The free energy principle (FEP) is a new paradigm that has gain widespread interest in the neuroscience community. Although its principal architect, Karl Friston, is a psychiatrist, it has thus far had little impact within psychiatry. This article introduces readers to the FEP, points out its consilience with Freud's neuroscientific ideas and with psychodynamic practice, and suggests ways in which the FEP can help explain the mechanisms of action of the psychotherapies. Today's psychiatrists are pragmatists, on the look-out for what ‘works’ and sceptical about the grand theories that held sway in the previous century. But ideology cannot be wholly avoided, nor theoretical controversy evaded. Current psychiatry's pantheon incudes evidence-based practice, DSM diagnosis and neuroscience. The search for evidence is theory driven. Diagnostic profusion raises questions about the medicalisation of human suffering. Despite extraordinary recent advances in neuroscience, their impact on everyday psychiatric practice has been modest.The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to introduce readers to an overarching model of brain function associated with the mathematical psychiatrist Karl Friston, the free energy principle (FEP), which has been influential in neuroscience generally, but thus far has caused relatively little stir within psychiatry or clinical psychology. My hope is to redress that. Second, I make the case that FEP can revitalise the psychoanalytic psychotherapies, marginalised by the inexorable rise of cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) as the dominant psychological therapy paradigm.It should be noted that FEP is deliberately described by Friston as a ‘principle’, akin to the principles of natural selection or gravity. The evidence for its validity is circumstantial rather than direct, and its detailed neuronal mechanisms and clinical implications remain to be fully explored.1 coined the term ‘negentropy’ to describe how living matter, Canute-like for its lifetime, reverses this cosmic tide towards disorder and homogeneity.Friston's project builds on the work of a number of pioneering predecessors and their concepts. These include Erwin Schrödinger, Heinrich Helmholtz, the Claudes – Claude Bernard and Claude Shannon – and Thomas Bayes. We live in an entropic universe. Broken cups don't spontaneously reassemble. Coffee cools once poured. Stars burn out. The exception is life itself. Quantum physicist Schrödinger2 resist the forces of entropy, physiologically and behaviourally. Inherent in homeostasis are boundaries: cell membranes, the skin, the brain within its skull. Janus-like, homeostasis faces outwards towards the environment and inwards towards the milieu interieur. Temperature sensors in the skin tell us it's a hot day; the sympathetic nervous system activates sweat glands, the brain tells us to fling off jumpers, move into the shade, etc., all in the service of resisting being entropically fried. Note that homeostats vary in ‘precision’ – some are highly sensitive, whereas others tolerate a great range of variation.The key to negentropy is homeostasis. As Bernard famously put it, the condition of a free life is the stability of the interior milieu – whether one is a unicellular amoeba or, like Schrödinger, a Nobel-prize winning primate. Homeostasis, and the more general processes of allostasis,4 The brain's job is to counteract entropy and to maintain internal stability on behalf of the organism whose processes and behaviour it controls and directs; this applies, reflexively, to itself.Friston had the insight and mathematical sophistication to see that the negentropic homeostatic principle applies not just to the organism as a whole but to the brain itself.5 Naively, we tend to think of vision as a camera-like image passively projected onto the visual cortex, or the auditory system as microphone-like, responding indiscriminatingly to the prevailing phonic universe. In the Helmholtz model the brain makes its own world. Our sense organs, external and internal, are constantly bombarded by a vast range of stimuli from an ever-changing environment. To operate with maximum efficiency, the brain selects out the ‘meaning’ of its sensations, attending only to those that are relevant to its ‘affordances’6 – its specific ecological niche – and especially to input that is anomalous or novel.The FEP goes back to the ideas of 19th-century polymath Hermann von Helmholtz, updated by artificial intelligence (AI) neuroscientists Geoffrey Hinton and Peter Dayan.Working in the 1950s at the Bell telephone company laboratory, Claude Shannon saw that this ‘meaning’ could be quantified – as ‘bits’ of information. Gregory Bateson, anthropologist and family therapy guru, called these ‘differences that make a difference’. White noise is chaotic, entropic and devoid of information. Language, whether spoken, sung or gestured, is structured, ordered, negentropic. The measure of informational energy is ‘surprise’, i.e. how unexpected a signal is. In the board game Scrabble, the letter ‘x’ conveys more information than ‘e’ because it is relatively unusual, applying to a smaller range of words, and so in calculating the score, is ‘worth’ more. The brain's aim is constantly to reduce informational entropy and maximise meaning.7 continuously estimates the likelihood of future events. Probabilities are computed by comparing current states of affairs with past occurrences, estimating the extent of correspondence between them, factoring in the likelihood of errors in both memory and perception, and ending with a portion that represents that which cannot be predicted. This is ‘prediction error’, which must, in the service of negentropy, be minimised as far as is possible – prediction error minimisation or PEM.A crucial building block for the FEP is the concept of the Bayesian brain. The Reverend Thomas Bayes, a late 18th-century clergyman and founder of probability theory, grasped, Doris Day-like, that the future's not ours to see. Yet, to survive and adapt we need to know, moment to moment, ‘what is going on’ – in ourselves, in the interpersonal world and in the physical world. On the basis of prior experience, the Bayesian brain8 ‘My stomach is complaining, but it's not surprising – I overdid it on the pudding, so it's probably not cancer’; ‘I know that tune, I've heard it so many times – yes of course, it's the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine’; ‘Is that a stick or a snake? Come on, no adders in city centres, probably safe to pick it up’.The brain, ‘top-down’, uses Bayesian probabilities to clarify ‘bottom-up’ input, extero- and interocaptive:9) and the neurohormonal environment. Prior models of the world, top-down, ‘bind’ incoming bottom-up information. Energy unbound, or prediction error, reflects novelty in need of binding – and so forestall the dangers of entropic chaos.Now to the free energy principle itself. ‘Energy’ equates to information, albeit physically embodied in patterns of neuronal impulses, synaptic transmission . Once language arrives, verbal concepts shape perceptions: ‘Oh of course, that's a face’. At the highest level is mentalising – thinking about thinking: ‘I wonder why bearded faces always make me feel slightly unsettled? Perhaps it's reminiscent of my scary grandfather’.10 Prediction error is minimised by ‘binding’ bottom-up energy  by top-down generative models based on pre-existing patterns and concepts. Thus is order preserved, entropy eschewed. We know what we like and, mostly, see what we want and expect to see.The FEP visualises a series of ‘conversations’ in which top-down ‘priors’ ‘bind’ bottom-up input into probabilistically recognisable meanings. Each level can be thought of as a meaning–action boundary. Ascending the hierarchy, the Bayesian process ensures that the most mathematically probable pattern prevails across these statistical boundaries or ‘Markov blankets’.11 The environment is constantly in flux; we need to explore as much as conserve – to find new sources of food, suitable mates, interest and excitement. Surprise, calibrated by the brain as the discrepancy between expectation and incoming sensation, is a proxy for free energy – and hence entropy. Surprise is both vital to survival but also potentially entropic, disruptive or even life-threatening. This represents the prediction error aforementioned. The brain minimises such surprise/error by whatever means possible.But there will always be a discrepancy between our pre-existing models of the world and incoming sensations, an excess of energy that cannot be bound and will have to be passed onto the next level up of the hierarchy. Lockdown excepted, we don't live huddled in ‘dark rooms’.At this point the role of affect becomes important. Free energy is aversive and can be thought of as representing mental pain. Conversely, ‘binding’ free energy is rewarding and therefore motivating. The role of affect, positive and negative, is to drive the free energy minimising processes. This is another ‘AI’ – active inference.12 Fourth, if all else fails, by choosing or fashioning environments that conform to the brain's pre-existing models of the word: ‘I can't stand modern music. Let's go over to Classic FM’. This last aspect is captured by the psychoanalytic concept of ‘projective identification’, in which we shape our interpersonal world, often deleteriously, to conform with expectations: ‘You psychiatrists are all the same – never there when I need you’.The idea of active inference captures a number of psychological processes central to psychological health. First, action or agency. Given that incoming stimuli are inherently subject to error and imprecision, the brain increases precision by movement – approaching an ambiguous stimulus source, turning the head to use foveal rather than peripheral vision, switching lights on in order to see better, etc. Second, top-down model revision. Now we know what that vague shape really ‘is’ – a cat, clothes strewn on the floor, etc.: ‘Let's listen more carefully. Oh, that's not the Beatles at all, it's the Beach Boys’. Third, and vitally in the case of social species such as our own, active inference is enhanced by recruiting help or ‘twogetherness’: ‘Did you hear something, or was I just imagining it?’; ‘You know about ’70s music – what was that group's name?’. Friston & Frith call this ‘duets for one’ and have worked out the mathematics of such collaborative Markov blankets.13 As children, securely attached people have had caregivers they could depend on to acknowledge their pain, tolerate protest and help them to move on. Repeated episodes of everyday rupture–repair cycles help build this resilience.The FEP has clear implications for those who work in mental ill health, and especially who favour psychological methods of treatment. Consider depression, typically triggered by loss, trauma or multiple setbacks. Adversity is widespread – poverty, inequality, racism – but not all succumb. To understand resilience, we need an illness model that encompasses not just events, but individuals’ responses to them. Attachment research shows that those who are securely attached are able to repair the inevitable ruptures to which all are prone, often through the typical sequence of protest, rage, grief and mourning.14 Securely attached children continue actively to try to re-engage with their caregivers in the confident expectation that they will be ‘back soon’. For insecurely attached children, by contrast, rather than rupture–repair, cycles of rupture–despair or rupture–disappear are the norm. Their caregivers have either themselves been overwhelmed by their child's unhappiness and so despairingly abandon attempts to alleviate it; or repress the impact of the child's mental pain and so ‘disappear’ emotionally. Both leave the child alone to find ways to bind the free energy the rupture evokes. When their caregiver's face freezes they look away, become miserable and regressed, and often resort to self-soothing rituals such as rocking or emotional dissociation.The free energy released by the rupture is bound by the child's knowledge that help is at hand and that their epistemically trusted caregiver will provide a generative model to counteract the free energy associated with ruptures: ‘Don't worry love, I'm just going to the loo, I'll be back in a minute’. In the ‘still face’ paradigm, parents are asked to freeze their facial expression for 1 minute while talking or playing with their child.Such insecurely attached children are primed in later life for depression in response to loss or trauma or, in extreme cases, to developing post-traumatic stress disorder. The ingredients of free energy minimisation needed to maintain psychological equilibrium are for them problematic. Active inference is compromised. They tend to be passive rather than active. They stick with limited and simplistic and inflexible ‘top-down’ models such as ‘It's no use trying to make things better, it never works’ or ‘Feelings are dangerous, best to keep them buried’. They find it hard to trust people and so can't ‘borrow’ an intimate other's brain with which to process feelings and build up alternative ways of viewing the world.15 People with personality disorders do badly with standard CBT, often refusing to engage or dropping out.16 The FEP provides explanations for this. From an FEP perspective, one way to minimise free energy is to gravitate towards or engender environments that confirm one's view of the world, however negative. Depression relegates sufferers to emotionally impoverished relationships, stereotyped and simplistic top-down models, and thus becomes a self-fulfilling hypothesis, resistant to psychotherapeutic interventions. In addition, these negative top-down priors are ‘inferentially inert’, i.e. inaccessible for modification.The most commonly used therapy for depression, CBT, attempts to address these deficiencies. Therapists encourage patients actively to test their negative ‘hypotheses’ by looking more closely at their experiences and by exploring alternative top-down models to account for them . But CBT has its limitations. ‘Treatment-resistant depression’ is common.A degree of chaos/uncertainty/free energy needs to be tolerated before new generative models can evolve. Homeostatic imprecision needs to be tolerated for a while. The holding and ‘negative capability’ of the therapist's ‘borrowed brain’ paves the way for a more complex, nuanced top-down reset. Given that people with personality disorders notoriously find it difficult to trust others, the brevity and defocus on the therapeutic relationship in standard CBT limits the scope for such fundamental change.17 However, when jointly considered – under a shared Markov blanket – these bottom-up unprocessed experiences can be bound with the therapist's encouragement and expertise into manageable narratives. However painful, they become less overwhelming, a source of new ways of thinking and psychic reorganisation. As the patient begins to feel that the therapist is safe, reliable, compassionate and empathic, so everyday ruptures – session-endings, holiday breaks and misunderstandings – are repeatedly repaired via model revision (‘Maybe the weekend break does not inevitably mean I'm forgotten’), and the trust this engenders can be generalised into the patient's everyday life.Moving from depression to an FEP perspective on trauma, the latter creates an overwhelming influx of free energy for which there are no available top-down models with which to bind it. Thoughts of cruelty, neglect and abuse remain in the realm of the unthinkable and are therefore ‘defended against’ by repression or dissociation.We can see here how contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy and revitalised Freudian ideas resonate with the FEP. Freud started off his working life as a neurologist. Like Friston, he conceptualised the brain's aim as reducing psychic energy, typically through action and ‘word representations’ – i.e. transmuting free energy into thinkable thoughts. He saw unbound energy (which he later transmuted into ‘libido’) as potentially disruptive and responsible for the symptoms of psychological illness. Psychoanalysis was designed first to evoke and then to quieten this trauma-related unbound energy. To achieve this, three key psychoanalytic procedures are free association, dream analysis and analysis of transference.The ‘virtual’ nature of the psychoanalytic relationship brings both top-down and bottom-up components of the FEP process into focus, enabling them to be mentalised rather than enacted. Free association taps into the mind's normally unvoiced upward-welling stream of consciousness, counteracting the elusiveness of affect seen in the rupture–despair/disappear attachment pattern. This enables the range of top-down responses to be enhanced and aversive free energy minimised. At the top-down level, in a process comparable to the immune system's lexicon of antigen-activated antibodies, dreaming is the means by which the mind generates a repertoire of narratives with which to bind the free energy which life's vicissitudes engender. Transference analysis turns the spotlight on the limited varieties of top-down narratives that sufferers use in their dealings with intimate others to minimise free energy. The enigmatic ambiguity of therapists’ persona enables patients to experience, reconsider and extend the top-down assumptions with which they approach the world of intimate others.18 MBT leads to big reductions in medication use, suicide attempts, hospital admission and unemployment among people with borderline personality disorder, as compared with treatment as usual.Psychoanalysis has tended to self-isolation, sequestrated from cross-fertilisation by other disciplines. The Friston–Freud consilience opens up new possibilities. Psychoanalytic and attachment-derived mentalisation-based therapy (MBT) is now established as a highly effective therapy for borderline personality disorder, previously considered untreatable.MBT is both practically and conceptually consistent with the FEM. It encourages patients (a) to identify the bottom-up feelings that fuel their self-injurious actions, (b) to pause and think of different ways of handling these, i.e. to tolerate a quantum of free energy with the help of the therapists’ ‘borrowed brain’ and (c) through mutual mentalising  to generate more complex and adaptive models of the self and significant others. The result is manageable surprise: confounding sufferers’ negative assumptions about the world, becoming less overwhelmed by unbound affect (fewer ‘melt-downs’) and facilitating greater resilience.If rehabilitation of the psychoanalytic method in the light of the FEP comes as a pleasant surprise, this is consistent with its principles. As in Mark Twain's trope, rumours of psychoanalysis's death have been greatly exaggerated. In place of despair or disappearance, the FEP suggests that repair is possible. FEP-grounded psychoanalytic approaches such as MBT are now known to help those with profound mental distress. They also suggest a scientifically sound account of the interpersonal and neuronal mechanisms by which psychological change comes about.


However, extant literature in this area is largely limited to the recipient’s perspective of social support. Furthermore, social support is not always effective, with evidence suggesting it can contribute to positive, negative, and indifferent adaptations to stress. As such, we do not know how social support influences adaptations to stress in sport. The social identity approach may explain how social support can lead to both positive and negative adaptations to stress. Our purpose in this study was to explore how social support and social identities influence adaptations to stress in a Rugby Academy Programme. Using qualitative methods within a naturalistic research paradigm, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Rugby Academy co-ordinators (n = 6) and players (n = 12), and four focus groups were conducted with teams of support staff (n = 18). Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, which generated seven sub-themes categorized into two higher-order analytical themes. Our results demonstrate that group-based perceptions of social support influence adaptations to stress. Specifically, whether social support influences positive, negative, or indifferent adaptations to stress depended on (1) social factors influencing the nature of social support, and (2) social factors influencing the provision and receipt of social support. These findings advance our understanding of how adaptations to stress are influenced by social support. Implications are offered for how organizations, teams, and practitioners can facilitate positive adaptations to stress in sport.Psychological stress can be both a help and a hindrance to wellbeing and performance in sport. The provision  Gaining a better understanding of this may inform how organizations, teams, and practitioners can support positive adaptations to stress—and more generally inform how these groups can understand, safeguard, and support wellbeing and performance in sport . Indeed, most of the extant literature documents the experiences of recipients of social support  and recipients  could allow researchers to better understand how social support influences adaptations to stress.Social support is a complex and multifaceted construct, encompassing both structural  and functional components  of interpersonal relationships . This inhow social support influences adaptations to stress, and how exactly organizations, teams, and practitioners can facilitate positive adaptations to stress in sport.In both the sport and broader psychology literature, there is evidence to suggest that while social support may allow for beneficial adaptations to stress, it may also result in indifferent and even negative adaptations to stress . For exaTwo predominant approaches in the sport literature help to explain how social support influences adaptations to stress. First, according to transactional theories of stress , perceivpersonal terms . However, as already argued above, social support involves an exchange between  providers and recipients. As such, salient group dynamics will contribute to social support’s influence on adaptations to stress. Second, while existing approaches emphasize the role of the social environment during stress re/appraisal  and their associated identity content  are likely to influence group members’ experience of stress and social support. Specifically, the characterizing identity of a group may influence what stressors are considered most pertinent to group members’ needs, as well as their trust and engagement with certain support providers  influences how the self is defined . Researchers from other areas of psychology have demonstrated how these social identity and self-categorisation processes underpin the experience of social support  and receipt of (perceived/received) social support within groups :Despite theoretical potential for the social identity approach to address the extant limitations on this topic, it is yet to be investigated. As such, our purpose in this study was to explore how social support and social identities influence adaptations to stress in a Rugby Academy Programme. Doing so may better inform RQ1: How can we understand social support using the social identity approach?RQ2: How can social factors influence the effects of social support?RQ3: How can we explain social support’s positive, negative, and indifferent adaptations to stress in sport?A naturalistic research paradigm with qualitative methods was adopted to generate comprehensive and ecologically situated insights . This apcritical epistemological position of realism . Our epistemological position was that, although a mind-independent reality exists, it is impossible to reach an absolute understanding of that reality as all methods of enquiry rely on participants’ and researchers’ interpretations of that reality. As such, we could only work toward a closer understanding of reality by adopting a  realism . This ph realism . SpecifiQuality and rigor of the findings were supported through several processes. First, the study used established methods for data collection and analysis. Second, transferability of the findings was supported by providing rich and accessible description with supporting quotations directly from the study participants  and by fN = 36) was gathered using purposive sampling bespoke to each sub-population  spread across regional training centers. As such, our sample consisted of three different Academy sub-populations: (1) support program co-ordinators; (2) teams of multidisciplinary support staff, and (3) players. Participants were only recruited if they were over 16 years of age and able to provide voluntary informed consent on the basis of having a full understanding of the research project and engagement expectations . To ensure a broad range of experiences and views, a cross-section from the Academy .Participant suitability was determined through collaborating with the National Governing Body’s (NGB) human resources team. Based on the study research questions, the inclusion criteria were to be involved in the NGB’s procurement and co-ordination of performance and welfare support for staff and players, and to have engagement with the Academy support program. To maximize variation in perspectives, co-ordinators were purposively sampled to comprise males and females from different age and staff groups. A gender-representative total of six co-ordinators consisting of directorial- and managerial-level staff from performance, human resources, and medical teams were identified, approached, and successfully recruited n of smallest subgroup = 4) were identified and approached via email invitation. There were two eligible male S&C coaches who responded to the invite for study participation but were unable to participate on the day of data collection. As such, a gender-representative total of 18 participants were recruited , incorporating support staff from all regional training centers.Participant suitability was determined through collaborating with the NGB’s human resources team and regional Academy managers. Based on the research questions, the inclusion criterion was to be working as part of a multidisciplinary team of Academy support staff and therefore engaged with the Academy support program. To ensure diverse and representative views, 20 eligible male and female members of support staff from varied professional disciplines  coaches, physiotherapists, and Academy managers; via email invitation. One eligible participant did not respond to the invite for study participation. As such, a gender-representative total of 12 participants were recruited , incorporating players from all regional training centers.Participant suitability was determined through collaborating with Academy managers. Based on the research questions, the inclusion criterion was to be a current Academy player and therefore engaged with the Academy support program. To maximize variation in perspectives, 13 eligible male and female Academy players were identified and approached teams of staff , while support staff focus groups lasted between 41 and 64 min . The first author then transcribed all audio recordings verbatim (resulting in 236 pages of transcript), which also served as part of the familiarization stage for subsequent analyses. Following transcription and initial analyses, participants were provided with their transcript-copies and preliminary results for the purposes of member reflections , participants were provided with study information  and consent sheets. There were no incentives for study participation. Interviews and focus groups were conducted by the first author who was familiar with qualitative interviewing. Academy co-ordinator and player interviews lasted between 22 and 56 min  social factors influencing the nature of social support, and (2) social factors influencing the provision and receipt of social support. Quotes typical of each theme using pseudonyms are also presented to illustrate interpretation and synthesis.“Going back to our responsibility as a governing body, that we have to develop better people as well as better players” . Co-ordinators, teams of support staff, and players indicated that this remit and identity also defined what stressors and support needs were relevant and salient to them; “Sometimes that can be personal things, sometimes it can be lifestyle-type situations, sometimes it can just be ill-informed choices, you’re dealing with young inexperienced people who have their sights very much on that starry vision of being a professional player” .Co-ordinators and teams of support staff explained how the Academy was situated within an organization (NGB) that had a remit of supporting performance alongside the welfare of its players, and that this remit defined who they were (their identity); “when we do quarterly reviews, we’re looking at things like work-ethic or responsibility […] that’s obviously not just rugby its overall making them, we’re looking at them being independent. Or, you know, good human beings who are gonna get jobs in other roles” . Players also reported receiving support that had “a 50-50 balance, like 50% is focused on training. But, the other 50% is focussing off-the-pitch as well” . For example, one player described how“[my Academy Manager]’s been driving me quite hard for my studies and making sure that they’re on track and they’re going as well as they can […] it’s very focused on, your studies come first and you train around that, rather than you train then your studies come around your training.” .The Academy’s resulting social identities seemed to, in turn, influence the form and provision of social support such that it had perceived benefits for their support needs . For example, co-ordinators and support staff indicated how social support within the Academy was multidisciplinary in nature and designed to have a complimentary focus on rugby, dual career, and personal development; “rather than just being an Academy that is ‘part of [NGB] Rugby’, which is where it started with, now we’re trying to develop our own identity, and then something that actually sits back, about ‘yes we’re not any different to what’s going on, but we are different’ […] people have the perception that the [region] players aren’t fit, so we want them to be athletic, but we want to be mean, and then we’ve got that word ‘dogged’ that comes from it, and we think that encompasses us a region.”Although there was a consistent national identity and social support structure throughout the NGB, there were also regional variations in terms of the stressors and available resources faced by different sub-groups . For example, one Academy Manager (Adam) said “We have to have a national programme that’s delivered regionally […] the academy structure that we have is very much a national focus, national messages, delivered regionally, that does reflect the region that the players are in” . These regionally distinct identities were often manifested and characterized through the use of “Academy Values”, which were used to create regional variations in the support behaviors of staff and players. For example, one Academy Manager from a rural training center (Marlin) spoke about their Academy Values as being “Developing and Sharing Knowledge” because they needed to utilize a bigger network of support providers , and “Combining Professionalism” because they needed to support “transitioning players in[to] a professional environment, we want to make sure they understand what professionalism is.” As such, while the provision of social support aligned with the super-ordinate NGB identity, there were also regional variations in the provision of support between each Academy. These regional variations allowed each Academy to address the stressors and support needs that were most pertinent to them.In other words, while there appeared to be a general alignment with a super-ordinate NGB identity, co-ordinators and support staff indicated that the operationalization of this super-ordinate identity was regionally distinct; asked Marlin like what I could do [about educational attainment], how I could juggle it, and then I’ve just had a meeting with [support staff] about potential, potential ideas and they’re gonna put me in touch with the guy in [city] […] he has a good education background so they said he’ll help a lot” . Conversely, support staff indicated that high levels of parental support may prevent players from developing autonomy skills; “now, you’re far more likely to have the parent phoning you directly saying ‘how does this happen, how does that happen?’ and their far more inquisitive which means the actual young person’s actually got a lesser skillset of that” . Support staff would, therefore, encourage players to reduce their level of reliance on parents in order to support players’ holistic development through becoming more autonomous and self-reliant; “I think the way we do that generally is we put a little bit of onus back on the player […] to take some ownership of that so we’re not chasing them every week” .Support networks were structured to achieve beneficial outcomes that were consistent with each Academy’s identity and support needs. For example, support staff emphasized the importance of cultivating close relationships with other staff to support holistic player development . Similarly, support staff would curate relationships with external support providers to (for example) assist with players’ educational attainment;“[I] “We pretty much talk through all our players, needs are highlighted and discussed, so if we’ve got a concern about a player, whether it’s a sport-specific concern or a behavioural concern, or something in their life out-with this, we can monitor that either formally or informally” .Both co-ordinators and support staff worked closely together to achieve a multidisciplinary understanding of—and provision for—players’ support needs. As such, the provision and receipt of social support in the Academy operated as a dynamic exchange within groups. For example, support staff described how responsive. This was because the group context allowed for salient stressors to be easily identified. A physiotherapist (Richard) shared an example of this; “‘This player feels low’, the physio said this, and the coach then said ‘how’d ya know?’, and I was like, ‘well, it’s my perception, I’ve grown to know a person coming in day-to-day and the last two or three weeks I’ve noticed there’s been a change’.” Similarly, group-based support was considered to be dynamic, as it enabled appropriate providers or types of support  to be easily prioritized depending on the most salient stressor . For example, one coach (Magnus) imitated what this dynamic group-based support provision looked like; “‘we need to obviously intervene here’. Who is it? [Coach]’s got the better relationship with him, you’ll maybe pick that up, or in situ, [Physiotherapist]’s just picked it up as they flag.” Players also indicated that support exchanges within groups often resulted in positive adaptations to stress due to being accessible. Specifically, the group environment allowed for members to easily access and engage with a range of support providers or recipients .Support staff and players indicated that support exchanges within groups often resulted in positive adaptations to stress due to being behaviours and it’s not quite meeting what we’re expecting, I have the ability that – we as a team, we talk a fair amount and class our Values and what we’re aiming for – and I can project that through to the athlete when we’re on the physio plinth, so to speak, and go: ‘well, do you think that’s a wise choice?”’ .The Academy identities and their characterizing identity content  influenced what behaviors were considered normative and meaningful amongst groups of support staff and players. These group norms in turn influenced the provision of normative social support from staff; “[If players’] “we’ll give them a little bit more additional S&C support, we will give them a bit of nutritional advice, they will potentially see [physiotherapist] and get a bit more support which they’re not ‘technically’ in terms of that level due to get, and I think if we were to be honest about it, I think the Values does shape the support we give them” . The converse was also noted, where less support would be provided if behaviors did not align with the group’s Values; “Certainly, from my point of view that Identity has a big impact on what I deliver to them. For example, there’s a [player] guy – they’re given supplements – that [player] guy I was giving the supplements from, he doesn’t get them because the other parts, ‘turn up on time, bring the effort, bring the right kit’, those three parts weren’t being delivered by him” .The meaning of normative social support provision to the group’s identity meant that staff would provide additional support over and above their remit if doing so aligned with their group’s “Academy Values.” For example, if a player’s behavior  aligned with their Academy’s values , this would be rewarded by warranting additional support from staff; “in terms of actual [mental health] support and knowing what’s available, I don’t think I know much about it, just generally, because it’s never happened to any of my friends or any sort of thing”; Oliver, Player). Further, their engagement with different types of support were also influenced by the extent to which doing so aligned with group norms ; “[The coaches are] working hard to make sure we’ve got everything that we need and we kind of repay them by following these Values and sticking to what we’re told.” .Co-ordinators, support staff, and players indicated that the groups which players belonged to—and their characterizing identities—influenced individual players’ receipt of social support. For example, co-ordinators and support staff indicated that players’ understanding of support were often based on the vicarious experiences of their teammates .This had implications for how social support influenced resultant adaptations to stress. Notably, players showed a better understanding of and engagement with normative social support , which would facilitate positive adaptations to rugby-related stressors. Conversely, this meant that players had a poorer understanding of and engagement with non-normative social support , thereby posing a greater risk for negative adaptations to non-rugby stressors; a barrier there depending on the type of support you’re referring for, whether players see it as being related to performance. You know, we’ve had a number of conversations with the players that blows up [imitating a conversation between coach and player]: ‘why don’t you come and speak to us?!’, ‘oh, well, oh. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to discuss that with you!”’ . These concerns about engaging with non-normative support were also corroborated by some players; “that’s the big problem at the moment, I would say, mental health stuff probably is available, but you have to go and seek it yourself, and people might not feel too comfortable doing that” .Support staff described how engaging with non-normative support could result in players experiencing negative adaptations to stress due to concerns over how it may be perceived or affect their standing within their group ; “[There is] “It makes you more comfortable in asking questions and stuff like that, so I’d feel really comfortable talking to one of these coaches about, just going up to them and asking ‘right, I’m doing, I’m struggling with this’ […] [Interviewer: “Why does that make you comfortable?”] It’s just, it’s easy. It, as I say like, support is making things easier, it’s just easy and there’s no stress”. This, in turn, allowed for the stressors and support needs of players to be better understood by support staff, thus enabling positive adaptations to stress.Co-ordinators, support staff, and players indicated that social support exchanges resulted in more positive adaptations to stress when support provider and recipient identified with one another on some valued dimension . First, this seemed to be because shared identification helped to create rapport and trusting relationships between provider and recipient. For example, one player (Ricky) explained how having a sense of shared identity made it easier to overcome help-seeking stress; one of us”) influenced the perceived trustworthiness and credibility of support. Co-ordinators, staff, and players indicated that (particularly non-normative) support was more graciously received and engaged with when provided by team-mates or retired professional players due to their level of shared knowledge and experience ; “somebody from HR [human resources] trying to sell this [non-rugby support] to players is not going to work […] they’re all sitting there half asleep. You put in a couple of ex-rugby players up there saying it to them? They’re listening.” . This had implications for the perceived effectiveness of support provided; “one of the pro team coaches which a lot of these guys will really look up to might have a message, and they might instantly buy into that” . For example, one player (Jerry) explained why he trusts the support received from his S&C coach ; “I respect [S&C coach] massively because he’s top class 7’s player, he knows what he’s talking about, and I feel yeah, cause it obviously, I do trust what he says because he’s been there and done that”.Second, the extent to which support providers were considered an ingroup member  social factors influencing the nature of social support, and (2) social factors influencing the provision and receipt of social support. In the following sections, we build a sequential discussion of these findings using the study’s three research questions.and recipients, and may often occur in group settings  influence the effects of social support. According to self-categorisation theory, group membership will motivate individuals to depersonalize and self-stereotype themselves in group-like terms .First, our findings demonstrate how the stressors considered most pertinent to each regional training center  were incorporated into the superordinate NGB and Academy group identities . In this way, group identities may allow group members to achieve consensus over what stressors are considered most pertinent to them , as well as what support is considered beneficial for abating those stressors . Social support’s influence on adaptations to stress may therefore depend on the degree to which it aligns with the group consensus regarding their most pertinent stressors  of social support, so that the support is more optimally matched to the ingroup’s perceived needs . As above, this may be due to shared group membership/s resulting in the consensus and mobilization of normative social support behaviors. Social support’s influence on adaptations to stress may therefore also depend on the identity content of groups—notably because this social factor has implications for the structure and function of social support . This might be because structural ties within groups are likely to be the basis for both beneficial o stress . Therefoed needs . Similar support .social cure; social curse; could be available and provided  or providers of support  are not always sought or well-received in sport . This is because doing so may conflict with the group’s identity-based norms , and attempting to access non-normative support  may result in negative adaptations to stress  may achieve positive, negative, or indifferent adaptations to stress. Notably, certain support providers  might be deemed non-normative due to being incongruent with a group’s identity content , thereby reducing the likelihood that their support would achieve positive adaptations to stress (or indeed whether group members engage with them in the first place). Equally, when there is a shared social identity between support provider and recipient, the identity-based implications behind such an exchange might allow for rapport, trust, and credibility to emerge more favorably .Similarly, this explains why the provision of social support from certain nt e.g., . HoweverThis study had several strengths. First, the use of qualitative methods allowed for a unique contribution to extant literature by allowing us to capture social identity “in action.” Indeed, the naturalistic study design allowed the researcher to build rapport with participants and recognize the subtleties of what was being said, thereby offering rich and contextualized insights into how social support and social identities influence adaptations to stress . Second,With regards to limitations, due to the study’s naturalistic design there were no observational data to supplement participants’ accounts of providing and receiving social support. However, it is worth noting that studies which have combined observational and self-report measures of social identity-related processes have reported high correlations between these indices e.g., . Second,While our findings offer naturalistic and rich insights into how social support and social identities influence adaptations to stress, it will be necessary for researchers to replicate and further investigate these findings using other methods and paradigms of research enquiry. In this regard, it may be important to consider the following. First, much of the extant literature adopts a singular perspective of social support (perceived or received support). As such, a fuller understanding of how the provision and receipt of social support influences adaptations to stress (and other outcomes) could be gained by simultaneously investigating enacted, perceived, and received support. Second, it is likely that relational differences exist with regards to the social support experience . To get a more accurate understanding of the social support experience, researchers could account for these relational differences by capturing the perspectives of important yet understudied individuals . While qualitative methods might allow for naturalistic insights into these perspectives, it may also be possible to capture them by comparing singular measures of social support e.g.,  with teanon-normative , and thus less likely to be engaged with by group members. Third, social support may be more potent when there is common ground of shared social identity  due to the identity-based implications behind the provision and receipt of social support—which poses both opportunities and challenges to achieving positive adaptations to stress. More concretely, our findings suggest that sport organizations, teams, and practitioners could enhance the effectiveness of social support by championing and embedding multifaceted group identities centered on desired outcomes . Doing so may allow for more types and providers of support  to be considered normative “parts of the ingroup,” and thereby more readily and effectively engaged with by athletes. In sum, group-based perceptions of social support influence adaptations to stress.By drawing on the social identity approach, the present study makes a novel contribution toward better understanding how social support and social identities influence adaptations to stress in a Rugby Academy Programme. Specifically, the present study explains how adaptations to stress in sport are influenced by the identity-based implications behind the provision and receipt of social support. This has several implications for how organizations, teams, and practitioners can support positive adaptations to stress in sport. First, our findings demonstrate that the experience of social support is embedded in the social nature of group life. It is thus important to consider the influence of group identity-processes on social support’s effects. Second, attempting to understand the context and identities of particular groups , may aid identification of a group’s most pertinent stressors along with the types of normative support that may result in positive adaptations to stress. Equally, doing so may aid identification of the types and providers of support that are deemed The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.This study, involving human participants, was reviewed and approved by the General University Ethics Panel at the University of Stirling. Written informed consent to participate in this study was obtained from all participants . Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable data included in this article.This research comprised part of CH’s doctoral thesis. As such, CH led the design, data collection, analysis, and write up of the research. PC and PA first and second supervisors, respectively, provided guidance and supervision on the research. This research was undertaken while PC was previously employed with the Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport at the University of Stirling. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.


Beyond Boredom and Anxiety  was lukewarm, albeit, this tepid response was during the dominance of the empirically experimental school of thought, wherein the subjective, phenomenological approach was disparaged  Clear goals: “I knew clearly what I wanted to do”; and (iii) Unambiguous feedback: “I was aware of how well I was doing.” Then, during flow, individuals will often experience the following states: (i) Autotelic experience: “I loved the feeling of what I was doing, and want to capture this feeling again”; (ii) Total concentration: “It was no effort to keep my mind on what was happening”; (iii) Sense of control: “I felt like I could control what I was doing”; (iv) Loss of self-consciousness: “I was not concerned with how others may have been evaluating me”; (v) Transformation of time: “The way time passed seemed to be different from normal”; and finally, (vi) Action-awareness merging: “I did things spontaneously and automatically without having to think”. These examples are selected items from the Long Flow State Scale 2  Flow Manual . These two scales are a common choice of measurement, due to Csikszentmihalyi's foundational definition of flow, the large body of literature supporting its reliability and validity  participants are assessed in terms of frequency  or veracity . There are 36 items in each scale, and the items are nearly identical between the two scales aside from the framed perspective of the instructions and items. The nine dimensions of flow are measured in both, and each dimension is measured by four separate items.According to the It is likely that the FSS-2 and DFS-2 may not strictly assess flow as one may expect them to. While they have been proven to be reliable and consistent with Csikszentmihalyi's  definitiFlow Manual  assess the memory of a recent flow experience and (ii) assess the memory of overall flow experiences. According to Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi , the flogeneral or trait-like, which refers to a general stable belief in one's capability in completing a task; domain-specific, which often relates to the ability to manage health/illness situations; and finally, task-specific, which refers to context specific behavior (van Diemen et al., omain-specific and task-specific are two categories that originate from state self-efficacy. Unfortunately, distinctions between these three aspects still require further research and clarification (van Diemen et al., In terms of state-trait conceptualization, flow and self-efficacy are very similar. Self-efficacy can be regarded as a state or a trait; however, this is just one common approach. Self-efficacy can also be organized into three situational contexts: Perhaps, current understandings of flow can be advanced through inspiration from already existent construct operationalizations such as has occurred with state self-efficacy. Or perhaps, further efforts of distinguishing between state and trait flow may prove to be fruitless, as most psychological constructs are neither one or the other, but rather of a combination of both state and trait attributes (Geiser and Simmons, Challenge-Skill Balance dimension, long regarded as an essential condition of flow, should instead be at an imbalance. They found that a perfect balance can lead to boredom or disinterest, and that a high challenge higher or lower than high skills is more strongly associated with flow. However, that study was based on students on a recent ski trip. Studies have found that dimensional validity issues are found especially in music students and athletes (Jackson et al., time transformation, loss of self-consciousness, and clear goals. Interestingly, validity issues for clear goals only apply for “elite athletes.” No statements can be made about music students and musicians in general, however, as the majority of flow and music research literature contains a limited range of participant demographics, i.e., schoolchildren and youths.Researchers have also challenged the inclusion of specific dimensions within the flow conceptualization. For instance, Lovoll and Vitterso  argued tThese issues give light to a major concern regarding the conceptualization and operationalization of flow across the research literature: in short, there is great need for theoretical integration. For instance, a conceptual analysis found 24 distinct operationalized constructs of flow in a total of 42 articles (Abuhamdeh, The DFS-2 and FSS-2 may be considered to be continuous; however, a continuum of “probably not flow” to “probably flow” or one of “0% properties of flow” to “100% properties of flow” does not give as much significance as a continuum that describes variation in flow intensity. Besides this questionable quantitative representation of the flow construct, there are conceptual issues. Not all flow scales contain the same sort of dimensions; in addition to this, many flow scales contain varying quantities of dimensions.fluency of performance, feelings of frustration, and absorption by activity (see: Rheinberg et al., action-awareness merging and autotelic experience, while the last may be used as another word for flow. Thus, the following criticism about the lack of “theoretical integration,” borrowed from an article on motivational theories, is quite accurate.In many cases, while dimensional constructs are similar and near-identical between certain operationalizations, different terminologies may be used. For instance, the following terms are used in some flow studies: [The] theories in psychology are dispersed across a whole field of historical orientations, overlapping concepts, and differentially-related constructs. This diffusion is manifested as a “proliferation” of terms and constructs which range in nomenclature… [with] idiosyncratic vocabulary using different words for the same concept and the same word for different concepts… (Duncan et al., Though it is possible that the componential approach of measuring flow as a multi-dimensional state-trait variable, i.e., the DFS-2 and FSS-2, may have been a step toward theoretical integration, it is often seen as just another set of scales to choose from. Sometimes, it is treated as a collection of constructs for custom handpicking (see: Lee, In conclusion, it is imperative that flow research and its accumulating literature can concretely answer the questions: “What is flow?” and “Does this [method] measure flow?”; unfortunately with the current limitations in research and literature, one can only state “it depends… it's complicated” and “probably.” Thus, critical analyses, meta-analyses, network analyses and qualitative studies may be invaluable tools in arriving at concrete answers to these sorts of questions. In addition to this, neurocognitive research approaches may provide further information that corroborates current foundational elements of flow, as seen in mindfulness/meditation research (see: Raffone and Srinivasan, JL-S: main writer. RL: advisor and editor. Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.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.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.


The pigeon circovirus (PiCV), first described in the literature in the early 1990s, is considered one of the most important infectious agents affecting pigeon health. Thirty years after its discovery, the current review has employed bibliometric strategies to map the entire accessible PiCV-related research corpus with the aim of understanding its present research landscape, particularly in consideration of its historical context. Subsequently, developments, current knowledge, and important updates were provided. Additionally, this review also provides a textual analysis examining the relationship between PiCV and the young pigeon disease syndrome (YPDS), as described and propagated in the literature. Our examination revealed that usages of the term ‘YPDS’ in the literature are characterizations that are diverse in range, and neither standard nor equivalent. Guided by our understanding of the PiCV research corpus, a conceptualization of PiCV diseases was also presented in this review. Proposed definitions and diagnostic criteria for PiCV subclinical infection (PiCV-SI) and PiCV systemic disease (PiCV-SD) were also provided. Lastly, knowledge gaps and open research questions relevant to future PiCV-related studies were identified and discussed. Journal of the Association of Avian Veterinarians is a five-sentence report marking the earliest record on circovirus infections in pigeons. The report describes an infection that is morphologically diagnosable by examination of the presence of inclusion bodies in necropsy tissues, commonly or sometime only found in the bursa of Fabricius of the birds. It was noted that the virus is “apparently distinct from the psittacine virus”  a key role in augmenting [the] disease progression” although further proof certainly is needed  were not specific.” Hence, to our reading of the text, there exist virtually two conceptualizations of YPDS: one that is colloquial, and the other that is more technical in its requirements.We would like to note two key points about the paper  at this We contend that these two points are crucial to the developments in PiCV research that followed the abovementioned report, and to the studies that are still to be conducted in the future. As such, we also investigated how this paper and, in particular, the two key points noted above, were referred to, and propagated in the literature. Our underpinning questions are: (1) How is PiCV described to be related to YPDS?; and (2) What is ‘young pigeon disease syndrome (YPDS)’ as operationalized in the literature?Examination of the retrieved texts showed that the relationship of PiCV infection to YPDS has been described in variable terms of associatedness, importance, and/or cruciality. Specifically, the role of PiCV infection to YPDS has been described in some papers as remaining “uncertain” and that it “has not yet been conclusively clarified”, while also described as “speculated as crucial”, “might be crucial”, “crucial”, “probably associated”, “associated”, “strongly associated”, “important”, “central”, “one of the putative factors”, “a key factor”, “one of the causative agents”, “among the major causative agents”, “the likely aetiological agent”, and “likely causal agent” in other records. Likewise, other texts also described PiCV infection to be “caus[al of] YPDS”, or “responsible for YPDS.” While these descriptors are not mutually exclusive of each other, these are also not equivalents. Additionally, the mechanism by which PiCV infection contributes to the development of YPDS has also been described in various descriptions of certainties, ranging from “assumed to induce immunosuppression”, “possibly by immunosuppression”, to “causes profound immunosuppression”. See ,116,117.Unsurprisingly, we also found that the descriptions, definitions, and/or operationalized usage of the term “young pigeon disease syndrome (YPDS)” also vary, corresponding to the above noted colloquial and technical conceptualizations. Indeed, in most texts, YPDS is referred to as a “multifactorial” or “complex disease” characterized by a combination of symptoms (often described as non-specific), with no to variable level of attributed importance to histopathological markers. Consistent with this is our observation that YPDS is used to describe cases (or loft histories) prior to the detection of PiCV infection in numerous reports. In others, YPDS is a category of viral infections. These are all also while other records explicitly state that YPDS is a consequence of PiCV infection and subsequent immunosuppression, or categorically require specific conditions for YPDS diagnosis, such as the observation of both clinical symptoms and PiCV-specific histological lesions, presence of viral particles, and a demonstration of the presence of a large amount of viral DNA. See ,113,117.Chlamydia, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and other parasites in varying combinations with varying degrees of support [Problematizing PiCV infection and its pathology, YPDS, and their correlation with each other is not new to this review. These have been, in fact, subjects of several discussions and opinions before. For instance, Dr. Henk de Weerd pointed out, “As you know, about 10 years ago ‘everyone’ (except me) was extremely alarmed about the circovirus. According to many, that was the cause of ‘just about everything’ in terms of pigeon outbreaks, including ‘adeno-coli’,” which, still according to Dr. de Weerd, is internationally known as the “Young Bird disease’’ . Similar support ,115,120. support .Most recently, experimental infection with the newly discovered and isolated pigeon Rotavirus A belonging to a novel clade also produced clinical manifestations that were also described as YPDS-like ,121. SomTherefore, the questions of what YPDS is, what its relation to PiCV infection is, and how this term has been used and propagated in the literature, which reflects how veterinary health practitioners and researchers perceive YPDS, need critical assessment. The current review revealed that usages of the term YPDS in the literature are neither standard nor equivalent. YPDS in the literature is a diverse range of characterizations.In consideration of the complex history of YPDS and PiCV infection, our current opinion is that YPDS, as colloquially conceptualized pointed above—that is, a combination of non-specific clinical symptoms, may still be useful as a putative diagnosis pending identification of the causative and/or confounding agents. We are also under the impression that PiCV must be categorically identified as a causative agent of the diseases that we propose below to be identified as PiCV subclinical infection (PiCV-SI) and PiCV systemic disease (PiCV-SD).From the early days of PiCV research, this virus has been consistently compared and likened to other related pathogens, most remarkably to porcine circovirus (PCV) and the associated disease formerly referred to as post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS), in terms of basic biology, to genetic diversity, pathobiology, and approaches to treatment and control ,90,93,99Additional parallels between PiCV infection and PCV2 infection can be long, but we would like to highlight several important points of similarities related to pathology, and disease. Like PiCV, early experimental studies with PCV2 sought to demonstrate the capacity of the virus to produce clinical signs compatible to PMWS. In PCV2, successes were achieved mostly after inoculation with another infectious or non-infectious agent. Together with other field observations, these studies lead to the conclusion that PCV2 is immunosuppressive and a “necessary but not sufficient factor to develop the clinical disease” ,123. WhiFrom this perspective of the current understanding of PiCV and YPDS research, and guided by the lessons from PCV2 and PCVD, we draw our proposed PiCV diseases, as shown in Based on epidemiologic and case studies conducted in multiple countries across the world, PiCV infection is quite common among both domestic and feral pigeons, with some reports identifying that most young pigeons in an affected loft would have been infected before reaching 1 year old. Previously performed experimental infections of pigeons with PiCV infected tissue homogenates, as well as documented naturally infected pigeons without clinical symptoms, confirm that while no clinical manifestations were observed, characteristic histopathologic lesions were present in challenged pigeons ,93,105. On other hand, PiCV-SD, like PCV2-SD, is a multifactorial disease in which PiCV is the strictly required factor. Like PCVDs, as PiCV has also been noted for its wide distribution similar to PCV2, cases of PiCV-SD must be considered to be of complex causality. This proposal, therefore, functionally reclassifies Duchatel’s and Szeleszczuk’s conceptualization of YPDS as PiCV-SD. As such, the previously reviewed clinico-pathological picture of PiCV infection with clinical manifestations and characteristic histological lesions would also be descriptive of PiCV-SD ,23. In tFurthermore, the current proposal is not to deny the involvement of other infectious agents in PiCV-SD. For instance, consistent with Schmidt et al. (2020), the discovery of pigeon Rotavirus A does not contradict to its potential importance in the development of what we are currently proposing as PiCV-SD. What this proposal is trying to resolve and formalize is the importance of and necessity for PiCV infection to pigeon health and the development of a particular disease. In extension, the proposal recognizes the pathogenicity of PiCV, perhaps, best evidenced by the demonstration of the virus’ apoptotic ability to B lymphocytes confirming its immunosuppressive function ,92.Guided by our examination of the literature, we are of the view that this proposal is the best step moving forward as an attempt to lodge a more cohesive approach to dealing with matters important to pigeon health management, and in extension, to scientific research.Perhaps, among the most important research gaps in PiCV research is still the absence of a reliable and replicated method for isolating this viral agent. We, however, note two records reporting propagation of PiCV ,112 achiIn Sahindokuyucu et al. (2022), inoculation of tissue homogenates positive for PiAdV-A and PiCV into the chorioallantoic cavity and yolk sack of the SPF embryonated eggs yielded PiCV-positive allantoic fluid at the fifth passage. None of the other tested viruses were positive by PCR. Additionally, cultivation of the virus from the same tissue homogenate using primary chicken embryo fibroblast also yielded PiCV- and PiADV-A-positive supernatant. It was, however, unclear how many cell culture passages were performed . MeanwhiParticularly, the establishment of a reliable isolation protocol for PiCV would enable future research on the more basic understanding of the biology of this virus, including its specific mechanisms for entry, replication, and release, as well as the functions of the other proteins encoded its genome. In particular, the role of ORF C3 protein in PiCV is still unclear. In PCV2 and duck circovirus, ORF C3 has been confirmed to induce lymphocyte depletion by apoptosis ,125,126.On the other hand, with the reported detection of PiCV in other animals, particularly in ticks, it is tempting to speculate whether all or some of these species are hosts (definitive or intermediate) or a vector of PiCV. With most of these reports relying on partial sequences, it remains to be shown if these detected infections are of a different subtype or strain, or perhaps a completely new circovirus species that is a very close relative sharing a common origin with PiCV. Nevertheless, these reports seem to be a prelude to studies needed to uncover what might be a cross-species jumping in play in PiCV evolution, together with its implication to PiCV epidemiology, pathobiology, and genetic diversity. More than thirty years after the discovery of PiCV, there is still a lot to learn about this viral agent.