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 ...