Mindfully Healing

It has incredible psychological and physiological power. Holding someone’s hand is enough to reduce their pain and even synchronise breathing and heart rates, new research finds. Dr Pavel Goldstein, the study’s first author, said: “The more empathic the partner and the stronger the analgesic effect, the higher the synchronization between the two when they are touching.” The study is the latest in the area of interpersonal synchronisation. This is how people’s physiological measures automatically synchronise to those who are around them. People automatically synchronise their footsteps when walking together and

The signs of depression are hidden in these type of people. It is harder to spot depression in people who are outgoing and fun-loving, research finds. Indeed, people who are extroverted may find it hard to spot the signs of depression in themselves. People who are highly agreeable are also harder to diagnose with depression, the study found. Professor Paul R. Duberstein, the study’s first author, said: “When a person who has enjoyed socializing and whose mood normally is positive becomes depressed, friends and family often don’t recognize it. Depression

Why you should celebrate your poor memory. People with worse memories can enjoy the same experiences more often, new research finds. In contrast, those with the best memories may quickly get tired of the same music, books, places and even people. Dr Noelle Nelson, the study’s first author, said: “People with larger working memory capacities actually encode information more deeply. They remember more details about the things they’ve experienced, and that leads them to feel like they’ve had it more. That feeling then leads to the ‘large-capacity’ people getting tired

Early life stress has this worrying effect on the brain. Stress in childhood can put you at greater risk of depression later on, new research finds. Early life stress can affect how DNA is expressed and make an organism more susceptible to stress in adult life. The conclusions come from an epigenetic study of mice. The study looked at the effect of molecules that regulate our DNA. Researchers found that mice exposed to stress early in life were more likely to show signs of depression when stressed as adults. These

Tests predict ten-fold increase in Alzheimer’s risk 18 years in advance. Low scores on memory and thinking tests could signal Alzheimer’s 18 years in advance, a new study finds. Dr Kumar B. Rajan, the study’s lead author, said: “The changes in thinking and memory that precede obvious symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease begin decades before. While we cannot currently detect such changes in individuals at risk, we were able to observe them among a group of individuals who eventually developed dementia due to Alzheimer’s.” In the study, over two thousand people

This type of music helps you search longer and harder for a creative solution. Listening to happy, energetic music increases people’s creativity, a new study finds. Researchers found that listening to the violin concerto “The Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi helped their divergent creativity. Divergent creativity refers to creating lots of potential answers to a problem. For example, try to think of as many uses as you can for a brick. Building a house is the obvious one, but you might also list sitting on it, using it to smash

Three steps that will help you stop brooding. Repetitive negative thoughts are at the heart of the depressive experience. There are three steps vital to reducing repetitive negative thoughts, according to Professor Hans M. Nordahl, an expert on psychological therapy. These are (1) realising that brooding is a waste of time, (2) focus on the here-and-now rather than the past and (3) be wary of habitual distractions like drinking. 1. Brooding is a waste of time Professor Nordahl said that people… “…often confuse ruminative brooding with problem solving, analysis or

This positive personality trait linked to more suicidal thoughts and suicide itself. People who have a tendency towards perfectionism are at a much higher risk of suicidal thoughts and suicide itself, new research finds. Perfectionists find it harder than others to deal with a world that is fundamentally flawed. Perfectionism involves being highly self-critical, constantly striving to meet the standards of others (typically parents or mentors) and being unsure about the efficacy of one’s own actions. While a certain amount of perfectionism is adaptive and necessary, when it becomes an

Have you ever fallen foul of the grammar police? Introverts are more likely to judge a person negatively on the basis of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, a new study finds. People who are sensitive to grammatical errors are also more likely to be less agreeable by nature. Extroverted people, though, are more likely to ignore written errors. Professor Julie Boland, one of the study’s authors, said: “This is the first study to show that the personality traits of listeners/readers have an effect on the interpretation of language. In this

Slows and can even reverse age-related physical and mental decline. Dancing keeps your brain young, new research finds. Compared with exercise like cycling and Nordic walking, dancing has more profound effects. Dr Kathrin Rehfeld, lead author of the study, said: “Exercise has the beneficial effect of slowing down or even counteracting age-related decline in mental and physical capacity. In this study, we show that two different types of physical exercise (dancing and endurance training) both increase the area of the brain that declines with age. In comparison, it was only