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How Government Funding Should Be Put Towards Creating Freshwater from Saltwater

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How Government Funding Should Be Put Towards Creating Freshwater from Saltwater

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Bianca Dragoi

Connor Barwick

Sebastian Francu

Vicky Zheng

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tyB4eIS_U7LmDnufG2CqTG_lMCcuYbgP/view?ts=68c84cbf

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/13696998.2023.2285186?needAccess=true

https://hitrustalliance.net/blog/the-ethics-of-ai-in-healthcare

Justin Ezaki, Jayden Hua, Athena Blanco, Kairi Nagasugi

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AI can now predict who will go blind, years before doctors can

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Researchers trained AI on tens of thousands of eye scans, enabling doctors to predict which keratoconus patients need early treatment and which can be safely monitored, cutting down on unnecessary procedures while preventing vision loss.

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Joey Spengler, Andrew Carlson, Kody Revell

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The effects of attempting to remove invasive spotted lanturnflies. 

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The effects of attempting to remove invasive spotted lanturnflies. 

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Avery Casey

Yuvan Ojha

Arlette Reveles

Scarlett Arons

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Effect of chemicals on evolution of fish

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Effect of chemicals on evolution of fish

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Sven, Nikolai, Chris, Balake

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Something about freezing Super Bacteria 

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Something about freezing Super Bacteria 

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How can we freeze stymie superbugs to prevent bacterial evolution?

-Maximiliano Silva, Anna Cole, Lukas Anderson, Cameron Judd

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Scientists may have uncovered a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs: drugs that freeze bacterial evolution in its tracks.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are those microbes that somehow survive even under the onslaught from megadrugs meant to kill them. Every year, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S. catch one of these superstrong bacteria or resistant fungi, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

One of the ways that evolve to become "antibiotic resistant" is by picking up free-floating genetic material from their environments. They then incorporate the scavenged genes into their own . In this way, bacteria can collect genes shed from microbes that are already resistant, and thus, gain resistance themselves. But bacteria aren't able to catch wayward bits of DNA without the right equipment; the "bugs" must first enter a state called "competence" to build the machinery required to scoop genetic material from their surroundings.

Bacteria become competent when placed under stress, such as when they're subjected to antibiotic treatments. that several common classes of antibiotics actually drive the spread of antibiotic resistance by pushing bacteria into a stressed-out state. But now, a new study of the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae has highlighted a potential solution to this paradoxical problem: drugs that prevent bacteria from becoming competent in the first place.

For the study, published Tuesday (March 3) in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, researchers put this strategy to the test in a mouse model and successfully blocked several strains of S. pneumoniae from becoming competent and exchanging genes inside the mice. The bacteria, which typically live in the human nose and throat, can trigger serious infections if they migrate into the bloodstream, sinuses, ears, lungs, or tissues covering the brain or spinal cord, according to the .

Antibiotics stand as the only available treatment for these infections, but in more than 30% of cases, the S. pneumoniae strains prove resistant to one or more antibiotics. If so-called "anti-evolution" drugs prove safe in humans, perhaps the medications could help prevent more strains from acquiring resistance, the researchers suggested.

Stopping the spread

The researchers screened more than 1,300 medications to pinpoint which ones could bring competence to a grinding halt. Results pointed to 46 such drugs, including antipsychotic medications, anti-microbials and an anti-malarial drug. Although diverse, the drugs all prevent competence at low doses via the same mechanism, the researchers found.

"The competence pathway has been studied for decades, and we know all the key components," study authors Jan-Willem Veening, a professor in the Department of Fundamental Microbiology at the Swiss University of Lausanne, and Arnau Domenech, a postdoctoral researcher in Veening's lab, told Live Science in an email.

One key component, known as the proton-motive force (PMF), allows the cell to produce energy, import nutrients, and shuttle cargo in and out of its body. When bacteria go into that competent state, they usually pump out a peptide called CSP, which accumulates outside the cell and triggers competence (the ability to grab antibiotic-resistant gene scraps) once it has built up beyond a certain threshold.

But when subjected to anti-evolution drugs, S. pneumoniae can no longer maintain a normal PMF, and the transporter that usually pumps out CSP malfunctions. "As the competence pathway is tightly regulated, if CSP is not exported, the expression of the key compounds is blocked and competence is inhibited," Domenech and Veening said.

The authors tested the effect of select drugs - an anti-microbial, antipsychotic and anti-malarial - on cultured S. pneumoniae and found that they all blocked competence by disrupting that PMF component. They found the same results in both the live mice and in human cells in lab dishes.

"The beauty of the present work is that we found several compounds ... that can slightly disturb the PMF without affecting the normal growth of the cell," Domenech and Veening added.

"It's disrupting the growth of the bacteria that drives the selection for resistance," said Andrew Read, a professor of disease ecology and biology at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. If drugs can block competence without driving the cells to develop resistance, "then the bugs would stay sensitive" to antibiotic treatment, he said.

Future studies will be needed to determine whether "'anti-evolution' drugs can be realistically used in combination with antibiotics to prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance," the authors noted in their paper. "Our next steps will be to test whether [these drugs] are specific for Streptococcus pneumoniae or if they can also block acquisition of resistance in other human pathogens," Domenech and Veening told Live Science. Read said that the philosophy of derailing evolution to prevent resistance should carry over to other bugs, but the exact drug targets might differ between them.

In developing the drugs for human use, scientists will have to be clever in how they design clinical trials, Read added. "It's a 'protect the therapeutic' drug, rather than a therapeutic itself," meaning the goal of the drugs wouldn't be to treat people, per say, but instead prevent resistance, he said.

"Instead of aiming to kill bugs," as many groups aim to accomplish with new antibiotic medications, "this is trying to stop the input of genetic variation on which selection can act." Read said. "For me, [these are] great first steps - let's go."

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New drugs could stymie superbugs by freezing evolution

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Scientists may have uncovered a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs: drugs that freeze bacterial evolution in its tracks. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are those microbes that somehow survive even under the onslaught from megadrugs meant to kill them. Every year, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S.

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Ryan Henry, Sarah Toppe, Bayla Klaidman, Cailey Dickson

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Group- Keanu Revell, Tristan Anderson, Andrew Atlas, Alexander Ivakhniouk

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Bowen Yu

Katia Baldwin

Audrey Dreier

Bijou Barkhuff

Overview: How do attention and behavior problems in children affect their quality of life as they age?

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What emotions do we release when we listen to music?

-Bayla Klaidman

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I still remember when I first heard the song by Peter Gabriel, "Solsbury Hill." Something about that song-the lyrics, the melody, the unusual 7/4 time signature-gave me chills. Even now, years later, it still can make me cry.

Who among us doesn't have a similar story about a song that touched us? Whether attending a concert, listening to the radio, or singing in the shower, there's something about music that can fill us with emotion, from joy to sadness.

Music impacts us in ways that other sounds don't, and for years now, scientists have been wondering why. Now they are finally beginning to find some answers. Using fMRI technology, they're discovering why music can inspire such strong feelings and bind us so tightly to other people.

"Music affects deep emotional centers in the brain, " says Valorie Salimpoor, a neuroscientist at McGill University who studies the brain on music. "A single sound tone is not really pleasurable in itself; but if these sounds are organized over time in some sort of arrangement, it's amazingly powerful."

How music makes the brain happy

How powerful? In one of her studies, she and her colleagues hooked up participants to an fMRI machine and recorded their brain activity as they listened to a favorite piece of music. During peak emotional moments in the songs identified by the listeners, dopamine was released in the nucleus accumbens, a structure deep within the older part of our human brain.

"That's a big deal, because dopamine is released with biological rewards, like eating and sex, for example," says Salimpoor. "It's also released with drugs that are very powerful and addictive, like cocaine or amphetamines."

There's another part of the brain that seeps dopamine, specifically just before those peak emotional moments in a song: the caudate nucleus, which is involved in the anticipation of pleasure. Presumably, the anticipatory pleasure comes from familiarity with the song-you have a memory of the song you enjoyed in the past embedded in your brain, and you anticipate the high points that are coming. This pairing of anticipation and pleasure is a potent combination, one that suggests we are biologically-driven to listen to music we like.

But what happens in our brains when we like something we haven't heard before? To find out, Salimpoor again hooked up people to fMRI machines. But this time she had participants listen to unfamiliar songs, and she gave them some money, instructing them to spend it on any music they liked.

When analyzing the brain scans of the participants, she found that when they enjoyed a new song enough to buy it, dopamine was again released in the nucleus accumbens. But, she also found increased interaction between the nucleus accumbens and higher, cortical structures of the brain involved in pattern recognition, musical memory, and emotional processing.

This finding suggested to her that when people listen to unfamiliar music, their brains process the sounds through memory circuits, searching for recognizable patterns to help them make predictions about where the song is heading. If music is too foreign-sounding, it will be hard to anticipate the song's structure, and people won't like it-meaning, no dopamine hit. But, if the music has some recognizable features-maybe a familiar beat or melodic structure-people will more likely be able to anticipate the song's emotional peaks and enjoy it more. The dopamine hit comes from having their predictions confirmed-or violated slightly, in intriguing ways.

"It's kind of like a roller coaster ride," she says, "where you know what's going to happen, but you can still be pleasantly surprised and enjoy it."

Salimpoor believes this combination of anticipation and intense emotional release may explain why people love music so much, yet have such diverse tastes in music-one's taste in music is dependent on the variety of musical sounds and patterns heard and stored in the brain over the course of a lifetime. It's why pop songs are, well, popular-their melodic structures and rhythms are fairly predictable, even when the song is unfamiliar-and why jazz, with its complicated melodies and rhythms, is more an acquired taste. On the other hand, people tend to tire of pop music more readily than they do of jazz, for the same reason-it can become too predictable.

Her findings also explain why people can hear the same song over and over again and still enjoy it. The emotional hit off of a familiar piece of music can be so intense, in fact, that it's easily re-stimulated even years later.

"If I asked you to tell me a memory from high school, you would be able to tell me a memory," says Salimpoor. "But, if you listened to a piece of music from high school, you would actually feel the emotions."

How music synchronizes brains

Ed Large, a music psychologist at the University of Connecticut, agrees that music releases powerful emotions. His studies look at how variations in the dynamics of music-slowing down or speeding up of rhythm, or softer and louder sounds within a piece, for example-resonate in the brain, affecting one's enjoyment and emotional response.

In one study, Large and colleagues had participants listen to one of two variations on a Chopin piece: In version one, the piece was played as it normally is, with dynamic variations, while in version two, the piece was played mechanically, without these variations. When the participants listened to the two versions while hooked up to an fMRI machine, their pleasure centers lit up during dynamic moments in the version one song, but didn't light up in version two. It was as if the song had lost its emotional resonance when it lost its dynamics, even though the "melody" was the same.

© Peter Morenus/UConn Photo

"In fact, when we debriefed the listeners after the experiment was over, they didn't even recognize that we were playing the same piece of music," says Large.

When playing the more dynamic version, Large also observed activity in the listener's mirror neurons -the neurons implicated in our ability to experience internally what we observe externally. The neurons fired more slowly with slower tempos, and faster with faster tempos, suggesting that mirror neurons may play an important role in processing musical dynamics and affecting how we experience music.

"Musical rhythms can directly affect your brain rhythms, and brain rhythms are responsible for how you feel at any given moment," says Large.

That's why when people get together and hear the same music-such as in a concert hall-it tends to make their brains synch up in rhythmic ways, inducing a shared emotional experience, he says. Music works in much the same way language works-using a combination of sound and dynamic variations to impart a certain understanding in the listener.

"If I'm a performer and you're a listener, and what I'm playing really moves you, I've basically synchronized your brain rhythm with mine," says Large. "That's how I communicate with you."

Different notes for different folks

Other research on music supports Large's theories. In one study, neuroscientists introduced different styles of songs to people and monitored brain activity. They found that music impacts many centers of the brain simultaneously; but, somewhat surprisingly, each style of music made its own pattern, with uptempo songs creating one kind of pattern, slower songs creating another, lyrical songs creating another, and so on. Even if people didn't like the songs or didn't have a lot of musical expertise, their brains still looked surprisingly similar to the brains of people who did.

But if our brains all synch up when we hear the same basic dynamic differences in music, why don't we all respond with the same pleasure?

Large, like Salimpoor, says that this difference in preference is due to how our neurons are wired together, which in turn is based on our own, personal history of listening to or performing music. Rhythm is all about predictability, he says, and our predictions about music start forming from a pretty early age onward. He points to the work of Erin Hannon at the University of Nevada who found that babies as young as 8 months old already tune into the rhythms of the music from their own cultural environment.

So while activity in the nucleus accumbens may signal emotional pleasure, it doesn't explain it, says Large. Learning does. That's why musicians-who've usually been exposed to more complicated musical patterns over time-tend to have more varied musical tastes and enjoy more avant-garde musical traditions than non-musicians. Social contexts are also important, he adds, and can affect your emotional responses.

"Liking is so subjective," he says. "Music may not sound any different to you than to someone else, but you learn to associate it with something you like and you'll experience a pleasure response."

Perhaps that explains why I love "Solsbury Hill" so much. Not only does its unusual rhythm intrigue me-as a musician, I still have the urge to count it out from time to time-but it reminds me of where I was when I first heard the song: sitting next to a cute guy I had a crush on in college. No doubt my anticipatory pleasure centers were firing away for a multitude of reasons.

And, luckily, now that the pleasure pathways are now deeply embedded in my brain, the song can keep on giving that sweet emotional release.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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I still remember when I first heard the song by Peter Gabriel, "Solsbury Hill." Something about that song-the lyrics, the melody, the unusual 7/4 time signature-gave me chills. Even now, years later, it still can make me cry. Who among us doesn't have a similar story about a song that touched us?

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The Relationship Between Music, The Body, and The Brain

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The Relationship Between Music, The Body, and The Brain

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-Sarah Toppe

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Watching a movie can be a mesmerizing experience, not just for our eyes - but also for our ears. From The Lord of the Rings series and Schindler's List to Interstellar and animated films like Mulan, movies can give rise to deep, complex emotions, thanks in large part to a key ingredient: music.

Take the Oscar-nominated film Maestro, about the life of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, AB '39. The most powerful scene in Maestro is arguably one in which there is no dialogue - only music.

Ensconced in a Gothic cathedral with an audience of extras, Bernstein, played by Bradley Cooper, directs a chorus of voices - the viewer's entrée into the finale of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2. Two women's voices emerge in a duet, lilting above a tapestry of strings. Trumpets pierce the air. A timpani rumbles as the chorus bursts into rapture. Finally, with church bells ringing, Bernstein brings the symphony to its epic conclusion.

The inspiration for the cathedral scene in Maestro was the original footage, an excerpt of which is shown here, of Leonard Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the film, Bradley Cooper conducts the same orchestra, in the same cathedral, in a single six-minute take.

Patrick Whelan, a Harvard Medical School lecturer in pediatrics, part-time, at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor of the Harvard Extension School course Music and the Mind, observes that sitting in the audience for this type of piece can be a profound, prosocial experience.

"When you go into a church, the music takes over the mental faculties of all the people who are attending," he says. "It puts everyone in the same emotional space."

Our chordal roots

Why does music leave such an emotional impression on us in the first place? What is it about tones and timbres that, when organized in a precise manner, can make us swoon or sway?

Whelan believes the answer lies partly in evolutionary biology. The earliest mammals, most of them likely nocturnal, had to rely on their hearing and sense of smell as defensive mechanisms - they were hyperfocused, hyperattentive. According to Whelan, the modern experience of listening to live music can be viewed as a vestige of that primeval adaptation.

In a performance venue, "there's an incredible complex sound signature all around you," Whelan says. "The brain has to sift through all the ambient noise in a concert hall. It's a much more primitive form of listening compared to a focused conversation."

These acoustic cues - just like the crescendo of an approaching predator - travel through the ear and into the temporal lobe, which parses the soundscape, identifies sounds, and tags their components as familiar or unfamiliar.

The salience of these sounds - whether a person responds to them emotionally and motivationally - influences the autonomic nervous system (ANS), a network that controls certain involuntary processes like breathing and heart rate. The valence of the music, which signals whether the music feels positive, negative, or somewhere in between, influences the ANS, too. These factors are among the reasons why our heart rate goes up when we hear the infamous music from Jaws, or why experimental music or heavy metal might make us feel uncomfortable if we're not used to it.

Patrick Whelan

Music also lights up nearly all of the brain - including the hippocampus and amygdala, which activate emotional responses to music through memory; the limbic system, which governs pleasure, motivation, and reward; and the body's motor system. This is why "it's easy to tap your feet or clap your hands to musical rhythms," says Andrew Budson, MD '93, chief of cognitive and behavioral neurology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System.

The brain's elaborate receptivity to music means that "lots of different things are going on simultaneously," Budson adds, so music "ends up being encoded as a rich experience."

The intensity of musical tension

Brain activity in patients with certain disorders reveals unexpected connections with brain activity in people as they listen to music. Although models of obsessive-compulsive disorder pathophysiology are varied, evidence suggests that the condition is caused by faulty neural circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, and anterior thalamus. This dysfunctional neuronal "loop" has the OFC at its center. Sitting just above the eye sockets, the orbitofrontal cortex, involved in decision-making, is hyperactive both in people with OCD, and, intriguingly, in people as they listen to music.

Why would that be? One key way that music - particularly Western tonal music - generates emotions in the listener is through patterns of tension and resolution. The way such patterns play out, together with the way the music fulfills or violates our expectations, manipulates and reveals how the brain handles complex cognitive processes like prediction and anticipation.

According to Whelan, OCD can be described as a maladaptive stress assessment problem. In addition to lecturing at Mass General, Whelan has directed the multidisciplinary care for patients with PANDAS syndrome as an associate clinical professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology at the University of California Los Angeles. PANDAS may be diagnosed when there is a strong association between Streptococcus infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever, in children and the subsequent onset of OCD, tics, or other behavioral issues.

Individuals who are diagnosed with OCD are "incapable of stratifying the risks of the cues that are coming from their environment," Whelan says. They excessively anticipate bad things happening and engage in obsessive thoughts or behaviors as an attempt to resolve - or prevent - those fears from becoming reality.

In other words, their orbitofrontal cortex runs on overdrive, just as it does when a person - with or without OCD - listens to music. But in the case of a person with OCD, hyperactivity in the OFC has a systemic, negative effect on the rest of the brain. Although the hyperactivity itself may not necessarily be the root cause of OCD symptoms, it's certainly part of the OCD story, and the way music leverages buildup and release is a variation on that theme.

Music and healing

The effect of music on our brains has clinical implications as well. Growing evidence suggests, for example, that listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major can reduce the frequency of seizures in some people with epilepsy.

Other conditions and diseases, ranging from Parkinson's to depression to Alzheimer's, could someday have therapeutic solutions derived from an understanding of music. For instance, by identifying the exact type of music able to provoke a particular cognitive, motor, or emotional response, there could be progress toward healing, improving, or compensating for disrupted brain function in various diseases. An increased understanding of brain mechanisms can facilitate this.

David Silbersweig, the Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at HMS and chair emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is interested in uncovering answers to these questions. A leader in functional neuroimaging research in psychiatry, he investigates how brain regions and networks function when we perceive, think, feel, and act.

We seem to be very much tuned for music."

"It's at the systems level with brain imaging that you can directly correlate mental states and brain states - and measure them." Silbersweig says. "Neuroimaging provides a noninvasive way of correlating brain structural and functional abnormalities with specific aspects of music processing."

For example, Silbersweig has seen people who survive stroke or tumors develop sensory amusia, a condition resulting from a lesion in the brain's right superior temporal gyrus. Because this region is integral to recognizing disparate sounds as part of a cohesive work, patients with sensory amusia lose the ability to perceive or respond to music. While patients with this condition may not be able to revive damaged tissue, exposure to music itself can indirectly make up for the setback.

That's because music's immediacy - it unfolds in real time and captures our attention in a way that cannot be negotiated - makes it an ideal vehicle for creating specific experiences in the brain. With both immediate and long-term exposure to music, a person's neurons will fire in new ways, helping to shape communication pathways over time.

Indeed, music is a potent tool for the future of precision medicine. As the scientific community continues to elucidate the emotional landscape of music, as well as how it differs from listener to listener, new methods for alleviating disease severity and improving overall well-being await both patients and otherwise healthy members of the general public.

As for Silbersweig, he and other colleagues in the field hope to continue weaving together what is known about the neural underpinnings of music into a more unified model, which Silbersweig thinks is an important - and meaningful - step.

"We seem to be very much tuned for music," he says. "It resonates with us in some important way."

Allison Eck is the executive communications manager in the HMS Office of Communications and External Relations. Images: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Sargent painting); Erica Hou (Whelan); BWH/Mainframe Photographics (Silbersweig)

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Scientists tune in to the brain's emotional response to music

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How does a common cold, (rhinoviruses) offer temporary protection against infections or Covid-19?     

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Common Cold May Protect Against Covid-19 According to National Jewish Health Researchers

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Common Cold May Protect Against Covid-19 According to National Jewish Health Researchers

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-Althea Manalang

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A new method to solve the issue of PFAS chemicals in our water.

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A new method to solve the issue of PFAS chemicals in our water.

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New method allows scientists to break down the PFAS chemicals that poison our water. Christopher Pemberton

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(Image credit: oxygen via Getty Images)

Scientists have developed a new method to break down harmful "forever chemicals" by exposing them to a sunlight-activated material.

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances () are chemicals found in many household products, including cookware, cosmetics, dental floss and waterproof clothing. True to their nickname, the chemicals take thousands of years to break down, enabling them to accumulate in the environment and our bodies.

PFAS have been used since the 1940s. Initially, they were valued for their nonstick properties, but now they are linked to a number of health impacts, including increased risks of autoimmune disease, developmental disorders, reduced fertility and in humans. This has led some PFAS to be banned. But with nearly 15,000 types having been produced, roughly 98% of the U.S. population has these chemicals in their blood.

Now, a team of researchers has found a way to break down the chemicals, reducing them to components that include fluoride, which is harmless at low doses. They published their findings July 25 in the journal .

"PFAS contamination continues to pose a global health risk, and this research represents a critical step toward safer communities and cleaner ecosystems," lead researcher Cameron Shearer, a materials scientist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said in a statement.
Related: Scientists find a simple way to destroy 'forever chemicals' - by beheading them
PFAS owe their persistence to their strong chemical bonds; they consist of a head (often charged oxygen molecules) linked to a tail of and atoms. For PFAS to degrade, this bond must be broken - but this process is very difficult to achieve using traditional methods.

"Many water contaminants are degraded by adding a reactive chemical that binds to the carbon," Shearer said. "However, in PFAS molecules, the carbon atoms are protected in such a way that makes this process nearly impossible."

In recent years, researchers have been developing methods to break down PFAS using materials called photocatalysts, which absorb incident light to speed up chemical reactions. The scientists behind the new study turned to a photocatalytic material called cadmium indium sulfide, known for its ability to release reactive oxygen species - or free radicals - after being exposed to visible light.

After mixing the material with one common PFAS called perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), the researchers watched as the photocatalyst absorbed light to generate free radicals that attacked the fluorine atoms in the bond.

Under optimized conditions, this led to the "complete breakdown" of around 99% of the PFOS molecules. The byproducts were components which the scientists say can be isolated and used to make toothpaste and fertilizer additives.

"The materials we have developed through our research could be used as part of PFAS-treatment chains that first capture and concentrate PFAS in water, which can then be degraded through exposure to our light-activated materials," Shearer said. "We plan to build on this study through our ongoing work improving the stability of the materials before they can be applied to large scale systems."

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Scientists transform 'forever chemicals' in water into fluoride with new process

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Exposure to a sunlight-activated catalyst broke down 99% of a forever chemical, leaving behind recyclable fluoride.

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Can a simple change in mindset change the course of an athletic career?

Connor Barwick

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Addressing Mental Health in Athletes | Mass General Brigham

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Mental health is essential to athletes’ health and performance. Learn how to identify signs of mental health struggles and what you can do to enhance athletes’ mental health.

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The Relationship Between Music, The Body and The Brain

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The Relationship Between Music, The Body and The Brain

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Why does music elicit certain responses from the brain and body as a whole?- Sarah Toppe

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The transformative power of music: Insights into neuroplasticity, health, and disease

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Music is a universal language that can elicit profound emotional and cognitive responses. In this literature review, we explore the intricate relationship between music and the brain, from how it is decoded by the nervous system to its therapeutic…

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Should dog breeding be acceptable?

Arlette Reveles

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Are Dog Breeders Bad_ Negative Effects of Dog Breeding _ PETA

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Film and its Correlation to the Human Psyche

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Film and its Correlation to the Human Psyche

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David Lynch and how films and art try to make sense of a world that grows ever so strange?

Bowen Yu

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When filmmaker David Lynch died this month, I mourned not just the loss of a great talent, but also a fresh way to understand people's minds. I'm a social and cultural psychologist, and I study how people go about making sense of their lives. My students and I had discovered that Lynch's work makes for powerful psychological stimuli in the lab to reveal some of the inner workings of the mind.

I'm particularly interested in what happens when we fall into a state that philosopher Albert Camus called " the absurd," when we realize that we are unable to continue making meaning in our lives. Sometimes we reach a point where nothing seems to make sense any more. And it turns out that studying this particular state helps reveal how our minds work. Lynch's films offer a portal to this unsettling state of mind.

In our research we've found that our minds have a sense-making system that helps us to navigate our worlds. Our brains are receiving a constant stream of sensory input, and our sense-making system is always monitoring things to ensure that everything we're experiencing adds up, and that we understand what is going on. It is a homeostatic system and it operates much like a thermostat, getting triggered only when we encounter something that doesn't make sense. In these situations, a network of neural connections in the brain called the salience network sends us a signal, like a red flag waving in front of our face, indicating that something is wrong and we need to figure it out.

We gain insight into our sense-making system when we're left dumbstruck.

Much of the time, things unfold for us about as we expect, and we're able to feel that we can generally predict and control what is happening in our lives. We turn the key in our ignition and the car starts; we say hi to a salesperson and they smile back; we step outside on a September afternoon, and the sun is shining bright. But every now and then we encounter something that sharply violates our expectations, leaving us in a state where we are at a loss for what to do: when we turn the key in our ignition we hear a screeching noise; the salesperson responds to our greeting by telling us to go f*ck ourselves; or we step outside to an unexpected September blizzard.

In these kinds of situations our sense-making system gets tripped, and we are left in somewhat of a daze, trying to figure out what is going on. We need to regain the feeling that we're able to understand what happens to us, and this can require some psychological work. Most of the time, the anomalies we encounter are quite straightforward, and we can piece things together and figure out what is wrong. Our sense-making system then gets reset and we can continue to go about our daily lives.

We can get better insight into how our sense-making system operates if we encounter things that aren't so easy to resolve, where we're left dumbstruck without an obvious way forward. But it's hard to engineer situations in the psychology lab that can drop people into "the absurd"-at least not in a way where we can reliably study how the mind responds.

Over the years, we have tried a range of different tactics to make our participants feel meaningless and left wondering "WTF?," so that we could investigate how the sense-making system operates. We have had our participants be unwitting participants in a magic trick where we swapped the experimenter that they were talking to with another person dressed in the same clothes (remarkably, very few people consciously notice the switch). We have also played blackjack with our participants with cards that have the colors reversed, with red clubs and black diamonds (again, almost no one consciously notices what is wrong). Arguably, though, our most effective way to get people into the absurd was to have them watch a clip from one of Lynch's films.

You'd be surprised how deeply disturbing Rabbits can be to watch.

Lynch started making feature-length films in the 1970s and had a certain genius touch for manipulating our emotions. As his biographer, Chris Rodley, noted, "the indefinable 'mood' or 'feeling' Lynch seeks to convey is linked to a form of intellectual uncertainty-what he calls being 'lost in darkness and confusion.'" From Lynch's vast catalog of surreal and dreamlike offerings-from the disturbing thriller, Blue Velvet, to the mystery horror-drama of Twin Peaks -we selected a clip from the beginning of his 2002 short film .

The film, which at first resembles a sit-com, has characters in rabbit costumes engaged in what seems to be a conversation-except that nothing that they say has any relation to what their partners are saying. Their disjointed exchange is interrupted by random laugh and applause tracks, which are separated by long, portentous pauses with an eerie background soundscape. The film completely lacks a narrative-nothing ever really happens. But you'd be surprised how deeply disturbing it can be to watch.

Our research found that the key emotion underlying our feelings when things don't make sense is the uncanny, in which we feel disoriented and unnerved. According to Sigmund Freud, we feel the uncanny when we experience the juxtaposition of the familiar alongside the unfamiliar. Many people reported feeling this during the height of the lockdowns in the COVID-19 pandemic, when the usually bustling streets of hometowns around the world remained strangely silent. It's the feeling we get when we see a robot that looks almost human-but moves in disturbingly nonhuman ways. We've assessed people's uncanny feelings in several studies with a psychological measure that we created, where people are asked how much they are feeling alienated or creeped out. But the highest level we've ever measured was when our participants watched part of Lynch's Rabbits.

The uncanny and discombobulating effects of this film reveals something important about the ways that people strive to maintain meaning in their lives. We find that when participants experience that WTF sensation, and can't figure out what is going on, they are prompted to find other ways to regain a sense of meaning.

Lynch had a certain genius touch for manipulating our emotions.

Our research found that one reaction that people have to these experiences with the nonsensical is that they become more committed to the other beliefs that they have in their lives. So religious people become more religious, liberals become more liberal, and conservatives become more conservative. By doubling down on their beliefs, people can feel that they understand the world again, thereby dispelling their bothersome uncanny feelings, and resetting their sense-making system. I suspect that part of the reason that the world is so polarized these days, is because there is so much upheaval going on in the world (climate change, COVID-19 pandemic, AI threatening our jobs), which keeps tripping our sense-making system, and leading us to become exaggerated versions of ourselves in response.

Lynch's films are noteworthy for eliciting such strong feelings perhaps because we're often not sure how to make sense of what we're experiencing, as the individual parts of the scene don't always seem to quite fit together. This might be because the characters seem to be focused on irrelevant topics, such as the Man From Another Place talking about flavors of gum coming back in style in Twin Peaks; or because different scenes don't seem to have any logical connection to each other, as in the latter half of Mulholland Drive; or because what we are seeing is just too outrageously nonsensical, such as a roast chicken reanimating into a twitching, oozing mess in Eraserhead. We may feel horrified, revolted, in awe, or just confused, but without being able to resolve what we're seeing, our intense feelings often stay with us long after the credits have stopped rolling.

Lynch was famously reluctant to explain his films. The closest that I ever heard of him offering a perspective on his work was in an interview where he described a time when he was enjoying a clear spring day, transfixed by a beautiful cherry tree in full bloom. But when he looked closer, he saw that the trunk was oozing some black and yellow pitch that was covered with red ants. "I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world," he said, "there are always red ants underneath."

Rest in peace, David Lynch. Thanks for leaving us with your beautiful and masterful films. You made us confront some of our most potent emotions, and your work illuminated some of the darker recesses of our minds.
Lead image: fran_kie / Shutterstock

Steven J. Heine

Steven J. Heine is a social and cultural psychologist at the University of British Columbia. He is the recent author of Start Making Sense: How Existential Psychology Can Help Us Make Meaningful Lives in Absurd Times.

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I use the filmmaker's work in my psychology lab to understand how we make sense of an unsettling world

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Using AI is forcing the planet to give up it's freshwater resources and both uses and emits huge amounts of electricity.

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I find it interesting to look at human views of society and what they think has made us so unique as a species. The article goes into biological views, cultural, and genetics, and what really makes separations between human and non-human. The article manages to both surprise you in how non-unique humans are and how unique we are at the same time.

-Avery Casey

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Written by the educator who created What Makes Us Human?, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in his field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

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How can prison inmates in the United States benefit from rehabilitative incarceration?

-Milahna Clark, Natalie Edge, Rebecca Wang

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The Benefits of Rehabilitative Incarceration

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Since the 1980s, incarceration rates have risen substantially in most countries, tripling in the United States and nearly doubling in many European countries. These trends raise important questions about the effectiveness of prisons and how well ex-convicts reintegrate into society.

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Psychological Science Behind Procrastination 

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Psychological Science Behind Procrastination 

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Why do we procrastinate until the last minute before the actual deadline? It's interesting to me because many people fall into this loop of procrastination, including myself, and it revolves around the brain and behavior overall.

-Yarely Campos Gonzalez

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Association for Psychological Science - APS

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Believe it or not, the Internet did not give rise to procrastination. People have struggled with habitual hesitation going back to ancient civilizations. The Greek poet Hesiod, writing around 800 B.C., cautioned not to "put your work off till tomorrow and the day after." The Roman consul Cicero called procrastination "hateful" in the conduct of affairs. (He was looking at you, Marcus Antonius.) And those are just examples from recorded history. For all we know, the dinosaurs saw the meteorite coming and went back to their game of Angry Pterodactyls.

What's become quite clear since the days of Cicero is that procrastination isn't just hateful, it's downright harmful. In research settings, people who procrastinate have higher levels of stress and lower well-being. In the real world, undesired delay is often associated with inadequate retirement savings and missed medical visits. Considering the season, it would be remiss not to mention past surveys by H&R Block, which found that people cost themselves hundreds of dollars by rushing to prepare income taxes near the April 15 deadline.

In the past 20 years, the peculiar behavior of procrastination has received a burst of empirical interest. With apologies to Hesiod, psychological researchers now recognize that there's far more to it than simply putting something off until tomorrow. True procrastination is a complicated failure of self-regulation: experts define it as the voluntary delay of some important task that we intend to do, despite knowing that we'll suffer as a result. A poor concept of time may exacerbate the problem, but an inability to manage emotions seems to be its very foundation.

"What I've found is that while everybody may procrastinate, not everyone is a procrastinator," says APS Fellow Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University. He is a pioneer of modern research on the subject, and his work has found that as many as 20 percent of people may be chronic procrastinators.

"It really has nothing to do with time-management," he says. "As I tell people, to tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up."

Suffering More, Performing Worse

A major misperception about procrastination is that it's an innocuous habit at worst, and maybe even a helpful one at best. Sympathizers of procrastination often say it doesn't matter when a task gets done, so long as it's eventually finished. Some even believe they work best under pressure. Stanford philosopher John Perry, author of the book The Art of Procrastination, has argued that people can dawdle to their advantage by restructuring their to-do lists so that they're always accomplishing something of value. Psychological scientists have a serious problem with this view. They argue that it conflates beneficial, proactive behaviors like pondering (which attempts to solve a problem) or prioritizing (which organizes a series of problems) with the detrimental, self-defeating habit of genuine procrastination. If progress on a task can take many forms, procrastination is the absence of progress.

"If I have a dozen things to do, obviously #10, #11, and #12 have to wait," says Ferrari. "The real procrastinator has those 12 things, maybe does one or two of them, then rewrites the list, then shuffles it around, then makes an extra copy of it. That's procrastinating. That's different."

One of the first studies to document the pernicious nature of procrastination was published in Psychological Science back in 1997. APS Fellow Dianne Tice and APS William James Fellow Roy Baumeister, then at Case Western Reserve University, rated college students on an established scale of procrastination, then tracked their academic performance, stress, and general health throughout the semester. Initially there seemed to be a benefit to procrastination, as these students had lower levels of stress compared to others, presumably as a result of putting off their work to pursue more pleasurable activities. In the end, however, the costs of procrastination far outweighed the temporary benefits. Procrastinators earned lower grades than other students and reported higher cumulative amounts of stress and illness. True procrastinators didn't just finish their work later - the quality of it suffered, as did their own well-being.

"Thus, despite its apologists and its short-term benefits, procrastination cannot be regarded as either adaptive or innocuous," concluded Tice and Baumeister (now both at Florida State University). "Procrastinators end up suffering more and performing worse than other people."

A little later, Tice and Ferrari teamed up to do a study that put the ill effects of procrastination into context. They brought students into a lab and told them at the end of the session they'd be engaging in a math puzzle. Some were told the task was a meaningful test of their cognitive abilities, while others were told that it was designed to be meaningless and fun. Before doing the puzzle, the students had an interim period during which they could prepare for the task or mess around with games like Tetris. As it happened, chronic procrastinators only delayed practice on the puzzle when it was described as a cognitive evaluation. When it was described as fun, they behaved no differently from non-procrastinators. In an issue of the Journal of Research in Personality from 2000, Tice and Ferrari concluded that procrastination is really a self-defeating behavior - with procrastinators trying to undermine their own best efforts.

"The chronic procrastinator, the person who does this as a lifestyle, would rather have other people think that they lack effort than lacking ability," says Ferrari. "It's a maladaptive lifestyle."

A Gap Between Intention and Action

There's no single type of procrastinator, but several general impressions have emerged over years of research. Chronic procrastinators have perpetual problems finishing tasks, while situational ones delay based on the task itself. A perfect storm of procrastination occurs when an unpleasant task meets a person who's high in impulsivity and low in self-discipline. (The behavior is strongly linked with the Big Five personality trait of conscientiousness.) Most delayers betray a tendency for self-defeat, but they can arrive at this point from either a negative state (fear of failure, for instance, or perfectionism) or a positive one (the joy of temptation). All told, these qualities have led researchers to call procrastination the "quintessential" breakdown of self-control.

"I think the basic notion of procrastination as self-regulation failure is pretty clear," says Timothy Pychyl of Carleton University, in Canada. "You know what you ought to do and you're not able to bring yourself to do it. It's that gap between intention and action."

Social scientists debate whether the existence of this gap can be better explained by the inability to manage time or the inability to regulate moods and emotions. Generally speaking, economists tend to favor the former theory. Many espouse a formula for procrastination put forth in a paper published by the business scholar Piers Steel, a professor at the University of Calgary, in a 2007 issue of Psychological Bulletin. The idea is that procrastinators calculate the fluctuating utility of certain activities: pleasurable ones have more value early on, and tough tasks become more important as a deadline approaches.

Psychologists like Ferrari and Pychyl, on the other hand, see flaws in such a strictly temporal view of procrastination. For one thing, if delay were really as rational as this utility equation suggests, there would be no need to call the behavior procrastination - on the contrary, time-management would fit better. Beyond that, studies have found that procrastinators carry accompanying feelings of guilt, shame, or anxiety with their decision to delay. This emotional element suggests there's much more to the story than time-management alone. Pychyl noticed the role of mood and emotions on procrastination with his very first work on the subject, back in the mid-1990s, and solidified that concept with a study published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality in 2000. His research team gave 45 students a pager and tracked them for five days leading up to a school deadline. Eight times a day, when beeped, the test participants reported their level of procrastination as well as their emotional state. As the preparatory tasks became more difficult and stressful, the students put them off for more pleasant activities. When they did so, however, they reported high levels of guilt - a sign that beneath the veneer of relief there was a lingering dread about the work set aside. The result made Pychyl realize that procrastinators recognize the temporal harm in what they're doing, but can't overcome the emotional urge toward a diversion.

A subsequent study, led by Tice, reinforced the dominant role played by mood in procrastination. In a 2001 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Tice and colleagues reported that students didn't procrastinate before an intelligence test when primed to believe their mood was fixed. In contrast, when they thought their mood could change (and particularly when they were in a bad mood), they delayed practice until about the final minute. The findings suggested that self-control only succumbs to temptation when present emotions can be improved as a result.

"Emotional regulation, to me, is the real story around procrastination, because to the extent that I can deal with my emotions, I can stay on task," says Pychyl. "When you say task-aversiveness, that's another word for lack of enjoyment. Those are feeling states - those aren't states of which [task] has more utility."

Frustrating the Future Self

In general, people learn from their mistakes and reassess their approach to certain problems. For chronic procrastinators, that feedback loop seems continually out of service. The damage suffered as a result of delay doesn't teach them to start earlier the next time around. An explanation for this behavioral paradox seems to lie in the emotional component of procrastination. Ironically, the very quest to relieve stress in the moment might prevent procrastinators from figuring out how to relieve it in the long run.

"I think the mood regulation piece is a huge part of procrastination," says Fuschia Sirois of Bishop's University, in Canada. "If you're focused just on trying to get yourself to feel good now, there's a lot you can miss out on in terms of learning how to correct behavior and avoiding similar problems in the future."

A few years ago, Sirois recruited about 80 students and assessed them for procrastination. The participants then read descriptions of stressful events, with some of the anxiety caused by unnecessary delay. In one scenario, a person returned from a sunny vacation to notice a suspicious mole, but put off going to the doctor for a long time, creating a worrisome situation.

Afterward, Sirois asked the test participants what they thought about the scenario. She found that procrastinators tended to say things like, "At least I went to the doctor before it really got worse." This response, known as a downward counterfactual, reflects a desire to improve mood in the short term. At the same time, the procrastinators rarely made statements like, "If only I had gone to the doctor sooner." That type of response, known as an upward counterfactual, embraces the tension of the moment in an attempt to learn something for the future. Simply put, procrastinators focused on how to make themselves feel better at the expense of drawing insight from what made them feel bad.

Recently, Sirois and Pychyl tried to unify the emotional side of procrastination with the temporal side that isn't so satisfying on its own. In the February issue of Social and Personality Psychology Compass, they propose a two-part theory on procrastination that braids short-term, mood-related improvements with long-term, time-related damage. The idea is that procrastinators comfort themselves in the present with the false belief that they'll be more emotionally equipped to handle a task in the future.

"The future self becomes the beast of burden for procrastination," says Sirois. "We're trying to regulate our current mood and thinking our future self will be in a better state. They'll be better able to handle feelings of insecurity or frustration with the task. That somehow we'll develop these miraculous coping skills to deal with these emotions that we just can't deal with right now."

The Neuropsychology of Procrastination

Recently the behavioral research into procrastination has ventured beyond cognition, emotion, and personality, into the realm of neuropsychology. The frontal systems of the brain are known to be involved in a number of processes that overlap with self-regulation. These behaviors - problem-solving, planning, self-control, and the like - fall under the domain of executive functioning. Oddly enough, no one had ever examined a connection between this part of the brain and procrastination, says Laura Rabin of Brooklyn College.

"Given the role of executive functioning in the initiation and completion of complex behaviors, it was surprising to me that previous research had not systematically examined the relationship between aspects of executive functioning and academic procrastination - a behavior I see regularly in students but have yet to fully understand, and by extension help remediate," says Rabin.

To address this gap in the literature, Rabin and colleagues gathered a sample of 212 students and assessed them first for procrastination, then on the nine clinical subscales of executive functioning: impulsivity, self-monitoring, planning and organization, activity shifting, task initiation, task monitoring, emotional control, working memory, and general orderliness. The researchers expected to find a link between procrastination and a few of the subscales (namely, the first four in the list above). As it happened, procrastinators showed significant associations with all nine, Rabin's team reported in a 2011 issue of the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.

Rabin stresses the limitations of the work. For one thing, the findings were correlative, meaning it's not quite clear those elements of executive functioning caused procrastination directly. The assessments also relied on self-reports; in the future, functional imaging might be used to confirm or expand the brain's delay centers in real time. Still, says Rabin, the study suggests that procrastination might be an "expression of subtle executive dysfunction" in people who are otherwise neuropsychologically healthy.

"This has direct implications for how we understand the behavior and possibly intervene," she says.

Possible Interventions

As the basic understanding of procrastination advances, many researchers hope to see a payoff in better interventions. Rabin's work on executive functioning suggests a number of remedies for unwanted delay. Procrastinators might chop up tasks into smaller pieces so they can work through a more manageable series of assignments. Counseling might help them recognize that they're compromising long-term aims for quick bursts of pleasure. The idea of setting personal deadlines harmonizes with previous work done by behavioral researchers Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch on "precommitment." In a 2002 issue of Psychological Science, Ariely and Wertenbroch reported that procrastinators were willing to set meaningful deadlines for themselves, and that the deadlines did in fact improve their ability to complete a task. These self-imposed deadlines aren't as effective as external ones, but they're better than nothing.

The emotional aspects of procrastination pose a tougher problem. Direct strategies to counter temptation include blocking access to desirable distraction, but to a large extent that effort requires the type of self-regulation procrastinators lack in the first place. Sirois believes the best way to eliminate the need for short-term mood fixes is to find something positive or worthwhile about the task itself. "You've got to dig a little deeper and find some personal meaning in that task," she says. "That's what our data is suggesting."

Ferrari, who offers a number of interventions in his 2010 book Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, would like to see a general cultural shift from punishing lateness to rewarding the early bird. He's proposed, among other things, that the federal government incentivize early tax filing by giving people a small break if they file by, say, February or March 15. He also suggests we stop enabling procrastination in our personal relationships.

"Let the dishes pile up, let the fridge go empty, let the car stall out," says Ferrari. "Don't bail them out." (Recent work suggests he's onto something. In a 2011 paper in Psychological Science, Gráinne Fitzsimons and Eli Finkel report that people who think their relationship partner will help them with a task are more likely to procrastinate on it.)

But while the tough love approach might work for couples, the best personal remedy for procrastination might actually be self-forgiveness. A couple years ago, Pychyl joined two Carleton University colleagues and surveyed 119 students on procrastination before their midterm exams. The research team, led by Michael Wohl, reported in a 2010 issue of Personality and Individual Differences that students who forgave themselves after procrastinating on the first exam were less likely to delay studying for the second one.

Pychyl says he likes to close talks and chapters with that hopeful prospect of forgiveness. He sees the study as a reminder that procrastination is really a self-inflicted wound that gradually chips away at the most valuable resource in the world: time.

"It's an existentially relevant problem, because it's not getting on with life itself," he says. "You only get a certain number of years. What are you doing?"

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Why Wait? The Science Behind Procrastination

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Procrastination is complex in its causes and the ways it affects the lives of those who wait; the consequences can be taxing on your well-being

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Music stimulates every part of the brain causing emotions and even medical uses

Ryan Henry

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Watching a movie can be a mesmerizing experience, not just for our eyes - but also for our ears. From The Lord of the Rings series and Schindler's List to Interstellar and animated films like Mulan, movies can give rise to deep, complex emotions, thanks in large part to a key ingredient: music.

Take the Oscar-nominated film Maestro, about the life of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, AB '39. The most powerful scene in Maestro is arguably one in which there is no dialogue - only music.

Ensconced in a Gothic cathedral with an audience of extras, Bernstein, played by Bradley Cooper, directs a chorus of voices - the viewer's entrée into the finale of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2. Two women's voices emerge in a duet, lilting above a tapestry of strings. Trumpets pierce the air. A timpani rumbles as the chorus bursts into rapture. Finally, with church bells ringing, Bernstein brings the symphony to its epic conclusion.

The inspiration for the cathedral scene in Maestro was the original footage, an excerpt of which is shown here, of Leonard Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the film, Bradley Cooper conducts the same orchestra, in the same cathedral, in a single six-minute take.

Patrick Whelan, a Harvard Medical School lecturer in pediatrics, part-time, at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor of the Harvard Extension School course Music and the Mind, observes that sitting in the audience for this type of piece can be a profound, prosocial experience.

"When you go into a church, the music takes over the mental faculties of all the people who are attending," he says. "It puts everyone in the same emotional space."

Our chordal roots

Why does music leave such an emotional impression on us in the first place? What is it about tones and timbres that, when organized in a precise manner, can make us swoon or sway?

Whelan believes the answer lies partly in evolutionary biology. The earliest mammals, most of them likely nocturnal, had to rely on their hearing and sense of smell as defensive mechanisms - they were hyperfocused, hyperattentive. According to Whelan, the modern experience of listening to live music can be viewed as a vestige of that primeval adaptation.

In a performance venue, "there's an incredible complex sound signature all around you," Whelan says. "The brain has to sift through all the ambient noise in a concert hall. It's a much more primitive form of listening compared to a focused conversation."

These acoustic cues - just like the crescendo of an approaching predator - travel through the ear and into the temporal lobe, which parses the soundscape, identifies sounds, and tags their components as familiar or unfamiliar.

The salience of these sounds - whether a person responds to them emotionally and motivationally - influences the autonomic nervous system (ANS), a network that controls certain involuntary processes like breathing and heart rate. The valence of the music, which signals whether the music feels positive, negative, or somewhere in between, influences the ANS, too. These factors are among the reasons why our heart rate goes up when we hear the infamous music from Jaws, or why experimental music or heavy metal might make us feel uncomfortable if we're not used to it.

Patrick Whelan

Music also lights up nearly all of the brain - including the hippocampus and amygdala, which activate emotional responses to music through memory; the limbic system, which governs pleasure, motivation, and reward; and the body's motor system. This is why "it's easy to tap your feet or clap your hands to musical rhythms," says Andrew Budson, MD '93, chief of cognitive and behavioral neurology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System.

The brain's elaborate receptivity to music means that "lots of different things are going on simultaneously," Budson adds, so music "ends up being encoded as a rich experience."

The intensity of musical tension

Brain activity in patients with certain disorders reveals unexpected connections with brain activity in people as they listen to music. Although models of obsessive-compulsive disorder pathophysiology are varied, evidence suggests that the condition is caused by faulty neural circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, and anterior thalamus. This dysfunctional neuronal "loop" has the OFC at its center. Sitting just above the eye sockets, the orbitofrontal cortex, involved in decision-making, is hyperactive both in people with OCD, and, intriguingly, in people as they listen to music.

Why would that be? One key way that music - particularly Western tonal music - generates emotions in the listener is through patterns of tension and resolution. The way such patterns play out, together with the way the music fulfills or violates our expectations, manipulates and reveals how the brain handles complex cognitive processes like prediction and anticipation.

According to Whelan, OCD can be described as a maladaptive stress assessment problem. In addition to lecturing at Mass General, Whelan has directed the multidisciplinary care for patients with PANDAS syndrome as an associate clinical professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology at the University of California Los Angeles. PANDAS may be diagnosed when there is a strong association between Streptococcus infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever, in children and the subsequent onset of OCD, tics, or other behavioral issues.

Individuals who are diagnosed with OCD are "incapable of stratifying the risks of the cues that are coming from their environment," Whelan says. They excessively anticipate bad things happening and engage in obsessive thoughts or behaviors as an attempt to resolve - or prevent - those fears from becoming reality.

In other words, their orbitofrontal cortex runs on overdrive, just as it does when a person - with or without OCD - listens to music. But in the case of a person with OCD, hyperactivity in the OFC has a systemic, negative effect on the rest of the brain. Although the hyperactivity itself may not necessarily be the root cause of OCD symptoms, it's certainly part of the OCD story, and the way music leverages buildup and release is a variation on that theme.

Music and healing

The effect of music on our brains has clinical implications as well. Growing evidence suggests, for example, that listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major can reduce the frequency of seizures in some people with epilepsy.

Other conditions and diseases, ranging from Parkinson's to depression to Alzheimer's, could someday have therapeutic solutions derived from an understanding of music. For instance, by identifying the exact type of music able to provoke a particular cognitive, motor, or emotional response, there could be progress toward healing, improving, or compensating for disrupted brain function in various diseases. An increased understanding of brain mechanisms can facilitate this.

David Silbersweig, the Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at HMS and chair emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is interested in uncovering answers to these questions. A leader in functional neuroimaging research in psychiatry, he investigates how brain regions and networks function when we perceive, think, feel, and act.

We seem to be very much tuned for music."

"It's at the systems level with brain imaging that you can directly correlate mental states and brain states - and measure them." Silbersweig says. "Neuroimaging provides a noninvasive way of correlating brain structural and functional abnormalities with specific aspects of music processing."

For example, Silbersweig has seen people who survive stroke or tumors develop sensory amusia, a condition resulting from a lesion in the brain's right superior temporal gyrus. Because this region is integral to recognizing disparate sounds as part of a cohesive work, patients with sensory amusia lose the ability to perceive or respond to music. While patients with this condition may not be able to revive damaged tissue, exposure to music itself can indirectly make up for the setback.

That's because music's immediacy - it unfolds in real time and captures our attention in a way that cannot be negotiated - makes it an ideal vehicle for creating specific experiences in the brain. With both immediate and long-term exposure to music, a person's neurons will fire in new ways, helping to shape communication pathways over time.

Indeed, music is a potent tool for the future of precision medicine. As the scientific community continues to elucidate the emotional landscape of music, as well as how it differs from listener to listener, new methods for alleviating disease severity and improving overall well-being await both patients and otherwise healthy members of the general public.

As for Silbersweig, he and other colleagues in the field hope to continue weaving together what is known about the neural underpinnings of music into a more unified model, which Silbersweig thinks is an important - and meaningful - step.

"We seem to be very much tuned for music," he says. "It resonates with us in some important way."

Allison Eck is the executive communications manager in the HMS Office of Communications and External Relations. Images: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Sargent painting); Erica Hou (Whelan); BWH/Mainframe Photographics (Silbersweig)

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Scientists tune in to the brain's emotional response to music

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The invasive Spotted Lanternfly is demolishing grapevines 

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The invasive Spotted Lanternfly is demolishing grapevines 

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The Spottend Lanternfly is an invasive species to the United States. It was introduced to the East Coast and is making its way to California. What will it do to the environment if it reaches California. How will it affect California's economy if the flies reach the vineyards?

Scarlett Arons

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Squashing the spotted lanternfly problem may require enlisting other species

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The invasive spotted lanternfly has spread to 17 states and can threaten vineyards. But bats, fungi, dogs and even trees may help control them.

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The Relationship Between Music, The Brain, and The Body

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The Relationship Between Music, The Brain, and The Body

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Why does music elicit certain physical and emotional responses from the brain and body as a whole?- Sarah Toppe

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The transformative power of music: Insights into neuroplasticity, health, and disease

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Music is a universal language that can elicit profound emotional and cognitive responses. In this literature review, we explore the intricate relationship between music and the brain, from how it is decoded by the nervous system to its therapeutic…

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New education style suited for 21st century

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New education style suited for 21st century

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How can education be remodeled to help make newer generation students be more engaged and truly understand information?

-Blake Varon

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How to reimagine education for the 21st century _ Brookings

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Sports Psychology; How the mindset can make or break an athlete in their career. 

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Sports Psychology; How the mindset can make or break an athlete in their career. 

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Why are athletes' emotions and thoughts different from those who don't participate in sports?

Shelby Kaiser

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Sports Psychology_ Mindset Can Make or Break an Athlete

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Overtraining athletes can lead to damaged kidneys and more.

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Overtraining athletes can lead to damaged kidneys and more.

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How can we prevent people from taking a negative toll from overtraining?

Samantha C.

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No pain, no gain? Training too hard can have serious health consequences

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Physical exercise is essential to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but there is a fine line between pushing oneself to the limit and overtraining. While a dedicated workout routine yields numerous benefits, overtraining can take a negative toll, and in some cases lead to potentially life-threatening outcomes.

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How does understanding and practicing mental health techniques in athletes help their performance?

-Emilie Beake

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Addressing Mental Health in Athletes | Mass General Brigham

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Mental health is essential to athletes’ health and performance. Learn how to identify signs of mental health struggles and what you can do to enhance athletes’ mental health.

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How can we break the cycle of rumors and myths being spread

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The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, "Faced with a choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof."

Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

What's going on here? Why don't facts change our minds? And why would someone continue to believe a false or inaccurate idea anyway? How do such behaviors serve us?

The Logic of False Beliefs

Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. 1

However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong.

In Atomic Habits, I wrote, "Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe-or worse, being cast out-was a death sentence."

Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. While these two desires often work well together, they occasionally come into conflict.

In many circumstances, social connection is actually more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker put it this way, "People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true." 2

We don't always believe things because they are correct. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about.

I thought Kevin Simler put it well when he wrote, "If a brain anticipates that it will be rewarded for adopting a particular belief, it's perfectly happy to do so, and doesn't much care where the reward comes from - whether it's pragmatic (better outcomes resulting from better decisions), social (better treatment from one's peers), or some mix of the two." 3

False beliefs can be useful in a social sense even if they are not useful in a factual sense. For lack of a better phrase, we might call this approach "factually false, but socially accurate." 4 When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts.

This insight not only explains why we might hold our tongue at a dinner party or look the other way when our parents say something offensive, but also reveals a better way to change the minds of others.

Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Friendship Does.

Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can't expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.

The way to change people's minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.

The British philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that we simply share meals with those who disagree with us:

"Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal - something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt - disrupts our ability to cling to the belief that the outsiders who wear unusual clothes and speak in distinctive accents deserve to be sent home or assaulted. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together." 5

Perhaps it is not difference, but distance that breeds tribalism and hostility. As proximity increases, so does understanding. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln's quote, "I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."

Facts don't change our minds. Friendship does.

The Spectrum of Beliefs

Years ago, Ben Casnocha mentioned an idea to me that I haven't been able to shake: The people who are most likely to change our minds are the ones we agree with on 98 percent of topics.

If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. You already agree with them in most areas of life. Maybe you should change your mind on this one too. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, it's easy to dismiss them as a crackpot.

One way to visualize this distinction is by mapping beliefs on a spectrum. If you divide this spectrum into 10 units and you find yourself at Position 7, then there is little sense in trying to convince someone at Position 1. The gap is too wide. When you're at Position 7, your time is better spent connecting with people who are at Positions 6 and 8, gradually pulling them in your direction.

The most heated arguments often occur between people on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the most frequent learning occurs from people who are nearby. The closer you are to someone, the more likely it becomes that the one or two beliefs you don't share will bleed over into your own mind and shape your thinking. The further away an idea is from your current position, the more likely you are to reject it outright.

When it comes to changing people's minds, it is very difficult to jump from one side to another. You can't jump down the spectrum. You have to slide down it.

Any idea that is sufficiently different from your current worldview will feel threatening. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates.

In conversation, people have to carefully consider their status and appearance. They want to save face and avoid looking stupid. When confronted with an uncomfortable set of facts, the tendency is often to double down on their current position rather than publicly admit to being wrong.

Books resolve this tension. With a book, the conversation takes place inside someone's head and without the risk of being judged by others. It's easier to be open-minded when you aren't feeling defensive.

Arguments are like a full frontal attack on a person's identity. Reading a book is like slipping the seed of an idea into a person's brain and letting it grow on their own terms. There's enough wrestling going on in someone's head when they are overcoming a pre-existing belief. They don't need to wrestle with you too.

Why False Ideas Persist

There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them.

Silence is death for any idea. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Ideas can only be remembered when they are repeated. They can only be believed when they are repeated.

I have already pointed out that people repeat ideas to signal they are part of the same social group. But here's a crucial point most people miss:

People also repeat bad ideas when they complain about them. Before you can criticize an idea, you have to reference that idea. You end up repeating the ideas you're hoping people will forget-but, of course, people can't forget them because you keep talking about them. The more you repeat a bad idea, the more likely people are to believe it. 6

Let's call this phenomenon Clear's Law of Recurrence: The number of people who believe an idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated during the last year-even if the idea is false. 7

Each time you attack a bad idea, you are feeding the very monster you are trying to destroy. As one Twitter employee wrote, "Every time you retweet or quote tweet someone you're angry with, it helps them. It disseminates their BS. Hell for the ideas you deplore is silence. Have the discipline to give it to them." 8

Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. Don't waste time explaining why bad ideas are bad. You are simply fanning the flame of ignorance and stupidity.

The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared. It makes me think of Tyler Cowen's quote, "Spend as little time as possible talking about how other people are wrong."

Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation.

The Intellectual Soldier

I know what you might be thinking. "James, are you serious right now? I'm just supposed to let these idiots get away with this?"

Let me be clear. I'm not saying it's never useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. But you have to ask yourself, "What is the goal?"

Why do you want to criticize bad ideas in the first place? Presumably, you want to criticize bad ideas because you think the world would be better off if fewer people believed them. In other words, you think the world would improve if people changed their minds on a few important topics.

If the goal is to actually change minds, then I don't believe criticizing the other side is the best approach.

Most people argue to win, not to learn. As Julia Galef so aptly puts it: people often act like soldiers rather than scouts. Soldiers are on the intellectual attack, looking to defeat the people who differ from them. Victory is the operative emotion. Scouts, meanwhile, are like intellectual explorers, slowly trying to map the terrain with others. Curiosity is the driving force. 9

If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. At the center of this approach is a question Tiago Forte poses beautifully, "Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?"

Be Kind First, Be Right Later

The brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami once wrote, "Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right." 10

When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. We are so caught up in winning that we forget about connecting. It's easy to spend your energy labeling people rather than working with them.

The word "kind" originated from the word "kin." When you are kind to someone it means you are treating them like family. This, I think, is a good method for actually changing someone's mind. Develop a friendship. Share a meal. Gift a book.

Be kind first, be right later. 11

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Why don't facts change our minds? This article explains the logic of false beliefs and proposes a better system for constructive conversation.

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How do NICU nurses, parents, and the babies bond benefit one another in the greater picture.

Medicinal lense

Daniela Figueroa, Danielle Ott, Tara Visco, Karina Jean

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It’s more than just a bond: nurses and parents are great hospital business

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A newborn’s admission to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) can be both stress inducing and frightening for a parent or caregiver. With nursing being a constant calming presence, a trusting bond between the parents and nurses often becomes the…

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How do businesses promote their products and services to maximize their profit?

Rebecca Wang

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Cint™ | The World’s Largest Research Marketplace

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What Is Market Research For Advertising? - Cint

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Market research is an important tool to use when launching a new ad campaign. Learn more about advertising market research with Cint!

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Interstitium: Anatomical Structure in the Human Body

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Interstitium: Anatomical Structure in the Human Body

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This is about the interstitium, a newly discovered body system that connects the entire body and allows for cell migration.

-Joey Spengler

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Interstitium: A Network of Living Spaces Supports Anatomical Interconnectedness

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Discover the interstitium—a vast, fluid-filled network that connects the entire body and redefines human anatomy.

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Pesticides have negative effects on non-target organisms

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Pesticides have negative effects on non-target organisms

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What are the effects of chemicals on zoo animals versus wild animals?

Sven Wikstrom

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Pesticides have negative effects on non-target organisms - Nature Communications

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Pesticides affect a diverse range of non-target species and the magnitude of this hazard remains only partially understood. Wan et al. found that insecticides, fungicides and herbicides have negative effects on non-target plants, animals and microorganisms within terrestrial and aquatic systems.

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Players believe that they should be paid a larger percentage of the league's revenue, however this can only happen if more money is brought in.

Kairi Nagasugi

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It will take some time for the Caitlin Clark effect to be felt across the WNBA.

Clark enters the league as a budding superstar who is already widely recognized as having been the biggest figure in a sea change for women's basketball. Shortly after she helped the NCAA women's Final Four set broadcasting records, she went first overall in the WNBA draft, helping the event draw a bigger TV viewership than the most recent MLB and NHL drafts. Tickets for the Indiana Fever, who drafted Clark last weekend, are the hottest in the sport. Clark's jersey has already sold out - though Dick's Sporting Goods intends to sell Clark name and number T-shirts in all 724 of its locations, according to a company spokesperson. Last year, it sold WNBA merch in only a fraction of its stores.

But even as women's basketball surges broadly, Clark comes into a league that has faced steep financial shortcomings, leaving its players well short of being compensated at the levels of their male counterparts.

"It's not good enough," Nancy Lieberman, a Hall of Fame basketball player, Olympic gold medalist and NCAA champion, said in an interview. "It has to get better."

It could take several years for all the crucial deals among players, the league, broadcast partners and other business interests to renegotiate the way money flows.

Right now, WNBA players remain locked into the collective bargaining agreement, or CBA, they signed in 2020, which dictates their overall pay terms.

Since the deal was signed, the revenue generated by the WNBA has grown - yet it still pales in comparison to those generated by the NBA.

Last year, a Bloomberg News report found the WNBA was projected to make $180 million to $200 million for the 2023 season.

A WNBA spokesperson declined to comment on the report, which NBC News hasn't verified. The spokesperson also declined to discuss league financials.

The WNBA's revenue compares with about $10 billion for the NBA in the season ending in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.

The WNBA's lower revenue is a key reason for the pay disparity between the leagues that has now drawn national headlines, and it is why rookies, including Clark, will earn a base salary of just $76,000 this season.

Of course, Clark will earn much more than that through outside sponsorship deals. And she is eligible for a suite of performance-based bonuses and marketing arrangements with her team, the Fever, and the league itself that are worth at least $500,000.

But that would still most likely be less than the NBA's current league minimum of about $1 million. Technically, NBA rookies make slightly more than that. Players in the NBA's lower-level G League are the exception; they typically earn a season salary of about $40,000.

The gap between male and female basketball players isn't only about the level of pay.

NBA players enjoy about a 50-50 split of so-called basketball-related revenues - like broadcast money and jersey sales - with owners.

The CBA that WNBA players signed allowed for revenue sharing only if certain revenue thresholds were met. And so far, they've fallen short, a WNBA spokesperson confirmed.

WNBA players can opt out of their CBA after this season - and it's likely that they will, given the enormous growth the women's game had been experiencing even before Clark captured America's attention.

The hope is that with Clark and other young stars entering the league, there will soon be more money and better terms for its players.

In particular, the WNBA is poised to negotiate a new set of broadcasting rights that will increase the value of the league - enough to the point that the revenue sharing threshold would become moot, assuming the thresholds even remain.

Ironically, the fate of the WNBA remains in the hands of the NBA, which controls more than 40% of the women's league.

That's why Terri Carmichael Jackson, the Women's National Basketball Players Association executive director, has called on the NBA to put the WNBA front and center.

"It's time the NBA recognizes the indispensable role of WNBA players in shaping the league's future success," Carmichael Jackson said in a statement to NBC News.

She continued: "They must acknowledge that valuing WNBA players and paying million-dollar salaries requires a stronger broadcast deal, one that absolutely necessitates players at the negotiating table to strengthen the business case and drive home their value."

Asked for comment, an NBA spokesperson referred NBC News to the WNBA.

In a statement, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said: "We continue to find ways to return some of the growth we have been experiencing to the players beyond what the CBA requires," referring to the collective bargaining agreement.

We're "increasing playoff bonuses by over 50% and providing a $4 million budgeted charter [flight] program for full playoffs, all back-to-backs requiring air travel, and the Commissioner Cup Championship Game," Engelbert added.

WNBA players aren't necessarily asking to be paid at the same levels as their NBA counterparts. Rather, as Las Vegas Aces star Kelsey Plum said on an episode of the Vegas-centric " The Residency Podcast," "We're asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared."

Lieberman, the Hall of Famer, said there has been unwillingness to make the kinds of investments necessary to put the game front and center, on TV or elsewhere.

"Being the first, it can be very lonely," she said, adding that, in many cases, her success had come from decision-makers - mostly men - who had "taken a leap of faith."

Lieberman's comments echoed those of University of Connecticut women's coach Geno Auriemma, who was much more explicit in his criticism of the WNBA's growth efforts.

"The WNBA is going to have to do a great job of marketing these guys," he said at a news conference this month, referring to players like Clark and Huskies star Paige Bueckers. "And the WNBA I don't think has done a great job of marketing their individual stars."

CORRECTION (April 22, 2024, 9:54 a.m. ET) A previous version of this article misstated which Clark merchandise sold out at Dick's Sporting Goods. They were T-shirts, not jerseys.

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WNBA players could earn more money, but it will take big changes to make that happen

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Despite its momentum, the WNBA still generates only a small fraction of the revenue the NBA does, making it tough for women's pay to reach parity with men's.

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New drugs allow us to freeze bacterial evolution to study and or eliminate it at its early stages.

-Maximiliano Silva

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Scientists may have uncovered a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs: drugs that freeze bacterial evolution in its tracks.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are those microbes that somehow survive even under the onslaught from megadrugs meant to kill them. Every year, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S. catch one of these superstrong bacteria or resistant fungi, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

One of the ways that evolve to become "antibiotic resistant" is by picking up free-floating genetic material from their environments. They then incorporate the scavenged genes into their own . In this way, bacteria can collect genes shed from microbes that are already resistant, and thus, gain resistance themselves. But bacteria aren't able to catch wayward bits of DNA without the right equipment; the "bugs" must first enter a state called "competence" to build the machinery required to scoop genetic material from their surroundings.

Bacteria become competent when placed under stress, such as when they're subjected to antibiotic treatments. that several common classes of antibiotics actually drive the spread of antibiotic resistance by pushing bacteria into a stressed-out state. But now, a new study of the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae has highlighted a potential solution to this paradoxical problem: drugs that prevent bacteria from becoming competent in the first place.

For the study, published Tuesday (March 3) in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, researchers put this strategy to the test in a mouse model and successfully blocked several strains of S. pneumoniae from becoming competent and exchanging genes inside the mice. The bacteria, which typically live in the human nose and throat, can trigger serious infections if they migrate into the bloodstream, sinuses, ears, lungs, or tissues covering the brain or spinal cord, according to the .

Antibiotics stand as the only available treatment for these infections, but in more than 30% of cases, the S. pneumoniae strains prove resistant to one or more antibiotics. If so-called "anti-evolution" drugs prove safe in humans, perhaps the medications could help prevent more strains from acquiring resistance, the researchers suggested.

Stopping the spread

The researchers screened more than 1,300 medications to pinpoint which ones could bring competence to a grinding halt. Results pointed to 46 such drugs, including antipsychotic medications, anti-microbials and an anti-malarial drug. Although diverse, the drugs all prevent competence at low doses via the same mechanism, the researchers found.

"The competence pathway has been studied for decades, and we know all the key components," study authors Jan-Willem Veening, a professor in the Department of Fundamental Microbiology at the Swiss University of Lausanne, and Arnau Domenech, a postdoctoral researcher in Veening's lab, told Live Science in an email.

One key component, known as the proton-motive force (PMF), allows the cell to produce energy, import nutrients, and shuttle cargo in and out of its body. When bacteria go into that competent state, they usually pump out a peptide called CSP, which accumulates outside the cell and triggers competence (the ability to grab antibiotic-resistant gene scraps) once it has built up beyond a certain threshold.

But when subjected to anti-evolution drugs, S. pneumoniae can no longer maintain a normal PMF, and the transporter that usually pumps out CSP malfunctions. "As the competence pathway is tightly regulated, if CSP is not exported, the expression of the key compounds is blocked and competence is inhibited," Domenech and Veening said.

The authors tested the effect of select drugs - an anti-microbial, antipsychotic and anti-malarial - on cultured S. pneumoniae and found that they all blocked competence by disrupting that PMF component. They found the same results in both the live mice and in human cells in lab dishes.

"The beauty of the present work is that we found several compounds ... that can slightly disturb the PMF without affecting the normal growth of the cell," Domenech and Veening added.

"It's disrupting the growth of the bacteria that drives the selection for resistance," said Andrew Read, a professor of disease ecology and biology at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. If drugs can block competence without driving the cells to develop resistance, "then the bugs would stay sensitive" to antibiotic treatment, he said.

Future studies will be needed to determine whether "'anti-evolution' drugs can be realistically used in combination with antibiotics to prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance," the authors noted in their paper. "Our next steps will be to test whether [these drugs] are specific for Streptococcus pneumoniae or if they can also block acquisition of resistance in other human pathogens," Domenech and Veening told Live Science. Read said that the philosophy of derailing evolution to prevent resistance should carry over to other bugs, but the exact drug targets might differ between them.

In developing the drugs for human use, scientists will have to be clever in how they design clinical trials, Read added. "It's a 'protect the therapeutic' drug, rather than a therapeutic itself," meaning the goal of the drugs wouldn't be to treat people, per say, but instead prevent resistance, he said.

"Instead of aiming to kill bugs," as many groups aim to accomplish with new antibiotic medications, "this is trying to stop the input of genetic variation on which selection can act." Read said. "For me, [these are] great first steps - let's go."

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New drugs could stymie superbugs by freezing evolution

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Scientists may have uncovered a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs: drugs that freeze bacterial evolution in its tracks. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are those microbes that somehow survive even under the onslaught from megadrugs meant to kill them. Every year, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S.

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Why rest and recovery is essential for athletes

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Why rest and recovery is essential for athletes

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How can we best optimize our recovery to have energy and avoid injuries?

-Micah Chin

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Why rest and recovery is essential for athletes - UCHealth Today

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The effects of strength training on distance running performance and injury prevention

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The effects of strength training on distance running performance and injury prevention

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I posted this idea because I have dealt with injury throughout my life and know many runners that could benefit from research in the area.

What is the best way to prevent injury in distance running?

Justin Ezaki

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The Relationship Between Music, The Brain, and The Body

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The Relationship Between Music, The Brain, and The Body

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How does music affect the brain and cause certain emotional responses? -Sarah Toppe

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Watching a movie can be a mesmerizing experience, not just for our eyes - but also for our ears. From The Lord of the Rings series and Schindler's List to Interstellar and animated films like Mulan, movies can give rise to deep, complex emotions, thanks in large part to a key ingredient: music.

Take the Oscar-nominated film Maestro, about the life of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, AB '39. The most powerful scene in Maestro is arguably one in which there is no dialogue - only music.

Ensconced in a Gothic cathedral with an audience of extras, Bernstein, played by Bradley Cooper, directs a chorus of voices - the viewer's entrée into the finale of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2. Two women's voices emerge in a duet, lilting above a tapestry of strings. Trumpets pierce the air. A timpani rumbles as the chorus bursts into rapture. Finally, with church bells ringing, Bernstein brings the symphony to its epic conclusion.

The inspiration for the cathedral scene in Maestro was the original footage, an excerpt of which is shown here, of Leonard Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the film, Bradley Cooper conducts the same orchestra, in the same cathedral, in a single six-minute take.

Patrick Whelan, a Harvard Medical School lecturer in pediatrics, part-time, at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor of the Harvard Extension School course Music and the Mind, observes that sitting in the audience for this type of piece can be a profound, prosocial experience.

"When you go into a church, the music takes over the mental faculties of all the people who are attending," he says. "It puts everyone in the same emotional space."

Our chordal roots

Why does music leave such an emotional impression on us in the first place? What is it about tones and timbres that, when organized in a precise manner, can make us swoon or sway?

Whelan believes the answer lies partly in evolutionary biology. The earliest mammals, most of them likely nocturnal, had to rely on their hearing and sense of smell as defensive mechanisms - they were hyperfocused, hyperattentive. According to Whelan, the modern experience of listening to live music can be viewed as a vestige of that primeval adaptation.

In a performance venue, "there's an incredible complex sound signature all around you," Whelan says. "The brain has to sift through all the ambient noise in a concert hall. It's a much more primitive form of listening compared to a focused conversation."

These acoustic cues - just like the crescendo of an approaching predator - travel through the ear and into the temporal lobe, which parses the soundscape, identifies sounds, and tags their components as familiar or unfamiliar.

The salience of these sounds - whether a person responds to them emotionally and motivationally - influences the autonomic nervous system (ANS), a network that controls certain involuntary processes like breathing and heart rate. The valence of the music, which signals whether the music feels positive, negative, or somewhere in between, influences the ANS, too. These factors are among the reasons why our heart rate goes up when we hear the infamous music from Jaws, or why experimental music or heavy metal might make us feel uncomfortable if we're not used to it.

Patrick Whelan

Music also lights up nearly all of the brain - including the hippocampus and amygdala, which activate emotional responses to music through memory; the limbic system, which governs pleasure, motivation, and reward; and the body's motor system. This is why "it's easy to tap your feet or clap your hands to musical rhythms," says Andrew Budson, MD '93, chief of cognitive and behavioral neurology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System.

The brain's elaborate receptivity to music means that "lots of different things are going on simultaneously," Budson adds, so music "ends up being encoded as a rich experience."

The intensity of musical tension

Brain activity in patients with certain disorders reveals unexpected connections with brain activity in people as they listen to music. Although models of obsessive-compulsive disorder pathophysiology are varied, evidence suggests that the condition is caused by faulty neural circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, and anterior thalamus. This dysfunctional neuronal "loop" has the OFC at its center. Sitting just above the eye sockets, the orbitofrontal cortex, involved in decision-making, is hyperactive both in people with OCD, and, intriguingly, in people as they listen to music.

Why would that be? One key way that music - particularly Western tonal music - generates emotions in the listener is through patterns of tension and resolution. The way such patterns play out, together with the way the music fulfills or violates our expectations, manipulates and reveals how the brain handles complex cognitive processes like prediction and anticipation.

According to Whelan, OCD can be described as a maladaptive stress assessment problem. In addition to lecturing at Mass General, Whelan has directed the multidisciplinary care for patients with PANDAS syndrome as an associate clinical professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology at the University of California Los Angeles. PANDAS may be diagnosed when there is a strong association between Streptococcus infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever, in children and the subsequent onset of OCD, tics, or other behavioral issues.

Individuals who are diagnosed with OCD are "incapable of stratifying the risks of the cues that are coming from their environment," Whelan says. They excessively anticipate bad things happening and engage in obsessive thoughts or behaviors as an attempt to resolve - or prevent - those fears from becoming reality.

In other words, their orbitofrontal cortex runs on overdrive, just as it does when a person - with or without OCD - listens to music. But in the case of a person with OCD, hyperactivity in the OFC has a systemic, negative effect on the rest of the brain. Although the hyperactivity itself may not necessarily be the root cause of OCD symptoms, it's certainly part of the OCD story, and the way music leverages buildup and release is a variation on that theme.

Music and healing

The effect of music on our brains has clinical implications as well. Growing evidence suggests, for example, that listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major can reduce the frequency of seizures in some people with epilepsy.

Other conditions and diseases, ranging from Parkinson's to depression to Alzheimer's, could someday have therapeutic solutions derived from an understanding of music. For instance, by identifying the exact type of music able to provoke a particular cognitive, motor, or emotional response, there could be progress toward healing, improving, or compensating for disrupted brain function in various diseases. An increased understanding of brain mechanisms can facilitate this.

David Silbersweig, the Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at HMS and chair emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is interested in uncovering answers to these questions. A leader in functional neuroimaging research in psychiatry, he investigates how brain regions and networks function when we perceive, think, feel, and act.

We seem to be very much tuned for music."

"It's at the systems level with brain imaging that you can directly correlate mental states and brain states - and measure them." Silbersweig says. "Neuroimaging provides a noninvasive way of correlating brain structural and functional abnormalities with specific aspects of music processing."

For example, Silbersweig has seen people who survive stroke or tumors develop sensory amusia, a condition resulting from a lesion in the brain's right superior temporal gyrus. Because this region is integral to recognizing disparate sounds as part of a cohesive work, patients with sensory amusia lose the ability to perceive or respond to music. While patients with this condition may not be able to revive damaged tissue, exposure to music itself can indirectly make up for the setback.

That's because music's immediacy - it unfolds in real time and captures our attention in a way that cannot be negotiated - makes it an ideal vehicle for creating specific experiences in the brain. With both immediate and long-term exposure to music, a person's neurons will fire in new ways, helping to shape communication pathways over time.

Indeed, music is a potent tool for the future of precision medicine. As the scientific community continues to elucidate the emotional landscape of music, as well as how it differs from listener to listener, new methods for alleviating disease severity and improving overall well-being await both patients and otherwise healthy members of the general public.

As for Silbersweig, he and other colleagues in the field hope to continue weaving together what is known about the neural underpinnings of music into a more unified model, which Silbersweig thinks is an important - and meaningful - step.

"We seem to be very much tuned for music," he says. "It resonates with us in some important way."

Allison Eck is the executive communications manager in the HMS Office of Communications and External Relations. Images: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Sargent painting); Erica Hou (Whelan); BWH/Mainframe Photographics (Silbersweig)

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Systematic Review

Open access

Published:

BMC Public Health 25, Article number: 2992 (2025) Cite this article

Abstract

This study aimed to assess how sleep quality affects mental health in adults.

The mean differences (MDs), along with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), were calculated from the retrieved data using a continuous model with random- or fixed-effects. Approximately 54 papers, comprising a total of 10,196 adults and conducted between 1998 and 2024, were included in this meta-analysis.

Improving sleep significantly reduced depression (MD, -2.92; 95% CI, -3.61 to -2.24, P-value< 0.001) and anxiety (MD, -1.14; 95% CI, -1.32 to -0.97, P-value< 0.001) compared to standard care among adults. However, no significant difference was observed in stress (MD, -1.03; 95% CI, -2.31 to 0.25, P-value= 0.11) between improving sleep and standard care among adults.

Analysis showed that improving overall sleep quality significantly reduced depression and anxiety, though no significant difference was observed in stress compared to standard care among adults. However, considering that the majority of studies had limited sample sizes, the results warrant careful interpretation.

Key points

1. Recent research indicates that individuals with mental health-related problems are more prone to certain sleep disorders.

2. Numerous clinical trials have assessed the effect of sleep-improving therapeutic approaches, including cognitive behavioral therapeutic interventions for insomnia, on mental health conditions like depressive disorders and anxiety.

3. Attempts have been made to investigate the impacts of these trials on mental health-related outcomes by meta-analyses; however, these studies were unable to draw firm conclusions about the causal link between sleep disorders and mental health-related outcomes.

4. This meta-analysis study revealed that enhancing the overall quality of sleep significantly lowered depression and anxiety.

5. However, the findings showed no significant difference in stress compared to standard care among adults.

6. There is a paucity of studies examining the benefits of sleep improvement on mental health outcomes within existing clinical and community health services. Thus, further clinical service intervention trials are needed to fully understand the efficacy and implementation of these strategies in routine care.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Sleep disturbances are highly prevalent globally. Epidemiological studies indicate that nearly one-third of the entire population experiences insomnia symptoms, such as difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep. In addition, between 4% and 26% report excessive daytime sleepiness, while 2-4% are diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) [ 1]. A recent study with over 2000 individuals revealed that 32% experienced "general sleep disturbances" [ 2]. Based on an analysis from the literature, Chattu et al. revealed that public health professionals should enhance their awareness of the unfavorable consequences of sleep deprivation [ 2]. About 17% of adults experience mental health challenges of varying severity [ 3]. Nationally representative data analysis suggests that such problems are becoming increasingly common [ 4]. Therefore, both sleep disturbances and mental health represent major global public health concerns with substantial individual and societal impact [ 2, 5].

There is a well-established bidirectional link between sleep disruptions and mental health conditions [ 6]. It was once believed that mental health concerns caused sleep problems [ 7]; however, it is now recognized that insufficient sleep can also lead to the onset, recurrence [ 8], and persistence of mental health illnesses [ 9]. Understanding the magnitude of this correlation-and whether enhancing sleep can improve mental health outcomes-has significant clinical and public health implications. People with insomnia are significantly more likely to experience clinically severe anxiety and depression (10 and 17 times, respectively) [ 10]. Furthermore, a meta-analysis of over twenty longitudinal cohort studies revealed that, compared to people who do not have trouble sleeping, those who suffer from insomnia are twice as likely to develop depression [ 6].

Studies demonstrate that sleep difficulties correlate with several mental health conditions, particularly highlighting the associations with anxiety, insomnia, and depression. In addition, inadequate sleep has been linked to eating disorders [ 11], posttraumatic stress disorder [ 12], and symptoms within the psychosis spectrum, such as hallucinations and delusions [ 13]. Moreover, research demonstrates that patients with mental health disorders are more likely to experience certain sleep abnormalities, including sleep apnea [ 14], circadian rhythm disruptions [ 15], restless leg syndrome [ 16], excessive daytime drowsiness [ 17], narcolepsy [ 18], sleepwalking, and nightmares [ 19].

Despite significant observational evidence, establishing causality in the sleep-mental health link remains difficult. Most present research used cross-sectional or longitudinal designs, which can identify connections but are unable to identify causal direction [ 20]. Cross-sectional research is unable to establish temporal sequence, but longitudinal studies, albeit being more robust, remain vulnerable to residual confounding and various biases [ 21]. Experimental designs, such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) [ 7], improve causal inference by limiting the effects of confounding variables [ 8]. To determine if sleep problems have a causal effect on mental health, researchers must manipulate sleep and record subsequent mental health changes-a method consistent with interventionist theories of causality [ 22]. Numerous RCTs have assessed the impact of sleep-enhancement therapies, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), on mental wellness outcomes such as depression and anxiety. Meta-analyses have attempted to consolidate these findings [ 23].

Nevertheless, existing meta-analyses have numerous limitations. Initially, certain studies incorporate interventions that failed to enhance sleep, thereby precluding the evaluation of the association between sleep and mental wellness [ 24]. Secondly, many research studies focus mainly on short-term results measured right after the intervention, which limits understanding of long-term benefits and creates uncertainty about sustained effects. Third, the majority of reviews concentrate on CBT-I, primarily addressing depression, while neglecting other mental health outcomes and alternative therapies. Ultimately, there is a lack of comprehensive research on the factors that may influence the efficacy of sleep therapy for mental health across diverse populations, settings, and study designs.

Objectives

This evaluation sought to provide a reliable and precise assessment of how interventions that improve sleep quality affect mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and stress. We selected RCTs that reported improved sleep quality in the interventional group compared to controls, and then assessed mental health-related issues to objectively quantify this benefit. We did not limit cognitive behavioral therapy or mental wellness measures to depression or anxiety. Rather, we analyzed any sleep-related approach that led to a significant change in sleep quality compared to control subjects, and investigated how that difference influenced subsequent mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and stress.

To more effectively isolate the impact of sleep enhancement interventions, we excluded therapies that specifically targeted mental health issues, such as CBT designed to address depressive disorders. Acknowledging the potential for significant variability among studies, we employed moderation analyses to examine the impact of study characteristics and demographic factors on the outcomes. Our fundamental assertion was that therapies that significantly enhance sleep would ultimately lead to corresponding improvements in mental health.

Method

Design

The meta-analyses were conducted using a predefined epidemiological procedure [ 9]. Data was collected and analyzed using several databases, including PubMed, the Cochrane Library, OVID, Google Scholar, and Embase [ 11, 12, 25, 26].

All retrieved studies were combined into a single EndNote file. The initial screening procedure removed duplicate entries. Firstly, we reviewed the titles and abstracts and excluded ineligible records. Secondly, we continued screening and evaluated the full-text articles based on the inclusion criteria, incorporating eligible records into the review and dismissing ineligible ones, along with the rationale for their deletion. Two authors performed an independent review of the documents. These datasets were used to analyze the effects of sleep quality on adult mental health [ 27]. To assess the effect size of sleep quality, we used the following metrics: self-reported assessments of overall sleep quality, such as the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and measures of sleep duration and its impact on daily functioning, such as the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) [ 27].

To measure the effect size of mental health outcomes, we examined the impact of improved sleep on specific issues, namely depression, anxiety, and stress, separately from other mental health outcomes. We measured how sleep affected each mental health issue reported at the latest follow-up time of the study. This technique provides a thorough assessment of the influence of improved sleep quality on mental status-related outcomes, necessitating the maintenance of any changes over an extended period [ 22, 23]. We pooled the effect sizes to derive a composite metric for mental health. In line with the assessment of sleep quality, we emphasized self-reported measures of mental health above measures rated by observers, as the personal perception of mental health issues is undoubtedly the most significant.

Data pooling

Recent research has shown that improving sleep produces several therapeutic benefits. This study investigated the primary outcomes based on the inclusion criteria. Language barriers were not considered during study selection and participant screening. There were no limitations regarding the number of participants eligible for inclusion. A total of 35 letters, reviews, and editorials were excluded from the analysis. Figure 1 illustrates the full study selection process.

Eligibility of studies

The effects of the quality of sleep on adult mental wellness were being investigated. Only studies that discussed how the applied interventions affected the occurrence of various clinical outcomes were included in the conducted sensitivity analyses. Subgroup assessments were also carried out.

Inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria

Figure 1 serves as an in-depth summary of the investigation. Upon fulfillment of the inclusion criteria, the literature was included in the study [ 9, 13, 14]:

1. 1.
The study was an RCT and controlled prospective.

2. 2.
Adults were the subjects under investigation.

3. 3.
Validly assess the independent contribution of changes in sleep on mental health outcomes among adult populations.

4. 4.
The study examined the impact of sleep quality on adult mental health [ 25].

We excluded non-comparative studies, studies with incomplete data reporting, and studies reporting different outcomes.

Study identification

The PICOS framework was used to guide the development of the search strategy [ 28], as follows: P (population) Adult; Improving sleep was I (intervention). C (comparison): included comparing sleep quality improvement to standard treatment [ 29]. O (outcome): mental health illnesses, such as depression, anxiety, and psychological stress; S (study design): the study design was not restricted. Using the keywords in Table 1, we conducted a thorough search of the relevant databases through April 2025. Appraisals were conducted on all publications contained in a software for reference management, including authors, titles, and abstracts. Furthermore, two authors review articles to identify relevant tests [ 11, 12, 15].

Table 1 Database search strategy for inclusion of examinations

Screening of studies and data collection

Each study was documented in a standardized format, including key elements. Criteria employed to reduce the data included the authors' surname, the date of the study, country of execution, the target population, the overall number of subjects, clinical and therapeutic features, demographic details, and qualitative and quantitative assessment methods [ 30]. Two authors examined the potential for bias in the research and the standards of methodologies employed in the papers selected for supplemental analysis. The two authors performed impartial evaluations of the methodologies employed for each examination [ 31].

In addition, we also extracted statistical data for effect size calculation, information concerning the characteristics of the analyzed studies such as the publication status, and study attributes (e.g., the target and control groups, duration of follow-up), and the approach investigated (e.g., type of intervention, mode of application) was also recorded.

Statistical analysis

The mean differences (MDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were determined using a continuous model with random- or fixed-effects [ 16]. The calculated I ² index ranges from 0 to 100 and is represented as a percentage. Elevated I ² levels indicate greater heterogeneity, whereas diminished I ² values reflect reduced heterogeneity [ 17]. If I ² was 50% or more, we applied the random effect; if not, the fixed effect was chosen [ 18, 31]. Bias was determined using Egger's statistical tests for quantitative analysis, deemed present if P-value > 0.05 using a two-tailed method [ 32, 33]. Graphs and statistical analyses were conducted using Review Manager 5.4. 31.

Results

Table 2 summarizes the main characteristics of these studies, which involved approximately 10,196 participants.

Table 2 Characteristics of studies

Improving sleep, as indicated by the validated questionnaire scores, was associated with significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms (MD, −2.92; 95% CI: −3.61 to −2.24, P-value < 0.001) with high levels of heterogeneity (I ² = 99%), and anxiety symptoms (MD, −1.14; 95% CI: −1.32 to −0.97, P-value < 0.001) with moderate levels of heterogeneity (I ² = 50%) compared to standard care among adults, as shown in Figs. 2 and 3. However, no significant difference was detected in stress (MD, −1.03; 95% CI: −2.31-0.25, P-value = 0.11) with high heterogeneity (I ² = 98%) between improved sleep quality and standard care among adults, as shown in Fig. 4.

The quantitative results of the Egger regression test and the graphical examination of the effect's funnel plot indicated no evidence of bias ( p = 0.86), as illustrated in Figs. 5, 6 and 7. The majority of relevant examinations were revealed to have inadequate practical quality and exhibited bias in their selective reporting.

Discussion

The data analyzed revealed that improved sleep quality scores in validated questionnaires resulted in significantly lower levels of depression and anxiety symptoms in adults compared to standard care. There was no significant change in stress levels between improved sleep scores and conventional adult care. However, considering that the majority of the research used a small sample size (40 studies used sample sizes of less than 100 people), the results should be interpreted with caution.

The meta-analysis had several limitations: Assortment bias may have occurred due to the exclusion of certain papers intended for inclusion. However, all excluded studies failed to meet the requisite criteria for the analysis. Nonetheless, data on factors such as ethnicity, age, and gender were essential to ascertain their influence on outcomes. In addition, a high level of heterogeneity was observed between outcomes. The potential sources of heterogeneity might include the differences in the studies' populations, differences in the types and durations of sleep interventions, and the use of various tools to assess sleep quality, depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. We note that methodological differences may have influenced impact sizes and contributed to the diversity observed in our research. The objective of the study was to elucidate the effect of sleep quality on adult mental health. The use of imprecise or insufficient data from prior research likely exacerbated bias. The individual's age, gender, ethnicity, and nutritional status were the primary variables that likely contributed to discrimination. Unreported studies and inadequate data may have unintentionally altered values. Contemporary theories of emotion regulation, like the action control viewpoint, propose that managing emotions involves three stages. The first step involves recognizing the need for regulation, choosing the approach and scope of regulation, and putting a regulatory plan into action.

Conclusions

The data showed that improving sleep led to significantly lower depression and anxiety symptoms compared to standard care among adults. Nevertheless, no significant difference in stress levels was observed between the sleep improvement and standard care groups. Though given that most of the studies comprised a minor sample size (40 studies utilizing sample sizes lower than 100 subjects), their values warrant careful consideration.

Data availability

On request, the corresponding author is required to provide access to the meta-analysis database.

References

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Acknowledgements

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Funding

No funding was received for this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. The Medical Department of Neurology, Ningbo Medical Center LiHuiLi Hospital, No.1111 Jiangnan Road, Yinzhou District, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 315000, China

Zhiguang Li

2. College of Sport and Health, Henan Normal University, No. 46 Jianshe East Road, Xinxiang, 453007, Henan Province, China

Tao Zhong

3. Department of Neurology, Liaocheng Second People's Hospital Internal Medicine, 306 Jiankang street, Linqing City, 252600, China

Xiangpeng Meng

Authors

1. Zhiguang Li

2. Tao Zhong

3. Xiangpeng Meng

Contributions

X.M., Z.L., and T.Z.: Concept and methodology, X.M., Z.L. and T.Z.: software, T.Z.: data curation, Z.L.,and T.Z.: validation and visualization, Z.L. and T.Z.: writing initial draft, Z.L., and T.Z.: review of writing, T.Z.: supervision. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript. We confirm that the work is original; the work has not been, and will not be published, in whole, or in part, in any other journal; and all the authors have agreed to the contents of the manuscript in its submitted form.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiangpeng Meng.

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Li, Z., Zhong, T. & Meng, X. A meta-analysis study evaluating the effects of sleep quality on mental health among the adult population. BMC Public Health 25, 2992 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025-23709-w
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Almost anywhere in the world, geothermal heat can be accessed and used immediately as a source of heat. This heat energy is called low-temperature geothermal energy. Low-temperature geothermal energy is obtained from pockets of heat about 150° C (302° F). Most pockets of low-temperature geothermal energy are found just a few meters below ground.

Low-temperature geothermal energy can be used for heating greenhouses, homes, fisheries, and industrial processes. Low-temperature energy is most efficient when used for heating, although it can sometimes be used to generate electricity.

People have long used this type of geothermal energy for engineering, comfort, healing, and cooking. Archaeological evidence shows that 10,000 years ago, groups of Native Americans gathered around naturally occurring hot springs to recuperate or take refuge from conflict. In the third century BCE, scholars and leaders warmed themselves in a hot spring fed by a stone pool near Lishan, a mountain in central China. One of the most famous hot spring spas is in the appropriately named town of Bath, England. Starting construction in about 60 CE, Roman conquerors built an elaborate system of steam rooms and pools using heat from the region's shallow pockets of low-temperature geothermal energy.

The hot springs of Chaudes Aigues, France, have provided a source of income and energy for the town since the 1300s. Tourists flock to the town for its elite spas. The low-temperature geothermal energy also supplies heat to homes and businesses.

The United States opened its first geothermal district heating system in 1892 in Boise, Idaho. This system still provides heat to about 450 homes.

Co-Produced Geothermal Energy
Co-produced geothermal energy technology relies on other energy sources. This form of geothermal energy uses water that has been heated as a byproduct in oil and gas wells.

In the United States, about 25 billion barrels of hot water are produced every year as a byproduct. In the past, this hot water was simply discarded. Recently, it has been recognized as a potential source of even more energy: Its steam can be used to generate electricity to be used immediately or sold to the grid.

One of the first co-produced geothermal energy projects was initiated at the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center in the U.S. state of Wyoming.

Newer technology has allowed co-produced geothermal energy facilities to be portable. Although still in experimental stages, mobile power plants hold tremendous potential for isolated or impoverished communities.

Geothermal Heat Pumps
Geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) take advantage of the Earth's heat, and can be used almost anywhere in the world. GHPs are drilled about 3 to 90 meters (10 to 300 feet) deep, much shallower than most oil and natural gas wells. GHPs do not require fracturing bedrock to reach their energy source.

A pipe connected to a GHP is arranged in a continuous loop-called a "slinky loop"-that circles underground and above ground, usually throughout a building. The loop can also be contained entirely underground, to heat a parking lot or landscaped area.

In this system, water or other liquids (such as glycerol, similar to a car's antifreeze) move through the pipe. During the cold season, the liquid absorbs underground geothermal heat. It carries the heat upward through the building and gives off warmth through a duct system. These heated pipes can also run through hot water tanks and offset water-heating costs.

During the summer, the GHP system works the opposite way: The liquid in the pipes is warmed from the heat in the building or parking lot, and carries the heat to be cooled underground.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has called geothermal heating the most energy-efficient and environmentally safe heating and cooling system. The largest GHP system was completed in 2012 at Ball State University in Indiana. The system replaced a coal-fired boiler system, and experts estimate the university will save about $2 million a year in heating costs.

Harvesting Geothermal Energy: Electricity

In order to obtain enough energy to generate electricity, geothermal power plants rely on heat that exists a few kilometers below the surface of the Earth. In some areas, the heat can naturally exist underground as pockets steam or hot water. However, most areas need to be "enhanced" with injected water to create steam.

Dry-steam power plants take advantage of natural underground sources of steam. The steam is piped directly to a power plant, where it is used to fuel Dry-Steam Power Plants turbines and generate electricity.

Dry steam is the oldest type of power plant to generate electricity using geothermal energy. The first dry-steam power plant was constructed in Larderello, Italy, in 1911. Today, the dry-steam power plants at Larderello continue to supply electricity to more than a million residents of the area.

There are only two known sources of underground steam in the United States: Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and The Geysers in California. Since Yellowstone is a protected area, The Geysers is the only place where a dry-steam power plant is in use. It is one of the largest geothermal energy complexes in the world, and provides about a fifth of all renewable energy in California.

Flash-Steam Power Plant

Flash-steam power plants use naturally occurring sources of underground hot water and steam. Water that is hotter than 182° C (360° F) is pumped into a low-pressure area. Some of the water "flashes," or evaporates rapidly into steam, and is funneled out to power a turbine and generate electricity. Any remaining water can be flashed in a separate tank to extract more energy.

Flash-steam power plants are the most common type of geothermal power plants. The volcanically active island nation of Iceland supplies nearly all its electrical needs through a series of flash-steam geothermal power plants. The steam and excess warm water produced by the flash-steam process heat icy sidewalks and parking lots in the frigid Arctic winter.

The islands of the Philippines also sit over a tectonically active area, the "Ring of Fire" that rims the Pacific Ocean. Government and industry in the Philippines have invested in flash-steam power plants, and today the nation is second only to the United States in its use of geothermal energy. In fact, the largest single geothermal power plant is a flash-steam facility in Malitbog, Philippines.

Binary cycle power plants use a unique process to conserve water and generate heat. Water is heated underground to about 107°-182° C (225°-360° F). The hot water is contained in a pipe, which cycles above ground. The hot water heats a liquid organic compound that has a lower boiling point than water. The organic liquid creates steam, which flows through a turbine and powers a generator to create electricity. The only Binary Cycle Power Plants emission in this process is steam. The water in the pipe is recycled back to the ground, to be re-heated by the Earth and provide heat for the organic compound again.

The Beowawe Geothermal Facility in the U.S. state of Nevada uses the binary cycle to generate electricity. The organic compound used at the facility is an industrial refrigerant (tetrafluoroethane, a greenhouse gas). This refrigerant has a much lower boiling point than water, meaning it is converted into gas at low temperatures. The gas fuels the turbines, which are connected to electrical generators.

Enhanced Geothermal Systems
The Earth has virtually endless amounts of energy and heat beneath its surface. However, it is not possible to use it as energy unless the underground areas are "hydrothermal." This means the underground areas are not only hot, but also contain liquid and are permeable. Many areas do not have all three of these components. An enhanced geothermal system (EGS) uses drilling, fracturing, and injection to provide fluid and permeability in areas that have hot-but dry-underground rock.

To develop an EGS, an "injection well" is drilled vertically into the ground. Depending on the type of rock, this can be as shallow as 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) to as deep as 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles). High-pressure cold water is injected into the drilled space, which forces the rock to create new fractures, expand existing fractures, or dissolve. This creates a reservoir of underground fluid.

Water is pumped through the injection well and absorbs the rocks' heat as it flows through the reservoir. This hot water, called brine, is then piped back up to Earth's surface through a "production well." The heated brine is contained in a pipe. It warms a secondary fluid that has a low boiling point, which evaporates to steam and powers a turbine. The brine cools off, and cycles back down through the injection well to absorb underground heat again. There are no gaseous emissions besides the water vapor from the evaporated liquid.

Pumping water into the ground for EGSs can cause seismic activity, or small earthquakes. In Basel, Switzerland, the injection process caused hundreds of tiny earthquakes that grew to more significant seismic activity even after the water injection was halted. This led to the geothermal project being canceled in 2009.

Geothermal Energy and the Environment

Geothermal energy is a renewable resource. The Earth has been emitting heat for about 4.5 billion years, and will continue to emit heat for billions of years into the future because of the ongoing radioactive decay in the Earth's core.

However, most wells that extract the heat will eventually cool, especially if heat is extracted more quickly than it is given time to replenish. Larderello, Italy, site of the world's first electrical plant supplied by geothermal energy, has seen its steam pressure fall by more than 25% since the 1950s.

Re-injecting water can sometimes help a cooling geothermal site last longer. However, this process can cause "micro-earthquakes." Although most of these are too small to be felt by people or register on a scale of magnitude, sometimes the ground can quake at more threatening levels and cause the geothermal project to shut down, as it did in Basel, Switzerland.

Geothermal systems do not require enormous amounts of freshwater. In binary systems, water is only used as a heating agent, and is not exposed or evaporated. It can be recycled, used for other purposes, or released into the atmosphere as non-toxic steam. However, if the geothermal fluid is not contained and recycled in a pipe, it can absorb harmful substances such as arsenic, boron, and fluoride. These toxic substances can be carried to the surface and released when the water evaporates. In addition, if the fluid leaks to other underground water systems, it can contaminate clean sources of drinking water and aquatic habitats.

Advantages
There are many advantages to using geothermal energy either directly or indirectly:

Geothermal energy is renewable; it is not a fossil fuel that will be eventually used up. The Earth is continuously radiating heat out from its core, and will continue to do so for billions of years.

Some form of geothermal energy can be accessed and harvested anywhere in the world.

Using geothermal energy is relatively clean. Most systems only emit water vapor, although some emit very small amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and particulates.

Geothermal power plants can last for decades and possibly centuries. If a reservoir is managed properly, the amount of extracted energy can be balanced with the rock's rate of renewing its heat.

Unlike other renewable energy sources, geothermal systems are "baseload." This means they can work in the summer or winter, and are not dependent on changing factors such as the presence of wind or sun. Geothermal power plants produce electricity or heat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The space it takes to build a geothermal facility is much more compact than other power plants. To produce a GWh (a gigawatt hour, or one million kilowatts of energy for one hour, an enormous amount of energy), a geothermal plant uses the equivalent of about 1,046 square kilometers (404 square miles) of land. To produce the same GWh, wind energy requires 3,458 square kilometers (1,335 square miles), a solar photovoltaic center requires 8,384 square kilometers (3,237 square miles), and coal plants use about 9,433 square kilometers (3,642 square miles).

Geothermal energy systems are adaptable to many different conditions.

They can be used to heat, cool, or power individual homes, whole districts, or industrial processes.

Disadvantages
Harvesting geothermal energy still poses many challenges:

The process of injecting high-pressure streams of water into the Earth can result in minor seismic activity, or small earthquakes.

Geothermal plants have been linked to subsidence, or the slow sinking of land. This happens as the underground fractures collapse upon themselves. This can lead to damaged pipelines, roadways, buildings, and natural drainage systems.

Geothermal plants can release small amounts of greenhouse gases such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide.

Water that flows through underground reservoirs can pick up trace amounts of toxic elements such as arsenic, mercury, and selenium. These harmful substances can be leaked to water sources if the geothermal system is not properly insulated.

Although the process requires almost no fuel to run, the initial cost of installing geothermal technology is expensive. Developing countries may not have the sophisticated infrastructure or start-up costs to invest in a geothermal power plant. Several facilities in the Philippines, for example, were made possible by investments from American industry and government agencies. Today, the plants are Philippine-owned and operated.

Geothermal Energy and People

Geothermal energy exists in different forms all over the Earth (by steam vents, lava, geysers, or simply dry heat), and there are different possibilities for extracting and using this heat.

In New Zealand, natural geysers and steam vents heat swimming pools, homes, greenhouses, and prawn farms. New Zealanders also use dry geothermal heat to dry timber and feedstock.

Other countries, such as Iceland, have taken advantage of molten rock and magma resources from volcanic activity to provide heat for homes and buildings. In Iceland, almost 90% of the country's people use geothermal heating resources. Iceland also relies on its natural geysers to melt snow, warm fisheries, and heat greenhouses.

The United States generates the most amount of geothermal energy of any other country. Every year, the U.S. generates at least 15 billion kilowatt-hours, or the equivalent of burning about 25 million barrels of oil. Industrial geothermal technologies have been concentrated in the western U.S. In 2012, Nevada had 59 geothermal projects either operational or in development, followed by California with 31 projects, and Oregon with 16 projects.

The cost of geothermal energy technology has gone down in the last decade, and is becoming more economically possible for individuals and companies.

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Geothermal energy is heat that is generated within the Earth. It is a renewable resource that can be harvested for human use.

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How can the understanding of brain health maximize lifespan?

Sebastian Francu

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As the AAN and its members work to promote brain health for all, a new Emerging Issues in Neurology article summarizes emerging evidence on strategies to support and maintain brain health across a person's lifespan and across neurological subspecialties.

Linda M. Selwa, MD, FAAN

"With our training and insights on scientific discoveries, neurologists are the standard-bearers when it comes to brain health," said author Linda M. Selwa, MD, FAAN. "A crucial part of brain health is preventive care, and this Emerging Issues article highlights the emerging preventive evidence and strategies that can optimize development, enhance function, and limit the impact of the diseases we treat."

Read the article: The Neurologist's Role in Promoting Brain Health

Read the press release: Twelve Questions to Ask Your Doctor for Better Brain Health in the New Year

Emerging Issues in Neurology articles are published by the AAN with the goal of providing timely, informal guidance that is derived from expert consensus opinion to neurologists about new or emerging issues. These issues have immediate implications for patient care, but their formal evidence bases are still evolving.

Brain health-defined by the AAN as the "continuous state of attaining and maintaining the optimal neurologic function that best supports one's physical, mental, and social well-being through every stage of life"-is an increasingly high-profile issue. Promoting brain health for all is central to the AAN's mission and at the core of its groundbreaking Brain Health Initiative.

The new Emerging Issues in Neurology article does its part for brain health by presenting factors that may protect brain function and framing a practical approach to screening assessments and preventive interventions that neurology clinicians can use for their patients. These measures are important both for prevention and for people with active brain disease, in whom they may reduce recurrence or slow progression of disease and enhance quality of life and overall function.

"We particularly hoped to connect brain health scientific findings to the daily clinical work of neurologists," Selwa said. "We illustrated how vital some of these preventive considerations are for every life stage.  We also tried to give useful, concrete examples about what knowledge exists for many different subspecialties."

One practical example provided in the article is a list of 12 factors influencing brain health across the lifespan-sleep, mental health, diet, exercise, trauma avoidance, blood pressure, and more-as well as corresponding screening questions.

Gregory S. Day, MD, MSc, FAAN

"Whether we're evaluating patients for the management of seizures, traumatic brain injury, stroke risk reduction or treatment, or in the pediatric setting, there are opportunities in every single visit to screen for risk factors for brain health and to promote this unified message to patients," said author Gregory S. Day, MD, MSc, FAAN. "It helps us show that we're not just here to address the problem that's on your mind. We're here to think about you as an individual and to recognize that your goals are our goals."

Special attention is given to vulnerable populations that experience a disproportionate burden of neurological disease and may benefit most from approaches to optimize brain health. The article also explores gaps in the evidence concerning brain health and outlines possible next steps toward the AAN's ambitious mission of ensuring brain health for all.

"There's a mountain of data on brain health, and this is just the start," Day said. "As neurologists, we can bring that to our patients. We can say, 'We want to see you live a healthy life where neurology and neurological care can enhance that today, but also prepare you and set the stage for a healthier tomorrow.'"

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Brain Health Strategies Highlighted in New Emerging Issues in Neurology Article

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How can neurologists ensure a "healthier tomorrow" for their patients? A new article highlights emerging strategies and practical interventions for preventive neurological care.

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What factors limit humans from living on other planets?

Tristan Anderson

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We will never be able to live on another planet. Here’s why | Aeon Essays

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The scientific evidence is clear: the only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. Here’s why

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AI Medical Software That Predicts Early Blindness

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AI Medical Software That Predicts Early Blindness

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Jayden Hua

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AI can now predict who will go blind, years before doctors can

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Researchers trained AI on tens of thousands of eye scans, enabling doctors to predict which keratoconus patients need early treatment and which can be safely monitored, cutting down on unnecessary procedures while preventing vision loss.

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The Relationship Between Color and Psychological Functioning

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The Relationship Between Color and Psychological Functioning

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How does mood and psychological function affect our perception of color, and does color affect our perception of reality?

- Bijou Barkhuff

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What happens while you're sleeping?

Anna Cole

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How much can we influence our own brains?

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How much can we influence our own brains?

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Can we, after realizing that it is a possibility, change how we think?

Andrew Carlson

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What happens in our brain when we do complex tasks - The University of Sydney

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New drugs could stymie superbugs by freezing evolution

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New drugs could stymie superbugs by freezing evolution

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How can we stop the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

Lukas Anderson

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Scientists may have uncovered a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs: drugs that freeze bacterial evolution in its tracks.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are those microbes that somehow survive even under the onslaught from megadrugs meant to kill them. Every year, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S. catch one of these superstrong bacteria or resistant fungi, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

One of the ways that evolve to become "antibiotic resistant" is by picking up free-floating genetic material from their environments. They then incorporate the scavenged genes into their own . In this way, bacteria can collect genes shed from microbes that are already resistant, and thus, gain resistance themselves. But bacteria aren't able to catch wayward bits of DNA without the right equipment; the "bugs" must first enter a state called "competence" to build the machinery required to scoop genetic material from their surroundings.

Bacteria become competent when placed under stress, such as when they're subjected to antibiotic treatments. that several common classes of antibiotics actually drive the spread of antibiotic resistance by pushing bacteria into a stressed-out state. But now, a new study of the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae has highlighted a potential solution to this paradoxical problem: drugs that prevent bacteria from becoming competent in the first place.

For the study, published Tuesday (March 3) in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, researchers put this strategy to the test in a mouse model and successfully blocked several strains of S. pneumoniae from becoming competent and exchanging genes inside the mice. The bacteria, which typically live in the human nose and throat, can trigger serious infections if they migrate into the bloodstream, sinuses, ears, lungs, or tissues covering the brain or spinal cord, according to the .

Antibiotics stand as the only available treatment for these infections, but in more than 30% of cases, the S. pneumoniae strains prove resistant to one or more antibiotics. If so-called "anti-evolution" drugs prove safe in humans, perhaps the medications could help prevent more strains from acquiring resistance, the researchers suggested.

Stopping the spread

The researchers screened more than 1,300 medications to pinpoint which ones could bring competence to a grinding halt. Results pointed to 46 such drugs, including antipsychotic medications, anti-microbials and an anti-malarial drug. Although diverse, the drugs all prevent competence at low doses via the same mechanism, the researchers found.

"The competence pathway has been studied for decades, and we know all the key components," study authors Jan-Willem Veening, a professor in the Department of Fundamental Microbiology at the Swiss University of Lausanne, and Arnau Domenech, a postdoctoral researcher in Veening's lab, told Live Science in an email.

One key component, known as the proton-motive force (PMF), allows the cell to produce energy, import nutrients, and shuttle cargo in and out of its body. When bacteria go into that competent state, they usually pump out a peptide called CSP, which accumulates outside the cell and triggers competence (the ability to grab antibiotic-resistant gene scraps) once it has built up beyond a certain threshold.

But when subjected to anti-evolution drugs, S. pneumoniae can no longer maintain a normal PMF, and the transporter that usually pumps out CSP malfunctions. "As the competence pathway is tightly regulated, if CSP is not exported, the expression of the key compounds is blocked and competence is inhibited," Domenech and Veening said.

The authors tested the effect of select drugs - an anti-microbial, antipsychotic and anti-malarial - on cultured S. pneumoniae and found that they all blocked competence by disrupting that PMF component. They found the same results in both the live mice and in human cells in lab dishes.

"The beauty of the present work is that we found several compounds ... that can slightly disturb the PMF without affecting the normal growth of the cell," Domenech and Veening added.

"It's disrupting the growth of the bacteria that drives the selection for resistance," said Andrew Read, a professor of disease ecology and biology at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. If drugs can block competence without driving the cells to develop resistance, "then the bugs would stay sensitive" to antibiotic treatment, he said.

Future studies will be needed to determine whether "'anti-evolution' drugs can be realistically used in combination with antibiotics to prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance," the authors noted in their paper. "Our next steps will be to test whether [these drugs] are specific for Streptococcus pneumoniae or if they can also block acquisition of resistance in other human pathogens," Domenech and Veening told Live Science. Read said that the philosophy of derailing evolution to prevent resistance should carry over to other bugs, but the exact drug targets might differ between them.

In developing the drugs for human use, scientists will have to be clever in how they design clinical trials, Read added. "It's a 'protect the therapeutic' drug, rather than a therapeutic itself," meaning the goal of the drugs wouldn't be to treat people, per say, but instead prevent resistance, he said.

"Instead of aiming to kill bugs," as many groups aim to accomplish with new antibiotic medications, "this is trying to stop the input of genetic variation on which selection can act." Read said. "For me, [these are] great first steps - let's go."

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New drugs could stymie superbugs by freezing evolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Scientists may have uncovered a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs: drugs that freeze bacterial evolution in its tracks. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are those microbes that somehow survive even under the onslaught from megadrugs meant to kill them. Every year, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S.

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How does fear play a role in whether people perform acts of courage?

-Natalie Edge

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Courage: Why some people act despite fear

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How we can all build bravery like a skill using deliberate practice and feedback.

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Why are so many Dodger pitchers getting injured and how can we stop this from happening?

Alex Sklar

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Are the Dodgers’ pitching injuries really that bad_ _ True Blue LA

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What could gene editing mean for our future?

Tara Visco

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World’s First Patient Treated with Personalized CRISPR Gene Editing Therapy at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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Landmark study from CHOP and Penn Medicine showcases the power of customized gene editing therapy to treat patient with rare metabolic disease.

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How can we prevent/reduce air pollution in our cities?

Alexander Ivakhniouk

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How do attention and behavior problems affect children in health, finances, and education as they grow up?

-Audrey Dreier

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Children with attention, behavior problems earn less money, have less education, poorer health as adults

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Children who struggle with attention and behavior problems tend to end up earning less money, finish fewer years of school and have poorer mental and physical health as adults, compared with children who don’t show early attention and behavior problems.

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How will Artificial Intelligence impact the healthcare system in the future?

Athena Blanco

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