The recent drought events (e.g., 2003, 2015, and 2018), are within the range of natural variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium

Past megadroughts in central Europe were longer, more severe and less warm than modern droughts. M. Ionita, M. Dima, V. Nagavciuc, P. Scholz & G. Lohmann. Communications Earth & Environment volume 2, Article number: 61 (2021). Mar 19 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00130-w

Abstract: Megadroughts are notable manifestations of the American Southwest, but not so much of the European climate. By using long-term hydrological and meteorological observations, as well as paleoclimate reconstructions, here we show that central Europe has experienced much longer and severe droughts during the Spörer Minimum (~AD 1400–1480) and Dalton Minimum (~AD 1770–1840), than the ones observed during the 21st century. These two megadroughts appear to be linked with a cold state of the North Atlantic Ocean and enhanced winter atmospheric blocking activity over the British Isles and western part of Europe, concurrent with reduced solar forcing and explosive volcanism. Moreover, we show that the recent drought events (e.g., 2003, 2015, and 2018), are within the range of natural variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium.

Conclusions

By using different independent data sets (e.g., observations, paleo reanalysis, documentary evidence, and proxy records) in this study we provide a comprehensive assessment of past megadroughts in central Europe and their underlying drivers. Moreover, we have shown that the recent droughts (e.g., 2003, 2015, and 2018, among others) are within the historical variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium. Future climate projections indicate that Europe will face substantial drying, even for the least aggressive pathways scenarios (SSP126 and SSP245)49. Although the greenhouse gases and the associate global warming signal will substantially contribute to future drought risk49, our study indicates that future drought variations will also be strongly influenced by natural variations. A potential decrease of TSI in the next decades could result in a higher frequency of drought events in central Europe, which could add to the drying induced by anthropogenic forcing. The potential manifestation of record extreme droughts represents a possible scenario for the future and it would represent an enormous challenge for the governments and society. Thus, determining future drought risk of the European droughts requires further work on how the combined effect of natural and anthropogenic factors will shape the drought magnitude and frequency.

Becoming a physician increases the use of antidepressants, opioids, anxiolytics, and sedatives, especially for female physicians

The Effects of Becoming a Physician on Prescription Drug Use and Mental Health Treatment. D. Mark Anderson, Ron Diris, Raymond Montizaan & Daniel I. Rees. NBER Working Paper 29536, Dec 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29536

Abstract: There is evidence that physicians disproportionately suffer from substance use disorder and mental health problems. It is not clear, however, whether these phenomena are causal. We use data on Dutch medical school applicants to examine the effects of becoming a physician on prescription drug use and the receipt of treatment from a mental health facility. Leveraging variation from lottery outcomes that determine admission into medical schools, we find that becoming a physician increases the use of antidepressants, opioids, anxiolytics, and sedatives, especially for female physicians. Among female applicants towards the bottom of the GPA distribution, becoming a physician increases the likelihood of receiving treatment from a mental health facility. 

[Based on data from the 2019 National Survey on Labor Conditions.]

Men and women primed with mate scarcity held a more positive attitude toward mate poaching relative to those primed with mate abundance, and this link was mediated by an induced fear of being single & intrasexual competitiveness

Perceived Mate Scarcity Leads to Increased Willingness to Mate Poach. Larissa McKelvie et al. The Journal of Sex Research, Dec 3 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.2005762

Abstract: Mate poaching, where an individual attempts to attract a pair-bonded individual, is a risky mating tactic. Yet, it is surprisingly common. Although many studies have investigated individual differences in mate poaching, few have examined potentially relevant ecological factors, such as mate availability. In this study, 254 unmated North American adults were primed with either perceived mate scarcity or abundance, and subsequently completed measures of fear of being single, intrasexual competitiveness, and attitudes toward mate poaching. Results from a sequential mediation model revealed that men and women primed with mate scarcity held a more positive attitude toward mate poaching relative to those primed with mate abundance, and that this link was mediated by an induced fear of being single and intrasexual competitiveness. Our results suggest that mate poaching is a facultative adaptation of human mating psychology driven by intrasexual competitiveness that is activated in response to environments of low mate availability. It highlights the need for researchers to consider ecological cues when studying individual variation in mate poaching behavior.

In more gender-equal countries, differences between men and women are larger for innate preferences and smaller for socially constructed interests

The Gender Gap in Preferences: Evidence from 45,397 Facebook Interests. Ángel Cuevas, Rubén Cuevas, Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín. NBER Working Paper 29451, November 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29451

Abstract: This paper uses information on the frequency of 45,397 Facebook interests to study how the difference in preferences between men and women changes with a country's degree of gender equality. For preference dimensions that are systematically biased toward the same gender across the globe, differences between men and women are larger in more gender-equal countries. In contrast, for preference dimensions with a gender bias that varies across countries, the opposite holds. This finding takes an important step toward reconciling evolutionary psychology and social role theory as they relate to gender. 

The demographic transition (he move from a high fertility/high mortality regime into a low fertility/low mortality regime) in 186 countries for more than 250 years

Demographic Transitions Across Time and Space. Matthew J. Delventhal, Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Nezih Guner. November 6, 2021. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Demographic_Transitions.pdf

Abstract: The demographic transition –the move from a high fertility/high mortality regime into a low fertility/low mortality regime– is one of the most fundamental transformations that countries undertake. To study demographic transitions across time and space, we compile a data set of birth and death rates for 186 countries spanning more than 250 years. We document that (i) a demographic transition has been completed or is ongoing in nearly every country; (ii) the speed of transition has increased over time; and (iii) having more neighbors that have started the transition is associated with a higher probability of a country beginning its own transition. To account for these observations, we build a quantitative model in which parents choose child quantity and educational quality. Countries differ in geographic location, and improved production and medical technologies diffuse outward from Great Britain. Our framework replicates well the timing and increasing speed of transitions. It also produces a correlation between the speeds of fertility transition and increases in schooling similar to the one in the data.

Keywords: Demographic transition, skill-biased technological change, diffusion.

JEL codes: J13, N3, O11, O33, O40

Workplace premiums associated with teams of professionals have increased, while premiums for previously high-paid blue-collar workers have been cut

Consolidated Advantage: New Organizational Dynamics of Wage Inequality. Nathan Wilmers, Clem Aeppli. American Sociological Review, December 1, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224211049205

Abstract: The two main axes of inequality in the U.S. labor market—occupation and workplace—have increasingly consolidated. In 1999, the largest share of employment at high-paying workplaces was blue-collar production workers, but by 2017 it was managers and professionals. As such, workers benefiting from a high-paying workplace are increasingly those who already benefit from membership in a high-paying occupation. Drawing on occupation-by-workplace data, we show that up to two-thirds of the rise in wage inequality since 1999 can be accounted for not by occupation or workplace inequality alone, but by this increased consolidation. Consolidation is not primarily due to outsourcing or to occupations shifting across a fixed set of workplaces. Instead, consolidation has resulted from new bases of workplace pay premiums. Workplace premiums associated with teams of professionals have increased, while premiums for previously high-paid blue-collar workers have been cut. Yet the largest source of consolidation is bifurcation in the social sector, whereby some previously low-paying but high-professional share workplaces, like hospitals and schools, have deskilled their jobs, while others have raised pay. Broadly, the results demonstrate an understudied way that organizations affect wage inequality: not by directly increasing variability in workplace or occupation premiums, but by consolidating these two sources of inequality.

Keywords: wage inequality, stratification, organizations, workplaces, occupations

A Polygenic Score for Educational Attainment Partially Predicts Voter Turnout

A Polygenic Score for Educational Attainment Partially Predicts Voter Turnout. Christopher T. Dawes et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 5, 2021. http://users.econ.umn.edu/~rusti001/Research/Genetics/VotingPNASAll.pdf

Abstract: Twin and adoption studies have shown that individual differences in political participation can be explained in part by genetic variation. However, these research designs cannot identify which genes are related to voting or the pathways through which they exert influence, and their conclusions rely on possibly restrictive assumptions. In this study, we use three different US samples and a Swedish sample to test whether genes that have been identified as associated with educational attainment, one of the strongest correlates of political participation, predict self-reported and validated voter turnout. We find that a polygenic score capturing individuals’ genetic propensity to acquire education is significantly related to turnout. The strongest associations we observe are in second-order midterm elections in the US and EU Parliament elections in Sweden, which tend to be viewed as less important by voters, parties, and the media and thus present a more information-poor electoral environment for citizens to navigate. A within-family analysis suggests that individuals’ education-linked genes directly affect their voting behavior but for second-order elections, it also reveals evidence of genetic nurture. Finally, a mediation analysis suggests that educational attainment and cognitive ability combine to account for between 41% and 63% of the relationship between the genetic propensity to acquire education and voter turnout depending on the type of election.

Sexual and romantic relationships among people experiencing homelessness: A scoping review

Czechowski, K., Turner, K. A., Labelle, P. R., & Sylvestre, J. (2021). Sexual and romantic relationships among people experiencing homelessness: A scoping review. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Dec 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000583

Abstract: Homelessness is widely recognized as a pervasive issue. Despite increasing research on factors affecting the health and well-being of people who are homeless, one that remains relatively understudied is the role of romantic and sexual relationships. Given that this population has the same needs for intimacy and closeness as anyone else, it is important to understand how these relationships occur, what barriers exist in developing and maintaining them, and what is their impact. This scoping review aimed to (a) characterize the nature of research that has examined sexual and romantic relationships among people who are homeless and (b) identify and synthesize the findings of studies that examined romantic and sexual relationships among people who are homeless. Of 539 studies that examined sexual or romantic relationships among people who are homeless, 88.87% examined sexual health risk, 11.13% examined sexual victimization, 5.57% examined survival sex, and 2.41% examined consensual sexual or romantic relationships. Of the studies that examined consensual sexual or romantic relationships substantially (n = 13) all used qualitative methods and identified common themes such as love, romance, and emotional support; partner relationships as transactional; barriers to partner relationships; and casual sex and pleasure. Despite the possible benefits of sexual and romantic relationships in the context of homelessness, researchers instead have primarily focused on possible risks associated with sex. We introduce how sexual citizenship can be applied to understand how current practices and policies limit people’s civic participation when homeless. 

Predictions shape our perception: fMRI and multivoxel pattern analysis show that non-stimulated regions of early visual areas contain information about the conscious perception of an ambiguous visual stimulus

Non-stimulated regions in early visual cortex encode the contents of conscious visual perception. Bianca M. van Kemenade, Gregor Wilbertz, Annalena Müller, Philipp Sterzer. Human Brain Mapping, December 3 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25731

Abstract: Predictions shape our perception. The theory of predictive processing poses that our brains make sense of incoming sensory input by generating predictions, which are sent back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. These predictions are based on our internal model of the world and enable inferences about the hidden causes of the sensory input data. It has been proposed that conscious perception corresponds to the currently most probable internal model of the world. Accordingly, predictions influencing conscious perception should be fed back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivoxel pattern analysis to show that non-stimulated regions of early visual areas contain information about the conscious perception of an ambiguous visual stimulus. These results indicate that early sensory cortices in the human brain receive predictive feedback signals that reflect the current contents of conscious perception.

4 DISCUSSION

Our findings show that the current perceptual state during bistability can be decoded from fMRI signal patterns not only in stimulated early visual regions, which is in line with previous studies (Haynes & Rees, 2005), but crucially also in non-stimulated retinotopic visual cortex, which did not receive any bottom-up input. This suggests that non-stimulated regions of early visual cortex contain information not only about visual stimulation in the surrounding context, as previously shown (Smith & Muckli, 2010), but even about conscious perception independent of visual stimulation per se. This is in line with current theories that model bistable perception within the framework of predictive processing (Brascamp, Sterzer, Blake, & Knapen, 2018; Hohwy et al., 2008). According to this view, ambiguous stimuli (such as the bistable moving plaids used here) provide equally strong sensory evidence for two different percepts, but the currently dominant percept establishes an implicit prediction regarding the cause of the sensory input. This prediction is thought to stabilize the current perceptual state through feedback from higher to lower hierarchical levels, while sensory evidence for the currently suppressed perceptual interpretation elicits prediction errors that act to destabilize the current percept, eventually leading to a perceptual change (Weilnhammer et al., 2021; Weilnhammer, Stuke, Hesselmann, Sterzer, & Schmack, 2017). Here, we provide evidence supporting the notion of feedback signalling of predictions in bistable perception.

There have been other studies that showed neural activity in visual areas that were not directly stimulated. These include studies on object perception (Williams et al., 2008), feature-based attention (Serences & Boynton, 2007), visual scene perception (Smith & Muckli, 2010), and illusions like the Kanizsa triangle (Kok, Bains, van Mourik, Norris, & de Lange, 2016), apparent motion (Chong, Familiar, & Shim, 2016; Muckli, Kohler, Kriegeskorte, & Singer, 2005), or the bistable Gestalt illusion (Grassi, Zaretskaya, & Bartels, 2017). Our study is in line with this earlier work, which underlines the idea that long-range connections carry feedback signals from higher areas back to early visual cortex. However, it is distinct from these findings in the key aspect that it shows that such feedback signals in non-stimulated visual areas carry information about the subjective interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus, where the physical properties of the stimulus are stable, while the conscious perception of the participant alternates between two alternative interpretations. Bistable motion quartets inducing apparent motion also show activity along the non-stimulated motion path depending on conscious interpretation, but this activity underlies the reconstruction of an illusory percept, that is, of a stimulus that is not actually there. In our study, the activity reflected feedback signals about a stimulus that was always physically present, but was interpreted in different ways over time. As such, our results do not only support the general idea that predictions are sent back to early visual cortex, but importantly that they are involved in the subjective interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus.

Our univariate results showed significantly more activation for patterns than components in non-stimulated early visual areas. Increased activation for patterns in early visual cortex has been reported in previous studies as well (Grassi et al., 2018; Wilbertz, Ketkar, Guggenmos, & Sterzer, 2018). We observed this pattern only in non-stimulated areas, which resembles the results by Grassi et al. (2017) that a global Gestalt percept induced more activity in the illusory percept regions in early visual cortex than a local Gestalt percept. The fact that we observed this effect in non-stimulated regions only seems to support the hypothesis that it is driven by feedback mechanisms, as indicated by findings from Kok et al. (2016) who found enhanced activity for illusory percepts only in deep cortical layers that process feedback signals. As such, our univariate results support our multivariate results. Since it has been shown that attentional mechanisms can also drive perceptual effects in non-stimulated areas (Serences & Boynton, 2007), it is possible that attention to the current percept might have contributed to the results. However, since we found opposite univariate patterns in early visual cortex (more activity for pattern percepts) and area hMT+/V5 (more activity for component percepts), feedback mechanisms seem a more likely explanation. On a similar note, it has been reported that people blink more during pattern perception compared to component perception (Brych, Murali, & Händel, 2021), which could be an alternative explanation for the increased BOLD response in visual cortex (Hupé et al., 2012). However, again the opposite pattern in early visual cortex versus hMT+/V5 seems to rather point at the involvement of feedback mechanisms.

We suggest that the percept-related information that we found in non-stimulated regions of early visual areas most likely arises from feedback signalling that originates from higher-level areas concerned with the computation of component vs. pattern motion perception, such as area hMT+/V5 (Castelo-Branco et al., 2002; Duarte, Costa, Martins, & Castelo-Branco, 2017; Grassi et al., 2018). Research on bistable plaid motion has shown that hMT+/V5 is concerned with the disambiguation of bistable plaids into pattern and component motion (Castelo-Branco et al., 2002), and that it sends information back to early visual cortex during this process (Duarte et al., 2017). Furthermore, effective connectivity analyses have shown that apparent motion induced activation of non-stimulated visual regions along the illusory apparent motion path is associated with enhanced feedback signalling from area hMT+/V5 (Sterzer, Haynes, & Rees, 2006), which has been shown to be causally involved in such apparent motion perception in a later TMS study (Vetter, Grosbras, & Muckli, 2015). Considering these studies, it seems plausible that area hMT+/V5 is also involved in predictive feedback signalling to non-stimulated areas during bistable plaid motion perception, and that our results thus reflect predictive feedback signalling coming from this area. Our significant decoding results in hMT+/V5 support the idea that this area generates the predictions that are sent back to early visual areas during bistable perception, though future studies will have to provide direct causal evidence. There are other potential origins of feedback signalling in bistable plaid perception, as several studies have shown involvement of frontoparietal areas in bistable perception (Brascamp et al., 2018; Grassi et al., 2018; Weilnhammer et al., 2021). Recent evidence suggests that hMT+/V5 might signal perceptual conflict to and receive signals from frontal areas to resolve this conflict, making hMT+/V5 a hub for receiving and relaying feedback signals from and to frontal cortex (Weilnhammer et al., 2021). As our study was focused on visual cortex, we were unable to verify the involvement of areas outside visual cortex. However, our results support the idea of hMT+/V5 as a source of feedback signals to early visual cortex in bistable perception.

In conclusion, our current results provide compelling support for the notion that conscious perception reflects an internal model that generates predictions about the current state of the world, and that these predictions are fed back to the lowest levels of sensory processing to enable inferences regarding the sensory input.

Advancing mathematics by guiding human intuition with AI

Advancing mathematics by guiding human intuition with AI. Alex Davies, Petar Veličković, Lars Buesing, Sam Blackwell, Daniel Zheng, Nenad Tomašev, Richard Tanburn, Peter Battaglia, Charles Blundell, András Juhász, Marc Lackenby, Geordie Williamson, Demis Hassabis & Pushmeet Kohli. Nature volume 600, pages70–74, Dec 1 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04086-x

Abstract: The practice of mathematics involves discovering patterns and using these to formulate and prove conjectures, resulting in theorems. Since the 1960s, mathematicians have used computers to assist in the discovery of patterns and formulation of conjectures1, most famously in the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture2, a Millennium Prize Problem3. Here we provide examples of new fundamental results in pure mathematics that have been discovered with the assistance of machine learning—demonstrating a method by which machine learning can aid mathematicians in discovering new conjectures and theorems. We propose a process of using machine learning to discover potential patterns and relations between mathematical objects, understanding them with attribution techniques and using these observations to guide intuition and propose conjectures. We outline this machine-learning-guided framework and demonstrate its successful application to current research questions in distinct areas of pure mathematics, in each case showing how it led to meaningful mathematical contributions on important open problems: a new connection between the algebraic and geometric structure of knots, and a candidate algorithm predicted by the combinatorial invariance conjecture for symmetric groups4. Our work may serve as a model for collaboration between the fields of mathematics and artificial intelligence (AI) that can achieve surprising results by leveraging the respective strengths of mathematicians and machine learning.

Daily Memory Lapses and Affect: Mediation Effects on Life Satisfaction

Daily Memory Lapses and Affect: Mediation Effects on Life Satisfaction. Jennifer R. Turner, Jacqueline Mogle, Nikki Hill, Sakshi Bhargava & Laura Rabin. Journal of Happiness Studies, Dec 02 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-021-00481-3

Abstract: Memory lapses are a type of daily challenge that are common to most people and are associated with negative mood outcomes. How daily challenges are associated and linked to broad domains, like life satisfaction and well-being, has been underexamined. Life satisfaction is often assessed from a macro-level that emphasizes average differences over longer timeframes, yet daily experiences (i.e., micro-level) may accumulate to shape these characteristics. In the current study, we examined if daily memory lapses (e.g., difficulties with word-finding or forgetting a meeting) were associated with life satisfaction, and whether this relationship was mediated by the associated changes in positive and negative affect due to daily memory lapses. In a coordinated analysis of two datasets (N = 561, ages 25–93 years), we used multilevel structural equation modeling to assess how daily memory lapses may influence the broader outcome of global life satisfaction. The pattern of results was similar across datasets: memory lapses were associated with reduced positive affect and increased negative affect. Further, the daily affect associated with daily memory lapses significantly mediated the relationship between lapses and life satisfaction, while the direct relationship between memory lapses and life satisfaction was non-significant. This study provides support for the role of daily challenges, specifically memory lapses, influencing broader constructs such as psychological well-being by identifying the key factor of affective responses. Future work should identify other salient daily challenges, as well as explore if reducing the affective response to challenges through targeted interventions would mitigate impacts on distal functioning.

What does your favourite colour say about your personality? Not much

Jonauskaite, D., Thalmayer, A. G., Müller, L., & Mohr, C. What does your favourite colour say about your personality? Not much. Personality Science, [Accepted Manuscript]. Dec 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.5256

Abstract: The claim that favourite colours reveal individuals’ personalities is popular in the media yet lacks scientific support. We assessed this claim in two stages. First, we catalogued claims from six popular websites, and matched them to key Big Six/HEXACO trait terms, ultimately identifying 11 specific, systematic, testable predictions (e.g., higher Extraversion among those who prefer red, orange, yellow, pink, or turquoise). Next, we tested these predictions in terms of Big Six trait scores and reports of favourite and least favourite colours from 323 French-speaking participants. For every prediction (e.g., red-extraversion), we compared trait scores between participants who chose or did not choose the predicted colour using Welch's t-tests. We failed to confirm any of the 11 predictions. Further exploratory analyses (MANOVA) revealed no associations between colour preferences and personality trait. Favourite colours appear unrelated to personality, failing to support the practical utility of colour-based personality assessment.

Aguado and his team recently found that cells taken from the heart valve tissues of men and women with aortic valve disease respond very differently to the same drug

Developing Sex-specific Treatments for Heart Disease: UC San Diego bioengineer advances equity in science, and among scientists. Univ. of California at San Diego, Dec 2021. https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/developing-sex-specific-treatments-for-heart-disease

As a heart fails, a woman's ventricular wall increases in thickness relative to a man's. And in heart valve disease, men show more calcified tissue growth, while women develop more fibrotic, scar-like tissue. Yet, treatments for both diseases remain strikingly similar for both men and women, despite the differences in disease progression.

Brian Aguado, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California San Diego, aims to change that. He is studying sex-specific differences in disease—starting with cardiovascular disease—from the molecular scale all the way up to the organism level. He uses bioengineering tools to develop more relevant, sex-specific models and treatments for cardiovascular disease, enabling better clinical outcomes for patients who have long been ignored.

“Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in men and women, but we still don’t fully understand the mechanisms that cause it—especially in women—simply because our models for understanding disease are largely male biased,” said Aguado, one of the 27 new faculty who joined the Jacobs School of Engineering in the last two years. “This has created a gap in understanding as far as what makes men and women go through cardiovascular disease differently and how we can address that head on.”

And Aguado doesn’t just focus on equity in his research. He’s also a strong advocate of equity and diversity among the researchers doing this work, and co-founded the LatinX in Biomedical Engineering (LatinXinBME) community to support diversity within the scientific community.

“In academic spaces, I feel like a lot of folks are encouraged to assimilate—to adopt the current average,” said Aguado. “I think it's super important to bring your whole self to the workplace, and hope that my lab can inspire populations historically excluded from the sciences to do work that supports their respective communities.”

Diversifying the biomedical field and workforce

Aguado co-founded the LatinxinBME community with friend and fellow scientist of Colombian descent Ana Maria Porras, now a professor at the University of Florida, after a conference in 2018 helped them realize the value of community in fighting feelings of isolation. What started as a small Slack group to help these LatinX researchers keep in touch has now grown to a community of more than 300 members from around the country, seeking mentorship, advice, and a sense of inclusion.

“We try to help each other through key transition points in our careers: from undergraduate to grad school; grad school to postdocs; postdocs to faculty; we share with each other what life is like, and any advice we can give. It’s been a beautiful tool and community for mentorship and helping each other through academic and industry careers,” said Aguado.

The group has now established an executive board, and holds regular research symposia along with social and mentorship events. The sense of inclusion he found through LatinXinBME was also one reason Aguado felt UC San Diego was the best place for his research, and himself, to thrive.

“I’m first-generation Colombian American, so I've just always been immersed in Colombian culture at home, but at the same time have come to realize that it’s a rarity in academic spaces,” he said. “The fact that I have colleagues here at UC San Diego that speak Spanish, it means a lot. That feeling of inclusion just has helped me in so many ways that it feels like LatinXinBME is a way I can create space to welcome people to academic spaces and help them feel like they are not alone.”

Aguado said it’s no accident that he’s working toward equity through his scientific and outreach efforts.

“I see this marriage between the diversity work I do with LatinXinBME and increasing equity in science through social means, but then also increasing it in science through my lab. That’s another reason UC San Diego is such a good fit for me, because I feel that both of these aspects are valued in this academic community.”

One-size-fits-all vs. precision medicine

Aguado’s scientific goal sits in between two healthcare paradigms: one-size-fits-all treatments that ignore differences based on sex, race, and age; and precision medicine, with treatments tailored down to the individual level. While the goals of precision medicine are worth exploring, Aguado said he has concerns about how accessible this level of care will be to the general population, and in particular, to underserved communities.

He envisions a more effective middle ground.

“My long-term vision is to not just focus on sex as a variable; I think we can also incorporate age and ancestry into our models, really embracing the whole idea of precision medicine but not making it so specific to individual patients. Instead, we could think of how we can stratify patients into groups and take into account what makes us unique biologically, so that we can better cater treatments to certain populations.”

Gender is another variable that Aguado considers, particularly as it relates to transgender people’s health outcomes with everything from hormone therapy treatments, to molecular differences impacting cardiovascular disease outcomes.

His current work on sex-specific differences in cardiovascular disease is a first step toward this larger goal. To understand how and why heart diseases affect men and women differently, and how we can develop more tailored treatments for them, Aguado and his team of student researchers study sex-based differences at a variety of scales, from within single cells, to the extracellular matrix, and to the immune system, tissue and organism level.

Studying sex-based differences

At the smallest scale, Aguado and his team recently found that cells taken from the heart valve tissues of men and women with aortic valve disease respond very differently to the same drug. Using hydrogel biomaterials developed in his lab, they were able to tie some of these differences in response to genes on the cell’s X chromosome, explaining why female cells—which have two X chromosomes—express increased activity. They’re now working to understand how genetic and epigenetic changes caused by these sex chromosomes can lead to changes in cell behavior, and ultimately study how these changes could be harnessed to impact healing after a cardiac event.

Moving up from understanding the cellular to the extracellular level—the complex cocktail of proteins, hormones and biochemicals that surround cells—Aguado collaborates with cardiologists to collect serum samples from patients with aortic valve disease. He found that using this extracellular serum to culture cells resulted in cells with different behaviors based on the sex of the patient.

“We have provided this really nice bridge between in vitro disease modeling and in vivo patient outcomes, simply by taking into account these sex-specific extracellular components,” he said.

While understanding what underpins these differences is a scientific challenge, the biggest hurdle is simply making it a priority to incorporate both male and female models into research.

“It’s not hard, you just need to think about it,” said Aguado. “For example, in my previous lab work, we would isolate cells from pig hearts, but we did not know the biological sex of the hearts. After consulting the literature and recognizing sex differences in the heart, I called up the meat company that sent the hearts, and asked if they could ship separate boxes of male and female hearts. To my surprise, they said, “no problem.” It just takes initiative to acknowledge that there are these clinical differences between the sexes, and incorporate that into your studies.”

Developing new treatments

All this information that Aguado and other researchers are learning about sex-specific differences at the cellular, extracellular, immune system and organ levels, is setting the stage to not only prescribe existing treatments more effectively based on sex, but to also develop new ones.

For example, one project that Aguado plans to tackle is developing polymer scaffolds—sponge-like biomaterials—that have been engineered to recruit certain populations of immune cells as a strategy to control the male or female immune response after cardiac injury, and improve tissue regeneration after a heart attack.

Modulating the immune system in this way to encourage optimum healing based on what we know about how sex impacts cardiovascular disease and healing would be a crowning achievement.

“I believe we can find a middle ground between something that might work for large groups of people but is missing certain populations—like cardiovascular disease which has been largely based on male animal models—versus a completely customized approach that might not be accessible for every patient. If my work can show that there are more effective ways to treat certain groups of patients, then I’ll feel like I made an impact. Because at the very least we’re not ignoring 50 percent of the population with our research.”

Participants feel more positive when in the presence of others; however, mood enhancement for women only occurred when the task was nondemanding; in the case of life satisfaction, only women were sensitive to the presence of others

Feeling better in the presence of others: It may depend on whether you are a man or a woman. Teresa Garcia-Marques, Marília Prada, Ricardo Fonseca, Alexandre Fernandes. Analise Psicologica, Vol 39, No 2 (2021), Dec 2021. http://publicacoes.ispa.pt/index.php/ap/article/view/1829

Abstract: Previous research has suggested that it is good to have other people around us. Indeed, there seems to be a generally positive impact of the presence of others on individuals’ physical and psychological well-being. In the current work, we examine if these positive experiences may be promoted by the mere presence of nonsignificant others in our environment, during a brief period. Specifically, in two experiments, we compared how being in the presence of others (co-action) versus being alone impacts how participants feel at the moment (mood, Experiment 1) and how satisfied they feel about their lives (general well-being, Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we also manipulated the nature of the task (i.e., demanding/threatening vs. nondemanding). Both experiments revealed that participants feel more positive when in the presence of others. However, important gender differences occurred: mood enhancement for women (vs. men) only occurred when the task was nondemanding. In the case of life satisfaction, only women were sensitive to the presence of others. We discuss how these effects inform the social facilitation literature.

Keywords: Social facilitation, Well-being, mood, Gender differences.

The prevalence of aphantasia (imagery weakness) in the general population: Prevalence of 3.9%, the most extreme aphantasia subtype (absent imagery) has a prevalence of 0.8%

The prevalence of aphantasia (imagery weakness) in the general population. C. J. Dance, A. Ipser, J. Simner. Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 97, January 2022, 103243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2021.103243

Highlights

• Establishes the first replicated prevalence of aphantasia (visual imagery weakness).

• Aphantasia (absent or dim/vague imagery – measured using the VVIQ) has a prevalence of 3.9%.

• The most extreme aphantasia subtype (absent imagery) has a prevalence of 0.8%.

• Prevalence is based on the measure/diagnostic threshold in line with contemporary aphantasia literature.

• This prevalence rate can now serve as a fundamental underpinning of future aphantasia research.

Abstract: Visual mental imagery is the ability to create a quasi-perceptual visual picture in the mind’s eye. For people with the rare trait of aphantasia, this ability is entirely absent or markedly impaired. Here, we aim to clarify the prevalence of aphantasia in the general population, while overcoming limitations of previous research (e.g., recruitment biases). In Experiment 1, we screened a cohort of undergraduate students (n502) using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks, 1973) and found that 4.2% had aphantasia. To establish the reliability of our estimate, we then screened a new sample of people (n502) at an online crowdsourcing marketplace, again finding that approximately four percent (3.6%) had aphantasia. Overall, our combined prevalence from over a thousand people of 3.9% – which shows no gender bias – provides a useful index for how commonly aphantasia occurs, based on measures and diagnostic thresholds in line with contemporary aphantasia literature.

Keywords: AphantasiaImageryPrevalenceImaginationVVIQ

Examining effects within the same individuals over time indicated that climate concern predicted a small residual increase in psychological distress, but not in life satisfaction, one year later

Longitudinal relations between climate change concern and psychological wellbeing. Sarah E. McBride et al. Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 78, December 2021, 101713. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101713

Highlights

.  Concerns about climate change effects may negatively impact psychological wellbeing

.  Detrimental effects of climate concern might be stronger for younger people

.  Pre-registered longitudinal links between climate concern and wellbeing are reported

.  Climate concern leads to residual increase in psychological distress one-year later

.  No effect observed for life satisfaction, and effects were not moderated by age

Abstract: Concerns about the effects of climate change are mainstream, and the climate crisis might have greater psychological impact on younger people. We hypothesise that climate concern will have detrimental links with psychological wellbeing over time, and that this association will be more pronounced among younger adults. We test our pre-registered predictions using two waves of an annual national probability panel study—the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (N = 13,453). Cross-lagged models examining effects within the same individuals over time indicated that climate concern predicted a small residual increase in psychological distress, but not in life satisfaction, one year later. However, there was no evidence that the associations varied across age. These longitudinal findings indicate a novel link between climate concern and psychological distress, which is apparent across the adult lifespan.

Keywords: Climate changeStressAgeLongitudinalCross-lagged modelModeration

How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks? Not very, we find that weather disasters over the last quarter century had insignificant or small effects on U.S. banks’ performance

How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks? Kristian S. Blickle, Sarah N. Hamerling, and Donald P. Morgan. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Staff Report Number 990 November 2021. https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr990

Abstract: Not very. We find that weather disasters over the last quarter century had insignificant or small effects on U.S. banks’ performance. This stability seems endogenous rather than a mere reflection of federal aid. Disasters increase loan demand, which offsets losses and actually boosts profits at larger banks. Local banks tend to avoid mortgage lending where floods are more common than official flood maps would predict, suggesting that local knowledge may also mitigate disaster impacts.

JEL: G21, H84

5 Conclusion

More extreme weather is one potential vector from climate change to bank and financial stability. It is a standard, prominent arrow in diagrams showing potential transmission mechanisms. Our findings suggest the disaster channel is not likely a material source of instability for banks. Even very small banks facing extreme disasters are not substantially threatened.

This resilience seems inherent to some degree because disasters increase the demand for loans. Earnings on new loans helps offset losses on loans on the books. In fact, income for larger banks increase after disasters. Local banks also manage to limit exposure to high risk areas, perhaps reflecting their greater knowledge of such risks. Those endogenous factors seem to buttress banks more than federal disaster assistance. Insurance is another likely mitigating factor that we do not explore. That is worthwhile topic future research.

For policymakers, our findings suggest that potential transition risks from climate change warrant more attention than physical disaster risks.

Rates of positive changes related to therapy varied between 26.6% (relationship to parents) & 67.7% (improvement in depressed mood); deteriorations were related to physical well-being (13.1%), ability to work (13.1%) & vitality (11.1%)

Negative effects of psychotherapy: estimating the prevalence in a random national sample. Bernhard Strauss, Romina Gawlytta, Andrea Schleu and Dominique Frenzl. BJPsych Open, Volume 7, Issue 6, November 2021 , e186. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2021.1025

Abstract

Background: Negative or adverse effects of psychological treatments are increasingly a focus of psychotherapy research. Yet, we still know little about the prevalence of these effects.

Aims: Starting from a representative national sample, the prevalence of negative effects and malpractice was determined in a subsample of individuals reporting psychotherapy currently or during the past 6 years.

Method: Out of an initial representative sample of 5562 individuals, 244 were determined to have had psychotherapy within the past 6 years. Besides answering questions related to treatment, its effects and the therapists, patients filled out the Negative Effects Questionnaire, items of the Inventory of Negative Effects of Psychotherapy reflecting malpractice and the Helping Alliance Questionnaire, and rated psychotherapeutic changes in different areas.

Results: Rates of positive changes related to therapy varied between 26.6% (relationship to parents) and 67.7% (improvement in depressed mood). Deteriorations were most commonly related to physical well-being (13.1%), ability to work (13.1%) and vitality (11.1%). Although patients generally reported a positive helping alliance, many of them reported high rates of negative effects (though not always linked to treatment). This was especially true of the experience of unpleasant memories (57.8%), unpleasant feelings (30.3%) and a lack of understanding of the treatment/therapist (19.3/18.4%). Indicators of malpractice were less common, with the exception that 16.8% felt violated by statements of their therapist.

Conclusions: This study helps to better estimate aspects of negative effects in psychotherapy ranging from deteriorations, specific effects and issues of malpractice that should be replicated and specified in future studies.

Discussion

Based upon the conclusion that our knowledge about negative effects of psychotherapy is still limited,^{Reference Parry, Crawford and Duggan1–Reference Gerke, Meyrose, Ladwig, Rief and Nestoriuc6} one of the unmet needs is sufficient study of the type and quantity of negative effects of psychotherapy under naturalistic conditions. There are several approaches to reach the goal of acquiring more detailed data concerning negative effects. For example, Crawford^{Reference Crawford, Thana, Farquharson, Palmer, Hancock and Bassett5} approached psychotherapeutic services in England and Wales to survey patients receiving treatment within these services. Although this approach might result in a population close to being representative of psychotherapy patients in a specific health system, it would not be representative of the wider population.

Another approach would be to start by drawing a random sample from a national population and to filter those individuals who had received psychotherapeutic treatment in a certain time period. The latter approach was chosen in a study of Albani et al^{Reference Albani, Blaser, Geyer, Schmutzer, Goldschmidt and Brähler18–Reference Albani, Blaser, Geyer, Schmutzer and Brähler20} related to the German population. In contrast to our survey, that study focused on formal characteristics of psychotherapies, patients’ experiences with choosing and finding a therapist, and general figures related to the effectiveness of psychotherapy from the patients’ perspective. In their survey, Albani et al asked only a very small number of questions related to general opinions about the patients’ psychotherapists and did not explicitly focus on negative effects. The sampling method of the Albani et al study probably did not yield a sample representative of psychotherapy patients in Germany. On the other hand, by avoiding direct selection of these patients, the procedure likely resulted in an unbiased sample from which patient experiences could be derived.

So far, data related to the prevalence of psychotherapeutic change, change rates and the occurrence of negative effects are quite variable and do not allow aggregation owing to the different data sources and measures. To add data from a representative population, our study followed the model of Albani et al, selecting individuals from a random national sample of the German population and determining which had been treated with psychotherapy. This resulted in a sample of 244 individuals who were interviewed in detail – in contrast to Albani et al – with a focus on effectiveness, helping alliance and a description of negative effects.

In fact, the resulting sample had quite similar characteristics to those of the German population. The ratio of males to females appeared to be more balanced in our sample than in the Albani study and closer to the distribution of the national population. In a large clinical sample of German out-patients,^{Reference Altmann, Zimmermann, Kirchmann, Kramer, Fembacher and Bruckmayer30} the percentage of female patients was much higher than in Albani's study^{Reference Albani, Blaser, Geyer, Schmutzer and Brähler19,Reference Albani, Blaser, Geyer, Schmutzer and Brähler20} (77%), showing that the general population is different from the population using the psychotherapeutic system. Individuals in the under-45 age group were underrepresented whereas those of 45 to 65 years of age were overrepresented in our sample, compared with the general population. Compared with the national population, individuals in our sample had a higher educational level. This probably reflects selective mechanisms of patients’ access to the psychotherapeutic system.^{Reference Strauß31}

Of the initial sample, 7.44% indicated experiences with psychotherapy during the prior 6 years. Although there are no exact estimates of the proportion of individuals seeking psychotherapeutic treatment in Germany, there are some figures for this percentage that can be used to for comparison. Rommel et al^{Reference Rommel, Bretschneider, Kroll, Prütz and Thom32} reported that 11.3% of German females and 8.1% of males over 18 years of age sought psychotherapeutic or psychiatric help over the course of 1 year (Survey Health in Germany). A study of adult health in Germany^{Reference Rattay, Butschalowsky, Rommel, Prütz, Jordan and Nowossadeck33} reported that 5.3% of females and 3.2% of males between 18 and 79 years of age made use of psychotherapy in the public health system (i.e. attending licensed therapists with reimbursement of the costs by health insurance). Based on these comparative figures, we think that our sample reflects a realistic proportion of psychotherapy users.

Based on the data obtained in our interview study with the final sample of 244 (former) psychotherapy patients, we found a relatively positive evaluation of the therapeutic relationship using the HAQ,^{Reference Bassler, Potratz and Krauthauser22} which was comparable to that found by other studies. The reports of our sample were generally positive regarding the quality of the working alliance and trust in the therapeutic relationship. At least 80% of all individuals agreed at least to some extent with the positive formulations of the HAQ.

On the other hand, there were some indicators of problems in the therapeutic relationship. One of the most prominent indicators was the report that at least 19% thought that the treatment would not help and ended their therapy prematurely. Also of relevance is the finding that in 24.2% of those cases, the end of treatment was a proposal of the therapist. Although we have no information on whether these were negotiated or unilateral decisions, this finding raises concerns about the lack of participatory decision-making about when to end therapy.

Although we did not use standardised scales that are commonly used to assess treatment outcomes, our data suggest that ‘direct measurements’ of different fields susceptible to psychotherapeutic change indicate improvement rates between 26.6% and 67.6%. The improvement rates of common outcomes (i.e. interactions with others, improvement in depressed mood, personal development), reported by more than 60% of the individuals, particularly demonstrate that the sample might be representative of psychotherapy patients, as similar rates are reported in the research literature.^{Reference Lambert12}

The improvement rates in our sample are also similar to those reported by Albani et al, with respect to both change rates and rates of deterioration as well as differences between single areas of change. However, the improvement rates in the Albani study (with a larger sample) were somewhat higher than those in our sample. For example, an improvement in depressed mood was reported by 67.6% of our sample and by 78.6% in the Albani study. The general evaluations of the treatments were also in line with those reported by Albani et al.

The primary focus of our study was an estimation of negative effects (or side-effects as negative effects paralleling correct treatment in the sense of Linden's classification^{Reference Linden3}) of psychotherapies, with the NEQ as the core instrument. Twenty different negative effects could be attributed to the treatment or to other causes.

The survey results reported in our sample are comparable with those reported in different clinical samples with the NEQ; we found similar results to those of other studies using this method in different samples and psychotherapeutic settings. In a recent study, Rozental et al^{Reference Rozental, Kottorp, Forsström, Mánsson, Boettcher and Anderson2} reported: ‘As for the rate of negative effects, the number of participants reporting negative effects in the current study was 50.9%, consistent with 58.7% among patients in a psychiatric setting who responded to the INEP’.^{Reference Rheker, Beisel, Kräling and Rief34} However, this number varies significantly between investigations, with rates as high as 92.9% among patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder assessed with the Side-effects of Psychotherapy Scale in a study by Moritz et al,^{Reference Moritz, Fieker, Hottenrott, Seeralan, Cludius and Kolbeck35} and as low as 5.2% in a national survey by Crawford et al^{Reference Crawford, Thana, Farquharson, Palmer, Hancock and Bassett5} probing for ‘lasting bad effects from the treatment’. Hence, different studies assess a range of negative effects, from transient ‘side-effects’ to lasting harm, making it difficult to compare ratios directly. Even within a subtype of negative effect, different methods of assessment will yield different results, so accurate estimates are not yet available.

Finally, since we had limited resources, we restricted our investigation of malpractice and boundary violations in psychotherapy in this study to only the six items of the INEP. These items form a subscale of the instrument mainly developed to cover side-effects of psychotherapeutic interventions. In general, in our sample, the rates of boundary violations were very low, even lower than one would have estimated from the specific studies in this field. For example, Becker-Fischer and Fischer^{Reference Becker-Fischer and Fischer36} reported rates of sexual boundary violations in psychotherapies that were much higher than 5%, whereas in our sample such violations occurred in three of the 244 cases (1.2%).

Strengths and limitations

The main strength of this study was clearly the sampling procedure, which started with a large (>5000) sample representative of the German population and then sought to find individuals disclosing experience with psychotherapy in the German health system, currently or during the past 6 years. We used some of the items from a former survey focusing on more general aspects of psychotherapy and added (parts of) instruments specifically developed to capture negative effects (NEQ) or malpractice (INEP). These additions have shown good psychometric qualities in this and other studies and allow comparisons with other studies or sampling procedures. Compared with other studies, e.g. the Crawford et al^{Reference Crawford, Thana, Farquharson, Palmer, Hancock and Bassett5} survey, we obtained much more detailed results on negative effects as opposed to global ‘lasting bad effects’.

Despite our best efforts, the final sample of 244 was rather small, although it was within the expected range for the use of psychotherapy in the population. Another limitation was the fact that 98 of the 244 participants were surveyed, on average, 2.63 years after completion of their psychotherapy. Of the 244, 139 had already completed their psychotherapy, among whom 98 provided the date of the end of therapy. Thus, the results may have been biased by recall effects. More specifically, there may have been a tendency to only remember adverse aspects of the treatment and neglect the positive ones, or to forget certain unwanted events that occurred several years ago. However, comparisons between those currently undergoing psychological treatment and those remembering their treatment retrospectively yielded only minor differences with respect to both general evaluations of psychotherapy and negative effects.

Moreover, as only 65% of eligible participants accepted the invitation to the interview, the results could be open to selection bias. For example, participants who were unhappy about their treatment might be more (or less) likely to respond to a study on the effects of psychotherapy or might exaggerate negative effects experienced during psychotherapy.

A comparison of demographic data from the recruited sample and the final sample revealed some minor differences regarding age distribution and educational level. However, participants were not recruited only on the basis of potential experiences of negative effects, as positive aspects of treatments were evaluated as well, limiting the risk of selection bias. Also, the response rate in our study was similar to those of other studies on negative effects of psychotherapy, which found rates of 59%^{Reference Gerke, Meyrose, Ladwig, Rief and Nestoriuc6} and 61%²⁹; it was even much higher than the rate of 19% found in one study.^{Reference Crawford, Thana, Farquharson, Palmer, Hancock and Bassett5}

Our results related to problematic issues such as boundary violations should encourage a detailed examination of patient complaints. So far, these have been mainly reported by certain institutions who serve as receiving agencies for psychotherapy-related complaints.^{Reference Khele, Symons and Wheeler37,Reference Kaczmarek, Passmann, Cappel, Hillebrand, Schleu and Strauss38}

In the future, more research on the prevalence of negative effects would be useful. This would include a more systematic assessment of these effects in clinical trials.^{Reference Klatte, Strauss, Flückiger and Rosendahl8} It would be interesting to try to recruit a similar sample as that used in our study to estimate the occurrence of more subtle violations of borders and other problematic issues in psychotherapy. According to the studies relating to such complaints, these are much more common than severe ethical problems such as a sexual assault in the treatment room. Addressing such violations and intensifying the more general focus on negative effects would eventually enrich training, supervision and clinical practice with the goal of avoiding harm in psychotherapy.