Mindfully Healing

There will be a test, so I hope you are paying attention. When a person starts to blink more rapidly, it suggests their mind is wandering, research finds. Blinking sets up a tiny barrier against the outside world, allowing the brain to focus on something different. The researchers were inspired by neuroscientific findings that parts of the brain are less active when the mind wanders. Dr Daniel Smilek, the study’s first author, said: “And we thought, OK, if that’s the case, maybe we’d see that the body would start to

Now we know why some men undo more shirt buttons than they should. A hairy chest signals higher intelligence in a man, research finds. Dr Aikarakudy Alias, a psychiatrist, has found that hairy chests are more frequent among men who are highly educated, such as doctors. Dr Alias surveyed male trainee doctors in the US and found that 45% of them were ‘very hairy’. This is in comparison to the 10% of men in the general population who are very hairy. The same was also true when Dr Alias looked

The behavior is linked to more white matter, the brain’s ‘superhighway’. People who take calculated risks are likely to be smarter than average, research finds. People making quick decisions and taking chances have more white matter in their brains. White matter is sometimes called the ‘superhighway’ of the brain: it transmits signals and regulates communication. The researchers were surprised by the result as they expected the exact opposite: that smarter people would spend more time evaluating the situation before making a decision. Dr Dagfinn Moe, study co-author, explained: “We expected