Field: Psychology

A trial of patients with treatment-resistant depression found ketamine to be at least as effective as electroconvulsive therapy.

You might feel like coffee gives you the energy to get through the day – but chances are, you're not getting as much as you think.

Eudaimonic pursuits are outwardly focused, whereas hedonic activities are concerned with self-centered fulfillment.

Resilience is vital for dealing with failure, and stems from three traits: self-esteem, psychological flexibility, and emotional regulation.

Researchers have turned to this unique genetic population to find insights into how our genes play a role in mental health.

New research links the gut microbiome, an ecosystem of viruses, bacteria, and fungi, to the development of anorexia nervosa.

LSD flashbacks have been studied for decades, though scientists still aren't quite sure why some people experience them.

The last decade has seen a steep drop in adult friendships and a worrying increase in loneliness. Is this the cost of our modern life?

More than a third of Americans don’t log enough hours in bed, provoking serious health impacts. Diet is an important, under-recognized reason.

Online dating is so mainstream that you’re an outlier if you haven’t met your partner on an app — so why not AI?

As people grow older, they gain greater control of their feelings. How do they do that — and can they teach young people a thing or two?

What is FTD, the type of dementia that leads to inappropriate social behavior, impulsivity, and loss of empathy?

The famous placebo effect has a long, rich history — it certainly had an outsized role in the medicine of centuries past.

Guided conversations with the terminally ill are popular with patients, families and doctors. But are they truly beneficial?

Macaque monkeys reduce their social networks as they get older – research suggests evolutionary roots of the same pattern in elderly people.

Most people care what others think of them. In many situations, that can be leveraged for the common good — cooperation.

A new hypothesis explains depression as an altered state of consciousness, which could help researchers make an objective diagnostic test.

MIT researchers trained logic-aware language models to reduce harmful stereotypes like gender and racial biases.

To what extent will our psychological vulnerabilities shape our interactions with emerging technologies? AI will be the test.

Some neuroscientists think psychedelics and the hallucinations they induce could help reveal how we generate our perceptions of the world.

Researchers found that patients who slept less than six hours a night were 27% more likely to have an infection.

Digital distractions have become a ubiquitous part of work and life. But these distractions begin with emotional discomfort.

We are living in a period of living and traveling in space. If we continue on this trajectory, we will develop new spiritual views.

End of life patients face existential and spiritual challenges other patients do not. Psychedelics may be uniquely suited to helping them.

In transhumanism, "The Singularity" promises possibility of uploading your consciousness into silicon, guaranteeing a kind of immortality.

Researchers have begun to study yoga's effects and are finding that it has great benefits for both mental and physical health.

The benefits of practicing mindfulness carry over into everyday life – even when you aren’t actively meditating.

Reasoning by yourself is a much weaker tool than contributing your reasoning to a group and being flexible to changing your mind.

Lateral thinking is a way of approaching problems. It deliberately forgoes obvious approaches in favor of oblique or unexpected ones.

Researchers concluded that exercise should be prescribed to patients with mental health issues before psychiatric drugs.

Taking small steps to help your circadian rhythm adjust to winter could mean happier times during what are literally the darkest days.

Researchers suggest that dreaming helps us generalize our experiences so that we can adapt to new circumstances.

A psychiatrist and neuroscientist began to think of prescribing exercise as telling patients to take their “exercise pills.”

Personalized learning has to potential to prepare learners who are self-regulating and self-motivated for life beyond school.

Some anxiety is normal and, in fact, necessary and helpful. But what happens when it interferes with a child's daily functioning?

Most types of antidepressants work by increasing neurotransmitter levels throughout the brain, which take weeks. A new drug takes hours.

Happiness emerges from resilience, which helps children regulate difficult emotions and stressful situations.

Kids' brains develop in four main stages. Each has its own particular set of advancements and challenges for parents.

New research is revealing how physical activity can reduce and even ward off depression, anxiety and other psychological ailments.

Whether you’re trying to break a bad habit or start a good one, psychologists have some tips to get you started.

College in prison reduces the chance of reoffending, but it also dramatically changes the perspective of the professors who teach them.

Positive and negative memories are stored in different parts of the brain, raising the possibility of therapeutic memory manipulation.

A new playground in Melbourne’s Southbank is the work of artist Mike Hewson, who introduces "risk" back into play.

With ketamine showing potential as an antidepressant, researchers investigate another anesthetic: nitrous oxide, or "laughing gas."

People who chose change over inaction, regardless of the decision, self-reported being better off and happier after six months.

In his later years, psychologist Abraham Maslow added a new apex to the pyramid of human needs: self-transcendence.

A scientific review found that withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and antipsychotics can last for over a year.

Entire religions are constructed around theories of an afterlife, but former monk Stephen Batchelor lists three reasons you won't come back.

People tend to think they should speak less than half the time to be likable but more than half the time to be interesting.

Creatine shows promise as a treatment for depression, boosting the effects of SSRIs and potentially working as a standalone medication.

One possible explanation of near death experiences is that our brains are flooded with a hallucinogenic, DMT.

After being separated as toddlers, two identical twins were raised apart in the US and South Korea.

Americans are more likely to cooperate with strangers today than they were in the 1950s, according to the American Psychological Association.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle proposed that humans are social, rational animals who seek to “live well.”

In the long run, procrastination isn’t an effective way of managing emotions and causes health and work setbacks.

People are being diagnosed with depression earlier than in the past because of a decrease in stigma and better diagnostic guidelines.

Kaizen asks us to make small changes, slowly and over time. It's a hard skill to master in an age of instant gratification.

Life's modern distractions, such as news and social media, have overwhelmed our evolutionarily designed attention spans.

What if there is nothing special about self-awareness? What if it is just evolutionary dead weight, bound to disappear soon?

Mathematicians tell us that, to maximize the chances of the best outcome, we ought to ditch the first 37% of any options.

The Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has sent a memo supportive of psychedelic therapies. What does that mean for the field?

UNC researchers have found evidence that the genetic makeup of a crucial receptor may impact your psychedelic experience.

The 5-hour rule asks us to devote at least one hour a day to learning, experimenting, and reflecting. Here's how to make it work for you.

Yin-Yang symbolizes not a conflict or struggle but shows that nothing in life is solely either this or that.

Nurturing dads raise more emotionally intelligent children, helping make society more respectful and equitable.

Exposure therapy is a reliable technique for overcoming irrational fears, but it currently suffers high patient dropout rates.

Buddhist psychologists, Robert Thurman and Sharon Salzberg, have identified "Four Enemies" that are obstacles to a happy, fulfilled life.

Crows and the rest of the corvid family keep turning out to be smarter and smarter. A corvid's pallium has more neurons than a great ape's.

A study by Yale researchers finds that reading books in particular returns cognitive gains that increase longevity.

After decades, the Department of Veterans Affairs is once again investigating psychedelic therapies.

Research shows if you cultivate a more optimistic mindset, you might further increase your chances for a long life.

Google can make AI seem sentient, but the AI has no understanding of what it is saying. But humans are easily fooled by conversational AI.

Unexpected outcomes trigger release of noradrenaline, which helps the brain focus its attention and learn from the event.

Researchers discovered that the way fungi independently gained the ability to produce psilocybin is because of horizontal gene transfer.

Every social interaction is a game of chess, trying to get inside someone’s head to navigate what they are thinking or what they will do.

Scientists in the relatively new field of “geopsychology” are seeing links between personality and location.

When you struggle with anxiety or depression, sex may be the last thing on your mind. But it can be a tool for well-being.

Researchers show that intelligence is not the most important factor in leadership, simply talking the most is.

Fake faces created by artificial intelligence (AI) are considered more trustworthy than images of real people, a study finds.

Seeing one’s life flashing before one’s eye might be our ultimate attempt – however desperate – to find meaning in our lives.

To better understand how these effects manifest in the brain, we analyzed over 6,000 written testimonials of hallucinogenic experiences.

A new study suggests that the causes of these disorders are hidden in "dark genes," which may account for the enigma of their development.

The brain appears to remember immune responses, and memories can trigger them to happen again.

A psychological treatment for chronic back pain left two-thirds of study participants with little-to-no pain after just one month.

An IBS treatment app that facilitates cognitive behavior therapy helped trial participants manage symptoms and improve their quality of life.

Results from the first phase 3 trial of using MDMA for PTSD along with talk therapy found the drug to be effective.

A small study has provided evidence of psilocybin for depression working as well as a popular SSRI.

New research shows that having an attitude of gratitude is key to healthy relationships, and it can virally impact society.

NYU’s Center for Psychedelic Medicine will serve as the nexus for the school’s psychedelic research, as well as provide training to budding researchers.

A new, small study in Australia suggests that oral ketamine treatment may help treat suicidal thoughts.

A pacesetting institution, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is opening a psychedelic research center focusing on MDMA and trauma.

Some experiment designs need to deceive. These former magicians have some advice.

If we can better understand the evolution of our moral compass, psychologists believe we can begin working toward a society built on empathy over judgement.

Science is finally proving that the act of apologizing can save and strengthen a relationship that’s been damaged by conflict.

Philosophers have been making the claim that free will is an illusion for hundreds of years. What does modern neuroscience have to say about it?

The Field Trip app aims to help people get some of the benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy outside the confines of a clinic.

The pandemic has therapists' couches off limits. A new study finds that remote therapy may be as effective for depression as face-to-face, so I gave it a try.

The benefits of MDMA therapy as a PTSD treatment appear to last for at least a year, according to a newly published paper.

An app created by a sex therapist is helping couples learn how to have better sex by exploring their own desires and discovering their partner’s.