The findings suggest that it may be important to target BD in obesity prevention and treatment programs in order to reduce the adverse impact of excess body weight on young people's emotional well-being.

Abstract Human and non-human animal research converge to suggest that the sense of smell, olfaction, has a high level of plasticity and is intimately associated with visual-spatial orientation and memory encoding networks. We investigated whether olfactory memory training would lead to transfer to an untrained visual memory task, as well as untrained olfactory tasks. We devised a memory intervention to compare transfer effects generated by olfactory and non-olfactory (visual) memory training. Adult participants were randomly assigned to daily memory training for about 40 days with either olfactory or visual tasks, that had a similar difficulty level. Results showed that while visual training did not produce transfer to the olfactory memory task, olfactory training produced transfer to the untrained visual memory task. Olfactory training also improved participants’ performance on odor discrimination and naming tasks, such that they reached the same performance level as a high-performing group of wine professionals. Our results indicate that the olfactory system is highly responsive to training, and we speculate that the sense of smell may facilitate transfer of learning to other sensory domains. Further research is however needed in order to replicate and extend our findings.

A sense of shared Muslim suffering seems to play a key role in uniting Muslims around the world. Therefore, in the current paper we hypothesized that the social psychological underpinnings of Islamist extremism would be similar for Muslims living in the West and Muslims living in countries with prolonged and ongoing exposure to Western-led military interventions. Across 4 studies among Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan ( Ns = 425, 402, and 127) and Muslims living in 20 Western countries ( N = 366), we examined a path model in which group-based anger mediated the link between Muslim identification, perceived injustice of Western military and foreign policy, and violent behaviour intentions. Our results indicate that regardless of whether Muslims live in places with prolonged and ongoing experience of Western military interventions or not, the social psychological factors predicting violent Islamist extremism appear to be similar. We discuss implications for future theory and research.

Cognitive aging creates major individual and societal burden, motivating search for treatment and preventive care strategies. Behavioural interventions can improve cognitive performance in older age, but effects are small. Basic research has implicated dopaminergic signalling in plasticity. We investigated whether supplementation with the dopamine-precursor L-dopa improves effects of cognitive training on performance. Sixty-three participants for this randomised, parallel-group, doubleblind, placebo-controlled trial were recruited via newspaper advertisements. Inclusion criteria were: age of 65-75 years, Mini-Mental State Examination score >25, absence of serious medical conditions. Eligible subjects were randomly allocated to either receive 100/25 mg L-dopa/benserazide (n = 32) or placebo (n = 31) prior to each of twenty cognitive training sessions administered during a four-week period. Participants and staff were blinded to group assignment. Primary outcomes were latent variables of spatial and verbal fluid intelligence. Compared to the placebo group, subjects receiving L-dopa improved less in spatial intelligence (−0.267 SDs; 95%CI [−0.498, −0.036]; p = 0.024). Change in verbal intelligence did not significantly differ between the groups (−0.081 SDs, 95%CI [−0.242, 0.080]; p = 0.323). Subjects receiving L-dopa also progressed slower through the training and the groups displayed differential volumetric changes in the midbrain. No statistically significant differences were found for the secondary cognitive outcomes. Adverse events occurred for 10 (31%) and 7 (23%) participants in the active and control groups, correspondingly. The results speak against early pharmacological interventions in older healthy adults to improve broader cognitive functions by targeting the dopaminergic system and provide no support for learning-enhancing properties of L-dopa supplements in the healthy elderly. The findings warrant closer investigation about the cognitive effects of early dopamine-replacement therapy in neurological disorders. This trial was preregistered at the European Clinical Trial Registry, EudraCT#2016-000891-54 (2016-10-05). Age-related cognitive decline and dementia are serious public health problems with devastating impact on the quality of life of individuals, their caregivers, but also on healthcare in general. The current total worldwide cost of dementia is about a trillion US dollars a year and is expected to double by 2030 1. Whilst pharmacological

Collective action is often equated with progressive politics, but are there aspects of group mobilisations that generalise across contexts? We examine general social and personality psychological factors behind endorsement of group-based violence across different types of violent group mobilisation. Specifically, we focus on the endorsement of group-based violence amongst supporters of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement ( N = 394), an immigration-critical group ( N = 252), and soccer supporters ( N = 445). Across three preregistered studies, we tested an integrative model including personality and social psychological factors. Several effects were consistent across all three contexts, with group-based relative deprivation positively, and honesty-humility negatively, predicting support for violence. Further, amongst BLM supporters and the immigration-critical group, emotionality negatively predicted support for violence, violent intentions, and self-reported aggression/violence. Overall, our results suggest that individuals who endorse violence in different contexts have some psychological factors in common.