Lotus Psychology

21/11/2025

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20/10/2025

A few years of parenting can have lifetime implications. This video tries to explain some parenting patterns of today and their consequences.

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21/09/2025

The theme for World Alzheimer's Day 2025 is "Ask About Dementia," encouraging open conversations, questions, and greater understanding to foster community support.

27/08/2025

Elderly Positivity Bias May Signal Early Cognitive Decline

Aging brains may lean toward optimism, but new evidence shows this comes with a cost.

Researchers found that older adults who misread emotional expressions as positive performed worse on cognitive tasks and displayed brain structure and connectivity changes.

The bias did not correlate with depression, indicating it reflects cognitive decline rather than emotional health.

Scientists believe positivity bias could provide a valuable tool for detecting early dementia.

25/08/2025

How Stress Types Differently Impact Brain and Behavior

A new study highlights how acute and chronic stress affect the brain differently, with acute stress linked to anxiety-like behaviors and chronic stress tied to depressive symptoms.

The research, conducted in male and female rats, also revealed key s*x differences in stress responses, suggesting that males are more vulnerable to anxiety after sudden stress exposure.

Chronic mild stress, meanwhile, was more strongly associated with biochemical and behavioral signs of depression.

These findings underscore the need to consider both stress type and s*x when developing treatments for stress-related mental disorders.

19/08/2025

“Eureka!”: Surprising Brain Clues Predict When Inspiration Will Hit

Researchers have discovered that sudden moments of insight may not be as unpredictable as they seem.

By observing mathematicians solving difficult problems, scientists found that behavior became less structured and more novel just before breakthroughs occurred.

This behavioral unpredictability was measured using tools from information theory.

The findings suggest that creativity leaves identifiable traces, opening a new way to study and even anticipate insights.

18/08/2025

Bipolar Mood Shifts Linked to Insulin Signaling in the Pancreas

A new study reveals that mood cycling in bipolar disorder may be partly driven by a pancreas–brain feedback system.

Using human-derived pancreatic cells, scientists found that increased expression of the bipolar susceptibility gene RORβ disrupts insulin secretion.

In mice, boosting RORβ in pancreatic β cells reduced insulin during the light phase, causing depression-like behaviors linked to overactive hippocampal neurons.

Later, this overactivity stimulated insulin release in the dark phase, producing mania-like behaviors alongside reduced hippocampal activity.

The pattern shows how circadian timing and metabolic changes can work together to influence mood.

The discovery could lead to novel treatments targeting peripheral organs as well as the brain.

06/08/2025

Promise of Reward Changes How We Pay Attention

The human brain doesn’t just passively observe the world—it calculates where the rewards are.

In a new study, participants played visual games for points, revealing how rewards modulate attention and decision-making differently.

Visual attention (or sensitivity) improved when the reward for spotting subtle changes was high, shown by focused eye movements and heightened brain activity.

But bias—the willingness to guess that a change occurred—shifted without these typical attention markers, suggesting a different decision-making circuit is at play.

This is the first evidence that the brain’s attention and bias systems respond to reward through separate neural routes.

Understanding this could shape how we design learning tools and treat conditions like gambling addiction or ADHD.

05/08/2025

How Kids Learn What Emotions Really Mean

Children’s ability to interpret emotions evolves as their cognitive skills mature.

The study found that younger children rely heavily on visual facial cues, while older ones draw on learned emotional concepts.

Using EEG, word association tasks, and behavioral games, researchers tracked how emotion processing transforms between ages 5 and 10.

Results showed that while perception remains stable, understanding becomes more precise and differentiated with age.

This developmental shift reveals how experience and knowledge shape emotional insight.

These findings may guide strategies to support emotional learning in early education and therapy.