The Mindful Body argues against mindlessly accepting age-related decline in cognition and health as inevitable

In 1979, Har­vard researcher Ellen Langer invit­ed elder­ly men to spend a week at a retreat designed to remind them of their younger days, sur­round­ed by the art, music, food, games, décor, and more from the late 1950s. After­ward, the men were test­ed and found to have made sig­nif­i­cant gains in hear­ing, mem­o­ry, dex­ter­i­ty, posture,…

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New book provides practical guidance for women (and men) to rebalance our lifestyles and build Cognitive Reserve

On one of our “walk and talks” around the lush trails of Rock Creek Park in DC sur­round­ed by bik­ers, run­ners, cars and the occa­sion­al deer, Wendy and Lisa talked about aging. Wendy’s moth­er, who had her chil­dren in her ear­ly 20s, was still join­ing the family’s gru­el­ing sum­mer hikes with her chil­dren and nine…

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Shape your environment, shape your mind

One of the biggest con­trib­u­tors to our hap­pi­ness is some­thing we bare­ly pay atten­tion to: the voice inside our own heads. As psy­chol­o­gist Ethan Kross describes in his new book Chat­ter, that voice is con­stant­ly ana­lyz­ing the sit­u­a­tions we’re in, reflect­ing on the past and future, and telling us who we are. While some­times friend­ly and…

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Neuroscientist Lisa Genova, author of the beautiful novel Still Alice, releases non-fiction book on Memory

A Neuroscientist’s Poignant Study of How We For­get Most Things in Life (The New York­er): Any study of mem­o­ry is, in the main, a study of its frailty. In “Remem­ber,” an engross­ing sur­vey of the lat­est research, Lisa Gen­o­va explains that a healthy brain quick­ly for­gets most of what pass­es into con­scious aware­ness. The fragments…

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How Wonder and Awe help us transcend self, regulate stress, and improve well-being

What is awe? We have all expe­ri­enced it, even if we didn’t know what to call it. Whether we’re over­look­ing a beau­ti­ful view after a chal­leng­ing hike or watch­ing a new leaf grow on the plant we’ve been nur­tur­ing in lock­down, the feel­ing we get in that moment—amazed, inspired, transported—is what researchers call awe. In his new…

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