Depression: Failure to Learn Depression stops you. You can’t start. You can’t think. You want to rest but can’t sleep. Simple acts become unendurable. You retreat, then hide. You can’t burden others with what you are now – stuck. In previous centuries personality changes so abrupt led depressed people to be burned at the stake. Things […]
Is Your Brain Like a Muscle?
Grow your muscle, grow your brain. For decades it’s getting clearer – physical activity leads to more brain cells. But how? And why? A recent paper in Cell Metabolism, ably reported by Gretchen Reynolds, shows the advantages of cross-species research. Work with mice, monkeys and humans demonstrated something jocks sensed long ago – your legs talk […]
Preventing Holiday Colds
Stopping Colds It’s winter, time for holiday coughs, colds and flus – and ways to prevent them. True, it does not look like winter; Christmas time temperatures in the seventies across the northeast US should give even the most hardened global climate change “hoaxist” real pause. But though cold weather with its changes in nasal and sinus temperatures, […]
The Most Important Learning (10/13/14)
It’s time for a very short quiz. Do you learn more – Taking a walk across an abandoned car park Or Studying for a required calculus test? Teachers, academics and most folks will probably choose #2. Even if we don’t like calculus, we’re taking a test. That’s gotta be important. Yet most human learning does […]
Your Lying, Cheating Brain (3/3/14)
Creating Useful Lies “I just know it’s true. I saw it.” But your brain is not a DVD player, correctly recording what happened. And that’s a good thing. The unreliability of memory has been a literary theme for thousands of years. The creation of our many “true fictions” are ascribed to factors varying from personality […]