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Retirement offers the unprecedented stage of life to boost the quality in the moment experiences, deepen existing social connections and choose new ones that nurture the brain, mind, soul and purpose.

I had the pleasure to interview Evian Gordon MD, PhD. Evian is Chairman of the Board for Total Brain. He has over 30 years experience in brain research and considered to be one of the originators of field of integrative neuroscience. He has authored more than 300 peer reviewed publications.

Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Gordon! Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

MyPhD was focused in serum lipids and heart attacks, in the days when cardiology was the golden highway of medicine. I was on a roll. And by chance, my PhD supervisor showed me the missing link fossil of the first hominids (primates) that stood upright. He pointed out to me that in the past 5 million years, the hominid brain has tripled in size. No other species has done anything like this.

I completed my PhD and switched my medical and science goals to set up a Standardized International Brain Function and Performance Database and use the insights from the database to build tools for self-transformation. That has remained my daily mission for 30 years.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

Most of my early applied integrative neuroscience team had science and medical backgrounds. We were immersed in rational thinking and built a system to simultaneously measure electrical brain function, heart rate variability, sweat rate, breathing and response time to a range of activation tasks.

Tasks included nonconscious presentation of face emotions that were presented so rapidly (in a hundredth of a second) that the viewer was not aware of what was being presented.

We showed the viewers all the different face emotions (fear, disgust, sad, happy etc.) and analyzed the brain-body measures.

The first time we saw that nonconscious fear stimuli, it was processed 30 thousandths of a second faster than other emotions, we realized two shocking things:

Ever since that moment, those discoveries put a different lens into how we approach the function of the brain. More so, it shifted the focus to the motherload of the brains operating system how to best align nonconscious emotion intuition and conscious rational thinking.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

I always thought I was the smartest person in the room.

The lesson I learned, was how little I knew then. And more so now.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Peter Cooper is the Founder of Cooper Investors, a $12 billion equities fund that only invests in long range opportunities (and whose team has interviewed over 1,000 CEOs to select their long range value latency strategies).

My company had set up the worlds largest standardized brain database (over a million datasets and featured in 300 publications) and built an online brain fitness platform to better understand your key brain capacities, train and track new habits, and generated what is likely to be the first objective test to predict treatment response in depression. We succeeded beyond our expectations, with over 30 highly-respected US companies using the online product.

However, by under-resourcing along with experiencing slow revenue growth, it resulted in stretching the company in too many directions to keep the mission on track. Therefore, it was leading investors to run out of patience and the company was running out of money.

Peter introduced me to Louis Gagnon and persuaded him to become the CEO of Total Brain. Louis has not only scaled the company but has brought fresh approaches to help destigmatize mental health around the globe.

What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?

Work strategically harder.

But with a focus on finishing tasks!

Burnout is not about hard work.Its about being too stretched and a lack of finishing tasks.

And I would also advise them to only work with people with whom you are authentically aligned. Misalignment is the motherload of burnout.

If its not aligned, cut the chord as soon as possible.

What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?

3 things:

1) A differentiated mission real differentiating ideas matter.

2) People alignment and be vigilant about not hiring self-righteous opportunists.

3) A growth mindset and a respectful, deep understanding of innovation and implementation of groundbreaking ideas.

With that in place: a differentiating product, a good product-market fit and the quickest paths to sustainable revenue, are more likely to happen.

Ok thank you for all that. Now lets move to the main focus of our interview. Retirement is a dramatic life course transition that can impact ones health. In some cases, retirement can reduce health, and in others it can improve health. From your point of view or experience, what are a few of the reasons that retirement can reduce ones health?

Can you share with our readers 5 things that one should do to optimize mental wellness after retirement? Please share a story or an example for each.

We live in the era of increasing awareness about age related memory mental health deterioration. There is however, growing evidence that although the brain diminishes in some tasks as it ages, it gains in other ways. Here are five factors that can help improve mental health after retirement.

1. Self-Awareness

Retirement inevitably increases the opportunity for self awareness and self reflection. The insights can be enhanced by a check-in of brain capacity strengths and mental health challenges, to magnify strengths and protect against mental health negativity.

2. Emotion Regulation

The widespread negative reality is that memory usually declines with age. However, neuroimaging evidence shows that emotional stability and negativity bias improves with age. The increased personal bandwidth of retirement provides an opportunity to magnify that strength.

3. Wisdom

The ability to see the patterns that matter increases with age. This ability allows an enhanced ability to make rapid and effective decisions that could increase the ability to savor ones retirement new opportunities. It is not coincidental that many great inventions and artistic outcomes have occurred late in late.

4. Quality Time and Social Connections

5. Gratitude

The Positive Psychology Movement have highlighted the benefit to mental health of magnifying strengths, a positive solution focused attitude and the power of gratitude. When better to immerse in gratitude for what worked, than in retirement?

In your experience, what are 3 or 4 things that people wish someone told them before they retired?

1. Focus on what you will do, not what you wont do.

2. Dont generate self limiting age related beliefs. Go for it.

3. Its time to use your life learnt wisdoms.

4. Have deep gratitude for what is working for you, in health and life.

5. Stay on your lifes mission.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

Daniel Khaneman (2011): Thinking Fast and Slow. Macmillan.

I was shocked to discover the extent to which nonconscious emotions, intuition and biases drive most of our decisions.

In this book, Nobel Laureate Kahaneman and his collaborator Amos Tversky highlight through simple but elegant experiments, how unambiguously small random nudges nonconsciously shape most of our decisions.

This book has helped many people think afresh about how to best be aware and align their nonconscious intuition and their rational conscious thinking, to make better decisions.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Democratize the brain.

By providing the most engaging, impactful, intuitive and concrete online brain platform to align your nonconscious and conscious brain powers.

Can you please give us your favorite Life Lesson Quote? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

The only good is knowledge.

The only evil is ignorance.

Socrates (469399 BC).

This was one of the earliest seeds of the current brain revolution. It regularly inspires me on my 30 year journey, since I set up the worlds largest standardized brain function, performance database and applications Total Brain.com.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them

Jim Kwik.

Because his mission is to create a smarter and more caring world by helping you rebuild our brains.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

YouTube Channel:https://www.dreviangordonsbrain.com/

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/evian-gordon-a94bbab1/Facebook,https://www.facebook.com/dr.evian.gordonTwitter,https://twitter.com/dreviangordon?lang=en

The rest is here:
Focus on what you will do. With Beau Henderson & Dr. Evian Gordon - Thrive Global

Neuroscience

Researchers’ Analysis Confirms Effects of Cognitive Training for Older Adults – University of Texas at Dallas

April 17, 2020 medical

As more people live to advanced ages due to health care innovations, more also are dealing with the decline in mental acuity that can come late in life. Cognitive training is often touted as a way of treating or even preempting these issues, but there is significant disagreement on the effectiveness of various methods.

Researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas Center for Vital Longevity (CVL) conducted a large-scale analysis of the benefits of multiple training types for individuals who are aging healthily, as well as those with mild cognitive impairment.

Dr. Chandramallika Basak

Dr. Chandramallika Basak, associate professor of cognition and neuroscience in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, is the corresponding and first author of the study published in February in Psychology and Aging. She said her meta-analysis which assessed the results of 215 previous studies published in 167 journal articles will have a large-scale impact on a controversial field.

Effective cognitive training during late adulthood can help maintain, or even enhance, our cognitive abilities, said Basak, the director of the Lifespan Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratoryat CVL. Credit this cognitive plasticity to our brains ability to recover some core abilities that decline with age with practice, such as processing speed, executive functions and working memory.

Cognitive training in older adults refers broadly to activities designed to maintain or improve cognitive abilities that typically decline in late adulthood, such as short-term memory, attention, problem-solving and executive functions. Although techniques and tests vary widely, they usually involve a professional who administers a standardized test, supervises a training module designed to improve the skill or skills used on that test, and then retests to see if a subject has improved.

Training modules are designed for the subject to relearn an ability that may have declined in a way that is both engaging and scientific, said CVL research associate Shuo (Eva) Qin PhD19, another author of the study.

Basak said that the results from this meta-analysis supported the benefits of cognitive training, albeit limited to specific training modules: Those who were given any type of training outperformed their related control groups on post-training cognitive tests. The results support the idea that even an aging, slightly impaired brain can still make positive changes.

Though healthy participants showed more robust cognitive improvements than those with mild cognitive impairments, there was widespread improvement across all groups, Basak said. One key finding was that cognitive training was found to significantly improve everyday functioning in older adults, which in turn can provide additional years of independence and potentially delay the onset of dementia.

Effective cognitive training during late adulthood can help maintain, or even enhance, our cognitive abilities. Credit this cognitive plasticity to our brains ability to recover some core abilities that decline with age with practice, such as processing speed, executive functions and working memory.

Dr. Chandramallika Basak, associate professor of cognition and neuroscience in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Her analysis compared the effectiveness of two prominent cognitive-training modules and gathered significant data on which techniques accomplish the most in older patients with mild cognitive impairment as well as those aging healthily. It also differentiated between what are called near-transfer and far-transfer effects.

Though the primary goal was to compare single-component training to multicomponent training, this is also an important distinction, Basak said. We want to understand not only the effects cognitive training has on the specific abilities participants are trained on these are near-transfer effects but also on unrelated abilities that are not specifically trained during that specific training, which is far transfer.

Basak explained that one way to describe far-transfer effects is learning a set of cognitive skills that results in improved performance on tasks under different contexts and that are very different from the learned task. For example, someone who is learning to play a computer game may end up improving their driving or someone practicing aerobic exercise may have an improved memory.

The Lifespan Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory, directed by Dr. Chandramallika Basak, uses both behavioral and brain-imaging techniques to understand the mechanisms of memory and complex skill and how these abilities may change and be enhanced across the lifespan. The research is particularly focused on the interaction between working memory and attentional control, sources of individual differences of enhanced learning and memory, and how these skills are affected by age and memory disorders.

While single-component training studies focus on a single function, such as short-term memory, multicomponent studies either target multiple abilities sequentially or nonspecifically and simultaneously.

The most important finding was that all modules of multicomponent training yielded significant near and far transfer suggesting that, in older adults, multicomponent training is a more effective general tactic than most single-component training modules. However, single-component training that targeted executive functions and working memory showed a very robust near and far transfer.

Specifically, multicomponent training that combines core cognitive abilities, such as executive functions and processing speed, may be most promising, Basak said.

As older adults become physically frail, cognitive training can be conducted without demands on physical abilities from the comfort of ones home, she said.

Whether youre trying to fend off the effects of cognitive aging from the beginning or are hoping to halt an existing deficit, cognitive training helps.

Margaret OConnell MS16, PhD18, now a clinical research associate at Medpace, was also an author of the study.

The research was supported by grant R56AG060052 from the National Institute on Aging, a component of the National Institutes of Health.

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Researchers' Analysis Confirms Effects of Cognitive Training for Older Adults - University of Texas at Dallas

Neuroscience

U of A Sophomore Named Goldwater and Amgen Scholar – University of Arkansas Newswire

April 17, 2020 medical

Photo Submitted

Sabrina Jones is a recipient of the prestigious Goldwater Scholar and Amgen Scholar awards.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. Sabrina Jones, a sophomore at the University of Arkansas, has been named a 2020 Barry Goldwater Scholar. The Goldwater Scholarship is the nations most prestigious award for undergraduate students who plan doctoral studies and research careers in the fields of science, mathematics, or engineering.

Jones, an honors student from Russellville, will receive a scholarship of up to $7,500 from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship Foundation.

In addition to being selected as a Goldwater Scholar, she has also recently been selected as a 2020 Amgen Scholar. She will receive a $6,420 stipend for a 10-week summer research experience at Caltech.

The Goldwater Scholarship is the most competitive undergraduate STEM award in the country, said U of A Chancellor Joe Steinmetz.The program selects students who are asking and answering important questions in their fields. Sabrina Jones is joining an august group of Goldwater Scholars from across the country and from our campus, who have gone on to distinguished research careers. The Amgen Scholars Program is also a research-centered award, and very, very competitive. Both of these awards recognize Sabrinas stellar academic record and her extensive and productive research, and both will help launch her post-graduate career. I look forward to soon be reading about her discoveries in neuroscience.

Jones is an honors physics, psychology, and Spanish major in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. She is a Bodenhamer Fellow, Arkansas Governors Distinguished Scholar, National Hispanic Scholar, and National Merit Finalist. She plans to pursue a career conducting clinical neuroscience research at a medical research institution.

I am truly honored to be recognized as a 2020 Goldwater Scholar, Jones said. Being a part of this class of researchers, innovators, and future scientists is an amazing recognition. I am forever grateful to the individuals who introduced me to the field of research, including my mentor at UAMS, Dr. Ryoichi Fujiwara, and my mentor at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Woodrow Shew. Though research is at times frustrating and tedious work, this pursuit has been, and will continue to be, one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship was established by Congress in 1986 to honor the United States senator. Nearly 400 students from across the United States were named Goldwater Scholars this year. The purpose of the program is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields. Universities and colleges may nominate up to four students per year.

On campus, Jones performs research with Dr. Woodrow Shew, associate professor of physics, on neuronal networks. She has also conducted research with Dr. Ryoichi Fujiwara, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and this summer she will research with Dr. Carlos Lois, research professor of biology at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Sabrinas current research project is aimed at understanding how the activity of very large populations of neurons in cerebral cortex is related to complex body movements, said Dr. Shew. She is working with data recorded from more than 10,000 neurons simultaneously in mouse cortex. This data set is rather mind-blowing five years ago it would have been impossible to obtain data like this. Her research questions require state-of-the-art data analytical skills and computer programming.

Though she aims to become a neuroscientist, she is obtaining a degree in physics, which develops skills ideally suited to handling the heavy data analysis that is absolutely required in neuroscience. I expect her work to result in an impactful publication within a year. She is only a sophomore and already an accomplished researcher. I can only imagine her caliber once she reaches the Ph.D. stage.

A big congratulations go out to Sabrina, her mentors, the Department of Physics, our college faculty, and those at UAMS, said Todd Shields, dean of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.Mentoring is such an essential part of student research and is at the core of the work we do in Fulbright College. There is no question that because of her talent, dedication and research experience with professors Shew and Fujiwara, Sabrina will thrive in a competitive M.D. or Ph.D. program. We cant wait to see the positive impact she makes in her field of neuroscience, and how she will mentor and inspire other new scientists as well.

Jones has published in the journals Pharmacology Research & Perspectives and Xenobiotica, as well as presented her work at conferences in Pittsburgh and Montreal. She was awarded a 2020 Honors College Research Grant, and she is also an active member of the Society of Physics Students, Conversation Club, and Honors College Ambassadors. In summer 2019, she studied Spanish at Universidad Nebrija in Spain.

Jones is the 57th University of Arkansas student to be named a Goldwater Scholar, with U of A students receiving awards for 24 of the last 25 years. Previous Goldwater Scholars have gone on to become Rhodes, Marshall, Gates Cambridge, Fulbright, and Udall Scholars, as well as National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows. They have pursued doctoral work at prestigious programs including the University of Virginia, University of Michigan, University of California-Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, Columbia University, Cornell University, MIT, St. Andrews (Scotland), Oxford University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and Washington University.

University of Arkansas students interested in applying for competitive scholarships like the Goldwater Scholarship should contact the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards at awards@uark.edu.

Neuroscience

Is There a Cure for Cabin Fever? – University of Virginia

April 17, 2020 medical

Find the latest information on the Universitys response to the coronavirus here.

Feeling trapped? Are the walls closing in? Do you have a strange urge to do something a little crazy? Maybe its not that bad, but after more than a month of distancing yourself from co-workers, classmates, friends and even members of your family, you might be showing signs of a troubling illness: cabin fever.

Of course, cabin fever isnt a genuine psychological disorder. Its a folk term for that combination of anxiety and exhaustion you experience when you begin to feel trapped in your own home. But while the disease may not be real, the symptoms certainly are, and treating those symptoms early can make all the difference.

According to James Coan, an associate professor of clinical psychology and director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia, our natural habitat is not a cabin, a living room or a home office; its other people.

Were designed as a species to be around other people, he said. Were extremely adaptable. Thats why were all over the world. We can live anyplace, and we live on almost any kind of food. Weve even walked on the moon. But the reason that were so adaptable is that weve picked up our ecological niche, our habitat, and taken it with us. Weve turned it into each other.

Remove that access to others that we expect on a daily basis, and we start to go crazy, Coan said. And the nature of that crazy is really that our bodies and our brains are so thoroughly designed to work with other people that they dont work very well on their own.

Coan likened it to driving around an unfamiliar city while looking for an address. When you have someone in the passenger seat, he said, they can look for the address and navigate while you just operate the car. Its so much easier. Because if Im not looking for the address, I can devote all of my attention to driving. When youre deprived of that person in the passenger seat, your bandwidth is cut. When your bandwidth is cut, you start getting exhausted. And when you start getting exhausted, your world gets more chaotic, more obtrusive, and more miserable.

For some, the experience leads to nothing more than irritability, but for others who struggle with the effects of social isolation, it can trigger feelings of loneliness and depression, and thats when cabin fever can become something much more serious.

Adrienne Wood, an assistant professor of psychology at UVA who studies the impact of emotions on our behavior, said that social isolation, and in particular the experience of being lonely, is an extremely unhealthy state.

Chronic loneliness is on par with smoking a pack of cigarettes a day in terms of its health repercussions. Not just for your mental health, but also for your physical health, Wood said. Just the subjective feeling of being lonely increases inflammation in the body, which is the bodys sickness state. Your body will physically be treating itself as if it were sick, which, in the long term, is bad for it.

Wood suggested that if youre beginning to feel the effects of exhaustion or depression, there are things you can do, like spending time in the sunlight every day, finding creative activities that keep you from becoming bored and establishing a routine that can bring some predictability to your day. The most important thing you can do is to find ways to minimize your feeling of isolation.

Phone calls, videoconferencing, playing online games and actively building your network through social media are all good ideas, and Wood added that laughter remains one of the best things you can share with the people in your life.

Laughter is associated with positive emotions, Wood said, but it also has therapeutic effects on the body and is linked to the release of endorphins, which you get after exercise. Laughter increases your pain threshold, but it also helps build resiliency.

This is a very draining time that were all experiencing. Its very emotionally draining; its physically draining and its cognitively draining. Positive emotions and, in particular, humor are ways of rebuilding the resources we have available to us.

But, Wood cautioned, if youre starting to feel anything akin to depression, dont wait to take steps to connect with friends, family and colleagues and laugh a little.

Once things get bad, she said, its going to become harder for you to reach out to others. Then it becomes really hard to fix the problem.

Continued here:
Is There a Cure for Cabin Fever? - University of Virginia

Neuroscience

Stem Cells and Silk Make a New Way to Study the Brain – Tufts Now

April 17, 2020 medical

More than five million Americans, mostly sixty-five or older, suffer from Alzheimers disease (AD), and that number is expected to triple by 2060, as todays twenty-somethings become seniors. No treatments exist for this devastating disease, and its root causes remain as tangled as the curious brain deformities that German physician Alois Alzheimer first described in 1906.

Now a team of Tufts researchers from the School of Medicine and the School of Engineering has received a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study the role of different cell types and mutations in AD. They will use a unique bioengineered mini brain that realistically simulates the human brain environment for years.

The work, which builds on years of collaboration among the researchers, will overcome two traditional stumbling blocks to such studies: the limited relevance of animal models and the inability of cell culture systems to reproduce the physiology of the human brain. While age is the biggest risk factor for AD, genetics also plays a role. Scientists have uncovered twenty gene variants that increase the risk of AD, said Giuseppina Tesco, professor of neuroscience and lead investigator on the research, who has devoted her career to studying the disease.

Recent studies show that most of the genes that carry these variants are expressed in glial cells, particularly astrocytes and microglial cells. Once dismissed as onlookers in the brain, glia are now front and center in Alzheimers research said glia expert Philip Haydon, a principal investigator on the project. Haydon, the Annetta and Gustav Grisard Professor of Neuroscience, likens these cells to the pit crew for the flashy race-car-like neurons, supporting top performance by, for example, preventing buildup of protein plaques.

But unlike neurons, human glial cells behave very differently from those of other mammals. What we can learn from mouse models is very limited. It is very important to study these genes in human cells, said Tesco. And we need to do this over time. It may take months to see the effect of genetic variation.

The Tufts team will use cells derived from patients with AD as well as healthy subjects, drawing on advanced stem cell technology that makes it possible to reverse engineer human primary cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, which can then differentiate into neurons, astrocytes, and microglia.

These glia and other brain cells will grow on a unique three-dimensional doughnut-shaped scaffold made of porous silk and collagenwhat the researchers have dubbed a mini brain. Bioengineer David Kaplan, Stern Family Professor and a principal investigator on the grant, and his team have spent six years perfecting the mini brain for research on AD, traumatic brain injury, and brain cancer.

This model allows us to put cells where we want, determine ratios of different cells to use in the system, and control interactions, so we can study electrophysiology, synaptic activity, and other functions as the tissue ages, said Kaplan. That control over the long term supports exploration of age-related questions about disease progression and contributes to reproducibility, a scientific pillar. Past experiments using these mini brains have mimicked structural and functional features and neural activity for up to two years.

In contrast, a two-dimensional culture systemlike the proverbial petri dishwont replicate the complexities of multiple cell types and physiologies. And organoidssimplified organs in miniature now in vogueare subject to cellular death after a few weeks or months.

To complement the in vitro studies with the scaffolds, scientists in Haydons lab will transplant some of the human cells, both mutated and normal, into mice. As they grow, the human glia cells will replace the mouse cells, giving researchers an opportunity to study human brain function. This is the first step towards translational studies, said Haydon.

The grant complements donations from Tufts alumni, parents, friends, and other private individuals who have experienced the pain of Alzheimers disease in their own lives. Donor dollars really got some of our early, exploratory work up and running, said Haydon. Now we are building on that.

The NIH support is a bright spot at a time when COVID-19 has forced Tufts scientists, like their peers around the world, to halt laboratory research, sometimes losing years of work.

Tesco said that while it is difficult to be away from her lab, safety is more important than anything else. Im from Italy, where we have more than 22,000 deaths, she said. Being healthy and having the possibility to continue to do some work, I feel lucky. Well be in the best position possible when were ready to start because well be able to start something completely new and very exciting.

Kim Thurler can be reached at kimberly.thurler@tufts.edu.

Link:
Stem Cells and Silk Make a New Way to Study the Brain - Tufts Now

Human Behavior

Crushing coronavirus means ‘breaking the habits of a lifetime.’ Behavior scientists have some tips – Science Magazine

April 16, 2020 medical

Researchers have been deeply involved in developing messages aimed at changing people's behavior to curb the coronavirus pandemic, and studying which ones work.

By Warren CornwallApr. 16, 2020 , 10:50 AM

Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

With no vaccine or medication to cope with the novel coronavirus, people around the world have soughtor been ordered to seekprotection by changing the way they act in ways large and small, from their washing hands more frequently to avoiding almost all physical contact. Now, government and industry leaders are turning to behavioral scientists for advice on how to persuade their citizens and workers to abide by such dramatic changes.

To beat the pandemic, we need a more rapid change of behavior than I can think of in recent human history, says Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford University. He recently helped recruit more than 40 top behavioral scientists to summarize their fields research on how to steer people into certain actions and how it might aid the response to the pandemic.

Politicians and executives are on the hunt for such advice. Facebook and Twitter have consulted Willer about ways to improve communicating coronavirus-related information and avoid pitfalls. Jay Van Bavel, a psychologist at New York University who led the review with Willer, shared insights from the work with approximately 700 people at an early April teleconference about pandemic misinformation hosted by the World Health Organization. Governments ranging from the United Kingdom to Sierra Leone have reached out to other behavioral researchers.

Their advice is already proving consequential, though not always successful. The government of the United Kingdom initially avoided closing schools and businesses, citing advice from its vaunted Nudge Unit, which helps policymakers develop subtle ways to incentivize certain behaviors. The unit had reportedly warned that restricting movement too soon risked behavioral fatigue. But the government reversed course in late March after novel coronavirus infections surged.

In their search for practical guidance, behavioral scientists are plumbing previous research into disease outbreaks such as the flu and Ebola, as well as seemingly unrelated subjects including cigarette warning labels and political campaigns. Meanwhile, they are rushing ahead with new studies aimed at improving measures during the current crisis.

Many of their recommendations might seem like common sense and can be distilled to this: Have a unified set of fact-based messages, tailor them to different audiences, and choose your messengers wisely. A common message can help give people confidence to take action, particularly at a moment when fear motivates people, says Shana Gadarian, a political scientist at Syracuse University who has studied how anxieties influence political action in the United States.

Even robust messages can lose power, however, when leaders send contradictory signals, or when public health advice gets refracted through a political lens. In the UnitedStates, President Donald Trump has repeatedly contradicted recommendations from public health officials, notably saying he probably wouldnt wear a face mask on the day that both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and first lady Melania Trump urged people to do just that. Early in the pandemic, figures in conservative news outlets had derided calls for an aggressive response to the virus as a hoax or an attack on the Trump administration. "When you hear [health] experts saying one thing and the head of your [political] party saying another, thats a troubling kind of thing to decide, Gadarian says. In the United States, What we're seeing evidence of is that Republicans are basically going with what the president says.

In a survey of 3000 people in the United States in mid-March, Gadarian found that political leanings were the strongest predictor of whether someone was likely to follow public health recommendations. Democrats were more inclined than Republicans to wash hands, buy hand sanitizer, and distance themselves from others. As COVID-19 has spread to more parts of the country, that partisan divide has shrunk but not vanished, according to a poll in late March by the Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 90% of people across the political spectrum reported engaging in some kind of social distancing. But Democrats were more likely to have stayed home, canceled plans for a group gathering, or fully sheltered-in-place. A survey in early April by Stanford researchers still found a partisan gap.

That ideological split is stronger in the United States than in the United Kingdom, says Gordon Pennycook, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. He and collaborators surveyed approximately 650 people in each country to see what influenced misperceptions about the pandemic, such as the coronavirus being no worse than the flu. The study, published as a preprint this week, found that in the United States, misperceptions were correlated with whether someone got their information from conservative news outlets such as Fox News. Although the United Kingdom has conservative newspapers, theres no comparable television broadcast station, Pennycook says. "Also, [Prime Minister] Boris Johnson is not treating [the pandemic] the same way that Trump is."

Whether people respond to public health messages depends partly on who delivers it. That was underscored in Liberia during the deadly Ebola outbreak of 2014 and 2015, which killed nearly 5000 people in the West African nation. There, efforts by government workers to get people to follow precautions such as social distancing were stymied by suspicions that the disease was a government ploy to win more aid money. But neighborhood volunteers recruited and trained by government officials experienced much more success, says Lily Tsai, a political behavioral scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied the Ebola response there. She concluded that residents found neighbors more credible partly because their connections to the community made them more accountable.

The identity of a trusted messenger depends on the situation. It could be local religious leaders or politicians, sports figures or celebrities, Gadarian says. Governors leading their states pandemic responses have enjoyed a surge in popularity. In a late March Instagram chat, basketball star Stephen Curry of Californias Golden State Warriors discussed the disease and how to avoid it with Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The video has had nearly half a million views on YouTube.

Messages can come in more subtle ways as well. Proponents of nudges emphasize the ways that small visual cues, brief reminders or tiny changes in peoples surroundings can change their actions. In the case of the coronavirus, it can be as simple as painting lines on a walking path to show what a 2-meter separation looks like, says Susan Michie, a health psychologist at University College London and director of its Centre for Behaviour Change.

She is contemplating how to break people of the habit of touching their faces, because the virus infects people through the mucus membranes that line the nose and airways. She wonders whether software on a persons camera-enabled computer or smartphone could alert them of a face touch. Its about breaking the habits of a lifetime and setting up slightly different habits, she says.

It will take more than just messages to change behaviors on such a mammoth scale, says Ann Bostrom, who studies risk perception and communication at the University of Washington, Seattle. Often, compliance hinges on giving people the tools they need to easily follow new rules. The physical context in which you make these decisions is often more important than grand ideological views, Bostrom says. If theres a mask available from the dispenser at the front of the building, youre probably more likely to put it on. Ditto for easy availability of things like hand sanitizer, others say.

Making behavioral changes easy to maintain could become particularly important as lockdowns stretch on and strains build, Michie says. Past research has found compliance during an epidemic can decline over time. The U.K. government, she adds, might need to take measures to avoid backsliding and make a lockdown tolerable, including opening golf courses and private sports fields so that people can get outside without being crammed together. The government could even provide people with tablet computers and videos to help them pass the time at home.

Tsai, whose behavioral research focuses on people in the developing world, says that in poorer nations, persuading people to obey a lockdown could come down to something as simple as ensuring access to drinking water. Shes launching an ambitious project in the West African country of Sierra Leone that uses detailed behavioral data to figure out what tools can best promote social distancing and limited movement there. Shes working with the countrys public health ministry, for example, to combine cellphone movement data with surveys of almost 3000 people across this country of 6.6 million. The goal is to gauge what messages are most effective, and what incentives would encourage residents to stay homewhether its information, money, water, food, or a combination.

Eventually, Tsai plans to create a dynamic map, down to the neighborhood level, showing potential hotspots where cooperation could be difficult, and what kinds of actions are likely to help ease acceptance of physical distancing and other measures. She is also hoping to expand the project to some of the continents largest cities, Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, to help prepare them for when the virus gains a foothold there. When the disease arrives in these sprawling cities, she fears, its going to be awful.

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Crushing coronavirus means 'breaking the habits of a lifetime.' Behavior scientists have some tips - Science Magazine

Human Behavior

What About This? By Wayne William Cipriano – Douglas County Herald

April 16, 2020 medical

I was wrong.

In a previous article presented here, I did not take Covid-19 as seriously as I should have. I should have taken into my consideration how resoundingly stipid so many persons have proven themselves to be.

Who would go out as before into an environment that offered a very high transmission rate of a fairly serious respiratory illness? Even before we learned how high the mortality rate was, the mere possibility of catching a very debilitating flu, you would think, would encourage all of us to stay away from places and situations where we could catch it.

In that previous article I argued that hysteria seemed to be ruling our news sources. I now realize that hysteria may well be a rational response in the face of a population that doesnt seem to understand simple precautions delivered in English and must, it seems, be scared into proper defensive behavior.

I suggested that the overall rate of illness and death would not be as damaging to us as a population as our yearly sacrifice of limb and life to automobiles. I suspect that I was wrong about that it looks like the final totals of casualties due to Covid-19 may surpass that over our use of the highways. But whether that proves to be the case or not, Covid-19 has really hurt us.

I listed the same few behaviors we have all heard so often to protect ourselves from Covid-19: wash our hands; avoid anyone coughing or sneezing; stay away from crowds; stay home if we are sick from ANYTHING. The things we seem to find so difficult to do.

In my defense, I thought many of us would follow those suggestions and I continue to believe if we had Covid-19 would not have been so bad here. But I should have recalled that if we over-react (hyper-hysteria) and we do not get sick, perhaps we look silly; if we under-react (by not following protective guidelines as so many, unaccountably, have not) we get sick, maybe dead.

We have hear of persons, cities, states that refused to recognize the danger of carrying on as normal when normal behavior could subject one to a very serious virus.

We have seen youngsters, totally lacking even the most self-protective impulses, almost dare Covid-19 to attack them. We have even seen parents and other responsible adults allow and even finance gatherings of these youngsters that place them in serious jeopardy.

But, that behavior is not simply of the young, is it?

I was wrong to rely on what I had considered rational persons would do in the face of a serious but fairly easily avoided epidemic. Some other guy might have waited to pontificate upon the hysteria that I called out in the media until the actual numbers were in. But if we always reserve our remarks until after the fact, wait until we see how each and every chip has fallen, we are not responsible social commentators, we are simply historians.

I will try to look at the future with a greater appreciation for what I have learned, once again, about human behavior. But I remain adamant that if ALL OF US washed our hands frequently, stayed away from anyone coughing or sneezing, avoided all crowds, and stayed home if we experienced any feelings of illness at all, Covid-19 would not have done to us what it has.

Has it come to pass that the only way to get people to do the right thing in cases such as this is to terrify them by what may happen even if those scary stories are irrational? But if we do we throw in the towel and admit that most of us are fools. Maybe there is a reason, maybe a very good reason to lie and exaggerate for the ultimate good. But what does that do to our (my) expectation to be told the Truth about other stuff?

I do not think that trade off is acceptable, even when it is employed in what some may think is the ultimate good. But thats just me. You have a say in this, too. What seems better to you?

Nevertheless, in that previous article in this space I was presumptively inaccurate.

I was wrong.

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What About This? By Wayne William Cipriano - Douglas County Herald

Human Behavior

Does Age Correspond With Altruism? – The National Interest

April 16, 2020 medical

Looking for something to binge-watch while youre hunkering down at home?

Consider checking out the popular TV show The Good Place. Over four recently concluded seasons, the series follows the adventures and mishaps of four utterly self-centered characters on their quest to become decent and selfless human beings.

The deeper question this philosophy-laced comedy raises is: Can people be truly selfless?

The technical term for this behavior is altruism the willingness to help others, even at a cost to your own well-being. And if the answer to that question is yes, then are those of us who are selfish able to transform ourselves into kind and selfless individuals?

Im a psychologist who uses brain science to understand how people make decisions. With my team at the University of Oregon, I am investigating why many of us behave altruistically, whether human beings become more altruistic with age and even whether its possible to learn how to be altruistic.

Stumped philosophers

Whether people do altruistic deeds because of their altruistic nature or out of ulterior motives is a question that has stumped philosophers, religious thinkers and social scientists for centuries, because selfishness can inspire seemingly altruistic acts.

For example, people may give away money to show off their wealth, to appear trustworthy or simply to feel good about themselves.

Even Pamela Hieronymi, a University of California, Los Angeles philosopher who informally served as a consultant for the hit TV show, has expressed serious skepticism about whether anyone can turn from selfish to selfless.

Brain patterns

How do scholars like me study what goes on in peoples brains?

My team had participants in a series of experiments lie in MRI scanners, looking at a screen that described different scenarios. Sometimes my colleagues and I told them that US$20 was being transferred to their bank accounts. At other times, the same amount would go to a charity, such as a local food pantry. Participants simply observed these $20 transfers, either to themselves or to the charity, without having any say in the matter.

All the while, we scanned what neuroscientists consider the brains reward centers, specifically the nucleus accumbens.

This region, which is a little bigger than a peanut, plays a role in everything from sexual gratification to drug addiction and related neural sites. It becomes active when something happens that makes you happy and that you would like to see repeated in the future.

The experience of money going to the charity boosted activity in those reward areas of the brain for many of our participants. And exactly this observation, we argue, is a manifestation of peoples true altruistic nature: They felt rewarded when someone in need becomes better off, even if they didnt directly do anything to make a difference.

We found that in about half of our study participants, activity in these reward areas was even stronger when the money went to the charity than when it landed in their own bank accounts. We determined that these people could be neurally defined as altruists.

Then, in a separate stage of the experiment, all of these same participants had the choice to either give some of their money away or to keep it for themselves. Here, the neural altruists were about twice as likely as the others to give their money away.

We believe that this finding indicates that purely altruistic motives can drive generous behavior and that brain imaging can detect those motives.

Aging and altruism

In a related study my colleagues and I conducted, there were 80 participants who were between 20 and 64 years old, but otherwise were comparable in terms of their backgrounds. We found that the proportion of altruists that is, those whose reward areas were more active when money went to the charity than to themselves steadily increased with age, going from less than 25% through age 35 to around 75% among individuals 55 and older.

Also, older participants tended to become more willing to give their money to charity or to volunteer in this experiment. And when assessing their personality characteristics through questionnaires, our group found that they exhibited traits such as agreeableness and empathy more strongly than younger participants.

These observations align with growing evidence of more altruistic acts in the elderly. For example, the share of their income that 60-year-olds give to charity is three times as much as for 25-year-olds. This is significant even though they tend to have more money in general, making it easier to part with some of it.

People who are 60 and up are about 50% more likely to volunteer. They are also nearly twice as likely to vote as those under 30.

However, our results are the first to clearly demonstrate that older adults do not just act like they are nicer people, which might easily be driven by selfish motives such as making it more likely that they will be remembered fondly once they are gone. Rather, the fact that their reward areas are so much more responsive to experiencing people in need being helped suggests that they are actually, on average, kinder and genuinely more interested in the welfare of others than everyone else.

The road ahead

These findings raise lots of additional, important questions that we cover in an article we published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, an academic journal. For example, additional research is needed in which people are followed across time to make sure that the age difference in generosity truly reflects personal growth, and not just generational differences. Also, we need to generalize our results to larger samples from more varied backgrounds.

Most importantly, we dont yet know why older adults appear to be more generous than younger folks. My colleagues and I are planning to look into whether realizing that you have fewer years to live makes you more concerned about the greater good.

For the lead characters in The Good Place, the journey toward selflessness is an arduous ordeal. In real life, it may simply be a natural part of growing older.

[You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help. Read The Conversations newsletter.]

Ulrich Mayr, Lewis Professor and Department Head of Psychology, University of Oregon

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters.

Human Behavior

Survivor: Winners at War Recap: In Love and War – Vulture

April 16, 2020 medical

Survivor

Full Circle

Season 40 Episode 10

Editors Rating 3 stars ***

Photo: Robert Voets/CBS Entertainment

Last year,Survivorhost and executive producerJeff Probst sent out a tweetasking if fans would like to see more two-hour-long episodes. The response was almost a resounding yes. With the increasingly complex gameplay, the influx of advantages, and time-sucking twists such as the Edge of Extinction, it was becoming near impossible to craft a coherent narrative in a regular 60-minute episode (42 minutes without commercials). Unfortunately, as mighty and powerful as Jeff is in the world ofSurvivor, he has no jurisdiction over the CBS schedule, as he explained in aWinners At Warpreseason interview. A couple of double episodes per season were as much as CBS was willing to budge.

Its episodes like this, though, that demonstrate the need for a longer weekly runtime. In an effort to cram so much in, including 19 (yes, NINETEEN) family visits, it means that we bounce all over the place with no real sense of direction. This is particularly damaging in a game where the dynamics are continually shifting and new strategies are always forming. The less time we spend at camp, the harder it is to figure out just what exactly is going on. Alliances change at a moments notice for no real rhyme or reason. Relationships we thought were meaningful are thrown aside like an old pair of underwear. And the final vote leaves us in a puddle of perplexion, our brains melting out of our ears. I understand the element of surprise, but there is a difference between a good surprise and a bad surprise. Surprise! Weve bought you a new car!Unexpected and amazing!Surprise! Mom and Dad are getting a divorce!Wait, what? Why is this happening? What does it all mean?!This episode falls firmly in the latter category.

The reason the final 15 minutes is so slapdash is in large part due to the extended family visit that takes up almost 30 minutes of the episode. A staple ofSurvivor, the family visit continues to divide the fanbase. Some people love it, others hate it. Personally, while I think the family visit has provided some classic moments over the years (Jonny Fairplays infamous dead grandma lie being the number one), its not something I find especially entertaining. That doesnt mean Im an emotionless monster, I promise. There are times I get a little choked up, including this episode, which amped up the emotion by bringing the castaways children out to the island. My issue is more with how melodramatically these moments are handled by the show itself, down to Jeffs incessant exposition, as if hes an android trying to process human behavior. It all gets a little bit Lifetime movie special with its sentimental platitudes and histrionic soundtrack.

Dont get me wrong, there are some sweet scenes. Sarah joking that her son is playing with the enemy as all the different kids run around the beach together is funny. Seeing the return of Nadiya, Val, Rachel, and John all of whom have played this game themselves is exciting. And there is some unifying power in seeing families reunite in these uncertain times when many people are separated from their closest loved ones. But boy, does this episode milk the melodrama. Just when you think this feature-length lovefest is drawing to a close, no, the eliminated players on the Edge also get a surprise visit from their families. Again, its cute seeing Parvati cuddle her baby daughter and Rob and Amber showing their four girls where their love story started. But half an hour of hugging and crying begins to grate. Obviously, the excessiveness of this family visit has some contractual bargaining behind it. I imagine the promise of a visit from their kids was what got many of these past winners to agree to return. In fact, in a pregame interview, Tyson admits as much, claiming he put his foot down about having his daughter be part of the family visit. So, I get that, and I dont begrudge these players for making demands, especially after all theyve givenSurvivorover the years. But I didnt need to see so damn much of it.

An Immunity Challenge immediately follows, which leaves us with about ten minutes for the pre-Tribal strategizing. And theres a lot going on! Tony is the only person 100 percent safe, having won his first-ever Individual Immunity necklace, ironically in a challenge that required patience, a quality diametrically opposed to Tonys usual playstyle. Slow and steady is not what Im made of, he laughs. Im more fast and sloppy. Regardless of whatever the reading is on his speedometer, Tony is bulletproof tonight, and, therefore, powerful. Various players approach him with their plans. Jeremy wants to split up Sarah and Sophie, who he perceives as a growing threat to his game. Sarah, meanwhile, is interested in taking out Kim but gets into a comical quarrel with her Cops R Us partner over whether thats the right move or not. You see, Tony would much prefer removing Tyson over Kim. Talking to Tony is like talking to a rock, says a flustered Sarah. And this is going to end badly if we cant work it out.

Things only get wilder from here. Tony checks in with Ben and Nick and presents an alternative plan blindsiding Jeremy. At this point, Im wondering what happened to the big threats alliance between Tony, Jeremy, Ben, and Tyson? Clearly, there is no time to explain, as the Jeremy plan picks up momentum, particularly after Tony tells Sarah that Jeremy threw her name out. Then, Kim, realizing shes on the outs, convinces Jeremy and Tyson that they need to stick together. Now, these three are remnants of the once-feared Poker Alliance, but there is no mention of that in the episode. Theyre just suddenly together because reasons. And Denise and Michele are with them too. Although Michele was previously aligned with Nick, who is now voting with the other alliance? You see what I mean? Some significant pieces are missing from this story. And just when you think youve got it all in place, a sack full of grenades is emptied onto the table in the form of advantages.

Kim tells her alliance about her idol and how shes happy to play it for one of them. Im willing to go to the Edge making a move, she states. Across the beach, Jeremy informs Tyson of his Safety Without Power advantage, which allows him to leave Tribal before the votes are cast. Tyson warns him not to use it because they need his vote for the numbers. Meanwhile, Sophie suggests Sarah use her Vote Steal in order to avoid a potential rock draw. This is a war, Sophie says. And when the smoke clears, well see who is dead in the trenches. Thats a quote worthy of aSurvivorepic, and I wont lie, there is an electrifying energy before and during Tribal Council. The proceedings again rapidly descend into a hodgepodge of side conversations and not-so-covert whispering. You cant ever truly know what is going on, remarks Kim as she takes a brief respite from the chaos to answer Jeffs question. Hey, at least its not just me who is lost.

Tribal Council culminates in a cavalcade of advantages. Jeremy and Sarah face off in a hilarious game of chicken as they both go to play their secret powers at the same time. You go first, says Sarah. No, ladies first, Jeremy responds. Its a tense stalemate as both players try to keep their cards hidden, not wanting to tip off the other. Sarah stands her ground, though, forcing Jeremy to make the first move, revealing his Safety Without Power advantage and saying peace out to tonights Tribal. He left his squad, comments Wendell from the jury bench. Its hard to knock Jeremys decision, though, as he was clearly the intended target judging by the disorder that follows. Sophie firmly, and smartly, puts a stop to the scrambling by loudly suggesting the five in her alliance simply huddle together and decide who theyre voting for. This leaves the minority of Kim, Denise, Michele, and Tyson to work out where the vote is going to land so that Kim can correctly play her idol. In a brilliant bit of misdirection, Sarah uses her Steal A Vote on Denise, not only bagging herself an extra vote but making it appear that Denise is the target, causing Kim to misplay her idol. The real mark is Tyson, who is sent back to the Edge, hopefully where his jar of peanut butter is waiting for him.

Exciting? Sure. But satisfying? Thats debatable. The vote count wound up being five for Tyson, two for Denise, and two for Sophie, which, when you think about it for a second, doesnt make any sense. Why were there only two Sophie votes when Kim, Michele, and Tyson were supposedly voting together? Did one of them flip? They must have, but the episode didnt bother to show us the who or the why. Logic would dictate the flipper was Michele, but that requires us as viewers to fill in the gaps, which shouldnt be how this works. You dont get to the end of a book only to be told to write the final chapter yourself although, I wouldnt have minded that option forThe Girl on the Train. Maybe if we hadnt spent half the runtime watchingSurvivor Family Robinson,we could have had a more comprehensible and, ultimately, a more rewarding story. Either that or CBS givesSurvivorwhat it deserves, longer weekly episodes!

Its fitting that Tyson leaves in the episode he gets to see his wife and daughter, given his story has focused on how fatherhood has changed him.

Jeff randomly thanking Fiji Airways for flying all the family members out is a little jarring. But I get it, that must have been a noisy plane journey!

As tired as I was with the family stuff by the end, the post-credits sequence of the Edge inhabitants group hugging Jeff to thank him for bringing their loved ones out was sweet.

Im glad we didnt have to compete for our children. Dont speak too soon Ben, thats the next twist!

Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!

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Survivor: Winners at War Recap: In Love and War - Vulture

Human Behavior

Pandemic has a Silver Lining – Newport This Week

April 16, 2020 medical

By ohtadmin | on April 16, 2020

To the Editor:

While millions have been horribly affected by COVID-19, there is a silver lining to this pandemic. With the resulting global shutdown, the environments health is actually improving, and with that comes undeniable proof that humans are largely to blame for longstanding environmental degradation. In Indias Punjab region, the Himalayan Mountains are viewable with the naked eye for the first time in 30 years. In Venice, fish and dolphins are seen swimming in the canals, whose waters are now clear for the first time in decades. For now, Los Angeles is free of its perpetual smog blanket, and the Northeast corridors air is also clearer and cleaner.

Globally, 8.8 million people die prematurely due to air pollution. That happens mainly in areas near major highways and/or coal-burning facilities. Researchers are studying the probability that the higher number of COVID-19 deaths reported in industrial northern Italy stem from the added hazards of air pollution in that region. This is compared to fewer virus attributed deaths thanks to the less polluted skies in Italys more agricultural southern regions.

Humans arent alone in their suffering. All of natures creatures are plagued by the ecological devastation caused by complicit governments, together with corporate entities greedy desire to maximize profits at the ecosystems expense.

We must encourage and actively support the critical work of environmental and educational nonprofits with increasing pace. Individuals and governments must realize our newly emerging cleaner environment is a direct product of mankinds forced curtailment of polluting activities, due to COVID-19s heavy restrictions on transportation and industry. Proof that human behavior is guilty of degrading the worlds air, water, and soil is visible and undeniable now more than ever. That it took a pandemic to begin lifting the veil from skeptics eyes is discouraging and saddening, but truth is often more visible during a real, unexpected challenge.

Elizabeth Lisette PrinceNewport

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Pandemic has a Silver Lining - Newport This Week