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The Mime And The Mind
When you watch a mime pull an invisible rope or run into an invisible wall you as the viewer are tricked into visualizing something that isn’t there. But is it all in the mime? Or does the mind play a role? Chaz Firestone, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University joins Ira to discuss his latest research on how the mind “helps” us see these invisible objects. ...
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Parents, Stop Talking About the ‘Lost Year’
They’re calling it a “lost year.” On and offline, parents are trading stories — poignant and painful — about all of the ways that they fear their middle schoolers are losing ground. ... They reason they’ll be fine is built right into the biology of early adolescence, explained Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University and the author of “Age of Opportunity,” the influential 2014 book on adolescent brain science. The fact that middle schoolers are going through a “critical period” of heightened brain flexibility, instability and plasticity, he said, means that they are hypersensitive and ultra-vulnerable — and also extra-primed for adaptability and resilience. ...
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The Pandemic Doesn’t Mean We Have to Choose between Physical and Mental Health
If you’re thinking about the COVID pandemic as an assault against physical health alone, you’ve got it all wrong. The statistics on illness and death are staggering—but there’s been an equally staggering toll exacted on our mental health. Nearly one third of Americans are experiencing symptoms of clinical depression or anxiety, and the Well Being Trust estimates we will suffer up to 150,000 additional deaths tied to the social isolation and economic stressors associated with COVID-19. In nonpandemic times, making choices that benefit both physical health and mental health was relatively straightforward, for these choices were often one and the same.
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Society’s Role in Covid’s Spread
Fareed gives his take on how varying degrees of tolerance for rules have influenced national responses to the pandemic across the world. ...
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Dogs Act Jealously Even When They Don’t See Their Rival
Researchers gauged the reactions of a group of dogs when their owners appeared to shower attention on a perceived rival.
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You Won’t Remember the Pandemic the Way You Think You Will
... The pandemic has not been a single, traumatic “flashbulb” event like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the fiery disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger, or 9/11. Instead, it’s a life period in which everybody’s memories will be embedded, more like the Great Depression or World War II, or My High-School Years or When I Was Married to Barbara. Starting in March 2020, hundreds of millions of Americans began forming their own impressions of it. As psychologists and anthropologists who study memory will tell you, we tend to lay out our anecdotes almost like short stories or screenplays to give our lives meaning; our plots (do they have silver linings?
