Mindframe

Hollywood doesn’t have the best track record portraying mental illness. From the harmless, almost charmingly quirky weirdos of Benny and Joon to the axe-wielding maniacs haunting many a horror flick, mentally ill people are seemingly always either romanticized or villainized, with little middle ground. And hey, what about the ending of A Beautiful Mind, where brilliant economist John Nash manages to logic himself out of his schizophrenia-induced delusions? There’s some wild movie magic, right? While the film certainly takes liberties with the actual John Nash’s life, painting a rosier or more exciting picture of a man without much actual resemblance to Russell Crowe, the script is careful to include a line implying that Nash achieved this stable, rational frame of mind with a little help from psychiatric drugs. And therein lies the actual Hollywood distortion: the real-life Nash spent those final decades of his life totally unmedicated. In 1994, as part of an autobiogra...

  Could you have ADHD? If you’re not, say, a hyperactive schoolboy, it’s possible that nobody has ever suggested this to you. However, between four to five percent of the U.S. adult population has the condition—roughly one in twenty. And that means there’s about an 100% chance that ADHD affects your life in some way, whether it’s present in a best friend, a coworker, a boss, or yes, you. How could it go undetected in your life for so long? Because it’s probably not quite what you think it is. ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It’s a term used to describe brain differences which affect one’s ability to focus, self-regulate, and/or sit still. That “and/or” is key, because ADHD can look extremely different in different people. For instance, not all people with ADHD exhibit that stereotypical hyperactivity. In addition to hyper behaviors (like constant fidgeting) or impulsivity (like interrupting others), ADHD can also include a cluster of s...

  Chronic stress: it’s not just bad for your stress ball budget. Left untreated, persistent stress can create a whole host of problems in the human body and brain. Beyond the muscle aches and migraines, there’s also anxiety, high blood pressure, a weakened immune system, and—of course—insomnia. Given the inherent dangers of not sleeping enough, it’s easy to see how unaddressed tension (even from past sources, as with PTSD) could become a vicious cycle. http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/understanding-chronic-stress.aspx However, researchers at MIT have created a study illustrating a more surprising side effect of the high-stress life: risk-taking. Let’s say you’re sitting in a meeting with your boss and your boss’s boss when you notice a mistake in your boss’s report. You could call it out, impressing your boss’s boss but alienating your direct superior. Or you could play it safe and say nothing, avoiding both the glory and the potential pitfall. Which way do you go? Cont...

What makes the human brain so, well, human? It’s not purely a matter of size—from studying the cranial cavities of Neanderthals, we know that our bygone genetic cousins sported more gray matter than us. But seemingly that wasn’t enough to put them in the same ecological niche, or even just to keep them from extinction. After close examination and a lot of theorizing, researchers at Oxford have suggested that the main brain difference between them and us was more a matter of function, that Neanderthal brains prioritized muscle control and eyesight while ours focused more on developing the social skills necessary to form a tight-knit group. In other words, maybe the human brain’s main asset is the ability to foster teamwork.  It’s a nice thought, even if it is unprovable: other scientists have proposed many other theories for the disappearance of the Neanderthal, including interspecies breeding that simply blended them into humans, or even a matter of simple geography. And ...

What do Babe Ruth, Marie Curie, David Bowie, Barack Obama, and Oprah have in common, other than fame? No, that’s not the start of a riddle; there’s a simple, non-trick answer. They’re all left-handed . Today, left-handed people make up roughly ten percent of the population. Modern science has yet to explain what causes left-handedness in humans, although we have weeded out some of our earlier theories, such as “ being a witch .” Still, the idea that lefties are in some way untrustworthy has persisted across cultures and centuries (famously, the Latin word for “left” comes from the word “sinister”).   As late as the 1960’s, American public schools forced left-handed children to write with their right hand. What gives? Perhaps it’s a classic case of a majority failing to understand a minority, and coming to fear them instead. Interestingly, even today, neuroscience experiments commonly exclude left-handed subjects, in the hopes of eliminating variables. In a 2014 article in ...

In a fair and just world, losing a limb would be the end of feeling any discomfort in that particular region. For one thing, surely at that point, you’ve got enough on your plate. For another, it sounds like something that should go without saying. Once the nerve endings in that arm or leg are no longer connected to your body—and crucially, to your brain—it’s not as though you can clock accurate information about what that appendage is going through. (Nor would you want to.) However, most post-surgery amputation patients report an unpleasant sensation sort of floating where their limb used to be. Sometimes this manifests as a burning pain, while sometimes it itches, or prickles like the departed body part has fallen asleep (an ironic expression, in this case.)  Sometimes, this only lasts a few seconds. Sometimes, it lasts days at a time. The Amputee Coalition explains that these attacks tend to decrease in length and frequency over the first six months, but warns, “many con...

How much of our social behavior is hard-wired and how much is learned? It’s a huge question. The nature vs nurture debate has raged for centuries, and while most people today would argue that our actions are shaped by at least a little of both, it’s difficult to analyze social interactions scientifically. There are a thousand nuances at play in any conversation, impossible to replicate in a lab environment. If you’re looking for clean data, it’s a lot easier to study an animal with simpler social dynamics, like mice. And as it happens, exciting things are happening in the field of neurochemical rodent behavioral analysis .  “We’re starting to get a sense of what happens between the part of the brain that takes in sensory information and the part that produces behavior,” explains David Anderson of the California Institute of Technology. Comparing a mouse’s neuron firing patterns to its real-time actions can provide some important clues to the machinery of what we call “inst...

For most of us, the thought of getting caught sleeping at our desks is stressful enough to send our brains a zippy little wake-up shot of cortisol. For others, napping at work might bring to mind one of those hyper-trendy companies, the kind with yoga and juice bars, and an almost disturbing zeal to replace desk chairs with exercise balls, or treadmills, or kiddie pools filled with salt water and live tropical fish. (Give it time; it’ll happen.) And indeed, firms like Google, Ben & Jerry’s, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Zappos have all invested in creating a space specifically for employees to close their eyes and take a mid-day snooze. In fact, according to a 2015 article on Inc.com , roughly 6% of employers now offer an onsite nap room of some sort. As with many trends in the U.S., we didn’t invent the nap break so much as we borrowed it from other cultures. In Spain, businesses famously close from 2 to 5 to accommodate a daily “siesta” for workers— although ironically, our ...

Let’s say you’re a sleep pro. You’ve learned the key role of REM cycles in encoding new memories, and the troubling statistics linking tired driving with automobile accidents. You’ve taken steps to log your 7 to 9 hours every night, and are enjoying the benefits of a healthier, more energetic you. But there is still a way that sleep-deprivation could be shaping—and harming—your day-to-day life. You may be sleeping enough. But what about your boss? What about your boss’s boss? After all, if it’s unwise to operate heavy machinery on a sleep debt, it’s surely a bad idea to operate an entire business, with millions of dollars—not to mention the careers of real-life human beings on the line. However, it seems to be all too common. In a recent survey of more than 180 business leaders, 43% reported getting insufficient sleep at least four nights a week . In other words, for four out of ten respondents at the top of the corporate ladder, those unrested nights are more common tha...

Let’s say you’re reading up on landmark Supreme Court decisions of the past decade. (Hey, everybody needs hobbies.) You’re skimming an article from 2013 about the abolition of DOMA, when you encounter a soundbite from the late Justice Scalia, dismissing his opponent’s arguments as “legalistic argle-bargle.” Hold on a minute. You blink at the page. “Argle-bargle”? Is that a typo? If so, what would it possibly be a typo for? You backtrack and discover, nope, that quote appears in multiple sources. Just what’s going on here? Had Justice Scalia taken leave of his senses? Your answer might depend on your political beliefs, but at least as far as this particular phrase goes, the man was not talking nonsense. As The Atlantic explained to its confused readers at the time , Antonin was simply using an old-fashioned Scottish word for “nonsense,” basically an across-the-pond equivalent to “mumbo-jumbo.” You absent-mindedly add a new word to your vocabulary, and continue on with your wor...

Imagine that, on the second morning of a business trip, you go to unzip your suitcase, only to realize you forgot to pack any pants. With just a few hours before a big presentation, you duck into the closest mall, for a shopping trip with a firm deadline. You step into a promising store, and with the help of a sales clerk, you quickly narrow the pool of potential pants to just two options. Pair A is stylish and flattering, but they’re pushing your emergency pants replacement budget at $70. Pair B won’t turn any heads, but they fit fine, and they’re on sale for $20. ‘Is it worth it to splurge on a pair of pants I’ll only need to wear once?’ you ask yourself, frowning in the dressing room mirror. ‘The cheaper ones will get the job done, and it’s not like I don’t have nice pants at home.’ Just then, the clerk knocks on the door. “Hey,” she says, “As long as you’re trying on slacks, we just got a new shipment in, and I think we’ve got your size.” She passes you a new pair of p...