Volume 9 Issue 6, June 2025

Switching fields for a PhD can be challenging. Williams-Ceci shares her experiences when transitioning from psychology to information science.

Postnatal brain development is important for individual and societal outcomes. We need large-scale cohort studies from diverse populations to generate generalizable insights into the factors that affect children’s brain development. Here we discuss the contribution of the Chinese Child Brain Development project.

We report differences in social media engagement between adolescents with and without a mental health condition, and also differences between those with internalizing and externalizing conditions. Differences include time spent on social media, online social comparison and the effect of social media feedback on mood.

How humans perform fine motor movements such as handwriting efficiently and accurately is an unsolved mystery in neuroscience. Our results suggest that the brain encodes handwriting in motor cortex by breaking it down into a series of small movement segments.

Two nationwide randomized controlled trials in England with over 4 million participants found that text messages that highlighted that people had reached the ‘top of the queue’ increased COVID-19 vaccination rates. As a result, this ‘top of queue’ message was subsequently rolled out as the standard text reminder.

In this Perspective, the authors review current interventions on social media use among adolescents and propose a new theoretical model based on self-determination theory to guide the effective design of and research on such interventions.

In this Perspective, Gennetian et al. present a framework for child-centric reparations for slavery and legacies of structural and systemic racism in the USA.

The application of polygenic risk scores (PRSs) in clinical practice has advanced but also received criticism. In this Perspective, major psychological and behavioural arguments against PRS applications are assessed.

Neil et al. examine factors associated with variation in fatal police shooting rates across 2,727 US agencies and find that this variation is most strongly associated with differences in social contexts, especially potentially dangerous interactions.

This research explores the linguistic traces of evidence-based reasoning and intuitive decision-making in congressional speeches from 1879 to 2022. The analysis suggests that evidence-based language has continued to decline since the mid-1970s, together with a decline in legislative productivity.

Memon et al. examine the impact that having a paper retracted has on scientists’ subsequent careers.

Scientific disagreements are not just a matter of using different methods or having conflicting data. Sulik et al. surveyed psychological scientists and found that disagreements are also associated with differences in researchers’ cognitive traits.

Cheng et al. explore the universality and cultural variability in how people understand human relationships, revealing a five-dimensional framework for relationship concepts across both modern and ancient societies.

In this systematic review and meta-analysis, Chen et al. show how the relationship between emotion regulation and mental health varies across cultures, identifying moderators such as indulgence, individualism and uncertainty avoidance.

Gender-based violence is widespread, affecting women and men worldwide. Stein et al. use a meta-analysis and the Burden of Proof methodology to evaluate associations between gender-based violence and eight health outcomes, including major depressive disorder, substance use and reproductive health.

Around the world, more than a billion children are regularly exposed to violence or neglect. Flor et al. systematically review evidence that links childhood physical violence, psychological violence and neglect to increased risks for 14 health outcomes.

Two nationwide randomized controlled trials in England with over 4 million participants found that text messages highlighting that people had reached the ‘top of the queue’ increased COVID-19 vaccination rates.

Yin et al. harmonized 1,091 fMRI scans across five imaging cohorts to map developmental trajectories of brain functional connectivity in early childhood, revealing early brain development and its links to cognitive abilities.

How does the brain encode complex movement sequences? Qi et al. reveal that the brain decomposes sequences into temporal states, each corresponding to a small movement fragment, with motor cortex neurons dynamically altering their encoding across states.

Jung et al. show the existence of polygenic overlap and associations between subjective well-being and psychiatric disorders.

Using a nationally representative UK sample of adolescents with clinical-level mental health symptoms, this Registered Report examined differences in social media use. The results suggest that adolescents with mental health conditions spent more time on social media and were less happy about online friends than adolescents without conditions.