Gaming disorder (GD) affects approximately 8% of adolescents and is associated with altered reward processing. However, the nature of associations between GD and neural reward systems, and how psychopathology (PP) moderates these associations during development, remains unclear. Using longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, we examined 2,046 adolescents (58% female; ages 11-14) at two time points, two years apart. Hierarchical linear mixed-effects models examined bidirectional associations between GD symptoms and neural activation during the Monetary Incentive Delay task, as well as interactions with PP (anxiety, depression, ADHD) across eight reward-circuit regions of interest. After FDR correction and controlling for PP, robust bidirectional associations emerged between GD and reward/loss activation across bilateral amygdala, insula, vmPFC, caudate, putamen, and ACC. A consistent developmental pattern revealed early reward hypoactivation (ages 11-12) transitioning to reward hyperactivation (ages 13-14), suggesting progressive neuroadaptation from reward deficiency to sensitization. Specific types of PP selectively moderated GD × Reward Activation relationships: anxiety and ADHD enhanced the associations between right insula activation and GD symptoms across time. These findings provide further evidence that PP functions as a contributing risk factor of GD, with the right insula emerging as the most robust neural indicator of GD both with and without the effects of PP. Clinically, early treatment of anxiety and ADHD may help minimize GD symptom development during adolescence.

Flow, an optimal experience characterized by deep immersion and engagement in an activity, has been extensively studied in behavioral research. However, its neural dynamic mechanism remains poorly understood. In a within-subject video gaming experiment, we captured neural activity underlying flow, boredom, and anxiety using a 64-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) system. Compared to boredom and anxiety, flow exhibits the highest global functional connectivity, metastability, and dimensionality of dynamic functional connectivity patterns, suggesting that flow is a highly adaptable process that is supported by high-dimensional neural dynamics. Unlike previous studies that focused on identifying static or localized brain activity, we examine the neural dynamic patterns of flow and propose the Global Dynamic Flow Model that characterizes flow as a high-dimensional, global metastable neural activity. Our study offers novel insights into the role of high-dimensionality and global metastability in brain activity associated with the flow experience.

What is the prevalence of moral themes in textual corpora? Most previous moral mining research has been informed by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). Here, we develop and evaluate an alternative moral mining tool based on the theory of Morality as Cooperation (MAC), using crowd-sourced annotations and the web-based hybrid content annotation platform, the Moral Narrative Analyzer (MoNA). We compare the empirical performance of the extended Morality as Cooperation Dictionary (eMACD) with previous dictionaries, including the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD), across ten validation analyses, encompassing diverse corpora that include news media, journal entries, presidential speeches, social media, and movies. We find that eMACD outperforms previous dictionaries in most cases. We conclude that eMACD is an important addition to the methodological toolkit of researchers examining moral content in textual data, and we provide eMACDscore - a Python-based moral mining tool - to facilitate future research.

Background:Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos have been increasingly popularized as accessible tools for stress relief. Despite widespread media coverage promoting their benefits, empirical research on the neural mechanisms underlying ASMR remains limited, particularly in general, unselected populations rather than self-identified ASMR responders. Objective:This study aimed to investigate whether ASMR videos, when viewed in a naturalistic context by a general population sample, elicit consistent neural synchrony in stress-related brain regions and whether individual differences in perceived stress predict variability in neural responses. Methods:The study included 72 young adults from South Korea. They participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment in which they viewed 3 ASMR videos selected through both manual and computational content analysis to reflect commonly consumed ASMR content. Intersubject correlation analysis was used to quantify the degree to which participants exhibited shared temporal patterns of neural activity across 16 a priori regions of interest implicated in stress processing. Intersubject representational similarity analysis assessed whether pairwise similarity in self-reported stress levels predicted similarity in neural synchrony. Exploratory analyses examined differences across videos, the impact of familiarity and prior ASMR use, and comparisons with a Mukbang control video. Results:Intersubject correlation analysis demonstrated that ASMR videos elicited significant neural synchrony in several brain regions (P<.05), including the insula and amygdala, although this synchrony varied across videos. No significant associations were identified between perceived stress and neural synchrony after correction for multiple comparisons (all P>.05). Exploratory comparisons with a Mukbang control video revealed no significant differences in stress-related neural synchrony between ASMR and non-ASMR content (all P>.05). Additional exploratory analyses examining familiarity with the content and prior ASMR viewership also did not show significant effects (all P>.05). Uncorrected analyses suggested weak trends that indicated greater neural variability among participants with differing stress levels, but these findings are preliminary. Conclusions:The results do not provide conclusive evidence that ASMR videos consistently engage stress-related neural networks or that individual stress levels predict neural synchrony during ASMR video viewing. The findings highlight the substantial variability in ASMR engagement across content and individuals, and underscore the need for further research using multimodal physiological measures, larger samples, and stratified designs to identify which ASMR components and viewer characteristics are most relevant to potential stress-relief effects.

Importance:Although gaming disorder is recognized as a diagnosable behavioral addiction, uncertainty remains regarding its directional association with adolescent psychopathology. Clarifying this association is crucial for refining diagnostic frameworks and developing targeted interventions. Objective:To examine directional longitudinal associations between psychopathology and gaming disorder among adolescents using the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution model as a theoretical framework. Design, Setting, and Participants:This cohort study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (release 5.1), analyzing 4289 adolescents in the US who played video games and completed 3 waves of data collection (at ages 11-12, 12-13, and 13-14 years) between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2022. Statistical analysis was performed from December 2024 to March 2025. Main Outcomes and Measures:Psychopathology was assessed using caregiver reports from the Child Behavior Checklist, which provided measures of depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), social problems, anxiety, and conduct disorder or aggression. Additional person-centered core characteristics (eg, negative life events, family conflict, bullying, and impulsivity) were incorporated. Gaming disorder was measured using the Video Game Addiction Questionnaire, which aligns with the DSM-5 criteria for internet gaming disorder. Results:This cohort comprised 4289 adolescents (mean [SD] age, 168.8 [8.2] months; 2391 of 4288 [56%] males). Household income varied widely, with 1374 of 3877 households (35%) reporting an income from $100 000 to $199 000. Cross-lagged panel models (CLPMs) demonstrated that higher baseline levels of psychopathology were associated with an increased risk for subsequent gaming disorder from the 2-year to the 3-year follow-up (β = 0.03 [95% CI, 0.002-0.06]; P = .003) and from 3-year to the 4-year follow-up (β = 0.07 [95% CI, 0.04-0.10]; P < .001). Even when controlling for other personal core characteristics associated with increased risk, there was still a small to medium effect size of psychopathology associated with gaming disorder from the 3-year to the 4-year follow-up (β = 0.04 [95% CI, 0.002-0.07]; P = .04). In contrast, gaming disorder was not associated with later increases in psychopathology. Hierarchical mixed-effects models that accounted for both the panel structure and grouping of the data corroborated the results from the CLPMs. Conclusions and Relevance:The results of this cohort study suggest that psychopathology is significantly associated with the development of gaming disorder among adolescents. Clinical efforts to address underlying mental health issues, particularly for internalizing symptoms such as depression, anxiety, social problems, and ADHD, may reduce the incidence and severity of gaming disorder.

The Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) suggests that news audiences, including investors, evaluate news based on their moral frames, and that these moral evaluations shape behavior. We extracted moral signals from 382,185 news articles across an 8-month period and examined their predictive effect on stock market movement. Results indicate that morality is a strong predictor during low economic periods and is driven by subversion and sanctity. Overall, our study suggests that moral framing and its foundations are important considerations for research on news effects, especially during periods of economic instability. The study provides an additional theoretical perspective on stock market fluctuations as well as practical implications for stakeholders with an interest in dampening collective panics and stabilizing investor sentiment.

Persuasive communication in marketing, political, and health domains influences sales, elections, and public health. We present a mega-analysis (a pooled analysis of raw data) of 16 functional MRI datasets (572 participants, 739 messages, and 21,688 experimental trials) assessing the neural correlates of the effectiveness of messages in individual message receivers and at scale (in large groups of message receivers who did not undergo neuroimaging). Existing theories suggest that decision-making is driven by expected rewards and perceived social relevance associated with the expected outcomes of a given choice. Consistent with these theories, we find that (i) brain activity implicated in reward and social processing is associated with message effectiveness in individuals and at scale across diverse domains (e.g. marketing and health campaigns); (ii) exploratory analysis further suggests language, emotion, and sensorimotor processes as pertinent to message effectiveness; and (iii) brain activity provides complementary information on message effectiveness at scale beyond self-reports provided by the same neuroimaging participants. This study offers novel insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying effective messaging, highlights a path toward greater unity and efficiency in persuasion research, and suggests practical intervention targets for message design.

Humans universally condemn what they see as moral violations, yet the perceived wrongness of distinct moral transgressions varies across individuals, neurodiverse populations, and cultures. We currently do not know how and to what extent the human brain universally computes and translates moral wrongness into subjective, graded moral judgments. Here, we combined fMRI with pattern recognition techniques to identify and evaluate a neural signature predictive of graded moral wrongness judgments. Drawing on to date’s largest database for studying the neural basis of moral judgment, spanning independent, multi-culture fMRI datasets of moral vignettes for discovery (n = 64), validation (n = 30), replication (n = 27), and generalization (n = 30) analyses (n total =151), we demonstrate that accurate prediction of graded moral wrongness relies on a distributed neural circuit, with important contributions from cortical and subcortical areas. We further evaluate common and domain-isolated (e.g., care, fairness, purity) brain systems for graded moral wrongness and demonstrate shared and dissociable neural representations with negative affect and subjective disgust. Together, we find that graded moral wrongness judgments are robustly computed via a shared and distributed neural code and provide a sensitive and specific moral wrongness biomarker for future studies.

The prevalence of negative sentiment in news content appears to have increased over time. This trend has raised concerns about the potential challenges associated with consuming negative news, particularly when it is consumed frequently. In response, two general recommendations have emerged: news organizations should strive to balance negative coverage with positive reporting, and users are advised to limit their exposure to negative news. However, these recommendations seem to not be effective in practice in many cases and may also raise moral, intellectual, informational, and societal challenges (e.g., the public’s unawareness of societal issues). This Perspective aims to propound that negative news can be consumed ‘mindfully’ and ‘harmoniously’. We propose that individuals should adopt an agentic mindset toward negative news consumption. We outline what mindful and harmonious consumption of negative news might look like and argue that recommending a fixed duration limit for exposure to negative news for all users may not be feasible, given the interpersonal and intrapersonal variability among individuals. The mindful-harmonious consumption of negative news may serve as an adaptive strategy for contemporary users, who are continuously exposed to negative news yet still require it. Conceptual and empirical investigations into the mindful and harmonious consumption of negative news warrant scholarly and public attention.

This paper adopts a pluralist conceptualization of the construct of moral understanding, in particular within the context of audiences' verbalization patterns in response to watching morally-laden narratives on YouTube. We propose eight unique dimensions along which expressions of moral understanding can be measured in naturalistic settings and demonstrate the pragmatic feasibility of leveraging Large Language Models for moral content analysis. Our findings suggest a heightened prevalence of dimensions including emotional response, moral awareness, moral contextualization, moral reasoning, and aesthetic perception in audience responses, suggesting the multifaceted ways in which audiences cognitively and affectively interpret moral themes as constructed within narratives. Additionally, we find that specific moral content dimensions, i.e., harm and loyalty, differentially activate multiple moral understanding dimensions. In doing so, this study provides initial evidence of the existence of robust linkages between moral content, as exemplified within popular short-film narratives, and the saliency of audiences' expressed moral understanding.

The potential of using online media content as an efficient and affordable alternative to mental health care depends on the ability to identify and select content that offers therapeutic benefits. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos, known for inducing a tingling sensation through repetitive behaviors and enhanced audio features, have gained attention largely due to self-reported evidence suggesting their effectiveness in reducing stress. This study aimed to assess physiological evidence from the central nervous system (CNS) using functional magnetic resonance imaging to validate the stress-relief effects of ASMR videos within an uninterrupted, naturalistic paradigm. This study investigated the neurological responses of 72 young adults to popular ASMR videos, focusing on established CNS indicators of stress, and examines how neural synchrony in response to these videos varies with stress levels. Despite the use of an advanced analytic pipeline suitable for naturalistic paradigms—incorporating inter-subject correlation (ISC) and inter-subject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA)—this study found no substantial neurological evidence to support ASMR's stress-relief effects across carefully selected video stimuli. Among the 16 stress-related regions of interest, significant neural synchrony was observed solely in the left insula (Brodmann area 13) with ISC = 0.013, p < .05, after false-discovery rate correction. Furthermore, the degree of neural synchronization was not moderated by individuals’ stress levels. Despite ensuring ecological validity and utilizing a state-of-the-art analytic pipeline suited for naturalistic paradigms, this study did not provide neurological evidence supporting the stress-relief effects of ASMR videos. Consequently, these results challenge the therapeutic claims made by researchers and media outlets regarding ASMR's effectiveness as a stress-relief tool.

Abstract Drawing from the literature on adolescent cognitive development, we describe how digital media usage has been linked to cognitive control processes, including the regulation of affective responses. In addition, we highlight how digital media use is perceived as particularly gratifying for adolescents’ needs. The use of digital media for prolonged periods or in a problematic way has been associated with structural and functional changes in the brain regions related to top-down control and reward systems. Studies are still at an early stage, mostly cross-sectional and based on self-reports. Measures used to assess digital media use mainly cover time and frequency of use, or problematic digital media use, with little or no focus on specific activities and content. Reported effects tend to be negligible-to-small; however, studies have rarely examined the impact of mental health conditions, which can in themselves be the underlying driver of cognitive changes and digital media use. We suggest future research should focus on establishing causality and directionality while highlighting positive uses in relation to cognitive development. More data examining different types of uses and contexts, including vulnerable and underrepresented populations and areas, are necessary before generalizing results.

Punishment of moral norm violators is instrumental for human cooperation. Yet, social and affective neuroscience research has primarily focused on second- and third-party norm enforcement, neglecting the neural architecture underlying observed (vicarious) punishment of moral wrongdoers. We used naturalistic television drama as a sampling space for observing outcomes of morally-relevant behaviors to assess how individuals cognitively process dynamically evolving moral actions and their consequences. Drawing on Affective Disposition Theory, we derived hypotheses linking character morality with viewers’ neural processing of characters’ rewards and punishments. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses of 28 female participants while free-viewing 15 short story summary video clips of episodes from a popular US television soap opera. Each summary included a complete narrative structure, fully crossing main character behaviors (moral/immoral) and the consequences (reward/punishment) characters faced for their actions. Narrative engagement was examined via intersubject correlation and representational similarity analysis. Highest cortical synchronization in 9 specifically selected regions previously implicated in processing moral information was observed when characters who act immorally are punished for their actions with participants’ empathy as an important moderator. The results advance our understanding of the moral brain and the role of normative considerations and character outcomes in viewers’ engagement with popular narratives.

The present research examined how value-free and value-driven measures of argument strength (MAS) can be computationally extracted using a theory-driven approach at scale in a naturalistic setting by analyzing a total of 7,961 real-world debates and 42,716 judgments in rhetorical quality. In the first study, value-free MAS was significantly related to the rhetorical quality of arguments (i.e. their persuasiveness). The results indicate that the side that provides more information-source citation, less quantitative specificity, more unique words, and more abstract language is more likely to be perceived as convincing in dialectical argumentation, where two people are exchanging opposing arguments. In the second study, the added influence of value-driven MAS is investigated. The results show that the similarity between the moral values represented in arguments and those that are salient to argument receivers predicts the rhetorical quality. The research demonstrates how rhetorical quality can be measured and predicted at scale, and how naturally generated arguments can be used for scientific progress in persuasion research.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder associated with suboptimal outcomes throughout the life-span. Extant work suggests that ADHD-related deficits in task performance may be magnified under high cognitive load and minimized under high perceptual load, but these effects have yet to be systematically examined, and the neural mechanisms that undergird these effects are as yet unknown. Herein, we report results from three experiments investigating how performance in ADHD is modulated by cognitive load and perceptual load during a naturalistic task. Results indicate that cognitive load and perceptual load influence task performance, reaction time variability (RTV), and brain network topology in an ADHD-specific fashion. Increasing cognitive load resulted in reduced performance, greater RTV, and reduced brain network efficiency in individuals with ADHD relative to those without. In contrast, increased perceptual load led to relatively greater performance, reduced RTV, and greater brain network efficiency in ADHD. These results provide converging evidence that brain network efficiency and intraindividual variability in ADHD are modulated by both cognitive and perceptual load during naturalistic task performance.

Media multitasking has become nearly ubiquitous in the developed world. Higher self-reported media multitasking has consistently been shown to relate to self-reported attention problems, including symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but the magnitude of this relationship is small and heterogeneous across studies. These findings have motivated calls for increased specificity in media multitasking research, moving beyond aggregated summaries of multitasking behavior in favor of an approach that considers how specific combinations of media behaviors relate to cognitive outcomes of interest. Herein, we take a data-driven (Jack et al., 2018), computational approach to uncover the network structure of media multitasking behaviors in a sample of 2542 young adults in the United States. Results indicate that those with greater severity of ADHD symptoms tend to have more densely connected multitasking networks overall, as well as differing patterns of node centrality within the network. These results provide increased understanding of how individual differences in media multitasking habits relate to attention and cognition, and point to the promise of network-based analyses developing a fuller understanding within this topic domain.

Abstract Moral conflict, in other words the violation of one or more moral norms in order to uphold different moral norms, undergirds all appealing narrative fictions. The Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME), which is rooted in moral foundations theory, provides a method of evaluating moral conflict as expressed in screen stories. While viewing moral conflict, viewers have to engage in rational cognitive processes in order to evaluate the witnessed behavior; this can be an important catalyzer for moral understanding. The chapter introduces a Moral Foundations Dictionary to extract the moral conflict in a given story in relation to (1) within-foundation versus between-foundations conflict, (2) magnitude of conflict, and (3) degree of polarity. A proposed Moral Narrative Analyzer will be able to extract moral information and conflict from narratives. A more recent framework for evaluating the moral content of stories is rooted in Morality as Cooperation.

For decades, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been the focus of social neuroscience research, specifically regarding its role in competitive social decision-making. However, the distinct contributions of PFC subregions when making strategic decisions involving multiple types of information (social, non-social, and mixed information) remain unclear. This study investigates decision-making strategies (pure probability calculation vs. mentalizing) and their neural representations using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data collected during a two-person card game. We observed individual differences in information processing strategy, indicating that some participants relied more on probability than others. Overall, the use of pure probability decreased over time in favor of other types of information (e.g., mixed information), with this effect being more pronounced within-round trials than across rounds. In the brain, (1) the lateral PFC activates when decisions are driven by probability calculations; (2) the right lateral PFC responds to trial difficulty; and (3) the anterior medial PFC is engaged when decision-making involves mentalizing. Furthermore, neural synchrony, which reflects the real-time interplay between individuals' cognitive processes, did not consistently contribute to correct decisions and fluctuated throughout the experiment, suggesting a hierarchical mentalizing mechanism at work.