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Showing posts with the label #Yale

Stress may lead to lower cognitive function, study finds.

#Stress #Cardiovascularriskfactors #Yale, #JAMA #AfricanAmerican #Alzheimers #cognitivefunction A new study found that people with elevated stress levels are more likely to experience a decline in cognitive function, affecting their capacity to remember, concentrate and learn new things. Stress is known to take a physical toll on the body, raising the risk of stroke, poor immune response and more. It can also drive people to unhealthy behaviors like smoking and poor physical activity. The study, published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, did find that participants with elevated stress levels were more likely to have uncontrolled cardiovascular risk factors and poor lifestyle factors. But even after adjusting for many of these physical risk factors, the researchers found that people with elevated stress levels were 37% more likely to have poor cognition. People who struggle with memory slips can be stressed because of the challenges that brings. But the new study suggests that the connecti...

Yale neuroscientists debunked the idea that anyone is “normal”

#Yale #Normal #neuroscientists  #Study  #Human  Don’t you wish everyone would just act more normal, like you? I know I do. But normal is a relative state that depends on time, place, and circumstance. There’s no one right way to be a human, and that applies to mental as well as physical states. That’s why neuroscientists are advocating for more recognition of the bizarre normalcy of all complex humans in psychiatry—an argument that can help all of us take a bigger-picture view. A new study published in Trends in Cognitive Science on Feb. 20 debunks the myth of normalcy in people and animals. “ The Myth of Optimality in Clinical Neuroscience ” (paywall), by Avram Holmes and Lauren Patrick of the Yale University psychology department, uses evolution to show that uniformity in our brains is totally abnormal. What’s much more common in life, during its  3.5 billion years of evolving existence on Earth , is range and change, variety in and among creatures and ha...