Category: Mental Health

This is an indicator of brain health and a better functioning memory.

Feeling younger than your age is a sign of brain health, research finds.

Brain scans showed that those who felt younger than their age had increased gray matter in critical brain regions.

They also did better on memory tests and were less likely to report depressive symptoms.

It may be that people are able to intuitively sense their own brain aging.

Professor Jeanyung Chey, who led the study, said:

“Why do some people feel younger or older than their real age?

Some possibilities include depressive states, personality differences or physical health.

However, no-one had investigated brain aging processes as a possible reason for differences in subjective age.”

Many people feel older or younger than their actual age — psychologists call this subjective age.

The researchers asked 68 healthy people aged 59 to 84 years-old about their actual and subjective age.

Brain scans measured the amount of gray matter in various brain regions.

Professor Chey explained the results:

“We found that people who feel younger have the structural characteristics of a younger brain.

Importantly, this difference remains robust even when other possible factors, including personality, subjective health, depressive symptoms, or cognitive functions, are accounted for.”

On the other hand, feeling older could be a sign that it is time to start making changes to improve brain health.

Professor Chey said:

“If somebody feels older than their age, it could be sign for them to evaluate their lifestyle, habits and activities that could contribute to brain aging and take measures to better care for their brain health.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (Kwak et al., 2018).

How schizophrenia and high intelligence are linked.

High IQ could protect against schizophrenia amongst those at genetic risk from developing the condition, a study finds.

The findings are in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom that those with high intelligence are at increased risk of developing schizophrenia.

A large study has found that intelligence actually has a protective effect.

The study’s lead author, Dr Kenneth S. Kendler, said:

“If you’re really smart, your genes for schizophrenia don’t have much of a chance of acting.”

The study was conducted by researchers at Lund University in Sweden and Virginia Commonwealth University.

It included data from 1.2 million Swedish males born between 1951 and 1975 whose IQ and any hospitalisations for schizophrenia were tracked over 24 years.

Dr. Kendler explained the results:

“What really predicted risk for schizophrenia is how much you deviate from the predicted IQ that we get from your relatives.

If you’re quite a bit lower, that carries a high risk for schizophrenia.

Not achieving the IQ that you should have based on your genetic constitution and family background seems to most strongly predispose for schizophrenia.”

It may be that factors which reduce intelligence, such as childhood trauma, can also contribute to the risk of schizophrenia.

There was no evidence that, for the most intelligence people, there was a higher risk of schizophrenia:

“The question is, might we see some upward bump at that high level of intelligence where really brilliant people have increased risk for the disease and we show no such trend.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Kendler et al., 2014).

Improvising is not just good for theatre, it is good for life.

Improvising boosts people’s well-being and improves creative thinking, a study finds.

People asked to improvise in groups for the study used the “Yes, and…” technique of theatre improvising.

This involves accepting what your improvisation partner says and then adding to it.

For example, I say “Can you see that tiger in the distance?”

And you say: “Yes, and it is coming straight for us!”

Agreeing with your partner keeps the improvisation going, while adding something builds up the scene you are creating together.

Twenty minutes of doing improvisations like this caused people to feel more tolerant and comfortable with uncertainty.

Research has found that people who are more tolerant of uncertainty are less likely to experience mental health issues.

Improvising is not just good for theatre; it is good for life — given how much is made up as we go along.

The research involved 205 people and for one study participants either did 20 minutes of improv exercises or they practised scripted theatre.

People who improvised felt higher well-being afterwards.

Professor Colleen Seifert, study co-author, explained:

“Individuals also reported a happier mood compared to a control group, who didn’t get the same satisfaction when performing scripted tasks.”

Improvising also boosted people’s divergent creativity.

Divergent creativity refers to creating lots of potential answers to a problem.

For example, try to think of as many uses as you can for a brick.

Building a house is the obvious one, but you might also list sitting on it, using it to smash open a coconut, or painting a face on it and using it as a puppet (admittedly not a very expressive puppet!).

Professor Seifert said:

“Improvisation is shown in these experiments to produce benefits beyond every day, routine social interactions.”

The study’s authors think that improvisation is a good therapeutic option:

“As a means to enhance psychological health, improvisational theater training offers benefits without the negative stigma and difficulties in access surrounding other therapeutic interventions.

These results support its popular use beyond the theater to improve social and personal interactions in a variety of settings.”

The study was published in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity (Felsman et al., 2020).