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The global population is inevitably aging due to increased life expectancy and declining birth rates, leading to an amplified demand for innovative social and healthcare services. One promising avenue is the introduction of companion robots. These robots are designed to provide physical assistance as well as emotional support and companionship, necessitating effective human-robot interaction (HRI). This study explores the role of cognitive empathy within HRI, focusing on the influence of robot facial animacy and emotional expressions on perspective-taking abilities-a key aspect of cognitive empathy-across different age groups. To this end, a director task involving 60 participants (30 young and 30 older adults) with varying degrees of robot facial animacy (0%, 50%, 100%) and emotional expressions (happy, neutral) was conducted. The results revealed that older adults displayed enhanced perspective-taking with higher animacy faces. Interestingly, while happiness on high-animacy faces improved perspective-taking, the same expression on low-animacy faces reduced it. These findings highlight the importance of considering facial animacy and emotional expressions in designing companion robots for older adults to optimize user engagement and acceptance. The study's implications are pertinent to the design and development of socially effective service robots, particularly for the aging population.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs13090728 | DOI Listing |
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
September 2025
Institut de Biologie de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Paris 75005, France.
Excitatory glycine receptors (eGlyRs), composed of the glycine-binding NMDA receptor subunits GluN1 and GluN3A, have recently emerged as a novel neuronal signaling modality that challenges the traditional view of glycine as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Unlike conventional GluN1/GluN2 NMDARs, the distribution and role of eGlyRs remain poorly understood. Here, we show that eGlyRs are highly enriched in the ventral hippocampus (VH) and confer distinct properties on this brain region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJASA Express Lett
September 2025
Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76201,
Misophonia is a condition characterized by intense negative emotional reactions to trigger sounds and related stimuli. In this study, adult listeners (N = 15) with a self-reported history of misophonia symptoms and a control group without misophonia (N = 15) completed listening judgements of recorded misophonia trigger stimuli using a standard scale. Participants also completed an established questionnaire of misophonia symptoms, the Misophonia Questionnaire (MQ).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Interpers Violence
September 2025
University of Memphis, TN, USA.
Complex trauma (CT), or chronic interpersonal trauma that begins early in life, has been associated with a multitude of negative outcomes, including posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and emotion dysregulation. Some CT survivors also exhibit adaptive functioning, such as resilience. Social and contextual factors may have an impact on the expression of adverse and adaptive outcomes for CT survivors, yet have been neglected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDev Psychobiol
September 2025
Department of Psychology and Center for Neuroscience and Behavior, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA.
Social buffering may reduce the persistent impacts of acute early life stress (aELS) and, thus, has important implications for anxiety- and trauma-related disorders. First, we assessed whether aELS would induce maladaptive fear incubation in adult mice, a PTSD-like phenotype. Overall, animals showed incubation of fear memory in adulthood, independent of aELS condition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Genet Couns
October 2025
Department of Genetic Counseling, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Aichi, Japan.
Newborn screening (NBS) for Fabry disease (FD) is an effective way to identify individuals with FD before the onset of symptoms, enabling early therapeutic treatment. The classic form of FD typically begins in early childhood or later, but the late-onset form often develops in adulthood. However, FD-NBS identifies positive cases regardless of the expected timing of symptom onset.
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