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Premenstrual dysphoric disorder in online peer support communities: a Reddit case study
No full textThe growing reliance on online communities has reshaped how individuals articulate, validate, and navigate psychological distress. However, the value of online peer support spaces remains insufficiently studied, particularly in the context of underrecognized conditions such as Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). Here we investigated r/PMDD, a Reddit-based peer support community comprising 17,332 participants over a 12-year period (2012–2024), contextualized by their activity across 112 other mental health subreddits. We found a substantial decrease in the association of PMDD with depression and anxiety, evident both in general cross-community activity trends and at the individual level shortly after users become active in r/PMDD. Despite PMDD’s clinical classification as an affective disorder, users frequently discussed both psychological and physical symptoms. These discussions largely aligned with DSM-5-TR diagnostic criteria, though substantial heterogeneity was evident across individuals. Users clustered around distinct treatment types, with SSRI antidepressants, contraceptives, and complementary medicine as the most prominent. These three medication types were negatively associated between each other, indicating a compartmentalized approach to treatment. Moreover, users posting about SSRI antidepressants in r/PMDD exhibited higher cross-community activity across most disorders compared to those posting about contraceptives. The findings underscore the value of online peer support communities as a complement to clinical understanding of diagnostically complex conditions like PMDD, particularly in relation to comorbidity patterns, symptomatology, and treatment
Effects of Joint Action Observation on Children’s Imitation
No full textGrasping others’ intentions from their actions is essential for learning, as it enhances the ability to identify collaborative acts and anticipate others’ actions, facilitating effective coordination toward shared goals. From a young age, children seem to recognize when others are working together based on their interactions and use this understanding to inform their own learning. Although much of early learning occurs in joint contexts, little attention has been devoted to understanding how children learn by participating in joint actions and by observing others acting together. Using a puzzle box paradigm, we tested 3–6-year-old children’s imitation of an inefficient performance following individual and joint demonstrations in which the inefficient performance did or did not involve bimanual or joint coordination. This allowed us to test whether the tendency to overimitate extends to joint actions and how action coordination modulates imitative behavior. We found that overimitation extends to joint actions, as indicated by similar rates of inefficient copying following individual and joint action demonstrations. Furthermore, our results suggest that action coordination did not play a significant role in modulating children’s tendency to overimitate. Taken together, the results of the study advance our understanding of how learning occurs in social interactions
Divergent accumulation patterns of SNVs and INDELs reveal negative selection in noncancerous cells
No full textSomatic mutations accumulate with age in human tissues. Clonal amplification of some mutations causes cancers and other diseases. However, it is unclear if random mutation accumulation affects cellular function without clonal amplification. We tested this in cell culture, avoiding the limitation that mutation accumulation in vivo leads to cancer. We performed single-cell whole-genome sequencing of fibroblasts from DNA-mismatch-repair-deficient Msh2−/−mice and controls after long-term passaging. While maintaining the same growth rates, in the Msh2−/−fibroblasts, single-nucleotide variants increased up until >50,000 per cell, with small insertions and deletions plateauing at ∼16,000 per cell. We provide evidence for genome-wide negative selection and large-scale mutation-driven population changes, including significant clonal expansion of preexisting mutations and widespread cell-strain-specific hotspots, likely caused by positive selection of mutations in specific genes. Since negative selection to prevent mutations with adverse effects in vivo during aging is difficult to envision, these results suggest a causal role of somatic mutations in age-related cell functional decline
