Description: I am willing to bet that you have already heard something about the practice of if not the term being used for forest bathing. No, it does not involve getting wet in the woods (unless perhaps it is raining). The term comes out of Japan (shinrin yoku = forest bathing) where the practice of… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Health and Prevention In Aging
Aging Attitudes, Aging Health and Ikigai
Description: Quick question! How are attitudes towards aging and aging related health related? I am guessing but I suspect your answer to that question was something like; they are related in that as your health declines your attitudes about aging become more negative. That does seem to make sense. Those of us in our late… Read more »
Vaccine Hesitancy 201
Description: We are all very tired of talking about and worrying about Covid and its many issues and yet we are also, as I write this, wondering what the Omicron variation is going to do to our ability to cope and manage individually, withing our communities and especially within our medical systems. Any sort of… Read more »
Psychiatric Disorders and Type 2 Diabetes: How are they related?
Description: Read just the title of the article linked below. Now, what questions or hypotheses pop up for you with just the title in mind? If you have had a psychology or a statistics course you will recognize the title as a typical example of a statement of correlation. Psychiatric disorders and type 2 diabetes,… Read more »
Psychology of Covid: The Vaccine Dilemma Game
Description: Social psychology often involves examining the social give and take between individuals and at some of the ways that individuals may bias their perceptions or out and out act in their own interest at the expense of other’s outcomes. This work includes things like the Just World Hypothesis (e.g., maybe people who flaunt social… Read more »
Reactivating Stem Cells: Possbile Key to Treating Neurodegenerative Disorders
Description: When I first started teaching introductory psychology a few decades ago I used to tell students that they had most of the largest number of brain neurons they would ever have at the time they were born. After their birth the number of brain cells dropped due to things like attrition and pruning (neurons… Read more »
This is Your Brain on Lonely
Description: Being lonely is not an enjoyable experience and in many ways that I suspect you are aware of or could guess at, it is not good for you either. But how does prolonged loneliness effect your brain and why might it be useful and important to know how loneliness impacts people’s brains? Think about… Read more »
Challenges to Admitting Defeat
Description: Somewhere in the aftermath of the American election (November 3, 2020) there will be (maybe) a point where the outgoing president acknowledges his loss. At least that is how it has gone in every previous American Presidential election. But, as of today, November 14, 2020, Donald Trump has not yet conceded the election to… Read more »
Focussed Ultrasound Does an End-Run on the BBB and that is a Good Thing!
Description: If you have had an introductory Psychology course, and perhaps even if you have not yet, you are likely aware of the challenges faced when researchers and clinicians want to introduce drugs in to specific brain regions or to influence specific neurotransmitter systems within the brain. Trying to increase the functional levels of a… Read more »
Psychology of Covid-19: Dogs versus Cats?
Description: I am going to ask you a question but before I do I need you to put aside a bias you may have and try to be objective. Are you a cat person pr a dog person? If your answer to that question is something like, “they are both nice” or “I am indifferent… Read more »