We present a deflationary account of smartphone addiction by situating this purportedly antisocial phenomenon within the fundamentally social dispositions of our species. While we agree with contemporary critics that the hyper-connectedness and unpredictable rewards of mobile technology can modulate negative affect, we propose to place the locus of addiction on an evolutionarily older mechanism: the human need to monitor and be monitored by others. Drawing from key findings in evolutionary anthropology and the cognitive science of religion, we articulate a hypernatural monitoring model of smartphone addiction grounded in a general social rehearsal theory of human cognition. Building on recent predictive-processing views of perception and addiction in cognitive neuroscience, we describe the role of social reward anticipation and prediction errors in mediating dysfunctional smartphone use. We conclude with insights from contemplative philosophies and harm-reduction models on finding the right rituals for honoring social connections and setting intentional protocols for the consumption of social information.

Hypnosis and heavy smartphone use are both characterised by absorbed states in which one loses track of time and responds automatically to stimuli. In this pre-registered study, we tested whether there was a relationship between smartphone addiction and hypnotisability: one's tendency to follow suggestions under hypnosis. Over 11 public lectures, we hypnotised 641 student-aged participants; after the hypnosis session, participants completed the Smartphone Addiction Scale (Short Version). There was a positive correlation between hypnotisability and smartphone addiction (r = .17, 95% CI [.09, .24], p < .001) with a magnitude similar to standard predictors of hypnotisability. This correlation was small but unlikely spurious: it was positive in 10 of the 11 samples (including two from psychology courses) and persisted in a follow-up several months later. The addiction scores in this Canadian sample were unexpectedly high (M = 31.41) compared to other countries. We hypothesise that targeting the absorbed, time-distorted, and automatic use of smartphones may promote healthier phone habits.

Palliative care spans a wide-ranging spectrum: from pain-management to spiritual support. As the demand for end-of-life care increases, so does the demand for innovative, effective, interventions. Mind-body techniques seem especially advantageous in a palliative context. Here we show that hypnosis serves an excellent adjunct therapy in palliative care to boost the efficacy of standard treatments. With the overarching goal of bridging clinical and scientific insights, we outline how five core principles of hypnosis can benefit the diverse needs of palliative care.

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Determining the generalizability of biological mechanisms sup- porting psychological constructs is a central goal of cognitive neuroscience. Self-esteem is a popular psychological construct that is associated with a variety of measures of mental health and life satisfaction. Recently, there has been interest in identifying biological mechanisms that support individual differences in self-esteem. Understanding the biological basis of self-esteem requires identifying predictive biomarkers of self-esteem that generalize across groups of individuals. Previous research us- ing diffusion magnetic resonance imaging has shown that self- esteem is related to the integrity of structural connections link- ing frontostriatal brain systems involved in self-referential processing and reward. However, these findings were based on a small, relatively homogeneous group of participants. In the cur- rent study, we used an out-of-sample predictive modeling approach to generalize the results of the previous study to an independent sample of participants more than twice the size of the original study. We found that both linear univariate and multivariate machine learning models trained on frontostriatal integrity from the original data significantly predicted self-esteem in the independent dataset. These findings underscore the relationship between self-esteem and frontostriatal connectivity and suggest these results are robust to differences in scanning acquisition, analytic methods, and participant demographics.