Earth and Environmental Sciences

The development of large-scale photovoltaic power plants (PVPPs) represents one effective pathway toward achieving carbon neutrality. However, the impact patterns of PVPPs across different climate and ecosystem types remain elusive, which is a critical factor for regional management and optimization of photovoltaic projects. In this study, the impacts of PVPPs on local climate and ecosystems across different regions were simulated by a photovoltaic energy balance module and an ecological mechanism model. These results indicated that PVPPs deployment exerted significant impacts on local climate, decreasing air temperature and increasing air relative humidity in most regions. The climate effects were obvious in desert ecosystem and Tibet-Plateau (TP) climatic zone. The PVPPs deployment also showed positive influences on vegetation growth and carbon sequestration. It enhanced gross primary productivity (GPP), net primary productivity (NPP) and net ecological productivity (NEP). PVPPs increased NEP in desert ecosystems and the Tibet-Plateau region, while ecological effects were greater enhancement in grassland ecosystem and the middle temperate climate regions. The climate effects induced by PVPPs are significant for vegetation growth and carbon sequestration. Our findings can serve as a reference for rational construction and planning of PV projects, achieving a win-win situation that balances clean energy production with ecological conservation.

Bike-sharing systems have become an essential component of sustainable urban transport, yet the resilience of system usage to changing environmental conditions remains insufficiently understood. This study provides a comprehensive spatiotemporal assessment of how weather and air quality influence bike-sharing ridership across five major U.S. cities between 2020 and 2024, and how these dynamics may evolve under future climate scenarios. Using generalized additive models, we reveal that primary weather variables mathematically dominate cycling decisions: ridership peaks around 20-25°C, while precipitation consistently suppresses usage. Conversely, air quality exerts a much weaker, secondary influence characterized by a behavioral dichotomy. Invisible, routine pollutants like ozone act as spurious proxies for pleasant weather, whereas physically perceptible hazards-such as acute wildfire smoke in San Francisco-can trigger sharp declines in usage. Hot spot analyses further show that environmental stress dynamically reconfigures spatial activity, driving a "climatic refuge" effect where cycling shifts toward waterfronts during extreme heat. Projecting these sensitivities forward, we show that future warming will enhance annual cycling suitability, particularly in seasonally cold cities, by reducing prohibitive winter days. Collectively, these results provide an integrated framework for understanding micromobility resilience, highlighting that urban cyclists respond primarily to immediate sensory environments rather than abstract health metrics.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is increasingly recognised as a One Health challenge in which environmental reservoirs play an important role in the persistence and dissemination of resistance genes. Despite growing recognition that environmental antimicrobial resistance is a critical component of the One Health challenge, the pathways through which antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) move between environmental systems and human populations remain incompletely characterised, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where environmental exposures are greatest and surveillance capacity is limited. This review synthesises current knowledge on environmental resistomes across soil, water, sediment and groundwater systems, with a focus on metagenomic and quantitative analytical approaches that have transformed environmental AMR surveillance. Unlike traditional culture-based methods, metagenomics enables comprehensive, culture-independent profiling of microbial communities and their associated resistomes, allowing detection of both known and previously uncharacterised resistance genes, as well as insights into their genetic context and mobility. This has significantly advanced our ability to characterise environmental reservoirs and infer potential transmission pathways at ecosystem scale. Using Bangladesh as an illustrative example of environmental exposure dynamics in rapidly urbanising low- and middle-income settings, we examine how contaminated urban waterways, wastewater discharge, agricultural practices, and seasonal hydrological processes-including monsoon-driven flooding-create interconnected transmission pathways linking environmental, animal, and human microbiomes. We also consider how co-selection pressures from heavy metals and other environmental contaminants contribute to the persistence and amplification of antimicrobial resistance beyond antibiotic-driven selection alone. These dynamics are further intensified by dense surface water networks, strong hydrological connectivity, and limited wastewater treatment infrastructure, which together create high-intensity human-environment interfaces and facilitate large-scale redistribution of antimicrobial resistance genes across environmental compartments. Taken together, these features make Bangladesh an analytically distinctive and tractable model system for understanding environmental AMR dynamics, with relevance to comparable deltaic and monsoon-influenced regions in South and Southeast Asia. Key methodological challenges-including the gap between ARG detection and clinical risk interpretation, biases in resistance gene databases, sampling limitations, and the lack of harmonised environmental surveillance frameworks-are examined alongside emerging tools such as long-read sequencing, functional metagenomics and artificial intelligence-assisted bioinformatic analysis. Finally, we propose an integrated One Health framework linking environmental metagenomics, global surveillance systems and policy interventions to support harmonised, data-driven monitoring and mitigation of environmental AMR across interconnected ecosystems.

Hospital resilience to extreme weather events is usually investigated at the meso level, taking the entire hospital as the unit of analysis. This overlooks the multilevel nature of resilience, regarding interactions with the micro and macro levels. This article develops an analytical framework informed by the Resilience Engineering perspective, considering cross-level interactions and informal practices neglected by studies focused on the robustness of physical infrastructures. To this end, a study of hospital resilience to a flooding event was conducted, encompassing triggers, manifestations, and impacts of resilience across the micro, meso, and macro levels. Data collection involved observations, meetings, document analysis, and questerviews with healthcare professionals from four hospitals affected by the floods. Results indicated 31 triggers, 40 manifestations, and 44 impacts. Three propositions synthesise emergent patterns arising from these results. Altogether, the themes that guided data collection and analysis (triggers, manifestations, and impacts), a schematic model of their relationships, and the propositions, make up a framework for the multilevel analysis of hospital resilience to floods. This framework advances Resilience Engineering by moving beyond the conceptual recognition of multilevel resilience and offering a basis for its empirical analysis. It also contributes to the assessment of hospital resilience to floods by highlighting the limitations of an overemphasis on the meso level and formal organisational structures.

The gut microbiome plays an important role in mammalian host health and ability to adapt to environmental conditions. While the gut microbiome is often considered fairly stable over short periods of time in the absence of a dramatic stressor, relatively little is known about the actual time scale of microbiome shifts, particularly in wildlife species. Most existing temporal studies utilize captive subjects, while here we employ the Western deer mouse, Peromyscus sonoriensis, in a field-based study to assess short-term microbiome dynamics (less than two days) in the wild. Mice were live-trapped at several urban and rural parks over a two-night trapping period in and around Spokane, Washington, USA in May of 2024. We collected fecal samples from 43 different individuals, capturing two to four time points per individual, and bacterial community composition was determined via 16S profiling with Nanopore sequencing. Genus-level profiles were compared across time points for each individual, showing relative consistency in types of taxa present for most mice, but some marked shifts in Ligilactobacillus in some mice. Calculation of intraclass correlation coefficients, however, showed low stability in alpha diversity (Shannon index) over time, suggesting greater variability than initially anticipated. Analysis with respect to site urbanization, sex, and age showed a significant effect of age when accounting for homogeneity of variance, with additional exploration of urbanization and sex needed in future work. These results provide important insight into the understudied area of host microbiome dynamics and highlight the complex relationships between microbiome, health, and environment.

N C Holt, B D Nguyen, T Reitman, P Campbell, K Samuk, M Malone; The x-axis: the scientific and ethical issues of race and sex/gender as biological categori

The rapid proliferation of electronic devices has made electronic waste (e-waste) one of the fastest-growing waste streams globally, yet only a fraction is formally collected and recycled. The circular economy (CE) offers a transformative framework for rethinking e-waste systems, but a persistent implementation gap separates theoretical potential from on-the-ground reality. This paper provides a narrative thematic review that synthesizes cross-disciplinary evidence to map the co-evolution of e-waste management practices, business models, and policy instruments under a CE lens. Drawing on academic literature, policy documents, and industry reports from 2010 to 2025, the review examines current practices across collection systems, reverse logistics, and formal-informal sector dynamics. It identifies systemic barriers spanning product design, collection inefficiencies, and processing limitations, revealing how failures in one domain, such as weak eco-design or fragmented regulation, amplify challenges elsewhere, creating self-reinforcing lock-ins. The analysis then explores emerging enablers, including technological innovations (hydrometallurgy, bio-hydrometallurgy, automated disassembly, digital product passports), policy instruments (extended producer responsibility with eco-modulated fees, right-to-repair legislation), circular product design strategies, and economic incentives (deposit-refund schemes, blended finance, public procurement). The central finding is that isolated interventions are insufficient; coordinated, systems-level approaches are required to bridge implementation gaps. The paper concludes with actionable recommendations for policymakers, recyclers, and consumers, alongside a forward-looking research agenda to advance CE-based e-waste management.

Introduction This article analyzes the latent conflicts that structure the relationship between a mining company and affected local communities in the municipality of Yorodougou in western Côte d’Ivoire. Methods Based on a qualitative approach combining 26 individual interviews and 24 focus groups, the study examines how community expectations, fragile agreements, and uncertainty shape local perceptions of the project. Results The findings show that latent conflict stems not only from a lack of investment, but primarily from a persistent misalignment of expectations within a context of uncertainty and fragile arrangements governing the project’s benefits. Tensions arise from differing perceptions of roles and responsibilities among stakeholders, as well as from weak accountability, participation, and dispute-resolution mechanisms. Community demands for drinking water, roads, electricity, school and sanitation facilities, employment, and training reveal both a local governance issue regarding benefits and a challenge for urban and regional planning. Discussion Drawing on the 2030 Agenda, the article links these expectations to the Sustainable Development Goals and argues that the persistence of latent conflict depends less on the volume of social actions than on the spatial coherence of investments, the credibility of commitments, and the capacity of local institutions to reduce social vulnerability. From an inclusive urban resilience perspective, the article proposes linking Impact and Benefit Agreements with nature-based and community-oriented approaches to co-produce more equitable infrastructure and services and to strengthen the long-term acceptability of the project.

This study examines young people’s subjective sense of safety in Wiesbaden and understands insecurity not as an individual feeling, but as a socially and spatially produced phenomenon. The starting point is a relational understanding of space, according to which spaces of fear do not arise as fixed locations, but as the result of architectural, social and symbolic constellations. Methodologically, the project follows a sequential mixed-methods design involving a multilingual online survey and subsequent walking interviews to capture both broad distributions and situational interpretations of insecurity. The results show that subjective safety is unevenly distributed spatially and socially. More central, well-frequented spaces are perceived as safe, whilst transit areas, underpasses, station precincts and places with poor visibility are more frequently regarded as unsafe. Particularly relevant factors here are darkness, low social presence, a lack of visibility and perceptions attributed by others. Insecurity also significantly influences mobility behavior: many respondents avoid certain routes, adapt their movements or seek social reassurance. The study shows that street design and open space planning should take greater account of subjective safety, as public spaces have not only a functional but also a social and symbolic impact.

Background Athlete burnout frequently co-occurs with depression and anxiety, yet prior studies relying on total scores obscure how individual symptoms interact across these constructs. Objective To identify central and bridge symptoms linking athlete burnout, depression, and anxiety using network analysis. Methods A total of 1,226 Chinese collegiate athletes (637 male, 589 female; M age = 18.11, SD = 1.39) completed the ABQ-15, PHQ-9, and GAD-7. A regularized partial-correlation network was estimated with the EBIC-LASSO; expected influence (EI) and bridge expected influence (bEI) indexed centrality. Results GAD-2 (uncontrollable worry; EI = 1.07), PHQ-2 (depressed mood; EI = 1.22), and ABQ-E8 (physical exhaustion; EI = 1.11) were the most central nodes. PHQ-3 (sleep disturbance; bEI = 0.47) emerged as the strongest bridge across the three clusters. The strongest edges connected ABQ-E8–PHQ-4 (fatigue; r = 0.37) and ABQ-E2 (training fatigue)–PHQ-1 (anhedonia; r = 0.29). Conclusion GAD-2, PHQ-2, and ABQ-E8 exhibited high centrality and represent key intervention targets for reducing the overall symptomatology of burnout–depression–anxiety comorbidity in athletes, and should therefore be prioritized; PHQ-3, as the strongest bridge symptom connecting the three clusters, represents a target whose treatment may interrupt the transdiagnostic symptom-transmission pathways that maintain the comorbidity. These clearly defined intervention targets also facilitate the development of a brief, multi-symptom screening tool tailored to athlete populations.

Aligning with an integrated biopsychosocial models of stress-related psychopathology, Garcia-Toro and Gomez-Juanes argued that anxiety-spectrum disorders can be understood as a biopsychosocial dissociation driven by 'schismogenesis', the runaway feedback across neurobiological, psychological, and social systems that disrupt integration and creates rigid hyperactivity and hypoactivity across systems. They reframe anxiety disorders through complex systems (or cybernetics), suggesting psychopathology may emerge when reciprocal feedback overwhelms regulatory mechanisms, producing disintegration across these systems.Several empirical studies offer new insights into how vulnerability to stress-related psychopathology is shaped by developmental, dispositional, and social-environmental factors. First, Inoue et al. conducted a bibliometric analysis mapping research trends in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Their main finding is that OCD research is increasingly organized around neurocircuitry, genetics, oxidative stress and inflammation, as well as metabolic interventions, rather than purely descriptive phenomenology, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. This aligns with the Research Topic's broader emphasis on psychiatric disorders as heterogeneous conditions that require multimodal investigation and treatment.In addition, Li et al. showed that the association between childhood trauma and physiological stress responses may be genetically determined and sex-specific. Using a sample of non-clinical young adults (N = 190), they found that the relationship between childhood trauma and hair cortisol concentration varied by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) Val66Met genotype and sex, with the association more prominent among female Val/Val carriers. This suggests that childhood traumarelated changes in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) reactivity may be moderated by gene-bysex processes.Relatedly, Ecker et al.'s study suggested that heightened stress sensitivity is already reflected in personality and temperament in non-clinical adolescents (N = 73). Under experimentally induced social stress, lower extraversion was associated with greater salivary cortisol reactivity, while higher harm avoidance was associated with both stronger cortisol responses and higher subjective stress. These findings suggest that dispositional traits may shape physiological and subjective responses to stressors long before the onset of a psychiatric disorder.More importantly, stress-related psychopathology may also show meaningful day-to-day temporal variation. Biggs et al. used ecological momentary assessment to assess PTSD symptoms four times daily for 15 days among U.S. service members with probable PTSD (n = 80) and without probable PTSD (n = 79). They found that symptom clusters in the probable PTSD group varied across the week and were generally higher on weekdays than weekends, suggesting that symptoms may fluctuate in response to recurring work-related pressures.Finally, focusing on EEG-derived brain dynamics together with peripheral lactate and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in remitted patients with bipolar I disorder (N = 20), Kesebir and Demirer et al. suggested that bipolar I disorder may involve a bioenergetic signature, with serum lactate and LDH linked to theta and gamma EEG activity. This EEG-metabolite association may reflect integrated neuroenergetic and neuroprotective processes that may be relevant to stress sensitivity and longer-term neurodegenerative risk in bipolar I disorder.Social and cultural specificity in the clinical presentation of stressors and psychopathology are highlighted in several empirical studies included in this Research Topic. Region-specific stressors play an important role in mental health difficulties and reduced well-being in specific populations. Mohammad et al. examined long-term mental health outcomes among survivors of the 1988 chemical attacks in Kurdistan. Among 534 participants, 78.8% met the PTSD threshold, and nearly half (46.3%) showed comorbid somatic and mood symptoms. Greater trauma exposure, female sex, and lower educational attainment were associated with more severe symptoms. These findings suggest that trauma burden and social vulnerability interact such that socially-disadvantaged individuals had a more severe symptom presentation.Johnson et al. examined the association between adverse childhood experiences and interpersonal difficulties, including interpersonal sensitivity, paranoid ideation, and hostility, among Jamaican adults (N = 1,633). Most participants (70.5%) reported high ACE exposure, and greater ACE burden was associated with worse scores on all three outcomes, with bullying, physical neglect, and home and community violence particularly salient. These findings indicated that early adversity is highly prevalent in Jamaican adults and contributes to later interpersonal difficulties, including paranoia and hostility.Eid et al.'s narrative review of somatic symptom and related disorders in Arab populations identified correlates of these disorders in a region where mental health stigma and distinct explanatory models of illness are common. The 35 studies included in the review suggested that, across Arab populations, female sex, lower educational attainment, chronic medical comorbidity, trauma exposure, stigma, and culturally-specific explanatory models influenced symptom expression, help-seeking, and diagnostic recognition, highlighting the importance of culturally-sensitive understanding of stress-related psychopathology and help-seeking behavior.Two empirical articles examined country-specific stressors in China. First, Lu et al. (2025) found that, among Chinese adolescents (N = 1,421), cyberbullying victimization at baseline predicted higher depression and academic burnout, and lower self-esteem at six-month follow-up. These longitudinal associations were partly mediated by reduced mindfulness. Second, Xue et al. (2025) found that, among left-behind children in China (N = 719), perceived discrimination was crosssectionally associated with lower subjective well-being, both directly and indirectly via lower social support and reduced psychological resilience. A chain mediation pathway from perceived discrimination to diminished support, to reduced resilience, and then to lower subjective well-being was evident.Finally, the data report by Ramos-Galarza et al. found that traffic police officers in Ecuador experience notable levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, reflecting the psychological burden of repeatedly facing dangerous and conflictual work conditions. More broadly, traffic police stress reflects context-specific occupational and social demands, and the most relevant stressors may differ by setting, sociodemographic profile, and broader environmental conditions.Three articles in this Research Topic point toward multilevel, context-sensitive care rather than onesize-fits-all treatment for stress-related psychopathology. Ahari and Fonzo proposed a biopsychosocial model of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted therapy for specific phobia, conceptualized as a dyadic one-session treatment that combines pharmacologic facilitation with psychotherapy. MDMA may reduce fear and defensiveness and enhance trust and emotional openness, thereby making exposure-based work in clinics more effective. More broadly, MDMA-assisted therapy may reshape the social and emotional climate of psychotherapy, making it especially useful for trauma-and fear-related disorders when high arousal and avoidance make exposure difficult.The validation study of the Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC) by Brendel et al. underscored the importance of measuring therapeutic indicators across multiple domains during psychotherapy rather than restricting evaluation to symptom severity alone. As childhood trauma often shapes family dynamics, attachment, and relationship functioning, therapy should address those aspects alongside management of mental health symptoms. Their findings support a broader assessment lens for managing childhood trauma and related psychopathology in therapeutic settings.Stress-reduction interventions may also be highly relevant in medical settings. Wang et al. examined the efficacy of a psychological intervention combining implicit theory with virtual reality for patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysm undergoing first cerebral angiography after flowdiverter stent implantation. Their intervention yielded significant reduction in anxiety and improvement in treatment confidence, implicit cognition, physiological regulation, procedural cooperation, and follow-up adherence. The intervention may be a scalable, non-pharmacological adjunct to routine nursing care for reducing procedural stress and improving longer-term adherence.Overall, the current Research Topic converges on a multilevel approach in which acute and chronic stressors acting against the backdrop of pre-existing vulnerabilities to give rise to heterogeneous mental health outcomes in both clinical and non-clinical populations. This broader formulation is especially useful for understanding transdiagnostic presentations in which affective, psychotic, and other stress-related symptoms occur. These findings suggest that interventions should be personalized, developmentally-informed, culturally-sensitive, and capable of targeting both stressinduced mechanisms and the vulnerabilities that maintain them.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.The author(s) declared that generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript. GPT-5.4 was used for language editing to check typographical errors and grammatical accuracy, and all changes were reviewed by the authors.Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

In recent years, increasing numbers of users have constructed parent-like virtual figures through chatbots, raising ethical controversies over familial kinship. Understanding users’ motivations and processes in constructing AI parents is crucial for examining how digital technologies reshape contemporary kinship. However, existing research on human-AI kinship has largely focused on griefbots, narrowing interpretations of users’ motivations for creating AI parents. Focusing on the Chinese cultural context, this study investigates the communicative processes and outcomes through which users construct virtual parents via AIGC-driven social chatbots. Grounded in Communication Theory of Resilience (CTR), the study is based on semi-structured interviews with 25 participants and thematic analysis for coding and interpretation. The findings from the Chinese participants indicate that the stressors triggering resilient communication between humans and AI primarily stem from loss or trauma in real-life kinship, as well as idealized expectations of family bonding. This form of human-AI resilient communication provides users with emotional support, assists them in crafting normalcy within traumatic environments, and inspires proactive reflection on their relationships with real-life families. This study identified three types of human-AI kinship within the sample: Attachment-Based Kinship, Commemorative Kinship and Mediating Kinship. These three categories of human-AI kinship exhibit liquid fluidity and transformability both internally and in relation to the users’ real-life human kinship. We define the processes of Affective Transformation and Relational Reorganization emerging from the interview materials as resilient communication processes within the context of human-AI interaction, and we further extend the CTR theoretical framework by refining the existing processes of resilient communication.

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While contemporary psychology focuses on developing a cohesive self for wellbeing, Indian philosophical traditions such as Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism and the teachings of J. Krishnamurti provide a critique of the notion of a fixed self-identity. This conceptual paper compares them at a phenomenological and functional level and relates these comparisons to contemplative neuroscience, particularly the default mode network, self-referential processing, and meditation-related changes in self-experience. Furthermore, It proposes a spectrum model: self-referential processing as an ordinary mode, meta-awareness as a trainable capacity, and non-self experience as a transformed outcome. The framework suggests that wellbeing may involve flexible regulation of self-identification rather than simple self-enhancement. Finally, implications for research, clinical practice, and cultural interpretation are discussed.

Subjective food preferences significantly influence eating behavior, and in eating disorders (EDs), these preferences are often altered. Neuroimaging and neurobehavioral studies have revealed atypical brain responses to food cues in anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), and binge eating disorder (BED), and these findings may point to disrupted subjective food valuation as a key neurobiological mechanism. This narrative review synthesizes recent findings suggesting that altered reward processing and valuation contribute to the persistence and complexity of disordered eating behaviors. The review is based on a comprehensive search of PubMed and additional citation searching, with study selection guided by conceptual relevance to subjective food valuation, reward processing, and decision-making in EDs. The review begins by outlining the conceptual foundations of subjective valuation and preference formation, followed by empirical evidence of altered reward processing and neural correlates of food valuation in AN, BN, and BED. Studies in clinical populations showing disrupted reward learning and maladaptive food choices are integrated to illustrate disorder-specific patterns. Across EDs, converging evidence indicates disorder-specific alterations in subjective food valuation and reward processing. While AN is characterized by reduced hedonic valuation, diminished reward responsiveness, and increased reliance on cognitive control mechanisms, BN and BED are more strongly associated with heightened hedonic and motivational salience of food cues, alongside dysregulated reward learning and variable engagement of cognitive control systems. The review concludes with a discussion of broader implications, future research directions, and potential clinical applications that emphasize integrating subjective preferences into ED research and treatment. Investigating EDs as disorders of disrupted subjective food valuation offers a unifying neurobehavioral perspective that expands our understanding of ED psychopathology and may lay the groundwork for targeted interventions addressing maladaptive reward processing.

This article synthesizes contemporary research on the multifaceted impacts of piano interaction on human cognition, mental health, and neural processes, and explores its translation into intelligent human-computer systems. Evidence from clinical psychology demonstrates that structured piano training can significantly alleviate anxiety and depression in the elderly, enhance executive functions and working memory in aging populations, and serve as an effective component within multi-element interventions for severe mental illness, as exemplified by the GET UP PIANO trial. Neuroscientific investigations reveal that these benefits are supported by a specialized auditory-motor network, encompassing premotor and parietal cortices, which exhibits significant plasticity in experts and is engaged during both music perception and mental imagery. Unique patterns of musical processing in special populations, such as preserved fronto-temporal connectivity for song in autism spectrum disorder, provide a neurobiological rationale for music-based therapies. Critically, these findings are now informing the development of intelligent technologies. We explore how principles of cross-modal correspondence and personalization are being leveraged to create adaptive systems for health-tech, including closed-loop neurofeedback for neuromodulation, smart keyboards for motor rehabilitation using biofeedback, and AI-driven analysis of musical improvisation for mental health assessment. Finally, the review addresses key challenges, including the need for methodological standardization, mechanistic elucidation, and ethical HCI design focused on data security and long-term engagement. The convergence of neuroscience, clinical practice, and technology positions the piano as a powerful and evolving interface for enhancing human health and cognitive resilience.

Translating findings from educational neuroscience (EN) into teaching practice remains a complex task, particularly in authentic school contexts. This scoping review examines how EN research has engaged with real-world school settings between 2015 and 2025, focusing on theoretical foundations, translational processes, researcher-educator collaboration, participant characteristics, and conditions supporting knowledge translation. Following PRISMA-ScR reporting standards and JBI scoping review guidance, searches were conducted in Scopus, Web of Science, and ERIC, complemented by backward reference list searching. Twenty-four empirical studies met the predefined inclusion criteria. Data were charted across six domains and synthesized through a narrative approach, with methodological quality appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. The synthesis was structured through a multidirectional T1-T4 translational framework, ranging from the development of teaching applications based on basic research to their systemic dissemination within educational policy and practice. School-based EN research is expanding but remains conceptually and methodologically heterogeneous. Most studies occupied hybrid T2-T3 positions, combining the evaluation of EN-informed applications with implementation in school practice, while T4-level translation was not represented as a primary objective. Theoretical approaches were mainly grounded in cognitive neuroscience, especially neuroplasticity, executive functions, and attention, but were often integrated with psychological and educational frameworks. Thirteen studies drew directly on primary neuroscientific evidence, whereas 11 relied mainly on synthesized EN models. Co-design and co-investigation were frequent and tended to co-occur with clearer translational pathways, although collaboration varied in depth and reciprocity. Participant characteristics were inconsistently used to inform design. Structural constraints, limited teacher preparation, conceptual gaps, and weak fidelity monitoring emerged as recurrent barriers, while institutional support, curriculum alignment, conceptual mediation, and iterative feedback loops facilitated translation. Advancing school-based EN will require stronger theoretical transparency, more systematic collaboration reporting, greater attention to learner and school contexts, and clearer pathways toward systemic uptake.

Objective As university students’ learning, social interaction, and payment activities increasingly move online, online scam prevention has become an important issue in digital safety governance in Chinese higher education. Drawing on Protection Motivation Theory, this study examined the relationships among online fraud susceptibility, threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior, and further explored latent group differences in online fraud susceptibility. Methods Data were collected from 765 university students in China. Structural equation modeling was used to test the relationships among the focal variables. Latent profile analysis, combined with the Bolck–Croon–Hagenaars method, was then conducted to compare differences in threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior across latent profiles. Results Online fraud susceptibility was significantly and negatively associated with threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior. Both threat awareness and anti-fraud self-efficacy were significantly and positively associated with online scam prevention behavior, whereas the path from threat awareness to anti-fraud self-efficacy was not significant. The mediation results suggest that threat awareness and anti-fraud self-efficacy were statistically supported as two indirect parallel pathways rather than as a stable sequential process. Latent profile analysis identified three groups: low-susceptibility, moderate-susceptibility, and high-susceptibility. The low-susceptibility group showed better overall performance in threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior than the other two groups, whereas the difference between the moderate-susceptibility and high-susceptibility groups was mainly reflected in anti-fraud self-efficacy. Conclusion Differences in online scam prevention behavior among Chinese university students are associated not only with general risk awareness, but also with susceptibility structure, efficacy beliefs, and latent group heterogeneity. The findings suggest that university anti-fraud education should place greater emphasis on strengthening anti-fraud self-efficacy and providing differentiated support for students with different levels of susceptibility.

Background This study aimed to examine the associations between early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) and psychological flexibility among college students, as well as the mediating role of self-compassion and the moderating role of perceived social support. Methods A total of 1,184 college students were surveyed using the short form of the Young Schema Questionnaire, the short form of the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire, Neff’s Self-Compassion Scale, and the Perceived Social Support Scale. Results EMSs were negatively correlated with self-compassion and perceived social support, and positively correlated with psychological inflexibility. Perceived social support was positively correlated with self-compassion and negatively correlated with psychological inflexibility, while self-compassion was negatively correlated with psychological inflexibility. Structural equation modeling indicated that EMSs were negatively associated with self-compassion, which in turn was negatively associated with psychological inflexibility. EMSs also showed a significant positive direct association with psychological inflexibility. In addition, perceived social support moderated the association between EMSs and self-compassion. Conclusion EMSs showed significant direct and indirect associations with psychological flexibility. Specifically, self-compassion partially mediates the relationship between EMSs and psychological flexibility, while perceived social support moderates the pathway between EMSs and self-compassion. These findings provide empirical support for improving college students’ mental health and developing targeted psychological interventions.

Introduction Family caregivers of people with dementia face an elevated risk of abusive behaviors. However, the psychological association linking caring attitudes to abuse risk—specifically the indirect role of resilience—remains underexplored in non-Western contexts. This cross-sectional study examined whether psychological resilience shows an indirect association in this relationship among Chinese dementia family caregivers. Method This cross-sectional study recruited 133 family caregivers from a dementia research center in central China (June 2023–May 2024). Participants completed measures of resilience, caring attitudes, and abuse risk. Data were analyzed using correlations, binomial logistic regression, and mediation analysis (PROCESS Macro, Model 4; 5,000 bootstrap samples). Results 66.2% of caregivers screened positive for abuse risk. More positive caring attitudes and higher resilience were each significantly correlated with lower abuse risk ( r = −0.71 and r = −0.43, p < 0.001). When abuse risk was defined using a CASE cut-off (≥3 vs. <3), more positive caregiving attitudes were associated with significantly lower abuse risk (OR = 0.11, 95% CI: 0.04–0.27). These results remained consistent across subgroups, with no notable multicollinearity (all VIFs <5). Mediation analysis indicated that resilience had a significant partial indirect effect. Notably, the strength of this indirect effect varied across attitudinal dimensions: it was strongest for maintaining positivity (29.2%) and managing reluctance (22.6%), whereas the association from acute emotional distress (e.g., burnout) to abuse risk remained largely direct. Conclusion Psychological resilience shows a significant partial and differential indirect association between caring attitudes and abuse risk. These findings suggest a dual-focus intervention—addressing acute distress while building resilience—as a hypothesis-generating strategy for abuse prevention in China’s filial-piety-based dementia care.

Recent research suggests that incidental affect, including odor-elicited emotion, can shape moral judgment in adults. However, little is known about how this influence develops across early childhood. The present research examined whether pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant odors modulate moral evaluations of care and purity violations in adults and preschool-aged children. In Study 1, 36 undergraduates completed a within-subjects task under three odor conditions. In Study 2, 93 children aged 3 to 6 years completed a developmentally adapted version of the same task. Among adults, odor effects were domain-selective: unpleasant odor increased condemnation relative to pleasant odor in the care domain, whereas purity judgments were unaffected. Among children, analyses by age group indicated that odor effects were confined to the 4- to 5-year-old group. Within this subgroup, unpleasant odor was associated with higher wrongness ratings than neutral odor in both domains, although the overall pattern differed across domains. Taken together, these findings suggest that the influence of incidental odor on moral judgment may shift from a relatively broad pattern in early childhood to a more domain-selective pattern in adulthood. This developmental change is consistent with increasing cognitive control and the progressive differentiation of moral reasoning across domains.

Introduction Reading ability plays an important role in children's cognitive and emotional development and school adjustment. Although musical training has been associated with children's reading-related abilities, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this relationship remain insufficiently understood. This study examined the relationship among musical training, working memory, and reading ability in children from multilingual backgrounds in frontier regions. Methods A combined cross-sectional comparison and intervention study design was used. Study 1 compared children with musical training and children without musical training and examined the mediating role of working memory in the relationship between musical ability and reading-related outcomes. Study 2 implemented a 12-week music-based rhythmic movement training program consisting of 20 sessions among lower-grade children without prior musical training. Results In Study 1, children with musical training performed better than children without musical training in musical ability, working memory, and some reading tasks. Working memory partially mediated the relationship between musical ability and antonym judgment and fully mediated the relationship between musical ability and sentence proposition judgment. In Study 2, children in the music intervention group showed improvements in musical ability, working memory accuracy, antonym judgment, and sentence proposition judgment. Discussion These findings provide evidence from both an associational pathway and an intervention context, suggesting that working memory may represent a possible cognitive pathway linking musical training to the development of some reading-related abilities. Music-based rhythmic movement training may provide a feasible approach for supporting reading-related development among children from multilingual backgrounds in frontier regions.

Objective This study examined the psychological mechanism linking work–family enrichment to occupational commitment among kindergarten teachers, with job satisfaction as a mediator and emotional intelligence as a moderator. Design A cross-sectional survey design was used to test whether job satisfaction mediated the association between work–family enrichment and occupational commitment and whether emotional intelligence moderated the direct and indirect pathways. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted among 1,312 kindergarten teachers in China. Participants completed measures of work–family enrichment, job satisfaction, emotional intelligence, and occupational commitment. Data were analyzed using PROCESS Models 4 and 15 with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Results Work–family enrichment positively predicted occupational commitment. Job satisfaction partially mediated this association, indicating that work–family enrichment was related to occupational commitment both directly and indirectly through increased job satisfaction. Emotional intelligence significantly moderated this conditional process: the association between job satisfaction and occupational commitment was stronger among teachers with higher emotional intelligence, whereas the direct association between work–family enrichment and occupational commitment was stronger among teachers with lower emotional intelligence. The conditional indirect effect through job satisfaction was stronger at higher levels of emotional intelligence. Conclusion Work–family enrichment was associated with kindergarten teachers’ occupational commitment through both direct and indirect pathways, and this association differed according to teachers’ emotional intelligence. These findings extend resource-based explanations of occupational commitment in emotionally demanding early childhood education contexts while avoiding causal claims because of the cross-sectional design.