The question “What is the meaning in life?”, asked for millennia, is one of the central questions of philosophy. There has been a growing movement to approach this question by carefully analyzing the “meaning in life.” Now, Professor Masahiro Morioka of Waseda University has proposed a new idea: to explore “meaning in life” as a kind of geographical landscape experienced when a person tries to engage with their life with a certain attitude or intention.

Once an electoral candidate is in the lead, the public views them as the winner. If the candidate then loses, fraud seems a likely explanation, and even the winner’s supporters might be inclined to be suspicious about the final result. This is because of the cumulative redundancy bias (CRB). The CRB is a cognitive effect that makes it difficult for us to ignore information that we have already processed, even if the previously processed information is redundant to the most recent observation. “This effect plays a major role in the communication of election results in the USA in particular,” explains Dr. Moritz Ingendahl from the Social Cognition Lab at Ruhr University Bochum with regard to the presidential election in 2020. The researchers report their findings in the journal Psychological Science from July 24, 2025.

Self-disclosure is vital for communication. In the present century, various innovative forms of communication have emerged, including video-conferencing and embodied virtual reality (VR). In this context, researchers from Japan have recently demonstrated that embodied VR, especially with unrealistic avatars, facilitates the revelation of personal feelings. Moreover, female-to-female pairing had the highest self-disclosure score, underlining the role of gender.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that causes hallucinations, delusions, and social and cognitive impairment. Animal models are valuable for understanding the mechanisms underlying schizophrenia. However, conventional behavioral assessments are limited by the need for human intervention and external stimuli. Researchers from Fujita Health University, Japan, have established a semi-naturalistic platform using the automated ‘IntelliCage’ system for the comprehensive assessment of schizophrenia-like behaviors. The model can enhance translational research in psychiatric disorders and improve therapeutic development.