January 14, 2025
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry looked at the contribution of childhood lead exposure to psychopathology in the US population over the past 75 years. “We set out to determine the toll that leaded gasoline took on the US population’s mental health over the past century,” Dr. Aaron Reuben told us. “We knew it would be higher than anyone previously understood.”
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November 12, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Nature looked at structural and functional mechanisms of learning and memory. “NMDA receptors are essential for the fundamental processes,” study author Hiro Furukawa told us. “Recent clinical studies have revealed that in autoimmune encephalitis, antibodies targeting NMDA receptors disrupt normal neuronal function, resulting in psychotic symptoms.”
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October 8, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies looked at how humans mindlessly treat AI virtual agents as social beings, but how this tendency diminishes among the young. “We were interested in understanding how people relate to AI tools, for example chatbots or smart speakers,” study author Jianan Zhou told us. “Such systems are pervasive nowadays and appear to be smart and well-informed to the typical user, which makes sense from the point of usability. The question this raises, however, is whether interaction with such systems can increase feelings of liking or sympathy towards them and lead us to behave much like we do when interacting with other humans.”
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August 27, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study looked at smartphone survey data to help reveal the timecourse of changes in mood outcomes following vitamin C or kiwifruit intervention in adults with low vitamin C. “This study analyses secondary outcomes from our main trial (KiwiC for Vitality study) published in 2020," study author Tamlin Conner told us. "The secondary outcomes used smartphone surveys of people’s mood every second day throughout the eight-week intervention trial.”
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July 23, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in Health Care for Women International looked at the effect of Transcendental Meditation on self-esteem, self-efficacy, and gratitude, for increasing empowerment of female youth in Uganda. “Our study is about the impact of the Transcendental Meditation® (TM®) technique on developing empowerment in the lives of female youth in Uganda,” study author Leslee Goldstein told us.
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April 23, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in Communications Medicine looked at predicting which patients with cancer will see a psychiatrist or counsellor from their initial oncology consultation document using natural language processing. “Our study is about using artificial intelligence to predict which patients with cancer will see a counsellor or psychiatrist,” study author Dr. John-Jose Nunez told us. “We do this by using AI models to read the document an oncologist writes after the first appointment with a patient. The AI is then able to predict which patients will go on to see a psychiatrist or counsellor with accuracy above 70%.”
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April 2, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new systemic review and multivariate meta-analysis published in the Journal of Nature Human Behaviour looked at the physical and mental health benefits of touch interventions. “Our study is a meta-analysis, meaning that we collected data from all available studies and merged it together, on the effects of touch interventions on health benefits,” study author Julian Packheiser told us.
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January 23, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Behavior and Information Technology looked at whether less social media use can contribute to more satisfaction, work-engagement and mentally healthy employees. “The study focused on the question how to reduce potential negative effects of social media use on work- and mental health related variables,” study author Dr. Julia Brailovskaia told us. “Based on our previous findings, we hypothesized that the reduction of social media use time will have those positive effects.”
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December 26, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in iScience looked at whether pet and owner personality and mental wellbeing associate with attachment to cats and dogs. “We delved into the personality and mental wellbeing profiles of both owners and their pets (cats and dogs) concerning owners’ attachment insecurity, explicitly focusing on avoidant and anxious attachment styles,” study author Aada Ståhl told us.
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November 21, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity looked at the effect of modernized collaborative care for depression on depressive symptoms and cardiovascular disease risk biomarkers. “We set out to determine whether treating depression, a psychological risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), could reduce the risk of developing CVD in the future, like treating high blood pressure and high cholesterol,” study author Jesse C. Stewart told us. “Our study, the eIMPACT trial, was based on more than three decades of research showing that people with depression are at elevated risk of developing CVD, similar to people with traditional CVD risk factors.”
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