Psychology

Semaglutide Reduced Heavy Alcohol Drinking by 13.7 Percentage Points vs Placebo in 26-Week Trial of Adults With AUD and Obesity

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Semaglutide Reduced Heavy Alcohol Drinking by 13.7 Percentage Points vs Placebo in 26-Week Trial of Adults With AUD and Obesity

TL;DR: A 2026 randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial in The Lancet (N=108 adults with both moderate-to-severe alcohol use disorder and obesity) found that 26 weeks of once-weekly 2.4 mg semaglutide reduced heavy drinking days by 41.1 percentage points compared with a 26.4-point reduction on placebo — a 13.7-point treatment difference, with parallel drops in alcohol craving, …

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Group Exercise in Psychiatric Care Built Routine and Belonging

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Group Exercise in Psychiatric Care Built Routine and Belonging

TL;DR: A 2026 mixed-methods study in BMC Psychiatry found that adults in psychiatric treatment valued group-based physical activity less as generic exercise and more as structured, socially supported care, with 97% of questionnaire participants saying they felt supported by activity leaders. Key Findings Real-world psychiatric care: The program was embedded in an Oslo outpatient clinic …

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Parkinson’s Visual Hallucination Mouse Model Mapped Behavior Sequences

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Parkinson's Visual Hallucination Mouse Model Mapped Behavior Sequences

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy built a Parkinson’s visual hallucination mouse model and found that a combined behavior map identified hallucination-like episodes better than any single movement measure. Key Findings Model: Researchers used 6-OHDA to create Parkinson-like dopamine injury in male C57BL/6 mice, then used benzhexol hydrochloride to trigger Parkinson’s …

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Nazi Propaganda Images Reduced Guilt and Shame in German Viewers

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Nazi Propaganda Images Reduced Guilt and Shame in German Viewers

TL;DR: A 2026 study in European Journal of Social Psychology found that adding flattering Nazi-era propaganda images to atrocity photographs reduced several immediate negative emotions in German viewers across the combined evidence, even though the clearest guilt effect did not replicate in the online sample. Key Findings Mixed-image condition: Participants saw atrocity photographs alone or …

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Lurasidone and Xanomeline Improved Cognitive Scores in Schizophrenia Meta-Analysis

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Lurasidone and Xanomeline Improved Cognitive Scores in Schizophrenia Meta-Analysis

TL;DR: A 2026 network meta-analysis in International Clinical Psychopharmacology found that lurasidone and xanomeline-trospium improved global cognitive scores in schizophrenia-spectrum randomized trials, while quetiapine and cariprazine ranked best for attention. Key Findings 14 randomized trials: Researchers analyzed 2,464 participants across trials of selected second- and third-generation antipsychotics plus xanomeline-trospium. Lurasidone improved global cognition: Lurasidone outperformed …

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Identity Politics Accounted for Progressive Well-Being Gap

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Identity Politics Accounted for Progressive Well-Being Gap

TL;DR: A 2024 study in Sociological Forum found that identity-politics measures statistically explained much of the link between progressive ideology and lower self-reported well-being in the 2021 Baylor Religion Survey. Key Findings Well-being gap: Progressive ideology was associated with more depression, more anxiety, and lower sense of control. Identity-politics measures: Racial-inequality protest willingness and support …

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Empathy for Pain Persisted Across Live and Prerecorded Video in EEG Study

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Empathy for Pain Persisted Across Live and Prerecorded Video in EEG Study

TL;DR: A 2026 electroencephalography (EEG) study in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience found that observers’ empathy-for-pain ratings and physiological coupling stayed similar whether they watched another person receive painful stimulation through a live video call or a prerecorded video, although live interaction produced an earlier frontal theta brain response. Key Findings 35 observers tested: Researchers …

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E-GAT + Bi-LSTM AI Classified Emotion Across Modalities

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E-GAT + Bi-LSTM AI Classified Emotion Across Modalities

TL;DR: A 2026 study in PLOS One reported that an artificial intelligence model combining enhanced graph attention with bidirectional long short-term memory classified emotion from text, speech, facial cues, and video benchmarks with its strongest performance on the CMU-MOSEI multimodal dataset. Key Findings Three benchmark datasets: The model was tested on SemEval-2018 text, RAVDESS speech-and-face …

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Dark Triad Traits Linked to Aggressive Relationship Expectations

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Dark Triad Traits Linked to Aggressive Relationship Expectations

TL;DR: A 2025 study in Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy linked higher Dark Triad traits, a personality cluster covering psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism, with more aggressive relationship expectations and greater self-reported sexual coercion in a 624-person online survey. Key Findings The survey included 624 adults: participants completed personality, attachment, relationship-expectation, and sexual-aggression questionnaires. Dark …

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Prior Cocaine Use Disrupted Orbitofrontal Hidden-State Coding in Rats

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Prior Cocaine Use Disrupted Orbitofrontal Hidden-State Coding in Rats

TL;DR: A 2026 study in eLife found that prior cocaine self-administration disrupted how rat orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a frontal brain region involved in task structure and flexible behavior, encoded hidden states in an odor-sequence task. Key Findings 3,881 single units: The study recorded 3,881 lateral OFC single units while rats performed a sequential odor task. …

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