Neuroscience

The next time you’re driving home in a car or sitting down to enjoy a meal, spare some thought for the ways in which the neurochemical soup in your brain mimics your gut: helping you to digest complex patterns of information as you navigate the intricacies of your daily life.

Roshi Joan Halifax tells a story about witnessing a conversation in the early 1970s between Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, and Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist and systems theorist, about the mind. Bateson asked, “Where is the mind?” Salk pointed to his own head. Bateson chuckled, shook his head, and pointed to the space between... See more

According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, extracted episodic details must also be recombined into a coherent event simulation. This recombinatory ability is thought to be central to flexibly imagining the future – to construct as well as disassemble and rework the components of scenarios to create different outcomes to enhance... See more

Research has shown a staggering number of health benefits associated with dispositional optimism, from improvements in cardiovascular health, to how quickly wounds heal, to slower disease progression.