Tag: mental-health
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Empire of Normality
“Empire of Normality Neurodiversity and Capitalism” by Robert Chapman (Following is an extract from Purkis, J. (2024, augustus 1). Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman. The Sociological Review Magazine.) Chapman has penned an important contribution to understanding the genealogy of the ideas that sustain these western capitalist constructs of who is mentally worthy to participate in…
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Neurocognitive Dynamics: Nonergodicity and Simpson’s paradox
“Nonergodicity and Simpson’s paradox in neurocognitive dynamics of cognitive control” Nonergodicity and Simpson’s paradox present significant, yet underappreciated challenges in cognitive neuroscience. Leveraging brain imaging and behavioral data from over 4000 individuals and a Bayesian computational model of cognitive dynamics, we investigated brain-behavior relationships underlying cognitive control at both between-subjects and within-subjects levels. Strikingly, brain-behavior…
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Attention unleashed
“Attention unleashed: Creative therapy for thoughtful transformation“ Various factors—motivation, interest, fatigue, and external stimuli—influence creative mental processes and attention control (AC). Creative thinking (CT) relies on AC and involves coordinated neural networks and pathways. The cognitive function of AC requires the capacity to direct attention toward distinct features of the environment or internal thoughts. Such…
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The body does not keep the score
“The body does not keep the score: trauma, predictive coding, and the restoration of metastability” For nearly a decade, the idea that “the body keeps the score” has shaped public and clinical understanding of trauma. It is an enticing metaphor—implying that experience is literally inscribed in flesh, that the body bears the scars of what…
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Your brain on nature
“Your brain on nature: A scoping review of the neuroscience of nature exposure” The relationship between natural environments and human cognition has gathered increasing attention across disciplines, including neuroscience, environmental psychology, and public health. An expanding body of empirical evidence supports the notion that exposure to nature consistently promotes psychological and physiological well-being. However, our…
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Active information sampling in health and disease
“Active information sampling in health and disease” Active information gathering is a fundamental cognitive process that enables organisms to navigate uncertainty and make adaptive decisions. This review has synthesised current knowledge on the behavioural, neural, and computational mechanisms underlying information sampling across health and disease. Several key themes have emerged from this analysis. Firstly, information…
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Delusion as embodied emotion
“Delusion as embodied emotion: a qualitatively driven, multimethod study of first-episode psychosis in the UK” Delusions in psychosis involve complex and dynamic experiential, affective, cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal alterations. Their pattern of emergence during the early stages of illness remains poorly understood and the origin of their thematic content unclear. Phenomenological accounts have emphasised alterations…
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Mapping interactions between adversity and neuroplasticity across development
“Mapping interactions between adversity and neuroplasticity across development” Highlights: The human brain undergoes a protracted course of development that provides prolonged opportunities to be sculpted by experience. Yet, persistent definitional and measurement challenges have complicated efforts to understand how experience interacts with neuroplasticity during human development. Here, we synthesize previously siloed perspectives to propose an…
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Stubborn Goals: the adaptive value
“The adaptive value of stubborn goals” Humans exhibit a striking tendency to persist with chosen goals. This strong attachment to goals can often appear irrational – a perspective captured by terms such as perseverance or sunk-cost biases. In this review, we explore how goal commitment could stem from several adaptive mechanisms, including those that optimise…
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Harmony in the brain
“Harmony in the brain: A narrative review on the shared neural substrates of emotion regulation and creativity” The contribution of creativity in overall well-being through regulating emotions has sparkled research interest in employing artistic interventions recently for the improvement of mental health. Although the behavioural links between emotion regulation and creativity have been established, the neural networks reflecting…
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From Soundwaves to Brainwaves: “Music”
“From Soundwaves to Brainwaves: The Transformative Power of Music” The human brain physically embodies rhythmic sound in a remarkablesymphony that has the power to heal. People resonate to music. They respond positively in ways that suggest that the rhythms of the brain and body, like neurons, breathing, or cardiac rhythms, are engaged when you listen…
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Brain-body physiology
“Brain-body physiology: Local, reflex, and central communication” Behavior is tightly synchronized with bodily physiology. Internal needs from the body drive behavior selection, while optimal behavior performance requires a coordinated physiological response. Internal state is dynamically represented by the nervous system to influence mood and emotion, and body-brain signals also direct responses to external sensory cues,…
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Pathfinding: a neurodynamical account of intuition
Pathfinding: a neurodynamical account of intuition We examine the neurobiology of intuition, a term often inconsistently defined in scientific literature. While researchers generally agree that intuition represents “an experienced-based process resulting in a spontaneous tendency toward a hunch or hypothesis,” we establish a firmer neurobiological foundation by framing intuition evolutionarily as a pathfinding mechanism emerging…
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Plasticity: A network theory
“Plasticity in mental health: A network theory“ Plasticity is the ability to modify brain and behavior, ultimately promoting an amplification of the impact of the context on the individual’s mental health. Thus, plasticity is not beneficial per se but its value depends on contextual factors, such as the quality of the living environment. High plasticity is…
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Top-down influences
“Top-down influences on the perception of emotional stimuli” (also available as PDF) The ability to quickly and accurately perceive external emotional stimuli — events in the environment that evoke changes in feelings, physiology and behaviour — is vital for adaptive social interactions and effective decision making in everyday life. Contemporary theories of emotional perception emphasize the influence of top-down…
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Blink and you see it
“Blink and you see it“ Every few seconds, our visual world disappears behind a thin fold of skin that maintains the tear film on the corneal surface and, for more than a tenth of a second, blocks light from falling onto the retina. “Blink and you miss it” is a common idiom that captures how…
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Self-compassion and compassion: predict well-being
“Self-compassion and compassion for others interact to predict well-being” discusses the findings that the effects of compassion for the self on one’s well-being may be contingent on one’s compassion for others. Compassion is generally defined as the motivation and intention to alleviate the suffering of people. Compassion is associated with a number of positive outcomes,…
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“mundane behaviours resembles a drug”
The problem extends across the globe. Researchers have studied compulsive shopping in many countries, including the United States, Turkey, Poland, Germany, India, Brazil, South Korea and Pakistan — where almost one-third of university students were classified as compulsive buyers in both physical stores and online.Heping He, a marketing researcher at Shenzhen University in China, is…
