Managing other people at work triggers structural changes in the brain, protecting its memory and learning centre well into old age.

UNSW researchers have, for the first time, identified a clear link between managerial experience throughout a person’s working life and the integrity and larger size of an individual’s hippocampus – the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory – at the age of 80.

The findings refine our understanding of how staying mentally active promotes brain health, potentially warding off neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The study was presented this week at the Brain Sciences UNSW symposium Brain Plasticity –The Adaptable Brain.

The Symposium focused on research that is revealing the brain’s ability to repair, rewire and regenerate itself, overturning scientific dogma that the brain is “hard-wired”. [continue reading…]

We know that in keeping the body physically healthy, the mind both conscious and unconscious is a principle actor. Indeed, research has shown that the biological, or physiological, immune system that fights pathogens once they’ve entered the body can be kick-started by the “behavioral immune system,” with which we notice, feel repulsed by, and act to avoid people who might make us sick.

Now a study in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, offers intriguing new evidence of the connection moving in the other direction: from physiological to psychological immune reactions. “When people have been recently sick, and therefore recently activated their physiological immune systems, they are more likely to pay attention to and display avoidance of disfigured faces”—which they read, like a rash or a sneeze, as a sign of contagion, says University of Kentucky psychologist Saul Miller. Miller conducted the study with Jon K. Maner of Florida State University. [continue reading…]

Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax works with people at the last stage of life (in hospice and on death row). She shares what she’s learned about compassion in the face of death and dying, and a deep insight into the nature of empathy.

Source: TED