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.
172 papers
The study introduced the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), a short self-test that gives a score from 0 to 50 to measure autistic traits in adults with normal intelligence. The researchers tested four groups (58 adults with Asperger/high-functioning autism; 174 random controls; 840 Cambridge students; and 16 math Olympiad winners) and found…
This meta-analysis combined 241 effect sizes from 114 studies to test how six habitual emotion-regulation strategies relate to symptoms of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and substance-related problems. Rumination showed the strongest (large) link with symptoms. Avoidance, problem solving, and suppression showed medium-to-large links, while reappraisal and acceptance showed smaller (small-to-medium)…
This study reviewed surveys and used global models to measure how the COVID-19 pandemic changed rates of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders in 2020. It found that places with higher COVID-19 infection rates and bigger drops in movement had larger increases in these disorders. The authors estimate about 53.2…
This 2012 paper reviewed meta-analyses on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The authors found 269 meta-analytic studies and examined a representative sample of 106 reviews across many problems. They reported the strongest support for CBT for anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, bulimia, anger control problems, and general stress. The paper concluded the…
This 2002 review looked at animal and human research on exercise and the brain. It reports that voluntary exercise in animals raises levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and other growth factors, spurs the birth of new neurons, changes gene activity in ways that support plasticity, and can improve learning…
This study reviewed systematic reviews to measure death risks in major mental disorders. The authors screened 407 reviews and found 20 that reported mortality risks for 20 different disorders, covering over 1.7 million patients and more than a quarter of a million deaths. Every disorder showed higher all-cause death rates…
This review sums up research showing that being in or exposed to nature is linked to better mental functioning and mood. Lab and field experiments find short-term improvements in stress and mood from nature sights, sounds, and walks in green places. Population studies also find people living near green or…
This article reviews theory and research on how people and cultures shape each other. It defines the self as the “me” at the center of experience — a developing sense of awareness and agency that forms as a person (both brain and body) becomes tuned to different environments. The authors…
This research found that writing about important personal experiences in an emotional way for as little as 15 minutes on three separate days was linked to better mental and physical health. The results were seen across ages, genders, cultures, social classes, and personality types. Computer text analysis showed that people…
This review says our sense of being a body comes from the brain combining many body signals. It describes three parts of bodily self-consciousness: self-identification (feeling a body is mine), self-location (where I feel I am), and the first-person perspective (the point from which I see). Experiments that create mismatched…
This review looked at research on emotion dysregulation (problems managing emotions) in people with ADHD. It found three main points: emotion dysregulation is common across the lifespan and causes substantial problems; it may come from trouble noticing, recognizing, or paying attention to emotional cues tied to a brain circuit that…
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…
