Psychology & Psychiatry

Over the past decades, some lawyers have started using brain imaging scans as evidence during criminal trials, to provide a possible explanation for the criminal behavior of defendants. This was justified by recent neuroscientific studies, which found that some people who commit crimes present differences in specific parts of the brain. Yet a key question remains: are these brain changes causal, compensatory or incidental to the behavior?

When people are stressed, they make riskier decisions.

Researchers have found that even after recovery, individuals who previously experienced depression may retain a heightened sensitivity to negative cues and face challenges in regulating responses to potential punishment.

“Sleeping on it,” especially dropping deeper than a doze, might help people gain insight into certain kinds of tasks, according to a study published in PLOS Biology by Anika Löwe and colleagues.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, levels of clinically elevated depression and anxiety symptoms in children have skyrocketed worldwide and parents are feeling increasingly helpless.

The military prides itself on loyalty and respect but those values must extend to how they treat those who leave service, new research from Flinders University reveals.

When humans repeat specific patterns of behavior on a regular basis, these behaviors can become habits. Some habits, such as exercising in the morning, hygienic rituals, eating healthy or meditation practices, can be beneficial. Others, such as smoking, eating while watching TV or various forms of procrastination, can have detrimental consequences.

Whether you are solving a puzzle, navigating a shopping center or writing an email, how well you do will not only depend on the task at hand but also on your internal cognitive state. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute in Frankfurt have now shown that such cognitive states can be identified from facial expressions—and can even be used to accurately predict how quickly and successfully a task will be solved.

While many people pride themselves on never forgetting a face, it’s just not so easy for others.

A novel study aimed at disentangling the neurological underpinnings of depression shows that multiple brain profiles may manifest as the same clinical symptoms, providing evidence to support the presence of both one-to-one and many-to-one heterogeneity in depression. The findings of the study in Biological Psychiatry, highlight the layered and complex interactions between clinical symptoms and neurobiological sources of variation.