Earlier animal work had already hinted that overexposure to digital-style stimulation very early in life, before weaning, could produce hyperactivity, social deficits and disrupted neuroplasticity. What remained unclear was whether the childhood period, after pups are weaned but before adolescence, carries a similar risk. This matters because human screen exposure frequently intensifies during exactly this stage, when children begin choosing their own content and spending longer stretches with tablets, televisions and gaming devices. The Iranian team, led by Amirreza Hosseinzadeh and corresponding author Monireh Mansouri, together with Hamidreza Pouretemad and Mozhan Parsa, designed their experiment to test that specific post-weaning window under tightly controlled laboratory conditions.

The experimental protocol was deliberately simple in concept but rigorous in execution. Male rats, beginning at postnatal day 22, the point of weaning, were placed in front of a display presenting colored lights paired with cartoon sounds for six hours every single day, continuing until postnatal day 52, which corresponds roughly to adolescence in the rat. This sustained regimen of excessive audiovisual stimulation, abbreviated EAVS by the authors, was intended to model, in a controlled fashion, the kind of high-intensity, fast-paced sensory input that digital media delivers to developing children. The animals were then put through a battery of standard behavioral assays designed to probe the domains most commonly affected in autism spectrum disorder: social interaction, repetitive behavior, and activity levels.

The behavioral results were unambiguous. Rats that had experienced the daily audiovisual overstimulation showed markedly increased repetitive behaviors, one of the diagnostic hallmarks of autism spectrum conditions. They also demonstrated impaired social interaction, engaging less and differently with conspecifics than their normally reared peers. In addition, the exposed animals were hyperactive, moving with an intensity and persistence not seen in controls. Together, the three behavioral changes map onto the classic triad that researchers look for when building animal models of autism-like phenotypes, and their co-occurrence after a purely environmental manipulation is the most provocative aspect of the study.

Behavior alone, however, does not explain mechanism, so the team turned to quantitative neuroanatomy. Using three-dimensional stereological measurement, a technique that allows unbiased estimation of structure volumes and cell numbers from systematically sampled tissue sections, the researchers examined the amygdala, the almond-shaped complex in the medial temporal lobe that assigns emotional significance to sensory input and is heavily implicated in social behavior. What they found was significant enlargement of the amygdala overall, along with an increased number of neurons in two of its key subregions: the basolateral nucleus, which integrates sensory and cortical information feeding into the amygdala, and the central nucleus, which serves as the main output station driving emotional and autonomic responses.

This pattern of structural plasticity is technically significant because the amygdala occupies an unusual position in autism research. Human neuroimaging studies of autism spectrum disorder have variously reported amygdala enlargement in young children with the condition, and altered connectivity between the amygdala and social brain networks is a recurring finding. The fact that a purely environmental input, six hours per day of colored lights and cartoon sounds, was sufficient to drive both volume increases and neuron number increases in the basolateral and central subregions suggests that developmental sensory overstimulation can push the amygdala along a growth trajectory that mirrors, at least superficially, the structural differences observed in clinical populations. The authors are careful, however, to frame this as an autism-like phenotype rather than a model of autism itself.

That caution is important and the researchers state it explicitly. Rodents do not voluntarily choose their media, so the model cannot capture the motivational and behavioral complexity of human device use, where children actively seek out screens and their exposure patterns vary enormously. What the model does offer is experimental control: a defined stimulus, a defined duration, a defined developmental window, and a homogenous genetic background. Within those constraints, the study isolates the neurobiological consequences of sensory overstimulation per se, free from the confounds of family environment, socioeconomic status, or pre-existing developmental differences that complicate every human screen-time study. It is precisely this control that human correlational research can never achieve.

The timing of the manipulation also carries an implicit message about brain development. Postnatal day 22 to 52 in the rat encompasses a period of intense experience-dependent plasticity, when circuits in the limbic system and cortex are being refined by environmental input. The amygdala, in particular, continues to mature through this window, and the increased neuron counts observed in the basolateral and central nuclei indicate that the overstimulation did not merely alter existing neurons but was associated with changes in neuronal population size, whether through altered neurogenesis, altered survival, or shifts in the timing of developmental cell loss. Untangling which of those mechanisms is responsible will be a natural target for follow-up work, as will determining whether the effects persist into adulthood or can be reversed by returning the animals to normal environments.

For the broader public conversation about children and screens, the study does not say that tablets cause autism. Autism spectrum disorder is a strongly heritable, multifactorial condition, and no single environmental exposure can be called its cause. What the research does support is a narrower and still consequential claim: that the developing brain, through at least the childhood years, is structurally and behaviorally responsive to the intensity and character of its sensory environment, and that sustained, excessive exposure to fast, colorful, noisy audiovisual input can bias that development toward patterns of behavior and brain structure that resemble aspects of autism. Previous work had established this vulnerability for the pre-weaning period; this study extends it into the post-weaning phase, closing a gap that parents and pediatricians had every reason to wonder about.

The study was funded by the Iran Cognitive Sciences and Technologies Council and approved by the Ethics Committee of Shahid Beheshti University, conducted in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Its publication as an open-access article ensures that the full methods, stereological protocols and raw behavioral data are available for scrutiny and replication. As debate over childhood screen exposure continues to intensify worldwide, work of this kind provides the kind of mechanistic, experimentally controlled evidence that observational studies alone cannot supply, and it will likely fuel further research into how the timing, duration and content of sensory stimulation interact to shape the social and emotional brain during development.

Subject of Research: Effects of post-weaning excessive audiovisual stimulation on autism-like behavior and amygdala structure in rats

Article Title: Post-weaning audiovisual overstimulation induces autism-like phenotypes and amygdala structural plasticity in rats

Article References: Hosseinzadeh, A., Mansouri, M., Pouretemad, H., & Parsa, M. (2026). Post-weaning audiovisual overstimulation induces autism-like phenotypes and amygdala structural plasticity in rats. BMC Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12868-026-01041-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12868-026-01041-2

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, audiovisual overstimulation, amygdala, brain development, rats, screen exposure, behavioral neuroscience, stereology, social interaction, repetitive behavior, hyperactivity, childhood

The research team, led by Marina Leonor Pinheiro and Olga Cunha of the University of Minho in Portugal, together with Marta Sousa and Rui Abrunhosa Gonçalves, focused on a group that has long been underrepresented in psychopathy research. Most of what scientists know about the developmental roots of psychopathic traits comes from studies of men, even though women constitute a growing share of the incarcerated population and display distinct patterns of offending, trauma exposure, and emotional functioning. Psychopathy itself is not a monolith. Contemporary models, including the widely used four-facet structure, distinguish between an interpersonal facet marked by manipulation and superficial charm, an affective facet defined by shallow emotion and lack of remorse, a lifestyle facet characterized by impulsivity and irresponsibility, and an antisocial facet reflecting a history of rule-breaking and criminal behavior.

Participants in the study, whose average age was just under 39 years, completed a battery of validated self-report instruments. The ACEs Scale captured the accumulated weight of childhood adversity, from physical and emotional abuse to living in a household marked by substance misuse or mental illness. The Benevolent Childhood Experiences Scale, developed specifically to measure the positive side of the developmental ledger, assessed the presence of supportive figures, safe surroundings, and comforting memories that can counterbalance harm. Adult attachment was measured with the Adult Attachment Scale–Revised, which yields three dimensions: anxiety about abandonment, comfort with closeness, and trust in others. Psychopathic traits were assessed with the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale–Short Form, allowing the researchers to examine both total scores and the individual facets separately.

The results confirmed the central association that decades of prior work had predicted. Adverse childhood experiences were positively associated with psychopathic traits overall, and the connection was particularly strong for the lifestyle and antisocial facets, the dimensions most closely tied to impulsive, unstable, and rule-violating behavior. In other words, women who reported more cumulative adversity in childhood were more likely to display the behavioral patterns of psychopathy that contribute directly to criminal careers and institutional misconduct. This facet-specific pattern matters theoretically, because it suggests that early trauma may shape the behavioral expression of psychopathy more powerfully than its emotional or interpersonal core.

Equally revealing was what the researchers found when they turned the lens toward positive childhood experiences. These benevolent early experiences were negatively associated with the lifestyle facet of psychopathy, meaning that women who recalled more supportive and nurturing childhood environments reported lower levels of impulsivity and irresponsibility in adulthood. The finding aligns with a rapidly expanding body of literature on what some researchers have called counter-ACEs, the idea that positive experiences can accumulate their own protective momentum and promote adaptive functioning even in the presence of significant adversity. Prior studies have linked positive childhood experiences to better adult mental health, stronger relationships, and reduced psychopathology across general and justice-involved populations.

But the study’s most ambitious test, and its most sobering result, concerned the interplay between these early experiences and adult attachment. Drawing on attachment theory, which holds that early caregiver relationships form internal working models that guide close relationships across the lifespan, the researchers hypothesized that the protective effect of positive childhood experiences might depend on a woman’s adult attachment profile. Secure attachment, characterized by low anxiety, comfort with closeness, and trust in others, could plausibly amplify the benefits of a benevolent childhood, while attachment insecurity could erode them. Using moderated moderation analyses, a statistical technique capable of detecting three-way interactions in which two moderators jointly condition the strength of an association, the team tested this possibility for each attachment dimension.

The verdict was negative. After applying false discovery rate correction, a stringent statistical safeguard against spurious findings when multiple tests are conducted, none of the hypothesized three-way interactions between adverse experiences, positive experiences, and any of the three attachment dimensions reached significance. Attachment anxiety, comfort with closeness, and trust in others did not condition the relationship between childhood adversity and psychopathic traits in this sample. The protective role that the researchers predicted for positive childhood experiences, in other words, was not amplified or diminished by adult attachment patterns among these incarcerated women. The authors interpret this as evidence that the hypothesized buffering mechanism may be more complex than attachment theory alone can explain, or that it may operate differently in forensic populations than in community samples.

The null findings carry real scientific weight. Interaction effects are notoriously difficult to detect and replicate, and recent methodological work has shown that developmental moderation hypotheses often fail to reproduce across cohorts and domains. By reporting their corrected non-significant results transparently, the Portuguese team contributes to a more honest map of where protective factors do and do not matter. The findings suggest instead a simpler picture: adverse and positive childhood experiences each show direct, facet-specific associations with psychopathic traits, and any protective effect of benevolent experiences appears not to hinge on how securely or insecurely these women attach to others as adults. For clinicians working in women’s prisons, the practical implication is that trauma history remains a critical risk marker, particularly for impulsive and antisocial behavior, while positive childhood experiences may merit attention as an independent, albeit modest, protective signal.

The study also highlights the broader case for trauma-informed care in correctional settings, an approach that recognizes the prevalence of childhood victimization among incarcerated women and integrates that understanding into assessment, treatment, and institutional policy. Because the design was cross-sectional and relied on retrospective self-reports, the researchers caution that causal direction cannot be established and that memory biases may influence reported adversity. The sample, drawn from Portuguese prisons, may not generalize to other cultural contexts. Still, as one of the few studies to examine ACEs, positive childhood experiences, attachment, and psychopathy simultaneously in women, the work opens a clear path forward: longitudinal designs and larger samples will be needed to determine whether benevolent early experiences truly inoculate against psychopathic outcomes, and under what relational conditions that protection takes hold.

Subject of Research: The relationship between adverse childhood experiences and psychopathic traits in incarcerated women, examining the moderating roles of positive childhood experiences and adult attachment.

Article Title: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Psychopathic Traits in Women: An Exploratory Study of the Moderating Role of Positive Childhood Experiences and Attachment

Article References: Pinheiro, M. L., Sousa, M., Gonçalves, R. A., & Cunha, O. (2026). Adverse Childhood Experiences and Psychopathic Traits in Women: An Exploratory Study of the Moderating Role of Positive Childhood Experiences and Attachment. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-026-00971-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s40653-026-00971-7

Keywords: adverse childhood experiences, positive childhood experiences, psychopathic traits, attachment, incarcerated women, childhood trauma, moderated moderation, forensic psychology, Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, resilience, Adverse, Childhood

Measles spreads efficiently when susceptible people are concentrated in the same population, allowing outbreaks to expand rapidly once the virus is introduced. Vaccination interrupts that chain of transmission by reducing the number of people who can become infected and pass the virus onward. The first measles-containing vaccine dose is therefore a central marker of childhood protection, although a single dose does not provide complete protection for every child. The study’s estimated coverage of 58.3%, with a 95% confidence interval of 55.5% to 61.1%, indicates that many children remained outside the reach of routine or supplementary immunization services during the period represented by the survey. The researchers describe this coverage as below the level needed for herd protection. In practical terms, low overall coverage can conceal even more serious local vulnerabilities: a national average may appear moderate while particular districts or communities have far fewer vaccinated children and therefore greater potential for sustained transmission.

The investigators analyzed records for 3,436 children aged between 12 and 59 months. The survey data were collected during fieldwork in 2018 and 2019 and formed the basis of the 2020 Somalia Demographic and Health Survey. To estimate vaccination prevalence, the researchers applied the survey’s sampling weights, including the variable V005, so that the results reflected the design of the national survey rather than simply treating every sampled record as equally representative. The outcome was coded as vaccinated or unvaccinated according to whether the child had received MCV1. Because children were sampled within households and communities, the study used multilevel logistic regression rather than a single-level model. This approach is designed to separate associations linked to individual or household characteristics from variation associated with the broader community context. It cannot prove that a particular factor causes vaccination, but it can show how strongly measured characteristics are associated with the odds of receiving a dose while accounting for clustered data.

The geographic analysis revealed a strong spatial pattern. Global Moran’s I, a statistic used to test whether similar values are arranged near one another rather than distributed randomly, was 0.653, with a probability value below 0.001. That result indicates significant positive spatial autocorrelation: areas with relatively high vaccination levels tended to be near other areas with relatively high levels, while areas with lower coverage tended to cluster with other low-coverage areas. The researchers then used Getis-Ord Gi* hotspot analysis to identify concentrations of unusually high or low values and applied SaTScan Bernoulli models to search for statistically defined geographic clusters. Together, these techniques produced a map of concentrated vaccination advantage and disadvantage. Hotspots were identified in the northern regions of Togdheer, Sool, Sanaag and Bari. Coldspots appeared in the southern regions of Gedo, Lower Juba and Bakool, where low uptake was geographically concentrated rather than isolated.

The multilevel findings add detail to that map. Children aged 48 to 59 months had substantially higher adjusted odds of having received MCV1 than the comparison age group, with an adjusted odds ratio of 16.32. An odds ratio compares the odds of an outcome between groups after accounting for other variables in the model; it is not the same as a percentage increase in vaccination coverage. The strong age association may reflect the cumulative opportunity for a child to encounter vaccination services as time passes, although the survey design cannot establish the exact reason. Maternal education was also associated with uptake. Children whose mothers had secondary education had 1.83 times the adjusted odds of vaccination compared with the reference category. The authors interpret this pattern as consistent with the potential importance of health knowledge, communication with services and the ability to navigate vaccination schedules, while recognizing that education may also be connected with other social and economic conditions.

Household economic position and mobility were likewise associated with MCV1. Children from middle-income households had 1.88 times the adjusted odds of vaccination compared with the reference wealth group. The study also found higher adjusted odds among children in nomadic residence, with an adjusted odds ratio of 1.60. That result does not mean that all nomadic families experience easier access to immunization. Instead, it shows an association within this dataset and may reflect the reach of particular outreach activities, differences in service delivery or other characteristics measured or unmeasured in the survey. Regional differences were especially large: children in Togdheer had 6.3 times higher odds of vaccination than children in the reference region. Such contrasts emphasize that national vaccination strategies cannot rely solely on uniform service delivery. The same intervention may perform differently depending on transport routes, settlement patterns, local health infrastructure and the ability of families to return for scheduled care.

The researchers quantified the contribution of community-level conditions using the intra-cluster correlation coefficient, or ICC. The ICC indicated that 13.1% of the variance in vaccination status was attributable to differences between communities. In a hierarchical dataset, this measure helps show whether children living in the same community resemble one another in their likelihood of vaccination beyond what can be explained by their individual characteristics. A community contribution of this magnitude suggests that place-based factors matter: the presence and reliability of health facilities, outreach schedules, local information networks, security conditions, transport and the organization of mobile services may all influence whether families can obtain immunization. The analysis did not measure every one of these mechanisms directly, so the ICC should not be read as identifying a single cause. Rather, it supports the conclusion that interventions focused only on household behavior would leave part of the vaccination gap untouched.

The study’s conclusions direct attention to the southern coldspots and to groups that may be missed by facility-based programs. The authors recommend prioritizing geographically identified low-coverage areas, strengthening maternal health literacy and expanding mobile vaccination outreach for underserved rural and nomadic populations. A mobile approach can bring services closer to communities whose distance, movement or limited transport options makes routine clinic attendance difficult. Geospatial results can help planners decide where such activities are most urgently needed, while multilevel findings can help tailor communication and delivery strategies to local circumstances. The analysis is based on secondary, anonymized, publicly available survey data and therefore describes associations at the population level rather than tracking children over time. Even with that limitation, its combination of weighted survey estimates, spatial statistics and hierarchical regression provides a more targeted view than a single national coverage figure. For Somalia, the message is clear: closing the measles immunity gap will require not only more doses, but also a precise understanding of where access and protection remain weakest.

The study’s design is particularly useful for distinguishing national coverage from the distribution of coverage. A weighted prevalence describes the estimated share of eligible children who had received MCV1, whereas the spatial statistics examine whether vaccination levels are arranged in recognizable geographic patterns. These answer different questions: the first indicates the overall scale of the immunity gap, while the second helps determine whether low uptake is concentrated enough to justify place-specific planning. The significant Moran’s I result and the hotspot and coldspot analyses therefore complement, rather than duplicate, the regression findings.

The multilevel framework also changes how the reported associations should be interpreted. In a conventional regression, observations from the same community may be treated as independent even though they can share health facilities, outreach teams, information sources and environmental constraints. Accounting for clustering reduces the risk that such shared circumstances will be mistaken for purely individual effects. The community-level variance identified by the investigators consequently supports a delivery-oriented interpretation: improving vaccination may require changes in how services are organized and reached, not simply stronger demand among caregivers.

Age deserves careful consideration when translating the results into program decisions. Older children have had more time to encounter routine services or catch-up activities, so the age association may signal delayed rather than absent access. It also suggests that programs should actively identify children who have passed the usual vaccination contact point without receiving MCV1. This is different from assuming that younger children are inherently less likely to benefit; they may simply have had fewer opportunities by the time of observation. The cross-sectional survey cannot establish the sequence of events behind the association.

Similarly, the findings on education, wealth and residence should guide investigation rather than serve as fixed classifications of families. These characteristics can be connected to several pathways at once, including awareness, affordability of travel, trust, service availability and the timing of outreach. The study’s adjusted odds ratios show relationships after inclusion of measured variables, but they do not identify which pathway is responsible or demonstrate that changing one characteristic would produce a specific increase in uptake. Local follow-up could therefore help determine whether the most effective response is communication, transport support, improved session reliability, or a combination of approaches.

Because the analysis used existing anonymized survey data, it provides a broad population-level assessment without exposing participants to additional data collection. Its findings can establish priorities for vaccination planning, but implementation should still be accompanied by monitoring. Repeated coverage assessments and evaluation of outreach in the designated low-coverage areas would help determine whether geographic inequalities narrow over time and whether improvements reach children who remain unvaccinated, rather than merely shifting the national average.

Subject of Research: Geographic and social determinants of first-dose measles vaccination among children in Somalia

Article Title: Spatial patterns and determinants of childhood measles vaccination in Somalia a multilevel and geospatial analysis of the 2020 demographic and health survey

Article References: Abdillahi, A. M., Ali, I. H., Omer, H. A., Said, N. I., Bile, H. S., & Muse, A. H. (2026). Spatial patterns and determinants of childhood measles vaccination in Somalia a multilevel and geospatial analysis of the 2020 demographic and health survey. Discover Social Science and Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-026-00416-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44155-026-00416-4

Keywords: Measles vaccination, Somalia, MCV1, Child health, Geospatial analysis, Multilevel modeling, Vaccine coverage, Health inequities, Spatial, patterns, determinants, childhood