PSYREFLECT

Issue #46

June 11, 2026

#1Research

When the Body Counts Its Own Heartbeats: How We Measure Interoception Falls Apart Under Scrutiny

A neural marker that shifts with the task in front of the participant, but not with how well they perform it, is hard to defend as a stable trait of the person.

interoceptioncardioceptionheartbeat-evoked potentialEEG
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#2Research

What Actually Replicates in the Gaming-Disorder Brain: Frontal-Midline Connectivity, Meta-Analysed and Validated

When you pool a decade of contradictory scans and keep only what replicates, the gaming-disorder signal is not in the reward striatum – it is in the frontal-midline circuitry of control and self-monitoring.

internet gaming disorderbehavioral addictionresting-state fMRIfunctional connectivity
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#3Research

An Older-Looking Brain Tracks Worse Chronic Pain – But Placebo Still Works

Two people of the same age can have very different brains – and it is the brain's age, not the birthday, that tracks how much chronic pain hurts.

chronic painbrain ageplaceboneuroimaging
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#4Research

Neutral faces, threatened brains: how social anxiety reshapes face processing in childhood

Socially anxious children did not over-respond to faces – they under-encoded them, suggesting the mechanism begins at perception, not appraisal.

social anxietychild and adolescentneural mechanismface processing
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#5Tool

Does the SDQ Mean the Same Thing at Age 4 and Age 16?

The SDQ's architecture holds from preschool to late adolescence – but a "restless" four-year-old and a "restless" sixteen-year-old are not the same score.

SDQchild mental healthpsychometricsmeasurement invariance
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#6Industry

California's $6.4bn community-care bond stalls: not one new bed opened on schedule

None of the ten projects the state itself forecast would open by the end of 2025 had opened – a $6.4 billion bond that is "exceeding its goals" on paper has yet to deliver a single new community bed on schedule.

deinstitutionalisationcommunity mental healthsupportive housingmental health policy
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