News Mental Health
Going Viral
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash Have you adjusted yet? It would not be surprising if your answer were a resounding “No!” You might even be feeling a kind of grief for your former life, the one in which you…
Love in the Time of Covid-19: Quarantine Your Fear
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on March 31, 2020 We are living through one of the scariest times in recent history, and humans are not very good at being scared. Experiencing an overwhelming global…
The Pain in Spain Stays Mainly in Your Brain
Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels Suppose your beloved but clumsy dance partner steps on your foot and you immediately feel pain, identified by your brain as clearly being in the crushed appendage, but what exactly is that sensation and where does it…
How To Remember To Not Forget
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash I had a great opening sentence to this article that came to me last night as I was going to sleep. Where it went since then, I have no idea. Memory is far from…
The Deep End of the Gene Pool
Photo by CDC on Unsplash The old scientific debate of nature vs. nurture has taken on some promising new directions since the field of epigenetics has been developing over the past few decades. Every living thing carries a genetically coded…
Grow Up, Not Old
Photo by Ekaterina Shakharova on Unsplash This is the first in a two-part series looking at the effects of aging on our health, and the lives and well-being of seniors in our community. Death and taxes aren’t the only certainties…
Whatever Happens in Vagus, Stays in Vagus
Photo by Kelvin Valerio from Pexels There is a nerve in the human body that regulates heart function, influences digestion, informs you when it’s safe to relax, and promotes efficient swallowing and speaking. This longest cranial nerve (originating in the brain) also receives…
To Sleep, Perchance, To Sleep Enough
Photo by Lux Graves on Unsplash In case you don’t remember, you’ve probably spent a third of your life laying dormant, experiencing deep periods of unconsciousness alternating with patterns of symbolic, poorly understood, yet altogether vivid and emotional hallucinations. For…
Being in the Zone
Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash Last time we talked about neuroplasticity and how the brain can change itself based on what is demanded of it and how it is used. Among the various restructurings that have been studied are…
Your Brain on Plastic
Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash Not long ago neuroscientists believed that the human brain developed along a predictable timeline and that windows for certain types of growth closed at some point, creating a kind of final draft of the…