Frontiers in Psychology最新文献

Background: Physical exercise is widely recognized for promoting cognitive function and psychological resilience; however, the precise systemic mechanisms remain fragmented across isolated disciplines. Existing models often fail to capture the complex, multi-systemic nature of these adaptations.

Methods: We conducted a comprehensive literature search in PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases up to December 2025. Keywords included "exercise," "neuroinflammation," "metabolism," "kynurenine pathway," and "gut-brain axis." We prioritized high-quality preclinical and clinical studies that examined bidirectional cross-talk between at least two physiological systems (neural, immune, or metabolic) to construct a unified theoretical synthesis.

Results: Based on this synthesis, we propose the "Neuro-Immuno-Metabolic (NIM) Axis." Unlike linear bipartite models, this framework positions exercise as a systemic "energy challenge" that triggers a coordinated recalibration. Key mechanisms identified include: (1) Metabolic Signaling: Lactate, ketone bodies, and the PGC-1α-mediated kynurenine detoxification pathway act as systemic signalers; (2) Immune Regulation: Exercise drives a shift from pro-inflammatory surveillance to "repair-oriented inflammation" rather than binary M1/M2 phenotypes; and (3) Gut-Brain Integration: Gut metabolites (e.g., indoles, SCFAs) regulate central immune tolerance via AhR signaling. Furthermore, we delineate the mechanistic specificity of aerobic, resistance, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

Conclusion: The NIM axis provides a novel, integrative framework that explains how metabolic stress is transduced into psychological resilience. These insights establish a theoretical foundation for precision exercise medicine and advocate for future multi-omics research to develop individualized interventions.

Objective: To evaluate the association between a multi-component web-based mental health intervention and clinical outcomes in patients with psychological disorders through a historical controlled study.

Methods: This historical controlled study included 483 patients diagnosed with psychological disorders who received interventions at our hospital between August 2022 and October 2024. Patients were divided into a control group (CG, n = 238, treated from August 2022 to June 2023 using conventional paper-based assessments) and a study group (SG, n = 245, treated from July 2023 to October 2024 with multi-component web-based mental health intervention). Both groups received standardized treatment according to clinical practice guidelines, with the primary difference being the assessment modality. The web-based system enabled remote completion of standardized assessments and provided real-time data visualization for clinicians. Assessment indicators included the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), Social Disability Screening Schedule (SDSS), and World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF). Follow-up assessments were conducted at baseline and at 1, 3, and 6 months post-intervention.

Results: Baseline characteristics including gender distribution, mean age, mean BMI, and types of psychological disorders were comparable between groups (p > 0.05). At 1-month, 3-month, and 6-month follow-ups, the study group demonstrated significantly lower PHQ-9, GAD-7, and PSQI scores compared to the control group (p < 0.05). At 6 months post-intervention, the study group exhibited higher scores across all SF-36 dimensions (physical functioning, role-physical, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role-emotional, and mental health) compared to the control group (p < 0.05), with a total score of 74.53 ± 9.94, significantly higher than the control group's 63.70 ± 9.89 (t = 11.997, p < 0.001). Additionally, at 6 months post-intervention, the study group had significantly lower SDSS scores and higher WHOQOL-BREF scores than the control group (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: This historical controlled study observed an association between a multi-component web-based mental health intervention and improvements in depression, anxiety, sleep symptoms, quality of life, and social functioning. Given the historical design and pandemic-related temporal confounding, these findings should be interpreted as exploratory and hypothesis-generating.

In its conventional conception, the map has been defined as a "map-instrument," that is, as a technical device of an informative-practical nature. However, from the perspective of critical cartography, representation is understood rather as a spatial discourse, capable of "producing" political images of the territory and integrating subjectivity as one of its constitutive elements. In parallel, environmental psychology has long examined how people construct places through their interactions with and modifications of their environment, thereby linking places to meanings and to personal and collective experiences. Traditional approaches within this field have increasingly been questioned for their apolitical and uncritical assumptions, underscoring the need to recognize that the person-place relationships emerge from the interaction of personal, social, and political-contextual dimensions. This critique resonates with challenges posed by critical cartography to positivist approaches to map production, emphasizing how individuals and groups actively construct their social and spatial reality. This paper builds on data produced as part of a study conducted in Quebrada de Macul Park in Santiago de Chile, with the aim of developing a novel methodological approach to the study of place-assemblages. Place-assemblages are understood here as an ontological concept for examining analytical entities that intertwine material, symbolic, and practical dimensions of people-place relationships. Our guiding research question is: (How) Can subjective and/or psychosocial processes embedded in people-place relations be cartographically represented? To address this question we conducted (i) a systematic literature review to synthesize recent publications that integrate psychosocial and/or narrative processes with cartographic representations, and (ii) a reflexive thematic analysis of two in-depth interviews from the original study aimed at understanding how narratives might produce diverse multi-layer cartographies through which place is conceived as socially and politically intertwined. In doing so, the paper aims to advance methodological strategies, as well as onto-epistemological discussions, on how to operationalize the ontology of 'place-assemblages', translating this conceptual proposal into a concrete framework for capturing the symbolic, material, and practical nature of the person-place's unity.

Introduction: Although the processing of language and music are thought to be related, the semantic interplay of these domains in song remains relatively unexplored. This study investigates how music and lyrics contribute to conceptual meaning-making in song interpretation using a conceptual priming experiment.

Methods: Fifty participants completed a lexical decision task in which target words were semantically related either to the music or to the lyrics of an ecologically valid song prime. Reaction times were used to infer semantic alignment.

Results and discussion: The results showed significantly faster responses to target words associated with the music than to those associated with the lyrics of the prime. This effect remained significant even after controlling for various properties of the primes and targets, which had been assessed by an additional 234 participants in complementary studies prior to the priming experiment. We also found a significant interaction between target type (music- vs. lyrics-related) and the Euclidean distance of valence and arousal between the prime and target: affective distance predicted reaction times only for music-derived targets. Ratings from the complementary studies indicated that music evoked more positive and arousing responses than lyrics, while lyrics appeared to dampen the affective intensity of musical excerpts. Our findings challenge the assumption of tight integration between melody and lyrics in song processing. They suggest that music and language contribute unequally to conceptual interpretation in song, with music playing a more dominant role. These results offer new insights into the construction of multi-modal meanings and the cognitive mechanisms underlying song comprehension.

Introduction: Avoidant coping has been linked to poorer health outcomes. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine whether high avoidant coping can be reliably predicted from health parameters and socioeconomics among adults recently diagnosed with a serious illness.

Methods: A nationwide survey linked to national registers. Inclusion criteria were: (i) age ≥50 years, and (ii) diagnosed with cancer, neurological disease, and/or heart disease within the year preceding the survey. Coping was assessed using the Brief Approach/Avoidance Coping Questionnaire with high avoidance defined as > mean avoidance score +1 SD. Predictive models were developed using data from all survey respondents aged ≥50 years and subsequently tested in the recently diagnosed subsample. Area Under the Curve (AUC) and 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) were reported.

Results: The recently diagnosed sample comprised 746 individuals, of whom 13.4% exhibited high avoidant coping. High avoidance was associated with female sex, lower educational level, shorter self-reported life-expectancy, and poorer perceived social support. However, the predictive models demonstrated poor discriminative capacity (AUC 0.62; CI: 0.57-0.68) for the recently diagnosed sample. Among adults aged 50 + years recently diagnosed with serious illness, high avoidance could not be reliably predicted from health parameters and socioeconomics.

Breast cancer (BC) under 50 years is a critical, potentially traumatic experience that breaks a phase of life characterized by significant goals and expectations. Meaning-making transformation supports post-traumatic growth (PTG) that generally may occur at the end of the experience. The struggling diagnosis and treatment of BC at a young age usually remain strongly imprinted in the mind and body within the autobiographical memories (AMs). Individuals who report a tendency to draw integrative meaning or life lessons from their memories exhibit high levels of adjustment, recovery, and growth. This study aims to explore the narrative interplay between the hardest, negative AMs of BC treatment and PTG processes. A total of 10 women aged under 50 were recruited at the end of medical treatment. An ad hoc narrative interview was administered to explore the meaning-making of the BC experience. To pursue our aim, we focused on three narrative prompts related to negative AMs associated with BC treatment and PTG. Narratives were analyzed through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The analysis shows three narrative interplay trajectories between the hardest and negative AMs related to the BC medical journey that open to specific processes of growth at the end of the treatment: From the Death Anxiety to Self-Resignification; From Physical Suffering to the Choice of Priority; From the Temporality Collapse to the Present Moment Contact. They focus on three distinct yet interconnected aspects of PTG: identity, relational, and temporal levels. The findings confirm how PTG is generated by women's ability to transform the hardest and negative meaning of AMs of the experience. The presence of particularly difficult AMs attests to the psychic process associated with PTG. This process not only serves as an outcome but also facilitates meaning-making aimed at drawing integrative meaning, used for growth, either for oneself or one's life from memory itself. Despite the limitations of this study, it highlights the supportive use of AMs in a psycho-oncology context as a device to reflect on how BC women have internalized the meanings of cancer experience. It also aims to construct a setting conducive to their transformation into a growth-oriented one.

Background: College students face rising anxiety, depression, and stress, with traditional mental health services unable to meet demand. iCBT offers an accessible, low-cost alternative, yet evidence remains inconsistent regarding its effectiveness.

Objective: This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes evidence from RCTs to evaluate iCBT's effects on anxiety, depression, and stress in college students.

Methods: We systematically searched eight databases and one trial registry for studies published up to October 2025. Two reviewers independently screened studies, extracted data, and assessed bias using the Cochrane RoB 2 tool. Inter-rater agreement was measured using Cohen's kappa coefficient. Meta-analysis and subgroup analyses were conducted using RevMan 5.4 and Stata 17.0.

Results: This systematic review included 30 RCTs involving 5,169 college students, 29 of which were included in the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis results showed that, compared to the control group, internet-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy significantly alleviated anxiety symptoms (SMD = -0.24, 95% CI -0.31 to -0.18, p < 0.001), depressive symptoms (SMD = -0.42, 95% CI -0.54 to -0.30, p < 0.001), and stress levels (SMD = -0.37, 95% CI -0.47 to -0.27; p < 0.001) in college students. Subgroup analysis tentatively suggested that chatbot-based interventions may be promising for alleviating depression, while web platform-based interventions appeared more effective in improving anxiety. Furthermore, longer intervention durations (>4 weeks) yielded superior effects compared to shorter ones. Follow-up meta-analysis demonstrated that iCBT had a sustained impact on improving college students' mental health (Depression: SMD = -0.28, 95% CI -0.39 to -0.18, p < 0.001; Anxiety: SMD = -0.17, 95% CI -0.30 to -0.03, p = 0.01; Stress: SMD = -0.32, 95% CI -0.45 to -0.18, p < 0.001).

Conclusion: Our study found that iCBT is an effective approach for improving anxiety, depression, and stress among college students, with relatively long-term effects.

Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?ID=CRD420251177558, identifier (CRD420251177558).

Introduction: Speech perception in noise (SPiN) relies on precise neural encoding of periodic speech cues, which can be assessed using the frequency-following response (FFR). The robustness and fidelity of this encoding vary with maturation, environmental factors, and life experiences. Socioeconomic status (SES), a major contextual determinant of these influences, has been associated with more consistent and higher-quality FFRs in higher-SES individuals. However, it remains unclear whether SES-related advantages in quiet extend to noise. The primary aim was to determine whether SES predicts susceptibility to noise-related degradation in neural encoding, and a secondary aim was to examine whether SES-linked neural differences correspond to behavioral or self-reported SPiN performance.

Materials and methods: Seventy higher-education students with normal hearing were classified into low- and high-SES groups based on maternal education. Speech-evoked FFRs to a 170-ms synthetic /da/ were recorded in quiet and in +10 dB SNR babble. Neural timing, magnitude, and fidelity measures were analyzed. Behavioral SPiN was assessed using a monosyllabic adaptive speech-recognition-threshold task, and self-reported SPiN with the SSQ12. Linear mixed-effects models were used to examine SES effects and their modulation by noise on FFR parameters, and ordinary least-squares regressions were used to test whether these FFR metrics predicted behavioral and self-reported SPiN performance.

Results: Significant interactions between SES and noise indicated differential neural susceptibility to degradation, with higher-SES participants showing smaller noise-related delays in onset and transition timing and reduced declines in fidelity. Larger response magnitudes were also observed in the higher-SES group across segments. Behavioral SPiN showed no consistent group differences, although onset-latency and stimulus-to-response correlation predicted performance. No significant associations were detected for self-reported SPiN.

Discussion: Neural findings indicate that socioeconomic background shapes long-term susceptibility to noise, with higher-SES individuals exhibiting smaller timing delays in both onset and mid-syllabic encoding and more preserved neural fidelity. These advantages may arise from differences in subcortical and cortical phase-locked activity, reflecting neural patterns shaped over development. Maternal education may serve as a proxy for early-life conditions shaped by environmental factors and life experiences during sensitive periods when neural encoding is highly malleable, leaving durable imprints into adulthood.

The main purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that immediate and delayed suggestibility, measured by the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 2), are more strongly associated with perceived susceptibility to commission errors in memory distrust than omission errors. There were 229 community participants, who had completed the GSS 2, and Memory Distrust Scale (MDS) and the Squire Subjective Memory Questionnaire (SSMQ). The MDS and the SSMQ measure people's beliefs about their susceptibility to memory errors of commission and omission, respectively. There were several important findings. The main finding in common across the MDS and SSMQ was a significant negative relationship between GSS 2 memory recall and trait memory distrust. This was a robust finding and suggests that both commission and commission memory trust are associated with poorer objective memory recall. In contrast, only the MDS score was significantly correlated with GSS 2 confabulation, Yield 1, Yield 2, 'direct explanation' explanation resistant behavioural responses, and delayed suggestibility at 1 week follow-up. In contrast GSS 2 Shift correlated significantly with the SSMQ score but not the MDS score. The main implications of the findings are that commission errors, as measured by the MDS, are more associated with both immediate and delayed suggestibility than omission errors, and Shift with omission errors.