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‘Self-Care’ Isn’t the Fix for Late-Pandemic Malaise
If years could be assigned a dominant feeling (1929: despair; 2008: hope), 2021’s might be exhaustion. As the coronavirus pandemic rumbles through its 20th month, many of us feel like we are running a race we didn’t sign up for, and it’s getting longer every mile we run. With this slog has come a renewed focus on mental health. During the pandemic, universities have poured money into psychological resources. Corporations have hired chief health officers and invested in wellness services. In 2020, the mindfulness app Headspace saw a 500 percent increase in corporate-subscription requests.
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Science Rewind: Revisiting Three of Our Favorite Early Stories
As Under the Cortex enters its second year, we decided to comb through the archive and revisit three exciting stories from our early days.
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Sex, Drugs, and Genes: Moral Attitudes Share a Genetic Basis
By studying both identical and fraternal twins, researchers suggest that largely the same heredity factors that influence openness to casual sex also influence a person’s moral views toward recreational drug use.
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Mindfulness Meditation can Make Some Americans More Selfish and Less Generous
When Japanese chef Yoshihiro Murata travels, he brings water with him from Japan. He says this is the only way to make truly authentic dashi, the flavorful broth essential to Japanese cuisine. There’s science to back him up: water in Japan is notably softer – which means it has fewer dissolved minerals – than in many other parts of the world. So when Americas enjoy Japanese food, they arguably aren’t getting quite the real thing. This phenomenon isn’t limited to food. Taking something out of its geographic or cultural context often changes the thing itself.
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How a Facebook Whistle-Blower Is Stoking the Kids’ Screen Time Debate
The latest burst of recriminations directed at social media emphasizes the harm that can be done to teenagers. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook Inc. product manager turned whistle-blower, says executives at Facebook are aware of research showing the company’s Instagram photo-sharing platform in particular can be detrimental to teenage girls with body-image issues. Even before the pandemic increased the time most people spend online, many parents worried about attention-sapping “screen time” warping child development. ...
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The Self-Help That No One Needs Right Now
Nothing about The Body Keeps the Score screams “best seller.” Written by the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, the book is a graphic account of his decades-long career treating survivors of traumatic experiences such as rape, incest, and war. Page after page, readers are asked to wrestle with van der Kolk’s theory that trauma can sever the connection between the mind, which wants to forget what happened, and the body, which can’t. The book isn’t academic, exactly, but it’s dense and difficult material written with psychology students in mind.