often preferred by women. These places are less beneficial for people with more typically masculine preferences, as there is no guarantee that these spaces will foster side-by-side, task-oriented connections unless areas for sports and other team-based activities are also included.

To counter this inequity, researchers and public health officials first need to understand what makes friendships satisfying. Then they can ensure that recommendations to curb loneliness address all of the pathways that people use to cultivate high-quality friendships.

The post Our evolving ideas about friendship can help fight loneliness appeared first on Popular Science.

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In Head Trip, PopSci explores the relationship between our brains, our senses, and the strange things that happen in between.

MANY ILLUSIONS are products of mismatched sensory inputs, evoked when one sense contradicts another. (It looks like just a noisy fan, but it sounds as if it’s speaking.) One of the most startling—and easiest to try by yourself—of these illusions is the McGurk effect, an audiovisual illusion first described by Scottish psychologist Harry McGurk and his assistant John MacDonald in 1976. 

If you search YouTube, you’ll find many videos of the McGurk effect. You watch a person’s face as they speak a single syllable—usually ba—over and over again. After a while, the person will start mouthing a different syllable, usually fa. Many listeners will “hear” the accompanying audio changing to match this. In reality, though, it does nothing of the sort; the sound being played remains the same throughout. “Ba! Ba! Ba!”

So what’s going on? Michael Beauchamp, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent much of his career investigating the McGurk effect. “It’s what I think about all day, every day,” he laughs. In a 2012 paper in the journal NeuroImage, Beauchamp and colleague Audrey Nath examined the link between the effect and neural activity in a region of the brain called the left superior temporal sulcus (STS).

This STS forms a physical bridge between the visual cortex and the auditory processing region (a fact Beauchamp demonstrates with a 3D printout of his own brain). One of this brain region’s many important functions is processing multisensory audiovisual input. “[The STS] puts auditory information and visual information together,” Beauchamp explains. “That’s why we think it’s important for the McGurk.”

The 2012 research examined functional MRI data to study left STS activity in people who experienced the McGurk effect and to compare it to left STS activity in those who didn’t. There were, indeed, increased levels of activity in the first group. However, Beauchamp makes sure to caution that the results don’t constitute anything as definitive as “the STS causes the McGurk effect,” given the inherent complexity of the brain. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable [being that definitive] without a much larger sample size,” he says.

Still, the study did hint at one important fact that has been the focus of much subsequent research. “Some people always get the McGurk effect, and some people never do,” Beauchamp says. “[But] there’s also a whole spectrum in the middle. We are super certain of this; we’ve seen [it] in hundreds of people.”

The existence of this spectrum suggests that the effect—and thus the interaction between vision and hearing in multisensory processing—is more complex and nuanced than many scientists once believed. (This includes McGurk himself, who claimed that 98% of people always experience the full effect, while the remaining 2% never experience it at all.) 

It also suggests the whole concept of “illusion” is worth re-examining. We tend to assume that experiencing an illusion constitutes a failure of our senses—that we’ve been fooled, and that in the process, we’re coming up against the limits of our brains’ ability to make sense of the outside world. But Beauchamp’s study proposed that the real picture might be more subtle: “We speculate that McGurk perceivers have more liberal criteria for integrating auditory and visual speech information. Even if the auditory and visual information is mismatched, McGurk perceivers integrate it. This might provide an advantage under conditions of high levels of auditory or visual noise, at the cost of being misled by McGurk stimuli.”

That means, in some cases at least, the susceptibility to illusions may be adaptive, rather than maladaptive, because illusions are ultimately induced by the brain doing its best to make sense of mismatched or contradictory sensory information. This also raises the question of how our neurological centers might adapt to a change in the quality of that information. (As someone who has acquired hearing loss—I have damage to the cochlea in one ear, the legacy of a stray elbow in a childhood basketball game—I find this idea has personal resonance.) So do we know how, or if, the STS and the rest of the brain adapt to a long-term change in the reliability of one of the senses? 

“It’s a fascinating question—and an open one. We know the brain is plastic,” he says, adding that finding ways to use this plasticity is one of the goals of his team’s research. “For example, a lot of people’s hearing declines a lot faster than their vision does, so if we could help them to become more attuned to visual information, that might help [compensate for] hearing loss.”

The extent of the brain’s plasticity in this respect is underlined by one more remarkable detail that Beauchamp’s research has uncovered: The McGurk effect can be permanent. “If you watch the same McGurk effect clip for a long time, you’ll get the illusion even if you’re not looking at the screen. Basically, your brain is getting rewired; you don’t even need to see the face anymore, because your brain has been convinced, ‘OK, the auditory part is wrong, so I’ll go with what the visual part is saying,’” the professor explains.

Again, you can try it yourself: “Go on YouTube,” Beauchamp says. “Watch [one of those] videos for a minute a day for a few days, and then listen to it again without looking. My prediction is that you’ll still get the McGurk effect.”

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Best overall		Quility 20-Pound Weighted Blanket with Soft Cover		SEE IT	Helps promote relaxation and temperature control for a great night’s sleep.
Best knit		Bearaby Weighted Blanket		SEE IT	This chunky blanket is hand-knit from organic cotton and looks great in your home.
Best fleece		Uttermara Sherpa Fleece Weighted Blanket		SEE IT	The smooth fleece top and wool-like Sherpa reverse offer unmatched coziness.

If you’ve tried all the usual suspects to help fall asleep at night, such as a sleep schedule, getting plenty of exercise, and avoiding caffeine, but are still having trouble, it may be time to invest in a weighted blanket. Weighted blankets can help reduce stress while promoting a feeling of calmness by evenly applying firm yet gentle pressure throughout the body, similar to getting a hug or swaddling a baby. So, if you’re sold on the idea that these products could help you achieve optimal rest, we’ve rounded up some of the best weighted blankets on the market today.

• Best overall: Quility 20-Pound Weighted Blanket with Soft Cover
• Best knit: Bearaby Napper Organic Hand-Knit Weighted Blanket
• Best for adults: WONAP Weighted Blanket for Couples
• Best for kids: Sivio Kids Weighted Blanket
• Best throw: Baloo Weighted Cotton Blanket
• Best breathable: Brooklyn Bedding Chunky Knit Weighted Blanket
• Best cooling: YnM Bamboo Weighted Blanket
• Best fleece: Uttermara Sherpa Fleece Weighted Blanket

How we chose the best weighted blankets

Weighted blankets have only been seeing mainstream popularity for the past few years since a Kickstarter campaign for a product called the Gravity Blanket raised nearly $5 million. Unfortunately, the success of the Kickstarter quickly inspired countless knockoffs, which is why it’s even more important to vet these products for exceptional quality and value. With so many inferior products on the market, we took a look at roughly 25 to 30 of the highest-rated weighted blankets before arriving at the ones we chose for this guide.

One of the characteristics, in particular, that we honed in on was high-quality glass bead filling that is sewn into interior pockets so it won’t shift or even spill out of the blanket, which is common in inferior models. We also ensured that all of the products featured here use 100% cotton or bamboo fabric, except for one blanket with a reversible Sherpa and fleece cover. Most of the products listed also had removable, machine-washable covers to keep your weighted blanket clean and feeling like new for years to come.

The best weighted blankets: Reviews & Recommendations

The science behind weighted blankets checks out. The approach is called deep pressure stimulation, which uses this controlled pressure to stimulate the natural production of mood-boosting serotonin and increase melatonin levels while reducing the stress hormone cortisol. As such, many experts believe weighted blankets can improve sleep for people experiencing conditions including insomnia, anxiety, and autism.

Occupational therapists often use weighted blankets for sensory integration therapy, particularly among children and young adults with trouble processing their senses. Simulating these senses of touch can help the patient’s brain to adapt. Weighted blankets can also be soothing for the general populace, and we’ve rounded up some of the best weighted blankets on the market below.

Best overall: Quility 20-Pound Weighted Blanket with Soft Cover

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Why it made the cut: Evenly distributed micro glass beads provide gentle pressure to help even the most restless sleepers reduce tossing and turning and get through the night, making this an easy pick for the best weighted blanket overall.

Specs

• Fabric type: 100% cotton blanket, 100% polyester duvet cover
• Fill: Glass microbeads
• Weight: 20 pounds

Pros

• Even weight distribution across sections
• Removable duvet cover
• Seven-layer system shapes to your body

Cons

• Beads spread out over time
• Could be too warm for sleepers who run hot

Get better sleep with the Quility 20-Pound Weighted Blanket that wraps you in warmth and comfort. The gentle pressure of the micro glass bead filling should help reduce tossing and turning for even the most restless sleepers to make it through the night. The blanket’s seven-layer system shapes to your body for added comfort, with even weight distribution to balance the pressure across the quilted sections.

The 100% cotton material is designed to keep you cool. Although, some sleepers who run hot or live in warm climates may still think it’s too warm. So that’s something to consider if you fall into either of those categories. There’s also a removable duvet cover for easy cleaning, with a durable zipper and eight duvet tie-loops to keep the blanket in place. 

A handful of customers have also had issues with the glass beads redistributing after a few weeks or months of use but seem to be in the minority. However, those who have experienced problems also seem to have had good luck by contacting customer service.

Best knit: Bearaby Napper Organic Hand-Knit Weighted Blanket

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Why it made the cut: This gorgeous chunky blanket is made from sustainable materials, customizable in size, weight, and color, and feels delightful to snuggle under.

Specs

• Fabric type: Organic cotton
• Fill: N/A
• Weight: Available in 10-, 15-, 20-, and 25-pound sizes

Pros

• Beautiful design
• Eco-friendly
• Machine-washable

Cons

• More expensive
• If your home is drafty, cold air can seep in
• Some users say can be stiff at first

If you’re looking for a weighted blanket that looks as good as it feels, consider the Bearaby Napper. The company began as a Kickstarter campaign led by a former World Bank economist who was looking for a solution for her chronic insomnia. These chunky knit blankets are made with organic cotton, are free of artificial fillers, and have earned the OEKO-TEX Standard 100 for not containing harmful chemicals, so you can feel good about sleeping under one.

Bearaby recommends that you choose a weighted blanket that’s roughly 10 percent of your body weight, and provides a simple calculator to help you find the best option for your size of bed. The blankets are available in 10-, 15-, 20-, and 25-pound sizes and in a range of muted colors (Olive Night, Asteroid Grey, Moonstone Grey, Midnight Blue, Evening Rose, and Cloud White.) I tried the 10-pound version and can attest that these blankets provide a soothing amount of weight and look great at the foot of a bed or as a throw. They’re also machine-washable, and you can toss them in the dryer for a tumble dry.

Best for adults: WONAP Weighted Blanket for Couples

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Why it made the cut: Perfect for couples, the soothing touch of the bamboo blanket combined with glass beads provides a deep and relaxing sleep for you and your partner.

Specs

• Fabric type: 100% bamboo
• Fill: Glass beads
• Weight: 25 pounds

Pros

• Hypoallergenic glass beads
• Breathable natural bamboo fabric
• Four-by-four-inch diamond design

Cons

• Couples may find the blanket too restrictive

Both you and your partner will get a good night’s rest when using the extra-large WONAP Weighted Blanket for Couples. Constructed of 100% breathable Natural Bamboo fabric, the inner part of the blanket includes ultra-soft cotton compartments filled with hypoallergenic, non-toxic, and odorless premium glass beads. The beads are evenly distributed thanks to a four by four-inch diamond design that applies the same amount of pressure throughout the entire body for a more restful sleep.

The combination of the bamboo fabric and glass beads also creates a cooling effect to use the blanket year-round. In fact, one of the biggest problems some users have noted is that the blanket is so heavy and secure that it actually even may prevent you and your partner from getting near each other at night. Is there such a thing as a product doing its job too well?

Though the dense stitches and the durable thread of the bamboo fabric are intended to prevent leakage of the glass beads, a small number of reviewers complained of finding sand or dust in the bed after using it, so that is something to keep in mind.

Best for kids: Sivio Kids Weighted Blanket

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Why it made the cut: This blanket effectively simulates the hug of a mother so your child can fall asleep faster and sleep deeper and longer through the night. It’s easily one of the best weighted blankets for kids.

Specs

• Fabric type: 100% cotton
• Fill: Glass beads
• Weight: 3 pounds

Pros

• Seven-layer design prevents leakage
• Fun, kid-friendly designs
• Smaller pockets evenly distribute weight

Cons

• Suggested weight may be too light
• Some children could use a larger size

Parents of young children with special needs or separation anxiety may find the Sivio Kids Weighted Blanket to be an absolute game-changer. This thermostabilized weighted blanket aligns naturally with your child’s body to simulate the gentle hug of a mother. Many customers who have tried nearly everything else have reported that this blanket dramatically reduces or eliminates the number of times their children get up through the night.

Parents will also rest assured knowing that the blanket is crafted with 100% natural, breathable cotton fabric, with an upgraded seven-layer design and square four by four-inch pockets to prevent the beads from leaking. Not only do these pockets make sure that the weight is more evenly distributed, but they also won’t make any noise to wake your child up during the night.

However, some user reviews have noted that the size and weight recommendations are too small and light. So if your child is on the higher end of the height and growth charts for their age or could benefit from the extra weight, you may want to size up out of precaution. In any case, that also ensures that you won’t have to replace the blanket in six months to a year.

Best throw: Baloo Weighted Cotton Blanket

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Why it made the cut: These weighted blankets are made from all-natural cotton, chemical-free, and a portion of the company’s proceeds go toward ocean restoration.

Specs

• Fabric type: Organic cotton
• Fill: Glass microbeads
• Weight: 12 pounds

Pros

• Versatile
• Eco-friendly
• Machine-washable

Cons

• Not as attractive a design

Baloo describes their weighted throws, blankets, and comforters as a hug that molds to your body and calms you down. Their satin-y quilted throws, which weigh 12 pounds and are 42 inches wide by 72 inches long, are substantial enough for curling up on the couch, but can easily double as a travel blanket for people who get nervous when they fly. The throw is also large enough to cover a twin bed and has attachments if you’d like to attach one of the company’s linen duvet covers.

The company also highlights their sustainable practices: All of their products are made from organic cotton, their packaging is plastic-free, they meet the OEKO-TEX Standard 100, and a portion of the proceeds from their sales go toward replanting mangrove and kelp forests. The cotton is breathable, which makes the blanket suitable for use throughout the year. And the throws are machine-washable and available in Pebble White, Luna Blue, and Silver Sage.

Best breathable: Brooklyn Bedding Chunky Knit Weighted Blanket

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Why it made the cut: This beautiful hand-knit blanket features an open weave that allows for plenty of cooling airflow.

Specs

• Fabric type: Polyester jersey
• Fill: Polyester
• Weight: 10 or 15 pounds

Pros

• Hand-knit
• Promotes airflow
• Pretty design
• Can help reduce stress

Cons

• Made from synthetic material
• Only available in two weights

Blankets can sometimes look sloppy, but that’s not the case with Brooklyn Bedding’s Chunky Hand-Knit Weighted Blanket. Like the Beararby, this attractive blanket is crafted with care. It features soft polyester jersey outer shell and polyester fill—available in two weights (10 and 15 pounds) and two subtle colors (cream, shown here, and gray). Combined with the open-knit design, that material promotes airflow, making this blanket breathable and suitable for all seasons and members of the household (including furry friends enjoying their morning solar recharge, as seen above).

It’s cozy and comforting and threatens to keep you ensconced in bed or on the couch all day—partially because it provides just the right amount of calming pressure and partially because your toes might get tangled in the hand-knitted weave. Of course, we’d expect nothing less from Brooklyn Bedding—makers of the Aurora Luxe Cooling mattress, a top pick for hot sleepers thanks to its cool tech fibers and foams.

Best cooling: YnM Bamboo Weighted Blanket

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Why it made the cut: Even the hottest sleepers will rest comfortably year-round with cooling, silky-soft bamboo fabric and even more glass beads for optimal temperature control.

Specs

• Fabric type: 100% bamboo
• Fill: Glass beads
• Weight: 15 pounds

Pros

• All-natural cooling bamboo materials
• Smaller inner pockets for even distribution
• More glass beads and thinner fiber

Cons

• Slick bamboo may cause duvet to need readjusting
• Not cool enough for warm climates

You can feel the difference from the moment you touch the YnM Bamboo Weighted Blanket. Made out of 100% breathable bamboo fabric and premium glass beads, this is one of the softest weighted blankets on the market while still managing to stay incredibly cool. The manufacturer is so confident of the blanket’s cooling properties that they even go so far as to describe it as “like sleeping in a pool of cool water,” except that you don’t get wet.

The seven-layer system is designed to contour to the shape of your body for maximum comfort. This cooling weighted blanket also features more glass beads and less fiberfill for exceptional breathability and better temperature control. Unfortunately, a few customers who live in exceptionally warm climates claim that they still need their air conditioning on full blast while using this product.

Two additional layers combined with a three-dimensional lock bead sewing method also ensure against leakage, and the extremely fine stitching prevents weight shifting from one compartment to another. One of the only user complaints is that the bamboo material is so slick that it can be challenging to keep the blanket inside the duvet without adjusting it frequently.

Best fleece: Uttermara Sherpa Fleece Weighted Blanket

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Why it made the cut: This super-soft, super comfy heavy blanket keeps you warm by forming a gentle hug along your body without bunching up or causing excess heat.

Specs

• Fabric type: Sherpa and fleece
• Fill: 1-millimeter ceramic beads
• Weight: 15 pounds

Pros

• Smooth fleece top and Sherpa reverse
• Unique bead-filling technology
• Eye-catching unicolor pattern

Cons

• Commercial washing only
• Some users find it too heavy

The Uttermara Sherpa Fleece Weighted Blanket pairs a smooth, 220 GSM fleece top and wool-like Sherpa reverse for the softest, coziest weighted blanket money can buy. Sherpa is more resistant to fading and stain than traditional fabrics used in weighted blankets and won’t pill or shed after prolonged use. Though, on the downside, the blanket isn’t machine washable and requires commercial washing.

Still, that’s a small price to pay for the superior craftsmanship you’re getting with this high-quality blanket. Neat stitches create both an integrated look and strong seaming. The tiny 1-millimeter ceramic beads are sewn into small squares, which are further sandwiched with non-glue polyester and brushed fabric that prevent the beads from clustering or moving around when shuffled so that the blanket can be totally conformed to your body.

When choosing a size, however, one thing to note is that the fleece and Sherpa exterior may add extra weight, as some users actually find their blankets to almost be too heavy. So if you’re on the fence about which weight blanket to choose, it may be wiser to size down. Sherpa is also on the warmer side for standard weighted blankets, so it may not be ideal for those who run hot.

What to consider before buying the best weighted blankets

Size

Aside from quality, there are two primary features that you should take into consideration when deciding to purchase a weighted blanket: size and weight. As to the former point, ask yourself if you’ll be using the blanket by yourself or if you’ll be sharing with a partner. Weighted blankets do come in up to king and queen sizes to accommodate larger beds. However, weighted blankets are also not for everyone, and if your partner isn’t into the idea, you may be stuck with too large of an unwieldy blanket for just one person. 

Intended Use

Another thing to ask yourself is whether you’ll be using the blanket primarily for sleeping or lounging, and even if you’ll need a new pillow or even a new mattress to go along with your weighted blanket. However, if your objective for a isn’t for sleeping, but as a throw while you’re watching TV or reading a book, then you could absolutely meet your needs with a smaller size.

Weight

Of course, weight is perhaps the most critical factor to consider before buying a weighted blanket. Generally, most experts suggest getting one that weighs approximately eight to 12% of your overall body weight—or an even 10% is also a good rule of thumb. Depending on what you think your needs will be, you can easily size up or down, as some people say they prefer a heavier blanket while others don’t like to be weighed down too much.

We also can’t stress enough the importance of thoroughly reading user reviews. All too often, these types of products come with shoddy construction. So it’s especially crucial to choose a weighted blanket of exceptional craftsmanship and quality, that won’t tear open at the seams and leave glass sand and dust all over your bed.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best weighted blankets

• Best overall: Quility 20-Pound Weighted Blanket with Soft Cover
• Best knit: Bearaby Napper Organic Hand-Knit Weighted Blanket
• Best for couples: WONAP Weighted Blanket for Couples
• Best for kids: Sivio Kids Weighted Blanket
• Best throw: Baloo Weighted Cotton Blanket
• Best breathable: Brooklyn Bedding Chunky Knit Weighted Blanket
• Best cooling: YnM Bamboo Weighted Blanket
• Best fleece: Uttermara Sherpa Fleece Weighted Blanket

Oddly enough, our top picks for the best weighted blanket couldn’t be more different from one another, between the Bearaby Napper and the Uttermara Sherpa Fleece Weighted Blanket. We love the Bearaby because of the combination of beautiful design and comfort. However, those who prefer a blanket that provides added warmth will likely find the super soft Sherpa and fleece of the Uttermara to be a better fit.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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We’re closer than ever to mapping the entire brain to the microscopic level. Hundreds of neuroscientists across the world recently characterized more than 3,000 human brain cell types as part of the National Institute of Health’s BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network, publishing almost two dozen papers in four Science journals today. This super-focused attention to detail could unlock many mysteries surrounding that complex organ, such as what happened in our brains to distinguish us from other primates. 

“This is the first large-scale, detailed description of all the different kinds of cells present in the human brain,” says Rebecca Hodge, an assistant investigator at the Allen Institute in Seattle who co-authored multiple studies in the paper package. Her hope is that this brain atlas provides a community resource for scientists to explore how the wide variety of brain cells contribute to health and disease.

Mark Mapstone, a professor of neurology at University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, who wasn’t involved with these studies, likened the new data about the brain to a tourist’s guide. “Imagine navigating an unfamiliar city with a roughly drawn street map containing only the major streets of the downtown compared to navigating the same city with a detailed map extending beyond the downtown to the suburbs and including all highways, two-way and one-way streets, alleyways, sidewalks, location of street signs and traffic signals, speed limits, and location of coffee shops and restaurants,” he says. “Cleary, the latter would make navigation and understanding the city much easier.” This first suite of studies shows three main ways the brain map can be used for biology and medicine.

An evolving brain

A human brain atlas can teach us about our evolutionary history. One study published today in Science used single-nucleus RNA sequencing to measure the gene expression of individual brain cells in humans and five other primate species, including chimpanzees and gorillas. In this method, scientists pull out individual cells from a piece of tissue, break them open to expose the genetic messengers inside, then use tags akin to tiny barcodes to identify that material. “This is the main technology used in some of these papers that are coming out and it’s a technique that’s only been around for the past 10 years,” Hodge says. Getting this genetic profile allows researchers to group clusters of cells into specific types. 

[Related: Psychedelics and anesthetics cause unexpected chemical reactions in the brain]

Our cells’ composition and organization is similar to those of our close relatives. However, the biggest differences seemed to occur in a brain region called the middle temporal gyrus, which is involved in processing semantic memory and language. Humans had higher numbers of projecting neurons in this area compared to other species. What’s more, the researchers highlighted a difference in gene expression that promoted synaptic plasticity, which is the ability of neurons to strengthen brain connections. This feature is an important component for learning and memory, and it might explain how humans developed complex cognitive skills.

There was some variation within humans, too. Another study found the most differences across humans in immune cells called microglia as well as deep-layer excitatory neurons, which are involved in the communication between distant brain regions. Researchers are not quite sure why—one theory is that deep-layer excitatory neurons develop earlier and are more exposed to environmental factors that could diversify their gene patterns. “Everyone’s brain is largely similar. Even though we have the same building blocks, it’s the small number of differences that matter,” says Jeremy Miller, a senior scientist at the Allen Institute, and co-author of the study. “We’re now starting to understand how important these changes are and figuring out what makes us uniquely human.”

Animal models

Because human brains share many features with other mammals, neurologists frequently use the small brains of mice to study diseases. The one problem, Miller says, is that mice don’t naturally develop neurodegenerative diseases common in humans. Scientists who want to study Alzheimer’s disease, for example, would need to manipulate multiple mouse genes to cause the kind of brain pathology seen in older people. This requires a comprehensive understanding of how cell types in the brain work together and how they change in the context of disease. 

[Related: How your brain conjures dreams]

Much brain research in mice focuses on the neocortex, responsible for higher cognitive function. It might seem reasonable to assume that much of the brain’s cellular complexity appears here. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. In one of the first studies to create a cell map of the entire adult brain, neuroscientists have found high levels of diversity in older evolutionary structures such as the midbrain, which is involved in movement, vision, and hearing, and the hindbrain, which governs vital bodily functions such as breathing and heart rate. In subcortical areas, there also appears to be a supercluster of cells called splatter neurons that control innate behaviors and physiological functions. Replicating the complexity of these particular brain regions in animal models could help better identify the cellular origins of human diseases. 

Personalized medicine

Imagine a future where treatments are tailored to someone’s specific needs. To do that, scientists would use a person’s genetic profile, rather than characteristics such as weight or age, to inform any medical decisions. Clinicians could also use this genetic information to identify the risks of potential diseases and provide early preventative measures. 

“A detailed brain atlas can help us understand what successful brain function looks like so we can maximize brain cells and circuits that promote brain heath,” Mapstone says. “Addressing brain disease and promoting brain health can be more easily accomplished if we know how these cells are organized. “

Doctors are already using people’s genetic information to assess whether patients would be good candidates for a particular cancer treatment or to find the proper dose of a drug. This may soon include testing for neurological conditions. One study, which analyzed 1.1 million cells in 42 brain regions of neurotypical adults, identified specific neuronal cell types—mainly in the basal ganglia, a region involved in addictive behaviors—that were linked to 19 neuropsychiatric disorders and traits. Those conditions included schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as well as alcohol and tobacco use disorder.

This project is a step in the right direction for advancing research in personalized medicine, says Miller, though he warns this is only one of many to make this a reality for everyone. 

Miller and Hodge are optimistic there will be other versions of the human brain atlas completed in the next five years, as other groups wrap up similar projects. 

But there’s a possibility that we’ll never get the full picture. While Miller finds a half-decade timeframe reasonable, he says there’s always a chance science develops a new technology that could unearth something unexpected about the brain. “We can always do more,” he says.

This post has been updated.

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Adjusting to prosthetic limbs isn’t as simple as merely finding one that fits your particular body type and needs. Physical control and accuracy are major issues despite proper attachment, and sometimes patients’ bodies reject even the most high-end options available. Such was repeatedly the case for a Swedish patient after losing her right arm in a farming accident over two decades ago. For years, the woman suffered from severe pain and stress issues, likening the sensation to “constantly [having] my hand in a meat grinder.”

Phantom pain is an unfortunately common affliction for amputees, and is believed to originate from nervous system signal confusions between the spinal cord and brain. Although a body part is amputated, the peripheral nerve endings remain connected to the brain, and can thus misread that information as pain.

[Related: We’re surprisingly good at surviving amputations.]

With a new, major breakthrough in prosthetics, however, her severe phantom pains are dramatically alleviated thanks to an artificial arm built on titanium-fused bone tissue alongside rearranged nerves and muscles. As detailed in a new study published via Science Robotics, the remarkable advancements could provide a potential blueprint for many other amputees to adopt such technology in the coming years.

The patient’s procedure started in 2018 when she volunteered to test a new kind of bionic arm designed by a multidisciplinary team of engineers and surgeons led by Max Ortiz Catalan, head of neural prosthetics research at Australia’s Bionics Institute and founder of the Center for Bionics and Pain Research. Using osseointegration, a process infusing titanium into bone tissue to provide a strong mechanical connection, the team was able to attach their prototype to the remaining portion of her right limb.

Accomplishing even this step proved especially difficult because of the need to precisely align the volunteer’s radius and ulna. The team also needed to account for the small amount of space available to house the system’s components. Meanwhile, the limb’s nerves and muscles needed rearrangement to better direct the patient’s neurological motor control information into the prosthetic attachment.

“By combining osseointegration with reconstructive surgery, implanted electrodes, and AI, we can restore human function in an unprecedented way,” Rickard Brånemark, an MIT research affiliate and associate professor at Gothenburg University who oversaw the surgery, said via an update from the Bionics Institute. “The below elbow amputation level has particular challenges, and the level of functionality achieved marks an important milestone for the field of advanced extremity reconstructions as a whole.”

The patient said her breakthrough prosthetic can be comfortably worn all day, is highly integrated with her body, and has even relieved her chronic pain. According to Catalan, this reduction can be attributed to the team’s “integrated surgical and engineering approach” that allows [her] to use “somewhat the same neural resources” as she once did for her biological hand.

“I have better control over my prosthesis, but above all, my pain has decreased,” the patient explained. “Today, I need much less medication.” 

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Hulu’s new sci-fi horror movie, No One Will Save You, has just two sentences of dialogue over 93 minutes of run time. But it’s not a quiet film. Floors groan, feet thud, characters shriek, and something—no spoilers as to what—chitters eerily. The unsettling background noise is complemented by composer Joseph Trapanese’s menacing music, which shivers from deep electronic pulses to ripsaw whines. It’s spooky and effective. Even prolific horror novelist Stephen King took notice, calling the film “brilliant, daring, involving, scary” on the social media platform X. 

Horror soundtracks like No One Will Save You’s have a special goal. It’s hard to find another musical genre so defined by the need to generate a single emotion: fear. To twist audio in unnerving ways, composers, musicians, and mixers use several special techniques. Some songs might have extreme variation in their dynamics, such as long silences that build into clashing notes to accompany a jump scare on the screen. Others wrap in acoustical features with human screams that, according to one study, may trigger alarm bells in our brains. 

Spooky songs also have the liberty to be more experimental because they don’t have to be pleasant. Pop tunes and gentler soundtracks typically stick to well-worn concepts like harmony. The spine-chilling stuff, though, tends to be “much more creative and break the mold of certain unwritten rules,” says Ben Ma, a musician and software engineer at the music startup Rivet. Still, nightmarish scores use a few common compositional tricks to mess with listeners’ minds. 

Uneasy on the ears

If you’ve ever thought that horror soundtracks just sound like someone screaming, you’re correct. Music cognition researcher Caitlyn Trevor has investigated parallels between song composition and vocal signals or other natural sounds. Sad tunes might remind us of someone crying, but this is often in the most abstract sense, she says, where something like a falling melodic note is reinterpreted as a sigh. “What I liked about scary music is that it seems like an area where mimicry was much more direct and much more obvious,” Trevor explains. “It really does sound a lot like a scream.”

In the study, 20 volunteers listened to recordings of people actually screaming plus excerpts from horror soundtracks, which included scream-like music as well as more neutral songs. The participants were asked to rate their emotional impressions of what they’d heard on a negative to positive scale. Human screams were the most negatively emotional, but the subjects also reacted similarly, if less intensely, to scream-like music. It’s as though horror music “piggybacks” on natural vocal signals, Trevor adds, “but they’re a little less potent because it’s in this art space.” In other words, we might hear danger in a soundtrack, but we also know it’s make-believe.

“The correlation to screams definitely makes sense to me,” says Rich Vreeland, who, as the artist Disasterpeace, composed the soundtracks for It Follows, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and other Hollywood films. His musical inspirations span cinema and real life: Bernard Hermann’s jarring score for Psycho was “one of my touchstones for how to make shrill scary sounds,” as was the “horrific sound of the Sony alarm clock that I had as a kid.” 

Out of tune

Horror soundtracks are so distinct from other soundtracks that algorithms can pick out particular traits from the genre. A team of computer scientists, including Ma, used a bespoke computer model to analyze the music of 110 box-office topping movies, as they reported in a 2021 PLOS One paper. Their goal was to take a quantitative approach to the way movie music affects audiences with the “first study that applies deep learning models on musical features to predict a film’s genre,” they wrote. 

Inharmonicity nixes those nice, round numbers. The notes played together might not even exist on a keyboard—imagine sound spewing from the space between the keys, “something that you physically couldn’t play on a piano,” Ma says. To pull this off, you need a continuous pitch instrument. The violins’ shrieking strings in the Psycho soundtrack are a prototypical example: It “really exemplifies on the atonal level” how horror music works, Ma says, producing a frequency that is extremely unsettling.

Sounds of anxiety and terror

Trevor’s most recent study of horror music, published earlier this year in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, splits the idea of fear in two. There are songs that make us anxious and songs that terrify us. Her acoustic analysis teased several different features from the soundtracks of 30 horror movies to understand how they achieved either of those psychological effects. Notably, each category had a distinct tempo, which she and her colleagues described in the paper: The anxious examples were “ponderous” or “pacing,” while the terrifying ones were “frenetic” and “throbbing” or a “wall of sound.” 

As an additional experiment, the team then had 99 people rate the anxiety, terror, tenderness, and happiness of the tunes on a seven-point scale. On average, subjects weren’t able to completely separate the music into the two fearful categories—terrifying music was rated as also conveying lots of anxiety. That might have been a product of survey bias, Trevor says. “Maybe participants were responding to how it made them feel more than what was being portrayed.” She’s currently part of a study that uses MRI brain scans to observe whether human screams and scary music activate similar neural networks in listeners. 

But there’s more to horror soundtracks than clever composition. The power of juxtaposition, for instance, is one aspect that scientific studies may not be designed to fully capture, but is super effective, Ma explains. The best scores, like the scary movies they accompany, put the audience at ease—then shatter it. “Horror soundtracks need to also have moments of beauty in them,” Ma says. “They put you in this place of calm so they can drag you out of it in the most gut-wrenching ways.”

Enjoy this scary-music playlist curated by PopSci editors, and let us know what your most feared soundtrack is.

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Fictional murderous barbers and real life serial killers are woven into London’s spooky history with legendary tales of their dastardly deeds. However, Sweeney Todd or Jack the Ripper may have paled in comparison to students from Oxford in the 14th century. A project mapping medieval England’s known murder cases found that Oxford’s student population was the most lethal of all social or professional groups, committing about 75 percent of all homicides.

[Related: How DNA evidence could help put the Long Island serial killer behind bars.]

First launched in 2018, Cambridge’s Medieval Murder Maps plots crime scenes based on translated investigations from 700-year-old coroners’ reports. These documents were recorded in Latinand are catalogs of sudden or suspicious deaths that were deduced by a jury of local residents. They also included names, events, locations, and even the value of murder weapons. The project recently added the cities of York and Oxford to its street plan of slayings during the 14th century. 

The team used these rolls and maps to construct the street atlas of 354 homicides across the three cities. It has also been updated to include accidents, sudden deaths, deaths in prison, and sanctuary church cases. 

They estimate that  the per capita homicide rate in Oxford was potentially 4 to 5 times higher than late medieval London or York. It also put the homicide rate at about 60 to 75 per 100,000—about 50 times higher than the murder rates in today’s English cities. The maps, however, don’t factor in the major advances in medicine, policing, and emergency response in the centuries since.

York’s murderous mayhem was likely driven by inter- knife fights among tannery workers (Tanners) to fatal violence between glove makers (Glovers) during the rare 14th century period of prosperity driven by trade and textile manufacturing as the Black Death subsided. But Oxford’s rambunctious youth made for a dangerous scene.

By the early 14th century, Oxford had a population of roughly 7,000 inhabitants, with about 1,500 students. Among perpetrators from Oxford, coroners referred to 75 percent of them as “clericus.” The term most likely refers to a student or a member of the early university. Additionally, 72 percent of all Oxford’s homicide victims also have the designation clericus in the coroner inquests.

“A medieval university city such as Oxford had a deadly mix of conditions,” lead murder map investigator and University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner said in a statement. “Oxford students were all male and typically aged between fourteen and twenty-one, the peak for violence and risk-taking. These were young men freed from tight controls of family, parish or guild, and thrust into an environment full of weapons, with ample access to alehouses and sex workers.”

Many of the students also belonged to regional fraternities known as “nations,” which could have added more tension within the student body.

One Thursday night in 1298, an argument among students in an Oxford High Street tavern resulted in a mass street fight complete with battle-axes and swords. According to the coroner’s report, a student named John Burel had, “a mortal wound on the crown of his head, six inches long and in depth reaching to the brain.”

Interactions with sex workers also could end tragically. One unknown scholar got away with murdering Margery de Hereford in the parish of St. Aldate in 1299. He fled the scene after stabbing her to death instead of paying what he owed. 

[Related: A lost ‘bawdy bard’ act reveals roots of naughty British comedy.]

Many of the cases in all three cities also involved intervention of bystanders, who were obligated to announce if a crime was being committed, or raise a “hue and cry.” Some of the bystanders summoned by hue ended up as victims or perpetrators.

“Before modern policing, victims or witnesses had a legal responsibility to alert the community to a crime by shouting and making noise. This was known as raising a hue and cry,” co-researchers and Cambridge crime historian Stephanie Brown said in a statement. “It was mostly women who raised hue and cry, usually reporting conflicts between men in order to keep the peace.”

Medieval street justice was also coupled with plentiful weapons in everyday life, which could  make even minor infractions lethal. London’s cases include altercations that started over littering and urination that led to homicide. 

“Knives were omnipresent in medieval society,” said Brown. “A thwytel was a small knife, often valued at one penny, and used as cutlery or for everyday tasks. Axes were commonplace in homes for cutting wood, and many men carried a staff.”

The team told The Guardian that they hope this project encourages people to reflect on the possible notices behind historic homicide and explore the parallels between these incidents and the altercations in the present. 

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Sci-fi author Brian Herbert once wrote, “The only guarantee in life is death, and the only guarantee in death is its shocking unpredictability.” These words ring true to researchers who investigate what happens in a person’s final moments—and the frustration that comes with these studies. One big problem almost always gets in the way: How do you ask people what dying feels like when they’re no longer here? 

Because we haven’t yet figured out how to communicate with the dead, the best-case scenario is talking to people who have had a close brush with death. They often mention seeing bright lights, their life flashing before their eyes, or visions of deceased loved ones. Some have even reported spotting the Grim Reaper by their bedside. It’s a paradoxical situation, says Kevin Nelson, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky: A few perceptions are common—a shining light, for instance—but the near-death experience is unique to each individual.

There’s still a lot of mystery when it comes to the cause, but the field is progressing thanks to people who have allowed scientists to study their brains in these situations. People who have survived these close calls say the encounter can be life-changing. One thing is certain: medical experts say near-death experiences are not a figment of the imagination. 

And figuring out the mechanisms behind this phenomenon goes beyond general curiosity. One goal is to better understand how cardiac arrests happen. It could also potentially save lives, because doctors would have more knowledge for when to continue resuscitations after a patient’s heart stops.

“The research not only benefits our understanding of consciousness, but also in understanding the importance of the heart, lung, and brain in our everyday physiology,” says Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Unreal recall

A near-death experience can happen to anyone. In fact, 1 in 10 people have reported sharper senses, slowed time, out-of-body sensations or other features associated with near-death, despite not being in grave danger. Research shows that near-death experiences come in four types: emotional, cognitive, spiritual and religious experiences, and supernatural. Of the four, people often recall supernatural activity, particularly the feeling of detaching from a physical body.

About 76 percent of people report an out-of-body experience during a near-death experience. While some people may attribute this to a spiritual experience, this is actually a sensory deception caused by the brain, which scientists have successfully replicated in people who are asleep. Research has shown that direct electrical stimulation of a brain area normally inactive in REM sleep can provoke an out-of-body experience. “Like a flip of a switch, you can literally throw somebody out of their body and back into their body,” Nelson says.

[Related: CPR can save lives. Here’s how (and when) to do it.]

Often, though, people with cardiac arrest will recall near-death experiences. “About a quarter of people who suffer and survived cardiac arrest have memories about some aspect of near-death experience, Borjigin says. This is because people with cardiac arrest have decreasing blood pressure, she says. With the heart unable to pump properly, oxygen is unable to travel to the rest of the body, which is essential for every single cell in your body to survive. When a brain is alerted to a sudden decline in oxygen, your brain undergoes certain changes that contribute to the perceptual distortions that accompany a near-death experience. 

Electrical surges in the brain

Ten years ago, Borjigin and her team observed that rats in simulated cardiac arrest still had fully active brains even 30 seconds after their hearts stopped. What’s more, their brains increased in electrical activity. To confirm whether this happens in humans, Borjigin recently tested the brains of four people who were critically ill and removed from life support.

When these comatose patients were taken off their ventilators, they could not breathe on their own. But, using EEGs, Borjigin noticed two people showed a surge in gamma brainwaves as their bodies started shutting down. Gamma brainwaves are usually a sign of consciousness, because they are mostly active when someone is awake and alert. 

“We’ve shown the brain has a unique mechanism that deals with a lack of oxygen because oxygen is so essential for survival that even an acute loss massively activates the brain and could lead to a near-death experience,” Borjigin explains. 

The boost in gamma waves occurred in a brain area called the temporo-parieto-occipital (TPO) junction. This is responsible for blending information from our senses, including touch, motion, and vision, into our conscious selves. It’s impossible to know if the increased brain activity was related to any visions they may have had, because, sadly, the two patients died. But Borjigin suggests activation of this area suggests people may likely pick up sounds and understand language. “They might hear and perceive the conversation around them and form a visual image in their brain even when their eyes are closed.” 

Hidden consciousness

In one of the largest studies of near-death experiences, an international team of doctors has linked the surge in brain activity to what they called a hidden consciousness immediately following death. In the study, people who were brought back to life through CPR after cardiac arrest could recall memories and conversations while they were seemingly unconscious. 

Between May 2017 and March 2020, the team tracked 567 people who underwent a cardiac arrest. They used EEGs and cerebral oxygenation monitoring to measure electrical activity and brain oxygen levels during CPR. To study auditory and visual awareness, the team used a tablet showing one of 10 images on the screen, and five minutes after, it would play a recording of fruit names: pear, banana, and apple, for another five minutes. 

Only 53 people of the original 567 participants were successfully resuscitated. Initially, they showed no signs of brain activity and were considered dead. But during the CPR, the team noticed bursts of activity. These spikes included gamma waves and others: delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves—all electrical activity that signals consciousness. 

[Related: How your brain conjures dreams]

Twenty-eight of those 53 patients were cognitively capable of having an interview. Eleven people recalled being lucid during CPR, being aware of what was happening or showing perceptions of consciousness like an out-of-body experience. No one could recall the visual image but when asked to randomly name three fruit, one person correctly named all the fruits in the audio recording—though the authors note this could have been a random lucky guess. 

The study authors also included self-reports of 126 other survivors of cardiac arrests not involved in the study and what they remembered from almost dying. Common themes included the pain and pressure of chest compressions, hearing conversations from doctors, out-of-body experiences, and abstract dreams that had nothing to do with the medical event.

The findings debunk the idea that an oxygen-deprived brain stays alive for only five to ten minutes. They also raise the question whether doctors can save people already determined to be dead. “These patients were actually alive within, as seen in the positive waves on the EEG, but externally they were dead,” says Chinwe Ogedegbe, an emergency trauma center section chief and coauthor of the study. 

Beyond the brain’s resilience to the lack of oxygen, the authors propose an alternative “braking system” that could explain the distorted perceptions of consciousness. The brain normally filters and inhibits unneeded information when you’re awake. In this unconscious state, however, the braking system is gone, which could allow dormant brain pathways to activate and access a deeper realm of consciousness containing all of your memory, thoughts, and actions. “Instead of being hallucinatory, illusory or delusional, this appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality,” the authors write in their paper.

Unfortunately, with only a small number of participants surviving their cardiac arrest, it’s unclear whether this altered consciousness is more visual or auditory. Ogedegbe is working to increase the number of participants in the next trial to 1,500. Doing so will give researchers a better idea of the type of brain activity that goes on when someone is at death’s door, and potentially provide comfort that their loved ones can sense them in their final moments.

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If you think your mental health might benefit from psychotherapy, booking an appointment with a professional—often an Herculean task—is only the beginning. Before you start, there might be some mental cobwebs you’ll need to clear out to make therapy work for you. 

Maybe you feel like your problems are insurmountable, or even doubt a therapist’s ability to make a difference. Maybe you fear or distrust the medical system, and opening up seems terrifying. 

Therapists often see these hesitations with their clients and assure that by addressing them, you can overcome them and fully benefit from your time, financial, and emotional investment in the process.

“Me and my therapist didn’t click”

So you went to a therapist and after talking to them for an hour you decided there was no connection. It happens—as much as they’re professionals, they’re also just people, and it’s impossible to connect with everybody. Maybe they were poorly trained, which is not only discouraging, but also downright harmful, says Josh Jonas, a psychotherapist at The Village Institute, a therapy practice in New York City.

This is why it’s so important to find a good fit. Meeting with multiple therapists in your quest to find a dynamic that works for you is normal. Whenever it doesn’t feel right, just try another one. But, as anyone who has looked for this unicorn knows, it’s easier said than done.

[Related: Boost your health with a little nature therapy]

Mental healthcare needs have spiked in the US over the past four years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a shortage of mental health professionals that predated the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened after the health crisis. This has made it hard to find a therapist that’s a good match. The reality is even grimmer for the 160 million Americans that live in states like California, Texas or Arkansas, where mental healthcare access is limited. 

To increase the chances of finding a match, ask for a quick intro call with the therapist you’re planning to see. Even if you are using an online platform where you are matched with someone through a questionnaire, you can request to interview them ahead of your first session and change therapists at any time. 

You can ask them anything you want that will make you feel more at ease about working with them. But if you don’t know what to ask, Jonas suggests some ideas to get you started:

• What is your typical process for getting to know your patients and their concerns?
• What type of therapy do you use and why? 
• How quickly might I anticipate seeing some sort of progress?
• Do you anticipate me needing to set aside time outside of therapy for “homework” or other to-dos?

It will take time and some effort, but Jonas says finding a good therapist is a fight worth fighting. 

“My therapist won’t ‘get’ me”

Your therapist might be a person with an entirely different background than you, which might result in them not understanding you at first. But even if that’s the case, they should really want to try. 

“People can have the sense that because of disparities, you might not get the same treatment,” says Marlene Watson, a licensed therapist and director of training at the Ackerman Institute, a family therapy clinic in New York City, 

People of color, for example, might feel an inherent mistrust in psychotherapy (a field where the grand majority of professionals are white) based on the known history of systemic racism in the medical community. 

In addition, some women might be concerned that male providers will be more dismissive of their experiences based on a history of sexism in healthcare. A 2021 study published in the journal Psychological Services, shows that women with serious mental illness are often overlooked in mental health and rehabilitation settings, and have a higher risk of treatment bias, abuse, and violence compared to men. 

But even if you and your therapist have physical, cultural, or communicational differences, Watson says a good professional will not only have training on cultural bias, but will actively and openly talk to you about not feeling understood. 

“We talk about communication as our business […] a therapist engaging in that type of dialogue is a sign you are in the right place,” she says.

If, on the other hand, they don’t initiate a conversation about it, you can. And if they seem closed off to it, it might be time to look for another therapist.

“I’m going to get reported or committed to a hospital” 

Jonas and Watson validate that the fear of real life repercussions from opening up to a therapist can cause clients to think twice about what they share. From patients sufferring from suicidal ideations or self-harm, to parents worrying Child Protective Services might get involved, some people wonder where the line is when it comes to sharing the hard stuff.

Watson and Jonas say that outcomes where authorities need to get involved are rare and only happen when there’s a serious and imminent risk to the safety of the patient or someone in their life. Both professionals encourage those with suicidal thoughts to seek help, and clarify that asking about these ideations is actually a normal part of their job. Watson says that bringing it up themselves helps patients relax and turns treatment into “just a conversation”. 

“I’d say to people, we are here to help you. To make sure you are safe, and that those around you are safe,” Watson says. 

“I’ll be seen as weak”

There’s long been a negative social stigma around mental illness, implying that seeking therapy is a sign of weakness. This, Jonas says, is especially true among men and particularly prevalent in certain cultural groups, where the notion is exacerbated by the fear that this prejudice might permeate other areas of the patient’s life. 

But Jonas explains this belief is not based on reality, especially as pursuing therapy becomes more common. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 42 million people in the US sought help with their mental health in 2021, a number that has been steadily increasing since 2019.  

In fact, he explains physical and emotional strength are much more similar than people realize. The emotional equivalent of being able to lift and hold 50 pounds at the gym is handling and processing your own emotions in a healthy way without offloading the weight onto someone else. Because that’s what snapping and yelling at people at home or in line at the register is—dropping those heavy dumbbells on the people around you. So therapy is your workout, says Jonas: “It makes you stronger emotionally.”

“Therapy doesn’t work… nobody can really help me”

A lot of people want to work on dealing with the long lasting effects of neglect and emotional disconnection. Ironically, this experience can perpetuate the feeling of neglect, because if a patient was abandoned once, they might feel it’s likely they’ll be abandoned again—even by their therapist. This feeling is also prevalent in patients suffering from addiction, who generally can’t find solace in people but in whatever they’re addicted to. 

[Related: Mental wellness apps are basically the Wild West of therapy]

Luckily, Jonas says a lot of the time you only need one good experience with psychotherapy to dispel that belief. A 2018 literature review published in the journal Psychotherapy showed that a positive relationship between a patient and their therapist is strongly related to a good outcome, so unpacking your own barriers and challenges in that relationship is a must. 

“There are many people I’ve seen who don’t trust, but for some reason trust you. That’s reparative, and a huge win, and the beginning of them learning people can help,” he says.

This is yet another reason why finding the right therapist for you is so important—it can change your entire disposition to your mental health journey. Because trusting the process, Watson says, is essential: “It’s not all about what the therapist can do, but it’s also about what you do.”

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The best workout apps will save you time and (often) money, and many include social features that allow you to get some of the in-person benefits that you’d find at the gym. These apps vary in the quality and variety of instruction, but you might be surprised by the caliber of some free exercise apps—some feature top-notch fitness pros. 

As a personal trainer, I’ve used some of these apps myself and have recommended them for clients and friends. Some apps sync with devices or equipment like heart rate monitors, fitness watches, or exercise bikes. Some offer live instruction along with a wide selection of on-demand classes. They often provide expert guidance on form and let you work out whenever you want, without having to schedule a class or wonder if the gym is open.

Before you sign up for a subscription for one of the many fitness apps available, consider your workout preferences. Do you like to kickbox or strength train? Do you want the option to do both with some yoga or pilates on recovery days? Your goals, lifestyle, and budget play a big role in the best workout app for you. We’ve rounded up our favorites below.

• Best overall: Peloton
• Best free: Nike Training Club
• Best for yoga: Asana Rebel
• Best weightlifting: Fitbod

1. Best overall: Peloton App

First things first: You don’t need a Peloton bike or treadmill to use the Peloton app. Peloton offers different subscription levels to fit a range of budgets and fitness goals, including a free subscription that provides access to 50 classes. 

You can get by on the free subscription if you don’t rely on the app for all of your workouts, and it will give you a good sense of what to expect from the paid tiers. But you can also take advantage of a 30-day trial period for the paid subscriptions to see how the app fits into your workout style. I personally don’t think you need to pay for more than the $12.99 per month subscription unless you’ve got a Peloton bike or treadmill, which requires a $44 per month, all-access subscription.

The Peloton app offers a wide range of exercise modalities, like rowing, strength training, kickboxing, and pilates. The quality of Peloton’s instructors sets them apart from other apps, and in some cases, can feel like a virtual personal trainer. Plus, the fitness coach app features training programs if you’d like to focus on a specific area for a few weeks. Peloton also offers an excellent selection of live leaderboards and social motivation that creates a sense of community for users.

Peloton App is available on Android and iOS for $12.99 per month.

[Related: A beginner’s guide to Google Fit and Apple Health]

2. Best free: Nike Training Club

The Nike Training Club (NTC) is the best free workout app, hands down. Nike removed the subscription fee during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they haven’t reinstated it. This app offers 190 free workouts in a wide range of modalities, from dance and pilates to bodyweight strength training and running warm-ups. It also includes pre-designed programs that run from one to six weeks, helping you build strength and endurance over time. 

NTC also lets you easily build a customized workout. I love good filters because they minimize scrolling through an endless list of workouts. You can filter based upon:

• Available equipment
• Muscle group
• Workout focus
• Trainer-led classes
• Workout length

The app also includes a workout history so you can see your progress. Plus, it offers suggestions based on your past workouts and your preferences. Lasting fitness requires a planned approach, and NTC gives you that option. While instruction isn’t as dynamic as the Peloton app, the classes are led by Nike Master Trainers and the app includes excellent tips on form to maximize your workout time. And you can’t beat the price.

Nike Training Club is free on iOS and Android.

3. Best for yoga: Asana Rebel

As a trainer and a yoga practitioner, I love Asana Rebel. I recommend it to anyone who prefers yoga as their main form of exercise. 

When you sign up, you fill out a survey and the app tailors your options based on your preferences. Strong filter features help you find workouts by length, muscle group, experience level, and workout goals. Plus, there are meditations if you feel like you need something quieter than yoga. For the desk-bound, this app includes yoga for the office to give you a stretch and rejuvenation from your chair. But don’t let the ease of use fool you. Most yoga practitioners can find challenging workouts. 

One of my favorite features is the add-on option at the end of each workout. You can start with a five-minute focus on flexibility and finish your session with a routine that targets the upper body, followed by some meditation. Plus, the app offers nutrition and meditation guidance, providing a holistic approach to physical and mental health. 

Asana Rebel offers a yearly subscription that costs around $6 per month. However, the subscription frequently goes on sale for 50 percent off, so you can snag yourself a good deal.

Asana Rebel is available for Android and iOS for about $6 a month.

[Related: The best fitness trackers]

4. Best for weightlifting: Fitbod

Building muscle safely requires a plan, and the Fitbod app helps you develop a tailored regimen and record your progress for long-term success. The app guides you through a strength training plan, offering suggestions as you progress. You get three workouts for free before you have to pay for the $12.99-per-month subscription. 

The app customizes exercises based on your fitness level and access to equipment. When you sign up, you put in your fitness level, goals, and add a checkmark next to the equipment available to you. If you’re limited to dumbbells and body weight, the app provides suggestions based on your answers. Fitbod can help you create workouts whether you have access to a full gym or not. 

You can also create your own workout programs or customize suggestions made by the app. Selection starts with choosing a muscle group or two, and Fitbod provides suggestions that include circuits and supersets to give you options to choose from. The app also provides instructions for strength moves ranging from bench presses to mountain climbers. And instructors demonstrate proper form in included videos.

While this app may not be robust enough for pro lifters, Fitbod is an excellent choice for people designing their lifting programs on their own, as it combines instruction and a workout planner. Even those with more experience can use it as an exercise plan, tallying sessions and sets to monitor progress.

Fitbod is available for Android and iOS for $12.99 per month after three free workouts.

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The values and lifestyles of past societies are often revealed to anthropologists and archaeologists through their relationship with death and the burial of their dead. It’s an essential hallmark of human cultural systems and part of this relationship involves manipulations, retrieval, and reburial of human remains after an individual had died. Now, some new evidence from a cave in Spain shows that early humans may have returned to the burial site to craft tools from the bones and possibly extract marrow, potentially as food. The findings are detailed in a study published September 20 in the open-access journal PLOS One.

[Related: Cremated remains still hold clues to life and death in the Bronze Age.]

Caves along the Iberian Peninsula were not only Neanderthal crab cooking hotspots, but also as places to bury the dead and modify human remains for thousands of years. Using caves for burials was a common practice in multiple present-day countries, and it began to become more common in Portugal and Spain around the 4,000 BCE. The archaeological sites in this region show evidence that human remains were later manipulated for other uses, but the cultural meaning behind these changes is still largely unclear. 

University of Bern bioarchaeologist Zita Laffranchi, anthropologist Marco Milella, and  Universidad de Córdoba archaeologist Rafael M. Martínez Sánchez co-wrote the study, and  believe that the underground and dark features of the caves likely provided ancient humans with a well-suited place to house remains. 

“Such traits are shared by ancient Neolithic farming societies in Iberia, Europe, and other parts of the world, as part of a system of transcultural responses towards death. As if it were a ‘device of making ancestors,’ the community remains grouped together after death, in a subterranean space interpreted as a perpetual projection of an eternal nocturnal environment,” the study authors wrote in an interview accompanying the paper.

In the new study, the team examined human remains from the Cueva de los Marmoles cave in southern Spain. They looked at the bones of at least 12 people. Radiocarbon dating pegged the burials between the fifth and second millennium BCE, roughly from this area’s Neolithic period to its Bronze Age. Most of the items from this study were excavated between 1998 and 2018. These include a diligently carved human skull cup, a tibia that appears to have been modified for use as a tool, and dozens of other bone fragments found in the almost 27,000 square-foot cave. 

New evidence suggests that some remains may have been intentionally broken and scraped for marrow for up to a year after the Marmoles individuals had died. The team noted the intentional post-mortem modifications made to the remains, which include some fractures and scrapes to the bones. These cuts could have resulted from efforts to get marrow and other tissues from the bones for dietary or practical uses. 

They were initially surprised by the extended time frame that the cave was used for funerary practices.

“This suggests that Marmoles was a symbolic landmark for human communities living in the area, and was likely to be the presence of specific funerary traditions,” wrote the authors. “Secondly, the most interesting aspect of our findings was the complex treatment of the remains, often difficult to interpret, but which unequivocally points to rather homogenous actions, and well-defined traditions and beliefs systems.”

[Related: Extinct human cousins may have beaten us to inventing burial rituals.]

These results match other cave sites in the region, and show that burying human remains in caves and later modifying and using them as food and tools was daily widespread. While there could also be further symbolic purposes for these body modifications, those are still unclear and need further study. 

The authors say that the next steps will include continued archaeological study of the save and apply more radiocarbon, anthropological, and zooarchaeological analyses to the skeletal remains that may emerge in future digs at Marmoles and other burial caves in the area. 

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Excerpted from Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life by Neha Sangwan, MD, with permission from McGraw Hill, pages 44-49, September 2023.

How do you tell the difference between when your body is casually communicating with you and when it is trying to alert you to signs of burnout? Well, that depends on how closely you’re listening and whether you’re numbing the early signals. Your body has manners. It knows you’re busy, so it starts with a whisper, at a low volume (say one or two out of 10), but if you don’t pay attention, it continues to get louder, until it eventually stops you in your tracks. If you’ve gotten in the habit of hitting snooze on your body’s signals with various coping mechanisms, you can reach an 11—a heart attack, pneumonia, or other crisis—without even realizing it. That’s scary. 

It’s important to note that your body is more than just an alarm system. It wants to be your friend, and it talks to you about everything. Yes, it’s also informing you in your everyday communication with others when something is:
 

• Important to you 
• Out of balance 
• Different from what you expected 
• Not quite right 
• Exactly right 

Your body’s signals will not only give you a heads-up when something is wrong and it’s time to see the doctor, but also day-to-day updates on what resonates with you and what just feels off. Once you learn how to interpret these powerful signals, you’ll have a distinct advantage in every conversation, interaction, and experience in your life. 

The body map

Begin by ruling out any medical problems. Any new and unusual signals from your body need to be checked out by a medical professional. Once you’ve gotten a clean bill of health, then you can explore how the collection of symptoms may potentially be caused by burnout. 

When we’re acutely focused on everyone and everything around us (external data), it’s easy to miss what’s happening inside us (internal data). Recognizing and healing burnout depends on how attuned you are to interpreting your own physiology and responding to the data your body is sending. 

Each person’s body has a unique communication style. For some people, it’s their heart racing, stomach turning, or muscles tensing. For others, it’s sweating or shallow, rapid breathing. All day long, your body communicates with you, and it’s critical that you’re able to decipher those signals. These physical sensations are the gateway of awareness to valuable information that will guide you on this journey. 

Take a look at the Body Map illustration below to get a few ideas of how your body might be trying to communicate with you. By no means is this an exhaustive list. Feel free to add your own physical sensations to the diagram. 

One of the fastest ways to tune in to your physiology is by becoming aware of your physical body in space and where it meets the external world. By this, I mean literally shifting your attention to where your body meets the chair or wherever you are sitting. If you’re standing, notice where your feet meet the floor. As you take your next deep breath, focus on the expansion and contraction of your rib cage. Next, become aware of the sensations of clothing on your body, such as the tightness or looseness of your waistband.

Don’t worry if this doesn’t come naturally. If you’ve experienced high stress over long periods of time, you may have adapted to tuning out your body’s sensations. It’s a common coping mechanism. For example, Alex, my seatmate on my latest flight, was adept at silencing his body’s signals (headaches, insomnia, and back pain). He went searching for clues to heal himself, but in the interim, prescriptions and cocktails brought the only relief he could find. 

If you’ve been relying on your own coping mechanisms, whatever they may be, and are out of practice at listening to your body, try expanding your awareness in everyday activities: 

1. While you’re on a call or in a meeting, hold a smooth stone or weight that fits comfortably in your hand.

2. Each time you notice the weight in your hand, use it as a reminder to check in with your body (meaning, is your body trying to get your attention? Do your wrists hurt from too much typing? Is your rear end numb from sitting for too long? Do you need to stand up, stretch, or get some water?). 

3. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t feel anything. Instead, take a deep breath and refocus your attention back on the weight in your hand.

 4. Anytime you notice an emotion arise in another person or a shift in intensity in the conversation, that’s a good time to bring your awareness back to the weight in your hand. 

5. Be patient. You will begin to tune in to your body’s signals.

The signals are already there

You probably feel more than you realize. What about that pesky neck or shoulder pain? A 3 o’clock energy dip? Any intermittent headaches? What about joint stiffness? These are all signals from your body. 

Once you identify and understand its unique language, you will be able to decipher the physical clues even earlier (at lower intensities), get curious and ask yourself, What happens before that? And just before that?

Interpreting your body  

Understanding your body’s unique language can seem confusing at first. That’s only until you learn how to interpret the intensity and frequency of the signals as well as the context of the situation. The data from your body typically falls into one of three main categories:   

Everyday guidance: low volume, low frequency

Helping you navigate everyday situations and a changing environment and recalibrating your internal GPS in new experiences. These physical signals can show up in many ways: intermittent muscle tension, throat constriction, jaw tightness, knots in your stomach, to name a few. 

Chronic depletion: mid-volume, more frequent

Alerting you to a drain of energy and lack of alignment in your internal GPS. These physical signals can show up as individual symptoms, such as fatigue, heart palpitations, insomnia, headaches, imbalance, pain, brain fog, forgetfulness, diarrhea, constipation, or a collection of symptoms known as a syndrome. 

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This article is republished from The Conversation.

Heart in your throat. Butterflies in your stomach. Bad gut feeling. These are all phrases many people use to describe fear and anxiety. You have likely felt anxiety inside your chest or stomach, and your brain usually doesn’t hurt when you’re scared. Many cultures tie cowardice and bravery more to the heart or the guts than to the brain.

But science has traditionally seen the brain as the birthplace and processing site of fear and anxiety. Then why and how do you feel these emotions in other parts of your body?

I am a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who researches and treats fear and anxiety. In my book “Afraid,” I explain how fear works in the brain and the body and what too much anxiety does to the body. Research confirms that while emotions do originate in your brain, it’s your body that carries out the orders.

Fear and the brain

While your brain evolved to save you from a falling rock or speeding predator, the anxieties of modern life are often a lot more abstract. Fifty-thousand years ago, being rejected by your tribe could mean death, but not doing a great job on a public speech at school or at work doesn’t have the same consequences. Your brain, however, might not know the difference.

There are a few key areas of the brain that are heavily involved in processing fear.

When you perceive something as dangerous, whether it’s a gun pointed at you or a group of people looking unhappily at you, these sensory inputs are first relayed to the amygdala. This small, almond-shaped area of the brain located near your ears detects salience, or the emotional relevance of a situation and how to react to it. When you see something, it determines whether you should eat it, attack it, run away from it or have sex with it.

Threat detection is a vital part of this process, and it has to be fast. Early humans did not have much time to think when a lion was lunging toward them. They had to act quickly. For this reason, the amygdala evolved to bypass brain areas involved in logical thinking and can directly engage physical responses. For example, seeing an angry face on a computer screen can immediately trigger a detectable response from the amygdala without the viewer even being aware of this reaction.

The hippocampus is near and tightly connected to the amygdala. It’s involved in memorizing what is safe and what is dangerous, especially in relation to the environment – it puts fear in context. For example, seeing an angry lion in the zoo and in the Sahara both trigger a fear response in the amygdala. But the hippocampus steps in and blocks this response when you’re at the zoo because you aren’t in danger.

The prefrontal cortex, located above your eyes, is mostly involved in the cognitive and social aspects of fear processing. For example, you might be scared of a snake until you read a sign that the snake is nonpoisonous or the owner tells you it’s their friendly pet.

Although the prefrontal cortex is usually seen as the part of the brain that regulates emotions, it can also teach you fear based on your social environment. For example, you might feel neutral about a meeting with your boss but immediately feel nervous when a colleague tells you about rumors of layoffs. Many prejudices like racism are rooted in learning fear through tribalism.

Fear and the rest of the body

If your brain decides that a fear response is justified in a particular situation, it activates a cascade of neuronal and hormonal pathways to prepare you for immediate action. Some of the fight-or-flight response – like heightened attention and threat detection – takes place in the brain. But the body is where most of the action happens.

Several pathways prepare different body systems for intense physical action. The motor cortex of the brain sends rapid signals to your muscles to prepare them for quick and forceful movements. These include muscles in the chest and stomach that help protect vital organs in those areas. That might contribute to a feeling of tightness in your chest and stomach in stressful conditions.

The sympathetic nervous system is the gas pedal that speeds up the systems involved in fight or flight. Sympathetic neurons are spread throughout the body and are especially dense in places like the heart, lungs and intestines. These neurons trigger the adrenal gland to release hormones like adrenaline that travel through the blood to reach those organs and increase the rate at which they undergo the fear response.

To assure sufficient blood supply to your muscles when they’re in high demand, signals from the sympathetic nervous system increase the rate your heart beats and the force with which it contracts. You feel both increased heart rate and contraction force in your chest, which is why you may connect the feeling of intense emotions to your heart.

In your lungs, signals from the sympathetic nervous system dilate airways and often increase your breathing rate and depth. Sometimes this results in a feeling of shortness of breath.

As digestion is the last priority during a fight-or-flight situation, sympathetic activation slows down your gut and reduces blood flow to your stomach to save oxygen and nutrients for more vital organs like the heart and the brain. These changes to your gastrointestinal system can be perceived as the discomfort linked to fear and anxiety.

It all goes back to the brain

All bodily sensations, including those visceral feelings from your chest and stomach, are relayed back to the brain through the pathways via the spinal cord. Your already anxious and highly alert brain then processes these signals at both conscious and unconscious levels.

The insula is a part of the brain specifically involved in conscious awareness of your emotions, pain and bodily sensations. The prefrontal cortex also engages in self-awareness, especially by labeling and naming these physical sensations, like feeling tightness or pain in your stomach, and attributing cognitive value to them, like “this is fine and will go away” or “this is terrible and I am dying.” These physical sensations can sometimes create a loop of increasing anxiety as they make the brain feel more scared of the situation because of the turmoil it senses in the body.

Although the feelings of fear and anxiety start in your brain, you also feel them in your body because your brain alters your bodily functions. Emotions take place in both your body and your brain, but you become aware of their existence with your brain. As the rapper Eminem recounted in his song “Lose Yourself,” the reason his palms were sweaty, his knees weak and his arms heavy was because his brain was nervous.

Arash Javanbakht is an associate professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University

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

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Finding lasting love can be really difficult. We’ve all heard the annoying adages like “there’s plenty of fish in the sea,” not to mention the old “opposites attract” chestnut. However, many people tend to end up being quite similar to their partners, according to the results of a study published August 31 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

[Related: Social relationships are important to the health of aging adults.]

The new research included numerous studies dating back more than a century. The team examined 130 traits from millions of couples, ranging from political leanings to age of first sexual intercourse to substance use habits. For between 82 and 89 percent of traits analyzed, partners were more likely than not to be similar. In only one part of the analysis, and for only three percent of studied traits, did individuals tend to be coupled with someone who is demonstrates an opposing trait.

In addition to shedding light on some of those unseen forces that may shape human relationships, this research could have some important implications for the field of genetic research.

“A lot of models in genetics assume that human mating is random. This study shows this assumption is probably wrong,” study co-author and University of Colorado at Boulder psychologist and neuroscientists Matt Keller, said in a statement. Keller noted that a tendency called assortative mating—when individuals with similar traits couple up—can actually skew findings of genetic studies.

To find their results, the team conducted both a meta-analysis of previous research and their own original data analysis. In the meta-analysis, they examined 22 traits across 199 studies of millions of male-female co-parents, engaged pairs, married pairs, or cohabitating pairs. The oldest study in this analysis was conducted back in 1903. They also used a dataset called the UK Biobank to analyze 133 traits across almost 80,000 opposite-sex pairs in the United Kingdom.

Same sex couples were not included in the research because the patterns in these types of partnerships may differ significantly. The authors are now pursuing those relationships in a separate study.

[Related: These fuzzy burrowers don’t need oxytocin to fall in love.]

Traits such as political and religious attitudes, level of education, and certain measures of IQ showed particularly high correlations. For example, on a scale of 0 meaning no correlation and 1 meaning couples always share a trait, the correlation for political values was .58. Traits surrounding substance use also showed high correlations, with heavy drinkers, smokers, and teetotalers tending to strongly pair with those who share similar traits. Traits like height and weight, medical conditions, and personality showed much lower but still positive correlations. For example, the correlation for neuroticism was .11.

Interestingly, some traits, such as extroversion, did not have much of a correlation.

“People have all these theories that extroverts like introverts or extroverts like other extroverts, but the fact of the matter is that it’s about like flipping a coin: Extroverts are similarly likely to end up with extroverts as with introverts,” study co-author and University of Colorado at Boulder PhD student Tanya Horwitz said in a statement. 

The meta-analysis found “no compelling evidence” that on any trait that opposites attract. However, in the sample from the UK Biobank, the team did find a handful of traits in which there seemed to be a small negative correlation, including hearing difficulty, tendency to worry, and whether someone is more of a morning person or night person (called chronotype). Additional studies will be needed to understand those findings, according to the team. 

Some of the less-frequently studied traits including number of sexual partners and whether an individual had been breastfed as a child also showed some correlation.

“These findings suggest that even in situations where we feel like we have a choice about our relationships, there may be mechanisms happening behind the scenes of which we aren’t fully aware,” said Horwitz.

According to the authors, couples could share traits for a variety of reasons, including growing up in a similar area. Some people are simply attracted to those who are similar based on the traits studied, and some couples grow more similar the longer they stay in the relationship. 

These pairings could lead to some downstream genetic consequences. For example, if short people are more likely to produce offspring with a similar height and vice versa, there could be more people at the height extremes in the next generation. This same thing apply for medical, psychiatric, and other traits according to Horowitz. 

Some of the social implications include those with similar educational backgrounds continuing to pair up, which could widen socioeconomic divides.

The team cautions that the correlations found were fairly modest and should not be overstated or misused to promote an agenda. Assortative mating has historically been dangerously co-opted by the eugenics movement, which gained traction during the early 20th century.

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In Head Trip, PopSci explores the relationship between our brains, our senses, and the strange things that happen in between.

WE’VE ALL WONDERED how it might feel to inhabit a body that is not our own. The idea of body transfer has been a science fiction staple from the 1882 novel Vice Versa to the ongoing blockbuster Avatar movies. But while we won’t be swapping bodies with anyone else soon, it turns out that it is possible to feel as if something that’s not actually part of your body is connected to it. This phenomenon is called the body transfer illusion.

The canonical example of the body transfer illusion is the rubber hand experiment. In it, a subject’s hand is obscured from view, perhaps with a mirror box, and a rubber hand is placed where the individual might expect to see their own. If both the real hand and the rubber hand receive identical manipulation—for example, by being stroked gently—then after a while, the participant begins to perceive the fake part as their own. When someone swings a hammer in the direction of the rubber hand, say, the subject might flinch. 

The rubber hand experiment was first described in 1998 and has been explored widely in the decades since. Perhaps the best-known application of the phenomenon is as therapy for people with amputated limbs who are experiencing phantom limb pain.

The key to this illusion seems to be the interaction between so-called bottom-up and top-down constructions of body ownership: The former is based on pure sensory input, while the latter is based on the brain’s experience and resultant expectations. “The brain has a lot of knowledge about your body,” says H. Henrik Ehrsson, a cognitive neuroscientist at Karolinska Institute in Sweden whose work focuses on the construction of a sense of body ownership. “It remembers where your body was just a few seconds ago. It has an internal representation of your body, and it’s always going to compare that to the incoming sensory data.” 

The rubber hand experiment is an example of how incoming data can be manipulated in a way that alters the brain’s internal representation of the body. However, there are limits to the sorts of illusions that can be induced. “The shape of the object is important,” Ehrsson explains. “[The illusion] works well with objects that are similar to human limbs, but if you have, say, a block of wood, or something like that, it doesn’t work.” It’s also important for the stimulation of the rubber and real hands to be synchronized—if “visual and tactile stimuli are out of sync by even a couple of hundred milliseconds, the illusion will not be elicited,” he adds.

Mel Slater, a professor at the University of Barcelona in Spain, has spent decades exploring the idea of body transfer in the context of virtual reality. He describes one of his experiments, from 2012, in which he attempted to quantify exactly how far the illusion could be pushed. Fifty participants entered a VR environment where one of their simulated arms began growing in length. Participants reported that the feeling of identification with the arm declined as its length grew. They maintained a strong sense of ownership—initially. “The illusion was maintained for that arm up to three times the length of the real arm—but no more,” Slater says. “Not four times.” The experiment shows that while there appear to be limits on how radically different a body we can identify with, some wild outcomes remain possible.

Beyond distorting the physical dimensions of the body, the body transfer illusion can also create all sorts of fascinating potential scenarios, such as embodying someone of a different race, gender, or age. Slater’s experiments have explored all these possibilities and found that such experiences seem to have profound psychological effects on participants. For example, a white person’s experience of inhabiting the body of a person of color resulted in a measurable and lasting reduction in implicit racial bias.

There are also stranger possibilities, like experiencing supernumerary limbs or two full bodies. One might think that the sense of having a pair of right arms would be disconcerting. However, Ehrsson—who tests all his experiments himself—is at pains to point out the difference between illusions and delusions. With the former, the person feeling the sensation retains an understanding that the faux circumstances aren’t “real”; thus, the experience lacks the emotionally distressing nature of a genuine delusion.

So what’s having two right arms like? Ehrsson laughs. It’s “weird,” he says, “[but] quite funny.” 

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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When it comes to building a sustainable settlement on Mars, the technological and engineering challenges are steep. But they take a back seat to the Human Resources department. Forget sophisticated vehicles or sensitive instrumentation—the most temperamental, fragile things we send to the Red Planet will be humans.

After all, NASA’s Opportunity rover roamed Mars for 14 years, separated from Earth by a half-hour communications delay, scoured by dust storms and irradiated by cosmic rays, and never complained or got into a fight with a colleague. 

Humans, though, will be sequestered “in a confined space about the size of a small RV for three years,” James Driskell, a research psychologist at the Florida Maxima Corporation, says of most plausible NASA Mars mission scenarios. Driskell and his company have consulted with the space agency and the US military on the psychological issues of crews in isolated and stressful situations. In tight quarters, “people get angry at each other.”

Current Mars plans, such as NASA’s proposed Artemis mission, would send astronauts there and back on a three-year round trip. But you can imagine how stressful dynamics—danger, isolation, other people—might increase on a permanent base or research station, if crews stayed for a decade (or forever). Or, rather than using your imagination, you can rely on the computer simulation of a Mars settlement produced by George Mason University Computational Social Scientist Anamaria Berea and her colleagues. 

In a forthcoming study that hasn’t yet undergone full peer review, Berea and her colleagues detail how they used an “agent-based modeling” approach—a computer system not all that different from a large video game—to calculate the survivability of different population sizes of Mars settlers. They’ve incorporated personality types, too, for the long haul. They came to two main conclusions: that only a few tens of initial settlers are needed to create a sustainable colony, and that people with more agreeable social traits did better for themselves and the larger settlement. 

[Related: Rodent astronauts suggest trips to Mars will make us anxious, forgetful, and afraid]

The new study originated as a response to other papers suggesting that between 100 and 300 people would be the minimum necessary to begin a sustainable settlement on Mars. The nonprofit Blue Marble Science Institute, which studies questions of planetary science and habitability, contacted Berea to see whether her team could verify the other studies’ minimally viable population numbers. 

Berea says she had a better idea: Creating a simulation for a space habitat that included “human, social, and behavioral factors.” Berea and her team at the computational social sciences department had created simulated humans, who were assigned a set of skills necessary for running a Mars settlement, such as producing food or maintaining life support systems. 

Each faux settler had one of four aggregate personality types: There were the “agreeables,” highly social and low in scores of aggressions or competitiveness; “socials,” extroverts with a bit more of a competitive edge; “reactives,” who were more still competitive and fixated on fixed routines; and “neurotics,” highly competitive people with difficulty coping with changes in routine or boredom. Settlement members could die in accidents, or due to “health” conditions determined by the available food and life support resources, but could also be replenished by resupply shuttles every 18 months—the researchers chose not to model sex and reproduction. 

After running multiple computer models for more than 20 simulated years, the study authors found that settlements could begin with far fewer than 100 settlers and remain sustainable, despite accidents or dips in food supplies. The lowest number to kickstart a sustainable settlement was 22 people, but that is not a hard limit, according to Berea. “It’s somewhere between 10 and 50,” she says. “It’s in the tens; It’s not in the hundreds like the other papers were saying.”

[Related: NASA rover finds evidence of carbon-based chemistry in Martian crater]

They also found that agreeable personality types were the most likely to survive to the end of each simulation run. But Bera is careful to note that the agents—the algorithmic representations of humans—do not remain static through the simulation, just as people, whatever their personalities, change over time. “The neurotic that puts his or her foot down on the planet on day zero might not be the neurotic on day 100. They interact, and they adjust,” she says.

This can be seen in real-world Mars mission simulations, such as the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) missions, which places crews of six people in a simulated Mars habituated on the rocky lava slopes of Mauna Loa. There, it’s vital to anticipate the ways people change over time. 

“For the first few weeks, usually of people living under stressful conditions, they can still kind of have a ‘honeymoon period’ where everyone’s still very polite and patient and can kind of get along despite some challenges,” says astrobiologist Michaela Musilova, the former director of HI-SEAS from 2018 until 2022. “Usually after the first few weeks is when people really start to struggle and if they’re not prepared for it properly.” 

That struggle could take the form of depression or rudeness with other crew members or mission control. Over the 30 simulated Moon and Mars missions for which Musilova served as commander, she found the answer was to consciously forge bonds between crew members using shared meals and evening recreation, such as karaoke. 

“The more the crew bonded, the longer the ‘honeymoon period’ lasted and even when it wore off, the crew still behaved politely towards one another,” she says. 

Musilova also found that selecting as diverse a group of people as possible, in terms of skills, life experience and ethnicity, helped ensure a better functioning team. 

That’s one thing that Berea and her colleagues didn’t model—all of their simulations contained equal numbers of the four personality types they had defined, rather than trying to build teams composed of different proportions of different types of people. Purposefully screening for personality is something Driskell notes is important for building teams going into difficult and isolated conditions. 

“What type of trait profiles do we want in that team? That sociability and extraversion is really good, but you don’t want a team full of it, because then they’re going to really want to just interact and get along and talk,” Driskell says. At the same time, he adds, you have people who are very competent and follow the rules and keep things running, but who are just a complete pain to live with. “Everybody’s got an example of somebody who was extremely technically adept, but you just could not get along with them,” he says. “I guess Elon Musk is a good example.”

Neither human nor computer simulations of Mars missions can ever fully predict the experience of putting human boots on the Red Planet, but each approach also takes a different slice of the problem. Computer simulations such as Berea’s and her colleagues can give researchers some idea of the large-scale population dynamics and psychology of a Mars settlement over many years. A 12-month HI-SEAS Mars mission, meanwhile, helps tease out real-life psychological nuance you can’t get from a computer model. 

Berea hopes to do more to integrate both approaches in the future, noting that NASA has just launched a new Mars analog mission, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) in the Mars Dune Alpha habitat. “Once they are done with that project, it would be great to get the data and compare that with our model for validation,” she says.

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Buying a space themed t-shirt with planets, swirling galaxies, or a NASA logo made to fit a five-year-old girl shouldn’t really be a tall order, but it was a daunting task for mom and entrepreneur Jaya Iyer. In 2015, she struggled to find clothing for her budding space cadet daughter in traditional retailers and noticed a huge hole in the market that is still reflective of society at large. The gender gap in STEM fields remains persistent, with women making up only 28 percent of the STEM workforce. That idea that science is for boys and not girls can begin as young as six, according to a 2021 study from Yale University. This outdated idea is still reflected with the very clothes available to them.

[Related: If you want sustainable clothes, focus on the farms.]

Equipped with a stereotype smashing goal, years of experience with online retailer ThinkGeek, and a PhD in fashion merchandising from Iowa State University, Iyer launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to create clothing for children whose hobbies don’t fit in “gender traditional” boxes—think girls who love bugs and math or boys who like cats more than reptiles. Svaha USA was born and since then, the company has expanded into adult and more gender neutral clothing and has collaborated with NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg. Their latest team up has tech executive and STEAM ambassador Rhonda Vetere contributing to a line of clothing featuring circuits, binary code, and robots.

It’s all with the same goals–representing science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) fields, clothing inclusivity and adaptability, and keeping the wearer feeling good without too much effort.

“If I have to dry clean anything that I own, it sits in my closet, because I don’t want to deal with having to go to a dry cleaner, drop it off, pick it up, and it’s expensive. I didn’t want those fussy features of any clothing,” Iyer tells PopSci. 

Iyer has long used her customer base as her primary source of ideas, inspiration, and market research, even holding multiple design competitions for new STEAM inspired patterns and clothing because she believes that, “art has to be a part of every element of STEM.” Customers are also the ones who have helped make the brand more adaptive and inclusive. For those with sensory issues, the clothes come in knitted fabrics for extra softness and do not have itchy fasteners. She began to make front button shirts for new moms who are nursing. Some options do not have zippers so wearers can easily get dressed in the morning without the help of a partner or roommate. 

All Svaha dresses also come with an element that is noteworthy for pretty much anyone who identifies as female–pockets. “I do have customers who say that, even my two-year-old now realizes the importance of having pockets in her dresses,” says Iyer. “I also realized how important it is for people who want to carry an insulin pump to have these kinds of clothing.”

While pockets in clothing may seem like a trivial bit of detail for some, wearing functional clothing can send an important message of inclusivity. Fashion psychologist, author, and instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York Dawnn Karen says the gender messaging on a lack of pockets can devalue the wearer and can contribute to decision fatigue, as needing to carry a bag for everyday items is just one more thing to worry about. 

[Related: Google’s new AI will show how clothes look on different body types.]

“We make more than 100 decisions a day. Think of someone in intense STEM jobs. If you want to focus on something, but have to think about a bag, it can make you feel unworthy or just add more stress,” Karen tells PopSci. “It’s more psychological than anything. A man with pockets built into his whole attire doesn’t have to think about that one less thing.”

In addition to this lack of functionality, women’s clothing also tends to be more painful, restrictive, and distracting to the wearer. This can interrupt focus and make it more difficult to move around in the workplace, according to research from Northwestern University’s Body and Media Lab. Anecdotal experiments with switching over to clothes made for men can reveal the lack of pain and mark inducing bits of clothing and simplifying dressing decisions, which can lead to more comfort and some overall happiness. 

To combat all of this, Karen promotes a movement she founded called dopamine dressing. Referencing the neurotransmitter nicknamed the “feel good hormone,” dopamine dressing encourages people of all gender identities to embrace the power of wearing clothes and accessories that help them feel happy. The concept arose at a time where Karen was having difficulty expressing herself verbally while recovering from sexual assault. Her experience studying counseling psychology in graduate school and as a part-time model led her to use clothing to work through feelings. 

“Mood illustration is dressing to perpetuate and optimize your current mood. It’s to maintain some type of emotional equilibrium and is what has been nicknamed dopamine dressing,” explains Karen.

The first key ingredient for Karen’s philosophy is color. Karen believes that color can help with this mood enhancement, even if it is a color that client’s of hers don’t believe will look good with their skin tones. While brighter colors do tend to elicit more of those happy feelings, it is highly individualized and some of Karen’s clients feel their best in all black. 

On the other side of the fashion psych coin is serotonin dressing, where people are encouraged to use clothing to sit with their negative feelings and actually pass through them instead of pushing them down or away. “Anything you suppress ends up coming back up. So you don’t want to suppress it,” says Karen. 

[Related: This STEM club for girls turned a real BMW into a sweet racing simulator.]

The second crucial ingredient is one that she shares with Iyer and Svaha USA–the all important comfort factor. Both cited the COVID-19 pandemic as having a major effect on consumers realizing that texture, fabric, and comfort really do matter for clothing. This impact goes beyond the power of the pocketbook. 

“If you are wearing something that you feel extremely comfortable in, you are going to feel happy and good wearing them all day long,” says Iyer. “I feel like that happiness can then very easily move on to everything that you do in the day.”

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This article is republished from The Conversation.

Laughter is an everyday reminder that we humans are animals. In fact, when recorded laughter is slowed down, listeners can’t tell whether the sound is from a person or an animal.

We throw our heads back and bare our teeth in a monkeylike grin. Sometimes we double over and lose our ability to speak for a moment, reverting temporarily to hooting apes. And just as hoots and howls help strengthen bonds in a troop of primates or a pack of wolves, laughter helps us connect with others.

Laughter is evolutionarily ancient. Known as a “play signal,” mammalian laughter accompanies playful interactions to signal harmless intentions and keep the play going. Chimps laugh. Rats laugh. Dogs laugh. Perhaps even dolphins laugh.

And laughter is an essential feature of human social interactions. We laugh when we’re amused, of course. But we also laugh out of embarrassment, politeness, nervousness and derision.

I’m a psychology researcher who studies how people use laughter to connect, and sometimes disconnect, with others. For humans, laughter has expanded from its original function as a play signal to serve a variety of social functions.

Laughter smooths social interactions

Amused laughter is a response to what scholars of humor call a “benign violation” – a situation that could represent a threat but that the laughing person has concluded is safe. (Psychologists love to ruin good things like comedy by overexplaining them.)

Laughter is a way to communicate that an interaction is playful, harmless and unserious. It’s often not a reliable sign that a person is having a good time, even though people sometimes laugh when they are enjoying themselves. An awkward exchange, a misunderstanding, a mocking joke – all these potentially uncomfortable moments are smoothed over by laughter.

My colleagues and I were curious about whether the tendency to laugh is a trait that is consistent for each person regardless of context or whether it depends on whom they’re interacting with. In one study, we had people talk to 10 strangers in a series of one-on-one conversations. Then we counted how many times they laughed.

To our surprise, we found that how often a person laughs – at least when talking to strangers – is fairly consistent. Some people are laughers, and others are not. Whom they were talking to didn’t have a strong effect. At least in our sample, there weren’t hilarious partners who made everyone they talked to laugh.

We found that the people who tended to laugh more enjoyed the conversations less. If you intrinsically enjoy talking to strangers and feel comfortable doing so, you may not feel the need to laugh a lot and smooth out the interaction – you trust it is going well. However, people felt they had more in common with these big-time laughers.

So in conversations between strangers, laughing a lot is not a sign of enjoyment, but it will make your partners feel similar to you. They will be likelier to agree that the two of you have something in common, which is a key ingredient in social connection. I suspect people borrow and transform the play signal of laughter to influence situations that, on their face, have nothing to do with play.

Laughter sends a message

We humans have remarkable control over our voices. Not only can we speak, but we can also alter the meaning of our words by modifying our vocal pitch, vowel placement, breathiness or nasality. A breathy “hello” becomes a flirtatious advance, a growly “hello” becomes a threat, and an upturned, high-pitched “hello” becomes a fearful question.

This got me thinking: Maybe people change the sound of their laughter depending on what they want to communicate.

After all, while some forms of laughter are considered uncontrollable – the kind that leaves you physically weak and running out of oxygen – most everyday laughter is at least somewhat under your control.

It turns out that there are already a lot of studies looking at different forms of laughter. Although their perspectives and methods differ, researchers agree that laughter takes many acoustic forms and occurs in many different situations.

The most popular approach for categorizing the many forms of laughter is to sort them by the internal state of the person laughing. Is the laughter “genuine,” reflecting a true positive state? Or is it the result of embarrassment, schadenfreude or mirth?

I wasn’t satisfied with those approaches. Laughter is a communicative behavior. To me it seems we should therefore categorize it according to how it influences the people listening, not based on how the person felt while laughing. The word “cat” transmits the same information to a listener regardless of whether the speaker loves or loathes felines. And the effect of a giggle on a listener is the same regardless of how the giggler feels, assuming the giggle sounds the same.

Pleasurable, reassuring or threatening

With the communicative nature of laughter in mind, my colleagues and I proposed that laughter can be boiled down to three basic social functions – all under the cloak of playfulness.

First, there’s reward laughter. This type is most clearly linked to laughter’s evolved role as a play signal. It is pleasurable to hear and produce, thus making a playful interaction even more enjoyable.

Then there’s affiliation laughter. It conveys the same message of harmlessness without delivering a burst of pleasure. People can use it to reassure, appease and soothe. This is the most common laughter in everyday conversations – people punctuate their speech with it to ensure that their intentions aren’t misconstrued.

Finally, there’s dominance laughter. This type turns the nonserious message on its head. By laughing at someone, you are conveying that they are not worth taking seriously.

My colleagues and I have identified acoustic properties of laughter that make it sound more rewarding, friendly or dominant. I have also found that people change how their laughter sounds during conversations that emphasize those three social tasks. The changes are subtle because the context – the situation, the people’s relationship, the conversation topic – does a lot to clarify a laugh’s meaning.

There is no such thing as a fake laugh. All laughter serves genuine social functions, helping you navigate complex social interactions. And because you look and sound so silly while doing it, laughter ensures no one takes themselves too seriously.

Adrienne Wood is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Wood receives funding from the National Science Foundation. University of Virginia provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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

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In Head Trip, PopSci explores the relationship between our brains, our senses, and the strange things that happen in between.

WHEN I WAS six years old, I had a recurring nightmare. I was running up a hill. Animalistic monsters that looked like warped Sesame Street characters were chasing me. I entered a diner and locked the doors, only to turn and see the terrors emerging from behind me. They had already gotten in. 

Most of this nightmare is ordinary, according to dream researchers, especially for kids. It’s actually quite common for anxiety dreams to envelop you when you’re trying to get a restful night of sleep, and if you understand what causes them, you can work to resolve them.

Causes of recurring nightmares

“The most common nightmare theme, and even more so for children, is that something bad is chasing you,” says Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School who edited the 1996 book Trauma and Dreams. She notes that some themes, like being chased by monsters, seem universal. Though they can vary by culture, other common recurring dreams include scenarios of “vividly sensing a presence,” falling, arriving late for an exam or train, getting attacked, and feeling frozen with fright, according to surveys of Canadian university students from the early 2000s. Barrett adds that variations on these themes can hold personal significance, such as when something that should be safe turns out not to be, as in my dream of being pursued by mutant children’s puppets.

Recurring nightmares tend to be more common in kids than adults: According to Barrett’s research, people reported experiencing fewer nightmares as they reached their teens. But why is being chased by something wicked such a common theme at an early age? 

“Children dream about animals, both realistic and monstrous ones, more than adults do,” Barrett says, drawing an evolutionary connection. “We think that maybe the early fears are the ones that are more programmed into us as a species. And gradually those diminish as ones that we’re really encountering in the waking, modern world become more of the focus.”

Whether fantastical or ordinary in nature, periods of recurring nightmares can simply occur at a particularly stressful time for dreamers of different ages, like exam season or divorce. They can also manifest out of an unresolved conflict or disturbing lived experience. It’s important to note that recurring nightmares and other sleep issues can correlate with post-traumatic stress disorder. Recurring nightmares can also occur for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and chronic anxiety, as well as those with other medical conditions, including narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and temporal lobe epilepsy, which is why it’s important to get screened for such conditions. 

How to get rid of a recurring nightmare

“Anxiety dreams depict everyday worries in a dramatized way. That is, the monsters represent normal fears related to the world, like school, teachers, nasty classmates, and so on,” says Michael Schredl, a researcher at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. Because these behaviors are avoidant, “running away and locking doors” in dreams “[are] typically not helpful.” 

For those who are looking to get rid of recurring nightmares, experts recommend writing down or drawing what happened in the dream, which causes the dreamer to face the nightmare again in waking hours. This is commonly known as exposure therapy, and it should be used carefully after consultation with a trained therapist. Then, in waking hours, the dreamer can envision a new ending to the nightmare or draw something that makes the scenario less anxiety-inducing—an active coping strategy. Imagining a trusted friend coming to the rescue or a peaceful resolution to an uncomfortable situation could help. Flying away from enemies is not recommended, as it further reflects avoidant behavior, according to Barrett.

Experts advise to think about this dream solution while they’re awake so they develop new thought patterns. That way when they face the anxiety-inducing scenario in their sleep again, they’re able to cope and apply the new strategy.

Kids can try these remedies, but they also may just grow out of the pattern. Schredl says that in the course of a child’s development, they will learn to cope with fear and accept that it’s okay to be afraid, so that they are no longer avoiding the feeling. Once they’ve stopped their avoidant dream behavior and even learned that they can act and have agency, the nightmares should lose their potency. 

I had that same nightmare about four or five times in total until I reached middle school. From what I remember, the last few times I visited the creatures in my sleep, my dad was there to comfort me. Instead of being caught, as I had been when alone in the first few iterations of the dream, we eventually escaped together and the puppets stopped being as scary. These days, I don’t dream of monsters anymore, and I’m more likely to dream of luxury buffets and spa visits. 

Read more PopSci+ stories. 

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More people in the United States are dying from causes related to excessive alcohol consumption since 1999. Surprisingly, this is particularly true for American women, according to a study published July 28 in the journal JAMA Network Open. While men are roughly three times more likely than women to die from alcohol use, the gap has narrowed and the risk to women has grown recently.  

[Related: COVID lockdown drinking habits led to a rise in deaths from alcoholic liver disease.]

The study looked at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on more than 600,000 deaths linked to alcohol between 1999 and 2020. The data included deaths from alcoholic liver disease, alcohol poisoning, acute intoxication, alcoholic cardiomyopathy, and mental and behavioral disorders that can be linked to alcohol consumption, and other causes.

It found that alcohol-related deaths steadily increased in the United States in that period. However, from 2018 to 2020, the rate increased by 14.7 percent for women compared to 12.5 percent for men. The study also found rising rates among older women in particular. Alcohol-related deaths rose in women over 65 and older by 6.7 percent from 2012 to 2020, compared with a 5.2 percent increase per year in men 65 and older. 

According to the authors, this shift does not necessarily mean that women in this age group are drinking more, but could point to “the larger burden of accumulating harms of chronic alcohol use among female individuals.”

While this study did not point to the reasons behind this increase, co-author and assistant professor of population health at Hofstra University Ibraheem Karaye offered a few potential theories to The New York Times. Karaye said that alcohol consumption is likely increasing among women and that alcohol affects women’s bodies differently. Women’s bodies typically have less fluid to dilute alcohol, which can result in higher blood-alcohol concentrations, which may make women more vulnerable to health complications, according to Karaye.

Stress is also a major factor in alcohol misuse among both men and women. The narrowing gap could reflect an increase in both stress and stress-related disorders among women, according to the team. 

[Related: A powerful combo of psilocybin and therapy might help people overcome alcohol use disorder.]

Excessive drinking during the COVID-19 pandemic has also increased alcoholic liver disease deaths, with a recent report from KFF Health News finding that the condition killed more Californians than car accidents or breast cancer. The lockdowns made people feel isolated, depressed, stressed, and anxious, says KFF’s Philip Reese, which led to some increases in drinking and an increase in alcohol sales.

Additionally, shifting attitudes towards heavy drinking by women may be a factor.  Associate professor in the division of gastroenterology and liver disease at NYU Langone Health Lisa Ganjhu told NBC News that she regularly sees women who are not aware of how physically toxic it can be. 

“The article didn’t surprise me. Women are overusing alcohol with more frequency now. I’ve had to talk to a fair number of women about their alcohol use,” said Ganjhu, who was not affiliated with the new study. “I had one patient who developed pancreatitis from drinking ask me when she could start drinking again. She said it wasn’t acceptable to not drink with clients. It’s mind-boggling.”

Regardless of gender, Karaye agrees with most physicians that “reducing or eliminating exposure [to alcohol] at any point would be valuable.” The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Rethinking Drinking program can help people evaluate alcohol usage and create plans to scale down or quit drinking. 

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Deepfake technology has already proven itself a troublingly effective means of spreading misinformation, but a new study indicates the generative AI programs’ impacts can be more complicated than initially feared. According to findings published earlier this month in PLOS One, deepfake clips can alter a viewer’s memories of the past, as well as their perception of events.

To test the forgeries’ efficacy, researchers at University College Cork in Ireland asked nearly 440 people to watch deepfaked clips from falsified remakes of films such as Will Smith in The Matrix, Chris Pratt as Indiana Jones, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in The Shining, and Charlize Theron replacing Brie Larson for Captain Marvel. From there, the participants watched clips from the actual remakes of movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Total Recall, and Carrie. Meanwhile, some volunteers were also provided with text descriptions of the nonexistent remakes.

[Related: This fictitious news show is entirely produced by AI and deepfakes.]

Upon review, nearly 50 percent of participants claimed to remember the deepfaked remakes coming out in theaters. Of those, many believed these imaginary movies were actually better than the originals. But as disconcerting as those numbers may be, using deepfakes to misrepresent the past did not appear to be any more effective than simply reading the textual recaps of imaginary movies. 

Speaking with The Daily Beast on Friday, misinformation researcher and study lead author Gillian Murphy did not believe the findings to be “especially concerning,” given that they don’t indicate a “uniquely powerful threat” posed by deepfakes compared to existing methods of misinformation. That said, they conceded deepfakes could be better at spreading misinformation if they manage to go viral, or remain memorable over a long period of time.

A key component to these bad faith deepfakes’ potential successes is what’s known as motivated reasoning—the tendency for people to unintentionally allow preconceived notions and biases to influence their perceptions of reality. If one is shown supposed evidence in support of existing beliefs, a person is more likely to take that evidence at face value without much scrutiny. As such, you are more likely to believe a deepfake if it is in favor of your socio-political leanings, whereas you may be more skeptical of one that appears to “disprove” your argument.

[Related: Deepfakes may use new technology, but they’re based on an old idea.]

Motivated reasoning is bad enough on its own, but deepfakes could easily exacerbate this commonplace logical fallacy if people aren’t aware of such issues. Improving the public’s media literacy and critical reasoning skills are key factors in ensuring people remember a Will Smith-starring Matrix as an interesting Hollywood “What If?” instead of fact. As for whether or not such a project would have been better than the original—like many deepfakes, it all comes down to how you look at it.

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This article originally appeared on MIT Press Reader. This is an excerpt from veteran game designer Greg Costikyan’s book “Uncertainty in Games.”

Unless you have lived in a Skinner box from an early age, you know that the outcome of tic-tac-toe is utterly certain. At first glance, rock-paper-scissors appears almost as bad. A four-year-old might think there’s some strategy to it, but isn’t it basically random?

Indeed, people often turn to rock-paper-scissors as a way of making random, arbitrary decisions — choosing who’ll buy the first round of drinks, say. Yet there is no quantum-uncertainty collapse, no tumble of a die, no random number generator here; both players make a choice. Surely this is wholly nonrandom?

All right, nonrandom it is, but perhaps it’s arbitrary? There’s no predictable or even statistically calculable way of figuring out what an opponent will do next, so that one choice is as good as another, and outcomes will be distributed randomly over time — one-third in victory for one player, one-third to the opponent, one-third in a tie. Yes?

Players quickly learn that this is a guessing game and that your goal is to build a mental model of your opponent, to try to predict his actions. Yet a naïve player, once having realized this, will often conclude that the game is still arbitrary; you get into a sort of infinite loop. If he thinks such-and-so, then I should do this-and-that; but, on the other hand, if he can predict that I will reason thusly, he will instead do the-other-thing, so my response should be something else; but if we go for a third loop — assuming he can reason through the two loops I just did — then . . . and so on, ad infinitum. So it is back to being a purely arbitrary game. No?

No.

The reason rock-paper-scissors is not a purely arbitrary game, and the reason that an excellent player will win more often than chance would predict, is that human psychology is not random, and some behaviors are — not necessarily predictable, but likely to occur more often than chance would dictate.

A player who has studied the game will unquestionably win more than chance would dictate against a naïve player.

One heuristic of experienced players is “Losers lead with Rock.” This is demonstrably true; naïve players will lead with Rock more often than one-third of the time. Your hand begins in the form of a rock, and it is easiest to keep it that way. The name of the game begins with “Rock,” and if you are mentally sorting through the options, it is the first one that will occur to you. And the word “rock” itself has connotations of strength and immovability. These factors lead players to choose Rock on their first go more often than chance would dictate. An experienced player can take advantage of this. Against a player you know to be naïve, you play Paper.

Similarly, players rarely choose the same symbol three times in a row, and almost never four times; it feels wrong to human psychology. An extended streak feels nonrandom and unlikely, even though in a purely random game, each new throw is stochastic, not dependent on the outcomes of previous throws. Thus in a truly random game, no matter how many times “Paper” has come up in a row before, there is a 1 in 3 chance of it coming up again. Given the nature of human psychology, if Paper has come up twice, there is far less than a 1 in 3 chance that the player will choose it again.

Even players who know this have to consciously try to overcome their bias against streaks — particularly if they lose with one gesture on the previous round. If you have played Paper twice in a row, and lost the last time you played, the human instinct is to try something different, and thus players will at that point choose Paper far less than one-third of the time.

In short, a player who has studied the game will unquestionably win more than chance would dictate against a naïve player, because he understands how human psychology is likely to affect the choices of his opponent. Of course, two players who both understand these factors are on a more even plane; but even here, there is the factor of human readability. It is hard to maintain a perfect “poker face,” and some are better at it than others. Some are better at noticing subtle cues in the expressions or body language of others. These skills are not always sufficient to ensure triumph, but they do produce a bias in favor of those more observant — and more socially adept at reading others.

In other words, at first glance rock-paper-scissors appears to be a guessing game, with victory going to the player who can outguess his opponent; at second glance, it appears to be purely arbitrary; and at third glance, the original supposition is justified. It is, in fact, a guessing game with victory going to the player who can outguess his opponent, but there are strategies to “outguessing.”

Where is the uncertainty in rock-paper-scissors? That should be obvious. It is in the unpredictability of opposing players. In fact, that is all there is in rock-paper-scissors; a first-player shooter played in deathmatch mode may rely to some degree on player unpredictability, but it also relies on player performance. Rock-paper-scissors is a game of player unpredictability in its purest form, for this single factor is the sole determinant of the game’s uncertainty, its raison d’être, and its cultural continuance.

Greg Costikyan, an award-winning designer of board, tabletop, roleplaying, computer, online, mobile, and social games, and the author of several books, including “Uncertainty in Games,” from which this article is excerpted.

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This article was originally published on Undark.

The transition to online learning in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic was, by many accounts, a failure. While there were some bright spots across the country, the transition was messy and uneven—countless teachers had neither the materials nor training they needed to effectively connect with students remotely, while many of those students were bored, isolated, and lacked the resources they needed to learn. The results were abysmal: low test scores, fewer children learning at grade level, increased inequity, and teacher burnout. With the public health crisis on top of deaths and job losses in many families, students experienced increases in depression, anxiety, and suicide risk.

Yet society very well may face new widespread calamities in the near future, from another pandemic to extreme weather, that will require a similarly quick shift to remote school. Success will hinge on big changes, from infrastructure to teacher training, several experts told Undark. “We absolutely need to invest in ways for schools to run continuously, to pick up where they left off. But man, it’s a tall order,” said Heather L. Schwartz, a senior policy researcher at RAND. “It’s not good enough for teachers to simply refer students to disconnected, stand-alone videos on, say, YouTube. Students need lessons that connect directly to what they were learning before school closed.”

More than three years after U.S. schools shifted to remote instruction on an emergency basis, the education sector is still largely unprepared for another long-term interruption of in-person school. The stakes are highest for those who need it most: low-income children and students of color, who are also most likely to be harmed in a future pandemic or live in communities most affected by climate change. But, given the abundance of research on what didn’t work during the pandemic, school leaders may have the opportunity to do things differently next time. Being ready would require strategic planning, rethinking the role of the teacher, and using new technology wisely, experts told Undark. And many problems with remote learning actually trace back not to technology, but to basic instructional quality. Effective remote learning won’t happen if schools aren’t already employing best practices in the physical classroom, such as creating a culture of learning from mistakes, empowering teachers to meet individual student needs, establishing high expectations, and setting clear goals supported by frequent feedback. While it’s ambitious to envision that every school district will create seamless virtual learning platforms—and, for that matter, overcome challenges in education more broadly—the lessons of the pandemic are there to be followed or ignored.

“We haven’t done anywhere near the amount of planning or the development of the instructional infrastructure needed to allow for a smooth transition next time schools need to close for prolonged periods of time,” Schwartz said. “Until we can reach that goal, I don’t have high confidence that the next prolonged school closure will be substantially more successful.”

Before the pandemic, only 3 percent of U.S. school districts offered virtual school, mostly for students with unique circumstances, such as a disability or those intensely pursuing a sport or the performing arts, according to a RAND survey Schwartz co-authored. For the most part, the educational technology companies and developers creating software for these schools promised to give students a personalized experience. But the research on these programs, which focused on virtual charter schools that only existed online, showed poor outcomes. Their students were a year behind in math and nearly a half-year behind in reading, and courses offered less direct time with a teacher each week than regular schools have in a day.

The pandemic sparked growth in stand-alone virtual academies, in addition to the emergency remote learning that districts had to adopt in March 2020. Educators’ interest in online instructional materials exploded, too, according to Schwartz, “and it really put the foot on the gas to ramp them up, expand them, and in theory, improve them.” By June 2021, the number of school districts with a stand-alone virtual school rose to 26 percent. Of the remaining districts, another 23 percent were interested in offering an online school, the report found.

But the sheer magnitude of options for online learning didn’t necessarily mean it worked well, Schwartz said: “It’s the quality part that has to come up in order for this to be a really good, viable alternative to in person instruction.” And individualized, self-directed online learning proved to be a pipe dream—especially for younger children who needed support from a parent or other family member even to get online, much less stay focused.

“The notion that students would have personalized playlists and could curate their own education was proven to be problematic on a couple levels, especially for younger and less affluent students,” said Thomas Toch, director of FutureEd, an education think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. “The social and emotional toll that isolation and those traumas took on students suggest that the social dimension of schooling is hugely important and was greatly undervalued, especially by proponents for an increased role of technology.”

Students also often didn’t have the materials they needed for online school, some lacking computers or internet access at home. Teachers didn’t have the right training for online instruction, which has a unique pedagogy and best practices. As a result, many virtual classrooms attempted to replicate the same lessons over video that would’ve been delivered at school. The results were overwhelmingly bad, research shows. ​​For example, a 2022 study found six consistent themes about how the pandemic affected learning, including a lack of interaction between students and with teachers, and disproportionate harm to low-income students. Numb from isolation and too many hours in front of a screen, students failed to engage in coursework and suffered emotionally.

After some districts resumed in-person or hybrid instruction in the 2020 fall semester, it became clear that the longer students were remote, the worse their learning delays. For example, national standardized test scores for the 2020-2021 school year showed that passing rates for math declined about 14 percentage points on average, more than three times the drop seen in districts that returned to in-person instruction the earliest, according to a 2021 National Bureau of Economic Research study. Even after most U.S. districts resumed in-person instruction, students who had been online the longest continued to lag behind their peers. The pandemic hit cities hardest and the effects disproportionately harmed low-income children and students of color in urban areas.

“What we did during the pandemic is not the optimal use of online learning in education for the future,” said Ashley Jochim, a researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. “Online learning is not a full stop substitute for what kids need to thrive and be supported at school.”

Children also largely prefer in-person school. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey suggested that 65 percent of students would rather be in a classroom, 9 percent would opt for online only, and the rest are unsure or prefer a hybrid model. “For most families and kids, full-time online school is actually not the educational solution they want,” Jochim said.

Virtual school felt meaningless to Abner Magdaleno, a 12th grader in Los Angeles. “I couldn’t really connect with it, because I’m more of, like, a social person. And that was stripped away from me when we went online,” recalled Magdaleno. Mackenzie Sheehy, 19, of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, found there were too many distractions at home to learn. Her grades suffered, and she missed the one-on-one time with teachers. (Sheehy graduated from high school in 2022.)

Many teachers feel the same way. “Nothing replaces physical proximity, whatever the age,” said Ana Silva, a New York City English teacher. She enjoyed experimenting with interactive technology during online school, but is grateful to be back in person. “I like the casual way kids can come to my desk and see me. I like the dynamism—seeing kids in the cafeteria. Those interactions are really positive, and they were entirely missing during the online learning.”

During the 2022-2023 school year, many districts initially planned to continue online courses for snow days and other building closures. But they found that the teacher instruction, student experience, and demands on families were simply too different for in-person versus remote school, said Liz Kolb, an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. “Schools are moving away from that because it’s too difficult to quickly transition and blend back and forth among the two without having strong structures in place,” Kolb said. “Most schools don’t have those strong structures.”

In addition, both families and educators grew sick of their screens. “They’re trying to avoid technology a little bit. There’s this fatigue coming out of remote learning and the pandemic,” said Mingyu Feng, a research director at WestEd, a nonprofit research agency. “If the students are on Zoom every day for like, six hours, that seems to be not quite right.”

Despite the bumpy pandemic rollout, online school can serve an important role in the U.S. education system. For one, online learning is a better alternative for some students. Garvey Mortley, 15, of Bethesda, Maryland, and her two sisters all switched to their district’s virtual academy during the pandemic to protect their own health and their grandmother’s. This year, Mortley’s sisters went back to in-person school, but she chose to stay online. “I love the flexibility about it,” she said, noting that some of her classmates prefer it because they have a disability or have demanding schedules. “I love how I can just roll out of bed in the morning, and I can sit down and do school.” Some educators also prefer teaching online, according to reports of virtual schools that were inundated with applications from teachers because they wanted to keep working from home. Silva, the New York high school English teacher, enjoys online tutoring and academic coaching, because it facilitates one-on-one interaction.

And in rural districts and those with low enrollment, some access to online learning ensures students can take courses that could otherwise be inaccessible. “Because of the economies of scale in small rural districts, they needed to tap into online and shared service delivery arrangements in order to provide a full complement of coursework at the high school level,” said Jochim. Innovation in these districts, she added, will accelerate: “We’ll continue to see growth, scalability, and improvement in quality.”

There were also some schools that were largely successful at switching to online at the start of the pandemic, such as Vista Unified School District in California, which pooled and shared innovative ideas for adapting in March 2020; the school quickly put together an online portal so that principals and teachers could share ideas and the district could allot the necessary resources. Digging into examples like this could point the way to the future of online learning, said Chelsea Waite, a senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, who was part of a collaborative project studying 70 schools and districts that pivoted successfully to online learning. The project found three factors that made the transition work: a focus on resilience, collaboration, and autonomy for both students and educators; a healthy culture that prioritized relationships; and strong yet flexible systems that were accustomed to adaptation.

“We investigated schools that did seem to be more prepared for the Covid disruption, not just with having devices in students’ hands or having an online curriculum already, but with a learning culture in the school that really prioritized agency and problem solving as skills for students and adults,” Waite said. “In these schools, kids are learning from a very young age to be a little bit more self-directed, to set goals, and pursue them and pivot when they need to.”

Similarly, many of the takeaways from the pandemic trace back to the basics of effective education, not technological innovation. A landmark report by the National Academies of Sciences called “How People Learn,” most recently updated in 2018, synthesized the body of educational research and identified four key features in the most successful learning environments. First, these schools are designed for, and adapt to, the specific students, building on what they bring to the classroom, such as skills and beliefs. Second, successful schools give their students clear goals, showing them what they need to learn and how they can get there. Third, they provide in-the-moment feedback that emphasizes understanding, not memorization. And finally, the most successful schools are community-centered, with a culture of collaboration and acceptance of mistakes.

“We as humans are social learners, yet some of the tech talk is driven by people who are strong individual learners,” said Jeremy Roschelle, executive director of Learning Sciences Research at Digital Promise, a global education nonprofit. “They’re not necessarily thinking about how most people learn, which is very social.”

Another powerful insight from pandemic-era remote schooling involves the evolving role of teachers, said Kim Kelly, a middle school math teacher at Northbridge Middle School in Massachusetts and a K-8 curriculum coach. Historically, a teacher’s role is the keeper of knowledge who delivers instruction. But in recent years, there has been a shift in approach, where teachers think of themselves as coaches who can intervene based on a student’s individual learning progress. Technology that assists with a coach-like role can be effective—but requires educators to be trained and comfortable interpreting data on student needs.

For example, with a digital learning platform called ASSISTments, teachers can assign math problems, students complete them—potentially receiving in-the-moment feedback on steps they’re getting wrong—and then the teachers can use data from individual students and the entire class to plan instruction and see where additional support is needed.

“A big advantage of these computer-driven products is they really try to diagnose where students are, and try to address their needs. It’s very personalized, individualized,” said WestEd’s Feng, who has evaluated ASSISTments and other educational technologies. She noted that some teachers feel frustrated “when you expect them to read the data and try to figure out what the students’ needs are.”

Teacher’s colleges don’t typically prepare educators to interpret data and change their practices, said Kelly, whose dissertation focused on self-regulated online learning. But professional development has helped her learn to harness technology to improve teaching and learning. “Schools are in data overload; we are oozing data from every direction, yet none of it is very actionable,” she said. Some technology, she added, provided student data that she could use regularly, which changed how she taught and assigned homework.

When students get feedback from the computer program during a homework session, the whole class doesn’t have to review the homework together, which can save time. Educators can move forward on instruction—or if they see areas of confusion, focus more on those topics. The ability of the programs to detect how well students are learning “is unreal,” said Kelly, “but it really does require teachers to be monitoring that data and interpreting.” She learned to accept that some students could drive their own learning and act on the feedback from homework, while others simply needed more teacher intervention. She now does more assessment at the beginning of a course to better support all students.

At the district or even national level, letting teachers play to their strengths can also help improve how their students learn, Toch, of FutureEd, said. For example, if a teacher is better at delivering instruction, they could give a lesson to a larger group of students online, while another teacher who is more comfortable in the coach role could work in smaller groups or one-on-one.

“One thing we saw during the pandemic are smart strategies for using technology to get outstanding teachers in front of more students,” Toch said, describing one effort that recruited exceptional teachers nationally and built a strong curriculum to be delivered online. “The local educators were providing support for their students in their classrooms.”

Remote schooling requires new technology, and already, educators are swamped with competing platforms and software choices—most of which have insufficient evidence of efficacy. Traditional independent research on specific technologies is sparse, Roschelle said. Post-pandemic, the field is so diverse and there are so many technologies in use, it’s almost impossible to find a control group to design a randomized control trial, he added. However, there is qualitative research and evidence that give hints about the quality of technology and online learning, such as case studies and school recommendations.

Educational leaders should ask three key questions about technology before investing, recommended Ryan Baker, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania: Is there evidence it works to improve learning outcomes? Does the vendor provide support and training, or are teachers on their own? And does it work with the same types of students as are in their school or district? In other words, educators must look at a technology’s track record in the context of their own school’s demographics, geography, culture, and challenges. These decisions are complicated by the small universe of researchers and evaluators, who have many overlapping relationships. (Over his career, for example, Baker has worked with or consulted for many of the education technology firms that create the software he studies.)

It may help to broaden the definition of evidence. The Center on Reinventing Public Education launched the Canopy project to collect examples of effective educational innovation around the U.S.

“What we wanted to do is build much better and more open and collective knowledge about where schools are challenging old assumptions and redesigning what school is and should be,” she added, noting that these educational leaders are reconceptualizing the skills they want students to attain. “They’re often trying to measure or communicate concepts that we don’t have great measurement tools for yet. So they end up relying on a lot of testimonials and evidence of student work.”

The moment is ripe for innovation in online and in-person education, said Julia Fallon, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, since the pandemic accelerated the rollout of devices and needed infrastructure. There’s an opportunity and need for technology that empowers teachers to improve learning outcomes and work more efficiently, said Roschelle. Online and hybrid learning are clearly here to stay—and likely will be called upon again during future temporary school closures.

Still, poorly-executed remote learning risks tainting the whole model; parents and students may be unlikely to give it a second chance. The pandemic showed the hard and fast limits on the potential for fully remote learning to be adopted broadly, for one, because in many communities, schools serve more than an educational function—they support children’s mental health, social needs, and nutrition and other physical health needs. The pandemic also highlighted the real challenge in training the entire U.S. teaching corps to be proficient in technology and data analysis. And the lack of a nimble shift to remote learning in an emergency will disproportionately harm low-income children and students of color. So the stakes are high for getting it right, experts told Undark, and summoning the political will.

“There are these benefits in online education, but there are also these real weaknesses we know from prior research and experience,” Jochim said. “So how do we build a system that has online learning as a complement to this other set of supports and experiences that kids benefit from?”

Katherine Reynolds Lewis is an award-winning journalist covering children, race, gender, disability, mental health, social justice, and science.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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While hours-long Monopoly games may lead to friendly rivalry among family and friends, board games like the rainbow-colored classic can help young children improve their math skills. A ssmall study published July 6 in the journal Early Years finds that board games based on numbers can help three- to nine-year-olds improve addition, counting, and the ability to recognize if a number is higher and lower than another.

[Related: It’s in the rules to play dirty in this new soil-themed board game.]

The study team believes that children can benefit from learning programs or interventions where board games like Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders are used a few times per week while supervised by a teacher or trained adult.  

Games can help enhance learning, but games where  players take turns to move their pieces around a board can have different impacts from those that require wagering or gambling. The fixed rules of a board game also limit a player’s activities and the moves on the board, which can usually determine the overall playing situation. 

“Using board games can be considered a strategy with potential effects on basic and complex math skills,” Jaime Balladares, study co-author and educational psychologist at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, said in a statement. “Board games can easily be adapted to include learning objectives related to mathematical skills or other domains.”

In the study, the team reviewed 19 studies conducted between 2000-2023 involving children ages three to nine. All of the studies except for one focused on the relationship between mathematical skills and boardgames. The children participating in the studies received adult-led board game sessions that took place an average of twice a week for 20 minutes over one-and-a-half months. 

They found that math skills improved significantly after the sessions among children for 52 percent of the tasks analyzed. Additionally, in nearly one-third (32 percent) of the cases, the children in the game groups gained better results than the ones who did not participate in the games. 

In some of the studies the team analyzed, children were grouped into either number-based board games or to a board game that didn’t focus on numeracy skills. Other studies used number-based board games, but were allocated different types, like dominoes vs. Monopoly. 

[Related: How climate change board games could turn play into action.]

All of the participants were assessed on their math performance after the game sessions, which were designed to encourage early math skills such as counting out loud. The study team rated success by four categories: numeric competency, simple number comprehension like ‘‘nine is greater than three,” deeper comprehension where a child can add and subtract, and their interest in mathematics

According to Balladeres, designing and implementing board games along with scientific procedures that can evaluate their efficacy in helping kids learn math are critical tasks educators should develop.   

“Future studies should be designed to explore the effects that these games could have on other cognitive and developmental skills,” said Balladeres. “An interesting space for the development of intervention and assessment of board games should open up in the next few years, given the complexity of games and the need to design more and better games for educational purposes.”

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To say that it’s impossible to function before that first cup of coffee in the morning is borderline clichè, but are those beans really doing the work we think it is to perk us up? A study published June 28 in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience by a team based in Portugal found that the experience of consuming coffee may act a bit like the placebo when it comes to making coffee drinkers feel ready to tackle the day. 

[Related: Forget black coffee—a hormone shot helped tipsy rodents sober up.]

Most coffee drinkers say their morning cup of joe makes them feel more alert and efficient due to its caffeine. This study looked at coffee drinkers to better understand if this wakefulness depends on the properties of the caffeine itself, or if it has to do with the experience of that first deliciously brewed sip. 

“There is a common expectation that coffee increases alertness and psychomotor functioning,” study co-author and University of Minho neuroscientist Nuno Sousa said in a statement. “When you get to understand better the mechanisms underlying a biological phenomenon, you open pathways for exploring the factors that may modulate it and even the potential benefits of that mechanism.”

In the study, the team recruited participants who drank at least one cup of coffee per day and asked them to not eat or drink caffeinated beverages for at least three hours before the study. They then interviewed the participants and performed two brief functional MRI (fMRI) scans. One can was before taking caffeine, or consuming a standardized cup of coffee, and the other scan was 30 minutes after. The participants were asked to relax and let their minds wander during the fMRI scans. These scans are similar to traditional MRI’s, but they examine how the brain functions and its activities.

Initially, the team expected that the fMRI scans would show that those who drank coffee had a higher integration in two parts of the brain because of coffee’s known neurochemical events. They thought they’d see it in the networks of the brain linked to the prefrontal cortex–where executive memory happens–and the default mode network, which is involved in introspection and self-reflection. 

The connectivity in the default mode network decreased after drinking coffee and after taking caffeine. This indicates that consuming either substance made more people prepared to transition from the restful nature of sleep and waking up to working on the tasks of the day. 

[Related: How to enjoy a more sustainable cup of coffee.]

However, drinking coffee increased the connectivity in the higher visual network and the right executive control network. These parts of the brain are involved in working memory, cognitive control, and goal-directed behavior. This increase did not occur when the participants only took caffeine, which the researchers say that this means if you want to feel not just alert, but also ready to go, caffeine alone won’t do it. You need that mug of java. 

“In simple words, the subjects were more ready for action and alert to external stimuli after having coffee,” co-author and neuroscientist at Jaume I University Maria Picó-Pérez said in a statement. “Taking into account that some of the effects that we found were reproduced by caffeine, we could expect other caffeinated drinks to share some of the effects. However, others were specific for coffee drinking, driven by factors such as the particular smell and taste of the drink, or the psychological expectation associated with consuming that drink.”

The team points out that it is possible that this experience around drinking decaffeinated coffee could be behind the neurological benefits. The study was unable to differentiate the effects of the drinking experience alone from the experience combined with the caffeine. 

“The changes in connectivity were studied during a resting-state sequence. Any association with psychological and cognitive processes is interpreted based on the common function ascribed to the regions and networks found, but it was not directly tested,” cautioned Sousa. “Moreover, there could be individual differences in the metabolism of caffeine among participants that would be interesting to explore in the future.”

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Speculative horror fiction, traditional Japanese puppetry, and cultural concepts of autonomy are inspiring a new project aimed at providing humans with sets of detachable cyborg arms. Jizai Arms are sleek, controllable appendages designed to compliment users’ movements, expression, and artistry. The University of Tokyo team lead by co-creator Masahiko Inami presented their creation for the first time last month at the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Unlike the headline-grabbing worlds of AI and autonomous robot technologies, however, Inami explained to Reuters on Tuesday that Jizai Arms are “absolutely not a rival to human beings.” Instead, the interchangeable limbs are meant to aid users to “do as we please… it supports us and can unlock creativity” in accordance with the Japanese concept of “jizai.” The term roughly translates to autonomy or freedom. According to the presentation’s abstract, the project is also intended to explore myriad possibilities between “digital cyborgs in a cyborg society.”

[Related: The EU just took a huge step towards regulating AI.]

To use Jizai Arms, subjects first strap on a harness to their torso. From there, arms can be attached into back sockets, and are currently controlled by a user or third-party via a miniature model of the same technology.

The project is partially inspired by centuries’ old “Jizai Okimono” animal puppetry, as well as Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata’s magical realism short story, “One Arm.” In this 1964 tale, a woman lets a man borrow her detached arm for an evening. “Half a century since its writing,” reads the paper’s introduction, “emerging human-machine integration technologies have begun to allow us to physically experience Kawabata’s world.”

Videos provided by the project showcase dancers performing choreography alongside classical music while wearing the accessory arms. The team’s paper describes other experiences such as varying the number and designs of the cybernetic arms, swapping appendages between multiple users, and interacting with each other’s extra limbs. In the proof-of-concept video, for example, the two ballet dancers ultimately embrace one another using both their human and artificial arms.

[Related: Cyborg cockroaches could one day scurry to your rescue.]

According to Inami, users are already forming bonds with their wearables after experiencing the Jizai Arms. “Taking them off after using them for a while feels a little sad,” they relayed to Reuters. “That’s where they’re a little different [from] other tools.” In a similar vein, researchers plan to look into long term usage of such devices, and how that could fundamentally change humans’ daily perceptions of themselves and others. 

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In Head Trip, PopSci explores the relationship between our brains, our senses, and the strange things that happen in between.

CAN YOU TELL when you’ve suddenly and accidentally broken into song? When you say, “I don’t know,” does it sound like a melody that you can hum? Why does a spoken word, when repeated over and over, begin to sound musical? 

To understand why people sometimes hear uttered phrases as melodies, let’s first break down language to its auditory elements. Not vowels and consonants–that’s too far. Instead, let’s focus on what linguists like me call prosody, or the intonation, stress, and rhythm of individual syllables.

In 1995, Diana Deutsch, an expert on musical illusions and paradoxes, coined the term speech-to-song illusion. She was reviewing a longer recording of herself and found that the seemingly random phrase sometimes behave so strangely, clipped out of context and left on repeat, began to sound like a song, complete with rhythm and melody. (You can hear a loop of the recording online.)

As it turns out, the illusion does not stem from Deutsch’s voice being especially musical. This illusion happens with all sorts of spoken stimuli that are played at regular intervals. The effect is most intense when the repeated stimulus is in a language that is very different phonologically from the listener’s native language. For example, in one 2015 study, English speakers most easily heard spoken Irish as song, followed by Hindi and Croatian.

Why is repetition so important here? There are measurable differences in how verbal stimuli sound when played once versus on repeat. In a 2008 study by Deutsch and colleagues, 31 participants were asked to repeat the stimulus themselves. After hearing it once, they spoke the sequence of words they’d heard; after 10 repetitions, they began to sing their responses, with a slightly larger pitch range than the original stimulus and the spoken responses. What’s more, according to a 2013 fMRI study (by a team that included Deutsch), repeated stimulus activates a part of the brain that is also activated by song and associated with the processing of complex pitch patterns, a network of eight different regions.

While Deutsch is credited for discovering the illusion in the realm of psychology, the basic premise—that repetition will add a layer of musicality to a recording of speech—was recognized long before 1995. Specifically, her use of a clipped recording on repeat reminded me of sampling, a technique used in hip-hop in which clips of existing recordings (sometimes speech) are incorporated in a new musical arrangement. 

To put this practice into context, I spoke to two experts: Langston Wilkins, expert in hip-hop and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Dan Charnas, historian of hip-hop and associate arts professor at New York University. Both confirmed that the use of repetition to add musicality to spoken vocal samples is a common practice in hip-hop, but neither was familiar with Deutsch’s framing of the phenomenon as an auditory illusion. Wilkins describes some of the sources hip-hop takes spoken samples from, including sermons, speeches, and film and TV dialogue. Charnas notes that the practice actually precedes hip-hop and tape recorders, with many vocal traditions originating in the African American community and gaining their musicality through repetition, for instance rap. The fact that these traditions were pioneered by African Americans may explain how the speech-to-song illusion evaded academic studies of musicality until the 1990’s—as Charnas notes, this reflects a general trend in academia failing to center African American culture, a culture in which “speech and song…have always been twin.”

But why does the illusion happen? As a linguist who studies intonation, I see a number of factors that may be at play here. First, I think it is significant that Deutsch and other scholars use clips cut out of longer recordings to demonstrate the illusion. Sentences in English and other languages have intonation, which includes pitch movements and other acoustic patterns that can span a full sentence. Cutting words out of a sentence will make a lot of these patterns incomplete. In a way, it is like cropping aterm out of the word watermelon and finding that it stops sounding like a word. The intonation that remains on Deutsch’s sometimes behave so strangely doesn’t sound like that of a full sentence. But unlike sentences, songs can have any melody they want. Perhaps that makes it easier for us to process phrases and clips like these as singing.

Another way to break down the speech-to-song illusion is by thinking about how humans process the “melody,” or pitch contour, of speech separately from the consonants and vowels that it is realized on. One example from English is the phrase I don’t know, which can be condensed to iunno, or even hummed as the melody you would expect to hear on iunno: a rise-fall-rise pitch contour. The hummed version of this melody contains none of the consonants or vowels in the phrase I don’t know, but people still know it means I don’t know, especially when you pair it with a visual cue like a shrug.

The process is not unique to English, either. One of the languages I studied for my dissertation, Amis (an Indigenous language of Taiwan), has its own iunno. In Amis, the phrase i saw (pronounced like “ee sow”) is added for emphasis on phrases like Really? You can either say the phrase in full, or you can just invoke the tonal melody that would have been on the phrase. These examples show that humans who are not hard of hearing can home in on the melody of speech, a key component of the speech-to-sound illusion. 

“The illusion is weaker in speakers of tonal languages,” says Andrew King, director of the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He’s referring to languages like Chinese and Yoruba in which tones are an integral part of the phonetic structure of words, alongside consonants and vowels. This tells me that the ability to separate the tonal contour from the consonants and vowels must be a crucial component of this illusion. 

When asked about people who might pick up on different aspects of the speech signal due to differences in hearing, Neil Bauman, founder of the Center for Hearing Loss Help, immediately saw a connection between the speech-to-song illusion and audio pareidolia, a phenomenon in which speech or music are perceived in random sounds not produced by humans. Bauman explained that like the speech-to-song illusion stimuli, some cases of audio pareidolia do involve a rhythmic element, such as a fan with a loose bearing that creaks and whizzes at fixed intervals, which may more easily trigger an audio illusion. 

While scholars are still working on exactly how and why the speech-to-song illusion happens, the fact remains that under the right conditions, people can hear songs when none were intended. This finding has been replicated, on repeat, both in the laboratory and in the DJ booth. 

Ben Macaulay is a lecturer in English linguistics at Lund University. His research focuses on prosody and intonation, namely the production, processing, development, and documentation of sentence-level tonal contours in the world’s languages. He received a Ph.D. in 2021 at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and his dissertation project was a typological study of intonation in the endangered Indigenous languages of Taiwan based on novel fieldwork.

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This article was originally published on The Markup. This article was copublished with STAT, a national publication that delivers trusted and authoritative journalism about health, medicine, and the life sciences. Sign up for its health tech newsletter here.

Websites for mental health crisis resources across the country—which promise anonymity for visitors, many of whom are at a desperate moment in their lives—have been quietly sending sensitive visitor data to Facebook, The Markup has found. 

Dozens of websites tied to the national mental health crisis 988 hotline, which launched last summer, transmit the data through a tool called the Meta Pixel, according to testing conducted by The Markup. That data often included signals to Facebook when visitors attempted to dial for mental health emergencies by tapping on dedicated call buttons on the websites. 

In some cases, filling out contact forms on the sites transmitted hashed but easily unscrambled names and email addresses to Facebook. 

The Markup tested 186 local crisis center websites under the umbrella of the national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Calls to the national 988 line are routed to these centers based on the area code of the caller. The organizations often also operate their own crisis lines and provide other social services to their communities. 

The Markup’s testing revealed that more than 30 crisis center websites employed the Meta Pixel, formerly called the Facebook Pixel. The pixel, a short snippet of code included on a webpage that enables advertising on Facebook, is a free and widely used tool. A 2020 Markup investigation found that 30 percent of the web’s most popular sites use it.

The pixels The Markup found tracked visitor behavior to different degrees. All of the sites recorded that a visitor had viewed the homepage, while others captured more potentially sensitive information. 

Many of the sites included buttons that allowed users to directly call either 988 or a local line for mental health help. But clicking on those buttons often triggered a signal to be sent to Facebook that shared information about what a visitor clicked on. A pixel on one site sent data to Facebook on visitors who clicked a button labeled “24-Hour Crisis Line” that called local crisis services.

Clicking a button or filling out a form also sometimes sent personally identifiable data, such as names or unique ID numbers, to Facebook. 

The website for the Volunteers of America Western Washington is a good example. The social services nonprofit says it responds to more than 300,000 requests for assistance each year. When a web user visited the organization’s website, a pixel on the homepage noted the visit.

If the visitor then tried to call the national 988 crisis hotline through the website by clicking on a button labeled “call or text 988,” that click—including the text on the button—was sent to Facebook. The click also transmitted an “external ID,” a code that Facebook uses to attempt to match web users to their Facebook accounts. 

If a visitor filled out a contact form on the Volunteers of America Western Washington’s homepage, even more private information was transmitted to Facebook. After filling out and sending the form, a pixel transmitted hashed, or scrambled, versions of the person’s first and last name, as well as email address. Volunteers of America Western Washington did not respond to requests for comment. 

The Markup found similar activity on other sites. 

The Contra Costa Crisis Center, an organization providing social services in Northern California, noted to Facebook when a user clicked on a button to call or text for crisis services. About 3,000 miles away, in Rhode Island, an organization called BH Link used a pixel that also pinged Facebook when a visitor clicked a button to call crisis services from its homepage. (After publication of this article Contra Costa Crisis Center told The Markup that it had removed the pixel.)

Facebook can use data collected by the pixel to link website visitors to their Facebook accounts, but the data is collected whether or not the visitor has a Facebook account. Although the names and email addresses sent to Facebook were hashed, they can be easily unscrambled with free and widely available web services. 

After The Markup contacted the 33 crisis centers about their practices, some said they were unaware that the code was on their sites and that they’d take steps to remove it. 

“This was not intentional and thank you for making us aware of the potential issue,” Leo Pellerin, chief information officer for the United Way of Connecticut, a partner in the national 988 network, said in an emailed statement. Pellerin said they had removed the code, which they attributed to a plug-in on their website.

Lee Flinn, director of the Idaho Crisis and Suicide Hotline, said in an email that she had “never heard of Meta Pixel” and was asking the outside vendor who had worked on the organization’s site to remove the code. “We value the privacy of individuals who reach out to us, and any tracking devices are not intentional on our part, nor did we ask any developer to install,” she said. “Anything regarding tracking that is found will be immediately removed.”

Ken Gibson, a spokesperson for the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, said the organization had recently placed the pixel on its site to advertise for staff but would now reduce the information the pixel gathers to only careers pages on the site.

In follow-up tests, four organizations appeared to have completely removed the code. The majority of the centers we contacted did not respond to requests for comment. 

“Advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools,” Meta spokesperson Emil Vazquez told The Markup in an emailed statement that mirrored those the company has previously provided in response to reporting on the Meta Pixel. “Doing so is against our policies and we educate advertisers on properly setting up Business tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect.”

Vazquez did not respond to a question about whether or how Meta could determine if this specific data was filtered.

There is no evidence that either Facebook or any of the crisis centers themselves attempted to identify visitors or callers, or that an actual human ever identified someone who attempted to call for help through a website. Some organizations explicitly said in response to The Markup’s requests for comment that they valued the anonymity promised by the 988 line. 

Mary Claire Givelber, executive director of New Jersey–based Caring Contact, said in an email that the organization had briefly used the pixel to recruit volunteers on Facebook but would now remove it. 

“For the avoidance of all doubt, Caring Contact has not used the Meta Pixel to identify, target, or advertise to any potential or actual callers or texters of the Caring Contact crisis hotline,” Givelber said.

Meta can use information gathered from its tools for its own purposes, however, and data sent to the company through the pixels scattered across the web enters a black box that can catalog and organize data with little oversight. 

Divendra Jaffar, a spokesperson for Vibrant Emotional Health, the nonprofit responsible for administering the national 988 crisis line, pointed out in an emailed statement that data transmitted through the pixel is encrypted. 

“While Vibrant Emotional Health does not require our 988 Lifeline network of crisis centers to provide updates on their marketing and advertising practices, we do provide best practices guidelines to our centers, counselors, and staff and hold them to rigorous operating standards, which are reviewed and approved by our government partners,” Jaffar said.

The organization did not respond to a request to provide any relevant best practices.

Jen King, the privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said in an interview that, regardless of the reasons, Meta is gathering far too much data through its tools.

“Even if this is accidental still on the part of the developers, you shouldn’t still be able to fall into this trap,” she said. “The time has long passed when you can use that excuse.”

The Pixel and Sensitive Data 

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, offers the pixel as a way to track visitors on the web and to more precisely target ads to those visitors on Facebook. For businesses and other organizations, it’s a valuable tool: A small company can advertise on Facebook directly to people who purchased a certain product, for example, or a nonprofit could follow up on Facebook with users who donated on their last visit to a website. 

One organization, the Minnesota-based Greater Twin Cities United Way, said it did not use its website to reach out to potential 988 callers but instead focused on “donors and other organizational stakeholders.” Sam Daub, integrated marketing manager of the organization, said in an emailed statement that the organization uses tools like the pixel “to facilitate conversion-tracking and content retargeting toward users who visit our website” to reach those people but did not track specific activity of 988 callers.  

Apart from encouraging users to buy ads, this sort of data is also potentially valuable to Meta, which, in accordance with its terms of service, can use the information to power its algorithms. The company reserves the right to use data transmitted through the pixel to, for instance, “personalize the features and content (including ads and recommendations) that we show people on and off our Meta Products.” (This is one of the reasons an online shopper might look at a pair of pants online and suddenly see the same pair follow them in advertisements across social media.)

The pixel has proved massively popular. The company told Congress in 2018 that there were more than two million pixels collecting data across the web, a number that has likely increased in the time since. There is no federal privacy legislation in the United States that regulates how most of that data can be used.

Meta’s policies prohibit organizations from sending sensitive information through the pixel on children under 13, or generally any data related to sensitive financial or health matters. The company says it has an automated system “designed to filter out potentially sensitive data that it detects” but that it is advertisers’ responsibility to “ensure that their integrations do not send sensitive information to Meta.”

In practice, however, The Markup has found several major services have sent sensitive information to Facebook. As part of a project in partnership with Mozilla Rally called the Pixel Hunt, The Markup found pixels transmitting information from sources including the Department of Education, prominent hospitals, and major tax preparation companies. Many of those organizations have since changed how or whether they use the pixel, while lawmakers have questioned the companies involved about their practices. Meta is now facing several lawsuits over the incidents. 

The types of sensitive health information Meta specifically prohibits being sent include information on “mental health and psychological states” as well as “physical locations that identify a health condition, or places of treatment/counseling.” Vazquez did not directly respond to a question about whether the data sent from the crisis centers violated Meta’s policies. 

There is evidence that even Meta itself can’t always say where that data ends up. In a leaked document obtained and published by Vice’s Motherboard, company engineers said they did not “have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data.” The document compared user data to a bottle of ink spilled into a body of water that then becomes unrecoverable. A Facebook spokesperson responded to the report at the time, saying it left out a number of the company’s “extensive processes and controls to comply with privacy regulations,” though the spokesperson did not give any specifics. “It’s simply inaccurate to conclude that it demonstrates non-compliance,” the spokesperson said.

“The original use cases [for the pixel] perhaps weren’t quite so invasive, or people weren’t using it so widely,” King said but added that, at this point, Meta is “clearly grabbing way too much data.”

988 History and Controversy

The national 988 crisis line is the result of a years-long effort by the Federal Communications Commission to provide a simple, easy-to-remember, three-digit number for people experiencing a mental health crisis. 

Crisis lines are an enormously important social service—one that research has found can deter people from suicide. The new national line, largely a better-funded, more accessible version of the long-running National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, answered more than 300,000 calls, chats, and texts between its launch in the summer of last year and January. 

But the launch of 988 has been accompanied by questions about privacy and anonymity, mostly around how or whether callers to the line can ever be tracked by emergency services. The national line is advertised as an anonymous service, but in the past callers have said they’ve been tracked without their consent when calling crisis lines. Police have sometimes responded directly in those incidents, leading to harrowing incidents.

The current 988 line doesn’t track users through geolocation technology, according to the service, although counselors are required to provide information to emergency services like 911 in certain situations. That requirement has been the source of controversy, and groups like the Trans Lifeline, a nonprofit crisis hotline serving the trans community, stepped away from the network. 

The organization has launched a campaign to bring the issue more prominence. Yana Calou, the director of advocacy at Trans Lifeline, told The Markup in an interview that there are some lines that “really explicitly don’t” track, and the campaign is meant to direct people to those lines instead. (Trans Lifeline, which is not involved in the national 988 network, also uses the Meta Pixel on its site. After being alerted by The Markup, a Trans Lifeline spokesperson, Nemu HJ, said they would remove the code from the site.)

Data-sharing practices have landed other service providers in controversy as well. Last year, Politico reported that the nonprofit Crisis Text Line, a popular mental health service, was partnering with a for-profit spinoff that used data gleaned from text conversations to market customer-service software. The organization quickly ended the partnership after it was publicly revealed. 

Having a space where there’s a sense of trust between a caller and an organization can make all the difference in an intervention, Calou said. “Actually being able to have people tell us the truth about what’s going on lets people feel like they can get support,” they said.

This article was originally published on The Markup and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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This article originally published on KFF Health News.

For more than 20 years, the National Eating Disorders Association has operated a phone line and online platform for people seeking help for anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders. Last year, nearly 70,000 individuals used the help line.

NEDA shuttered that service in May, saying that, in its place, a chatbot called Tessa, designed by eating disorder experts with funding from NEDA, would be deployed.

When NPR aired a report about this last month, Tessa was up and running online. Since then, both the chatbot’s page and a NEDA article about Tessa have been taken down. When asked why, NEDA said the bot is being “updated,” and the latest “version of the current program [will be] available soon.”

Then NEDA announced on May 30 that it was indefinitely disabling Tessa. Patients, families, doctors, and other experts on eating disorders were stunned. The episode has set off a fresh wave of debate as companies turn to artificial intelligence as a possible solution for a mental health crisis and treatment shortage.

Paid staffers and volunteers for the NEDA help line said that replacing the service with a chatbot could further isolate the thousands of people who use it when they feel they have nowhere else to turn.

“These young kids … don’t feel comfortable coming to their friends or their family or anybody about this,” said Katy Meta, a 20-year-old college student who has volunteered for the help line. “A lot of these individuals come on multiple times because they have no other outlet to talk with anybody. … That’s all they have, is the chat line.”

The decision is part of a larger trend: Many mental health organizations and companies are struggling to provide services and care in response to a sharp escalation in demand, and some are turning to chatbots and AI, even though clinicians are still trying to figure out how to effectively deploy them, and for what conditions.

The help line’s five staffers formally notified their employer they had formed a union in March. Just a few days later, on a March 31 call, NEDA informed them that they would be laid off in June. NPR and KFF Health News obtained audio of the call. “We will, subject to the terms of our legal responsibilities, [be] beginning to wind down the help line as currently operating,” NEDA board chair Geoff Craddock told them, “with a transition to Tessa, the AI-assisted technology, expected around June 1.”

NEDA’s leadership denies the decision had anything to do with the unionization but told NPR and KFF Health News it became necessary because of the covid-19 pandemic, when eating disorders surged and the number of calls, texts, and messages to the help line more than doubled.

The increase in crisis-level calls also raises NEDA’s legal liability, managers explained in an email sent March 31 to current and former volunteers, informing them that the help line was ending and that NEDA would “begin to pivot to the expanded use of AI-assisted technology.”

“What has really changed in the landscape are the federal and state requirements for mandated reporting for mental and physical health issues (self-harm, suicidality, child abuse),” according to the email, which NPR and KFF Health News obtained. “NEDA is now considered a mandated reporter and that hits our risk profile — changing our training and daily work processes and driving up our insurance premiums. We are not a crisis line; we are a referral center and information provider.”

Pandemic created a ‘perfect storm’ for eating disorders

When it was time for a volunteer shift on the help line, Meta usually logged in from her dorm room at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

Meta recalled a recent conversation on the help line’s messaging platform with a girl who said she was 11. The girl said she had just confessed to her parents that she was struggling with an eating disorder, but the conversation had gone badly.

“The parents said that they ‘didn’t believe in eating disorders’ and [told their daughter], ‘You just need to eat more. You need to stop doing this,’” Meta recalled. “This individual was also suicidal and exhibited traits of self-harm as well. … It was just really heartbreaking to see.”

Eating disorders are common, serious, and sometimes fatal illnesses. An estimated 9 percent of Americans experience an eating disorder during their lifetimes. Eating disorders also have some of the highest mortality rates among mental illnesses, with an estimated death toll of more than 10,000 Americans each year.

But after covid hit, closing schools and forcing people into prolonged isolation, crisis calls and messages like the one Meta describes became far more frequent on the help line.

In the U.S., the rate of pediatric hospitalizations and ER visits surged. On the NEDA help line, client volume increased by more than 100 percent compared with pre-pandemic levels.

“Eating disorders thrive in isolation, so covid and shelter-in-place was a tough time for a lot of folks struggling,” explained Abbie Harper, who has worked as a help line associate.

Until a few weeks ago, the help line was run by just five to six paid staffers and two supervisors, and it depended on a rotating roster of 90-165 volunteers at any given time, according to NEDA.

Yet even after lockdowns ended, NEDA’s help line volume remained elevated above pre-pandemic levels, and the cases continued to be clinically severe. Staffers felt overwhelmed, undersupported, and increasingly burned out, and turnover increased, according to multiple interviews.

The help line staff formally notified NEDA that their unionization vote had been certified on March 27. Four days later, they learned their positions were being eliminated.

“Our volunteers are volunteers,” said Lauren Smolar, NEDA’s vice president of mission and education. “They’re not professionals. They don’t have crisis training. And we really can’t accept that kind of responsibility.” Instead, she said, people seeking crisis help should be reaching out to resources like 988, a 24/7 suicide and crisis hotline that connects people with trained counselors.

The surge in volume also meant the help line was unable to respond immediately to 46 percent of initial contacts, and it could take six to 11 days to respond to messages.

“And that’s frankly unacceptable in 2023, for people to have to wait a week or more to receive the information that they need, the specialized treatment options that they need,” Smolar said.

After learning in the March 31 email that the helpline would be phased out, volunteer Faith Fischetti, 22, tried out the chatbot on her own, asking it some of the more frequent questions she gets from users. But her interactions with Tessa were not reassuring: “[The bot] gave links and resources that were completely unrelated” to her questions, she said.

Fischetti’s biggest worry is that someone coming to the NEDA site for help will leave because they “feel that they’re not understood, and feel that no one is there for them. And that’s the most terrifying thing to me.”

A chatbot can miss red flags

Tessa the chatbot was created to help a specific cohort: people with eating disorders who never receive treatment.

Only 20 percent of people with eating disorders get formal help, according to Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft, a psychologist and associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her team created Tessa after receiving funding from NEDA in 2018, with the goal of looking for ways technology could help fill the treatment gap.

NEDA said Tessa was supposed to be a “rule-based” chatbot, meaning one that is programmed with a limited set of possible responses. It is not ChatGPT and cannot generate unique answers in response to specific queries. “So she can’t go off the rails, so to speak,” Fitzsimmons-Craft said.

The plan was for Tessa to guide users through an interactive, weeks-long course about body positivity, based on cognitive behavioral therapy tools. Additional content about bingeing, weight concerns, and regular eating was under development but not yet available to users.

There’s evidence the AI approach can help. Fitzsimmons-Craft’s team did a small study that found college students who interacted with Tessa had significantly greater reductions in “weight/shape concerns” than a control group at three- and six-month follow-ups.

But even the best-intentioned technology can carry risks. Fitzsimmons-Craft’s team published a different study looking at ways the chatbot “unexpectedly reinforced harmful behaviors at times.” For example, the chatbot would give users a prompt: “Please take a moment to write about when you felt best about your body?”

Responses included: “When I was underweight and could see my bones.” “I feel best about my body when I ignore it and don’t think about it at all.”

The chatbot seemed to ignore the troubling aspects of such responses — and even to affirm negative thinking — when it would reply: “It is awesome that you can recognize a moment when you felt confident in your skin, let’s keep working on making you feel this good more often.”

Researchers were able to troubleshoot some of those issues. But the chatbot still missed red flags, the study found, such as when it asked: “What is a small healthy eating habit goal you would like to set up before you start your next conversation?”

One user replied, “Don’t eat.”

“Take a moment to pat yourself on the back for doing this hard work, <>!” the chatbot responded.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology assistant professor Marzyeh Ghassemi has seen issues like this crop up in her own research developing machine learning to improve health.

Large language models and chatbots will inevitably make mistakes, but “sometimes they tend to be wrong more often for certain groups, like women and minorities,” she said.

If people receive bad advice or instructions from a bot, “people sometimes have a difficulty not listening to it,” Ghassemi added. “I think it sets you up for this really negative outcome … especially for a mental health crisis situation, where people may be at a point where they’re not thinking with absolute clarity. It’s very important that the information that you give them is correct and is helpful to them.”

And if the value of the live help line was the ability to connect with a real person who deeply understands eating disorders, Ghassemi said, a chatbot can’t do that.

“If people are experiencing a majority of the positive impact of these interactions because the person on the other side understands fundamentally the experience they’re going through, and what a struggle it’s been, I struggle to understand how a chatbot could be part of that.”

Tessa goes ‘off the rails’

When Sharon Maxwell heard NEDA was promoting Tessa as “a meaningful prevention resource” for those struggling with eating disorders, she wanted to try it out.

Maxwell, based in San Diego, had struggled for years with an eating disorder that began in childhood. She now works as a consultant in the eating disorder field. “Hi, Tessa,” she typed into the online text box. “How do you support folks with eating disorders?”

Tessa rattled off a list of ideas, including resources for “healthy eating habits.” Alarm bells immediately went off in Maxwell’s head. She asked Tessa for details. Before long, the chatbot was giving her tips on losing weight — ones that sounded an awful lot like what she’d been told when she was put on Weight Watchers at age 10.

“The recommendations that Tessa gave me were that I could lose 1 to 2 pounds per week, that I should eat no more than 2,000 calories in a day, that I should have a calorie deficit of 500-1,000 calories per day,” Maxwell said. “All of which might sound benign to the general listener. However, to an individual with an eating disorder, the focus of weight loss really fuels the eating disorder.”

NEDA blamed the chatbot’s issues on Cass, the mental health chatbot company that operated Tessa as a free service. Cass had changed Tessa without NEDA’s awareness or approval, said NEDA CEO Liz Thompson, enabling the chatbot to generate new answers beyond what Tessa’s creators had intended.

Cass’ founder and CEO, Michiel Rauws, said the changes to Tessa were made last year as part of a “systems upgrade,” including an “enhanced question-and-answer feature.” That feature uses generative artificial intelligence — meaning it gives the chatbot the ability to use new data and create new responses.

That change was part of NEDA’s contract, Rauws said.

But Thompson disagrees. She told NPR and KFF Health News that “NEDA was never advised of these changes and did not and would not have approved them.”

“The content some testers received relative to diet culture and weight management, [which] can be harmful to those with eating disorders, is against NEDA policy, and would never have been scripted into the chatbot by eating disorders experts,” she said.

Complaints about Tessa started last year

NEDA was aware of issues with the chatbot months before Maxwell’s interactions with Tessa in late May.

In October 2022, NEDA passed along screenshots from Monika Ostroff, executive director of the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association in Massachusetts. They showed Tessa telling Ostroff to avoid “unhealthy” foods and eat only “healthy” snacks, like fruit.

“It’s really important that you find what healthy snacks you like the most, so if it’s not a fruit, try something else!” Tessa told Ostroff. “So the next time you’re hungry between meals, try to go for that instead of an unhealthy snack like a bag of chips. Think you can do that?”

Ostroff said this was a clear example of the chatbot encouraging “diet culture” mentality. “That meant that they [NEDA] either wrote these scripts themselves, they got the chatbot and didn’t bother to make sure it was safe and didn’t test it, or released it and didn’t test it,” she said.

The healthy-snack language was quickly removed after Ostroff reported it. But Rauws said that language was part of Tessa’s “pre-scripted language, and not related to generative AI.”

Fitzsimmons-Craft said her team didn’t write it, that it “was not something our team designed Tessa to offer and that it was not part of the rule-based program we originally designed.”

Then, earlier this year, “a similar event happened as another example,” Rauws said.

“This time it was around our enhanced question-and-answer feature, which leverages a generative model. When we got notified by NEDA that an answer text it provided fell outside their guidelines,” it was addressed right away, he said.

Rauws said he can’t provide more details about what this event entailed.

“This is another earlier instance, and not the same instance as over the Memorial Day weekend,” he said via email, referring to Maxwell’s interactions with Tessa. “According to our privacy policy, this is related to user data tied to a question posed by a person, so we would have to get approval from that individual first.”

When asked about this event, Thompson said she doesn’t know what instance Rauws is referring to.

Both NEDA and Cass have issued apologies.

Ostroff said that regardless of what went wrong, the impact on someone with an eating disorder is the same. “It doesn’t matter if it’s rule-based or generative, it’s all fat-phobic,” she said. “We have huge populations of people who are harmed by this kind of language every day.”

She also worries about what this might mean for the tens of thousands of people turning to NEDA’s help line each year.

Thompson said NEDA still offers numerous resources for people seeking help, including a screening tool and resource map, and is developing new online and in-person programs.

“We recognize and regret that certain decisions taken by NEDA have disappointed members of the eating disorders community,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “Like all other organizations focused on eating disorders, NEDA’s resources are limited and this requires us to make difficult choices. … We always wish we could do more and we remain dedicated to doing better.”

This article is from a partnership that includes Michigan Radio, NPR, and KFF Health News.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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The post An eating disorder chatbot that gave harmful advice was taken offline. Now it’s coming back. appeared first on Popular Science.

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In Head Trip, PopSci explores the relationship between our brains, our senses, and the strange things that happen in between.

USUALLY, pilots can navigate through cloudy and foggy conditions. They’re trained to do this. Substantially lowered visibility leaves them needing clarification and direction, and for that their instruments are essential. But in very rare cases, disagreement between their sensory experiences and reality can spell disaster. 

Sometimes a pilot can sense that the plane is descending, but feel confused as to why. The instruments could also indicate that the plane is drifting left or right while the pilot’s senses are pulling them in a different direction, throwing their instincts into chaos and preventing them from correcting the flight’s orientation quickly enough. The plane is turning and heading downward and the pilot isn’t helping. They have entered a death spiral. 

“It’s a catastrophic sensory illusion that can end up in a crash because someone relied on their perception of the plane’s orientation,” explains Jason Fischer, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. This is what happens when the pilot is tricked by their vestibular sense, “which allows you to perceive how your body is oriented in space when you don’t have enough visual information to go on,” he adds. A death spiral, or graveyard spiral, as it’s otherwise known, is caused by our innate impulse to rely on our sensory instincts. 

It is the way our brains are wired that can cause such a chaotic scenario. To traverse our world, we rely on several different senses. The strongest cues are visual. There is also the somatosensory system that senses temperature, pain, and, in this case, pressure, as in the “seat of the pants” feeling of being pushed down into your plane seat when the aircraft gains altitude. And then there’s the neurovestibular system. The brain relies on fluid moving through the inner ear’s small canals to help establish where the body is oriented in space and where it is going. Our vestibular sense works fine on solid ground and registers rapid changes in the speed and direction of our movement. But slow changes in movement can go unnoticed, as when the plane first begins to spiral off course. Because this fluid can settle in the ear canals during flight, a pilot might believe they’re level even as they are getting closer and closer to the ground, tuning all the while.

All this spatial confusion and the lack of clear sightlines leave the pilot bewildered and trusting their tragically mistaken instincts rather than their instruments. 

Fischer explained that the discombobulation that can result in a death spiral relates to how people combine information across the senses. For most of our worldly experiences, humans use multiple sources of information from different senses and collate that experience to emphasize the strengths of each piece of sensory data—as with smell and taste working together to create our experience of flavor. 

“Oftentimes, one given sense that has the most precise information will dominate perception,” says Fischer. “This kind of thing happens all the time with vision and audition, like when you try to judge the location of something based on hearing it. The signals coming from the front of you can be perfectly identical to those coming from behind you if you make those spatial judgments based on sound. At that point, you can have a rough sense of the location of the sound, but then you use vision to try to dial it in—which has the more powerful effect on localizing.” In a way, your eyes correct your ears.  

A death spiral is caused by similar sensory misunderstanding. The vestibular signals coming from the organs and canals in our ears are essentially accelerometers, providing a sense of our body’s movement through space and whether we’re starting to move faster. These signals also give us an idea of how we’re tilted relative to the ground due to gravity, a force that can cause acceleration. Our inner ears are fantastic at judging sudden movements, but gradual change? Not so much. 

“The problem is that they’re just accelerometers,” says Fischer. “They can’t really tell the difference between the acceleration due to gravity and the acceleration due to actual movement through space. As far as those organs are concerned, your own motion or acceleration through space has the same signal as acceleration due to gravity.” In other words, it is hard to tell the difference between going forward and down and just going forward. Fischer adds, “In order to disambiguate those things, you then need information from another sense.” 

Although a pilot may not be able to see the ground, they should be able to see the readings on their instruments. It is far safer to trust what the instruments say rather than what the body feels. It can mean the difference between life and death. 

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Orcas may be one of the ocean’s top predators, but they’ve rarely shown aggression against humans or watercraft in the past. But since 2020, orca pods have increasingly targeted sailboats off the Iberian Peninsula in Western Europe. In one instance, three of the black and white whales destroyed a vessel’s rudder, causing it to sink before it reached port. The Spanish coast guard called in a helicopter and sea cruiser to rescue the sailors.

The sea-mammal strikes have left scientists, sailors and social media users contemplating what’s changed in the last few years to cause this shift in behavior. Some experts suspect that one of the older female orcas involved, named White Gladis, had previously been hit by a ship or entrapped during illegal fishing. Questions arose. Are the whales attacking the boats to avenge White Gladis? Or are they simply defending themselves against more possible harm? Maybe they’re just playing with the sailboats? If the attacks were vengeful or defensive, does that mean orcas, and animals in general, can share their traumas with their social groups?

[Related: A baby orca sparks a glimmer of hope for an endangered group of whales]

Wild orcas don’t attack humans or approach boats. The subpopulation off the Iberian coast is considered critically endangered with only up to 50 adults, according to a 2019 estimate from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But authorities worry that the number of attacks means they will continue. The Atlantic Orca Working group told The New York Times that since 2020, orcas were documented swimming at or reacting to vessels about 500 times in the seas around Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. They caused physical damage to the watercraft in about a fifth of those incidents.

Whether the attacks were motivated by vengeance, defense, or play is up for debate. David Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, who studies how stress affects the brain in humans and animals, says it’s important to remember that we never know what an animal is thinking. “We interpret what they’re thinking from their behavior.”

Some scientists who study orcas suggested the strikes were playful given the species’ mischievous nature. Diamond, on the other hand, believes the animals are capable of retribution. He often shows videos of orcas in class and notes how they have a mammalian brain that is functionally similar to humans. “I can actually see the killer whale taking a proactive approach to say, this thing on the surface caused me harm so I want to get all my hunting party together and attack it,” he explains.

Linking the orca attacks to post-traumatic stress disorder, though, could be taking it too far. While White Gladis might have had a negative experience with a boat, it’s unlikely that she suffers from PTSD as some have speculated. The condition is unique to humans as it is diagnosed through self reports and not any physical test, Diamond says. More importantly, its symptoms go deeper than just remembering a harrowing experience and being fearful of it. “It changes [a person’s] personality; it changes their life,” he says. “So we don’t want to trivialize PTSD by saying, this orca had a terrible experience, therefore it has PTSD. Most people have terrible experiences in their lives and don’t develop PTSD.”

Even if animals don’t fit the clinical definition of PTSD patients, they could remember traumatic experiences or develop PTSD-like effects. In one study, Diamond’s team put lab rats in a box with cats, their natural predator. It triggered a part of the rodents’ brains known to be connected to the fear of death. Many weeks later, researchers put the rats back in the box in a different room without similar scents or cats. The subjects showed tremendous unease with the box itself, Diamond says. In another experiment, he paired a different set of rats and cats in boxes multiple times, and then sent the rodents to live with an unfamiliar rat afterward to simulate an unstable social life. They started to produce PTSD-like effects with changes in their physiology and behavior.

[Related on PopSci+: Can captive parrots have PTSD?]

And what about their roommates, or in the orcas’ case, their pod mates? It’s unlikely that animals can rehash all the details of a traumatic event to their acquaintances, but they might still be able to tip them off to the source of the trauma—and the subsequent dangers. About 16 years ago, John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington, captured American crows using nets to tag them with colored leg bands, so he could follow their behavior over their lifetimes. Now, many crows in the same neck of the woods show hostile behavior to humans. A lot of the birds that weren’t tagged “respond to us like we caught them,” Marzluff says. “So they are learning that we’re dangerous from others that either experienced it or saw the initial capture.”

Crows don’t just use group interactions to warn each other: They might take advantage of their numbers to engage with the threat. When the corvids see something they think is dangerous, they let out a harsh, scolding sound. Other crows hear it and then join in. “So it’s not like they’re telling one another, ‘Hey, there’s this guy who comes around once a year, watch out for him,’” Marzluff says. “It’s like, ‘I see this thing, which I’ve heard or known to be dangerous, come in here and learn about it with me. So from the orca example, it seems like they might be doing similar things.”

In another example, elephant mothers in Gorongosa National Park who survived hunters during Mozambique’s civil war sometimes enlist their kin and clans to chase away humans who come near them. It’s a defensive action, according to Liana Zanette, a biology professor at the University of Western Ontario, who researches predator-prey interactions. “These females lived during this time of this brutality by humans,” she says. “And so now whenever they see a human, they recognize it as a significant threat.”

While we may never fully never know why animals act the way they do, one thing is certain: Our presence makes a difference. Whether it’s an orca in the Strait of Gibraltar or a bird in your backyard, Marzluff says that we should know that animals are paying attention to what we do. “They do take information about our activities and use it in their behavior later,” he says. “We’re not just this static part of their environment. We’re an active species that they take seriously and respond to.”

The post Orcas are attacking boats. But is it revenge or trauma? appeared first on Popular Science.

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The brain is the most complex part of the human body. To keep our heads running smoothly,  more than 100 types of neurotransmitters must shuttle messages across multiple regions of white and gray matter. It’s difficult for researchers to track the immense number of connections that these chemical messengers make—Google recently created one of the most detailed maps of neuronal connectivity patterns, but even the tech giant could only focus on a small section of the brain. 

While it may take decades until someone fully maps out the human brain, there are ways to trace different aspects of connectivity. A new study published today in Science Advances used mind-altering drugs, such as ketamine and the surgical anesthetic propofol, to follow which neurotransmitter systems those pharmaceuticals activate. The findings help identify associations between these drugs and unexpected neurotransmitters. They could also help identify new treatment options for certain conditions and diseases, as the authors found that brain regions commonly altered by different drugs were often similarly affected by various neurological disorders.

Pharmacological agents such as mind-altering drugs have powerful uses in medicine, says Andrea Luppi, a postdoctoral researcher of network neuroscience at the Alan Turing Institute in the United Kingdom. “Anesthetics are extremely useful for surgery. Modafinil and methylphenidate are used to treat certain conditions,” Luppi says. “So it’s important to know how they act on the brain to exert their effects.”

But these types of chemicals can be tricky to understand, because they activate more than one neurotransmitter receptor. Knowing how they work in the brain can improve how they are used in clinical practice in the future. But it’s not enough to predict a drug’s mechanism based purely  on its clinical effects. There is also a chance these drugs could influence other neurotransmitters beyond their main targets. 

[Related: If you grow a brain in a lab, will it have a mind of its own?]

To address these questions, Luppi and his coauthors analyzed two sets of neuroimaging data from past studies to map out the ways the human brain changes when taking 10 mind-altering drugs. These drugs fell under three categories: psychedelics (psilocybin, DMT, LSD, MDMA, ayahuasca, and ketamine), anesthetics (propofol and sevoflurane), and cognitive enhancers (modafinil and methylphenidate). The first data set, based on the PET scans of 1,200 people, helped the team sketch out 19 types of molecules in the brain: all neurotransmitter receptors and transporters.

The second dataset used the fMRI scans of 224 people who had acute exposure to one of the 10 drugs. According to the authors, this is the largest fMRI study to date that has plotted a detailed map of the neurotransmitter landscape when under the influence.

Brain mapping showed that mind-altering drugs work with multiple neurotransmitter systems. The mapping showed expected relationships, such as the link between MDMA and its well-known target, the serotonin 2A receptor. However, the team noticed some mind-altering drugs, like anesthetics and psychedelics, can affect other neurotransmitters beyonds their main molecular targets. For example, anesthetics at the lowest dose primarily target molecules in the brain called GABA_A receptors. But the molecules that the drugs bind to changes as doses increase, the authors found, activating a more diverse group of neurotransmitters. 

[Related: How your brain conjures dreams]

“We are used to thinking that many drugs have a single or few molecular targets. What we see suggests that even when a drug exerts its effect through a specific receptor, it can have downstream consequences on many neurotransmitter systems. This reinforces the idea that the brain is a complex system,” Luppi says. 

According to the study authors, their mapping provides new opportunities to explore how each of these mind-altering drugs affects the neurotransmitter landscape. It could also help vet certain drugs for neuropsychiatric treatments. The changes in activity caused by mind-altering drugs are similar to the changes seen in the brains of patients with conditions such as autism, depression, and schizophrenia, the authors say. Administering mind-altering drugs that rewire the connections in functionally impaired brain areas could be another treatment option for people who live with these conditions. 

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Picture this: you text your romantic partner in the middle of the day, inquiring about dinner and after-work plans, but the message goes unanswered for an hour. Or your manager pulls you aside to offer some constructive criticism on a project or task you thought you were doing well with. If these or similar situations would leave you feeling anxious, incredibly unsettled, or angry, you may have high rejection sensitivity.

According to board certified behavioral analyst Reena Patel, high rejection sensitivity is an emotional response pattern characterized by an intense fear of rejection and an excessive need for approval from others. In less-clinical terms, it causes people to interpret uncertain or ambiguous social cues as signs of humiliation. As a result, rejection is not just a temporary sting or setback, but a devastating blow that affects self-confidence and can lead to social anxiety.

Importantly, high rejection sensitivity is not a diagnosable condition, but a pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can be observed and acknowledged by medical professionals, according to Darren Aboyoun, a clinical psychologist.

“It is more commonly observed in individuals who have experienced significant rejections or who have a history of interpersonal difficulties, such as those with insecure attachment styles,” Aboyoun explains. “Sensitivity to rejection can trigger physiological changes, including the fight-or-flight response, and heightened activity in areas of the brain that influence blood pressure, decision-making, and emotions.”

Aboyoun emphasizes that people who exhibit this trait aren’t just feeling bad about a situation they can easily “move on” from, but rather their feelings toward rejection are so deeply ingrained and overwhelming that they can lead to social withdrawal and isolation.

“In professional settings, high rejection sensitivity can disrupt one’s ability to collaborate with others, concentrate effectively, and ultimately hinder productivity and career advancement,” Aboyoun says. “In family and interpersonal relationships, it can contribute to miscommunication, difficulties in cultivating open, supportive relationships.”

Coping mechanisms and steps to move forward 

High rejection sensitivity is not currently categorized as a mental condition or illness, but as a behavioral trait. There is no proven cure or medication to manage it on its own, though certain types of therapy and coping mechanisms can help.

If you’re feeling up to it, you can also try to be clear with the people in your life about what you need from them. For instance, if you need validation or acknowledgment of your emotions and experiences without judgment, consider asking for it. Aboyoun suggests working with others to help them choose their words carefully when speaking with you and to ask others for reassurance when appropriate. The idea is to foster open lines of communication so that others can understand your perspective without minimizing your experiences.

Practicing mindfulness and relaxation techniques such as deep breathing exercises or meditation may also help manage anxiety and emotional reactivity triggered by perceived rejection, but Aboyoun suggests other coping strategies too.

For one, it’s important to acknowledge and accept that high rejection sensitivity is a vulnerability. If you are exhibiting a chronic heightened reaction to certain feelings or interactions, it’s good to self-reflect, Aboyoun says. Self reflection will require a deeper insight into why you reacted a certain way and whether that feeling is limited to something you said or did, or something else, he explains. 

“High rejection sensitivity is a very treatable condition,” Aboyoun says. “Effective treatment can positively change one’s life by increasing confidence and developing improved social skills that will cultivate more fulfilling relationships.”

This access to treatment is why he recommends therapy or counseling and working with a trained therapist to identify your patterns of rejection and increase your capacity to adapt to your thoughts and feelings.

Rejection sensitivity can be a challenging behavioral pattern to overcome, and unfortunately it has been the subject of very limited research. Until more studies can be done, learning to cope may involve a fair amount of trial and error. But once you find an approach that works, you should see improvement in previously troublesome areas of your life.

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If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing “988,” or the Crisis Text Line by texting “HOME” to 741741.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Melanie Gray Miller, a 30-year-old physician, wiped away tears as she described the isolation she felt after losing a beloved patient.

“It was at the end of a night shift, when it seems like bad things always happen,” said Miller, who is training to become a pediatrician.

The infant had been sick for months in the Medical University of South Carolina’s pediatric intensive care unit and the possibility that he might not improve was obvious, Miller recalled during an April meeting with physicians and hospital administrators. But the suddenness of his death still caught her off guard.

“I have family and friends that I talk to about things,” she said. “But no one truly understands.”

Doctors don’t typically take time to grieve at work. But during that recent meeting, Miller and her colleagues opened up about the insomnia, emotional exhaustion, trauma, and burnout they experienced from their time in the pediatric ICU.

“This is not a normal place,” Grant Goodrich, the hospital system’s director of ethics, said to the group, acknowledging an occupational hazard the industry often downplays. “Most people don’t see kids die.”

The recurring conversation, scheduled for early-career doctors coming off monthlong pediatric ICU rotations, is one way the hospital helps staffers cope with stress, according to Alyssa Rheingold, a licensed clinical psychologist who leads its resiliency program.

“Often the focus is to teach somebody how to do yoga and take a bath,” she said. “That’s not at all what well-being is about.”

Burnout in the health care industry is a widespread problem that long predates the covid-19 pandemic, though the chaos introduced by the coronavirus’s spread made things worse, physicians and psychologists said. Health systems across the country are trying to boost morale and keep clinicians from quitting or retiring early, but the stakes are higher than workforce shortages.

Rates of physician suicide, partly fueled by burnout, have been a concern for decades. And while burnout occurs across medical specialties, some studies have shown that primary care doctors, such as pediatricians and family physicians, may run a higher risk.

“Why go into primary care when you can make twice the money doing something with half the stress?” said Daniel Crummett, a retired primary care doctor who lives in North Carolina. “I don’t know why anyone would go into primary care.”

Doctors say they are fed up with demands imposed by hospital administrators and health insurance companies, and they’re concerned about the notoriously grueling shifts assigned to medical residents during the early years of their careers. A long-standing stigma keeps physicians from prioritizing their own mental health, while their jobs require them to routinely grapple with death, grief, and trauma. The culture of medicine encourages them to simply bear it.

“Resiliency is a cringe word for me,” Miller said. “In medicine, we’re just expected to be resilient 24/7. I don’t love that culture.”

And though the pipeline of physicians entering the profession is strong, the ranks of doctors in the U.S. aren’t growing fast enough to meet future demand, according to the American Medical Association. That’s why burnout exacerbates workforce shortages and, if it continues, may limit the ability of some patients to access even basic care. A 2021 report published by the Association of American Medical Colleges projects the U.S. will be short as many as 48,000 primary care physicians by 2034, a higher number than any other single medical specialty.

A survey published last year by The Physicians Foundation, a nonprofit focused on improving health care, found more than half of the 1,501 responding doctors didn’t have positive feelings about the current or future state of the medical profession. More than 20% said they wanted to retire within a year.

Similarly, in a 2022 AMA survey of 11,000 doctors and other medical professionals, more than half reported feeling burned out and indicated they were experiencing a great deal of stress.

Those numbers appear to be even higher in primary care. Even before the pandemic, 70% of primary care providers and 89% of primary care residents reported feelings of burnout.

“Everyone in health care feels overworked,” said Gregg Coodley, a primary care physician in Portland, Oregon, and author of the 2022 book “Patients in Peril: The Demise of Primary Care in America.”

“I’m not saying there aren’t issues for other specialists, too, but in primary care, it’s the worst problem,” he said.

The high level of student debt most medical school graduates carry, combined with salaries more than four times as high as the average, deter many physicians from quitting medicine midcareer. Even primary care doctors, whose salaries are among the lowest of all medical specialties, are paid significantly more than the average American worker. That’s why, instead of leaving the profession in their 30s or 40s, doctors often stay in their jobs but retire early.

“We go into medicine to help people, to take care of people, to do good in the world,” said Crummett, who retired from the Duke University hospital system in 2020 when he turned 65.

Crummett said he would have enjoyed working until he was 70, if not for the bureaucratic burdens of practicing medicine, including needing to get prior authorization from insurance companies before providing care, navigating cumbersome electronic health record platforms, and logging hours of administrative work outside the exam room.

“I enjoyed seeing patients. I really enjoyed my co-workers,” he said. “The administration was certainly a major factor in burnout.”

Jean Antonucci, a primary care doctor in rural Maine who retired from full-time work at 66, said she, too, would have kept working if not for the hassle of dealing with hospital administrators and insurance companies.

Once, Antonucci said, she had to call an insurance company — by landline and cellphone simultaneously, with one phone on each ear — to get prior authorization to conduct a CT scan, while her patient in need of an appendectomy waited in pain. The hospital wouldn’t conduct the scan without insurance approval.

“It was just infuriating,” said Antonucci, who now practices medicine only one day a week. “I could have kept working. I just got tired.”

Providers’ collective exhaustion is a crisis kept hidden by design, said Whitney Marvin, a pediatrician who works in the pediatric ICU at the Medical University of South Carolina. She said hospital culture implicitly teaches doctors to tamp down their emotions and to “keep moving.”

“I’m not supposed to be weak, and I’m not supposed to cry, and I’m not supposed to have all these emotions, because then maybe I’m not good enough at my job,” said Marvin, describing the way doctors have historically thought about their mental health.

This mentality prevents many doctors from seeking the help they need, which can lead to burnout — and much worse. An estimated 300 physicians die by suicide every year, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The problem is particularly pronounced among female physicians, who die by suicide at a significantly higher rate than women in other professions.

A March report from Medscape found, of more than 9,000 doctors surveyed, 9% of male physicians and 11% of female physicians said they have had suicidal thoughts. But the problem isn’t new, the report noted. Elevated rates of suicide among physicians have been documented for 150 years.

“Ironically, it’s happening to a group of people who should have the easiest access to mental health care,” said Gary Price, a Connecticut surgeon and president of The Physicians Foundation.

But the reluctance to seek help isn’t unfounded, said Corey Feist, president of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation.

“There’s something known in residency as the ‘silent curriculum,’” Feist said in describing an often-unspoken understanding among doctors that seeking mental health treatment could jeopardize their livelihood.

Feist’s sister-in-law, emergency room physician Lorna Breen, died by suicide during the early months of the pandemic. Breen sought inpatient treatment for mental health once, Feist said, but feared that her medical license could be revoked for doing so.

The foundation works to change laws across the country to prohibit medical boards and hospitals from asking doctors invasive mental health questions on employment or license applications.

“These people need to be taken care of by us, because really, no one’s looking out for them,” Feist said.

In Charleston, psychologists are made available to physicians during group meetings like the one Miller attended, as part of the resiliency program.

But fixing the burnout problem also requires a cultural change, especially among older physicians.

“They had it worse and we know that. But it’s still not good,” Miller said. “Until that changes, we’re just going to continue burning out physicians within the first three years of their career.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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It’s that time of year when TV shows finish forever. Succession’s nasty media scions ended their backstabbing and bickering. Midge concluded her journey in search of comedic stardom on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. And the May 30th episode of soccer dramedy Ted Lasso was probably the last. Maybe you watched these finales and found the resolutions satisfying. Even so, if you’re a superfan, perhaps you also experienced a bit of despair. It’s not unhappiness with the ending of a narrative, necessarily, but unhappiness that the narrative was ending. 

If you’ve felt deflated once a favorite show has wrapped up, you’re not alone. There’s even an unofficial term for it: post-series depression, or PSD. 

“It’s a feeling of emptiness and upset when a series or something that you really love is finishing or ending,” says Rita Kottasz, an associate professor of marketing at Kingston University, London, who has been at the forefront of post-series depression research. Whether it’s TV, a book, or a video game, there is a yearning, she says, “that you want more of it.”

The difference between PSD and depression

The concept of PSD gained traction on social media and in fan blogs in the mid-2010s. “It makes sense as a non-clinical way to describe a contemporary psychological phenomenon, which we’ve probably seen more during the Golden Age of TV,” says Chicago-based psychologist Brian Kong, citing Game of Thrones as a show with huge cultural influence.

Kottasz doesn’t particularly like the name PSD, and makes a distinction between clinical depression and the more colloquial sense of being down. In a draft of her 2020 paper on the phenomenon, she called it “consumer saudade,” using a Portuguese word that lacks a direct English translation. It is a sensation sort of like nostalgic longing. (The 17th-century writer Manuel de Melo called saudade “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”) Ultimately, a journal editor persuaded her to swap out the phrase, and Kottasz chose PSD because it was established outside of research. 

In the 2019 study, Kottasz and her colleagues published a 15-item classification scale for PSD, based on interviews with fans who reported sadness after their favorite things ended. She collected the most frequent emotions associated with PSD from the replies: among them, feeling frustrated, disappointed, indignant, sad, or empty inside. Some said they felt “that life is less complete now that the series is over” or that they had lost a few of their “best friends.”

[Related: From the archives: When the US first caught TV fever]

Although post-series depression suggests a focus on TV shows (a 2020 survey indicated male fans of Breaking Bad seem to be particularly susceptible to PSD), Kottasz is probing the connection to other kinds of media. Her ongoing research includes the abruptly announced hiatus of K-pop band BTS, which may have crushed young fans. It’s also applicable to novels. Millennials who grew up with Harry Potter—reading the books as children, then watching the movies as teens or adults—have expressed it. She found that “younger people are definitely more affected” than older ones, which can be attributed in part to the shift to on-demand streaming of shows and films. Business models that constantly push new content, such as Netflix recommendations that invite viewers to watch similar shows as soon as a series is finished, might contribute to this, too. “Companies are incredibly good at playing on the emotions of consumers,” she says.

Contrary to what you might expect, though, the sensation doesn’t seem to be triggered by binge-watching, Kottasz says. Instead, long-term consumption may be a factor. Kottasz thinks watching a show over several seasons or reading novels across many years strengthens a person’s relationship to the characters. In her 2019 paper, she cites a Harry Potter devotee who started reading the series at age 9 and was “cruelly left behind” after the final book and film released years later.

But it isn’t quite as simple as saying the end of a show or novel controls our emotional state. Kong is concerned that the phrase PSD might imply a causal relationship between low moods and a program’s end. Instead, he says that when viewers feel lasting negativity, TV consumption might be acting as an anesthetic for a deeper psychological issue, like how some people with anxiety or depression drink alcohol. Put another way, the low mood already existed, and watching the series only masked it.

Why it’s so hard to say goodbye

There’s no reason to be worried if you get sad or annoyed with the ending of a series you adore—after all, Kong says, people do feel emotionally connected with and invested in fictional characters. For most people, the negative feelings should dissipate shortly. 

If you’re looking to perk up when a finale has you down, though, “the short, Band-Aid answer is to move on to another series,” Kong says. “The bigger-picture answer is to make the show less central in your life and wellbeing. It might be a red flag if you have no other interests beyond a show or other series.” 

For those who experience strong PSD, the sensation can last for weeks, Kottasz says. “It seems to be the case from the data that people who struggle with anxiety, depression, and loneliness may be more inclined to become really big fans,” she says, who in turn experience prolonged sadness. If that’s the case, it’s probably time to seek further help from therapists or other mental health specialists.

[Related: Understanding your emotions can help you manage your anxiety]

What makes PSD more unusual than feelings of nostalgia or other losses, Kottasz says, is that enthusiasts “do have an opportunity to get things back” by persuading creators to make reboots, revivals, or spinoffs. Precedent for this dates back to before electronic TVs were invented: Author Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes for good in 1893, only to resurrect the consulting detective in the early 1900s. The BBC suggests it was the first revival of a character after fan outcry. 

Aficionados can engage in other ways. One is travel, mixing tourism with fandom to experience a franchise in real life. Think Lord of the Rings buffs who visit filming locations like “Mount Doom” in New Zealand, or Game of Thrones fanatics who tour Belfast and Dubrovnik. The pattern continues. On May 29, the Monday after Succession aired for the last time, fans flocked to New York City’s Battery Park, the scene of the series’s final shot.

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Love it or hate it, sleeping naked hits different. Not only is it less laundry to wash, but taking off those pajamas can do wonders for your health. While you may feel self-conscious at first, the openness of resting in the nude can actually boost your confidence and help you look your best self. 

There’s no right or wrong way to get ready for bed—it’s all a matter of preference. And while nakedness won’t miraculously cure all your sleep problems, experts say there are some modest benefits to going au naturel.

1. Younger-looking skin 

James Walker, a medical advisor for the healthcare platform Welzo, says sleeping without clothes gives your skin an opportunity to breathe, allowing for better airflow. He explains that clothes, especially tight-fitting ones, can restrict blood circulation, making it harder for your skin to receive vitamins and minerals needed for collagen production. Certain materials also might add to your discomfort in bed. Aditya Kashyap Mishra, a sex educator and relationship expert for Lustyboy, says synthetic fibers like spandex and nylon trap moisture in your skin—the added heat can make it hard to fall asleep. Other synthetic fabrics and pajamas with dyed cotton may cause skin irritation and acne from the fabric rubbing against you.

[Related: 5 surprising beauty benefits of running]

Tossing and turning from wearing the wrong clothing can affect your quality of sleep and your skin. The body makes collagen during sleep, which is essential for supple and younger-looking skin. Research shows that getting less than the recommended seven hours of sleep for adults increases skin aging and slows down recovery from sun damage.

2. A cooldown for your body

As you might expect, sleeping with your skin exposed helps regulate your temperature at night, says Walker. The drop in body temperature can prevent overheating—a real concern in summer and in places where winter is virtually non-existent. Research shows that feeling extremely hot at night increases wakefulness. Even if you manage to land some shut-eye, it will likely be less restorative with shorter cycles of slow-wave sleep and REM sleep. 

Feeling colder, on the other hand, can also help you fall asleep faster. Your body temperature is synced up with the light-dark cycles outside; it normally falls when the sun goes down. A lower body temperature from sleeping nude tells your biological clock it’s time to shut down.

3. Fewer fungal infections

Fungi and bacteria thrive in warm and damp areas like your nether regions. Mishra explains that trapped sweat from moisture-wicking clothing increases the risk of microorganisms building up, resulting in yeast infections and jock itch. Jock itch can also come from constant friction from clothes. Stripping down to nothing will allow more air circulation and keep your intimate parts from getting overheated.

4. Better emotional intimacy

Skin-to-skin contact between partners can strengthen your relationship. Research shows touching among consenting adults releases the “love hormone” called oxytocin. This chemical reduces stress and encourages openness and social bonding with others. One US marketing poll of more than 1,000 adults found that 57 percent of couples who regularly snoozed in the nude were happy in their relationship compared to 48 percent of pajama wearers. Getting used to baring it all in front of a partner can counteract self-consciousness of how you look in bed. Mishra says this openness is a huge stress reliever, and the added relaxation can help you sleep better.

What if you want to sleep in clothes?

If you’re still not convinced about sleeping naked, there are other ways to improve your slumber. Avoid tight or constricting apparel that would restrict your movement, irritate your skin, or otherwise cause discomfort. Walker recommends going to bed in loose-fitting and breathable fabrics like cotton or bamboo, or one simple layer like an oversized T-shirt and shorts to avoid overheating.

[Related: 11 ways to sleep better in unbearable heat]

There’s nothing wrong with slipping on a pair of socks before bed, Walker adds. Some people find it comforting and helpful in keeping their feet warm, especially during colder seasons. However, he warns against sleeping in socks that are too tight as they could restrict circulation. 

Whether you go to bed nude or in clothes, you should always remove your makeup and any heavy jewelry. Snoozing with makeup on can clog pores and lead to future breakouts. “It’s best to cleanse the face thoroughly before sleeping to allow the skin to breathe and regenerate,” advises Walker. Additionally, laying down in chunky necklaces, bangles, and other jewelry can be painful and might even leave abrasions on the skin.

“Ultimately, the key is to prioritize comfort and choose sleepwear that allows for optimal relaxation,” Walker says. “It’s always a good idea to listen to your body and make choices that help you feel comfortable and at ease during sleep.”

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Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink announced on Thursday evening that it has received FDA approval to begin conducting human trials. News of the major step arrives after years of research and numerous regulatory hurdles, as well as multiple investigations into potential safety and animal ethics violations.

“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” Neuralink wrote via its Twitter account on Thursday evening, with Musk retweeting the message alongside his congratulations.

[Related: Elon Musk hopes humans will test Neuralink brain implants in the next six months.]

Neuralink aims to create a line of computer implants that connect directly with users’ brains, initially in order to restore patients’ vision and help those with a “Stephen Hawking-type [neurological] situation,” explained Musk during a Neuralink presentation last November. For the majority of his life, Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which ultimately resulted in a near total body paralysis.

Neuralink first released footage in 2019 of a successful interfacing with rat test subjects. The company subsequently moved on to similar implants for sheep, pigs, and monkeys. In 2021, the company released footage of one of its test macaques playing Pong via a prototype “brain-machine interface.” Late last year, however, an exposé from Reuters revealed the company was under a federal investigation stemming from “internal staff complaints” regarding alleged animal-welfare violations, some of which pertained to over alleged 1,500 dead test subjects. Shortly thereafter, another report via Reuters indicated the FDA had rebuffed the company’s initial requests to begin human test trials, citing concerns over devices potentially overheating, as well as the possibility of damaging brain tissue upon implant removal.

[Related: Employees say Neuralink’s ‘hack job’ tests killed roughly 1,500 animals since 2018.]

As The Verge and DigitalTrends noted on Thursday, Neuralink is not the first company to receive regulatory greenlight on human brain-computer interface trials. Earlier this year, a company called Synchron—backed by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—announced it had successfully implanted their “Stentrode” neuroprosthesis device in four human subjects. BrainGate’s device has also previously allowed a paralyzed man to convert his imagined handwriting into text to communicate.

Per Neuralink, recruitment is not yet open for clinical trials, but the company promised “more information on this soon.” Last November, Musk stated during a company show-and-tell that “You could have a Neuralink device implanted right now and you wouldn’t even know,” adding that, “ Hypothetically in one of these demos, in fact… I will.”

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Following a similar report issued by the American Psychological Association (APA) earlier this month, the US Surgeon General released an advisory statement on Tuesday warning of social media platforms’ potentially harmful effects on minors.

While cautioning more research is still needed to understand the full scope of social media’s impact on children, adolescents, and teens, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s office makes clear they believe “ample indicators” show social media can represent a “profound risk of harm to [their] mental health and well-being.”

“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said in a statement this week, citing the “growing evidence” supporting their worry. In one such study referenced, adolescents who spend over 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of mental health issues such as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Additional research cited by the Surgeon General’s report points towards particular harm for girls, who face cyberbullying and body-image issues.

[Related: APA releases youth social media guidelines.]

“At this time, we do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents,” the advisory states.

At the same time, the advisory statement makes it clear that children and adolescents utilize and are influenced by social media in vastly varying ways. The ways children are impacted by social media are often based on their particularly emotional and psychological strengths and vulnerabilities, as well as cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors. Some of these experiences on social media can prove beneficial, such as offering spaces for community and connection with like-minded individuals sharing “identities, abilities, and interests,” alongside offering access to important information and spaces for self-expression.

As The New York Times noted on Thursday, social media has also proven especially helpful to children and teens within the LGBTQ+ community. “[A] variety of research over the decade since social media became ubiquitous among teenagers has found that often, social media use has been more beneficial than not for LGBTQ youth,” the article states.

A Surgeon General’s advisory does not carry any legal weight, but often serves as a public statement calling attention to a health issue alongside subsequent recommendations for policymakers, businesses, and the public. Among other suggestions, the Surgeon General’s office urges lawmakers to enact legislation ensuring tech companies share relevant health impact data to independent researchers and the public “in a manner that is timely, sufficiently detailed, and protects privacy.”

Additionally, the report recommends the development and implementation of digital and media literacy curricula in schools, as well as encouraging policies that “further limit access—in ways that minimize the risk of harm—to social media for all children.”

[Related: How to use built-in parental controls on Instagram, TikTok, and more.]

Meanwhile, businesses such as Meta, Twitter, and TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, are pushed to maintain a proper level of transparency about their own internal research and methods for developing products used by minors—something that’s frequently proven difficult to realize. Parents are also strongly encouraged to discuss, educate, and monitor their children’s social media habits.

Earlier this month, the American Psychological Association released its first-ever health advisory report on youth and adolescent social media usage, which spoke broadly of potential developmental effects stemming from experiences on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The APA’s 11-page outline described these apps as “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people,” but stressed it was rather how minors used the apps that influenced them.

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In the past few years, 10,000 to 20,000 apps have stampeded into the mental health space, offering to “disrupt” traditional therapy. With the frenzy around AI innovations like ChatGPT, the claim that chatbots can provide mental health care is on the horizon.

The numbers explain why: Pandemic stresses led to millions more Americans seeking treatment. At the same time, there has long been a shortage of mental health professionals in the United States; more than half of all counties lack psychiatrists. Given the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurers offer parity between mental and physical health coverage, there is a gaping chasm between demand and supply.

For entrepreneurs, that presents a market bonanza. At the South by Southwest conference in March, where health startups displayed their products, there was a near-religious conviction that AI could rebuild health care, offering apps and machines that could diagnose and treat all kinds of illnesses, replacing doctors and nurses.

Unfortunately, in the mental health space, evidence of effectiveness is lacking. Few of the many apps on the market have independent outcomes research showing they help; most haven’t been scrutinized at all by the FDA. Though marketed to treat conditions such as anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and depression, or to predict suicidal tendencies, many warn users (in small print) that they are “not intended to be medical, behavioral health or other healthcare service” or “not an FDA cleared product.”

There are good reasons to be cautious in the face of this marketing juggernaut.

Decades ago, Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and considered one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, predicted AI would never make a good therapist, though it could be made to sound like one. In fact, his original AI program, created in the 1960s, was a psychotherapist named ELIZA, which used word and pattern recognition combined with natural language programming to sound like a therapist:

Woman: Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

ELIZA: Your boyfriend made you come here?

Woman: He says I’m depressed much of the time.

ELIZA: I am sorry to hear that you are depressed.

Woman: It’s true. I am unhappy.

ELIZA: Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

Though hailed as an AI triumph, ELIZA’s “success” terrified Weizenbaum, whom I once interviewed. He said students would interact with the machine as if Eliza were an actual therapist, when what he’d created was “a party trick,” he said.

He foresaw the evolution of far more sophisticated programs like ChatGPT. But “the experiences a computer might gain under such circumstances are not human experiences,” he told me. “The computer will not, for example, experience loneliness in any sense that we understand it.”

The same goes for anxiety or ecstasy, emotions so neurologically complex that scientists have not been able pinpoint their neural origins. Can a chatbot achieve transference, the empathic flow between patient and doctor that is central to many types of therapy?

“The core tenet of medicine is that it’s a relationship between human and human — and AI can’t love,” said Bon Ku, director of the Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University and a pioneer in medical innovation. “I have a human therapist, and that will never be replaced by AI.”

Ku said he’d like to see AI used instead to reduce practitioners’ tasks like record-keeping and data entry to “free up more time for humans to connect.”

While some mental health apps may ultimately prove worthy, there is evidence that some can do harm. One researcher noted that some users faulted these apps for their “scripted nature and lack of adaptability beyond textbook cases of mild anxiety and depression.”

It may prove tempting for insurers to offer up apps and chatbots to meet the mental health parity requirement. After all, that would be a cheap and simple solution, compared with the difficulty of offering a panel of human therapists, especially since many take no insurance because they consider insurers’ payments too low.

Perhaps seeing the flood of AI hitting the market, the Department of Labor announced last year it was ramping up efforts to ensure better insurer compliance with the mental health parity requirement.

The FDA likewise said late last year it “intends to exercise enforcement discretion” over a range of mental health apps, which it will vet as medical devices. So far, not one has been approved. And only a very few have gotten the agency’s breakthrough device designation, which fast-tracks reviews and studies on devices that show potential.

These apps mostly offer what therapists call structured therapy — in which patients have specific problems and the app can respond with a workbook-like approach. For example, Woebot combines exercises for mindfulness and self-care (with answers written by teams of therapists) for postpartum depression. Wysa, another app that has received a breakthrough device designation, delivers cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

But gathering reliable scientific data about how well app-based treatments function will take time. “The problem is that there is very little evidence now for the agency to reach any conclusions,” said Kedar Mate, head of the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Until we have that research, we don’t know whether app-based mental health care does better than Weizenbaum’s ELIZA. AI may certainly improve as the years go by, but at this point, for insurers to claim that providing access to an app is anything close to meeting the mental health parity requirement is woefully premature.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Forging strong social relationships can help mitigate the effects of traumatic childhood events in human adults, but also in baboons. A study published May 17 in the journal Science Advances drew on 36 years of data from almost 200 baboons in southern Kenya and found that even though early adversity can take years of their lifespans, stronger social bonds in adulthood can help get these years back. 

[Related: Baboon poop shows how chronic stress shortens lives.]

“It’s like the saying from the King James Apocrypha, ‘a faithful friend is the medicine of life,’” co-author and Duke University biologist and evolutionary anthropologist Susan Alberts said in a statement.

Studies have consistently found that people who go through more bad experiences growing up, such as neglect or abuse,  are more likely to die early. However, the mechanisms behind how early adversity leads to a premature death has been harder for researchers to pin down, according to Alberts. Some of the limitations to earlier research is the reliance on self-reported memories which can be imprecise and subjective. 

Enter our primate cousins. Baboons share more than 90 percent of their DNA with humans and researchers have followed individual baboons near Amboseli National Park in Kenya since 1971. 

In this new study, the researchers analyzed how early life experiences and adult social connections affected long-term survival in 199 female baboons between 1983 and 2019.

Baboon childhood is certainly different from human childhood, but young baboons still face hardships. The team in the study tallied up each female’s exposure to six potential sources of early adversity, including whether she had a low-ranking or socially isolated mother or if her mother died before she reached maturity. It was also noted if she was born in a drought year or into a large group, and if she had a sibling close in age, which could contribute to more competition for both maternal attention and resources.

The team found that stressful experiences are very common for the baboons growing up in the semi-arid and unpredictable landscape of Amboseli. Of the 199 baboons in the study, 75 percent suffered through at least one stressor, and 33 percent had two or more.

Their results confirm previous findings that the more hardship a female baboon faces, the shorter her lifespan. Monkeys who experienced more upheaval at a young age were also more socially isolated as adults.

[Related: Monkeys with close friends have friendlier gut bacteria.]

However, the researchers showed that 90 percent of the dip in survival was due to the direct effects of early adversity, not to the weakened social bonds that continued into adulthood.

No matter how strong their bonds were with other baboons, each additional hardship translated to 1.4 years of life lost. Those who went through four bad experiences growing up died close to 5.6 years earlier than those who didn’t face any. Since the average female baboon lives to age 18, this is a large drop in lost years.

But an unfortunate start in life does not mean that a baboon will absolutely live a short life. 

“Females who have bad early lives are not doomed,” co-author and biologist at SUNY Oswego Elizabeth Lange said in a statement. “We found that both early life adversity and adult social interactions affect survival independently. That means that interventions that occur throughout the lifespan could improve survival.”

In baboons, strong social bonds are measured by how often they groom with their closest friends. Those with strong social bonds added 2.2 years to their lives, no matter what adversity they had faced in their earlier years. The baboons whose mothers died before they reached maturity and then forged strong friendships in adulthood showed the best ability to bounce back. 

However, the flip side is also true. Weak social bonds can magnify early life adversity, according to the study. 

It is not clear yet if these results can be translated to adult humans, but it suggests that early intervention is not the only way to overcome childhood trauma and its lingering effects. 

“If you did have early life adversity, whatever you do, try to make friends,” Alberts said.

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One of the leading US mental health organizations, the American Psychological Association (APA), has issued its first ever health advisory report on social media usage for youth and adolescents. Published on Tuesday, the 11-page brief speaks in broad terms regarding the habits of children and teens on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, describing them as “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” Rather, the APA argues social media’s influences on minors are only part of a much wider, complex array of factors, and “likely depend on what teens can do and see online, teens’ pre-existing strengths or vulnerabilities, and the contexts in which they grow up.”

In short, the APA reiterates that, like every other aspect of psychological development, it’s difficult to pinpoint and quantify any single influence on an individual’s brain evolution. Instead, the association focuses on two major contributors to how social media can potentially affect younger users—parental oversight and awareness, as well as a platform’s own algorithmic structures.

[Related: Twitter may soon purge ‘inactive’ accounts.]

The APA recommends parents regularly review and discuss their children’s social media usage, particularly during early adolescence—usually defined as between 10- and 14-years-old. Educating children and teens on social media literacy and usage alongside fostering healthy online habits and relationships are also considered key methods of maintaining a safe experience on platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Meanwhile, the APA stresses the responsibility does not rest solely on minors’ parents. The advisory’s authors note that the tech companies’ algorithms determining how, when, and why users see certain content are built upon “centuries of racist policy and discrimination encoded.” Social media therefore often becomes an “incubator” of these inherent biases, and which can  introduce and exacerbate extremist socio-political and racist ideals. “The resulting potential impact is far reaching, including physical violence offline, as well as threats to well-being,” adds the APA.

Speaking to PopSci, Jeremy Birnholtz, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University focusing on LGBTQ+ adolescent social media usage and the head of the school’s Social Media Lab, says he believes the APA’s “measured document” is a step in the right direction, but argues some of the guidelines are potentially difficult to follow for parents.

[Related: Is shyness something kids feel, or something kids are?]

In one section of the report, for example, the APA advises limiting the amount of time younger users spend comparing themselves to others the see on social media, “particularly around beauty- or appearance-related content,” pointing towards its potentially influence on “poorer body image, disordered eating, and depressive symptoms, particularly among girls.”

“The guideline is ‘teens should avoid using social media for social comparison.’ And it’s like, well, what does that mean? You shouldn’t look at your friends’ vacation photos? You shouldn’t follow the influencers that all your friends follow? I don’t think that’s realistic,” says Birnholtz.

Like the APA’s report, Birnholtz also argues social media’s negative effects are often symptomatic of broader, real world issues. Racism can be baked into social media—while that’s true, it’s also baked into society,” they say of platforms’ algorithmic biases. “Certain things like social comparison, no question, can be exacerbated by social media. But to suggest that they are a function of [it] is problematic, I think.”

Birnholtz goes on to explain that while it’s vital to take the APA’s suggestions into account, it’s important to remember the origins of many social media issues. “You’re detaching problems with social media from the problems that they represent in the broader society,” says Birnholtz. “You can fix it on social media, but as long as it’s in the [real world], you’re not going to fix it.”

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There are countless studies and copious amounts of research delving into how the internet can negatively impact your mind. But, new data indicates that there’s one way online time could actually benefit the brain. According to findings recently published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society from a team at NYU, it appears that regular internet usage may significantly reduce the risk of dementia in older populations.

As also highlighted by Gizmodo on Thursday, the study examined online habits of over 18,000 adults over the age of 50 for as long as 17 years (with a median of nearly 8 years) via data from the government’s biannual Health and Retirement Study. The dataset was subsequently broken down into two groups—those who were regular internet users, and those who were not. A second survey assessed their cognition at the study’s outset to use for reference over time. According to researchers, regular visitors to the internet “experienced approximately half the risk of dementia than non-regular users,” even when taking issues like pre-existing conditions into consideration. As Gizmodo also noted, those who reported using the internet in subsequent analysis displayed even lower risks of impairment.

[Related: How your daily screen time affects your wellbeing.]

But don’t take this as carte blanche to surf the web to your heart’s content just yet. When utilizing a smaller dataset of users that provided hourly usage rates per week, researchers discovered a potential U-curve situation between time and risk for dementia. Those who spend over six hours a day on the internet appear to possess a slightly increased chance to develop cognitive issues, much like those who rarely go online at all. This led researchers to hypothesize that “excessive online engagement may have adverse cognitive effects on older adults.” Despite the study’s caveats, however, the findings present an interesting look into the potential positives of online use, especially when people are often told to use the internet less.

The Goldilocks “not too much, but not too little” linkage between internet use and dementia falls in line with experts’ recent suggestions on how to best maintain cognitive health: lead an overall, decently healthy lifestyle, i.e. one with regular physical activity, a primarily plant-based diet, an aversion to bogus supplements, managing existing diseases, and reduced alcohol consumption. So, on top of all that, you can now possibly add a healthy hour or so of daily internet scrolling to the list. Just don’t fall too far down the rabbit hole.

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LIFE IS RARELY WORRY-FREE, but unprecedented angst has become a constant. Beyond the regular challenges of everyday existence—chaotic households, traffic jams, overbearing bosses—the looming presence of a deadly virus over the past three years has made even mundane decisions feel fraught.

Any number of things can spark stress, but they all share a common origin. “It’s when the demands on somebody outstrip the resources they have,” says Lynn Bufka, a senior director at the American Psychological Association (APA). The results of that are rarely good. Face a difficult situation, unrealistic expectation, or sudden conflict without the right skills or tools, and you risk melting down or freezing up. That danger increases when you are pressed for time or cannot influence a challenging variable. “The feeling of not having control is anxiety-provoking,” Bufka says. “It’s pretty overwhelming.”

Most people had no experience dealing with the kind of prolonged pressure that came along with the pandemic. But for those with some of the world’s most intense occupations, it’s all just part of the job. Losing their cool is simply not an option. The strategies they employ to keep calm while facing a classroom, saving a life, or defusing a bomb just might help the rest of us deal with whatever’s pushing us to the edge of reason.

The fishing boat captain

THE STRESSORS: In 2021, the people bringing in Dungeness crab, black cod, and other bounties of the earth—the workers in America’s fishing and hunting industries—had the second deadliest job in the United States, coming in just behind loggers, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. “It is extremely hazardous,” says Richard Ogg, captain of the troller Karen Jeanne, which is based in Bodega Bay, California. The gale-force dangers he and his crew face include rough seas, miserable weather, and sleep deprivation. Pulling in a catch big enough to earn the money they need weighs heavily on his mind too. Above all else, though, Ogg feels a sense of guardianship over his team, and finds the biggest challenge can be coping with conflicts that arise among a crew corralled on a 54.5-foot boat miles from shore. That’s no easy feat when dealing with workers who don’t necessarily respect the hazards, the gear, or each other.

THE COPING MECHANISMS: Effective communication is essential to keeping cool. Ogg tends to be egalitarian, even if he as the captain has the final say and will pull rank if he must. He often discusses problems or disagreements with everyone aboard, seeks their perspectives, and considers their viewpoints to zero in on the best solution. He finds that this approach, and accepting that things sometimes go sideways despite his best efforts, helps everyone stay on an even keel whenever things get choppy.

The air traffic controller

THE STRESSORS: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport hosted nearly 2,000 flights on average every day in 2022, making it the busiest hub in the world last year. “Almost every bit of airspace that we have, there’s going to be planes there,” says air traffic controller Nichole Surunis. Shepherding those thousands of passengers in and out safely requires tremendous concentration and the ability to process information quickly. Variables like bad weather or an unexpected move by a pilot can make an already challenging task even more dynamic at a second’s notice. There’s no time to dwell on what’s at stake. “You have to focus on all these pilots you’re talking to, with all these people on these planes,” Surunis says. In total, there are about 2.9 million travelers who fly into or out of the United States on a given day—and costly delays add to the strain of those minding the traffic. It’s only after the craft are safe that a controller might notice their racing heart and realize just how tense they were.

THE COPING MECHANISMS: Training and experience are key to handling rapidly shifting situations, and Surunis, like all controllers, has lots of both. “You have your Plan A—but you also must have a Plan B and Plan C,” she says. The occupation requires practicing self-care too. Stepping away from her workstation is essential, and mandated: Controllers typically aren’t allowed to go more than two hours without a break. Surunis doesn’t hesitate to tap a union-run support service after an especially grueling day, and she makes a point of unwinding by making time for hobbies like baking. That helps ensure she’s rested and ready to focus on keeping the sky safe.

The trauma surgeon

THE STRESSORS: Doctors who specialize in emergency care rarely have two days that are alike. A routine case like a ruptured appendix can end up on their table as readily as massive trauma. “They can be injured all over their body,” says Daniel Hagler, a critical care surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens Hospital in New York. “What you do within seconds or minutes of them arriving can be the difference between life and death.” The tension ramps up if he must handle many patients simultaneously. Over time, the strain takes a toll: A study published in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery found that nearly one-quarter of doctors in Hagler’s shoes experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

THE COPING MECHANISMS: Keeping it together requires the ability to triage, focus on what’s important, and put lesser priorities aside. Hagler employs “deliberate and algorithmic thinking”: If you see this, do that. Trust your intuition, using past experience to guide you to the best decision—while accepting that you may be wrong. “Take a step to just ready yourself and settle your nerves, and do what needs to be done,” he says.

The bomb tech

THE STRESSORS: Pipe bombs are the most common homemade explosive devices on American soil, according to the Department of Homeland Security, but the people who specialize in preventing them from blowing up are rare. Techs like Carl Makins, formerly of the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina, often face incendiaries crudely fashioned in someone’s kitchen or basement, so the safest way of deactivating them isn’t always clear. It doesn’t help that the gear includes 85 pounds of hot, uncomfortable Kevlar, making it hard to move. But the biggest source of anxiety is not knowing if someone tampered with the suspicious package or tried to move it in an effort to be helpful before he arrived. “What did you do to it?” Makins often found himself wondering. “Did you make it mad?”

THE COPING MECHANISMS: Makins always tried to compartmentalize his feelings. “You can’t get angry,” he says. “That limits your ability to see everything that you need to see.” He also used humor to help defuse tense situations—pointing out that, say, handling a bomb next to that shiny new pickup might not end well for the truck. He also remained mindful of his limits. If he was too tired, too tense, or just not up to the task, he’d say so and let someone else on the team step in to do the job. “You just tap out,” he says.

The teacher

THE STRESSORS: Teachers—despite diminishing resources, growing technological distractions, and students who often want to be anywhere but the classroom—are nevertheless saddled with the responsibility of shaping the future. That’s a lot of pressure, which explains why Gallup polls put teaching in a dead heat with nursing for the most stressful profession in the country, and why a RAND Corporation survey shows stress is the number one reason educators quit. And that was before COVID-19 compounded their challenges. When Teresa BlackCloud’s high school students in West Fargo, North Dakota, began taking turns attending class in person and learning from home in the fall of 2020, for example, she had to divide her attention between the pupils in front of her and the “online kids” who might need tech support. “I felt like my brain was split in two,” she says. “If only there were two Miss BlackClouds.” Like many educators, she had to quickly pivot between helping the teens in the classroom and assisting those working remotely.

THE COPING MECHANISMS: Setting clear boundaries is key to handling trying circumstances. BlackCloud had to put the kibosh on responding to pings from kids at all hours because it limited her ability to recharge. “I had to get really good at setting boundaries,” she says. She strives to practice mindfulness and sets aside specific parts of her day for mentally wandering into stressy places. “While I’m brushing my teeth is my time to worry about things,” she says.

The Alaska rescue pilot

THE STRESSORS: Flying a rescue helicopter in Alaska is so intense the Coast Guard requires pilots to complete a tour elsewhere before they can get the gig. The assignment often demands they travel long distances—​Air Station Kodiak monitors 4 million square miles of land and sea, an area larger than the entire lower 48 states—in the dark and through extreme conditions. Due to the environs, the Last Frontier has an aviation accident rate more than twice that of the rest of the country. “It is very challenging,” says Lt. Cmdr. Jared Carbajal, who flies MH-60 Jayhawks and often dons night-vision goggles to navigate the inky sky. The haste of operations compounds the tension: Pilots must be airborne within 30 minutes of getting the call to pull someone out of danger. That leaves little time to prepare and sometimes gives Carbajal scant knowledge of what he’ll find when he arrives at the scene. (Carbajal now flies out of US Coast Guard Air Station Sitka, also in Alaska.)

THE COPING MECHANISMS: Managing complex and uncertain scenarios requires focusing only on what you can control. Everything else is a distraction. Carbajal concentrates on one task at a time—​calculating flight distance, estimating how much fuel he’ll need, requesting the necessary gear, and so on—​that he tackles systematically. He avoids looking too far ahead on his to-do list or fixating on situations he cannot influence, like unusually turbulent waves. “If there’s something that you can’t make a contingency plan for, don’t even waste your time on it,” he says.

An earlier version of this article appeared on popsci.com in January 2021, and this feature first appeared in the Spring 2021 issue. It has been updated since that time.

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An online coaching company recently teamed up with language researchers to amass the world’s largest publicly available dataset of two-person virtual conversations. Already in use by institutions at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and elsewhere, BetterUp Labs’ CANDOR Conversation Corpus includes over 850 hours’ worth of over 1,600 Zoom chats recorded between January and November 2020. Its authors hope to provide experts and scholars across an array of fields a deep trove of data offering insight into the myriad ways digital communication methods can affect everyday human interactions.

Zoom delays are the bane of many remote workers’ existence, but there’s a reason beyond the sheer annoyance. Zoom delays cause us to awkwardly talk over one another. According to a study published last year, it takes approximately 297 milliseconds for the human brain to process face-to-face, yes-or-no questions—ask those same queries over a video chat portal like Zoom, and that delay increases to upwards of 976 milliseconds. As Business Insider relayed on Monday, the previous study’s researchers theorized that even as little as a 30- to 70-millisecond audio delay (less than the blink of an eye) can disrupt conversation participants’ neural processing that underlies the very basics of human dialogue.

[Related: The best Zoom tricks and add-ons for your video chats.]

Enter BetterUp Labs’ “Conversation: A Naturalistic Dataset of Online Recordings,” aka CANDOR. With methodology and results recently published in Science Advances, CANDOR offers one of the most expansive archives of two-person audio and video conversations to date. The process was simple enough: compensated participants were asked to pair up with randomized fellow volunteers, who were then tasked to chat together for at least 25 minutes about whatever they wanted. Afterwards, they were surveyed about their feelings and thoughts post-chat. Both the audio and video of each conversation was also recorded, meaning that unlike most conversational corpuses, CANDOR didn’t merely archive their transcriptions. Speakers’ visual and audio information were also detailed, meaning every facial tic, verbal stutter, and subtle gesture was made available for researchers to parse and analyze.

Initial analysis of CANDOR’s data reveals some quick takeaways about what makes a solid Zoom conversationalist—generally speaking, higher rated and more well received participants were those who spoke faster, louder, and more intensely. As Insider explains, “people rated by their partners as better conversationalists spoke 3 percent faster than bad conversationalists—uttering about six more words a minute.” Although average volume didn’t change between positively and negatively reviewed conversations, the more nuanced notion of “intensity” factored heavily into opinions, as well as the variation between decibel levels. More variation meant a better view, while monotone conversationalists unsurprisingly didn’t score as well.

[Related: Zoom chats can be surprisingly therapeutic.]

The authors of the new CANDOR corpus freely admit the limitations to their initial work—the first version includes only American English conversations, and randomly pairing participants might have produced social anxieties and issues that skewed some of the data. Still, the CANDOR database offers one of the most expansive sets of two-person digital conversations ever amassed, and can serve as a launching pad for even more detailed investigations down the line. In order to do so, however, don’t be surprised if you find yet another Zoom invite in your email inbox in the near future.

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Love them or loathe them, selfies aren’t going anywhere. Humans are not even alone in this ability to capture themselves in a moment— bears,  and penguins have from time to time posed for a self portrait. These third-person images are an easy way to satisfy the social pressures of “pics or it didn’t happen” or the dreaded FOMO with one single click, but they may also have a deeper psychological component. 

[Related: Understanding the weird Biden-Carter photo could help you take better selfies.]

New research published April 27 in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that people use first-person photography—a photo of the scene from their own perspective—when they want to document a physical experience, but opt for third-person photos like selfies where you are in the scene to capture the deeper meaning of an event. 

Earlier research into the psychology of selfies focused on how the photo-taker wants to present themselves, while this new research takes people capturing memories into consideration. 

“Not only do we find that most people take both types of photos in different situations, but that people also differ across situations in whether their goal for taking photo is to capture the physical experience of the moment or the bigger meaning of the moment in their life,” said Zachary Niese, study co-author and psychologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, in a statement.

The research included six studies involving over 2,100 participants. The team found that when the goal of a photo is to capture meaning, they’re more likely to take a selfie and that they find more meaning looking back at their own third-person photos compared with first-person. 

People also tend to like their photos more when the perspective matches their goal for taking the photo.

“Taking and posting pictures is a part of everyday life for many people. While there is sometimes derision about photo-taking practices in popular culture, personal photos have the potential to help people reconnect to their past experiences and build their self-narratives,” said Niese.

The authors warned against the assumption that photos taken from first or third person perspectives are better than the other. Their analysis shows that the most effective perspective depends more on an individual’s goal in the moment—whether that be to capture a physical experience like taking a tour of a museum or the deeper meaning of an event like a wedding or graduation.

[Related: Take better selfies with these lighting and angle tips.]

Going forward, the more understanding an individual has of the goal when taking a picture and the role that perspective plays in the photos and make amateur photographers better at preserving memories for later. 

“People’s photo-taking practices have the potential to serve a more fundamental human motive to develop and understand our sense of self, both in terms of the experiences in our life as well as their bigger meaning,” said Niese.

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Is shyness something you feel, or is it something that defines you? Child psychologists are still not fully convinced one way or the other. A small study published April 25 in the journal Society for Research in Child Development found that timidness, fear and nervousness in social situations or being at the center of attention, is a fairly typical childhood experience, whether it is an emotion or personality. 

[Related from PopSci+: Can dogs be introverts?]

Some long standing theories about shyness believe that there are two types of coy behavior. “Temperamental” shyness remains roughly the same throughout development, whereas “state” shyness is felt during a social situation and manifests more like an emotion. 

In this new study, researchers examined the behavioral, affective, and physiological responses to a speech task in 152 Canadian children (73 girls and 79 boys) ages seven and eight. The children were told that they would be giving a speech that would be filmed and shown to other children. Their parents completed online questionnaires about their child’s temperament, while the children were given an echocardiogram to check for physiological indications of nervous behavior.

The children prepared a two-minute speech about their last birthday and recited the speech in front of a video camera and a mirror. The researchers monitored the children for behaviors coded as avoidance or inhibition, self-reported nervousness, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

The team found that temperamental shyness may exist in a distinct group of children over time, and a larger group of children may experience shyness as an emotion during certain situations. 

About 10 percent of the children had a high level of stress giving the speech in addition to relatively high levels of shyness over time, according to the questionnaires filled out by their parents. According to the team, this provides evidence that shyness may be part of these children’s temperament. Being the center of attention may be stressful across time and in various contexts in this group. Future research could examine the consequences on how this shyness affects academic, social, and psychological well-being since shyness could be measured across time. 

Roughly 25 percent of study participants were not reported to be shy, but demonstrated a higher level of stress from giving the speech. The authors believe that it is likely that state shyness in response to a speech task is a relatively common, normative experience for children at this age.

[Related: Little kids drew their grim—and hopeful—reality of COVID.]

“Our findings provide empirical support for the long-theorized idea that there may be a subset of temperamentally shy children who manifest heightened behavioral, affective, and physiological reactivity in response to a social stressor, as well as a subset of children who may experience only the affective component which may reflect state shyness,” co-author and Brock University post-doctoral fellow and psychologist Kristie Poole said in a statement. “This highlights the multiple components and developmental course of temperamental shyness and the features that distinguish temperamental and state shyness in middle to late childhood.”

This study provides some empirical evidence for long-standing ideas about shyness that were first made by the late psychologist Jerome Kagan. In the 1990s, Kagan argued that temperamental shyness may exist as a distinct category for some children and the features that define this category are relatively stable across time and context.

The authors also noted some limitations to the research, namely that the study only measured these behavioral, affective, and physiological components at one point in time and the sample size was relatively small. Future research should also include a more racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse pool and focus.

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Is the phase “nice guys finish last” actually true? Unfortunately for all the soft-hearted among us, brutish behavior can be an effective path to power and dominance in both humans and chimpanzees. A study published April 24 in the journal PeerJ Life and Environment found that the male chimpanzees who exhibited greedy, irritable, and bullying personalities reached a higher social status. These rascals were also more successful at producing offspring. 

[Related: Adolescent chimpanzees might be less impulsive than human teens.]

However, the team is still plagued by a puzzling question from these findings: if being mean is the key to success, why isn’t every chimp a bully? 

For the study, the team followed 28 male chimpanzees living in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. A previous study had found that  these particular chimpanzees had a few members that  are more sociable whereas others are loners. Some of the chimps had overbearing personalities, and some were more easy-going. And, of course, there are a handful that are more quick to pick fights with others. 

Tanzanian field researchers performed personality assessments on the chimpanzees based on years of near-daily observations of how each animal interacted with others and behaved among the group. They found that a personality combination of high dominance and low conscientiousness helped the male chimpanzees fare better in life than the others, but it still doesn’t answer the evolutionary puzzle of why personality differences exist at all. 

A long held theory is that different personality traits matter at different points in an animal’s life or that certain traits that are a liability when an animal is young may pay off in old age. 

“Think of the personality traits that lead some people to peak in high school versus later in life,” Alexander Weiss, co-author and comparative psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “It’s a trade-off.” 

The team tested the theory using almost 40 years of data that goes back to famed primatologist Jane Goodall’s early research at Gombe. Across the lifespan, the same personality traits were linked to both high reproductive success and high social rank. 

[Related: Popular chimpanzees set hand-holding trends for the whole group.]

Something else must be behind the diversity of chimpanzee personality. The “best” personality to have could depend on social or environmental conditions. Gender could matter too—a trait that is beneficial to males could cost a female. If this is true, then “genes associated with those traits would be kept in the population,” Weiss said. Further study is needed to confirm this idea. 

The suggestion that animals have distinct personalities was considered taboo not too long ago, with Goodall herself accused of anthropomorphism with her descriptions. Scientists have studied animals ranging from squid to birds, finding evidence of distinct personalities. These quirks, idiosyncrasies, and ways of relating to the world around them remain reasonably stable over time and across situations.

Like with measures of human personality, personality ratings for animals have also been proven to be as consistent from one observer to the next. “The data just doesn’t support the skepticism,” Weiss said.

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Hana Iqbal drops her toddler off at nursery each day dressed in a raincoat, no matter what the forecast. Iqbal’s daughter goes to a forest school, where kids spend about half or more of their day outside, learning about the natural world. “Last week, my two-year-old was hammering nails into a piece of wood, wearing goggles and gloves,” she says.

Forest schools, also called nature pre-schools, outdoor pre-schools, and forest kindergartens, complement traditional education with a focus on environmental literacy. They vary in their cost, curriculum, and size, but generally mean that children spend a significant part of their classes outdoors and complete activities that help them learn about the nature around them. 

Iqbal describes herself not just as a forest schools convert, but an evangelist. “As a family doctor, I see so much heartbreaking mental health difficulty in young people every working day,” she wrote in a message to Popular Science. “I genuinely believe and hope that these streams of education—which allow children to develop mindfulness, body awareness, and relationship with nature, each other, and oneself—may be a little bit of an antidote to the challenges of modern life.”

She sends her daughter to a forest school in England, where the movement has flourished in recent years. In 2017, a shortlist of the best nurseries in the United Kingdom were all outdoor-focused. The schools are also common in Scandinavia, where the idea originated. Now, the trend is catching steam in the US as well. 

Forest schools have been around in the states since the 1960s, but have seen consistent growth since the 2010s, and a surge since the pandemic. Natural Start Alliance, which is a professional group for educators involved in environmental education, for newborns up to 8-year-olds, reports that it’s seen a big increase in interest in the past decade. In 2017, the organization logged about 275 nature preschools schools across the US; by 2022, that number had risen to more than 800 forest schools.

[Related: Homework might actually be bad]

Emily Van Laan, a communications specialist for Natural Start Alliance, attributes this to a few changes: increased conversation about the importance of early childhood development, the rise of play-based learning, concern over time spent on screens, and the spread of COVID-19 itself. She says that forest schools are scattered throughout the country, but have particularly high concentrations in California, Washington, and Minnesota.

“Sometimes people think about this approach to education as only being in places where the weather is always nice or always mild,” Van Laan says. “And that is definitely not the case. We see nature pre-schools in almost every state, including Alaska and Hawai’i, and definitely in every region of the US.”

Each school’s approach to outdoor learning will differ depending on the region. A program in Texas would think of exercises that keep kids cool during warmer months, or help them navigate snakes in the area. One in Minnesota would consider how children can stay warm and active when the temperature plunges, or teach them to forage for plants and fungi. 

“Every program will have guidance that is clearly communicated with parents in terms of the temperature barrier,” Van Laan says. For example, the forest school will tell parents how long children will spend outside in a certain temperature before going inside to take a break. Educators are also trained in risk assessment, like knowing the signs of when a child becomes too hot or cold.“The importance of having the right gear is a huge part of nature preschool,” Van Laan adds. “So they often do parent education on layering and a lot of programs often provide gear to the students that are enrolled.” 

Most programs are tuition-based and can be expensive, Van Laan says. But some offer a sliding scale or scholarships. One program in Wisconsin is free thanks to a partnership between a school district, nature center, and the YMCA. In Minnesota, 13 nature preschools are partially covered through public funding. 

Forest schools teach children how to be environmental stewards, something that is especially important as the world grapples with a changing climate. But there’s no research-based consensus on how to teach young children about climate change right now, Van Laan notes. (Even for older students, New Jersey is the only state with a mandated K-12 curriculum on climate change.) Van Laan says to start, educators should focus on teaching kids to connect with nature. “Certainly we’re not laying the responsibility of saving the planet on their tiny shoulders,” she says. 

[Related: Food forests can bring climate resilience, better health, and tasty produce to city residents]

At the same time, some forest schools have come face to face with the impacts of climate change. “The daily reality and urgency of climate change has increased,” she says. “And while we don’t want to introduce young children to ideas that frighten them, we also want to recognize their capacity for understanding. There are outdoor programs in California, for example, that have to close because of wildfires … Children are aware of these things. There’s no way to shield them from this knowledge, because they’re seeing it, they’re experiencing it.”

Iqbal says she’s happy her daughter has the unique opportunity to connect with nature daily—something she feels is made even more important with climate change. “My God, will the next generation need to know this and to look after this, after everything our generation and the generations before have created for them.”

Correction (April 24, 2023): The article previous said that Minnesota has 12 school districts with publicly funded nature preschools. The correct number is 13 nature preschools in total.

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How well do you know your pets? Pet Psychic takes some of the musings you’ve had about your BFFs (beast friends forever) and connects them to hard research and results from modern science.

ONE AFTERNOON several years ago, a Moluccan cockatoo named Harpo arrived at Midwest Avian Adoption & Rescue Services in St. Paul, Minnesota. As Galiena Cimperman sat quietly with him and scratched his head, the bird started to talk.

This was perfectly normal. Harpo, like others of his species and the parrot family to which it belongs, was a very vocal creature and gifted mimic. Cimperman, the sanctuary’s executive director, was accustomed to him keeping up a semicoherent monologue of under-his-breath babble. But a long while after their first meeting, he shared something unexpected.

“I hate this bird,” Harpo said, loudly and clearly. He repeated it twice more. “I hate this bird. I hate this bird.”

Harpo had certainly heard that insult before, likely in unpleasant circumstances. But what did the cockatoo mean by it? According to Cimperman, the words didn’t have the same significance for him that they would for us; Harpo was repeating the sounds, not using them as language. But that doesn’t mean the outburst was insignificant.

Cimperman believes the phrase reflected traumas the cockatoo experienced earlier in life and that uttering them was part of his recovery. “I’m hesitant to say, because I don’t have any scientific backing on this,” she explains, “but I think he was probably working through stuff.”

Her diagnosis of Harpo—and many other residents of MAARS, one of 100 or so sanctuaries in the US that provide lifetime homes to abused and abandoned parrots—indeed comes without a seal of scientific approval. Although there’s plenty of research on parrot memory, problem-solving, and communication (the cognitive sophistication of some species is likened to that of human children), the birds’ emotions are largely unstudied.

That makes the relationship between parrots and people all the more difficult. The birds’ intelligence, physiology, and social nature often makes it difficult for them to flourish in captivity—yet there are more than 50 million parrots in households and zoos worldwide. Many are ultimately dumped at overwhelmed rescue operations, where volunteers like Cimperman have to piece together their pasts to help them find solace in the present.

As for whether the animals’ suffering can lead to psychological trauma—defined as an ongoing emotional response to an intensely distressing event—there’s even less research on that than on their feelings. But between their emotions and their excellent long-term memories, they do possess the cognitive capacities necessary to experience extended trauma.

One of the only scientific papers about parrot trauma, in fact, emerged from a collaboration between MAARS caretakers and Gay Bradshaw, the psychologist and ecologist best known for identifying PTSD in orphaned elephants who witnessed their parents and elders being killed. Presented more than a decade ago at a conference of avian veterinarians, the paper describes how parrots at the sanctuary frequently meet the criteria for the disorder.

What Bradshaw learned is that the birds undergo intensely distressing experiences, beginning in most cases at birth. Unlike parrots in the wild, whose parents provide close, attentive care from hatching through fledging, commercially bred individuals often start life in isolation. They receive little attention except for intermittent tube feeding.

“I really think their whole lives are, in some form or another, traumatic,” Cimperman says. “The way people raise them is completely absent of everything they should have.” In a review of standard commercial breeding methods, bird vet Michelle Curtis Velasco likened them to the infamous Romanian orphanages where, in the near absence of human contact, infants went on to develop severe behavioral disorders.

Then, at an age when their wild counterparts meet other young flock members while continuing to receive parental instruction, fledgling parrots enter a human home. They have evolved to live in large groups, but as pets, just one or a few often-absent people become their entire social world. These situations are intrinsically fraught; even well-meaning guardians may ignore or punish their parrots after tiring of unwittingly powerful bites and earsplitting cries for company. Sometimes keepers are not so well-meaning, and the situation devolves into full-blown abuse.

The birds are ill-equipped to cope, says Cimperman, and stress is magnified by helplessness and an inability to escape. Many parrots, especially the larger ones, either have their wings clipped to prevent flight or never learn to fly at all; they lack the sense of security that mobility provides.

Little wonder that some parrots arrive at MAARS with symptoms of severe psychological disturbance: tics like picking their feathers out and even wounding themselves, extreme aggression, hypersensitivity to everyday noises, repetitive movements, incessant screaming, constant agitation, catatonic unresponsiveness, and so on. In extreme cases, parrots have stayed in their cages for years, avoiding eye contact and trembling when humans approach.

When seen in people, those behaviors raise concerns about PTSD. “I know this hasn’t been borne out scientifically to the degree that it should be, but I don’t know what else it adds up to,” Cimperman says. So MAARS adapts insights on human PTSD into its treatment regime. New arrivals are initially kept separate from the flock; as they begin to acclimatize, grooming, eating, and showing curiosity about their surroundings, caretakers work with them to develop a sense of trust in humans.

It’s important that the birds feel control over their own lives, says Cimperman. “So much of a parrot’s life in captivity is without choice,” she says. “We try to give everyone a sense of free agency as much as possible, closer to what they would have in the wild.” Later they may be exposed to reminders of past trauma—the sight of a garbage bag, for example, for a bird delivered to the sanctuary inside one—as they learn to regulate their feelings. The process may take months or even years.

In Harpo’s case, the details of his early life are murky. He had one guardian before arriving at a sanctuary in Texas; there Harpo killed several birds and left volunteers with wounds requiring medical treatment, at which point MAARS took him in. “We couldn’t have him out for more than five minutes. He would just kind of implode and start flying at your face or attacking anything he could get his beak on,” Cimperman recalls.

By the time Harpo said, “I hate this bird,” she had worked with him for three years. He still had episodes when “he would just kind of blank out and kind of go into attack mode,” but he was improving. He felt safe around Cimperman, and she saw that utterance—delivered with the pinned-back feathers and slit-eyed glare that signify intensely negative feelings—as part of the process. To her, it signified a mental reenactment of his past. “I think they store a lot of stuff that’s happened to them. And to be able to move forward, there has to be some getting out of stuff,” she says.

Erin Colbert-White, a comparative psychologist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington who has studied how African grey parrots use words, says she’s open to the possibility that parrots experience PTSD. She cautions, however, that Harpo’s invective is difficult to parse as a recollection of his trauma because we don’t know the context in which he first heard the disparaging phrase. “It’s such a complex conclusion to draw that I would want to somehow be able to study it systematically. I’m not saying it’s not true. I would just have more questions. The scientist in me says, ‘Proceed with caution.’”

Colbert-White also warns that the expectation that another species will “experience psychological disorders in ways that humans do is a big assumption.” Rigorous, without-a-doubt scientific evidence may be unobtainable, though; it would require inflicting trauma on captive parrots in controlled conditions. “There’s no way to ethically reproduce these sorts of situations,” Colbert-White says.

Even granting that uncertainty, just the possibility that parrots experience psychological effects that resemble humans’ adds to the urgency of protecting them—not just in captivity, notes Cimperman, but also in the wild. Half of all parrot species are declining, and one-quarter are threatened with extinction, yet they receive relatively little conservation attention. Thriving populations are frequently persecuted for the wildlife trade or in the name of “pest management.”

By the end of Harpo’s life in 2021, nine years after his arrival at MAARS, he was one of the friendliest feathered guests there. He ran to greet people and was positively joyful. “I think who Harpo was and who he ended up being were completely different birds,” Cimperman says. “He was literally unrecognizable.” And whatever he’d meant when he said “I hate this bird,” he had stopped saying it.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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If you’re reading this, you’re probably stressed. Never fear: We’ve dug through the evidence to reveal what science really says about finding zen—and holding onto it through tough times.

In 2013, Charlotte Figi made national news by becoming the youngest patient in Colorado to receive cannabidiol (CBD) therapy to soothe her seizures. The five-year-old had struggled with severe epilepsy since infancy, sometimes experiencing 50 or more episodes a day, with little relief from standard drugs and dietary tweaks. By the time her parents started consulting doctors about CBD extracts, she had difficulty walking, talking, and eating without help.

Figi’s neurologist put her on a low dose of a specially bred strain of medical cannabis, later dubbed “Charlotte’s Web.” The effects were almost immediate. The seizures slowed from daily to weekly events, and soon, the kid was living life almost normally. After close to two years of the oral treatment, the doctors decided to wean Figi off other epileptic medications.

Figi’s story represents one of the clearest, most well-documented cases of the healing potential of CBD. (The young pioneer died in 2020, due to complications of COVID-19.) Though people have used the plant-based chemical to treat migraines and other bodily aches for centuries, the science around its efficacy is still inconclusive because it’s tricky to study its direct effect on the nervous system. Regardless, the industry has boomed in the past decade. Today CBD can be found in a range of products—from lattes to bath bombs to dog treats—and is marketed as a cure-all for pain, anxiety, insomnia, and even AIDS.

So, what should a person who’s buying CBD expect? There’s plenty of information out there, but the bottom line is confusing. Here’s an overview of what medical experts say about the ingredient and whether it lives up to its hype.

What is CBD?

CBD is essentially cannabis, minus the strong psychoactive bits. The carbon-oxygen-hydrogen compound can be found in high concentrations in Cannabis sativa and less-potent hemp plants. Sometimes manufacturers mix it with traces of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the cannabis-based chemical that gets people high, but it generally doesn’t carry the same dopamine-heightening and possibly addictive properties.

Like THC, though, CBD works its “magic” by cozying up to the nervous system. From what molecular scientists know so far, it somehow changes proteins found all over the body that are responsible for managing pain, inflammation, mood, appetite, and even memory. It’s still unknown how extensively it affects that internal chemistry, especially when combined with other ingredients, says Johns Hopkins University food scientist Kantha Shelke.

Is CBD legal?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently updated its regulations to state that it supports further research on benefits, safety, and use of CBD products. For now, the extract is considered a controlled substance if it comes from cannabis plants. It’s treated more like a dietary supplement or food additive when harvested from hemp.

[Related: Cannabis poisoning is on the rise in pets]

That seems relatively straightforward, but throw local laws into the mix and the standards become a lot more unwieldy. CBD is legal to sell and buy in one form or another around the US, though it’s harder to hawk across state lines because of the federal regulations. In places where it’s lawful, the ingredient can be added to any product as long as it contains less than 0.3 percent THC and is marketed correctly. If it’s labeled as a drug it has to undergo clinical tests and win FDA approval before it’s available for public use. The agency has only approved one CBD medication so far: Epidolex, which is used to treat the same genetic syndrome that Charlotte Figi had.

At the beginning of 2023, the FDA announced that it would work with Congress on a new set of CBD regulations, citing potential long-term risks to people’s livers, the male reproductive system, livestock, and more. Once they are passed, the substance will be in a separate class from dietary supplements and food additives. In the meantime, the agency cautions against giving CBD products to children, pregnant and lactating people, and pets.

What are the proven benefits of CBD?

Some of the best research on CBD’s therapeutic effects comes from treating childhood epilepsy (thanks to the Figi family), schizophrenia, sleep deprivation, and anxiety disorders. The chemical has shown strong results in relieving all four of these conditions, with “a clear calming effect,” according to one 2019 analysis. That said, most of the studies exploring this connection don’t include a control group, or a baseline for comparison.

When it comes to looking at CBD for pain relief, the research is even more flimsy. Tests have shown that it can be effective against arthritis in rats, and that it might work as well as opioids for multiple sclerosis and cancer patients. But many of these treatments also included some amount of THC, so it’s hard to say if CBD was the primary cause of relief.

There’s also the question of which forms of CBD are safe enough for consumers but strong enough to make a difference. For neurological conditions like anxiety or apnea, the chemical needs to be absorbed into the bloodstream to have maximum impact. That means it needs to be ingested, inhaled, or rubbed in at high concentrations. But as health reporter Sarah Jacoby wrote in Self while vetting her own CBD buys, many of the proteins that trigger pain and inflammation are located between the skin and veins. So, any cream or gel that wants to counter aching joints and tight muscles needs to be able to get through the dermis but not as deep as the blood vessels. That’s a tall order for any drugstore formula.

Overall, doctors are reluctant to call CBD a pain panacea. But companies keep putting it in gels, goos, tinctures, massage oils, and roll-on creams, and people continue to snap them up. (One market report put CBD sales at nearly $5 billion sales in 2020.) It’s clear that the ingredient is somewhat beneficial to human health—science just needs to understand how much.

Does CBD have any bad effects?

Medical researchers haven’t pinpointed any deadly patterns with CBD use yet. A few case studies have mentioned respiratory failure, but in many of those instances, the patients also had THC in their system. People have complained about nausea and gastrointestinal issues after taking high concentrations of CBD. The Mayo Clinic also mentions fatigue, dizziness, and loss of appetite as possible complications.

[Related: Can you overdose on weed?]

There are concerns that CBD might interact negatively with other drugs, specifically blood thinners like warfarin. But there’s no specific guidance on which medications to avoid mixing with the extract.

How much CBD should people take?

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to calculate safe and effective serving sizes for CBD. Dosing depends on body weight, desired effect, and the way a person is taking it. CBD products often come with suggestions, but those can be misleading, given that the FDA doesn’t test every supplement against its labels and claims. (The agency has issued warnings to dozens of companies who’ve listed incorrect information about CBD and THC levels in their products; see the full list here.)

“With CBD, dosage matters,” Shelke says, as over-indulgence has been associated with ill effects. But without a fundamental understanding of the chemistry of the ingredient, and how the cooking process changes it, it’s hard to come up with scientifically backed dosing recommendations. With the limited information available, Shelke advises to go the “less is better” route with any unregulated CBD products.

Why is CBD so hard to study?

Because CBD is one of hundreds of compounds in hemp and cannabis, it’s tricky to extract and standardize. If the chemical is tainted or alternated in any way during the process, it can have a different set of effects. The way it’s consumed also plays a big part in the reaction. As Figi’s neurologist wrote back in 2014, cooking or smoking CBD means adding heat, which could break down the chemical and make it less beneficial. Pills and edibles, on the other hand, need to be carefully engineered so that they don’t get neutralized by stomach acid.

All that variability, both in the plants and the products that are derived from them, makes CBD more challenging to test for medicinal purposes. It’s also often mixed with THC when treating chronic pain or life-threatening illnesses, so it take many extra layers of research to isolate the purely physical perks from the psychoactive ones.

Is CBD safe to cook with?

Plenty of food brands, restaurants, and cookbook authors are now folding CBD into their recipes. But does the ingredient have the same therapeutic effect when it’s baked in a brownie pan at 360 degrees Fahrenheit or seared in a skillet with sea bass and lemon rinds?

“There are many unanswered questions about the science, safety, quality, and physiological effects of CBD that need to be addressed before one can identify the effects of various chemical reactions on its efficacy,” Shelke says. Part of the issue with cooking with the extract is that the purity and the concentration is often unknown. This makes it even harder to know how it will interact with other ingredients, and whether that combination will help or harm a person. Bottom line: It’s better to avoid highly processed products or prepared meals with CBD, especially if you’re new to the compound.

What’s the best way to see if CBD works for me?

If you’re looking for a supplement to help you go to sleep at night, relieve a light migraine, or unwind after a stressful event, try a low-stakes gummy or topical oil. Be sure to choose a well-reviewed and reputable product, Shelke says: Just because it says it contains CBD doesn’t mean it will live up to its promise.

To treat chronic pain, depressive disorders, or other serious illnesses, get your doctor’s recommendations first. They can take stock of the latest research specific to your needs and also track how CBD works with other prescriptions you’re taking.

[Related on PopSci+: The tasty chemicals flavoring the edible cannabis boom]

As you head into the experience, manage your expectations. Like most wellness products that are backed by tepid evidence, the results can be hit or miss. Stay within the recommended doses on the products’ labels and report any unexpected side effects to your primary-care physician.

The future of CBD seems full of potential, but in present times, there are more questions than answers.

Update (April 19, 2023): This post has been updated with new regulatory information from the FDA.

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Selfies occasionally go viral, but they’re not typically taken by an animal. So the fact that a black bear’s encounter with a motion-activated wildlife camera in Boulder, Colorado, in 2022 resulted in more than 400 of them—including an undeniably cute one with its tongue hanging out—is especially intriguing. Most creatures ignore camera traps. The question is: Why didn’t this bear?

​​It may be tempting to think of this selfie moment as an animal blunder, but this anecdote captures more than meets the eye. Research suggests bears, much like elephants and great apes, are more intelligent than previously assumed. The selfie bear is a unique reminder of a type of animal cognition scientists are just starting to understand. 

“Bears are probably more naturally curious about how things work than some other species,” says Jennifer Vonk, a psychology professor at Oakland University. 

Bears are generally impressive. They have an excellent sense of smell, seven times better than a bloodhound’s. Grizzly bears can run up to 35 miles per hour, beating the fastest human sprint by over 25 percent. Despite their bulk, bears are very dexterous—they can open screw-top jars, manipulate door latches, and even operate touchscreen computers with a talent that outpaces animals more closely related to people. 

Vonk discovered this when she and a colleague trained captive-bred black bears to select a larger or smaller set of dots that stayed in place or moved around the screen. Although the ability to count or distinguish between different quantities has been tested in many animals, scientists didn’t think ursines had this ability because they are a solitary, rather than social, species. The “social intelligence hypothesis” suggests social animals are likelier to be smarter than solitary species because interactive environments offer more cognitive challenges. 

[Related: Hibernating bears hold many secrets for better human health.]

The experiment proved otherwise. During the study, the size of the dots varied—in some trials, for example, the larger set of dots covered more area than the smaller set of dots. Conversely, the larger set could also cover a smaller area, which ultimately tested if black bears were making choices based on area or the number of dots. The animals performed above chance on all trials, showing they could use numbers to guide their choices. In other words, they could count. These results were published in the journal Animal Behavior. 

“I was surprised how quickly the bears took to responding on the computer because we were training animals that had never done any kind of experiments,” says Vonk. “On literally the first day we tested, the dominant male went right to the images that moved around the screen without making any errors. And with almost every task we gave him, he learned faster than the chimps and gorillas I was working with at the same time.”

While bears have one of the largest relative brain sizes of any carnivore, there’s surprisingly little research regarding their cognitive abilities. This oversight may be due to logistics more than anything else. Most cognitive research happens in a laboratory; the animals that do well in these environments are smaller creatures, like rats, mice, and pigeons. Facilities that allow controlled testing with bears are scarce. 

Despite these challenges, Vonk’s lab at Oakland University has worked to fill this gap in our understanding of bears since 2012. Another study conducted by Vonk suggests bears also recognize images on computer screens as real objects: During it, a captive black bear named Migwan was able to show that she prefers grapes over beets. While bears can recognize features of real objects in their virtual images, the researchers emphasized this doesn’t necessarily mean bears fully grasp what pictures are. 

Another touchscreen study from the Vonk lab suggests bears can distinguish between different categories of things, such as animals versus non-animals. The bears were trained (with the help of a few treats) to choose between two rather odd and different groups: supermodels and Planet of the Apes characters. After that task was mastered, the bears were tested on more difficult subjects. For instance, the studied black bears could tell polar bears from other species of bears, primates from hoofed animals, or a chameleon from a car. They performed surprisingly well, even for the most abstract categories of distinguishing animals from non-animals.

Other research suggests black bears aren’t the only intelligent bear. For example, in a study of tool use published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, brown bears had to manipulate logs and boxes to reach a tempting reward: glazed donuts. Six of the eight bears in the study successfully completed the pastry-acquiring task and usually did so out in less than two minutes, explains lead author Lynne Nelson, a professor of veterinary cardiology at Washington University. 

For decades, tool use was considered to be the defining characteristic of humans—something that proved how smart we are. The fact that bears can also use tools subsequently suggests some advanced intelligence.

Several factors may explain why bears are smart, though “more work needs to be done before we really know whether social structure or foraging ecology better predicts overall intelligence,” Vonk says. 

“I think people are only starting to recognize that it’s an interaction of all these things,” she adds.

For now, there are some promising theories. Overall most animals living in social groups, like primates, exhibit high levels of intelligence. Scientists hypothesize that social animals evolved to have mental abilities that help them cooperate and understand others’ intentions. But bears, generally, are solitary. Their brains are less of a response to their social situation and more of a response to the challenging environments that they live in. Their ability to make quick, adaptive responses to these conditions may explain why their brains are relatively large compared to their body weight—a proportion that suggests intelligence. 

Bear intelligence may also be the result of their early development; cubs start off life as curious little troublemakers. Gordon Burghardt, a professor of animal behavior at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, experienced this firsthand when two rescued black bear cubs stayed in his house for several weeks. He describes the inquisitive youngsters opening kitchen cabinets and sliding glass doors, climbing into the shower, and running off with purses. The cubs were also fond of playing with each other, which he posits helps with their development. Play is often thought to facilitate learning and mental development, as well as being a method of exercise and stress relief. 

Black bears and brown bears are both generalists, showing great versatility in the food they eat, how they get it, and where they find it, Vonk explained. They hunt, scavenge, and also seek out plants, nuts, and fruit. Bears also adjust to a seasonally changing environment, gaining weight in the fall and hibernating in winter. This variable and unpredictable environment may have led to bears’ greater intelligence. 

“Bears live in a vast range of environments from the deserts to the tropics and the Arctic,” Nelson adds. “Animals must exhibit a certain level of intelligence to be able to earn a living almost anywhere on the earth.”

[Related: What an ancient jawbone reveals about polar bear evolution]

The giant mammals face considerable challenges because of people too: the development of their habitats, hunting, pollution, cars, and climate change all put them at risk. Studying bear intelligence, in turn, does more than explain a natural wonder—it increases the likelihood that they’ll survive. Some scientists argue that people are more likely to protect animals when they realize the species are intelligent. 

Bears, meanwhile, will continue to be as curious as ever. After the selfie black bear went viral, Canadian park rangers tweeted out their own celebrity: the selfie polar bear.

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Bilingualism is an advantageous ability in ways that go beyond simply being able to communicate with others. It literally changes the brain, inducing heightened neuroplasticity and protecting against cognitive decline. New research also suggests a little-understood brain region uniquely adapts to different written languages—a finding that sheds light on the mysteries of language recognition.

In a study published on April 5 in the journal Science Advances, researchers examined how bilinguals process their respective languages in written form. They discovered that a part of the brain called the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) activates differently for English-Chinese speakers compared to English-French speakers. 

While most research on bilingualism compares people who speak two languages to those who just speak one, this study compares bilinguals of different languages and writing systems. Scientists analyzed the brains of people who speak English and Chinese, along with the brains of people who speak English and French. While an fMRI machine measured their brain activity, participants viewed visual stimuli like letters, faces, and houses.

In both groups, the VWFA reacted likewise when shown English or French. But when English-Chinese participants read Chinese characters, distinct areas lit up in response. 

[Related: Learning a second language early may have ripple effects throughout your life]

The study team, in turn, discovered clusters of neurons specific to the Chinese language in English-Chinese bilinguals. In English-French bilinguals, their brain activity was the same regardless of language stimuli. Their research further demonstrates that the brain develops in response to an individual’s unique experiences. 

“My initial impression of [the study] is that it’s a real tour de force methodologically and in terms of design it’s comprehensive, thorough and ambitious,” says Dale Stevens, a York University neuroscience professor who was not part of the research. It also gives us “a more specific understanding” of the VWFA, he adds. 

What is the Visual Word Form Area?

The VWFA is the region of the brain that recognizes written words. It develops when people learn to read, which builds neural pathways between the visual and language systems. Without it, people would be unable to read. 

Minye Zhan, the first study author and a cognitive neuroscience researcher at NeuroSpin, a research institute in France, expected to find some neurological differences between dominant English speakers, dominant French speakers, and balanced English-French speakers. Instead, the 21 English-French bilinguals didn’t demonstrate any processing differences, despite their dominance in one language over the other. 

“It’s the same system,” Zhan says. “I dug hard and didn’t see any difference. It was a very big surprise.”

Meanwhile, the brains of the ten English-Chinese speakers reacted very differently when shown Chinese characters. In this group, Chinese was the dominant language. When the researchers scanned the brains of these participants, they found distinct activity: Chinese-specific clusters of neurons in the VWFA. 

How did researchers map brain activity?

Previously, pinpointing specific areas of brain activity challenged researchers. Now, high-resolution MRI machines, such as the 7-Tesla fMRI used in this study, allow for more detailed brain scans. The research team, in turn, could see that chains of neuron clusters activated when the study participants saw Chinese. Zhan describes it as “a galaxy, a constellation of areas.” 

“The interesting part is that there are these word patches that process both languages, even different languages like English and Chinese,” Zhan says. “They’re so different, but they are processed in the same area, although there are specialized Chinese-only language patches in the brain.”

Interestingly, brain response to Chinese stimuli overlaps with a region that helps with facial recognition. The difference might have something to do with cognitive processing. The brain can perceive visual stimuli as a whole or in parts, and the strategy it chooses depends on the language read. 

Why are there language-specific areas?

When you see a face, you don’t recognize eyes, noses, and a mouth as separate parts. Instead, you see a face as a face, a unified whole. Research has shown that native Chinese speakers process Chinese characters similarly, which have combinations of strokes and radicals. Meanwhile, part-based processing is more common in alphabetic languages, such as English and French. Individual letters, or letter combinations, are processed separately and then integrated to form a coherent word. 

Another explanation has more to do with language structure. Chinese, like Japanese and some Korean, is logographic. These writing systems use characters that correspond to concepts, ideas, and words. Phonetic languages, like English and French, use characters that correspond to sounds.   

[Related: Learning a new language? Here’s how to perfect your pronunciation.]

Most Chinese characters give few clues as to how they are read. New learners, including Chinese children, pick up character pronunciation using Pinyin, which uses the Latin alphabet to spell out sounds of Standard Chinese characters. Meanwhile, when children study French or English, both phonetic languages with a strong connection between spelling and pronunciation, they’re encouraged to sound out words letter by letter. 

Learning Chinese might place unique demands on neural pathways, resulting in different connections. Still, these explanations for the VWFA’s split are speculation for now. Researchers don’t know precisely why the brain reacts differently for English-Chinese bilinguals, just that these bilingual speakers have specialized brain activity unobserved in the English-French group. 

This research wouldn’t have been possible more than a few years ago. The experiment used a high-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI scanner, which has a much stronger magnetic field that can scan brain activity in greater detail compared to previous models (a Tesla is a unit of measurement to quantify magnetic field strength). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved this model in 2017. 

In contrast, a hospital might use a 1.5 or 3-Tesla MRI machine. And while this resolution is the standard, it doesn’t reveal the same level of detail, Zhan says. 

The research raises many questions, says Zhan. Her team is interested in repeating the study with groups of participants who speak different native languages and use different alphabets. Zhan also wants to discover why these specialized patches of neurons emerge depending on what language a person can read. 

“So why do those special patches come up?” she says. “That we don’t know. We just observe them. So we report first and say that it needs more research.”

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Picture this: You’re at your desk working on a project when your phone chimes. A quick glance tells you a friend sent over a video on TikTok. Convinced you’re due for a break, you click the link to find a new dance video from Charli D’Amelio. Fast forward an hour later, and you’re still on your phone, except now you’ve gone from viral dances to animal videos to fitness gurus raving about a weight loss hack. 

If this scenario hits too close to home, you’re not alone. Most people on social media check it daily, and younger people are likelier to return to their favorite platforms multiple times a day. TikTok is especially popular with teenagers: A 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center suggests 67 percent of teens use it, while 16 percent use it almost constantly. 

So why do people spend so much time online? One underlying reason is that platforms like TikTok promote infinite scrolling. You might start off in one video only for the page to continuously load a never-ending stream of content. Absent-mindedly scrolling through content might seem like an innocent activity and a great excuse to waste time. However, research suggests it can negatively influence the brain and mental health.

Anyone can fall prey to mindless scrolling. Younger people are especially vulnerable since the brain is not fully developed until age 25, says Lisa Pion-Berlin, a psychologist and president of Parents Anonymous, a child abuse prevention nonprofit. While limiting access to social media (like this Utah bill requiring parental permission is trying to do) is one option, learning how to be a more active user can help anyone stop infinite scrolling and still enjoy social media.

Why infinite scrolling is bad for you

Social media platforms like TikTok are not comprehensively bad for you. Several studies suggest social media can prompt feelings of connectedness and positive well-being. Further, they allow for personal expression, which fosters positive mental health.

Ultimately, how social media makes people feel depends on how they use it. For example, excess social media use is associated with feeling more anxious, lonely, and generally bad about yourself. 

“The more attached we are to our devices, the more problematic it becomes,” says Lisa Strohman, a psychologist and the founder of Digital Citizen Academy, an education program that teaches children and teens how to have a healthy relationship with technology. 

[Related: Do you never feel FOMO? Time to meet its twin, JOMO.]

Moreover, Strohman says watching pictures and videos of everyone living their best life might make you worried or sad that you’re missing out. Some research suggests that comparing yourself to others on social media can result in aggression and anxiety, while other studies suggest a link between negative comparisons on social media and suicidal ideation.

Meanwhile, mindless scrolling can result in a state of mind similar to being in a trance state, says Pion-Berlin. She’s concerned that “mindless scrolling is a way to tune out” or dissociate from reality. Some research suggests that overuse of social media can result in negative psychological impacts: A 2023 study in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that middle schoolers who constantly checked their social media feeds showed changes in how their brains responded to feedback and criticism from peers.   

Infinite scrolling can also lead to disrupted sleep patterns in adolescents and adults. The screen’s blue light can make it difficult to fall asleep, and the constant content prevents your brain from shutting down for the night. 

When we sleep, the brain sorts through and categorizes the information from the day and commits the vital stuff into long-term memory, explains Strohman. But mindless social media surfing before bedtime keeps giving it more data for the brain to process throughout the night, “and that’s what tends to lead to that insomnia,” she explains.

How infinite scrolling can hijack the brain

Mindless scrolling helps make social media an addicting habit because it takes advantage of the brain’s reward system, says Strohman.

An enjoyable TikTok, for example, can trigger the brain’s reward pathway. Subsequently, this causes the brain to release a chemical called dopamine, which Strohman describes “as a hit or a high” for the brain. The dopamine surge tells the brain that scrolling through social media is pleasurable and that we should do it again. Because another attention-grabbing Tiktok plays immediately when the first is over, this process starts all over again immediately. 

“The brain is rewarded every time because of how the feeds and algorithms are set up so that anytime we’re not on the app, we think we’re missing something,” explains Strohman. “That makes us want to go back on it again.:

The same process applies to adolescents—possibly to a more significant effect. Pion-Berlin explains that because the prefrontal cortex is one of the last brain areas to mature fully, younger people are more impulsive and have less self-control than adults. With less self-control, it may be easier for teens to fall into this rabbit hole of social media content, she says. In addition, the limbic system—a part of the brain involved in behavioral and emotional responses—is also more sensitive during our teenage years, which makes them likelier to prioritize pleasurable and desirable activities.

What are some ways to stop infinite scrolling?

While infinite scrolling isn’t great, that does not mean you need to quit social media altogether. On the contrary, there are some benefits to staying on the apps, such as building communities among people with a shared hobby or interest, maintaining relationships with family who live miles away, raising awareness for a particular cause, and learning from credible experts.

[Related: All the ways you can reduce screen time across your devices]

To make the most of your time, you’ll want to become an active rather than a passive user. Active users interact with others— in practice, this could look like commenting on posts or creating content. The high engagement gives you a specific purpose for being on the app, allows you to nurture and maintain online friendships, and is associated with improved well-being. 

Meanwhile, infinite scrolling is a passive activity because you’re socially disconnected from others and lurking in the background. Of course, sometimes you just want to take a break from life and watch some mind-numbing videos. In these situations, you’ll want to set a timer to limit the time you spend online and know when it’s time to log off, Strohman says. 

Another suggestion from Strohman is turning off notifications. People often fall into mindless surfing when notified or tagged in something. And while you might start out looking at the relevant post, you can easily find yourself lost in a comment thread or other recommended videos. 

“Have a clear purpose when accessing social media,” Strohman says. If a friend shares a post, tell yourself you will only watch this one video and not spend the next two hours on TikTok. 

“The more you scroll, the less settled you’ll be,” advises Strohman. “Be mindful, recognize your part in it, and try to do what you can to manage yourself in those online worlds.”

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When it comes to tackling the opioid crisis in America, there is no single solution. Public health officials have taken measures to prevent future overdoses by reducing the number of opioid prescriptions, curbing the flow of illicit drug trafficking, and raising awareness of the dangers of opioids. But for the three million people already addicted to this class of drugs, the emphasis has turned to a quick-working treatment: naloxone.

It’s possible to reverse an opioid overdose with an injectable or single-dose nasal spray called naloxone (also known by the brand name Narcan). Street drugs and prescription painkillers like heroin, morphine, and codeine target opioid receptors in the brain to induce a pleasurable high. But they can also affect neurons that control respiration, causing a person to stop breathing if they overdose. Naloxone blocks the brain receptors so that the drugs can’t reach them, preventing this deadly side effect. “There are very few things I would call a perfect antidote, but, in this case, Narcan is one of them,” says Ryan Marino, a medical toxicologist and addiction medicine specialist at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He adds that naloxone works against synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

[Related: At-home test strips for fentanyl are just the first step to preventing overdoses]

In response to the growing number of opioid overdose deaths—75 percent of drug overdose deaths in the US in 2020 involved an opioid—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an over-the-counter version of naloxone. The decision makes the drug more accessible: People will be able to buy the nasal spray at places like their local pharmacy or gas station without a prescription. But while medical experts have lauded the FDA’s ruling, not everyone is happy with the news. There have been some concerns from the public about distributing naloxone and whether it encourages more drug use. PopSci spoke with medical experts on common misconceptions surrounding naloxone and its safety.

Myth 1: Naloxone encourages people to do more drugs

A common objection to expanding naloxone access is that it acts as a safety net for people with addiction to continue their drug habits with few repercussions. But Kathryn Cunningham, director of the Center of Addiction Research at the University of Texas Medical Branch, says research has shown no evidence that naloxone leads to more drug use. 

A well-known 2013 study in The BMJ journal found the number of opioid-related hospital visits did not increase in communities with programs distributing naloxone and those with less access to the nasal spray. Instead, naloxone helped in reducing the amount of risky drug activity in 19 communities that distributed it to residents.

Myth 2: Naloxone prevents users from getting treated for addiction

Think of naloxone as a fire extinguisher in your house, Marino says. You’ll likely use it if there’s a small blaze. But if you have repeated incidents or if your house becomes engulfed in flames, the fire extinguisher can only help so much. Eventually, you’ll have to call the fire department for help. Simply put, naloxone may actually convince people to find professional help because it gives them more opportunities to seek treatment and rehabilitation later in life. “You can’t seek medical services if you’re dead,” Cunningham explains. 

If there’s any deterrent to getting treatment, it’s the stigma surrounding substance use disorders. Research suggests laws hampering access to care and discrimination from medical professionals against patients with a history of drug use may discourage people from opening up about their addiction. Even when they seek out help, patients have reported being treated as if they were untrustworthy, intimidating, and immoral.

Myth 3: Only medical professionals can use naloxone safely

You do not need medical training to give naloxone to someone who’s overdosed. Marino says the over-the-counter nasal spray that the FDA approved was designed to be easy enough to be used by a child as young as 6. The box also has step-by-step instructions printed on the side. “It comes with this little nasal atomizer,” Marino adds. “You just take it out of the package, put it in someone’s nose, and press the pointer. That’s all there is to it.” If a person accidentally applies naloxone to someone who hasn’t overdosed, it will be benign.

[Related: How to break free of the bystander effect and help someone in trouble]

There is no age limit for being treated with naloxone. You can use it on a newborn with opioids in their system or even a toddler who’s exposed to fentanyl patches. The nasal spray expires after three years, and should be stored in temperatures between 77 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Naloxone freezes at temperatures below 5 degrees Fahrenheit, making it unusable until it thaws out.

Myth 4: Naloxone makes users violent

It’s been rumored that the sudden onslaught of withdrawal symptoms caused by naloxone might cause a person to become aggressive or lash out when they gain consciousness. That’s not typically the case. Cunningham says common side effects after treatment include headaches, disorientation, vomiting, and nausea—all of which are temporary, because it’s a short-acting drug. “Withdrawal is not life-threatening,” Cunningham notes. “Not breathing because of an opiate is life-threatening.”

Fact: Naloxone could save many lives if more people have it

The FDA’s decision (which doesn’t mention exact rollout dates) makes it so that anyone can be ready to jump in and prevent deaths from opioid overdoses. Marino says it’s best to think of naloxone as another item in your first aid kit in case of emergencies. “We might tell ourselves that no one in our life is using drugs or going to overdose, but you never want to have a situation where you need it and not have it.”

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This article was originally featured on KHN.

Nothing prepared Linda C. Johnson of Indianapolis for the fatigue that descended on her after a diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer in early 2020.

Initially, Johnson, now 77, thought she was depressed. She could barely summon the energy to get dressed in the morning. Some days, she couldn’t get out of bed.

But as she began to get her affairs in order, Johnson realized something else was going on. However long she slept the night before, she woke up exhausted. She felt depleted, even if she didn’t do much during the day.

“People would tell me, ‘You know, you’re getting old.’ And that wasn’t helpful at all. Because then you feel there’s nothing you can do mentally or physically to deal with this,” she told me.

Fatigue is a common companion of many illnesses that beset older adults: heart disease, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, lung disease, kidney disease, and neurological conditions like multiple sclerosis, among others. It’s one of the most common symptoms associated with chronic illness, affecting 40% to 74% of older people living with these conditions, according to a 2021 review by researchers at the University of Massachusetts.

This is more than exhaustion after an extremely busy day or a night of poor sleep. It’s a persistent whole-body feeling of having no energy, even with minimal or no exertion. “I feel like I have a drained battery pretty much all of the time,” wrote a user named Renee in a Facebook group for people with polycythemia vera, a rare blood cancer. “It’s sort of like being a wrung-out dish rag.”

Fatigue doesn’t represent “a day when you’re tired; it’s a couple of weeks or a couple of months when you’re tired,” said Dr. Kurt Kroenke, a research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis, which specializes in medical research, and a professor at Indiana University’s School of Medicine.

When he and colleagues queried nearly 3,500 older patients at a large primary care clinic in Indianapolis about bothersome symptoms, 55% listed fatigue — second only to musculoskeletal pain (65%) and more than back pain (45%) and shortness of breath (41%).

Separately, a 2010 study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society estimated that 31% of people 51 and older reported being fatigued in the past week.

The impact can be profound. Fatigue is the leading reason for restricted activity in people 70 and older, according to a 2001 study by researchers at Yale. Other studies have linked fatigue with impaired mobility, limitations in people’s abilities to perform daily activities, the onset or worsening of disability, and earlier death.

What often happens is older adults with fatigue stop being active and become deconditioned, which leads to muscle loss and weakness, which heightens fatigue. “It becomes a vicious cycle that contributes to things like depression, which can make you more fatigued,” said Dr. Jean Kutner, a professor of medicine and chief medical officer at the University of Colorado Hospital.

To stop that from happening, Johnson came up with a plan after learning her lung cancer had returned. Every morning, she set small goals for herself. One day, she’d get up and wash her face. The next, she’d take a shower. Another day, she’d go to the grocery store. After each activity, she’d rest.

In the three years since her cancer came back, Johnson’s fatigue has been constant. But “I’m functioning better,” she told me, because she’s learned how to pace herself and find things that motivate her, like teaching a virtual class to students training to be teachers and getting exercise under the supervision of a personal trainer.

When should older adults be concerned about fatigue? “If someone has been doing OK but is now feeling fatigued all the time, it’s important to get an evaluation,” said Dr. Holly Yang, a physician at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego and incoming board president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

“Fatigue is an alarm signal that something is wrong with the body but it’s rarely one thing. Usually, several things need to be addressed,” said Dr. Ardeshir Hashmi, section chief of the Center for Geriatric Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

Among the items physicians should check: Are your thyroid levels normal? Are you having trouble with sleep? If you have underlying medical conditions, are they well controlled? Do you have an underlying infection? Are you chronically dehydrated? Do you have anemia (a deficiency of red blood cells or hemoglobin), an electrolyte imbalance, or low levels of testosterone? Are you eating enough protein? Have you been feeling more anxious or depressed recently? And might medications you’re taking be contributing to fatigue?

“The medications and doses may be the same, but your body’s ability to metabolize those medications and clear them from your system may have changed,” Hashmi said, noting that such changes in the body’s metabolic activity are common as people become older.

Many potential contributors to fatigue can be addressed. But much of the time, reasons for fatigue can’t be explained by an underlying medical condition.

That happened to Teresa Goodell, 64, a retired nurse who lives just outside Portland, Oregon. During a December visit to Arizona, she suddenly found herself exhausted and short of breath while on a hike, even though she was in good physical condition. At an urgent care facility, she was diagnosed with an asthma exacerbation and given steroids, but they didn’t help.

Soon, Goodell was spending hours each day in bed, overcome by profound tiredness and weakness. Even small activities wore her out. But none of the medical tests she received in Arizona and subsequently in Portland — a chest X-ray and CT scan, blood work, a cardiac stress test — showed abnormalities.

“There was no objective evidence of illness, and that makes it hard for anybody to believe you’re sick,” she told me.

Goodell started visiting long covid web sites and chat rooms for people with chronic fatigue syndrome. Today, she’s convinced she has post-viral syndrome from an infection. One of the most common symptoms of long covid is fatigue that interferes with daily life, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are several strategies for dealing with persistent fatigue. In cancer patients, “the best evidence favors physical activity such as tai chi, yoga, walking, or low-impact exercises,” said Dr. Christian Sinclair, an associate professor of palliative medicine at the University of Kansas Health System. The goal is to “gradually stretch patients’ stamina,” he said.

With long covid, however, doing too much too soon can backfire by causing “post-exertional malaise.” Pacing one’s activities is often recommended: doing only what’s most important, when one’s energy level is highest, and resting afterward. “You learn how to set realistic goals,” said Dr. Andrew Esch, senior education advisor at the Center to Advance Palliative Care.

Cognitive behavioral therapy can help older adults with fatigue learn how to adjust expectations and address intrusive thoughts such as, “I should be able to do more.” At the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, management plans for older patients with fatigue typically include strategies to address physical activity, sleep health, nutrition, emotional health, and support from family and friends.

“So much of fatigue management is about forming new habits,” said Dr. Ishwaria Subbiah, a palliative care and integrative medicine physician at MD Anderson. “It’s important to recognize that this doesn’t happen right away: It takes time.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Relationships are all about trust, and a new study shows AI-aided conversations could help build rapport between two people—but only as long as no one suspects the other is using AI.

According to a Cornell University research team’s investigation published this week with Scientific Reports, using AI-assisted responses (i.e. “smart replies”) can change conversational tone and social relationships, as well as increase communication speeds. And although more positive emotional language is often used in these instances, people who merely suspect responses to be influenced by AI are often more distrusting of their conversation partners, regardless of whether or not they are actually being used.

[Related: OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update can still spread conspiracy theories.]

In the team’s study, researchers gathered 219 participant pairs and asked them to work with a program modeled after Google Allo (French for “hello”), the first, now-defunct smart-reply platform. The pairs were then asked to talk about policy issues under three conditions: both sides could use smart replies, only one side could use them, and neither could employ them. As a result, the team saw smart reply usage (roughly one in seven messages) boosted conversations’ efficiency, positive-aligned language, as well as positive evaluations from participants. That said, those who suspected partners used smart replies were often judged more negatively.

In the meantime, the study indicated you could also be sacrificing your own personal touch for the sake of AI-aided speed and convenience. Another experiment involving 299 randomly paired conversationalists asked participants to speak together under one of four scenarios: default Google smart replies, “positive” smart replies, “negative” replies, and no smart replies at all. As might be expected, positive smart replies begat more positive overall tones than conversations with the negative smart replies, or zero smart replies.

[Related: Microsoft lays off entire AI ethics team while going all out on ChatGPT.]

“While AI might be able to help you write, it’s altering your language in ways you might not expect, especially by making you sound more positive,” Jess Hohenstein, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author, said in a statement. “This suggests that by using text-generating AI, you’re sacrificing some of your own personal voice.”

Malte Jung, one of the study’s co-authors and an associate professor of information science, added that this implies the companies controlling AI-assist tech algorithms could easily influence many users’ “interactions, language, and perceptions of each other.”

This could become especially concerning as large language model programs like Microsoft’s ChatGPT-boosted Bing search engine and Google Bard continue their rapid integration into a suite of the companies’ respective products, much to critics’ worries.

“Technology companies tend to emphasize the utility of AI tools to accomplish tasks faster and better, but they ignore the social dimension,” said Jung. “We do not live and work in isolation, and the systems we use impact our interactions with others.”

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Update 04/06/2023: Comments from Monument’s CEO have been added to this article.

According to recent reports, two online alcohol recovery startups shared users’ detailed private health information and personal data to third-party advertisers without their consent. They were able to do so via popular tracking systems such as the Meta Pixel. Both Tempest and its parent company, Monument, confirmed the extensive privacy violations to TechCrunch on Tuesday. They now claim to no longer employ the frequently criticized consumer profiling products developed by companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.

In a disclosure letter mailed to its consumers last week, Monument states “we value and respect the privacy of our members’ information,” but admitted “some information” may have been shared to third parties without the “appropriate authorization, consent, or agreements required by law.” The potentially illegal violations stem as far back as 2020 for Monument members, and 2017 for those using Tempest.

Within those leaks, as many as 100,000 accounts’ names, birthdates, email addresses, telephone numbers, home addresses, membership IDs, insurance IDs, and IP addresses. Additionally, users’ photographs, service plans, survey responses, appointment-related info, and “associated health information” may also have been shared to third-parties. Monument and Tempest assured customers, however, that their Social Security numbers and banking information had not been improperly handled.

[Related: How data brokers threaten your privacy.]

Major data companies’ largely free “pixel” tools generally work by embedding a small bit of code into websites. The program then subsequently supplies immensely personal and detailed information to both third-party businesses, as well as the tracking tech’s makers to help compile extensive consumer profiles for advertising purposes. One study estimates that approximately one-third of the 80,000 most popular websites online utilize Meta Pixel (disclosure: PopSci included), for example. While both Tempest and Monument pledge to have removed tracking code from their sites, TechCrunch also notes the codes’ makers are not legally required to delete previously collected data.

“Monument and Tempest should be ashamed of sharing this extremely personal information of people, especially considering the nature and vulnerability of their clients,” Caitlin Seeley George, campaigns managing director of the digital privacy advocacy group, Fight for the Future, wrote PopSci via email. For George, the revelations are simply the latest examples of companies disregarding privacy for profit, but argues lawmakers “should similarly feel ashamed” that the public lacks legal defense or protection from these abuses. “It seems like every week we hear another case of companies sharing our data and prioritizing profits over privacy. This won’t end until lawmakers pass privacy laws,” she said.

“Protecting our patients’ privacy is a top priority,” Monument CEO Mike Russell told PopSci over email. “We have put robust safeguards in place and will continue to adopt appropriate measures to keep data safe. In addition, we have ended our relationship with third-party advertisers that will not agree to comply with our contractual requirements and applicable law.”

Tracking tools are increasingly the subject of scrutiny and criticism as more and more reports detail privacy concerns—last year, an investigation from The Markup and The Verge revealed that some of the country’s most popular tax prep software providers utilize Meta Pixel. The same tracking code is also at the center of a lawsuit in California concerning potential HIPAA violations stemming from hospitals sharing patients’ medical data.

Correction 04/06/2023: A previous version of this article’s headline stated Tempest and Monument “sold” user data. A spokesperson for the companies stated they “shared” data with third-party companies.

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Similar anatomy, not a shared sense of humor, might be key for experiencing deception from a pretty common magic trick. In a new study, a team of psychologists tested a sleight-of-hand trick called the French drop on three species of monkeys with different hand structures. In this trick, an object appears to vanish when a spectator assumes it is taken from one hand by the hidden thumb of the other hand.  

The monkeys without opposable thumbs did not fall for the assumption and were aware of the whereabouts of the treats a magician tried to “make disappear.” But, the monkeys with opposable thumbs were duped. The findings were published April 4 in the journal Current Biology.

[Related: A centuries-old magic trick is helping us make holograms we can feel.]

From the results, it appears that in order to deceive, a conjuror needs a similar anatomy to their audience. Sharing a particular biomechanical ability may be necessary to accurately anticipate and predict the movements of another with the same limbs. This phenomenon turns out to be true even when the apparently accurate predictions end in confusion at the hands of an illusionist. 

“Magicians use intricate techniques to mislead the observer into experiencing the impossible. It is a great way to study blind spots in attention and perception,” study author Elias Garcia-Pelegrin said in a statement. “By investigating how species of primates experience magic, we can understand more about the evolutionary roots of cognitive shortcomings that leave us exposed to the cunning of magicians.”

Garcia-Pelegrin, now a psychology professor at the National University of Singapore, has practiced magic for a decade and conducted these experiments during his PhD work at Cambridge University. 

The French drop is often one of the first tricks budding magicians set out to master. In the trick, a coin is displayed in one hand. The other hand then reaches over and grabs the coin. The palm of the second hand faces inwards, with the magician’s thumb concealed behind fingers. The viewer knows the thumb is lurking and ready to grip, so they assume the coin has been taken when it is no longer visible. Their attention then follows the second hand, only to find it empty. Meanwhile, the magician had secretly dropped the coin into the palm of the original hand.

In this study with monkeys, morsels of food replaced coins and the treats were given as a reward– but only if the monkey guessed the correct hand. Going into the experiment, the team predicted that monkeys with opposable thumbs would act like human audiences and assume that the hidden thumb had grabbed the treat, and then select the incorrect hand.

[Related: Time passes faster for smaller, quicker animals.]

The team repeatedly performed the French drop for 24 monkeys from three species– capuchins, squirrel monkeys, and marmosets. 

The eight capuchin monkeys were tested using peanuts. This species boasts noteable dexterity and uses stone tools to crack open nuts in the wild. Capuchins can also waggle each finger and have opposable thumbs which allow “precision grip” between thumb and forefingers.  They were fooled by the French drop about 81 percent of the time, mostly choosing the empty second hand.

While less dexterous than their capuchin counterparts, squirrel monkeys have limited thumb rotation, but can oppose their thumbs. They are typically familiar with a hidden thumb interacting with fingers, but they cannot cannot perform a precision grip the way capuchins and humans do. The squirrel monkeys were tested with mealworms and were fooled 93 percent of the time. 

Marmosets do not have opposable thumbs and have thumbs that align with their fingers to make five equidistant digits. These are ideal for climbing up thick tree trunks. They were fooled only 6 percent of the time. They chose the hand that initially held a tasty marshmallow was initially placed and stuck with it for this experiment.

The team tried to nullify the tricks by actually completing the hand-to-hand transfers, instead of using misdirection. When this occurred, the capuchins and squirrel monkeys anticipated correctly, while the marmosets missed out on their reward.

As a last step, the team devised their own version of the French drop called the “Power drop”. It utilizes a full fist grab, which is a hand action that all the monkey species could perform to varying degrees. They found that the power drop fooled all of the monkey species the vast majority of the time.

[Related: Monkeys with close friends have friendlier gut bacteria.]

“There is increasing evidence that the same parts of the nervous system used when we perform an action are also activated when we watch that action performed by others,” co-author and Cambridge psychologist Nicola Clayton said in a statement. “This mirroring in our neural motor system might explain why the French drop worked for the capuchins and squirrel monkeys but not for marmosets.”

The team adds that how fingers and thumbs move helps space the way an individual thinks and the assumptions made about the world around us. 

“Our work raises the intriguing possibility that an individual’s inherent physical capability heavily influences their perception, their memory of what they think they saw, and their ability to predict manual movements of those around them,” said Clayton. 

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Some adults who take prescription medication for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are required to have their urine tested for drugs several times a year. Others never are tested.

Such screenings are designed to check if ADHD patients are safely taking their pills, such as Adderall, and not selling them, taking too many, or using other drugs.

Several doctors told KHN there are varying opinions and no national standards on the role of urine testing to monitor adults who take ADHD medication. So patients face dramatically different requirements, depending on their clinics’ and health insurers’ policies.

“There really isn’t much literature to guide you on how to do this,” said Dr. Margaret Chaplin, a Connecticut psychiatrist who treats patients with ADHD, mental illnesses, or substance use disorders.

Chaplin first noticed the lack of testing standards about eight years ago, when she and colleagues proposed ways to prevent stimulant misuse in adult ADHD patients.

Her team recommended urine tests only if patients exhibit “red-flag behavior,” such as appearing intoxicated, repeatedly reporting lost prescriptions, or frequently switching doctors. Some doctors and clinics make testing decisions on a patient-by-patient basis taking into account those red flags or patient history. Others apply universal policies, which may be aimed at preventing discrimination. Some insurance companies and state Medicaid systems also have testing requirements.

ADHD stimulants, opioid pain medications, and some other drugs are classified as controlled substances, which are tightly regulated because they can be addictive or misused.

ADHD patients subjected to frequent drug screens say the tests can be time-consuming and expensive. Some feel stigmatized.

A.C. Shilton felt relieved when she was diagnosed with ADHD in her mid-30s. The farmer and freelance journalist from rural Tennessee said the diagnosis explained why she felt so disorganized and forgetful, and as if her brain were a motor running all day. Shilton said her medication slows that motor down.

The 38-year-old Jamestown resident said her first doctor ordered urine tests once a year. That doctor eventually closed his practice, and Shilton said her next physician made her take a test at nearly every visit.

“You go in to get the standard of care, which is this medicine, and you’re kind of treated like you’re a bad person again; there’s some shame associated with that,” Shilton said.

She was also upset after learning office staffers were incorrect when they told her that urine testing was required by law — something that other ADHD patients posting on social media forums said had happened to them too.

Shilton said few doctors treat adult ADHD patients in her rural community. She now drives more than an hour to a different clinic, which doesn’t require her to take as many drug tests.

Travis Gordon, 47, of Charlotte, North Carolina, has gone to the same ADHD clinic for more than 10 years. Gordon said he wasn’t drug-tested in the first few years. Then, for several years, he had to give a urine sample every three months. During much of the covid-19 pandemic, he wasn’t tested. Now, he’s screened every six months.

“We shouldn’t have to feel like street criminals to get drugs that are needed for our daily success,” Gordon said.

Gordon said it would make sense for doctors to order tests more frequently as they get to know new patients. But he said he doesn’t understand why such testing should continue for people like him, established patients who properly take their medication.

Traci Camper, 50, of northeastern Tennessee, said she has “never even tried a cigarette,” much less used illicit drugs, but her doctor has required urine tests every three months for more than 10 years. Camper said the process can be inconvenient but she’s ultimately OK with the tests, especially since she lives in an area with high rates of drug abuse.

The clinics that Shilton, Gordon, and Camper went to did not respond to KHN’s requests for interviews about their testing policies.

Adults are diagnosed with ADHD if they have multiple, frequent symptoms so severe they interfere with work, relationships, or other aspects of life. Treatments include therapy and medication, most often stimulants.

ADHD patients have been affected by the response to the opioid crisis, which has led to more scrutiny for all controlled medications. Some have reported trouble filling their prescriptions as drug distribution companies limit sales to certain pharmacies. Some patients, especially rural ones, could face obstacles if the federal government reverts to pre-pandemic rules that require at least one in-person appointment to receive controlled drugs via telehealth.

Chaplin said doctors who treat ADHD may feel the need to be extra vigilant with drug testing because of this increased scrutiny, or due to the risk of misuse.

An estimated 3.7 million Americans 12 or older misused prescription stimulants in 2021, and 1.5 million had a prescription stimulant use disorder, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Americans are more likely to misuse or be addicted to prescription opioids, sedatives, and tranquilizers, the agency said.

Adults with ADHD are more likely to have a substance use disorder than those without the condition, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Although there aren’t formal standards, several health care organizations and professionals have made recommendations to prevent and detect adult ADHD stimulant misuse. Suggestions include requiring patients to sign prescription-agreement contracts and regularly checking databases that show all controlled medications each patient is buying.

Chaplin said there’s little research into how effective any method is at preventing medication misuse.

A recent survey found that 42% of family physicians and 21% of college health professionals who treat adult ADHD require their patients to submit random urine drug screens.

Gordon, Camper, and some ADHD patients on social media forums said their drug screens have come at predictable intervals, instead of random ones.

Dr. Sidarth Wakhlu, a psychiatrist who specializes in treating substance use disorders at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said some of his patients also have ADHD. He suggests drug-testing most ADHD patients once or twice a year. For “someone who has no addiction history, has no red flags, every three months is an overkill,” he said.

The cost of drug testing is as variable as the frequency.

For example, Dr. Michael Fingerhood at Johns Hopkins University uses urine tests that cost as little as $60 before insurance. Fingerhood makes testing decisions case by case for patients who take controlled substances to treat ADHD, pain, or opioid addiction.

Gordon used to pay $110 for each of his tests when he had insurance his doctor did not accept. Shilton’s insurance was billed $545 for a test. Shilton said she complained to a nurse who said, in the future, she could use a less expensive test.

Shilton said she replied, “Well, why aren’t we doing that to begin with? Why are we doing this extremely fancy drug testing?”

Wakhlu said the more expensive urine tests can identify specific types and quantities of drugs. Such tests are usually used to confirm the results of initial, less pricey tests, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wakhlu said that when test results show a patient might be misusing stimulants, doctors should initiate a non-accusatory conversation to discuss the results and, if needed, offer help. He also said it’s important to emphasize safety, such as how taking too much ADHD medication or combining it with other stimulants, such as methamphetamine, can be dangerous.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Consider three hypothetical women in their mid-70s, all living alone in identical economic circumstances with the same array of ailments: diabetes, arthritis, and high blood pressure.

Ms. Green stays home most of the time and sometimes goes a week without seeing people. But she’s in frequent touch by phone with friends and relatives, and she takes a virtual class with a discussion group from a nearby college.

Ms. Smith also stays home, but rarely talks to anyone. She has lost contact with friends, stopped going to church, and spends most of her time watching TV.

Ms. Johnson has a wide circle of friends and a busy schedule. She walks with neighbors regularly, volunteers at a school twice a week, goes to church, and is in close touch with her children, who don’t live nearby.

Three sets of social circumstances, three levels of risk should the women experience a fall, bout of pneumonia, or serious deterioration in health.

Of the women, Ms. Johnson would be most likely to get a ride to the doctor or a visit in the hospital, experts suggest. Several people may check on Ms. Green and arrange assistance while she recovers.

But Ms. Smith would be unlikely to get much help and more likely than the others to fare poorly if her health became challenged. She’s what some experts would call “socially vulnerable” or “socially frail.”

Social frailty is a corollary to physical frailty, a set of vulnerabilities (including weakness, exhaustion, unintentional weight loss, slowness, and low physical activity) shown to increase the risk of falls, disability, hospitalization, poor surgical outcomes, admission to a nursing home, and earlier death in older adults.

Essentially, people who are physically frail have less physiological strength and a reduced biological ability to bounce back from illness or injury.

Those who are socially frail similarly have fewer resources to draw upon, but for different reasons — they don’t have close relationships, can’t rely on others for help, aren’t active in community groups or religious organizations, or live in neighborhoods that feel unsafe, among other circumstances. Also, social frailty can entail feeling a lack of control over one’s life or being devalued by others.

Many of these factors have been linked to poor health outcomes in later life, along with so-called social determinants of health — low socioeconomic status, poor nutrition, insecure housing, and inaccessible transportation.

Social frailty assumes that each factor contributes to an older person’s vulnerability and that they interact with and build upon each other. “It’s a more complete picture of older adults’ circumstances than any one factor alone,” said Dr. Melissa Andrew, a professor of geriatric medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who published one of the first social vulnerability indices for older adults in 2008.

This way of thinking about older adults’ social lives, and how they influence health outcomes, is getting new attention from experts in the U.S. and elsewhere. In February, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California-San Francisco published a 10-item “social frailty index” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Using data from 8,250 adults 65 and older who participated in the national Health and Retirement Study from 2010 to 2016, the researchers found that the index helped predict an increased risk of death during the period studied in a significant number of older adults, complementing medical tools used for this purpose.

“Our goal is to help clinicians identify older patients who are socially frail and to prompt problem-solving designed to help them cope with various challenges,” said Dr. Sachin Shah, a co-author of the paper and a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“It adds dimensions of what a clinician should know about their patients beyond current screening instruments, which are focused on physical health,” said Dr. Linda Fried, an internationally known frailty researcher and dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Beyond the corridors of medicine, she said, “we need society to build solutions” to issues raised in the index — the ability of seniors to work, volunteer, and engage with other people; the safety and accessibility of neighborhoods in which they live; ageism and discrimination against older adults; and more.

Meanwhile, a team of Chinese researchers recently published a comprehensive review of social frailty in adults age 60 and older, based on results from dozens of studies with about 83,900 participants in Japan, China, Korea, and Europe. They determined that 24% of these older adults, assessed both in hospitals and in the community, were socially frail — a higher portion than those deemed physically frail (12%) or cognitively frail (9%) in separate studies. Most vulnerable were people 75 and older.

What are the implications for health care? “If someone is socially vulnerable, perhaps they’ll need more help at home while they’re recovering from surgery. Or maybe they’ll need someone outside their family circle to be an advocate for them in the hospital,” said Dr. Kenneth Covinsky, a geriatrician at UCSF and co-author of the recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article.

“I can see a social frailty index being useful in identifying older adults who need extra assistance and directing them to community resources,” said Jennifer Ailshire, an associate professor of gerontology and sociology at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

Unlike other physicians, geriatricians regularly screen older adults for extra needs, albeit without using a well-vetted or consistent set of measures. “I’ll ask, who do you depend on most and how do you depend on them? Do they bring you food? Drive you places? Come by and check on you? Give you their time and attention?” said Dr. William Dale, the Arthur M. Coppola Family Chair in Supportive Care Medicine at City of Hope, a comprehensive cancer center in Duarte, California.

Depending on the patients’ answers, Dale will refer them to a social worker or help modify their plan of care. But, he cautioned, primary care physicians and specialists don’t routinely take the time to do this.

Oak Street Health, a Chicago-based chain of 169 primary care centers for older adults in 21 states and recently purchased by CVS Health, is trying to change that in its clinics, said Dr. Ali Khan, the company’s chief medical officer of value-based care strategy. At least three times a year, medical assistants, social workers, or clinicians ask patients about loneliness and social isolation, barriers to transportation, food insecurity, financial strain, housing quality and safety, access to broadband services, and utility services.

The organization combines these findings with patient-specific medical information in a “global risk assessment” that separates seniors into four tiers of risk, from very high to very low. In turn, this informs the kinds of services provided to patients, the frequency of service delivery, and individual wellness plans, which include social as well as medical priorities.

The central issue, Khan said, is “what is this patient’s ability to continue down a path of resilience in the face of a very complicated health care system?” and what Oak Street Health can do to enhance that.

What’s left out of an approach like this, however, is something crucial to older adults: whether their relationships with other people are positive or negative. That isn’t typically measured, but it’s essential in considering whether their social needs are being met, said Linda Waite, the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and director of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project.

For seniors who want to think about their own social vulnerability, consider this five-item index, developed by researchers in Japan.

(1) Do you go out less frequently now than last year?

(2) Do you sometimes visit your friends?

(3) Do you feel you are helpful to friends or family?

(4) Do you live alone?

(5) Do you talk to someone every day?

Think about your answers. If you find your responses unsatisfactory, it might be time to reconsider your social circumstances and make a change.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

The post Social relationships are important to the health of aging adults appeared first on Popular Science.

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Scrolling through Instagram and TikTok on a Monday morning is an easy trigger for the dreaded fear of missing out–or FOMO. To push back against this need to never miss a party or fancy vacation, the term JOMO (joy of missing out) has been popularized for those who report a healthy level of enjoyment of solitude.

However, most people who also have high JOMO also report higher levels of social anxiety, according to a study published this month in the journal Telematics and Informatics Reports.

[Related: Seattle schools sue social media companies over students’ worsening mental health.]

For the study, a team from Washington State University looked at two 500-person samples of adults recruited through Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform MTurk. As a way to measure JOMO, they asked a slate of questions about enjoying spending time alone and experiencing disconnection. For example, whether subjects liked having time to self-reflect and if they were happy to see friends and family out enjoying themselves even if they weren’t there. Questions to assess loneliness, social media use, social anxiety, personality traits, and general life satisfaction were also included. 

The surveys revealed mixed results, with some evidence that there is actually some anxiety hiding behind the joy. 

“In general, a lot of people like being connected,” psychology professor and co-author Chris Barry said in a statement. “When trying to assess JOMO, we found that some people were enjoying missing out, not for the solitude or a Zen-like, calming experience of being able to regroup, but more to avoid social interaction.”

This avoidance might explain the correlation the team found between social media use and JOMO, which surprised the team. They anticipated that people who wanted to miss out on social gatherings would not care to check in to see what their friends or family were doing. Instead, they found that those who have social anxiety may find social media as a less intense way to connect instead of interacting in person. 

The study of the first sample group showed connections in those high in JOMO and social media and also general life satisfaction, but social anxiety actually had the strongest correlation.

[Related: Study confirms the obvious: youth have abandoned Facebook.]

After getting these mixed results, they designed a second study to see if there was a group of people high in JOMO, but without that anxiety. While they did find these blissful introverts, the group was small and represented only about 10 percent of the participants in the study. This group was not socially anxious, but still reported some moderate feelings of loneliness.

Previous studies have linked FOMO with low self-esteem and loneliness, but these findings indicate that the experience of JOMO is not as clear. The team believes that JOMO might be more of a momentary phase of needing to disconnect instead of a constant state of feelings. Other studies have also shown that continued exposure to anxiety triggers can help lessen stress later.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions like ‘what’s a good dosage of social interaction versus disengagement?’ I think that’s going to differ for everyone,” Barry said.  “The motives matter,” Barry said. “Why are people missing out? If it’s because they need to recharge, that’s maybe a good thing. If they’re trying to avoid something, that is probably not healthy in the long run.”

The post Do you never feel FOMO? Time to meet its twin, JOMO. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Humans have been experimenting with mind-altering plants for many millennia now. . Modern-day drugs such as opium were being used in Europe around 5,700 BCE, and cannabis seeds started showing up in archeological digs in Asia some 10,000 years ago. Some studies have shown that ancient hominids have been using psychotropic plants and drugs as far back as 200 million years ago.

While tripping might seem like an exclusively human desire, it turns out that some of our closest great ape relatives might also find ways to switch up their state of mind—but instead of using plants and other substances, they just twirl around really quickly. For  research published today in the journal Primates, researchers watched 40 videos of great apes spinning around just to get dizzy. And they think these actions could have some clues into why people have often seeked innovative ways to get a little high, drunk, and what have you.

[Related: Why do humans talk? Tree-dwelling orangutans might hold the answer.]

“Every culture has found a way of evading reality through dedicated and special rituals, practices, or ceremonies,” study author Adriano Lameira, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Warwick, said in a press release. “This human trait of seeking altered states is so universal, historically, and culturally, that it raises the intriguing possibility that this is something that has been potentially inherited from our evolutionary ancestors.”

Inspired by a viral video of a male gorilla spinning in a pool, the team found dozens of videos of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans going round and round, often using ropes or vines. The researchers then analyzed the movements, finding that on average the apes spun 5.5 times per session, with an average speed of 1.5 revolutions per second. Most animals then repeated the session three times in a row. This is about as fast as professional dancers, circus artists, and Dervish Muslims twirl, according to the authors. 

The apes themselves would often be so dizzy after a bout of twirling that they were noticeably dizzy and likely to lose their balance. To understand the feeling of euphoria after such a feat, the team tested out twirling at the same speed and intensity themselves, and actually struggled to get to the third round due to dizziness. 

[Related: These long-fingered lemurs pick and eat their boogers, just like humans.]

Previous studies on why humans crave self-induced dizziness have focused on alcohol and drug use, but the authors of this study argue that simple spinning could be worth a deeper look. After all, the ability to make or find mind-altering substances requires knowledge, skills, and tools that we aren’t sure humans or pre-humans had access to, Lameira added. Additionally, there could be links with mental state and boredom, as the videos recorded were mostly of captive apes. 

“What we wanted to try to understand through this study is whether spinning can be studied as a primordial behavior that human ancestors would have been able to autonomously engage in and tap into other states of consciousness,” Lamiera said. “If all great apes seek dizziness, then our ancestors are also highly likely to have done so.”

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This article was originally featured on KHN.

Anxiety is the most common psychological disorder affecting adults in the U.S. In older people, it’s associated with considerable distress as well as ill health, diminished quality of life, and elevated rates of disability.

Yet, when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent, influential panel of experts, suggested last year that adults be screened for anxiety, it left out one group — people 65 and older.

The major reason the task force cited in draft recommendations issued in September: “the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for anxiety” in all older adults. (Final recommendations are expected later this year.)

The task force noted that questionnaires used to screen for anxiety may be unreliable for older adults. Screening entails evaluating people who don’t have obvious symptoms of worrisome medical or psychological conditions.

“We recognize that many older adults experience mental health conditions like anxiety” and “we are calling urgently for more research,” said Lori Pbert, associate chief of the preventive and behavioral medicine division at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and a former task force member who worked on the anxiety recommendations.

This “we don’t know enough yet” stance doesn’t sit well with some experts who study and treat seniors with anxiety. Dr. Carmen Andreescu, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, called the task force’s position “baffling” because “it’s well established that anxiety isn’t uncommon in older adults and effective treatments exist.”

“I cannot think of any danger in identifying anxiety in older adults, especially because doing so has no harm and we can do things to reduce it,” said Dr. Helen Lavretsky, a psychology professor at UCLA.

In a recent editorial in JAMA Psychiatry, Andreescu and Lavretsky noted that only about one-third of seniors with generalized anxiety disorder — intense, persistent worry about everyday matters — receive treatment. That’s concerning, they said, considering evidence of links between anxiety and stroke, heart failure, coronary artery disease, autoimmune illness, and neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia.

Other forms of anxiety commonly undetected and untreated in seniors include phobias (like a fear of dogs), obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder (a fear of being assessed and judged by others), and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The smoldering disagreement over screening calls attention to the significance of anxiety in later life — a concern heightened during the covid-19 pandemic, which magnified stress and worry among seniors. Here’s what you should know.

Anxiety is common. According to a book chapter published in 2020, authored by Andreescu and a colleague, up to 15% of people 65 and older who live outside nursing homes or other facilities have a diagnosable anxiety condition.

As many as half have symptoms of anxiety — irritability, worry, restlessness, decreased concentration, sleep changes, fatigue, avoidant behaviors — that can be distressing but don’t justify a diagnosis, the study noted.

Most seniors with anxiety have struggled with this condition since earlier in life, but the way it manifests may change over time. Specifically, older adults tend to be more anxious about issues such as illness, the loss of family and friends, retirement, and cognitive declines, experts said. Only a small fraction develop anxiety after turning 65.

Anxiety can be difficult to identify in older adults. Older adults often minimize symptoms of anxiety, thinking “this is what getting older is like” rather than “this is a problem that I should do something about,” Andreescu said.

Also, seniors are more likely than younger adults to report “somatic” complaints — physical symptoms such as dizziness, fatigue, headaches, chest pain, shortness of breath, and gastrointestinal problems — that can be difficult to distinguish from underlying medical conditions, according to Gretchen Brenes, a professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Some types of anxiety or anxious behaviors — notably, hoarding and fear of falling — are much more common in older adults, but questionnaires meant to identify anxiety don’t typically ask about those issues, said Dr. Jordan Karp, chair of psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson.

When older adults voice concerns, medical providers too often dismiss them as normal, given the challenges of aging, said Dr. Eric Lenze, head of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the third author of the recent JAMA Psychiatry editorial.

Simple questions can help identify whether an older adult needs to be evaluated for anxiety, he and other experts suggested: Do you have recurrent worries that are hard to control? Are you having trouble sleeping? Have you been feeling more irritable, stressed, or nervous? Are you having trouble with concentration or thinking? Are you avoiding things you normally like to do because you’re wrapped up in your worries?

Stephen Snyder, 67, who lives in Zelienople, Pennsylvania, and was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder in March 2019, would answer “yes” to many of these queries. “I’m a Type A personality and I worry a lot about a lot of things — my family, my finances, the future,” he told me. “Also, I’ve tended to dwell on things that happened in the past and get all worked up.”

Treatments are effective. Psychotherapy — particularly cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps people address persistent negative thoughts — is generally considered the first line of anxiety treatment in older adults. In an evidence review for the task force, researchers noted that this type of therapy helps reduce anxiety in seniors seen in primary care settings.

Also recommended, Lenze noted, is relaxation therapy, which can involve deep breathing exercises, massage or music therapy, yoga, and progressive muscle relaxation.

Because mental health practitioners, especially those who specialize in seniors’ mental health, are extremely difficult to find, primary care physicians often recommend medications to ease anxiety. Two categories of drugs — antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and SNRIs (serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) — are typically prescribed, and both appear to help to older adults, experts said.

Frequently prescribed to older adults, but to be avoided by them, are benzodiazepines, a class of sedating medications such as Valium, Ativan, Xanax, and Klonopin. The American Geriatrics Society has warned medical providers not to use these in older adults, except when other therapies have failed, because they are addictive and significantly increase the risk of hip fractures, falls and other accidents, and short-term cognitive impairments.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

The post Seniors are struggling with chronic anxiety, but don’t seek treatment appeared first on Popular Science.

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In Head Trip, PopSci explores the relationship between our brains, our senses, and the strange things that happen in between.

I STILL REMEMBER what my great-grandmother smells like. Even though she passed more than a decade ago, I know her favorite perfume just as well as I recall every contour of her face. Her scent came back to me recently when my boyfriend came over after spending several hours sitting in a room where incense was burning. The smoky aromatic blend fused with his clothing, and memories of my great-grandmother flooded in when I hugged him. I felt warm, loved, and safe.

This experience is not unlike the familiar story of someone walking through a department store’s perfume aisle and remembering an ex-lover, or getting a sniff of hair spritz or oil that evokes flashbacks of getting their scalp greased by a trusted elder as a child. It’s similar to the shared fondness my boyfriend and I have for the smell of freshly flat-ironed tresses—a peculiar odor that comforts us because it spurs the memory of watching our respective mothers press their hair when we were children.

Smell, alongside taste, is one of the oldest of the five human senses, and it plays a critical role in helping us assess the safety of our environment. Humans have approximately 400 cell receptors for detecting smells, compared to the 35 taste receptors used to sense flavors.This primitive, protective adaptation is deeply intertwined with our emotional and cultural experiences due to its direct connection to the amygdala-hippocampal complex. That immediate neurological throughline to the emotional epicenter of our brain is part of why our retention of smells first encountered in childhood is so strong.

That direct physiological connection between our noses and our brain’s emotional processing center is one reason we categorize aromas using the same terminology we use to describe sentiments, such as comforting, heavy, pleasant, or nauseating. It also explains why anosmia, a condition that leads to a weak or nonexistent sense of smell, can result in mental trauma. “For a lot of people, the loss of food pleasure is absolutely devastating,” says John Hayes, director of the Sensory Evaluation Center at Penn State, noting that smell plays a significant role in how food tastes. “But for other people, the loss of that emotional connection to smell can lead to feeling isolated.”

Experiences that occur between the ages of 3 and 11 have a profound effect on a child’s emotional intelligence. So developing a poignant association with a particular smell is likely part of the imprinting process nearly all humans go through, says Mike McBeath, a cognitive psychologist at Arizona State University.

“You want to remember smells when you first encounter them as a kid to learn the structure of the world around you,” he explains. “These associations might be something that helps us recognize where home is.” Children are also still learning to control their emotions, which means they might experience extremes. When such a feeling is tied to scent exposure, it might ingrain the connection deeper in a child’s memory. While newborns can recognize only a few odors, a child’s sense of smell will sharpen up until age 8. Then it levels out until about 20 years of age, when it starts a slow decline that continues to intensify with age.

While individual experiences with scent vary wildly, the process for the memory association is by and large the same. The olfactory nerve is the shortest cranial nerve, with only two synapses separating it from the amygdala, the emotion-processing area of the brain, says McBeath. From there, a smell has to hop only three synapses to the hippocampus, the brain’s working memory region. Aromas hit the backs of our brains more quickly than visual or auditory sensations, which require more processing in the prefrontal cortex before reaching the hippocampus.

Your initial experiences of smelling your grandmother’s perfume or the grease rubbed into your scalp remain stored in your brain so you know how to react if you whiff that substance again. Though there is no concrete evidence, an imprinted memory of smells is thought to be evolutionarily advantageous. According to experts interviewed for this article, it does make sense that when you first encounter a smell, your brain identifies it as good or bad to avoid potential future dangers. “That’s one reason you can often have these very strong associations,” says Claire Cheetham, an assistant professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh.

While humans are more likely to have pleasant smell associations, this isn’t always the case. Smells can trigger negative reflexes or even symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. One example is spoiled food. The smell of it prevents you from wanting to put it in your mouth to begin with. Some emotional cues are hard-wired to certain smells, such as, again, the repulsive stench of toxins or the sour odor of spoiled food (because we’re born disliking the taste profile of sour food to protect us from eating it). This innate wiring, according to McBeath, is part of the reason utility companies add a rotten-egg smell to natural gas, since the sometimes-poisonous substance otherwise evades our senses. (Though the first odorization of natural gas began in the 1880s in Germany, the practice became widespread following a gas explosion caused by an undetected leak at a Texas school in 1937.)

But many smell cues are learned in a lifetime. Babies, for example, don’t inherently think poop smells terrible. Instead, they learn to be disgusted by it from the facial reactions their caregivers make while changing their diapers, explains Hayes.

“We’re always looking for these novel cues in the environment,” which is why a lot of our childhood memories are based on first smells, he says. “Our brain pairs that new novel sensory experience with whatever was happening at the time. Our body is trying to protect us by helping us learn how to navigate through the world.”

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As a New Yorker, there’s a difference in whether it’s cold or “brick” outside. Cold weather is when you throw on a sweater before heading out. When it’s brick, you try to stay home as much as possible to avoid ending up like a human glacier. But the local lingo didn’t apply much this winter, with record-low snowfall and above-average temperatures across New York City.

A warm winter is more than just losing a few snow days. It’s knowing that the world will be dealing with more scorching heat waves and droughts, and natural disasters like the deadly flooding caused by Hurricane Ian in Florida and Cuba last year.

Climate change is only one of humanity’s long list of problems. This month we mark the third anniversary of the COVID pandemic, a disease that has killed millions worldwide and is becoming more chronic like the flu. On top of that, Turkey and Syria are still facing the aftershocks of a historically deadly earthquake, and soaring food prices from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could worsen global hunger for years to come. 

[Related: How to manage your mental health as traumatic events pile up]

There seems to be no shortage of community-wide tragedies. Likewise, these events are taking a toll on people’s psyches. Whether conscious or subconscious, you might mourn a loss of safety and security, on top of the more obvious layers of sorrow. But these feelings can also help you be the change you need to move forward in this ever-evolving world.

Collective grief is both a shared and unique experience

Some tragedies, like a mass shooting or police brutality, resonate among an entire group of people. “Grief is a normal reaction to loss,” says Kriss Kevorkian, a thanatologist and founder of the counseling service, A Grieving World. “When it’s collective grief, we’re experiencing that on a larger scale with more people.”

Collective grief can take hold even if you don’t personally know the people directly affected. When the Uvlade school shooting occurred, there was a nationwide outpouring of anger and sorrow over the murders of the teachers and children. Violent events like these force you to rethink life and the safety of your family, says Kevorkian.

Younger generations have become the most vulnerable to collective grief, especially with environmental anxiety. Kevorkian says that government failure to stop climate change has caused children to become more helpless and apathetic. When young people like Greta Thunberg do speak out on climate change, they are mocked and subject to verbal abuse.

Your brain and body on grief

Grief doesn’t stay in one corner of your body—it consumes your entire being. You might feel more tired than usual from tossing and turning all night. Maybe you’ve lost your appetite or have trouble keeping food down. Research shows that the first few months of grief can affect your body’s immune system activity and increase your risk of blood clots.

When your mind is weighed down by sadness, anger, and loneliness, there is little space to focus on other matters. Having “grief brain” can make it feel like you’re in a fog. Everyday tasks such as watering the plants or taking out the trash become really challenging. As you try to process your loss, you might forget things like where you placed your keys or an important doctor’s appointment. 

Grief brain happens because your mind recognizes the stress and emotional trauma as a threat, triggering the entire body’s fight-or-flight response. Brain regions like the amygdala signal the alarm through stress hormones that elevate your heart rate and increase your blood pressure, upping your anxiety and panic to keep tabs on the stressor. 

When you don’t deal with the heavy emotion, your brain protects itself by going into constant survival mode. Believing it’s in danger, it allocates more energy and resources to fear centers like the amygdala. Your brain might also decide to escape the stressor by metaphorically running away. It might dissociate from daily happenings, for example, to give you a mental break from negative emotions. “Deciding how to approach your grief can foster healing as opposed to delaying it when we try to ignore or deny reality,” says Jasmine Cobb, a social worker specializing in grief and trauma at Visual Healing Therapeutic Services in Texas.

Consume your grief before it consumes you

The good news is that grief-related stress on the brain is reversible. Meditation and mindfulness can train you to focus on the present moment instead of reliving the past or dissociating from future threats. Going outside for a 30-minute walk instead of doom-scrolling or watching the news can help clear and calm the mind. Crying can also be a healthy release of stress as it releases feel-good hormones such as oxytocin and endorphins. 

There is no normal amount of time you’re supposed to grieve. You can spend months or years mourning, only for a news story or movie to trigger your pain all over again. “There are three words I really can’t stand, ‘get over it,’” says Kevorkian. “Grief never ends.” 

While time can help with the grieving process, it’s important that you’re actively working on your emotions and any unresolved issues related to the loss. Cobb says speaking with someone you can confide in is important, whether it’s a family friend, therapist, or a spiritual leader. There is also power in shared grief. People who have gone through a similar experience can help provide support in overcoming your grief. “Find your community who can hold a torch for you when you’re unable to do that for yourself,” advises Cobb.

Turning collective grief into collective action

Grief is one of life’s greatest teachers, says Kevorkian. It shows you how to live in the present and appreciate all that you have right now. Beyond acceptance, taking action can help you wrestle with some of the hopelessness you might feel when dealing with events out of your control, Kevorkian explains.

[Related: The biggest tool we have to fight climate anxiety is community]

One example of a group turning pain into lasting change is Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). In 1980, 13-year-old Cari Lightner was killed by a drunk driver—a man who had just gotten out of jail two days after his fourth DUI arrest. For the next few years, Cari’s mother, Candace, used her daughter’s photo and story of her accident to raise awareness and change California traffic safety laws. Candace went on to form MADD, a political-advocacy group that gives other grieving parents the opportunity to feel like their tragedy was not in vain. 

“It’s easy for us to stay in bed under the covers and wallow in despair,” says Kevorkian. But finding the courage to take action can help you get out of your head and connect with others sharing similar distress. Hopefully, with time and work, the world will seem a little less bleak.

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The month of March brings with it the third anniversary of COVID-19 shutdowns beginning in the United States. The year 2020 became synonymous with change and fear, as major sporting events were canceled, thousands were infected with the novel virus and died, and work and school shifted online for millions. The world changed forever–especially for children.

In a survey of parents conducted in the fall of 2022 by Pew Research Center, 48 percent of parents with children in grades K-12 said that the first year of the pandemic had a very or somewhat negative impact on their children’s emotional well-being. Additionally, a 2022 review of survey studies by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that “the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health of children and adolescents is multifaceted and substantial,” and urged more well-designed studies looking at the mental health effects of the pandemic. 

[Related: COVID-19 vaccines are still essential in preventing death in children and teens.]

Now, a group of researchers in Sweden is turning to children’s drawings and their own explanation of what they drew to get a better sense of their feelings, beliefs, and ideas about COVID-19. A small study published March 2 in the journal Acta Paediatrica found that the common themes were detailed images of canceled activities, illness, and death, and the children had quite a bit of knowledge about the disease.

The team collected 91 drawings from kids between the ages of four and six years-old that were submitted to the Swedish Archive of Children’s Drawings between April 2020 and February 2021. The project was part of investigations into children’s voices in the public space during the pandemic.

“It was a very fun study to carry out. I was actually quite uncertain as to whether a medical journal would publish the article, but they did, including the children’s drawings and everything,” co-author Anna Sarkadi said in a statement. Sarkadi is a physician specializing in children’s health and social medicine from Uppsala University in Sweden

They analyzed the drawings using a type of visual analysis called semiotic visual analysis which looks at the image’s denotation (what images represent and how) and connotation (the associated meaning). The analysis also looked at the child’s own explanations accompanying the drawings.

The findings revealed that even the youngest children were strongly affected by the pandemic. In addition to canceled plans and images showing sick and dying people, fear, worry, and missing grandparents were common themes among them. Coronavirus was often described as a monster, while other children described how to protect themselves from the virus. One drawing even showed two children in a sword fight against a giant virus.

[Related: It’s harder for kids with food allergies to catch COVID.]

“The drawings were often covered in a lot of snot. On one drawing, a child wrote, ‘You throw up, then you cough, then you feel better or die,’ with extremely clear illustrations,” explained Maria Thell, a co-author and doctoral student at Uppsala University, in a statement. 

The study found that the children also know quite a bit about the virus, including how it spread and its symptoms. Out of 91 drawings, 14 showed hand washing, 17 showed symptoms like coughing, and 44 showed a depiction of the virus itself. 

“As a researcher with a background in child and youth science, I would love to develop this method further,” said Thell.

This team’s research will continue and the drawings from seven to 11 year old children will be studied next. 

“By encouraging young children to draw pictures using open prompts, such as how a disease feels, looks like or what is different now, it is possible to understand their interpretations of a situation and related emotions,” the authors write in the study. 

Additionally, they write that pediatricians can use children’s drawings to gage emotional response to COVID-19 in addition to other health issues and get a unique glimpse into their world. This can help adults have a better idea of what kids understand or don’t understand and detect any “unhelpful fantasies’ they may have conjured up. 

A survey of children in the United Kingdom found that seven to 11 year-olds were highly aware of the social restriction, illness, and death caused by the virus and similar reviews of children’s drawings have been conducted in Spain and Greece.

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If you’ve ever been pleasant to a rude customer while waiting tables, smiled through a friend’s wedding despite disliking their choice of spouse, or graciously received a truly ugly sweater as a gift, you’ve participated in a display rule. This is hiding a negative emotion usually to promote harmony between two individuals and the rules differ by culture. However, they can have negative consequences for the person suppressing a negative emotion or opinion. 

As daily interactions become increasingly virtual, display rules are changing. A group of researchers from the University of Tokyo in Japan set out to answer the questions of how emojis are used to reflect emotions in different contexts, if the same display rules apply to emojis, and how they affect a person’s well being. 

[Related: Meet the newest Apple emojis: a goose, a moose, and another pink heart.]

“As online socializing becomes more prevalent, people have become accustomed to embellishing their expressions and scrutinizing the appropriateness of their communication,” said Moyu Liu, a PhD student studying emotional management in online spaces at the University of Tokyo, in a statement. “However, I realized that this may lead us to lose touch with our authentic emotions.”

Liu is the co-author of a small study published March 3 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, that found that emojis were used to both express positive feelings and soften the more negative ones–such as not liking a friend’s piece of art.

Earlier research established that emojis serve as functional equivalents of facial expressions, but it didn’t look at the relationships between emotions expressed and experienced. It’s here that display rules can be problematic—if there is too much of a dissonance between the emotions that you experience and the emotions that you express, it can lead to emotional exhaustion. 

To try to answer this question, Liu’s study observed 1,289 participants who use Simeji, the most-downloaded emoji keyboard in Japan, and how the emojis were used to either express an emotion or mask it. 

The participants provided demographic data, answered questions about their subjective well being, and rated how often they use emojis. They were also given messages with different social contexts and asked to respond to them as they would normally, and then rated the intensity of the expression of their emotions.

[Related: AI moderators can’t keep up with vaccine disinformation’s newest language: emojis.]

The study found that texters chose to express more emotions via emoji with people in a private context or with a close friend. The respondents expressed the least amount of emotion with higher-status individuals. The most intense expressions of emotion came with matching emojis, unless the respondents felt the need to mask their true feelings, such as using a smiling emoji to mask sadness. 

Only when negative feelings were very strongly felt did the respondents use a negative emoji. Additionally, using emojis to express emotions was associated with higher subjective well being compared to masking emotions.

Liu would like to expand this study with a larger and more varied sample, including more males since the Simeji keyboard is more popular among young women and from different cultural backgrounds.

“First, the highly gender-imbalanced sample may have led to stronger results. Future research should explore potential gender differences in emoji display rules and examine the structural issues surrounding the formation of these emotion cultures,” cautioned Liu. “Second, Japanese culture’s emphasis on interpersonal harmony and concealment of negative emotions may have influenced the results.”

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When the wintry mix makes going outside unpleasant, the couch and a good book are tempting. But think: if you start your spring cleaning now, you’ll be able to enjoy the first warm days of the season outside smelling flowers instead of inside scrubbing floors.

Untidy spaces in particular seem to have a harmful effect on your mood and health. As a 2017 article in Psychology Today noted, clutter can interrupt “both your ability to move and your ability to think.”

[Related: A complete guide to digital spring cleaning]

Plus, it turns out people who regularly tidy up are getting a fair amount of light physical activity. That’s good if one of your New Year’s resolutions was to decrease the number on the scale, but cleaning also offers the benefit of space in your home to do things like rolling out the yoga mat or firing up an exercise video, doubling down on the physical benefits of a tidier space.

And if you start your spring cleaning now, it’ll give you an edge when warmer weather rolls around. Nearly 80 percent of households in the US ring in the new season with spring cleaning, and tackling what you can now means there will be less to do when you’d rather be outside. Some tasks, though, like washing windows, should probably still wait until you’re in significantly above-freezing temperatures.

Next, consider what you’ve accumulated—gifts, trinkets, and toys—over the past year and pare down items that serve similar purposes. For example, if you got a new phone or computer for Christmas, donate the old one. Be sure to include any cords and chargers, and consider including a pre-paid minutes card if you can afford it.

That said, don’t declare this the weekend you finally scour all the stain off every tile in your kitchen. Break a big task into more digestible chunks and tackle those grout stains a row or two at a time. Taking smaller steps will also let you know what “clean” and “tidy” mean to you—your place doesn’t have to look like an apartment straight out of #cleantok to be functional for you.

Give yourself a flexible deadline and bend the scope of the task to accommodate. Instead of having that shelf in order and the books to be donated out the door by the first day of spring, set a steady, regular pace that you can pick up and put down as you need. Even if the big stuff isn’t complete by the time the robins come back, it’ll still be much closer to being done than it was before.

Finally, consider tackling multiple projects on a rotating basis. A 2015 survey conducted by Microsoft in Canada showed that our attention spans have dropped substantially in the past decades—from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013. But switching things up keeps us more productive for longer. For work that’s repetitive or doesn’t need your full attention, multitasking and doing it in “small bites” can also help.

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“I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need.” You probably know the next line, even if you haven’t heard any other Mariah Carey song. In December, you either can’t avoid her, or you can’t help trying to hit the high notes with her.

Artists from Carey to AC/DC to Zendaya have recorded seasonal songs, hoping to break into the coveted and lucrative Christmas music market. Classic and modern carols generate roughly $170 billion a year, according to Billboard; more than 15 million people asked Amazon’s Alexa to play holiday tunes in 2020. In addition to Carey’s multi-decade chart topping, “All I Want For Christmas is You,” you also can’t escape hearing “Last Christmas” by Wham! or “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby before all the eggnog or coquito is gone.

[Related: ​​The psychology behind our love of Christmas movies]

In addition to being big business, there are some psychological drivers behind why so many of us feel drawn to this musical genre like ants to a gingerbread house. “A lot of Christmas repertoire is very nostalgic. We listen to much older music [now] than we listen to in the other 11 months,” says Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. “So, it’s that one time of the year where we are prepared to go back to this old repertoire.”

How Christmas music makes and sparks memories

One of Bennett’s research interests is the meta characteristics of holiday songs. He’s used both machine and human analysis to create a small database of 78 beloved Christmas classics from the UK music charts to identify common patterns. While performing what’s called a “corpus analysis” on the tracks, he found nine recurring themes in the lyrics. The most popular ones described the nostalgia of returning home, a feeling that many people experience as they travel back to loved ones for the season. “I speculate—and it is nothing more than speculation—that this is why we are prepared to keep coming back to this old music,” Bennett says.

Timelessness is one reason why you might see just as much Perry Como and Ella Fitzgerald on a holiday playlist as Michael Bublé and Ariana Grande. According to Bennett, pop music is socially functional, meaning young people in particular use it in whatever way they want to, whether that’s falling in love, wallowing in heartbreak, or dancing with friends. But the function changes a bit as they head home for the holidays and share the listening experience with their older relatives. “You are going to want pop music that appeals to multiple generations at the same time. Not something like EDM or emo for a heartbroken student,” says Bennett. 

Often, playing Christmas music in the background helps set that scene. But what stimulates those fuzzy feelings in the human brain? Amy Belfi, a neuroscientist at Missouri University of Science and Technology who studies autobiographical memory and how memories are evoked by music. Some of the future clinical applications of her work include studying how music could potentially help people with Alzheimer’s disease recover some memories. 

For Christmas music, Belfi agrees that our love for it all comes back to nostalgia. “I think that a lot of the reason why people love Christmas music is more about those associations than the actual sounds itself,” she tells PopSci. “There are Frank Sinatra versions of these songs that have been around for decades that our parents and grandparents and kids listen to. That is perhaps unique to Christmas music.”

[Related: Spotify is trying to figure out how our music preferences change as we age]

As Belfi’s research shows, music linked to memory activates an area of the brain located above the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex. This section of the brain also has a stronger connection to autobiographical memories over historical memories: for example, baking cookies while wearing a festive apron in the family kitchen, and not the name of the US president when the song came out.

With Christmas music, autobiographical memory is often tied to our families and childhoods, resulting in what psychologists and neuroscientists call a reminiscence bump. Because many people form their musical preferences between the ages of 15 and 30, the music that was popular around that time of life is associated with a resurgence in autobiographical memories. 

Additional research suggests that the reminiscence bump can even be inherited in a way. “Undergraduate college students had a reminiscence bump for music that was popular when they were teenagers, but also when their parents were teenagers,” says Belfi. “There’s this intergenerational transmission that you’re nostalgic for music when you were a kid, but also your parent’s music.”

How Christmas music still evolves 

Not everyone feels joy when they hear carols. That could be because of a few different factors: bad memories associated with Christmas, constant repetition over the course of the holiday season (which some research suggests could be bad for retail workers’ health), and even a rare disorder called musical anhedonia. This condition isn’t common, but some people simply aren’t emotionally moved by music.

“It’s not a perceptual issue. It’s not like people say, ‘it sounds like nails on a chalkboard.’ They’re just like, ‘I don’t really like music,’ ” explains Belfi.

One study from the University of Barcelona measured this by watching people listen to different genres of music in an MRI. Afterward, they played a game where they could win money. “The [scientists] looked at the reward regions of the brain and found that the people with musical anhedonia showed normal responses to winning money, but not to music,” says Belfi. 

Beyond a few special individuals, however, holiday tunes are largely beloved. And one of the reasons for that may be changing over time.

“What I think is culturally interesting about Christmas music is that in recent decades, it reflects a more secular and multicultural America,” says Bennett. While the traditional religious carols like the tranquil “Silent Night” remain popular, other seasonal hits have filled up people’s playlists. The silly “Dominick the Donkey” by Italian-American artist Lou Monte has became a cult classic since its release in the 1960s. José Feliciano’s 1970 Spanish and English classic “Feliz Navidad” still draws billions of listens on the radio today. Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” from the ‘80s, *NSYNC’s “Merry Christmas (Happy Holidays)” from the ‘90s, and Sia’s “Candy Cane Lane” from 2017 have only expanded the reach of the holiday music canon. It’s a medium that can truly connect everyone.

“There’s [music] in every culture across history,”  Belfi explains. “Almost everyone loves it and has some connection to it. It’s a large part of the human experience.”

Looking for a playlist to share with your loved ones this holiday season? PopSci has you covered. Check out our favorite songs (including some that we can almost guarantee you’ve never heard), and let us know your favorites.

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The death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police earlier this year has set off new questions about what public safety really means in America. While the five former officers are being charged for Nichol’s murder, there’s been scrutiny over how EMS responders handled the victim’s injuries after arriving on the scene.

On the night of January 7, paramedics responded to a call of a person being pepper sprayed. Despite the man laying bloody and in distress against a police vehicle, they failed to make their own assessment of the patient beyond what the officers told them. It took another 19 minutes for the EMTs to bring a stretcher out for him. 

The mistreatment Nichols endured from people trained to save lives is a grave reminder that America is built on a system designed to treat minority communities differently. One in every 1,000 Black men in the US will be killed by law enforcement, estimates a 2019 criminal justice study. Among young Black men between 25 and 29, police brutality ranks as the sixth leading cause of death. And more than half of police brutality cases go unreported, especially when they involve Black people. 

[Related: Racism is undeniably a public health issue]

In the wake of Nichols’s murder, medical organizations like the Association of American Medical Colleges released statements condemning the violence. But they didn’t address the fact that fear of being harmed by figures of authority can also carry over to medical institutions and personnel. Sirry Alang, an associate professor of Black Communities & the Social Determinants of Health at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, says police brutality must be considered a public health crisis. “Police brutality literally kills people. It causes death and disability and it shifts relationships with healthcare providers that make people less likely to seek care.”

The roots of medical mistrust

Medical mistrust is the belief that people working in the medical field want to harm you or don’t have your best interests at heart. Alang says it tends to come from the concern of being treated differently because you are affiliated with a specific racial or gender group. 

Medical mistrust has been justified through American history. From the 1930s to the 1970s, public health researchers with the Tuskegee syphilis study infected hundreds of healthy Black men and intentionally withheld treatment when penicillin became available. What’s more, the bogus science of eugenics promoted the forced sterilization of thousands of people of color in the 20th century. 

Mistrust has also arisen, in part, because of the prejudices workers at medical institutions hold against certain groups of people. For example, Black patients are less likely to be prescribed pain medication than white patients, even if they are experiencing the same level of pain, because of a deep-rooted stereotype that they have “thicker skin.” The US mortality rate among Black mothers from complications during pregnancy is also three times higher than that of white mothers, in part because of the failure of doctors to understand the pain of Black women.

“People don’t seek healthcare as individuals,” explains Alang—their choices are shaped by personal experience and the experiences of others in their community. “One bad experience can influence the expectations of others in that network and make it easy for medical distrust to spread.”

Cycles of violence, trauma, and more mistrust 

Experiencing police brutality creates traumatic racial experiences that can subvert a person’s belief on what to expect when dealing with a figure of authority. Think about the end of an abusive romantic relationship. Even if you moved on, you might always be wary of your new partner and whether they’ll behave just as badly. Similarly, a traumatic experience with the police keeps you on edge of being mistreated in other areas. 

“If people in authoritative roles have showed they don’t respect you, you’ll be more suspicious of other authority figures like healthcare providers,” says Georges Benjamin, the executive director for the American Public Health Association. What’s more, exposure to police violence can force survivors to develop feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness and further convince them to avoid care—even when they need it.

[Related: Teen girls and queer youth are facing a crisis of hopelessness]

Another issue is that healthcare institutions support a broken public-safety system that often works against those who need it. Take emergency medical dispatches, for example. First responders tend to talk to the officer at the scene first instead of speaking with the harmed individual to figure out what happened. “They then come to you like an object it has to fix instead of a person,” says Alang. 

Crumbling police-community relations

The stress and trauma that comes from the threat of police brutality can cause long-term stress that wears down the body over time. For example, a 2016 study of Black residents living in highly policed areas of New York City found they were more likely to have poor health outcomes such as high blood pressure, regardless of whether or not officers stopped them. Benjamin says that the perception that law enforcement is not actually there to protect you can create community stress that keeps your body in a constant fight-or-flight mode.

Constant stress contributes to a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, along with a number of mental health conditions. But when people are apprehensive about how they will be treated for “overreacting” to the constant threat of police brutality, Alang says they are more likely to skip out on seeing or talking to their doctor about the source of their stress and trauma. They might also be less likely to adhere to medication or treatment plan. “The relationship between a healthcare provider and a patient is one of fundamental trust,” Benjamin explains. “If you don’t trust that individual, you might have some suspicions on their advice or you may not believe what they told you.”

Building a safer public health system

Reducing police violence is just one part of fixing medical mistrust; hospital, EMS groups, and public health organizations need to actively build rapport with communities grieving the loss of their members. Alang says putting out anti-racist press statements after a violent incident does little to reassure the public. Instead, both she and Benjamin advise medical institutions to take action in ways that make people feel heard or supported. 

This can come from changes like hiring a healthcare workforce that represents the patient population it’s treating, and setting up accessible mental health programs focused on addressing trauma and stress. Benjamin adds that medical institutions can work with law enforcement to build out community-based policing, including teaching them how to interact with people under stress. “Public health is not going to [completely] solve this police violence problem,” he says. “But we are part of the solution.”

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For some workers, every weekend being a long weekend sounds like a dream. As it turns out, a  four-day work week trial from the United Kingdom analyzing nearly 3,000 workers across 61 companies is adding to the pile of evidence that demonstrates how a a reduction of hours is good for employees, the bottom line, and possibly the planet itself.

From June to December 2022, the studied employees worked 80 percent of their usual hours without a reduction in pay. In exchange, they promised to deliver 100 percent of their usual workload. According to 4 Day Week Global (4DWG) and 4 Day Week Campaign, the nonprofit organizations that organized the trial, this is the largest number of companies to participate in this kind of research. Researchers from the University of Cambridge, Boston College in Massachusetts, and workplace research group Autonomy oversaw data collection, interviews, and the analysis.

[Related: Essential tips and tools for working remotely—from anywhere.]

Employees were surveyed throughout the trial to gauge what an extra day of free time does for workers. The results were published today with 1,238 workers completing a final survey about their experience.

About 71 percent of employees reported lower levels of burnout, with 39 percent reporting less stress compared with the beginning of the trial. Sick days were reduced by 65 percent and there was a 57 percent drop in staff turnover compared to June to December 2021. 

Roughly 60 percent of employees found it easier to balance work and homelife. 62 percent of employees reported it easier to combine work with social life. 

“Before the trial, many questioned whether we would see an increase in productivity to offset the reduction in working time – but this is exactly what we found,” said sociologist Brendan Burchell, who led the University of Cambridge’s side of the research, in a statement. “Many employees were very keen to find efficiency gains themselves. Long meetings with too many people were cut short or ditched completely. Workers were much less inclined to kill time, and actively sought out technologies that improved their productivity.”

Company revenue barely changed, and even showed a marginal increase by 1.4 percent on average.

Additionally, male-identifying workers reported spending 27 percent more time taking care of their children, based on time diaries that were logged during the trial. Female-identifying  participants reported 13 percent increase in childcare.

“It is wonderful to see that we can shift the dial and start to create more balance of care duties in households,” Charlotte Lockhart, founder and managing director of 4DWG, told CNN.

[Related: Burnout is real. Here’s how to spot it—and recover.]

A day off in the middle of the week meant some savings on childcare expenses for some of the parents of young children. For parents with older children, it meant some more general free time. 

There were also some benefits for the planet. Simon Ursell, a founder of Tyler Grange, an environmental consultant group that participated in the trial, told the BBC, “On average we saw a 21 percent reduction in the number of miles traveled by car.” Tyler Grange cut out unnecessary meetings and travel and Ursell says some employees used additional days off to become more involved in volunteering.

The organizations that took part in the trial included a wide range of companies and sectors including online retailers, financial service providers, animation studios, housing, marketing firms, healthcare, and a fish and chip shop. About 92 percent of companies that took part in this pilot program said that they intend to continue a four-day work week and 18 companies confirmed the permanent change.

“We feel really encouraged by the results, which showed the many ways companies were turning the four-day week from a dream into realistic policy, with multiple benefits,” said David Frayne, a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, in a statement. 

As calls for a shorter work week have increased, some lawmakers in the United States are  willing to put the state behind it to test its merits. Maryland legislators have proposed a bill (House Bill 181) that will encourage qualifying businesses that have at least 30 employees to implement a 4-day work week (without reduction in pay), as part of a 5-year pilot program. Companies would receive a tax credit to help maintain wages. If it passes, Maryland will be the first state to encourage a 32 hour work week.

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Adolescence and its raging hormones and major physical and emotional changes has always been a fraught period of time. Add onto that the threats of climate change, constant mass shootings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and continued societal injustice and it’s a hard time to be young in the United States. The data collected in the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey is revealing just how “engulfed” in violence and trauma teens are, especially teenage girls.

Nearly one in three high school-aged girls reported 2021 that they seriously considered suicide in 2021. This is a huge jump of nearly 60 percent from a decade ago, according to new data released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on February 13. Teen girls additionally reported experiencing distress at twice the rate of teen boys. 

The YRBS also found increased rates of mental health issues and suicidal behavior among teens who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning.

[Related: Some teenagers’ brains have been aging faster during the pandemic.]

“High school should be a time for trailblazing, not trauma. These data show our kids need far more support to cope, hope, and thrive,” said Debra Houry, CDC’s Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science, in a statement. “Proven school prevention programs can offer teens a vital lifeline in these growing waves of trauma.”

The YRBS is conducted every other year, but this survey done in fall of 2021 was an especially crucial one. It is the first iteration of the survey where the COVID-19 pandemic was a factor. The pandemic has taken a toll on teenagers, many of whom were already struggling with mental health issues before the pandemic began. Many were dealing with social media pressures, family turmoil, the deaths of family members to COVID-19, and isolation. “These data make it clear that young people in the U.S. are collectively experiencing a level of distress that calls on us to act,” the authors wrote.

The survey asks teens about substance abuse, mental health, sexual behaviors, among other topics. The 2021 survey was also the first to ask about the social determinants of health (housing stability, food insecurity, etc.) and protective factors including parental involvement and connections with classmates. 

Youth mental health has continued to get worse over the three decades that the CDC has been gathering data on adolescents and the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health in 2021 and 2022. This new survey found particularly stark increases in widespread reports of harmful experiences among teen girls.

The report found that about 18 percent of teenage girls reported experiencing sexual violence. a 20 percent increase from 2017. More than 14 percent reported being forced to have sex, a 27 percent increase since 2019. 

“If you think about every 10 teen girls that you know, at least one and possibly more has been raped, and that is the highest level we’ve ever seen,” Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, told The Washington Post. She also said that the the rise of sexual violence almost certainly contributed to the glaring spike of depressive symptoms. “We are really alarmed.”

[Related: Gender-affirming hormones can improve teens’ mental health and life satisfaction.]

Worsening levels of persistent sadness or hopelessness were found across all racial and ethnic groups, with an increase in suicide attempts among Black and White youth. However, Black and Hispanic students were more likely than their White or Asian classmates to avoid school due to safety concerns. White students were also more likely to experience sexual violence than Asian, Black, and Hispanic students, and they were the only group to see an increase in sexual violence. Alaska Native and American Indian high school students were more likely than other racial or ethnics groups to have been raped.

Close to 70 percent of LGBQ+ students reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless and more than one in five had attempted suicide in the past year. The 2021 survey did not have a question assessing gender identity and did not highlight data specifically on students who identify as transgender, so the  “T” commonly used in the acronym LGBTQ+ was not included when referring to the data. However, the authors believe that strategies to improve adolescent health should be inclusive of all youth who identify as LGBTQ+.

Some of the positive findings of the new survey were that teens experienced lower rates of certain risky sexual behaviors (including general sexual activity and having multiple sex partners), substance abuse, and bullying at school.

The researchers wrote that schools can play a major role in helping address these issues through offering programs and connections that can protect against adverse mental health issues, such as youth development programs and inclusivity efforts. They also said that schools can link students and families with community resources and provide more mental, physical, and sexual health education. 

Contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline if you are experiencing mental health-related distress or are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support. Call or text 988. Chat at 988lifeline.org. Connect with a trained crisis counselor. 988 is confidential, free, and available 24/7/365. Visit the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for more information at 988lifeline.org.

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When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down normal life in 2020, nature became a refuge for many people  cooped up inside. As pandemic related travel disturbances continued, the National Park Service saw record numbers of visitors, as spending time outdoors was safer in terms of virus spread.

Even when a pandemic isn’t raging, spending time outside reduces stress, improves cognition, and can help us sleep better. All of this can help people lead happy, healthy, and productive lives, which helps the economy and lowers healthcare costs. 

[Related: Nature saves us trillions of dollars in healthcare.]

Citizen science has been designed to use people power for the benefit of scientific knowledge, but it can also help the citizens doing the science as well. A study published February 9 in the journal People and Nature found that involvement in citizen science boosts wellbeing and connection to nature for participants. 

“People connect with nature in different ways, so it’s great to see nature-based citizen science can provide another form of active engagement that can strengthen the human-nature relationship,” said study co-author Miles Richardson from the Nature Connectedness Research Group at the University of Derby in the UK, in a statement. “When combined with noticing the positive emotions nature can bring, citizen science and help unite both human and nature’s wellbeing.”

The study was conducted during pandemic lockdowns in 2020 by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the University of Derby, and the British Science Association. Five hundred volunteers from across the United Kingdom were randomly assigned to carry out a 10-minute nature-based activity at least five times over a period of eight days: a survey of pollinating insects, a butterfly survey, spending time in nature and jotting down three good things they noticed, or a combination of both. 

Researchers surveyed the participants both before and after the citizen scientists went out into nature, as a way to assess differences in connection to nature, well being, and pro-nature behavior. 

After completing their assignments, the researchers found that all volunteers showed increased scores in feeling connected to nature. 

“It gave me permission to slow down,” wrote one participant. 

“It made me more aware of nature in all aspects of the environment,” said another. 

“It reminded me that small things can make a big difference to my mood,” observed another volunteer.

[Related: Birders behold: Cornell’s Merlin app is now a one-stop shop for bird identification.]

The volunteers who wrote down the three good things they noticed while out in nature.Those who also combined those three positive things with nature recording activities (like counting pollinating insects) said that they were more likely to adopt more pro-nature behaviors beyond their involvement with this study. Some of those behaviors involved planting more pollinator friendly plants in their own gardens or helping build wildlife shelters. 

“Being in and around nature is good for our wellbeing, and we’ve shown that focused, active engagement with nature is just as important – whether that is ‘mindful moments’ in nature or taking part in citizen science,” said Michael Pocock, ecologist and academic lead for public engagement with research at UKCEH, in a statement. “This has been a valuable exercise for us in exploring how we can make citizen science even better. We now know that if we design future projects with additional nature-noticing activities, for example, we can enhance people’s own connection to nature, while still collecting valuable data.”

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County prosecutors charged former labor and delivery nurse Lindsay Clancy with first-degree murder and three counts of strangulation on Tuesday, after the alleged killing of her three children in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy, who has pleaded not guilty, underwent a psychiatric evaluation before her arraignment. Clancy’s lawyer is arguing that the mother was not in the right state of mind at the time of the killing, citing “overmedication” for issues with maternal mental health.

Although there has been no official diagnosis yet, her defense attorney has suggested Clancy has a rare disorder called postpartum psychosis. A major symptom of the condition, which occurs once or twice among every 1,000 people who give birth, is that a person loses their sense of reality after pregnancy. 

People may develop postpartum psychosis quickly, immediately following the delivery or within the first week following birth, says Ariadna Forray, an expert in postpartum maternal mental health psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. Although it can cause severe mental illness that, if left untreated, could potentially bring harm to the individual and others, Forray says “it’s rare for women to develop postpartum psychosis, and it’s even rarer to have women act out on their symptoms.” And while Clancy was reportedly taking treatments for postpartum depression, which is far more common, months before the killing, the condition itself is very different from postpartum psychosis.

What are the signs of postpartum psychosis?

People with the disorder show sudden mood fluctuations. One moment, they might feel jittery and highly energetic, and then the next moment, they may seem sluggish and more irritable than usual. “It’s your brain’s extreme reaction to having a baby,” explains Allison Lieberman, a marriage and family therapist who specializes in postpartum depression and psychosis at the online mental health platform Choosing Therapy. Chemical and hormonal shifts from childbirth, along with the stress of being a parent, can trigger a mother’s brain to have a “survival reaction,” she says.

Postpartum psychosis can be hard to recognize at first, because a mother’s physical and emotional changes often result from typical tasks like caring for a newborn baby. Parents rarely get much sleep in the first few months and often show dips in energy and appetite. 

[Related: Meditation isn’t always calming. For a select few, it may lead to psychosis.]

Specific risk factors associated with the condition are not well understood, because it’s so rare. But the most important symptoms to watch out for are confusion and disoriented thoughts that signal a loss of touch with reality. For example, parents may create delusions about the baby being sick when the child is perfectly healthy. They could convince themselves that the only way to help is to harm. “It’s the difference between knowing the intrusive thoughts are real versus not real,” says Lieberman. “Even if you think ‘I’m going to throw my baby down the stairs,’ that’s not necessarily psychosis if it disturbs you.”

However, both Lieberman and Forray stress that having postpartum psychosis does not automatically make you a violent person. In Lindsay Clancy’s case, the defense team is arguing she killed her children because a voice compelled her to do it. 

Is postpartum psychosis a symptom of postpartum depression?

No, they are unrelated to each other. The only connection is that both conditions occur after delivery. 

Postpartum depression is a medical condition where people who give birth experience intense feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and low mood within the first four weeks after delivery. Lieberman says it’s a longer and more intense version of the :baby blues,: because the condition interferes with a mother’s ability to care for themselves. “There’s this extra level of guilt that’s associated with not being able to be the parent you want to be and not enjoying parenthood,” Lieberman says. 

[Related: We don’t really know how many pregnant people are dying in the US]

Postpartum depression is common. It affects one in seven people who give birth, though many cases go undiagnosed because of the stigma and fear of being judged. Lindsay Clancy allegedly was taking 12 prescription drugs for multiple mood disorders, including postpartum depression. However, both Lieberman and Forray say it is not possible for postpartum depression to manifest into postpartum psychosis. 

While depression may cause new mothers to exhibit mood swings, postpartum psychosis is considered a type of bipolar disorder. “An estimated 70 to 80 percent of cases are related to bipolar disorder,” Forray says. Research suggests that having a history of the manic illness puts someone at a higher risk of developing postpartum psychosis after giving birth.

How is postpartum psychosis treated?

While delusions and hallucinations can take on many forms, the majority do not cause an individual to become violent. If there is evidence of postpartum psychosis in a patient, the best plan is to prevent the condition from worsening and avoiding escalation to acting out on these delusional thoughts. 

People with suspected postpartum psychosis need to be admitted to a psychiatric hospitalization where they can be assessed by a mental health expert, Forray says. Depending on the symptoms, they might then be prescribed medications such as a mood stabilizer or an antipsychotic. Another modern-day and safe alternative is electroconvulsive therapy. Research has shown the therapy helps to improve the severity of symptoms. “There’s a whole host of treatments that can be very effective,” Forray says. “And women start doing better as soon as treatment starts.”

With immediate medical intervention and the right support, it is possible to recover from postpartum psychosis. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, consider texting HOME to 741741 to reach the National Crisis Text Line or dialing 988 to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. The services are free, confidential, and equipped with staff trained to get you the help you need.

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KC DAVIS is famous for leaving dishes unwashed, forgetting to sweep, and, perhaps most of all, never folding laundry. But many of her 1.5 million TikTok followers credit her with helping them keep their homes cleaner than ever. Through her experience living with ADHD and her training as a licensed therapist, Davis has learned that a functional space isn’t always a tidy one. Her unique approach to what a well-kept dwelling should look like has helped followers, patients, and Davis herself radically reimagine how and why they clean.

Davis first started posting TikTok videos about parenting and housekeeping as a way to socialize during COVID-19 lockdowns. She’d just moved and had a second child on the way, and the added stressors of 2020 brought her lifelong dislike of cleaning tasks to a head. A pile of unwashed dishes didn’t used to be an ordeal, but now it meant scrubbing baby bottles while her children wailed for breakfast. “I’d always been messy, but my space had always been functional,” Davis says. Suddenly, the way she’d always managed chores just didn’t cut it. 

Davis noticed that many cleaning influencers celebrated sparkling floors and crumbless cabinets as inherently superior, while putting the onus on people with messier homes to stop being lazy and brute-force new habits to achieve the same perfection. It reminded her of a hard lesson she’d learned treating—and recovering from—substance use disorder: Focusing on total sobriety can keep someone from making progress at all. Davis, who spent 18 months in rehab as a teen, thinks the world of housekeeping should take cues from harm reduction—an approach usually associated with interventions like safe injection sites, which are intended to mitigate the risks of drug use for individuals who can’t or won’t abstain. In a similar way, she tries to show compassion to anyone (including herself) who can’t, realistically, do what might seem to be best for them, even when it comes to regular tasks at home. 

Davis knew from experience that entirely revamping her morning routine wasn’t going to rid her of her dread of doing the dishes. She also knew that she didn’t care about the optics of a pile of crusty plates. So she focused on figuring out how to have clean dinnerware on hand. She eventually placed a rack for soiled dishes near the sink, which cleared the faucet for washing an item or two as needed. 

By taking an all-or-nothing approach to tidiness, she explains, we set ourselves up to fail—and forget what the comforts of home are really about. For people dealing with disabilities, mental illness, or financial stress, Davis says, aspiring to complete domestic chores “properly” can mean not making the unglamorous changes that will help manage symptoms and responsibilities. Instead of focusing on turning a “dirty” room “clean,” she urges viewers to cut tasks down into individual, manageable steps that can markedly improve their lives. 

“You’re a person who deserves to have their suffering alleviated,” she says. “You’re a person who deserves to have help raising your quality of life based on the skills you possess today.” 

Davis generally encourages her viewers to play around with strategies that feel right for them—but she has a few widely applicable hacks to evangelize. One of her most universal, which went viral in September 2020, is her “five things” method. It boils down to the wisdom that every mess, no matter how intimidating, can be split into five buckets: trash, laundry, dishes, stuff that has a place, and stuff that needs one. Davis finds that dealing with one category at a time helps with her executive dysfunction—a common ADHD symptom that makes processes involving many decisions difficult. While cleaning, Davis used to get waylaid flitting from room to room, which slowed her progress. Tackling a few smaller messes is less overwhelming. “For my brain, at least, it becomes like I’m in a video game hunting down loot,” she says. 

The “five things” method also has five natural stopping points. If you bag your trash but then get tired or distracted, Davis explains, you’ve still made a real improvement to your space. Each step makes the room more usable, even if it doesn’t make it substantially prettier. Davis often reminds her viewers that there’s no shame in laboring less; following an order of operations that prioritizes hygiene and frequently used objects can accomplish much more than half-starting a deep cleaning routine over and over again. 

That’s how she finally tackled the mountain of rumpled clothes that used to cover the laundry room floor. Instead of pressuring herself to neatly fold and organize garments in closets, Davis asked what was actually wrong with the messy pile. She realized she was spending a lot of time and effort fishing things out of the heap. So she started sorting freshly dried items into bins—one for each household member—in a shared “family closet,” and it made a huge difference. 

“People say, ‘Oh, but stuff gets wrinkled.’ But it was already getting wrinkled on the floor,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t make anything worse!” 

In her 2022 book, How to Keep House While Drowning, Davis recalls that some of her early TikTok commenters called her lazy. But many more have expressed relief at seeing a therapist present chores as things worth doing imperfectly, if that means the helpful parts still get done. As Davis fondly shares: “Anything worth doing is worth half-assing.” 

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Over the past seven years, Allegheny County Department of Human Services workers have frequently employed an AI predictive risk modeling program to aid in assessing children’s risk factors for being placed into the greater Pittsburgh area’s foster care system. In recent months, however, the underlying algorithms behind the Allegheny Family Screening Tool (AFST) have received increased scrutiny over their opaque design, taking into account predictive AI tools’ longstanding racial, class, and gender-based biases.

Previous delving into the Allegheny Family Screening Tool’s algorithm by the Associate Press revealed certain data points could be interpreted as stand-in descriptions for racial groups. But  now it appears the AFST could also be affecting families within the disabled community as well as families  with a history of mental health conditions. And the Justice Department is taking notice.

[Related: The White House’s new ‘AI Bill of Rights’ plans to tackle racist and biased algorithms.]

According to a new report published today from the Associated Press, multiple formal complaints regarding the AFST have been filed via the Justice Dept.’s Civil Rights Division, citing the AP’s prior investigations into its potential problems. Anonymous sources within the Justice Dept. say officials are concerned that the AFST’s overreliance on potentially skewed historical data risks “automating past inequalities,” particularly long standing biases against people with disabilities and mental health problems.

The AP explains the Allegheny Family Screening Tool utilizes a “pioneering” AI program designed to supposedly help overworked social workers in the greater Pittsburgh area determine which families require further investigation regarding child welfare claims. More specifically, the tool was crafted to aid in predicting the potential risk of a child being placed into foster care within two years of following an investigation into their family environment.

The AFST’s black box design reportedly takes into account numerous case factors, including “personal data and birth, Medicaid, substance abuse, mental health, jail and probation records, among other government data sets,” to determine further investigations for neglect. Although human social service workers ultimately decide whether or not to follow up on cases following the AFST algorithm results, critics argue the program’s potentially faulty judgments could influence the employees’ decisions.

[Related: The racist history behind using biology in criminology.]

A spokesman for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services told the AP they were not aware of any Justice Department complaints, nor were they willing to discuss the larger criticisms regarding the screening tool.

Child protective services systems have long faced extensive criticisms regarding both their overall effectiveness, as well as the disproportional consequences faced by Black, disabled, poor, and otherwise marginalized families. The AFST’s official website heavily features third-party studies, reports, and articles attesting to the program’s supposed reliability and utility.

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Serotonin and dopamine are often called the “feel good” or “happy” hormones for their role in boosting moods. There is even a “love hormone”produced in the hypothalamus called oxytocin. For decades, research has pointed to oxytocin receptors as a pathway essential to developing social behaviors like romantic relationships and attachments in mammals like humans and prairie voles.

However, a study published January 27 in the journal Neuron isn’t so sure that oxytocin is absolutely essential. It finds that voles can actually form enduring attachments with mates and even parent their young without oxytocin receptor signaling.

[Related: Prairie Voles Show Empathy Just Like Humans.]

Prairie voles are small rodents found in the Midwest and also are one of only a few monogamous mammal species. They show empathy and form lifelong partnerships called “pair-bonds” after mating. The bonded voles share parenting duties, show signs of preferring their partner over strangers of the opposite sex, and actively reject new partners. In previous studies, drugs used to block oxytocin from binding to its receptors caused voles to be unable to pair-bond. 

Neuroscientists Devanand Manoli from University of California, San Francisco and Nirao Shah from Stanford University and their team used the gene editing technique Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) to generate prairie voles that don’t have functioning oxytocin receptors to test if pair-bonding was really controlled by signaling oxytocin receptors. They then tested the mutant voles to see if they had the ability to form enduring partnerships with other voles.

The answer? Yes, these voles formed loving pair-bonds just as readily as normal voles.

“We were all shocked that no matter how many different ways we tried to test this, the voles demonstrated a very robust social attachment with their sexual partner, as strong as their normal counterparts,” said Manoli, in a statement.

The team then wondered if oxytocin receptor signaling is also as critical for functions like co-parenting, parturition (or childbirth), and milk release during lactation. The mutant voles, however, could give birth and even nurse. The male and female mutant voles were also both engaged in their usual parental behaviors of huddling, licking, and grooming. Mutant pairs could even rear their pups to weaning age.

The mutant voles did, however, have some difficulties. They had limited milk release compared to normal voles, and fewer of their pups survived to weaning age. Those that did make it to weaning age were smaller compared to the pups of normal prairie voles. 

[Related: ‘Love Hormone’ Also Boosts Feelings Of Spiritual Enlightenment.]

According to the team, this study is different from ones that have used drugs to block oxytocin receptor signaling because genetics studies like this one can be more precise. “Drugs can be dirty,” said Manoli, “in the sense that they can bind to multiple receptors, and you don’t know which binding action is causing the effect. From a genetics perspective, we now know that the precision of deleting this one receptor, and subsequently eliminating its signaling pathways, does not interfere with these behaviors.”

Another key difference  is that pharmacological studies suppress oxytocin receptor signaling in adult animals, but this study was able to switch it off when the voles were embryos. 

“We’ve made a mutation that starts from before birth,” said Shah. “It could be that there are compensatory or redundant pathways that kick-in in these mutant animals and mask the deficits in attachment, parental behaviors, and milk let-down.”

According to the team, this study shows that there likely isn’t a single treatment or silver bullet for something as complex and nuanced as social behavior. Their vole-specific molecular tools and protocols, however, can help open doors to other research in genetics and biology.

“We’re very happy to be part of a community and to have this technology that we can share,” said Manoli. “Now we have this trove that we can start to mine. There are so many other questions that prairie voles could be interesting and useful for answering, both in terms of potential clinical implications for models of anxiety or attachment and also for basic comparative biology.”

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Misinformation is rampant on social media, and a new study has shed some light on why. Researchers from Yale University and the University of Southern California argue that basically, some people develop a habit for sharing things on social media—whether they’re true or not. Although “individual deficits in critical reasoning and partisan bias” are commonly cited as reasons that people share fake news, the authors wrote in the paper, “the structure of online sharing built into social platforms is more important.” 

Previous studies have found that some people—especially older people—just don’t consider whether something is true before sharing it. Other research has shown that some people are motivated to share news headlines that support their identity and match their existing beliefs, whether the headlines are true or not—especially Conservatives. 

While the research team from Yale and USC accept these as contributing factors to the spread of misinformation online, they hypothesized that they may not be the only mechanisms that lead people to share fake news. Both the idea that people share misinformation because of a lack of critical thinking or that it’s a result of partisan bias assume that they would share less fake news if they were sufficiently motivated or able to consider the accuracy of the headlines they are sharing, however, the Yale-USC team’s research suggests that may not be the case. 

Instead, the team argues that “misinformation sharing appears to be part of a larger pattern of frequent online sharing of information.” To support that, they found that the people in their 2,476-participant study who shared the greatest amount of fake news stories, also shared more true news stories. The paper is based on four related, but separately conducted studies all aimed at teasing out how habitual sharing affects the spread of misinformation. 

[Related: The biggest consumers of fake news may benefit from this one tech intervention]

In the first study, 200 online participants were shown eight stories with true headlines and eight stories with false headlines and asked if they’d share them on Facebook. The researchers also measured how strong their habitual sharing was on social media using data on how frequently they shared content in the past and a self-reported index that measured if they did so without thinking. 

As the researchers expected, participants with stronger sharing habits reposted more stories and were less discerning about whether they were true or not than participants with weaker habits. The participants with the strongest habits shared 43 percent of the true headlines and 38 percent of the false headlines while those with the weakest habits shared just 15 percent of the true headlines and 6 percent of the false ones. In total, the top 15 percent of habitual sharers were responsible for 37 percent of the shared false headlines across this study. 

The second study, which contained 839 participants, was aimed at seeing if participants would be deterred from habitual sharing after they were asked to consider the accuracy of a given story.

While asking participants to assess the headline accuracy before sharing reduced the amount of fake headlines shared, it was least effective in the most habitual participants. When participants had  to assess the accuracy before being asked about whether or not they would share a sample of stories,they shared 42 percent of the true headlines and still shared 22 percent of the false ones. But, when participants were only asked about whether or not they would share the stories, the most habitual participants shared 42 percent of the true headlines and 30 percent of the false ones.

[Related: These psychologists found a better way to teach people to spot misinformation]

The third study aimed to assess if people with strong sharing habits were less sensitive to partisan bias and shared information that didn’t align with their political views. The structure was similar to the previous study, with around 836 participants asked to assess the whether a sample of headlines aligned with liberal and conservative politics, and whether or not they’d share them. 

Again the most habitual sharers were less discerning about what they shared. Those not asked to assess the politics of the headlines beforehand reposted 47 percent of the stories that aligned with their stated political orientation and 20 percent of the stories that didn’t. Even when asked to assess the political bias first, habitual sharers reposted 43 percent of the stories that aligned with their political views and 13 percent of the ones that didn’t. In both conditions, the least habitual sharers only shared approximately 22 percent of the headlines that aligned with their views and just 3 percent of the stories that didn’t. 

Finally, in the fourth study, the researchers tested whether changing the reward structure on social media could change how frequently misinformation was shared. They theorized that if people get a reward response to likes and comments, it would encourage the formation of habitual sharing—and that the reward structure could be changed. 

To test this, they split 601 participants into three groups: a control, a misinformation training condition, and an accuracy training condition. In each group, participants were shown 80 trial headlines and asked whether or not they’d share them before seeing the eight true and eight false test headlines similar to the previous studies. In the control condition, nothing happened if they shared the true or false headline, while in the misinformation condition, participants were told they got “+5 points” when they shared a false headline or didn’t share a true one, and in the accuracy condition they were told they got “+5 points” when they shared a true headline or didn’t share a false one. 

As predicted, both accuracy training and misinformation training were effective in changing participants sharing behaviors compared to the controls. Participants in the accuracy condition shared 72 percent of the true headlines and 26 percent of the false headlines compared with participants in the misinformation condition who shared 48 percent of the true headlines and 43 percent of the false ones. (Control participants shared 45 percent of the true headlines and 19 percent of the false.)

The researchers conclude that their studies all show that habitual sharing is a major factor in the spread of misinformation. The top 15 percent most habitual sharers across were responsible for between 30 and 40 percent of all shared misinformation across all studies. They argue that this is part of the broader response patterns established by social media platforms—but that they could be restructured by internal engineers to promote the sharing of accurate information instead. 

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Feeling flat or emotionally unavailable can be a common side-effect of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a widely used class of anti-depressants. About 40 to 60 percent of patients taking SSRI’s are believed to experience limited enjoyment or feel emotionally dull.

A small study published January 22 in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology is shedding light on why this “emotional blunting,” or the dulling of both good and bad emotions, may happen. The study finds that the drugs affect reinforcement learning, which allows us to learn from our environment and actions.

[Related: The first new FDA-approved antidepressant in decades goes up your nose.]

“Emotional blunting is a common side effect of SSRI antidepressants. In a way, this may be in part how they work—they take away some of the emotional pain that people who experience depression feel, but, unfortunately, it seems that they also take away some of the enjoyment,” said Professor Barbara Sahakian, a co-author and professor of psychology the University of Cambridge, in a statement. “From our study, we can now see that this is because they become less sensitive to rewards, which provide important feedback.”

SSRIs target serotonin, a chemical in the brain called the “pleasure chemical” or the “happiness molecule” that carries messages between nerve cells. According to the National Health Service (NHS), more than 8.3 million patients in England received an antidepressant during 2021 and 2022. In the United States, prescriptions for anti-anxiety and antidepressants increased by an estimated 21 percent following the COVID-19 pandemic.

A team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen looked into the long term clinical use of SSRIs. They recruited 66 healthy volunteers and gave 32 of them an SSRI called escitalopram and the other 34 took a placebo. According to the team, this drug is known to be one of the best-tolerated antidepressants available on the market and the study participants took them over 21 days.

The participants completed self-reported questionnaires and were given a series of tests that assessed learning, inhibition, executive function, reinforcement behavior, and decision-making.

In terms of attention and memory (also called ‘cold’ cognition), there were no significant differences. There also weren’t any differences in ‘hot’ cognition, or the cognitive functions that involve emotions.

The key novel finding of the tests was a reduced reinforcement sensitivity on two tasks for the group taking escitalopram compared to those taking the placebo.

[Related: A link to depression might be in your gut bacteria.]

The team used a probabilistic reversal test, where a participant was shown two stimuli (A and B). If they chose A, they would receive a reward four out of five times. If they chose B, they would only get a reward one time out of five. The participants weren’t told this rule, but would have to figure it out themselves. At some point during the test, the probabilities would switch, forcing participants to learn a new rule.

Compared with those taking the placebo, the participants taking escitalopram were less likely to use both the positive and negative feedback to guide their learning of the task. The participants on the antidepressants were 23 percent less sensitive to this stimuli switch, which suggests that escitalopram affected sensitivity to the rewards and the individual’s ability to respond accordingly.

This could also explain one big difference the team found in the self-reported questionnaires: volunteers taking escitalopram had more difficulty reaching orgasm when having sex, a widely-reported side effect of the medication.

“Our findings provide important evidence for the role of serotonin in reinforcement learning,” said Christelle Langley, a co-author also from the Cambridge Department of Psychiatry, in a statement. “We are following this work up with a study examining neuroimaging data to understand how escitalopram affects the brain during reward learning.”

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Human teenagers aren’t exactly known for their restraint. An incompletely developed region of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which acts a bit like a parking break, can make adolescents more likely to engage in risky behaviors including reckless driving, substance abuse, and risky sexual behavior. It turns out, the same can be said for adolescent chimpanzees, except reckless behaviors for them may look more like increased aggression.

A study published January 23 by the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General from the American Psychological Association finds that while chimps and teens share these risk-taking behaviors, the chimpanzees may be may be less impulsive.

[Related: Squirrels gamble too—but with their genes.]

“Adolescent chimpanzees are in some sense facing the same psychological tempest that human teens are,” said co-author Alexandra Rosati, an associate professor of psychology and anthropology at the University of Michigan, in a statement. “Our findings show that several key features of human adolescent psychology are also seen in our closest primate relatives.”

Chimpanzees can live up to age 50 and their adolescence occurs from around age eight up to 15. Chimpanzees show rapid changes in hormone levels during adolescence, form new bonds with their peers, demonstrate some increases in aggression, and compete for social status just like their human counterparts.

In the study, the team of researchers performed two tests using food rewards on 40 wild-born chimpanzees at Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Sanctuary in the Republic of Congo in central Africa. It included 21 males and 19 females from six to 25 years-old and an average age of 15.

During test number one, adults and adolescent chimpanzees performed a gambling task and could choose between two containers. One of the containers always had peanuts, which chimpanzees somewhat like. The other had either a disliked snack (a cucumber slice) or their favorite, a banana slice. They had a choice between playing it safe and getting some the sort of delicious peanuts, or take a chance at getting the coveted banana with the risk of getting a yucky cucumber.

The team recorded the chimpanzees’ vocalizations and emotional reactions, including moans, screams, whimpers, banging on the table, or scratching themselves. To track hormone levels, they also collected saliva samples.

Adolescent chimpanzees took the risky option more often than the adults, but both expressed negative reactions if they got the cucumber.

Test number two was modeled after the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment performed on human children to examine delayed gratification. The chimpanzees could either get one banana slice immediately or wait for 60 seconds to receive three tasty banana slices.

[Related: Eurasian jays show masterful intelligence in human psychology test.]

Adult and adolescent chimpanzees both chose to delay gratification at a similar rate. In this situation, human teens tend to be more impulsive than adults and would more likely chose the instant gratification.

“Prior research indicates that chimpanzees are quite patient compared with other animals, and our study shows that their ability to delay gratification is already mature at a fairly young age, unlike in humans,” said Rosati.

What did separate the adolescent chimpanzees from the adults is that they threw more tantrums during the delay than the adults did.

According to Rosati, risk-taking behavior in both adolescent humans and chimpanzees appears to be biologically ingrained, but also certain increases in impulsive behavior may be more of a human thing. Additionally, future studies could look into differences in impulsive behaviors in male and female chimpanzees.

“We are currently looking at the development of several other cognitive abilities in chimpanzees, including capacities for self-regulation and the emergence of social skills that help chimpanzees form and maintain relationships,” Rosati told PopSci in an email.

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Content moderation is a notoriously nasty job, and the burgeoning labor outsourcing industry surrounding it routinely faces heated scrutiny for the ethics of its approach to subjecting human workers to the internet’s darkest corners. On Wednesday, Time published a new investigative deep dive into Sama, a company that recently provided OpenAI with laborers solely tasked with reading some of the worst content the internet has to offer.

Although the endeavor’s overall goal was to develop helpful and necessary internal AI filters for the popular, buzzworthy ChatGPT program, former Sama employees say they now suffer from PTSD from their tenures sifting through thousands of horrid online text excerpts describing sexual assault, incest, bestiality, child abuse, torture, and murder, according to the new report.  Not to mention, the report states that these employees, largely based in Kenya, were paid less than $2 an hour.

[Related: Popular youth mental health service faces backlash after experimenting with AI-chatbot advice.]

OpenAI’s ChatGPT quickly became one of last year’s most talked about technological breakthroughs for its ability to near instantaneously generate creative text from virtually any human prompt. While similar programs already exist, they have been frequently prone to spewing hateful and downright abusive content due to their inability to internally identify toxic material amid the troves of internet writing utilized as generative reference points.

With already well over 1 million users, ChatGPT has been largely free of such issues (although many other worries remain), largely thanks to an additional built-in AI filtering system meant to omit much of the internet’s awfulness. But despite their utility, current AI programs aren’t self-aware enough to notice inappropriate material on their own—they first require training from humans to flag all sorts of contextual keywords and subject matter. 

Billed on its homepage as an “the next era of AI development,” Sama, a US-based data-labeling company that employs workers in Kenya, India, and Uganda for Silicon Valley businesses, claims to have helped over 50,000 people around the world rise above poverty via its employment opportunities. According to Time’s research sourced via hundreds of pages of internal documents, contracts, and worker pay stubs, however, the cost for dozens of workers amounted to self-described “torture” for takehome hourly rates of anywhere between $1.32 and $2.

[Related: OpenAI’s new chatbot offers solid conversations and fewer hot takes.]

Workers allege to Time that they worked far past their assigned hours, sifting through 150-250 disturbing text passages per day and flagging the content for ChatGPT’s AI filter training. Although wellness counselor services were reportedly available, Sama’s employees nevertheless experienced lingering emotional and mental tolls that exceeded those services’ capabilities. In a statement provided to Time, Sama disputes the workload, and said their contractors were only expected to review around 70 texts a shift.

“These companies present AI and automation to us as though it eliminates workers, but in reality that’s rarely the case,” Paris Marx, a tech culture critic and author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About Transportation, explains to PopSci. “… It’s the story of the Facebook content moderators all over again—some of which were also hired in Kenya by Sama.”

Marx argues the only way to avoid these kinds of mental and physical exploitation would require a massive cultural reworking within the tech industry, something that currently feels very unlikely. “This is the model of AI development that these companies have chosen,” they write, “[and] changing it would require completely upending the goals and foundational assumptions of what they’re doing.”

Sama initially entered into content moderation contracts with OpenAI amounting to $200,000 surrounding the project, but reportedly cut ties early to focus instead on “computer vision data annotation solutions.” OpenAI is currently in talks with investors to raise funding at a $29 billion valuation, $10 billion of which could come from Microsoft. Reuters previously reported OpenAI expects $200 million in revenue this year, and upwards of $1 billion in 2024. As the latest exposé reveals yet again, these profits frequently come at major behind-the-scenes costs for everyday laborers.

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Access to gender-affirming hormones significantly improves the mental health and overall life satisfaction of transgender and nonbinary teens, finds a new study published January 18 in The New England Journal of Medicine. In one of the longest and largest studies looking at psychological outcomes, the authors’ conclusions further support the idea of gender-affirming care as a life-saving treatment.

“The authors provide a compelling defense for maintaining access to gender-affirming care for adolescents,” says Melina Wald, a child and adolescent psychologist and clinical director of the gender identity program at Columbia University Medical Center who was not affiliated with the study. For instance, the team found teens felt more comfortable in their bodies, who they are as it relates to their gender, and their mental state when they took therapeutic hormones. 

A June 2022 report estimates 1.6 million people over the age of 13 identify as transgender in the US. Among the 13- to 17-year-olds identifying as transgender or nonbinary, the number has nearly doubled from previous estimates in 2017. A common experience transgender youth wrestle with is gender dysphoria—a feeling of discomfort and distress when your sex assigned at birth does not match your gender identity. Left untreated, gender dysphoria is associated with an increase in suicide attempts and self-harm among trans teens. A branch of the National Institute of Health, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, funded the latest study to try to address the issue.

“There has been a lack of awareness in the past about the unique health needs and research opportunities for transgender and gender diverse populations,” a representative of the institute told Popular Science in an email. “Research in this area is important for expanding the evidence currently guiding the clinical care of transgender and nonbinary youth.”

One of the most effective ways to combat gender dysphoria is to make a person’s physical appearance more in line with their gender identity, and hormone therapy can help. Gender-affirming hormones—such as estrogen, testosterone blockers, progesterones—are a common medical path for transgender individuals to develop feminine or masculine features that help them feel more like their authentic selves. However, one long-standing complaint from critics against gender-affirming care is that it can cause “psychological mutilation” with some arguing hormone therapy “indoctrinates” children to continue treatment as adults, speculating that they would have been happier to not. The misinformation surrounding the dangers of gender-affirming care have fueled transphobic legislation that withholds medical care from adolescents.

[Related: Exploring the common misconceptions regarding trans and non-binary identities]

“Gender-affirmative care is safe, effective, and even lifesaving,” argues Michelle Forcier, a professor of pediatrics specializing in gender, sexual and reproductive health at Brown University not involved in the study. “Children should not be pawns of politicians [who hold] safe, effective healthcare hostage for political and personal goals. Most legislators are not qualified as medical experts in gender-affirming care and have no business inserting themselves in the clinical setting.” 

Forcier says that a patient’s decision to start and participate in gender-affirmative care is a personal and private one that should only be discussed with the child, caregivers, and their medical team. Popular Science reached out to multiple study authors for comment, but they had either declined or did not respond in time of publication.

The current study recruited 315 transgender and nonbinary youth between 12 to 20 undergoing gender-affirming hormone therapy from clinical sites in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. About 60.3 percent of participants were transmasculine and 58.7 percent were non-Latinx white. The teens started gender affirming hormones at different stages of development, with 25 already on puberty blockers before the study. From July 2016 to June 2019, psychologists used several psychosocial tests from the National Institute of Health to track any depression or anxiety symptoms the teens experienced, as well as positive effects from treatment and their life satisfaction every six months.

During the two-year study period, teens who felt their appearance reflecting more of their gender identity after gender-affirming care reported more propensity towards positive emotions  and greater life satisfaction. Youths that initiated gender-affirming care earlier already came in with lower baseline levels of depression and anxiety than those who started hormone therapy in late puberty. 

[Related: LGBTQ+ health networks helped make urban neighborhoods more resilient against COVID]

Regarding race, non-Latinx white youth showed a more significant decrease in depressive symptoms than other ethnicities and mixed race groups. However, the results may not be generalized to reflect the Black community, as there was an underrepresentation of Black participants in the study. In addition, Wald says that tracking and comparing the outcomes of youth who did not pursue hormone therapy at the study clinics would help inform any differences across transgender youth who do not have access to this type of care.

One notable observation was that transmasculine, but not transfeminine teens, showed a significant reduction in symptoms related to anxiety and depression. The differences may lie in the hormones they are receiving. Gina Sequeira, the co-director of the Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic who was not involved in the study, says patients taking testosterone see physical changes congruent with their gender identity at a faster rate than people taking estrogen. Estrogen takes longer to reduce testosterone’s masculinizing effects on the body and develop feminine features. 

“A patient on testosterone, for example, would start noticing a deepening of the voice usually within the first six months,” describes Sequeira. “For estrogen, changes like breast development take years and my suspicion is that patients may not have achieved the breasts they wanted at the two-year mark.” 

Despite all the benefits observed with gender-affirming hormone therapy, it is not a cure-all for gender dysphoria. In the study, 11 participants disclosed that they experienced suicidal ideation and two had died by suicide during the two-year period. All experts say the findings emphasize the need for a multifaceted approach to care. 

“Gender-affirmative hormones offer some benefit and relief, but youth are still navigating a potentially hostile world around them,” says Forcier, who adds that after the treatment, people may still experience a body that is not aligned with their gender identity. 

Having support at home and in the local community “can’t be understated,” says Sequeira. She adds that the more spaces a young person is affirmed in their gender identity—in healthcare settings, school, sports—the better their mental health.

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Colorado State University freshman Danika Fickler has drag racing in her blood—and her name. Her middle name, Carrera, is Spanish for “race,” and it was given to her by her drag-racing champion parents. Fickler’s father, Kyle, notched his most recent National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) win in 2019 at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka, Kansas and her mother, Debra, won her class at the same track from 2005 to 2007. In many ways, that track is their home. Kyle and Debra even honeymooned there, and now Danika Fickler is making a name for herself in the family business.

If you’re a drag racing fan, you’re familiar with a variety of vehicles on the strip in 75 classes from street roadsters, to souped-up sedans, coupes, trucks, and more. All of it is governed by the NHRA, which sets the rules for drag racing at facilities across North America. That includes Fickler’s home track, Heartland. 

Here’s a look at Fickler’s career so far as well as the Blazer’s history—and the tech that makes it go. 

400 horsepower (or more)

Piloting a 1986 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, Fickler, who is 19 years old, spent part of her senior year of high school racing. Heartland Motorsports Park started a new High School Points class two years ago, and she signed up, eager to continue her trajectory as a racer. She and the Blazer found their way to an NHRA championship event in September of last year as she finished out her season and got ready to start college, so it’s been a great vehicle for her. But what really makes it special is that Fickler bought it from her godmother Beth Hyatt, a fixture in the drag racing scene herself.

Hyatt’s husband Tim, who died in 2015, had built out the Blazer with all the muscle it needed to be a hot rod. While the body, brakes, and fuel tank are original, just about everything else is built with aftermarket parts, including its powerful small-block 355-cubic-inch Chevy V8 racing engine.

[Related: This Florida teen is making a business out of rebuilding old-school auto tech]

The 1986 Chevy S-10 Blazer wasn’t born to be a track monster. It was originally built with a 2.8-liter overhead-valve V6 making 125 horsepower and 150 pound-feet of torque, which is a far cry from what Fickler’s drag racer gets with its 400-hp replacement engine. That horsepower figure is an educated guess, Fickler tells PopSci, because the engine has never been measured on a dynamometer. (A dynamometer, or “dyno” for short, measures torque, which allows for the calculation of horsepower with a standard formula: torque times revolutions per minute divided by 5,252.) 

It’s sturdy, too, and Fickler has learned to trust the vehicle and herself. 

“The only time [we almost] crashed the Blazer was when my dad and I first took it out to the track,” she says. “Other than that, I’ve felt the car break on me once and it had to sit for two months. It was scary to get back in the car because I didn’t want something to make the car break again. It’s a thing where you get in the car and pray, ‘Please shift, please shift.”

Even more important, Fickler learned how to take the laws on regular roads that exist for safety very seriously. When she was racing quarter midgets (a one-quarter-scale version of a midget race car, which is in itself a tiny car) and then junior dragsters as a kid, she practiced controlling the car in various situations to avoid potential mishaps. 

“You see so much bad stuff happening to other people [on the roads],” she said. “Speeding at ridiculous high speeds is dangerous, and there is ten times more danger doing that on regular roads.” 

The psychology of drag racing

Not everyone can be born into a racing family, and Danika encourages anyone with an interest to try it. She’s seen people show up at test and tune events (those are basically open call opportunities for anyone to try drag racing for fun) at Heartland and they get hooked. 

“It may seem complicated, at first,” she said. “If you’re not born into it, you might think it’s hard,  but the drag racing community is so helpful. If you indicate you need assistance, someone will help you.” 

For Fickler’s races, the vehicles line up at the staging area each with a “dialed” time that predicts the amount of time it will take for that car to complete a straight-line quarter mile. The cars don’t have to have the same dialed time; if one car is predicted to be slower, it starts first and the other jumps off the line after the difference has elapsed. 

“You’re either chasing or being chased,” Fickler told the Wall Street Journal last year. “If you go quicker than your dialed time, you are disqualified. So you want to beat the other person by the smallest margin possible. In order to do that, you are working both the gas and the brakes.”

After 10 years of motorsports, Fickler isn’t planning to stop any time soon. Now that she has her diploma and finished out the season that she started during her senior year of high school, she can no longer compete in the High School class. She is planning to get her Super Gas license, which means she’ll be able to race what the NHRA describes as “primarily full-bodied cars and street roadsters,” using electronic timers and throttle stops to “run as close to the class standard without going under.”

That means her 55,000-mile Blazer will be retired soon, but it’s staying in the family. Currently, the market for mid-80s Blazers is hot, but it’s special to the Fickler clan—so it’s not going anywhere. Meanwhile, Fickler is pursuing a degree in psychology, which might sound like an odd choice for a racing enthusiast until she notes that both of her parents were lawyers and drag racers at the same time. The college student is planning to come home to Topeka to race at Heartland to hone her skills and stay competitive while exploring new tracks across the country. 

“I was racing the three same guys over and over again,” Danika said. “The class will be much bigger for me, with more rounds. One of the biggest things I learned is that you don’t plan to win a race, you plan to win a round.”

In September, Fickler won an NHRA championship event and finished second in points for the season. 

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WHEN FORMER Google executive Alan Eustace dove more than 135,000 feet through the air, it was the culmination of three years of work: parachute and balloon design, test falls from 57,000 and 105,000 feet up, and flight simulations. On October 24, 2014, Eustace donned a custom high-pressure spacesuit and strapped himself into a helium balloon. He focused on his breath as he made his ascent, and calmed his nerves by thinking of his practice runs. Then he made skydiving history. The plunge from the stratosphere was 1.5 miles longer than the previous record, making Eustace the current record holder for the highest-altitude free-fall jump.

Few would have the stomach to drop at speeds hitting 822 mph from the top of Earth’s ozone layer with nothing but a parachute on their back. If you have an extreme fear of heights, just the thought may be enough to make your legs feel like jelly. But, as Eustace’s preparation showed, there are ways to gird yourself physically and mentally for that dread.

Dreading lofty elevations is a universal feeling—even daredevils occasionally get uneasy in such settings. Elizabeth McMahon, a San Francisco–based psychologist specializing in treating phobias, says Homo sapiens evolved this way to avoid perils from an early age. In a 1960 experiment, psychologists placed crawling babies on a table with a clear plastic panel at the end, which they called a “visual cliff.” The extension gave the illusion the infants would fall if they tried to reach for their mothers on the other side. Almost all of the subjects refused to crawl over the plastic.

A fear of heights, which in extreme cases is called acrophobia, most likely helped our ancestors avoid falling from life-threatening ledges, according to McMahon. The apprehension is hard-wired into human brains. When you are faced with a long drop, there is a strong response in the amygdala, a primordial brain structure. This almond-shaped region activates additional parts of the limbic system like the hypothalamus, which triggers the fight-flight-or-freeze response by signaling glands to release adrenaline and cortisol. The hormones act as a distress call to the body, causing physical changes like increased blood pressure, breathing rate, and heart rate.

Because these areas are so highly stimulated at the sight of a potential threat, brain activity elsewhere is dampened. One important area in particular becomes impaired: the more recently evolved cerebral cortex, which is involved in logic and reasoning. This makes it harder to think and make rational decisions, McMahon says.

Understanding what’s causing you to feel lightheaded and anxious is the first step toward overcoming a fear of heights. The next is to practice relaxation techniques such as deep-breathing or mindfulness exercises when doing an activity far off the ground. The first sends oxygen to the brain, indicating that you’re not in danger. The reassuring effect then activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which relaxes your muscles and instills widespread feelings of calm.

The final step is slowly exposing yourself to the source of trepidation. A psychologist specializing in phobias can use a technique called exposure therapy to help you teach your brain that heights aren’t a guaranteed death sentence. This research-based method brings you in repeated contact with the source of your fear, and your therapist will teach you how to manage your anxiety as you gradually encounter greater increases in elevation. McMahon also recommends combining exposure therapy with virtual reality programs, where you can start with something as small as simulated walks up a 20-floor staircase and eventually work toward more extreme scenarios, like being perched on top of a skyscraper.

“In my experience, five to eight virtual reality sessions have often helped people get over their fear of heights,” McMahon says. “They don’t even have to travel to the Grand Canyon.”

This story originally appeared in the High Issue of Popular Science. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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This article was originally published on KHN.

Controlled substances became a little less controlled during the pandemic. That benefited both patients (for their health) and telehealth startups (to make money).

Some potentially addictive medications — like buprenorphine and Adderall — are now far more available online to patients because of regulatory changes. Given the scarcity of qualified doctors to treat some of the behavioral health conditions associated with these drugs, like opioid use disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, doctors’ new ability to prescribe online or, in some cases, by telephone is a huge change. But easier access to the drugs has both upsides and downsides, since they’re often dispensed without accompanying therapy that improves the odds of a patient’s success.

Pre-pandemic, patients sometimes traveled several hours for addiction care, said Emily Behar, director of clinical operations for Ophelia, a New York startup serving people with opioid addictions. Or patients might be struggling with multiple jobs or a lack of child care. Such obstacles made sustaining care fraught.

“How do you reach those people?” she asked.

It’s a question preoccupying much of the behavioral health sector, complicated by the reality that most patients with opioid use disorder aren’t in treatment, said Dr. Neeraj Gandotra, chief medical officer of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Increased access to telehealth has started to provide an answer. Behar, the startup executive, says its patients can see expert providers at their convenience. Missed appointments are dropping, say many in the industry.

The startup has secured solid funding — nearly $68 million, according to Crunchbase, an industry database — but addiction specialists and other prescribers of controlled substances online are a mixed group. Some are nonprofits; others are large startups attracting scrutiny from the news media and law enforcement for allegedly sloppy prescription practices.

The influx of new providers is attributable to loosened requirements born of pandemic-era necessity. To help patients get access to care while maintaining physical distance, the Drug Enforcement Administration and SAMHSA waived restrictions on telehealth for controlled substances.

But whether those changes will endure is uncertain. The federal government is working piecemeal to codify new rules for prescribing controlled substances, in light of the health care system’s pandemic experience.

On Dec. 13, SAMHSA issued a proposal to codify telehealth regulations on opioid treatment programs — but that affects only part of the sector. Left unaddressed — at least until the DEA issues rules — is the process for individual providers to register to prescribe buprenorphine. The new rules “get us at least a little bit closer to where we need to go,” said Sunny Levine, a telehealth and behavioral health lawyer at the firm Foley & Lardner, headquartered in Milwaukee.

Congress also tweaked rules around buprenorphine, doing away with a long-standing policy to cap the number of patients each provider can prescribe to. Ultimately, however, the DEA is the main regulatory domino yet to fall for telehealth providers.

In addition, pharmacies are taking a more skeptical stance on telehealth prescriptions — especially from startups. Patients were getting accustomed to using telemedicine to fill and refill their prescriptions for medications for some controlled substances, like Adderall, primarily used to treat ADHD. A shortage of Adderall has affected access for some patients. Now, though, some pharmacies are refusing to fill those prescriptions.

Cheryl Anderson, one Pennsylvanian with ADHD, said she sought online options because of her demanding schedule.

“My husband is frequently out of town, so I don’t have someone to reliably watch the baby to go to an in-person appointment,” she said. It was tough, with three kids, to find the time. Telehealth helped for about half of 2022. Previously, the DEA and state governments imposed tough rules on obtaining controlled substances from online pharmacies.

But in September, after her doctor wrote a refill prescription, she got a phone call saying her local pharmacy wouldn’t dispense medications if the prescription came through telehealth. Other local pharmacies she called took the same position.

Those denials seem to reflect a broader cultural shift in attitudes. Whereas patients and politicians hailed telemedicine at the beginning of the pandemic — first for its safety but also for its increased convenience and potential to extend care to rural areas and neighborhoods without specialists — hints of skepticism are creeping in.

The telehealth boom attracted shady actors. “You had a lot of people who saw an opportunity to do things that were less than scrupulous,” particularly in the behavioral health market, said Michael Yang, a managing partner at the venture capitalist firm OMERS Ventures. Skeptical media coverage has proliferated of startups that, allegedly, shotgun prescriptions for mental health conditions without monitoring patients receiving those medications. “It’ll settle down.”

The startups pose quandaries for local pharmacists, said Matt Morrison, owner of Gibson’s Pharmacy in Dodge City, Kansas.

Pharmacists have multiple obligations related to prescriptions, he said: to make sure incoming prescriptions are from legitimate physicians and that they’re connected to an actual health condition before filling the order. The sense around the industry, Morrison said, is that prescriptions from startups are tricky. They might come from a distant provider, whom the pharmacist can’t contact easily.

Those qualms pose difficulties for addiction treatment. Persuading pharmacists to fill prescriptions is one of the biggest administrative tasks for Ophelia, Behar said. Still, the shift online has been helpful.

“Telehealth picks up the gaps,” said Josh Luftig, a founding member of CA Bridge, a program based in Oakland, California, that helps patients in emergency departments initiate treatment for substance misuse. The supply of care providers wasn’t enough to meet demand. “Across the board, there’s been a lack of access to treatment in the outpatient setting. Now all they need is a phone and to get to a pharmacy.”

Treatment is more efficient for patient and provider alike, providers say. “The majority of our patients prefer to have a telehealth experience,” he said. “The telehealth appointments are more efficient. It increases the capacity of each person involved.”

Well-established organizations also report success: Geisinger, a large mid-Atlantic health system, said 94% of participants in one maternity-focused program were compliant, spokesperson Emile Lee said.

Ophelia, which started up just before the pandemic, expected to treat patients both in-office and online. “We have an office in Philadelphia we’ve never used,” she said. Now the company labors every few months — in anticipation of the end of state and federal public health emergencies — to make sure that the end of the associated looser rules doesn’t lead to disruptions in care for their patients.

More clarity on the future of online treatment could result from permanent regulations from the DEA. What the agency’s rule — which would create a registration process for providers interested in prescribing controlled substances online — will say is “anyone’s guess,” said Elliot Vice, an executive specializing in telehealth with the trade group Faegre Drinker. That rule has been pending for years. “To see this still not move, it is puzzling.”

The agency, which declined to comment specifically for this article, pointed to previous statements praising increased access to medication-assisted treatment.

“There shouldn’t be any change in the rules for telehealth,” Luftig said. “It would be the most horrific thing in terms of access for our communities. It would be an unmitigated disaster.”

[Correction: This article was updated at 10:30 a.m. ET on Jan. 11, 2023, to correct the location of Foley & Lardner’s headquarters.]

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Growing up with a family pet can have numerous benefits for kids beyond just having a playmate. They can help kids learn, with one study finding that children are more relaxed when reading to a dog instead of a peer or an adults. They can decrease a child’s risk of developing asthma and also help children become more nurturing.

But why do young children react to animals in certain ways?

A study published January 15 in the journal Human-Animal Interactions offers a glimpse into whether or not toddlers impulsively help dogs within certain scenarios.

[Related: The National Institutes of Health is studying dogs to learn more about aging and genetics in people.]

With the help of three friendly dogs named Fiona, Henry, and Seymour, a team studied how 97 toddlers (51 girls and 46 boys) between two and three years-old interacted with them in certain situations, particularly helping a dog reach a treat or toy.

In half of all events, the toddlers gave the dogs an out-of-reach treat and toy after a dog attempted and failed to get it themselves. By contrast, children offered dogs objects that had been previously ignored by the canines only 26 percent of the time.

The team found that the children were also twice as likely to help a dog reach a toy or a treat if the dog showed an interest in them. They also found that more lively dogs were also more likely to receive help and children helped the dogs get treats rather than toys.

“These findings lend support to our hypothesis that children’s early-developing proclivities for goal-reading and prosociality extend beyond humans to other animals,” said co-author and research leader Rachna Reddy, a postdoctoral fellow in evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, in a statement.

[Related: Humans have trouble anticipating aggressive behavior in man’s best friend.]

As expected, the researchers say, having a dog at home (44 of the children came from homes with dogs) increased a child’s likelihood to help. They also found that more engaged dogs and the out of reach object being food rather than a toy also increased the children’s likelihood of the helping.

“From several perspectives, children’s proclivities to attribute desires and goals to pet dogs during real-life, in-person interactions is unsurprising,” said Reddy. “However, we observed as early as 2 years of age, children behave in ways showing they are not only able to read the goal-directed behavior of another animal but can and do employ that knowledge to help an animal reach its own goal.

According to Reddy these early childhood behaviors may have an important evolutionary significance.

Future studies are needed to examine other psychological components of instrumental helping, including what emotions underlie a child’s motivation to help dogs, how culture and cognition shapes these motivations, and how these processes changes as a child grows older.

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In Head Trip, PopSci explores the relationship between our brains, our senses, and the strange things that happen in between.

THE ILLUSION typically starts the same way. You’ll hear a conversation between two familiar voices, or the lyrics to a beloved song. It’s alarming because, as far as you know, you’re alone, and there’s no music playing either. The only noise in the room is the uneven vibration of a fan or the sound of water rushing from your shower head. 

As disconcerting as this may be, don’t worry. You’re (probably) not tripping; you’re just experiencing audio pareidolia. 

Audio pareidolia is a weird but common experience that happens when you perceive words from a random noise. The trigger for the phenomenon varies from person to person. For some, it’s their fan or running water. Others might hear a melody within their aquarium filter’s bubbling, low-speed motors, airplane engines, or the noise from driving down the highway. 

While it feels somewhat like a hallucination, hearing and psychology experts assure us that it’s not. Instances of audio pareidolia are different from hallucinations in that you’re mishearing actual sounds in unusual ways. 

“When you’re born, your brain is basically a sheet of blank paper, but your brain is always looking for patterns, whether they’re visual, auditory, or anything else,” says Neil Bauman, the founder of the Center for Hearing Loss Help. The brain’s desire to find patterns it can recognize from random information is why pareidolia occurs in every sensory system. It’s why you see faces in the clouds overhead or feel something crawling on the surface of your skin even though nothing’s there. On a physiological level, your brain, which tries really hard to find meaning in all the sensory input it receives, goes digging into its archives to give meaning to an erratic jumble of noise. What you end up hearing is your brain’s rationalization of the background sound. 

“You don’t hear what your ears hear,” says Bauman, “you hear what your brain perceives you to hear.” 

Sometimes that’s a bit far off from what the actual noise is. Your brain is very good at finding patterns and adding significance to random input. That’s why you understand that loud noises are a sign that you might be in a dangerous situation—a useful evolutionary advantage. 

But the process behind audio pareidolia isn’t so helpful. Pareidolia is a glitch in your brain’s data-processing system: Your mind doesn’t turn random, meaningless noise into a train or car horn because what’s the use in that? Speech just happens to have a pattern that is most similar to that of the triggering sounds. 

“These patterns in question are ‘fuzzy’ in the first place, not ‘sharp,’” says Bauman of the deceptive background noise. “If the pattern was sharp, [your brain] would get a perfect match, and you’d hear the sound as a fan or motor sound. It’s the fuzziness of the sound that results in so much ambiguity.”

But there is a similarity between the fuzziness itself and the speech you manifest from it, explains Robert Remez, a professor of psychology at Barnard College. Experiments conducted during the 1950s attempted to see how well people understood speech with concurrent noise. Researchers took highly intelligible speech produced by a careful talker, and mixed in tones of equal intensity that were distributed randomly over the frequencies of the human auditory range—aka white noise. They found that when speech intelligibility fell by half due to the added hubbub, people were perfectly capable of understanding what was said, even when the speech was significantly quieter than the noise. 

“The reason, simply, is that speech is composed of sound that is constantly changing, and there do not appear to be moments that are uniquely informative about the spoken message,” says Remez. The snippets that a listener understands provide details about the speech segments being heard: their order and whether a piece of information is the start, middle, or end of a word. 

“It has to do with the way in which speech packs information into sound,” he adds. “So since that type of listening experience [from the experiments] is familiar to all of us, when we hear mostly noise, it’s not that different from hearing mostly noise with somebody speaking.” 

In a world full of noise and random events, it’s good that our brains have the ability to understand actual conversations through the noise—even if that function does produce occasional cognitive glitches like a Beyoncé lyric from the glub-glub of a pool filter.

“Your brain is pattern matching,” says Bauman. “That makes you human.”

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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A free mental health service offering online communities a peer-to-peer chat support network is facing scrutiny after its co-founder revealed the company briefly experimented with employing an AI chatbot to generate responses—without informing recipients. Although they have since attempted to downplay the project and highlight the program’s deficiencies, critics and users alike are expressing deep concerns regarding medical ethics, privacy, and the buzzy, controversial world of AI chatbot software.

As highlighted on Tuesday by New Scientist, Koko was co-founded roughly seven years ago by MIT graduate Rob Morris, whose official website bills the service as a novel approach to making online mental health support “accessible to everyone.” One of its main services allowing clients like social network platforms to install keyword flagging software that can then connect users to psychology resources, including human chat portals. Koko is touted as particularly useful for younger users of social media.

[Related: OpenAI’s new chatbot offers solid conversations and fewer hot takes.]

Last Friday, however, Morris tweeted that approximately 4,000 users were “provided mental health support… using GPT-3,” which is the popular AI chatbot program developed by OpenAI. Although users weren’t chatting directly with GPT-3, a “co-pilot” system was designed so that human support workers reviewed the AI’s suggested responses, and used them as they deemed relevant. As New Scientist also notes, it does not appear that Koko users received any form of up-front alert letting them know their mental health support was potentially generated, at least in part, by a chatbot.

In his Twitter thread, Morris explained that, while audiences rated AI co-authored responses “significantly higher” than human-only answers, they decided to quickly pull the program, stating that once people were made aware of the messages’ artificial origins, “it didn’t work.” 

“Simulated empathy feels weird, empty,” wrote Morris. Still, he expressed optimism at AI’s potential roles within mental healthcare, citing previous projects like Woebot, which alerts users from the outset that they would be conversing with a chatbot.

[Related: Seattle schools sue social media companies over students’ worsening mental health.]

The ensuing fallout from Morris’ descriptions of the Koko endeavor prompted near-immediate online backlash, causing Morris to issue multiple clarifications regarding “misconceptions” surrounding the experiment. “We were not pairing people up to chat with GPT-3, without their knowledge. (in retrospect, I could have worded my first tweet to better reflect this),” he wrote last Saturday, adding that the feature was “opt-in” while it was available.

“It’s obvious that AI content creation isn’t going away, but right now it’s moving so fast that people aren’t thinking critically about the best ways to use it,” Caitlin Seeley, campaign director for the digital rights advocacy group, Fight for the Future, wrote PopSci in an email. “Transparency must be a part of AI use—people should know if what they’re reading or looking at was created by a human or a computer, and we should have more insight into how AI programs are being trained.”

[Related: Apple introduces AI audiobook narrators, but the literary world is not too pleased.]

Seeley added that services like Koko need to be “thoughtful” about the services they purport to provide, as well as remain critical about AI’s role in those services. “There are still a lot of questions about how AI can be used in an ethical way, but any company considering it must ask these questions before they start using AI.”

Morris appears to have heard critics, although it remains unclear what will happen next for the company and any future plans with chat AI. “We share an interest in making sure that any uses of AI are handled delicately, with deep concern for privacy, transparency, and risk mitigation,” Morris wrote on Koko’s blog over the weekend, adding that the company’s clinical advisory board is meeting to discuss guidelines for future experiments, “specifically regarding IRB approval.”

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Are people less connected to nature today than previous generations? And does a disconnect from nature influence how much we care about climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental issues? 

These are questions at the heart of a new study from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station in France. Scientists reviewed existing studies that examine humans’ relationship with nature, and found that, overall, we have been interacting less with nature over the past few decades. They also revealed that humans worldwide live farther away from undeveloped land and live increasingly in urban areas, which have lost tree cover over time. The results were published in December in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 

According to the theory “extinction of experience,” interactions with nature are vanishing in modern societies, leading to potential loss of care for it. The theory has long been popular in environmental psychology, but there is little empirical evidence to prove it. This recent review study attempts to narrow that gap. 

“The knowledge about these human-nature interactions is crucial, as they are key in the construction of our relationship with nature and our behaviors,” says Victor Cazalis, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and Leipzig University, in a news release. 

Researchers reviewed studies from around the world that measure human interaction with nature. They also calculated other indices that could hint at the relationship, like how far the average person lives away from undeveloped land, how many people live in urban areas, and how many trees there are in cities. They defined an “experience of nature” as any interaction someone has with nature. It could include anything from visiting a national park, to seeing a fox in a city garden, to viewing a natural landscape in a Disney movie. 

[Related: Even if you live in a city, you can get health benefits from nature]

They found that human interaction with nature has declined in the past few decades. “What we showed basically is that North America and Western Europe are much more disconnected than the rest of the world to nature, but that the rest of the world is following the same trend,” Cazalis tells Popular Science. 

One key measure that stood out is that there are less representations of nature in cultural products. Disney movies increasingly depict purely urban landscapes, for example. “For urban populations, these cultural products can be a really important way to build your imagination about nature, especially as a kid, but also as adults,” Cazalis says.

The team, however, cautions there are still large gaps in the research. Still, Cazalis explains that there isn’t enough evidence to make any conclusive statements about the scope and extent to which human interactions with nature have declined. After searching through millions of studies in a database, only about 18 fit the parameters for their review. And a majority of those 18 studies were published in North America, Western Europe or Japan. 

The analysis also doesn’t consider the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on human interactions with nature. While a couple of studies found that the pandemic increased people’s interactions with nature, the pandemic’s effect “was not representative of what we wanted to measure, with the idea that maybe it’s just a peak, and then later, the people start going back to the usual business,” Cazalis says.

The review authors also examined general trends on opportunities people have to connect with nature. People around the globe live a little farther away from undeveloped land, or land that has low human impact, than they did before. From 2000 to 2020, the average person lived about 5.6 miles away from undeveloped land, which increased to about 6 miles away by 2020. While this 7 percent increase in distance to nature may seem small, it’s still a notable change when looking at the bigger picture, says Cazalis. 

“I think 7 percent increase as a global average—for some countries the increase is much more important—is significant as this is only over the last 20 years and as this is hardly reversible.”

They also found that more of the global population lives in urban areas than before. In 1960, only 34 percent of people around the world lived in urban areas, but by 2020 that number rose to 56 percent. And in those urban areas, people have less access to green spaces than they did before. In 2000, among cities surveyed in 133 countries, at least 5 percent of urban areas were bulwarked by trees. But by 2020, almost all of those experienced some minor decline in tree canopy. 

[Related: Spending time outside is a cheap way to improve your health—if you’re rich.]

“I thought it was a carefully done and valuable study,” Susan Clayton, a psychology professor at the College of Wooster who has written about environmental psychology, told Popular Science in a statement. “The authors are right that claims of ‘extinction of experience’ need more empirical support, and more nuance about what is meant by experience of nature. There certainly are changes in the ways we experience nature, but as this paper shows, it’s not as simple as a universal decline.”

Environmental psychologists believe interactions with nature are important because they shape how we value these spaces, which can lead to pro-environmental behaviors. This is increasingly acknowledged on the world stage, Cazalis says. At the most recent global conference on biodiversity loss in Montreal, COP15, world governments said one of their targets is to increase access to green spaces in urban areas.

“All the literature in environmental psychology says that there is an impact of experiences of nature on the way we act, and more importantly, on our values and political views,” Cazalis says. “It doesn’t mean that you cannot have any concern about nature if you don’t experience nature, but it shows that caring about the way we interact with nature is key to the big societal challenges that we have.”

While, to some extent, a loss of interaction with nature might be an inevitable consequence of development, Cazalis says there are things people can do to mitigate it, such as increase access to green spaces in urban areas and increase representation of nature in cultural products, like novels, children’s books and Disney movies. 

“It’s not the most urgent. We need first to stop eroding biodiversity,” Cazalis says. “But for a more long-term perspective, we need to take care of that interaction, of the way we connect.”

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Excerpted from Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion by Dr. Wendy Suzuki with permission from Atria. Copyright © 2022 by Wendy Suzuki, PhD.

What does emotion regulation mean?

One expert on emotion regulation, James J. Gross, another psychology professor at Stanford University, defines emotion regulation as “the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them.” He also points out that regulation is a set of processes that exist on a “continuum from conscious, effortful and controlled regulation to unconscious, effortless, and automatic regulation.”

What does this mean in practice? The bottom line is this: Though anxiety might originate as some form of attention-getting signal to avoid danger, it doesn’t necessarily have to cause discomfort, distraction, or otherwise interfere with our natural drive toward well-being and balance. We can learn to use awareness to reframe a situation, remove the perception of danger, and reappraise it as an opportunity to overcome a challenge and create new responses. We have multiple options for managing both the attention to the signal and the anxiety (the feelings), and if it gets to that point, the response itself. Our brain is a wondrous thing!

[Related: Stress and anxiety wear down your brain. Here’s how to fight back.]

Our brain-body systems are in a constant drive toward homeostasis, that state of equilibrium between arousal and relaxation. Every system—from the nervous system to the digestive—is interacting and exchanging signals in order to respond to a stressor and then re-gain homeostasis. This is true of our emotional system as well. Our negative emotions arise to draw our attention to something that may be dangerous, and then make some sort of change or adaptation to feel better. In other words, they have a positive purpose. It is the same with anxiety: it’s the brain-body’s way of telling us to pay attention. Our built-in system for managing our negative emotions, of processing, responding to, and coping with negative emotions in particular, so we can maintain or return to homeostasis is called emotion regulation.

Let’s look at how emotion regulation plays out in real life. Say you are anticipating an important job interview after being let go from your former position six months prior. You are feeling pressure, self-doubt, and fear—fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of not measuring up. The interview is four days away but you’re already feeling nervous. When you even imagine walking through the door of the building, your hands start to sweat, your heart ticks up, and your breath becomes a tiny bit shallow. Next, you begin to imagine every possible thing that could go wrong: you might forget to bring your résumé, you might wear mismatching socks, or you might forget everything you know about why you’re applying for the job in the first place.

Situation selection

One option is to avoid a situation that you expect will bother you or exacerbate your anxiety. Avoiding the situation (skipping the job interview) may alleviate the fear and stress in the near term; however, it clearly will not help you if, in the long run, you want or need the job in question. Gross calls this strategy situation selection.

Situation modification

Another option is to modify the current situation so that the anticipation or anxiety is made more tolerable or bearable. For instance, if you’re experiencing anxiety about the pending interview, you could modify the situation by asking to do the interview over the phone or video conference. This enables you to exert some control over your anxiety and puts you more in charge of the feeling that it’s bigger than you. Gross calls this situation modification. I call it a shift from bad to good anxiety. Your nervousness has not disappeared; it’s simply under your control and being channeled.

Attention deployment

A third option is referred to as attention deployment, which includes several ways you can avert your attention from the anxiety-provoking situation to something else that absorbs your attention. Parents use this technique frequently with their infants and toddlers. If the young child is afraid of dogs, for example, a parent could direct the child’s focus to a funny face while the scary dog walks away. This is a kind of intentional distraction.

[Related: How to keep your anxiety from spiraling out of control]

Cognitive change

The fourth and probably most sophisticated of the strategies for emotion regulation is referred to as cognitive change. In this case, you actively and consciously reappraise or reframe your mindset or attitude: instead of thinking about the job interview as a horrible way to spend your Friday morning, you reframe it as an opportunity to show yourself and your potential employer how much you know about the role and the company or organization; it also builds your confidence. The reframe acts as a mental suggestion that reshapes the feeling of anxiety from one of dread and feeling overwhelmed to one of excitement and challenge.

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Of the trillions of microorganisms that call your gut home, 13 bacterial species may contribute to depression. A pair of studies published on December 6 in the journal Nature Communications identified bacteria linked to depression and a possible explanation for how they’re promoting depressive episodes. 

Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. About five percent of adults live with the condition. If left untreated, a depressive episode can significantly impair your life, from constant hopelessness to a loss of interest in day-to-day activities. Understanding just how these microbes contribute to our mental health could shape gut-driven approaches for managing the condition.

Certain gut bacteria could be causing a chemical imbalance in the brain 

In one of the studies, the authors examined the microbiome composition of 1,539 adults in the Netherlands. “Our biggest surprise was the strength of the relationship between gut bacteria and depression,” Robert Kraaij, a senior research scientist at Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands and study coauthor, wrote in an email to PopSci. Of the 13 microbial taxa linked to depression, people with a higher abundance of Sellimonas, Eggerthella, Lachnoclostridium, and Hungatella reported more depressive symptoms. 

The 13 microbial species help produce chemical messengers—glutamate, butyrate, serotonin, and gamma amino butyric acid (GABA)—which the levels are typically altered during the depression. The findings from the current study could help identify people who are most at risk for depression, explains Najaf Amin, a senior researcher at Oxford University and senior study author. 

In the future, Amin plans to study the levels of the four chemical messengers in the blood of people with and without depression to see how they compare. Doing so may help get a better sense of how gut bacteria influence a person’s brain chemistry and how the brain regulates mood.

[Related: Magic mushrooms help cancer patients deal with depression]

Differences across ethnicities in the gut microbiomes of people with depression

The second study investigated fecal samples of 3,211 individuals who resided in urban Amsterdam. The participants belonged to one of six different ethnic groups—Dutch, South-Asian Surinamese, African Surinamese, Ghanaian, Turkish, and Moroccan. The microbiome assessments showed changes in bacterial species associated with depressive symptoms, including those species from the Christensenellaceae, Lachnospiraceae, and Ruminococcaceae families. One interesting observation, however, was that not everyone with depression had the same amounts of each microbial species. About 18 to 29 percent of differences in depression-related bacteria was due to ethnic differences.

“This is pivotal research with interesting data on gut-brain [interactions], a burgeoning area of science and medicine now,” says Harvey Hamilton Allen Jr., chief gastroenterologist at Mohawk Valley Endoscopy Center at St. Luke’s Hospital, who was not involved in either of the studies.

What we know about the gut’s involvement in depression

One of the reasons depression is difficult to treat is that there seems to be no single cause. Prior research has linked depression to stressful or traumatic life events, while others have observed depression manifesting after chronic substance abuse. Genetic factors might also be at play, as people with a family history of depression are three times more likely to have it too. The gut microbiome might be another contributor at play. 

While the idea had been tossed around for centuries, biologists have only recently unearthed physical evidence of a gut-brain connection in the past couple of decades. The theory goes that humans have a “bidirectional” line of communication between the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain, explains Hamilton Allen Jr. Imagine a telephone wire running from your central brain to your enteric nervous system—a collection of neurons in the wall of the GI tract that controls your digestive system. The enteric nervous system is often called the “second brain” for its influence on the rest of the body. 

One important piece of evidence that the gut likely plays a role in depression is that about 95 percent of serotonin—often labeled the “happy hormone” for its mood-regulating effects—is made from gut bacteria. Paxil and Zoloft, two commonly prescribed medications for depression, block the body from reabsorbing serotonin to avoid the hormone’s levels from falling too low. 

Treating depression through the microbiome

A deep understanding of the ins and outs of the gut microbiome could revolutionize how we approach medicine, including how we treat depression. “If certain bacteria are part of the cause of depression, we can design treatments to modulate these bacteria,” says Kraaij.

One potential approach is through fecal transplants. While such a treatment might seem ripe for bacterial infections, it could help promote healthy gut bacteria in people who are unable to produce them on their own (there have been reported deaths from fecal transplants among immunocompromised people). Transporting the poop from a person with a healthy gut microbiota to someone with  an unhealthy gut has already become the standard of care for treating Clostridioides difficile infections. The procedure restores healthy bacteria back into the lower intestines. Just last week on December 2, the FDA approved the first pharmaceutical-grade fecal transplant to treat difficult intestinal infections.

[Related: Autism shapes the gut microbiome, scientists report, not the other way around]

There is also some growing evidence that fecal transplants could help with depression. In a small case study published in February 2022, two people with major depressive disorder underwent poop transplants in addition to their current treatment plan. Both showed a reduction in depressive-live behavior four weeks after the procedure. One of the patients continued to show improvement in their depressive symptoms for up to eight weeks after treatment, along with improvement in other GI problems. 

The two studies could make the fecal transplant process more efficient by knowing which of the 13 bacteria species need to be transferred to make the gut healthy again. What’s more, Hamilton Allen Jr. speculates the findings could even help fecal transplants to be more personalized to different ethnicities in the future. 

Still, gut microbes are one of many factors linked to depression, Hamilton Allen Jr. says. Without an experiment that could manipulate the microbiome to see how people fared with and without these microbes, scientists cannot definitively say a gut imbalance is a primary cause of depression. But he says, “this is definitely one of the new treatment modalities, and as we learn more about this organ, we are going to see more research going into treating the microbiome.”

Correction (December 12, 2022): This story has updated the genus name Clostridium difficile to Clostridioides difficile to reflect changes in taxonomic classification of the bacteria.

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This article was originally featured on KHN.

Assisted living communities too often fail to meet the needs of older adults and should focus more on residents’ medical and mental health concerns, according to a recent report by a diverse panel of experts.

It’s a clarion call for change inspired by the altered profile of the population that assisted living now serves.

Residents are older, sicker, and more compromised by impairments than in the past: 55% are 85 and older, 77% require help with bathing, 69% with walking, and 49% with toileting, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Also, more than half of residents have high blood pressure, and a third or more have heart disease or arthritis. Nearly one-third have been diagnosed with depression and at least 11% have a serious mental illness. As many as 42% have dementia or moderate-to-severe cognitive impairment.

“The nature of the clientele in assisted living has changed dramatically,” yet there are no widely accepted standards for addressing their physical and mental health needs, said Sheryl Zimmerman, who led the panel. She’s co-director of the Program on Aging, Disability, and Long-Term Care at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The report addresses this gap with 43 recommendations from experts including patient advocates, assisted living providers, and specialists in medical, psychiatric, and dementia care that Zimmerman said she hopes will become “a new standard of care.”

One set of recommendations addresses staffing. The panel proposes that ratios of health aides to residents be established and that either a registered nurse or a licensed practical nurse be available on-site. (Before establishing specific requirements for various types of communities, the panel suggested further research on staffing requirements was necessary.)

Like nursing homes and home health agencies, assisted living operators have found it hard to retain or hire staff during the covid-19 pandemic. In a September 2021 survey, 82% reported “moderate” or “high” level of staffing shortages.

Dr. Kenneth Covinsky, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, witnessed staffing-related problems when his mother moved to assisted living at age 79. At one point, she fell and had to wait about 25 minutes for someone to help her get up. On another occasion, she waited for 30 minutes on the toilet as overworked staffers responded to pagers buzzing nonstop.

“The nighttime scene was crazy: There would be one person for 30 to 40 residents,” said Covinsky, the author of an editorial accompanying the consensus recommendations. Eventually, he ended up moving his mother to another facility.

The panel also recommended staffers get training on managing dementia and mental illness, on medication side effects, on end-of-life care, on tailoring care to individual residents’ needs, and on infection control — a weakness highlighted during the height of the pandemic, when an estimated 17% more people died in assisted living in 2020 compared with previous years.

“If I were placing my parent in assisted living, I certainly would be looking not just at staffing ratios but the actual training of staff,” said Robyn Stone, senior vice president of research at LeadingAge and co-director of its long-term services and supports center at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. LeadingAge is an industry organization representing nonprofit long-term care providers. Stone said the organization generally supports the panel’s work.

The better trained staff are, the more likely they are to provide high-quality care to residents and the less likely they are to feel frustrated and burned out, said Dr. Helen Kales, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UC Davis Health.

This is especially important for memory care delivered in stand-alone assisted living facilities or a wing of a larger community. “We have seen places where a memory care unit charges upwards of $10,000 a month for ‘dementia care’ yet is little more than a locked door to prevent residents from leaving the unit and not the sensitive and personalized care advertised,” wrote Covinsky and his University of California-San Francisco colleague Dr. Kenneth Lam in their editorial.

Because dementia is such a pervasive concern in assisted living, the panel recommended that residents get formal cognitive assessments and that policies be established to address aggression or other worrisome behaviors.

One such policy might be trying non-pharmaceutical strategies (examples include aromatherapy or music therapy) to calm people with dementia before resorting to prescribed medications, Kales said. Another might be calling for a medical or psychiatric evaluation if a resident’s behavior changes dramatically and suddenly.

Further recommendations from the panel emphasize the importance of regularly assessing residents’ needs, developing care plans, and including residents in this process. “The resident should really be directing what their goals are and how they want care provided, but this doesn’t always happen,” said Lori Smetanka, a panel member and executive director of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, an advocacy organization.

“We agree with many of these recommendations” and many assisted living communities are already following these practices, said LaShuan Bethea, executive director of the National Center for Assisted Living, an industry organization.

Nonetheless, she said her organization has concerns, especially about the practicality and cost of the recommendations. “We need to understand what the feasibility would be,” she said, and suggested that a broad study look at those issues. In the meantime, states should examine how they regulate assisted living, taking into account the increased needs of the residents, Bethea said.

Because the nation’s roughly 28,900 assisted living communities are regulated by states and there are no federal standards, practices vary widely and generally there are fewer protections for residents than are found in nursing homes. Some assisted living facilities are small homes housing as few as four to six seniors; some are large housing complexes with nearly 600 older adults. Nearly 919,000 individuals live in these communities.

“There are many different flavors of assisted living, and I think we need to be more purposeful about naming what they are and who they’re best suited to care for,” said Kali Thomas, a panel member and an associate professor of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University.

Originally, assisted living was meant to be a “social” model: a home-like setting where older adults could interact with other residents while receiving help from staff with daily tasks such as bathing and dressing. But given the realities of today’s assisted living population, “the social model of care is outmoded,” said Tony Chicotel, a panel member and staff attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

Still, he and other panelists don’t want assisted living to become a “medical” model, like nursing homes.

“What’s interesting is you see nursing homes pushing to get to a more homelike environment and assisted living needing to more adequately manage the medical needs of residents,” Chicotel told me, referring to the current pandemic-inspired reexamination of long-term care. “That said, I don’t want assisted living facilities to look more like nursing homes. How this all will play out isn’t at all clear yet.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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PSYCHEDELICS are having a moment. This past spring, Netflix’s How to Change Your Mind documentary series introduced the binge-watching masses to the concept of using trippy substances to reboot troubled brains. Numerous startups offer at-home ketamine therapy in glossy ads on Instagram. And in 2020, Oregon became the first state to vote to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use.

The world of scientific research is buzzing too. Clinical trials on the use of MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder have shown promising results and could lead to FDA approval in the next year or so. A recent study in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggested that administering ketamine before a cesarean section might mitigate postpartum depression in some patients. And in August 2022, a small study on substance use disorder in JAMA Psychiatry showed that when combined with therapy, two psilocybin sessions were associated with a sharp decrease in days of heavy drinking among participants.

While science is still homing in on why this works, we’re starting to form a preliminary understanding: Trippy compounds seem to affect how the brain regions responsible for mood, cognition, and perception respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Early research suggests this can lead to a boost in neuroplasticity—gray matter’s ability to learn things and adapt to change.

Though our clinical understanding of psychedelics is in its infancy, the drugs themselves are not. Even their therapeutic use is ancient. Mushrooms have been involved in the spiritual ceremonies of the Mazatec people in what’s now Oaxaca, Mexico, for thousands of years. Ibogaine, now touted as a therapy for substance use disorder, is derived from a plant that hunters in West Africa have long chewed for stimulation and focus while stalking game. Peyote has served as both a spiritual tool and a medicine in North America since at least 1000 B.C.E. And MDMA is derived from safrole, a compound in the oil of sassafras plants, whose recorded use by Native Americans dates to at least the 16th century.

Many Indigenous groups maintain an unbroken lineage of plant medicine use, while others now seek to reconnect with practices made difficult or impossible in the wake of colonization and other pressures. Federal drug policies in place since the 1970s, which many public health experts now agree to be misguided, have led to disproportionate punishment of BIPOC people and slowed or stopped research into the therapeutic benefits of compounds like LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. Though decriminalization laws like Oregon’s are unwinding the war on drugs, some advocates also see trouble in the latest wave of enthusiasm.

They warn that psychedelic medicine’s renaissance, fueled by media hype and venture capital, could make the substances less accessible to the people who stand to benefit from them the most. That group includes Indigenous and other marginalized populations, who have disproportionately high rates of trauma and resulting illness but who lack equal access to basic treatment—let alone expensive clinics or drug tourism retreats.

The future of fair drug use in the US is a puzzle that will take many perspectives to solve. But these four visionaries—therapists, activists, educators, researchers, and entrepreneurs—are listening, learning, and changing minds.

Protecting resources during a boom

As a Newe—a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Fort Hall, Idaho—Dawn D. Davis has many identities that share a common goal. As a researcher, educator, mother, farmer, fainting goat herder, and peyote user, she embodies a lifelong commitment to reciprocity with the substances that give us life. In her current postdoctoral work at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Energy Systems department, that means studying resource management, particularly as it pertains to water access and energy resilience in marginalized and rural communities. It has also meant laying the research groundwork for Lophophora williamsii, the squat cactus commonly known as peyote, to be treated with care both inside and outside Indigenous cultures.

The plant has recently caught the attention of psychedelics enthusiasts for containing the hallucinogenic compound mescaline, which studies suggest might help facilitate therapy for issues like addiction and trauma. But Davis’ ancestors and many other Indigenous North Americans have used it for spiritual ceremonies and general health applications, from soothing toothaches to treating wounds, for thousands of years. “It’s always been a part of my life,” she says.

As Davis grew up, however, she saw less and less available—and the cacti that were around appeared to be shrinking. L. williamsii also grows slowly, sometimes taking more than a decade to mature, and most of what is out there sits on private land. She and her family, like most traditional peyote users, access it through the ceremonies of a diffuse religious group called the Native American Church. After receiving degrees in museum studies and Native American studies, Davis began pursuing a doctorate in natural and water resources from the University of Idaho in 2013 to understand the scope of the problem. She’s since spent nearly a decade collecting data on where the plant grows to home in on its preferred vegetation and soil.

She hopes that her findings on peyote’s current distribution, which she earned a Ph.D. for in 2021, will help landowners and Indigenous users better understand the conditions in which the plant can thrive. While she’s still working to confirm and publish her data, it does indicate that the potential habitat for the slow-growing cactus in Texas and Mexico is “quite extensive,” suggesting that in situ conservation is entirely possible. But she cautions that bringing traditional knowledge into such efforts is key. In conducting her field research, she interacted with landowners and the earth in ways she didn’t learn in grad school: by sharing her intentions, introducing herself to the environment, and getting the permission of everyone and everything involved. To keep the plant’s population from dwindling further, she says, Western science will have to make room for people who engage with the earth in this way.

Conservation efforts may soon grow more pressing, as some psychedelics enthusiasts are pushing to have peyote widely decriminalized. Groups that include the Native American Church of North America, where Davis serves on the Legislative Committee, and the National Congress of American Indians, where she co-chairs the Peyote Task Force, argue that this will make the scant wild population even more vulnerable to outside parties, and have asked that peyote not be mentioned in any decriminalization efforts.

Some members of these and other advocacy groups have pointed out that there are other, faster-growing cacti, such as the San Pedro plant, that also produce mescaline and could be cultivated instead. While it is less potent, the tall cactus can grow all over the world. In the US, it’s a common sight on arid front lawns, where it’s legal to have but not legal to use for its mescaline. Davis, for her part, would prefer mescaline get left out of decriminalization bills entirely; she worries that such a loophole could mask peyote harvesting.

Davis emphasizes she’s one person from one tribe, so bringing many Indigenous voices into the conversation about psychedelic use is crucial. That’s as true for protecting a plant in peril as it is for respecting the reasons why tribes used specific flora and how they combine them. “I may be the only Native American peyote researcher,” she says. “I don’t know of any others. But that’s a hard space to be in, because I don’t consider myself a psychedelic researcher. I consider myself a medicine researcher. I see things from a very different perspective.”

Finding the sacred side of therapy

Danielle Herrera’s ketamine patients at Sage Integrative Health don’t get a very clinical experience. The Bay Area psychotherapist takes people for walks while they’re high, gives them sensory objects like feathers and bowls of water, and even sings with them. “That’s something that happens a lot in ayahuasca circles,” she says of the ceremonies involving the psychoactive South American brew. “Humming together can be really powerful.”

While Herrera, who identifies as mixed-Indigenous and part Filipino, tells people that her therapy is informed by traditional rituals, she doesn’t mean she treats every trip like a ceremony in the Amazon basin. She has at least two beliefs that buck the medical establishment: First, that every recreational drug has the potential to be beneficial, given the right therapeutic guidance and exploration. And second, that the process should look different for every patient—and for every therapist.

Her first work out of graduate school focused on treating children, though she was reluctant to turn her own childhood trauma, which stemmed from her parents’ struggles with substance use disorder, into a career. That is, until she found herself drawn to the Harm Reduction Therapy Center in San Francisco. The mobile clinics Herrera worked at would welcome people high on anything and give them whatever help they needed. Someone might be hungry, or have a wound that needed dressing, and she would also offer mental health support.

During that time, Herrera started training in ketamine therapy at the Sage Institute clinic. “Noticing what was happening in the intersection between harm reduction and psychedelic therapy allowed my relationship with my family to deepen,” she says. Her mother, who is now sober but used methamphetamines for years, opened up about her initial experiences with meth, which were intensely positive and spiritual. “Even drug counselors would just shame her,” Herrera says. “She told me, ‘If there was just one person who I could have talked to about my spiritual awakening on meth, I might not have fallen into the chaotic use and depression that followed.’”

Herrera has now facilitated integration—the thoughtful unpacking of insights gained while high—for “every drug you can think of.” And each session, she says, can be profound and unique. She pushes back against mainstream stereotypes of the psychedelic experience, which she feels can make patients think they should expect to find peace, that the drugs will calm their inner demons. Many of the people she treats, especially those who have endured lifelong racial aggression, actually become more in tune with their inner rage.

Perhaps most crucially, Herrera is always entirely herself. “When I was learning to become a therapist, I was really resistant to the colonialism I knew was entrenched in these systems,” she says of the perspectives that have typically informed modern psychiatry. “I was a real pot stirrer.”

Putting a new spin on pharmaceutical development

Jeeshan Chowdhury often reminds folks that his startup’s technology isn’t actually new. Mescaline, the compound Journey Colab recently synthesized, is best known as the psychedelic component of peyote. “While it feels like this is a new trend, it’s validated by thousands of years of use by Indigenous communities,” Chowdhury says.

The recent psychedelic boom has inspired a race to find—and patent—new chemical compounds that pack the same punch as ancient plant medicines. That sprint, of course, comes with the typical Big Pharma fears, from making treatments more expensive to leapfrogging traditional users by stamping trademarks. Journey Colab, which is exploring mescaline as a tool to treat substance use disorder, set itself apart from its beginnings in 2020: 10 percent of its founding equity is held in a perpetual trust overseen by representatives of Indigenous communities. “It’s actual ownership,” Chowdhury emphasizes.

Until about five years ago, Chowdhury, who was raised in a devout Muslim home, had never had much interest in drugs. But he eventually realized they could save him. “I was living these two very parallel lives,” he says. In 2017, he’d already earned an M.D. from the University of Alberta and a Ph.D. in health informatics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and had dropped out of a medical residency to found, build, and sell his first startup—a digital platform to help coordinate care in hospitals.

But he was in the midst of a mental health crisis. “I felt like I was drowning,” he says. Offerings like antidepressants and talk therapy helped, but felt like life preservers. By the time he sold that first company, he says, “I wanted to let go and drown.”

Out of desperation, he tried psychedelic therapy for the first time. “In that state of consciousness, it was like the muddy waters I’d been drowning in my whole life cleared up,” he says. He decided to get training in psychedelic integration—the process of folding insights gleaned from the thoughts and feelings of a trip into one’s conscious, everyday life—and grew fascinated by how much work still needed to be done to marry centuries of tradition with new scientific insight.

Journey Colab’s focus on mescaline could help refine our understanding of why the compound works so well. Previous studies in mice have indicated that the substance increases neuroplasticity for around five or six weeks; ketamine’s effects, by comparison, taper off after a couple of days, and those of MDMA and psilocybin in a fortnight. Journey Colab now wants to quantify how mescaline could help grease the wheels of alcohol use disorder therapy specifically.

Despite such promising signs, Chowdhury prefers to call Journey’s offerings “psychedelic procedures” as opposed to straightforward therapy sessions. Given their risks, he thinks they should be taken as seriously as surgery—and that they require tailored support and therapy to be effective. “It’s incredibly important for us to learn from the people who successfully integrated these very powerful tools into their individual lives and cultures and societies,” he says. “It’s done with ritual, and it’s done with respect.”

Making ketamine accessible and sustainable

Courtney Watson is supposed to be working on her dissertation. But a chance encounter in 2018 sent her on a detour. A licensed marriage and family therapist, Watson was moderating a panel at a conference for BIPOC techies when a stranger—who’d shown up thinking the meetup was about techno—asked her if she’d like to be introduced to the psychedelic therapy community.

She was intrigued. Watson had learned about the practice in grad school around 2011, when the drugs had yet to see their modern resurgence. In a class about addiction, a professor had pointed out that many illicit substances had once been used as medicine, and that they’d even been studied by modern scientists, but the war on drugs had shut those inquiries down.

On the advice of her new techno-loving acquaintance, Watson attended a conference on psychedelics. She was interested in the cultural perspectives of BIPOC and marginalized communities, but was surprised to hear a lot of chatter about LSD and psilocybin. “Those are white people drugs,” she remembers thinking. “We don’t do that stuff.” But then presenters talked about the power of such medicines to help treat PTSD. Watson knew that research increasingly showed members of marginalized communities had higher rates of the condition—one 2016 study, for example, indicated that more than one-quarter of Black women with depression in Oakland, California, had PTSD—but no one onstage was talking about that. She signed up for psychedelic-assisted therapy training not long after the conference ended. “I was like, ‘There’s an opportunity for healing here, and no one that’s here is going to be able to do that.’”

She opened Doorway Therapeutic Services, a ketamine clinic in Oakland designed by queer and BIPOC people, in 2020. There she relishes opportunities to challenge the status quo of one-on-one therapy. For instance, she and many other practitioners point out that traditional use of mind-altering drugs, like an ayahuasca ceremony she participated in in South America, tends to involve whole families and communities who spend generations learning to facilitate the rituals together. She also wants to see more opportunities for traditional herbalists to get the same recognition and legal validation as mainstream therapists. “It might be a mess in the beginning,” she says of shifting the paradigm around drug use and access, “but I believe we can do it.”

Watson is quick to point out that psychedelics need a lot more change—from including more BIPOC leaders to taming the high costs of therapy—than one person can kick-start. Under the leadership of sci-fi author Ayize Jama-Everett and activist Kufikiri Imara, she participated in an inaugural plant medicine conference called A Table of Our Own in the hopes of helping address these and other issues. The program gathered a couple dozen Black artists, academics, clinicians, cultivators, and spiritual leaders to re-imagine how psychedelic spaces can look with Black people at the helm.

For now, she’s doing what she can with Doorway. She works to make the organization as collaborative as possible and prioritizes employee well-being. That means sustaining the clinic by charging market rate for ketamine therapy in the Bay Area: more than $5,000 out of pocket for a full course of treatment.

Understanding that high cost limits accessibility, Watson, who’s still a Ph.D. candidate at Widener University, started a nonprofit. Access 2 Doorways helps fund clinics run by and for BIPOC people to facilitate access to psychedelic therapy. “We need this,” she says. “And we’re not going to get it if we don’t offer it.”

This story originally appeared in the High Issue of Popular Science. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

Imagine that a soldier has a tiny computer device injected into their bloodstream that can be guided with a magnet to specific regions of their brain. With training, the soldier could then control weapon systems thousands of miles away using their thoughts alone. Embedding a similar type of computer in a soldier’s brain could suppress their fear and anxiety, allowing them to carry out combat missions more efficiently. Going one step further, a device equipped with an artificial intelligence system could directly control a soldier’s behavior by predicting what options they would choose in their current situation.

While these examples may sound like science fiction, the science to develop neurotechnologies like these is already in development. Brain-computer interfaces, or BCI, are technologies that decode and transmit brain signals to an external device to carry out a desired action. Basically, a user would only need to think about what they want to do, and a computer would do it for them.

BCIs are currently being tested in people with severe neuromuscular disorders to help them recover everyday functions like communication and mobility. For example, patients can turn on a light switch by visualizing the action and having a BCI decode their brain signals and transmit it to the switch. Likewise, patients can focus on specific letters, words or phrases on a computer screen that a BCI can move a cursor to select.

However, ethical considerations have not kept pace with the science. While ethicists have pressed for more ethical inquiry into neural modification in general, many practical questions around brain-computer interfaces have not been fully considered. For example, do the benefits of BCI outweigh the substantial risks of brain hacking, information theft and behavior control? Should BCI be used to curb or enhance specific emotions? What effect would BCIs have on the moral agency, personal identity and mental health of their users?

These questions are of great interest to us, a philosopher and neurosurgeon who study the ethics and science of current and future BCI applications. Considering the ethics of using this technology before it is implemented could prevent its potential harm. We argue that responsible use of BCI requires safeguarding people’s ability to function in a range of ways that are considered central to being human.

Expanding BCI beyond the clinic

Researchers are exploring nonmedical brain-computer interface applications in many fields, including gaming, virtual reality, artistic performance, warfare and air traffic control.

For example, Neuralink, a company co-founded by Elon Musk, is developing a brain implant for healthy people to potentially communicate wirelessly with anyone with a similar implant and computer setup.

In 2018, the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched a program to develop “a safe, portable neural interface system capable of reading from and writing to multiple points in the brain at once.” Its aim is to produce nonsurgical BCI for able-bodied service members for national security applications by 2050. For example, a soldier in a special forces unit could use BCI to send and receive thoughts with a fellow soldier and unit commander, a form of direct three-way communication that would enable real-time updates and more rapid response to threats.

To our knowledge, these projects have not opened a public discussion about the ethics of these technologies. While the U.S. military acknowledges that “negative public and social perceptions will need to be overcome” to successfully implement BCI, practical ethical guidelines are needed to better evaluate proposed neurotechnologies before deploying them.

Utilitarianism

One approach to tackling the ethical questions BCI raises is utilitarian. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that strives to maximize the happiness or well-being of everyone affected by an action or policy.

Enhancing soldiers might create the greatest good by improving a nation’s warfighting abilities, protecting military assets by keeping soldiers remote, and maintaining military readiness. Utilitarian defenders of neuroenhancement argue that emergent technologies like BCI are morally equivalent to other widely accepted forms of brain enhancement. For example, stimulants like caffeine can improve the brain’s processing speed and may improve memory.

However, some worry that utilitarian approaches to BCI have moral blind spots. In contrast to medical applications designed to help patients, military applications are designed to help a nation win wars. In the process, BCI may ride roughshod over individual rights, such as the right to be mentally and emotionally healthy.

For example, soldiers operating drone weaponry in remote warfare today report higher levels of emotional distress, post-traumatic stress disorder and broken marriages compared to soldiers on the ground. Of course, soldiers routinely elect to sacrifice for the greater good. But if neuroenhancing becomes a job requirement, it could raise unique concerns about coercion.

Neurorights

Another approach to the ethics of BCI, neurorights, prioritizes certain ethical values even if doing so does not maximize overall well-being.

Proponents of neurorights champion individuals’ rights to cognitive liberty, mental privacy, mental integrity and psychological continuity. A right to cognitive liberty might bar unreasonable interference with a person’s mental state. A right to mental privacy might require ensuring a protected mental space, while a right to mental integrity would prohibit specific harms to a person’s mental states. Lastly, a right to psychological continuity might protect a person’s ability to maintain a coherent sense of themselves over time.

BCIs could interfere with neurorights in a variety of ways. For example, if a BCI tampers with how the world seems to a user, they might not be able to distinguish their own thoughts or emotions from altered versions of themselves. This may violate neurorights like mental privacy or mental integrity.

Yet soldiers already forfeit similar rights. For example, the U.S. military is allowed to restrict soldiers’ free speech and free exercise of religion in ways that are not typically applied to the general public. Would infringing neurorights be any different?

Human capabilities

A human capability approach insists that safeguarding certain human capabilities is crucial to protecting human dignity. While neurorights home in on an individual’s capacity to think, a capability view considers a broader range of what people can do and be, such as the ability to be emotionally and physically healthy, move freely from place to place, relate with others and nature, exercise the senses and imagination, feel and express emotions, play and recreate, and regulate the immediate environment.

We find a capability approach compelling because it gives a more robust picture of humanness and respect for human dignity. Drawing on this view, we have argued that proposed BCI applications must reasonably protect all of a user’s central capabilities at a minimal threshold. BCI designed to enhance capabilities beyond average human capacities would need to be deployed in ways that realize the user’s goals, not just other people’s.

For example, a bidirectional BCI that not only extracts and processes brain signals but delivers somatosensory feedback, such as sensations of pressure or temperature, back to the user would pose unreasonable risks if it disrupts a user’s ability to trust their own senses. Likewise, any technology, including BCIs, that controls a user’s movements would infringe on their dignity if it does not allow the user some ability to override it.

A limitation of a capability view is that it can be difficult to define what counts as a threshold capability. The view does not describe which new capabilities are worth pursuing. Yet, neuroenhancement could alter what is considered a standard threshold, and could eventually introduce entirely new human capabilities. Addressing this requires supplementing a capability approach with a fuller ethical analysis designed to answer these questions.

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The World Cup is in full swing, with countries duking it out on the soccer field for the championship and, of course, bragging rights. This World Cup has been anything but predictable. Fans were in uproar after Saudi Arabia beat out Argentina’s powerhouse team—the kingdom held a national holiday the day after to celebrate the win—while German fans were in disbelief after losing to Japan. And in a major upset, Mexico’s team was eliminated from the group stage, a first since 1978.

Whether or not you’re a soccer enthusiast, it’s hard to deny the excitement of seeing your home country move closer to the gold. And while not everyone can travel thousands of miles to the games held this year in Qatar, psychologists say there’s good reason to tune into a match. PopSci asked experts about the top five health benefits that come from rooting for a team, even if you’re just on the couch.

[Related: All the ways you can tune in to the 2022 Soccer World Cup]

You feel less lonely

Humans are, by nature, social creatures. This makes the world’s most popular sport a great opportunity to bond with others and find community. Carrie Wyland, a social psychologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, says there are two main reasons why. The first reason is that cheering for a team allows you to feel connected to something bigger than yourself. “Cheering for our favorite teams gives us a sense of identity,” she explains. This social identity is built on the small groups you’ve formed or connected with throughout your life. When you are deeply bonded with a group, your personal self shifts to a greater whole, creating a deeper sense of connectedness with others, explains Wyland. 

The second reason is collective joy. Whether you watch with family or go solo to a bar, your body experiences high arousal emotions, such as happiness and excitement, when you witness an event like your team scoring a goal. “When we experience and share these positive feelings with other people also watching the game, that actually allows us to enhance those emotions and have a greater emotional experience.”

And this social bond is felt through ups and downs—triumph and defeat. When your team loses, you might feel down for a few days, but there is an upside. Wyland says losing a game is still a collective experience and can continue to foster stronger bonds with others—whether in person, through a group chat, or even on social media—as you lament the loss together and figure out what went wrong.

You have higher self-esteem

A 2019 study in the journal Communication and Sport found that fans of winning sports teams reported higher self-esteem two days after the game. While more research is needed to confirm this link, Wyland says the boost in self-esteem after spectating a game may be from a psychological concept called “basking in reflected glory.” It’s when you associate another person’s wins with your own because of your close ties with this group. This can also be seen in fans who rejoice when their favorite music artist wins a Grammy or in supporters of a political party when their preferred candidate gets elected. In this case, a fan’s social identity in soccer may make them feel like they’re part of the team. So when fans cheer or perform rituals like wearing “lucky” socks, they feel like their support aided in the team’s victory.

You increase your life expectancy

There is some indirect support that cheering could help increase your lifespan. But this depends on how you cheer. Are you glued to the couch passively watching or are you physically getting up to jump and down or wave your hands when cheering? While it’s not near an actual physical workout, Wyland says small movements and gestures matter because it gets your body moving.

[Related: How to work out for your mental health] 

Socializing also positively impacts longevity. Social relationships—building friendships or feeling part of a community through sports—have been long associated with good physical and mental health. Regularly watching sports has even been linked to fewer depressive symptoms, which has been previously associated with a 10 to 12-year shorter lifespan in older adults. When you have that social support, there is evidence of a decreased risk of early death.

You relieve stress 

Getting swept away in the action of a game can help immerse yourself in the moment, especially in times of celebration, like when team USA’s Christian Pulisic scored that final goal against Iran to advance the team to the knockout rounds. 

“Sports are a celebration of life, and you are totally in the present—away from the regrets of the past or the anxieties of the future,” explains Eric Zillmer, a neuropsychologist and former director of athletics at Drexel University in Philadelphia. 

Watching and celebrating sports teams allows for a temporary escape from present reality. Zillmer says a game like soccer has rules and boundaries that can be therapeutic and easy to digest for people dealing with the unpredictability of life. Sports can also have people return to a simpler view of life: a triumphant comeback of the underdogs or the fairy tale moment of a superstar player carrying their team to the finals. 

“We know from studies on mindfulness and yoga that living your life in the present is very therapeutic for your health,” Zillmer says. “Sports make us feel alive, and it can be a catalyst for finding things that we hope to find in ourselves.” Sports are all about overcoming obstacles, he says; if those beating challenges exist in sports, they could exist in real life. 

[Related: The complex physics behind bending it like a World Cup player]

You are more motivated to exercise

Wyland says that seeing players zoom across the field and launch soccer balls into the air could inspire kids to get out and play the sport as well. Children may be energized after an exciting game and may want to play outside and emulate their favorite players like Argentina’s Lionel Messi or France’s Kylian Mbappé.

Adults can get in on the action, too, by channeling their excitement from watching the World Cup into their next workout. Zillmer advises linking high-probability behaviors (activities you like or enjoy doing) with low-probability behaviors (things you don’t want to do and may actively avoid). So if you’ve been meaning to exercise but can’t find the motivation to do it, think about your next session as a means to a reward. For example, if there’s a good chance you’re going to watch the USA versus Netherlands game (a high-probability behavior), then force yourself to engage in a low-probability behavior such as a walk around the block as a way of “earning it.” 

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Almost three years into the pandemic, the spotlight isn’t just on COVID medicine anymore. While booster shots and take-home antiviral pills gave us new tools to fight the infectious disease, health researchers and drug makers regained momentum in other crucial areas, like organ transplants, STI prevention, and white-whale therapies for alopecia and HIV. At the same time, AI deepened its role as a diagnostic aid, while mental health services got an accessibility boost across the US. We know the pandemic isn’t over—and other pathogens and illnesses are likely lurking undetected—but the progress we make in medical labs, factories, and care centers can help nurse societies back to health before the next storm hits.

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Grand Award Winner

AuriNova by 3DBio Therapeutics: A replacement ear that’s made from ear cells

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About 1,500 people in the US are born each year with absent or underdeveloped external ears. Traditional reconstruction techniques might fix the cosmetic issue, but a new 3D-printed ear transplant, called AuriNovo, offers a living substitute. The implant is made with proteins, hydrogel, and a patient’s own cells, giving it far more flexibility than any constructed with synthetic materials; plus, the procedure is less invasive than, say, transplanting tissue from a patient’s ribs. To build the replacement, a surgeon first takes a sample of an individual’s ear tissue to separate and culture the cartilage-making cells. Then, based on a 3D scan of the fully formed ear on the patient, the part is printed with collagen-based “bio ink” and surgically inserted above the jaw. A 20-year-old woman from Mexico was the first to get the implant this June. 3DBio Therapeutics, the New York-based regenerative medicine company behind AuriNovo, hopes to use the technology to one day create other replacement body parts, like noses, spinal discs, and larger organs. 

Paxlovid by Pfizer: The first take-home treatment for COVID-19

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COVID therapies have come a long way since the start of the pandemic, and now include several antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies. But Pfizer’s Paxlovid was the first oral treatment for the disease to receive emergency authorization from the FDA, meaning it can be obtained with a prescription. It’s also highly effective: Clinical trials show it reduces hospitalization and death from the virus up to 90 percent more than a placebo. The remedy is a combination of two pills: nirmatrelvir, which prevents the novel coronavirus from replicating, and ritonavir, which causes the body to metabolize nirmatrelvir more slowly. The drug does have downsides—it can interact with other medications and sometimes causes a foul aftertaste. Plus, rare cases of rebound COVID symptoms and positive tests have occurred in people following Paxlovid treatment, although research indicates that the latter might be related to the immune system responding to residual viral RNA. Still, it represents a crucial new safeguard for healthcare providers and the public.

EVO Visian Implantable Collamer Lenses by STAAR Surgical: Combining the perks of contacts and laser surgery

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Most cases of nearsightedness and astigmatism, which is blurred vision caused by an irregularly shaped cornea, can be fixed with laser eye surgery. But the procedure requires some corneal tissue to be removed and often leaves recipients with lingering dry eyes. EVO ICL provides an alternative with a minimally invasive new way to correct or reduce both conditions. During the approximately hour-long procedure, a flexible collagen-containing lens is implanted between the iris and natural lens. The implant is meant to sit in the eye permanently, but can also be plucked out by an ophthalmologist if needed. In published clinical trial results, close to 88 percent of patients reported 20/20 or better and nearly all achieved 20/32 or better distance vision after six months. The lenses also block some UV rays for added protection.

Olumiant by Eli Lilly and Incyte: Long-term relief for severe alopecia

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More than 300,000 people of all ages in the US live with severe alopecia areata, a condition that causes the immune system to attack hair follicles, leading to patchy baldness on the scalp and elsewhere. Hair loss in the nose and ears can affect patients’ hearing and allergies, and a lack of eyelashes can leave people vulnerable to eye irritation from dust. Olumiant, the first medication to secure the FDA’s approval for severe alopecia, can help hair grow back over the entire body. It belongs to a group of drugs called JAK inhibitors, which block certain inflammation-promoting enzymes. It was originally greenlit by the agency in 2018 to treat some forms of rheumatoid arthritis, but in clinical trials for alopecia, it helped roughly a third of participants to regrow up to 80 percent of their hair by 36 weeks, and nearly half after a year. Other JAK inhibitors in development could provide alternatives for patients who don’t fully respond to Olumiant.

AIR Recon DL by GE Healthcare: Sharper MRIs in half the time

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Laying motionless for an hour or longer in a magnetic scanner can be a claustrophobic and sometimes nauseating experience. A next-level neural network by GE Healthcare reduces the stress on patients, while filtering out visual noise from movement or faulty processing. The software combs through raw radio-wave data from MRI machines and turns the most accurate bits into high-resolution 3D images. Originally, the AI-reconstructed images had to be stitched together—but the updated tech, which received FDA approval this September, delivers in one go. The speedy precision can cut exam times in half, help hospitals and clinics serve more patients, and possibly improve the rate of diagnosis by giving radiologists a much cleaner view of tissues, bones, masses, and more.

ONE Male Condom by ONE: Latex that works for anal sex

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At first glance this condom isn’t all that different from those by other brands. It’s made from natural latex, comes in three thicknesses, and has a wide range of sizes for best fit. But the contraceptive is the first to also be clinically tested for STI protection during anal sex—and has proven to be extremely effective. In studies involving 252 male-male couples and 252 male-female couples, the condoms had a less than 2-percent chance of breakage, slippage, discomfort, and adverse events (which included urinary tract infections and bacteria and viruses spread during sex). With such a healthy showing, the company earned the FDA nod to label the product as “safe for anal sex.” With widespread availability, there’s hope that the condom can help beat back a record rise in chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and other STIs.

Bivalent COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech: A one-shot-fits-all approach

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One of the niftiest features of mRNA vaccines such as Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID shots is that they can be tweaked and scaled up quickly to keep up with an ever-changing virus. This August, the FDA authorized the first bivalent COVID boosters, modified with new genetic data to target both the original version of SARS-CoV-2 and the Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5. Just how much added protection the bivalent shots offer against the latest versions of COVID remains to be seen, although in early results, the Pfizer-BioNTech booster increased antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants by up to 11 times, while the Moderna booster did so by up to 15 times. Experts anticipate that the bivalent COVID vaccines, which are available to all adults and children ages 5 and older in the US, could save thousands of lives if the virus surges again this winter. 

Umbilical cord blood transplant for HIV by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Weill Cornell Medicine: The right cells for viral resistance

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There are now three official cases of patients in long-term HIV remission—but this one might be the most promising for the millions around the world living with the virus. In 2017, an unidentified American received a blood transplant packed with genes that were resistant to the pathogen behind AIDS. More than four years later, her doctors at Weill Cornell Medicine confirmed that the procedure at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center had indeed made her free of the disease. The miraculous sample was specifically taken from a relative’s umbilical cord blood cells, which were still in the process of maturing and specializing, making it easier for the transplant to take. Previous attempts to cure the disease depended on bone marrow donations that carry a mutated gene only known in Northern Europeans. This alternative treatment makes transplants more accessible for patients from other ethnic backgrounds, so their bodies can fight HIV in the long run as well.

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by SAMSHA: Streamlining the call for help 

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When you have a general emergency, you might call 911. But for people experiencing a mental crisis, the number has been a lot less intuitive. This July, however, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, run by the US Department of Health and Human Services since 2005, fully switched over to a three-digit code that’s easy to punch in: 988. The shortcut was years in the making, but required major collaboration with the Federal Communication Commission to connect every phone service provider to the alternative number. Since it went live, officials have reported shorter hold times and a 45-percent increase in use compared to August 2021, including on a specialized veteran hotline. The service shakeup also came with $177 million for states and tribes to support the transition in different ways, like alleviating surcharges, setting up call centers, and integrating crisis relief with existing or new emergency responses.

eCoin Peripheral Neurostimulator by Valencia Technologies: A discreet implant for bladder control 

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Pads, vaginal seals, and skin patches can be a burden for anyone who has to deal with urinary incontinence on a daily basis. A new electrode device, about as small as a nickel and implanted above the ankle, nips the issue in the bud in a more private and convenient way. Incontinence typically occurs when the muscles in and around the bladder contract too often or too much. To prevent leaks and constant trips to the toilet, the eCoin sends low-key shocks through the tibial nerve, targeting the pelvic organs and relaxing the bladder wall. A doctor can control the intensity of the pulses with a remote, making the device more customizable for a broad range of patients. Neurostimulators have become a vanguard treatment for different nervous system conditions, including chronic back pain and even paralysis—but few are so adaptable as this.

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Between lockdowns, missing milestone events such as prom or graduation, and general worry over the state of the world in the past few years, times have been particularly tough on adolescents.

Reports of anxiety and depression in adults increased by more than 25 percent in 2020, and some new research suggests that mental health and the neurological effects of the pandemic on adolescents could be even worse than in their adult counterparts.

[Related: Neuroscientists are mapping all 100 billion cells in the human brain.]

Scientists are beginning to look at how the past two and a half years of pandemic life is affecting the brains of teens. A new study published today in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, suggests that stressors related to the COVID-19 pandemic have physically changed teen brains, causing their brain structures to appear multiple years older than the brains of comparable peers before the pandemic.

“We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn’t know what, if anything, it was doing physically to their brains,” said Ian Gotlib, study author and psychology professor at Stanford University’s School of Humanities & Sciences, in a statement.

Changes in brain structure occur naturally as we age. During early teenage years and in puberty, the hippocampus (which controls access to certain memories) and the amygdala (which helps moderate emotions), go through growth spurts like the rest of the body. The tissues in the cortex, which controls executive functioning, becomes thinner at the same time.

To get a closer look, Gotlib and his team compared the MRI scans of 163 children that were taken before and during the pandemic. The study showed that during the COVID-19 lockdowns, this developmental process in the brain sped up in adolescents. According to Gotlib, an accelerated change in “brain age” has typically appeared only in children and adolescents who have experienced chronic adversity (family neglect, violence, family dysfunction, etc.). These kinds of early adverse experiences can be linked to worse mental health outcomes later in life.

However, it is still unclear whether the changes in brain structure that this study observed will be linked to changes in mental health later on in life.

“It’s also not clear if the changes are permanent,” said Gotlib. “Will their chronological age eventually catch up to their ‘brain age’? If their brain remains permanently older than their chronological age, it’s unclear what the outcomes will be in the future. For a 70- or 80-year-old, you’d expect some cognitive and memory problems based on changes in the brain, but what does it mean for a 16-year-old if their brains are aging prematurely?”

The results of this study could have implications for some of the longitudinal studies that have spanned the course of the pandemic. Scientists will have to account for abnormal rates of growth in the brain for any research down the road involving this generation, if those who experienced the pandemic generally show this rapid brain change.

“The pandemic is a global phenomenon—there’s no one who hasn’t experienced it,” said Gotlib. “There’s no real control group.”

[Related: We shouldn’t disregard the ideas that come from teens’ developing brains.]

Co-author Jonas Miller, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at the University of Connecticut, added that results like this may have serious consequences for this generation later in life.

“Adolescence is already a period of rapid reorganization in the brain, and it’s already linked to increased rates of mental health problems, depression, and risk-taking behavior,” Miller said. “Now you have this global event that’s happening, where everyone is experiencing some kind of adversity in the form of disruption to their daily routines – so it might be the case that the brains of kids who are 16 or 17 today are not comparable to those of their counterparts just a few years ago.”

Gotlib plans to follow the same cohort of teens from this study through later adolescence and into young adulthood, looking to see if the pandemic changed the trajectory of brain development long term, alongside their mental health. He also plans to compare the brain structures of those who were infected with COVID-19 and those who weren’t infected with the virus, with the goal of identifying any differences in the brain potentially caused by infection.

The post Some teenagers’ brains have been aging faster during the pandemic appeared first on Popular Science.

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