The purpose of this study was to investigate an unconscious or implicit mood-congruent memory (MCM) bias in clinical depression. Many studies have shown an explicit memory bias, but no study has yet found an implicit MCM bias in clinical depression. The authors compared depressed and control group participants on a conceptually driven implicit memory test. After studying words of positive, neutral, and negative affective valences, participants produced free associations to various cues. Implicit memory or priming was demonstrated by the production of more studied than unstudied words to the association cues. Depressed participants showed more priming of negative words, whereas controls showed more priming of positive words, thus supporting the MCM pattern. Also, no implicit memory deficit was found in depressed participants. These findings are discussed in the context of several prominent theories of cognition and depression.

Academic and industry-driven medical research faces substantial challenges in terms of patient involvement, recruitment, relevance and generalisability. Digital studies and stakeholder engagement may have enormous potential for medical research. But many digital studies are based on limited participant information and/or informed consent and unclear data ownership, and are subject to selection bias, confounding and information bias. The Swiss MS Registry serves as an example of a digitally enhanced, citizen-science study that leverages the advantages of both traditional medical research, with its established research methods, and novel societal and technological developments, while mitigating their ethical and legal disadvantages and risks.

Research testing the predictions of cognitive-behavioral theory related to the psychopathology of eating disorders has lagged behind treatment outcome research. Central to cognitive theories of eating disorders is the hypothesis that beliefs and expectancies pertaining to body size and to eating are biased in favor of selectively processing information related to fatness/thinness, dieting, and control of food intake or body weight. In recent years, controlled investigations of the predictions of cognitive theories of eating disorders have yielded empirical support for these theories. This paper reviews research which has tested the predictions of cognitive-behavioral theory and discusses the implications of these findings for the treatment of eating disorders. Understanding of information processing biases may assist the clinician in understanding a range of psychopathological features of anorexia and bulimia nervosa, including denial, resistance to treatment, and misinterpretation of therapeutic interventions.

The use of low sub-perceptual doses of psychedelics (“microdosing”) has gained popularity in recent years. Although anecdotal reports claim multiple benefits associated with this practice, the lack of placebo-controlled studies severely limits our knowledge of microdosing and its effects. Moreover, research conducted in standard laboratory settings could fail to capture the motivation of individuals engaged or planning to engage in microdosing protocols, thus underestimating the likelihood of positive effects on creativity and cognitive function. We recruited 34 individuals starting to microdose with psilocybin mushrooms (Psilocybe cubensis), one of the materials most frequently used for this purpose. Following a double-blind placebo-controlled experimental design, we investigated the acute and short-term effects of 0.5 g of dried mushrooms on subjective experience, behavior, creativity (divergent and convergent thinking), perception, cognition, and brain activity. The reported acute effects were significantly more intense for the active dose compared to the placebo, but only for participants who correctly identified their experimental condition. These changes were accompanied by reduced EEG power in the theta band, together with preserved levels of Lempel-Ziv broadband signal complexity. For all other measurements there was no effect of microdosing except for few small changes towards cognitive impairment. According to our findings, low doses of psilocybin mushrooms can result in noticeable subjective effects and altered EEG rhythms, but without evidence to support enhanced well-being, creativity and cognitive function. We conclude that expectation underlies at least some of the anecdotal benefits attributed to microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms.