new psychological research

Borderline Personality Disorder

Susan Krauss Whitbourne PhD, ABPP on April 27, 2024 in Fulfillment at Any Age

The tendency of people with borderline disorder to use splitting is well-established. New research provides a new pathway to understanding, focusing not on emotions but logic.

Arash Emamzadeh on April 26, 2024 in Finding a New Home

A new study suggests that happiness among singles and those in couples is similar.

Lixing Sun Ph.D. on April 26, 2024 in Lies and Deception

Two new research articles provide critical data and fresh perspectives on teenagers questioning their gender.

Lantie Elisabeth Jorandby M.D. on April 24, 2024 in Use Your Brain

People are frequently using more than one drug at a time, and they're more powerful than ever. That's a deadly combination.

Circadian Rhythm

Martin Moore-Ede M.D., Ph.D. on April 24, 2024 in The Light Doctor

A single-minded focus on climate and energy policy promotes unhealthy blue-rich LED lights and effectively bans circadian-friendly lights that promote human health and well-being

Artificial Intelligence

John Nosta on April 24, 2024 in The Digital Self

Revolutionizing research by turning large language models into dual-role digital labs can unveil deep insights into human decisions.

• Personality

Ingo Zettler Ph.D. on April 23, 2024 in Individual Differences

New research including three studies with 66,000+ participants from 38 countries shows that aversive personality and political orientation share the same (socio)political beliefs.

Susan Krauss Whitbourne PhD, ABPP on April 23, 2024 in Fulfillment at Any Age

A good night’s sleep is crucial to mental and physical health, but for the anxiously attached, new relationship research shows that this can be hard to achieve.

Lawrence T. White Ph.D. on April 22, 2024 in Culture Conscious

A new study of rural villagers in Nicaragua finds a link between watching TV and a preference for lighter-skinned faces.

Walter Veit Ph.D. on April 21, 2024 in Science and Philosophy

An obituary and some personal reflections

Bella DePaulo Ph.D. on April 21, 2024 in Living Single

Young adults develop skills and resources when they are single. For men especially, experience living single is also helpful emotionally after a romantic relationship ends.

Jennifer Gerlach LCSW on April 21, 2024 in Beyond Mental Health

We are often taught that panic attacks last just 15-20 minutes. Is this true?

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Susan Krauss Whitbourne PhD, ABPP on April 20, 2024 in Fulfillment at Any Age

The idea that sarcasm is an appropriate humor is not universally shared. New research shows why it's not that smart to be a smart aleck if you want a healthy relationship.

Holly Parker, Ph.D. on April 19, 2024 in Your Future Self

Crying is a brave, healthy, and powerful act. A new study reveals that crying can sometimes be linked with fruitful therapy experiences.    

John Nosta on April 19, 2024 in The Digital Self

Discover how the fusion of memory and privacy in LLMs is poised to create the most powerful and personalized AI assistants, redefining the future of human-AI interaction.

Mark S. Gold M.D. on April 18, 2024 in Addiction Outlook

The latest findings on genetics reveals how genes may affect the risk for substance use disorders, and how they can help predict which treatment will work.

Susan A. Nolan, Ph.D., and Michael Kimball on April 18, 2024 in Misinformation Desk

A small nonprofit, Fake News Cleaner, fights misinformation in Taiwan among people of all ages, while the United States increasingly mandates media literacy training in schools.

Alexandra Brewis and Emily Mendenhall Ph.D. on April 17, 2024 in Diagnosis: Human

What happens when patients resist their doctors' diagnoses? Less than you might expect.

Gary Wenk Ph.D. on April 17, 2024 in Your Brain on Food

A recent study focused on how the contents of the diet and the timing of eating can influence the risk of depression and anxiety.

Johanna Peetz Ph.D. on April 17, 2024 in Financial Matters

What do couples fight about when they disagree about money and financial decisions? Here are the themes of conflict in social media and in the arguments couples remember.

Workplace Dynamics

Llewellyn E. van Zyl Ph.D. on April 17, 2024 in HappyBytes

New research uncovers the cultural differences in how employees want to be appreciated. Discover the secrets to tailoring your recognition strategy for diverse populations.

Evolutionary Psychology

Stanley Coren PhD., DSc, FRSC on April 17, 2024 in Canine Corner

Dark-eyed dogs are rated as friendlier and more puppy-like. Brown eyes may have been specifically selected for during the domestication of dogs.

Hye-Young Kim Ph.D. on April 16, 2024 in Consumer Behaviour

Why it helps for dieters to be reminded that they refused that slice of cake.

Michael Castleman M.A. on April 16, 2024 in All About Sex

Virginity loss is a milestone of sexual maturation. Many people equate it with first intercourse. Actually, it's usually a multi-year process that culminates in first intercourse.

Susan Krauss Whitbourne PhD, ABPP on April 16, 2024 in Fulfillment at Any Age

Couples in long-term relationships may feel that they’re in a rut. New research provides 5 ways to tell if it’s time to become unstuck.

Lantie Elisabeth Jorandby M.D. on April 15, 2024 in Use Your Brain

A recent study of ultra-processed foods paints a grim picture. Here’s the latest.

William A. Haseltine Ph.D. on April 14, 2024 in Best Practices in Health

Observing stress in others elevates our stress levels, impacting physiology and behavior.

Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D. on April 14, 2024 in The Asymmetric Brain

Many people feel better if a loved one hugs them when they feel down. A new study investigated how touch benefits physical and mental health.

Wendy L. Patrick, J.D., Ph.D. on April 13, 2024 in Why Bad Looks Good

Want to look younger? Why does the answer matter to you, and how does it impact how others see you?

Russell Ramsay, Ph.D., ABPP on April 12, 2024 in Rethinking Adult ADHD

So you think that ADHD is the result of the 21st century lifestyle in the United States? Maybe not.

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December 28, 2023

2023’s Mind-Bending Revelations in the Brain Sciences

This year the explosion of interest in AI had a profound impact on how experts in the fields of neuroscience and psychology think about biological intelligence and learning

By Gary Stix

This year was full of roiling debate and speculation about the prospect of machines with superhuman capabilities that might, sooner than expected, leave the human brain in the dust. A growing public awareness of ChatGPT and other so-called large language models (LLMs) dramatically expanded public awareness of artificial intelligence. In tandem, it raised the question of whether the human brain can keep up with the relentless pace of AI advances.

The most benevolent answer posits that humans and machines need not be cutthroat competitors. Researchers found one example of potential cooperation by getting AI to probe the infinite complexity of the ancient game of Go—which, like chess, has seen a computer topple the highest-level human players. A study published in March showed how people might learn from machines with such superhuman skills. And understanding ChatGPT’s prodigious abilities offers some inkling as to why an equivalence between the deep neural networks that underlie the famed chatbot and the trillions of connections in the human brain is constantly invoked.

Importantly, the machine learning incorporated into AI has not totally distracted mainstream neuroscience from avidly pursuing better insights into what has been called “the most complicated object in the known universe”: the brain. One of the grand challenges in science—understanding the nature of consciousness—received its due in June with the prominent showcasing of experiments that tested the validity of two competing theories, both of which purport to explain the underpinnings of the conscious self.

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The past 12 months provided lots of examples of impressive advances for you to store in your working memory. Now here’s a closer look at some of the standout mind and brain stories we covered in Scientific American in 2023.

AI Drives a Machine That Can Decode the Contents of Your Brain

Researchers proved the usefulness of merging AI with neuroscience by reporting how they combined a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan with AI-driven LLMs to try to figure out what is actually going on in a person’s head. Demonstrated at the University of Texas at Austin, the model replicated—with a fair degree of accuracy—the stories a person listened to or made up while in the scanner. The researchers recorded brain activity when the participant listened to certain words. The data from these scans were then used to train an AI model to detect patterns in how the brain activated in response to these words. Then the system took a new set of scans, and the AI predicted, based on its training, what a person heard during those scans. It may be some time before you can buy this kind of technology on Amazon; such deductive feats require a ton of training. The best the current system can do is provide a rough gist of what’s in your head.

Victories in Go Inspire Better Gameplay

When the “superhuman” AI created by Google’s outfit DeepMind defeated then champion Lee Sedol at the strategy game of Go in 2016, it spurred collective hand-wringing about what this kind of superiority might imply for humans (who had previously been felled by computers in chess). Some researchers took it upon themselves to study exactly how Go players reacted to the defeat . The findings, published in March, hold some optimism for the future of human collaborations with AI systems: The study revealed that the Go community took Sedol’s defeat as a learning experience. These players analyzed the program’s moves and discovered that some had never been seen before in human gameplay. They then incorporated those moves into their own games—an example of an AI-human interaction that ultimately improved human gameplay and offered ideas about how such collaborations can better human decision-making.

Will We Finally Understand Consciousness by the Year 2048?

Headlines around the world revealed the outcome of a 25-year-old bet between philosopher David Chalmers and neuroscientist Christof Koch. The wager, settled at a New York University conference in June, was over whether neuroscience would be able to supply a “clear” neural signature of consciousness by this year. Koch—who thought a quarter-century ago that the consciousness signature would be QED by now—had to reluctantly agree that this lofty goal had yet to be reached. He proceeded to fork over a case of fine wine to Chalmers, and then he vowed to revisit the matter in another 25 years to assess whether more “clarity” had been achieved toward hacking consciousness. The conference also highlighted the results of experiments intended to test two leading theories of consciousness; it was agreed that both of them need a lot more work.

Quashing Bad Thoughts Makes You Feel Better

Not everything in the brain sciences has to do with AI. Clinical psychologists have done stellar work without the need to necessarily draw upon the resources of  an LLM. One simple at-home type of step has to do with turning off a negative flow of thoughts that might be streaming inside your head. The idea that if you ignore distressing thoughts and imagery, they’ll inevitably come back to haunt you later does not measure up, according to a study by researchers at the University of Cambridge in England. This is great news for people with anxiety, depression or trauma. Suppression of this flow of negativity really does seem to ratchet down the intensity of one’s inner fears.

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• Published: 16 February 2023

New and emerging approaches to treat psychiatric disorders

• Katherine W. Scangos   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7983-7767 1 ,
• Matthew W. State   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1624-8302 1 ,
• Andrew H. Miller   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8260-7997 2 ,
• Justin T. Baker 3 &
• Leanne M. Williams   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9987-7360 4 , 5  

Nature Medicine volume  29 ,  pages 317–333 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Psychiatric disorders are highly prevalent, often devastating diseases that negatively impact the lives of millions of people worldwide. Although their etiological and diagnostic heterogeneity has long challenged drug discovery, an emerging circuit-based understanding of psychiatric illness is offering an important alternative to the current reliance on trial and error, both in the development and in the clinical application of treatments. Here we review new and emerging treatment approaches, with a particular emphasis on the revolutionary potential of brain-circuit-based interventions for precision psychiatry. Limitations of circuit models, challenges of bringing precision therapeutics to market and the crucial advances needed to overcome these obstacles are presented.

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Scangos, K.W., State, M.W., Miller, A.H. et al. New and emerging approaches to treat psychiatric disorders. Nat Med 29 , 317–333 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02197-0

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April 23, 2024

Research in Context: Treating depression

Finding better approaches.

While effective treatments for major depression are available, there is still room for improvement. This special Research in Context feature explores the development of more effective ways to treat depression, including personalized treatment approaches and both old and new drugs.

Everyone has a bad day sometimes. People experience various types of stress in the course of everyday life. These stressors can cause sadness, anxiety, hopelessness, frustration, or guilt. You may not enjoy the activities you usually do. These feelings tend to be only temporary. Once circumstances change, and the source of stress goes away, your mood usually improves. But sometimes, these feelings don’t go away. When these feelings stick around for at least two weeks and interfere with your daily activities, it’s called major depression, or clinical depression.

In 2021, 8.3% of U.S. adults experienced major depression. That’s about 21 million people. Among adolescents, the prevalence was much greater—more than 20%. Major depression can bring decreased energy, difficulty thinking straight, sleep problems, loss of appetite, and even physical pain. People with major depression may become unable to meet their responsibilities at work or home. Depression can also lead people to use alcohol or drugs or engage in high-risk activities. In the most extreme cases, depression can drive people to self-harm or even suicide.

The good news is that effective treatments are available. But current treatments have limitations. That’s why NIH-funded researchers have been working to develop more effective ways to treat depression. These include finding ways to predict whether certain treatments will help a given patient. They're also trying to develop more effective drugs or, in some cases, find new uses for existing drugs.

Finding the right treatments

The most common treatments for depression include psychotherapy, medications, or a combination. Mild depression may be treated with psychotherapy. Moderate to severe depression often requires the addition of medication.

Several types of psychotherapy have been shown to help relieve depression symptoms. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy helps people to recognize harmful ways of thinking and teaches them how to change these. Some researchers are working to develop new therapies to enhance people’s positive emotions. But good psychotherapy can be hard to access due to the cost, scheduling difficulties, or lack of available providers. The recent growth of telehealth services for mental health has improved access in some cases.

There are many antidepressant drugs on the market. Different drugs will work best on different patients. But it can be challenging to predict which drugs will work for a given patient. And it can take anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks to know whether a drug is working. Finding an effective drug can involve a long period of trial and error, with no guarantee of results.

If depression doesn’t improve with psychotherapy or medications, brain stimulation therapies could be used. Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, uses electrodes to send electric current into the brain. A newer technique, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), stimulates the brain using magnetic fields. These treatments must be administered by specially trained health professionals.

“A lot of patients, they kind of muddle along, treatment after treatment, with little idea whether something’s going to work,” says psychiatric researcher Dr. Amit Etkin.

One reason it’s difficult to know which antidepressant medications will work is that there are likely different biological mechanisms that can cause depression. Two people with similar symptoms may both be diagnosed with depression, but the causes of their symptoms could be different. As NIH depression researcher Dr. Carlos Zarate explains, “we believe that there’s not one depression, but hundreds of depressions.”

Depression may be due to many factors. Genetics can put certain people at risk for depression. Stressful situations, physical health conditions, and medications may contribute. And depression can also be part of a more complicated mental disorder, such as bipolar disorder. All of these can affect which treatment would be best to use.

Etkin has been developing methods to distinguish patients with different types of depression based on measurable biological features, or biomarkers. The idea is that different types of patients would respond differently to various treatments. Etkin calls this approach “precision psychiatry.”

One such type of biomarker is electrical activity in the brain. A technique called electroencephalography, or EEG, measures electrical activity using electrodes placed on the scalp. When Etkin was at Stanford University, he led a research team that developed a machine-learning algorithm to predict treatment response based on EEG signals. The team applied the algorithm to data from a clinical trial of the antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft) involving more than 300 people.

EEG data for the participants were collected at the outset. Participants were then randomly assigned to take either sertraline or an inactive placebo for eight weeks. The team found a specific set of signals that predicted the participants’ responses to sertraline. The same neural “signature” also predicted which patients with depression responded to medication in a separate group.

Etkin’s team also examined this neural signature in a set of patients who were treated with TMS and psychotherapy. People who were predicted to respond less to sertraline had a greater response to the TMS/psychotherapy combination.

Etkin continues to develop methods for personalized depression treatment through his company, Alto Neuroscience. He notes that EEG has the advantage of being low-cost and accessible; data can even be collected in a patient’s home. That’s important for being able to get personalized treatments to the large number of people they could help. He’s also working on developing antidepressant drugs targeted to specific EEG profiles. Candidate drugs are in clinical trials now.

“It’s not like a pie-in-the-sky future thing, 20-30 years from now,” Etkin explains. “This is something that could be in people's hands within the next five years.”

New tricks for old drugs

While some researchers focus on matching patients with their optimal treatments, others aim to find treatments that can work for many different patients. It turns out that some drugs we’ve known about for decades might be very effective antidepressants, but we didn’t recognize their antidepressant properties until recently.

One such drug is ketamine. Ketamine has been used as an anesthetic for more than 50 years. Around the turn of this century, researchers started to discover its potential as an antidepressant. Zarate and others have found that, unlike traditional antidepressants that can take weeks to take effect, ketamine can improve depression in as little as one day. And a single dose can have an effect for a week or more. In 2019, the FDA approved a form of ketamine for treating depression that is resistant to other treatments.

But ketamine has drawbacks of its own. It’s a dissociative drug, meaning that it can make people feel disconnected from their body and environment. It also has the potential for addiction and misuse. For these reasons, it’s a controlled substance and can only be administered in a doctor’s office or clinic.

Another class of drugs being studied as possible antidepressants are psychedelics. These include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. These drugs can temporarily alter a person’s mood, thoughts, and perceptions of reality. Some have historically been used for religious rituals, but they are also used recreationally.

In clinical studies, psychedelics are typically administered in combination with psychotherapy. This includes several preparatory sessions with a therapist in the weeks before getting the drug, and several sessions in the weeks following to help people process their experiences. The drugs are administered in a controlled setting.

Dr. Stephen Ross, co-director of the New York University Langone Health Center for Psychedelic Medicine, describes a typical session: “It takes place in a living room-like setting. The person is prepared, and they state their intention. They take the drug, they lie supine, they put on eye shades and preselected music, and two therapists monitor them.” Sessions last for as long as the acute effects of the drug last, which is typically several hours. This is a healthcare-intensive intervention given the time and personnel needed.

In 2016, Ross led a clinical trial examining whether psilocybin-assisted therapy could reduce depression and anxiety in people with cancer. According to Ross, as many as 40% of people with cancer have clinically significant anxiety and depression. The study showed that a single psilocybin session led to substantial reductions in anxiety and depression compared with a placebo. These reductions were evident as soon as one day after psilocybin administration. Six months later, 60-80% of participants still had reduced depression and anxiety.

Psychedelic drugs frequently trigger mystical experiences in the people who take them. “People can feel a sense…that their consciousness is part of a greater consciousness or that all energy is one,” Ross explains. “People can have an experience that for them feels more ‘real’ than regular reality. They can feel transported to a different dimension of reality.”

About three out of four participants in Ross’s study said it was among the most meaningful experiences of their lives. And the degree of mystical experience correlated with the drug’s therapeutic effect. A long-term follow-up study found that the effects of the treatment continued more than four years later.

If these results seem too good to be true, Ross is quick to point out that it was a small study, with only 29 participants, although similar studies from other groups have yielded similar results. Psychedelics haven’t yet been shown to be effective in a large, controlled clinical trial. Ross is now conducting a trial with 200 people to see if the results of his earlier study pan out in this larger group. For now, though, psychedelics remain experimental drugs—approved for testing, but not for routine medical use.

Unlike ketamine, psychedelics aren’t considered addictive. But they, too, carry risks, which certain conditions may increase. Psychedelics can cause cardiovascular complications. They can cause psychosis in people who are predisposed to it. In uncontrolled settings, they have the risk of causing anxiety, confusion, and paranoia—a so-called “bad trip”—that can lead the person taking the drug to harm themself or others. This is why psychedelic-assisted therapy takes place in such tightly controlled settings. That increases the cost and complexity of the therapy, which may prevent many people from having access to it.

Better, safer drugs

Despite the promise of ketamine or psychedelics, their drawbacks have led some researchers to look for drugs that work like them but with fewer side effects.

Depression is thought to be caused by the loss of connections between nerve cells, or neurons, in certain regions of the brain. Ketamine and psychedelics both promote the brain’s ability to repair these connections, a quality called plasticity. If we could understand how these drugs encourage plasticity, we might be able to design drugs that can do so without the side effects.

Dr. David Olson at the University of California, Davis studies how psychedelics work at the cellular and molecular levels. The drugs appear to promote plasticity by binding to a receptor in cells called the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor (5-HT2AR). But many other compounds also bind 5-HT2AR without promoting plasticity. In a recent NIH-funded study, Olson showed that 5-HT2AR can be found both inside and on the surface of the cell. Only compounds that bound to the receptor inside the cells promoted plasticity. This suggests that a drug has to be able to get into the cell to promote plasticity.

Moreover, not all drugs that bind 5-HT2AR have psychedelic effects. Olson’s team has developed a molecular sensor, called psychLight, that can identify which compounds that bind 5-HT2AR have psychedelic effects. Using psychLight, they identified compounds that are not psychedelic but still have rapid and long-lasting antidepressant effects in animal models. He’s founded a company, Delix Therapeutics, to further develop drugs that promote plasticity.

Meanwhile, Zarate and his colleagues have been investigating a compound related to ketamine called hydroxynorketamine (HNK). Ketamine is converted to HNK in the body, and this process appears to be required for ketamine’s antidepressant effects. Administering HNK directly produced antidepressant-like effects in mice. At the same time, it did not cause the dissociative side effects and addiction caused by ketamine. Zarate’s team has already completed phase I trials of HNK in people showing that it’s safe. Phase II trials to find out whether it’s effective are scheduled to begin soon.  

“What [ketamine and psychedelics] are doing for the field is they’re helping us realize that it is possible to move toward a repair model versus a symptom mitigation model,” Olson says. Unlike existing antidepressants, which just relieve the symptoms of depression, these drugs appear to fix the underlying causes. That’s likely why they work faster and produce longer-lasting effects. This research is bringing us closer to having safer antidepressants that only need to be taken once in a while, instead of every day.

—by Brian Doctrow, Ph.D.

Related Links

• How Psychedelic Drugs May Help with Depression
• Biosensor Advances Drug Discovery
• Neural Signature Predicts Antidepressant Response
• How Ketamine Relieves Symptoms of Depression
• Protein Structure Reveals How LSD Affects the Brain
• Predicting The Usefulness of Antidepressants
• Depression Screening and Treatment in Adults
• Serotonin Transporter Structure Revealed
• Placebo Effect in Depression Treatment
• When Sadness Lingers: Understanding and Treating Depression
• Psychedelic and Dissociative Drugs

References:  An electroencephalographic signature predicts antidepressant response in major depression.  Wu W, Zhang Y, Jiang J, Lucas MV, Fonzo GA, Rolle CE, Cooper C, Chin-Fatt C, Krepel N, Cornelssen CA, Wright R, Toll RT, Trivedi HM, Monuszko K, Caudle TL, Sarhadi K, Jha MK, Trombello JM, Deckersbach T, Adams P, McGrath PJ, Weissman MM, Fava M, Pizzagalli DA, Arns M, Trivedi MH, Etkin A.  Nat Biotechnol.  2020 Feb 10. doi: 10.1038/s41587-019-0397-3. Epub 2020 Feb 10. PMID: 32042166. Rapid and sustained symptom reduction following psilocybin treatment for anxiety and depression in patients with life-threatening cancer: a randomized controlled trial. Ross S, Bossis A, Guss J, Agin-Liebes G, Malone T, Cohen B, Mennenga SE, Belser A, Kalliontzi K, Babb J, Su Z, Corby P, Schmidt BL. J Psychopharmacol . 2016 Dec;30(12):1165-1180. doi: 10.1177/0269881116675512. PMID: 27909164. Long-term follow-up of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for psychiatric and existential distress in patients with life-threatening cancer. Agin-Liebes GI, Malone T, Yalch MM, Mennenga SE, Ponté KL, Guss J, Bossis AP, Grigsby J, Fischer S, Ross S. J Psychopharmacol . 2020 Feb;34(2):155-166. doi: 10.1177/0269881119897615. Epub 2020 Jan 9. PMID: 31916890. Psychedelics promote neuroplasticity through the activation of intracellular 5-HT2A receptors.  Vargas MV, Dunlap LE, Dong C, Carter SJ, Tombari RJ, Jami SA, Cameron LP, Patel SD, Hennessey JJ, Saeger HN, McCorvy JD, Gray JA, Tian L, Olson DE.  Science . 2023 Feb 17;379(6633):700-706. doi: 10.1126/science.adf0435. Epub 2023 Feb 16. PMID: 36795823. Psychedelic-inspired drug discovery using an engineered biosensor.  Dong C, Ly C, Dunlap LE, Vargas MV, Sun J, Hwang IW, Azinfar A, Oh WC, Wetsel WC, Olson DE, Tian L.  Cell . 2021 Apr 8: S0092-8674(21)00374-3. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.043. Epub 2021 Apr 28. PMID: 33915107. NMDAR inhibition-independent antidepressant actions of ketamine metabolites. Zanos P, Moaddel R, Morris PJ, Georgiou P, Fischell J, Elmer GI, Alkondon M, Yuan P, Pribut HJ, Singh NS, Dossou KS, Fang Y, Huang XP, Mayo CL, Wainer IW, Albuquerque EX, Thompson SM, Thomas CJ, Zarate CA Jr, Gould TD. Nature . 2016 May 26;533(7604):481-6. doi: 10.1038/nature17998. Epub 2016 May 4. PMID: 27144355.

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Learning-Induced Plasticity Enhances the Capacity of Visual Working Memory Markus Conci, Nuno Busch, Robert Rozek, and Hermann Müller  

It is intuitively plausible that meaningful objects can be remembered better than meaningless objects. For instance, people are typically better at memorizing a picture of a cookie than that of a green square. However, previous visual working memory (VWM) studies have often confounded potential benefits accruing from preexisting (long-term) object knowledge with concurrent variations in perceptual and familiarity-related properties of the to-be-memorized stimuli. Improved short-term retention could thus be owing to increased familiarity or additional perceptual details provided with these objects. To eliminate such confounds and isolate the influence of knowledge, the current study presented observers with, for them, initially meaningless stimuli (Chinese characters), a subset of which was associated with specific meanings (animal pictures or everyday objects) during the experiment. The results revealed that acquiring a meaning association of Chinese characters with real-world objects indeed improved VWM, thus demonstrating that short-term retention can be boosted by associative long-term memory (LTM). 

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At least four-in-ten U.S. adults have faced high levels of psychological distress during COVID-19 pandemic

At least four-in-ten U.S. adults (41%) have experienced high levels of psychological distress at least once since the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak , according to a new Pew Research Center analysis that examines survey responses from the same Americans over time.

Experiences of high psychological distress are especially widespread among young adults. A 58% majority of those ages 18 to 29 have experienced high levels of psychological distress at least once across four Center surveys conducted between March 2020 and September 2022.

This assessment of the public’s psychological reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak is based on surveys of members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) conducted online several times since March 2020. The mental health questions were included on four surveys. The first survey was conducted among 11,537 U.S. adults March 19-24, 2020; a second survey with the question series was conducted April 20-26, 2020, with a sample of 10,139 adults; a third survey was conducted February 16-21, 2021, among 10,121 adults; and the most recent survey was conducted September 13-18, 2022, among 10,588 adults. Additionally, researchers analyzed a subsample of 5,007 respondents who participated in each of the four surveys to examine psychological distress over time.

The ATP is an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The surveys are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. The group of respondents who participated in each of the four surveys was similarly weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population. Here is more information about the ATP .

The psychological distress index used here measures the total amount of mental distress that individuals reported experiencing in the past seven days, as captured by questions measuring sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and physical reactions experienced when thinking about the outbreak. The low distress category includes about half of the sample; very few in that group said they were experiencing any of the types of distress most or all of the time. The middle category includes roughly a quarter of the sample, while the high distress category includes 21%. A large majority of those in the high distress group reported experiencing at least one type of distress most or all of the time in the past seven days.

This research benefited from the advice and counsel of the COVID-19 and mental health measurement group from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH): Catherine K. Ettman (JHSPH); M. Daniele Fallin (JHSPH, now at Emory University); Calliope Holingue (Kennedy Krieger Institute, JHSPH); Renee Johnson (JHSPH); Luke Kalb (Kennedy Krieger Institute, JHSPH); Frauke Kreuter (University of Maryland, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich); Elizabeth Stuart (JHSPH); Johannes Thrul (JHSPH); and Cindy Veldhuis (Columbia University, now at Northwestern University).

Here are the mental health questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and the detailed survey methodology statements for surveys conducted in March 2020 , late April 2020 , February 2021 and September 2022 .

The analysis highlights the fluid nature of psychological distress among Americans, as measured by a five-item index that asks about experiences such as loneliness, anxiety and trouble sleeping.

In the September 2022 survey, 21% of U.S. adults fell into the high psychological distress category; in each of four surveys, no more than 24% of adults have fallen into this category. But because individuals experience varying levels of distress at different points in time, a significantly larger share of Americans (41%) have experienced high psychological distress at least once across the four surveys conducted over the past two and a half years.

In addition to age, experiences of high psychological distress are strongly tied to disability status and income. About two-thirds (66%) of adults who have a disability or health condition that keeps them from participating fully in work, school, housework or other activities reported a high level of distress at least once across the four surveys. And those with lower family incomes (53%) are more likely than those from middle- (38%) and high-income households (30%) to have experienced high psychological distress at least once since March 2020.

See also: In CDC survey, 37% of U.S. high school students report regular mental health struggles during COVID-19 pandemic

While many Americans faced challenges with mental health before the coronavirus pandemic, public health officials warned in early 2020 that the pandemic could exacerbate psychological distress. The negative effects of the outbreak have hit some people harder than others, with women, lower-income adults , and Black and Hispanic adults among the groups who have faced disparate health or financial impacts.

Americans’ personal levels of concern about getting or spreading the coronavirus have continued to decline over the course of 2022. The coronavirus is one of many potential sources of stress , including the economy and worries about the future of the nation.

Psychological distress levels have shifted for most Americans during the pandemic

Amid the shifting landscape of COVID-19 in the United States , just 35% of Americans have registered the same level of psychological distress – whether high, medium or low – across all four surveys conducted by the Center since March 2020.

Instead, a majority of respondents (60%) moved in and out of levels of psychological distress. Psychological distress increased for some but decreased for others. One illustration of the fluid nature of these experiences is that while 41% of U.S. adults faced high psychological distress at least once across four surveys, just 6% experienced high distress in all four surveys. Nearly five times as many (28%) experienced low distress in all of the surveys.

The index of psychological distress is based on measures of five types of possible distress experienced in the past week, such as anxiety or sleeplessness, that are adapted from standard psychological measures. As used in the current survey, the questions are not a clinical measure nor a diagnostic tool; they describe people’s emotional experiences during the week prior to the interview.

Only one question refers specifically to the coronavirus outbreak. It asks how often in the past week Americans have “had physical reactions, such as sweating, trouble breathing, nausea, or a pounding heart” when thinking about their experience with the coronavirus outbreak. In the most recent September survey, 14% of Americans answered this question affirmatively. In March 2020, in the early stages of the outbreak, 18% said they had experienced this.  

Trouble sleeping is one of the most common forms of distress measured in the surveys. In the latest survey, about two-thirds of adults (64%) reported trouble sleeping at least some or a little of the time during the past week. A similar share (61%) said they had felt nervous, anxious or on edge.

Experiences with depression and loneliness also register with sizable shares of Americans. In the most recent survey, 46% of adults said they had felt depressed at least one or two days during the past week, and 42% said they had felt lonely.

All four surveys have included a question about positive feelings, though it is not part of the psychological distress index. Overall, 78% of U.S. adults said they had felt hopeful about the future at least one or two days in the past week, according to the latest survey from September. However, 22% of adults said they had felt hopeful about the future rarely or none of the time during the past week.

Note: Here are the mental health questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and the detailed survey methodology statements for surveys conducted in March 2020 , late April 2020 , February 2021 and September 2022 .

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Giancarlo Pasquini is a research associate focusing on science and society research at Pew Research Center

Scott Keeter is a senior survey advisor at Pew Research Center

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