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Are you the same “you” that you were twenty years ago? Thirty? Forty? What about fifty years ago? While science still struggles to quantify, measure, and categorize personality, some have a different question: how stable is personality in the first place? Do the high school version of yourself and the retiree version of yourself still have some common immutable core? It depends how you look at it , says a paper by lead author Rodica Damian of University of Houston and her co-authors Marion Spengler of the University of Tuebingen in Germany, Brent W. Roberts of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and UH grad student Andreea Sutu. The paper in question goes by the catchy title “Sixteen going on sixty-six: A longitudinal study of personality stability and change across 50 years.” Damian and her colleagues compared the results for 1,795 U.S. adults who had taken a personality test as teenagers and then again, five decades years later. The team found that yes, there is a
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Medicinal Music: Stroke Recovery

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Last week, we talked about a study suggesting that listening to a Bach sonata boosts the effectiveness of a painkiller. Today, it’s more good news for music fans: we’ll be looking at how the simple activity of listening to songs helps those recovering from a stroke. The connection between the nebulously defined “music therapy” and stroke recovery is nothing new. In 2008, Finnish music therapist Anita Forsblom teamed up with Teppo Särkämö of the University of Helsinki for an experiment involving 60 stroke patients.  One third were asked to listen to music every day, another third was assigned daily audio book consumption, and the final third served as the control group. Both the music group and the audio book group got to choose what they’d listen to, and all three groups otherwise received standard stroke rehabilitation care. To measure their relative progress, the subjects were tasked with filling out a wide range of cognitive tests and a mood assessment at one week
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The Best Painkiller Isn't What You Think It Is

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When we say that listening to the right song makes us feel better, usually we mean it in terms of emotions. However, a new study from the University of Utah Health suggests that combining certain painkillers with certain music boosts the pain-fighting effect of the medication a measurable amount. This recent bit of research was conducted specifically on models recreating two types of pain: inflammatory and post-surgical. (Nerve pain, or neuropathic pain, was not addressed.) Low doses of four medications were explored: ibuprofen, cannabidiol, levetiracetam, and NAX 5055. As for music, the researchers went with one artist only, while the control groups were given one of the four drugs and subjected to white noise. What music would you choose for optimal painkilling effect? The experimenters went with Mozart. (Interestingly, the phrase “Mozart therapy” already exists, referring to the beneficial effect ol’ Amadeus can have on patients with epilepsy. For instance, a 2018 st
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The Happiness Hack

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  Happiness: it’s something we all want, and in one way or another, most of us spend our lives attempting to pursue it. Multiple industries are devoted to our quest for increased joy. Now, a team of researchers at Iowa State University have carefully studied several mental strategies designed to make us happier. Their goal is to give us the low-down on the best way to lift a bad mood. The contenders? Loving-kindness, interconnectedness, and downward social comparison. Loving-kindness involves sincerely wishing for other people to be happy. Interconnectedness means meditating on the ties that we all share—for example, universal hopes and dreams. Downward social comparison occurs when you focus on how you are better off than others around you. To test the effectiveness of these various thought patterns, the team—led by Professor Douglas Gentile, Senior Lecturer Dawn Sweet, and grad student Lanmiao He—had college students walk around the building for 12 minutes. Som
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The Anti-Alzheimer's Diet, Part 2

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  While there is no one fool-proof diet guaranteed to guard against age-related cognitive decline, a series of recent studies have found a possible link between consuming certain foods and remaining sharper for longer.   Nuts We’ve known for a while that nuts are beneficial for the brain. Yes, they’re high in fat, but the brain actually needs some fat to run properly—as long as it’s the right kind. Walnuts, for instance, are a good source of those all-important omega-3 fatty acids you’ve heard so much about, the ones that help repair the cell membranes around neurons. Even if walnuts are not your favorite, though, it’s still worth grabbing a fistful of those crunchy legumes. Nuts also provide Vitamin E , which protects cells—including neurons—from free radical damage. They’re also linked with heart health, and better circulation means a better supply of blood for the brain. What’s the result of these benefits? In a 2014 study of 16,010 women
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The Anti-Alzheimer's Diet

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"It's the healthiest thing I can think of to drink," says Dr. Christopher Ochner, nutrition research scientist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. What trendy advance in food technology is Ochner talking about? Plain green tea, which has been regularly consumed in China for over a thousand years. Google “green tea health benefits” and you’ll find a lengthy list of dubious New Age-y claims, suggesting that regular consumption might help with everything from cancer to belly fat. However, research demonstrates that green tea improves blood flow and lowers cholesterol, in the process lowering blood pressure and decreasing risk of congestive heart failure. It does also seem to stabilize blood sugar for people with diabetes. Oh, and there’s the brain benefits. Multiple recent studies have suggested that consuming a compound found in green tea—EGCG, or epigallocatechin-3-gallate—reduces the formation of amyloid beta proteins, which occurs w
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New Robotics Solve an Old Riddle

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It turns out your teachers were being a little hasty when they said there are only five senses. For instance, there’s proprioception, which is essentially the brain’s ability to take stock of where your limbs are in relation to the rest of your body, without seeing or touching anything. Even floating in a pool with your eyes shut, you don’t have to check to know where your arms and legs are. This, of course, gets a bit complicated when you lose an arm or leg. In 80% of patients, the result, at least for a little while, is a condition called phantom limb syndrome: a burning or tingling perceived in the area of the former extremity, which scientists theorize may be the nerve endings attempting to make sense of the sudden disconnect. Previously, we wrote about an experimental phantom limb treatment involving a VR headset . However, now a new solution may be on the horizon , created by EPFL, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and the A. Gemelli University Polycli
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