Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
Researchers compared how well computers and humans can judge personality. They used data from 86,220 volunteers who took a 100-item personality questionnaire and looked at people’s Facebook Likes as the computer’s input. Computer predictions based on Likes matched the questionnaire scores better (r = 0.56) than friends’ judgments did (r…
This 2002 PNAS review by Marcus Raichle and Debra Gusnard examines how the brain uses energy. The authors say the brain uses a large share of the body's energy and that most of that energy goes to ongoing, background neural activity. They note that short-lived, task-related increases in energy use…
Postpartum depression can affect fathers too. Research summarized in this article says about 10% of men experience clinical paternal postpartum depression, often during pregnancy or in the first year after birth (with the highest risk in the first 3–6 months). The article lists common symptoms, risk factors like a partner’s…
Researchers studied more than 1,200 people at six multiday mass gatherings in the US and the UK. They found that psychedelic use was linked with better mood. That link appeared to work through people reporting a transformative experience and feeling more socially connected. The link was stronger when use had…
The researchers repeatedly measured early-morning cortisol and self-reported depressive symptoms in a population of adolescents. Using a statistical method to find subgroups, they identified a high-risk group (17% of the sample) with both high depressive symptoms and elevated morning cortisol. Membership in this group was linked to worse autobiographical memory…
