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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