What’s normal? When it comes to the brain, it’s hard to say, and that’s why we need to study global neurodiversity

In a small vil­lage in India—a place so remote it has no elec­tric­i­ty, no telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem, and no cars or buses—a research work­er pre­pares to place an EEG head­set on a female villager’s head. The woman, who earns $3.75 a day labor­ing in a near­by rice pad­dy and who has nev­er ven­tured out­side her vil­lage, eyes…

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The State of Mindfulness Science: 10 Key Research Findings to Encourage and Guide your Meditation Practice in 2018

___ Dur­ing the past two decades, more and more sci­en­tists have stud­ied mindfulness—a Bud­d­hist-inspired col­lec­tion of prac­tices aimed at help­ing us to cul­ti­vate moment-to-moment aware­ness of our­selves and our envi­ron­ment. Their ear­ly find­ings trig­gered an enor­mous amount of enthu­si­asm for med­i­ta­tion. Some­times, how­ev­er, jour­nal­ists and even sci­en­tists (who should know bet­ter) have over­stat­ed the physical…

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Study: Wisdom requires both higher heart rate variability and adopting a third-person perspective

——- Many cul­tures con­sid­er the human heart to be the seat of wis­dom. Now sci­en­tists are find­ing some evi­dence for this, though the real­i­ty may be more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems. Pre­vi­ous research has sug­gest­ed that high­er heart rate vari­abil­i­ty (HRV)—the vari­abil­i­ty in the time between our heartbeats

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