When you meet a stranger for the first time, how do you judge your potential to be friends? Is it their personality? Their style? Their smile? According to a new study in Scientific Reports, scent might have something to do with it, as smell preferences can predict whether people see each other as potential friends. “People take a lot in when they’re meeting face to face. But scent — which people are registering at some level, though probably not consciously — forecasts whether you end u ...read more
Mental health for U.S. children has declined before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic — a substantial break in a trend that has long shown this age group generally reports feelings of happiness and well-being, according to a report in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.Children under 18 years reported a slow, steady climb in anxiety and depression from 2016 to 2022. In contrast, incidents of physical health problems, such as asthma, severe headache or migraine, and heart conditions declined or ...read more
Denver, Colorado became the first U.S. city to decriminalize psilocybin — a chemical found in “magic mushrooms” — in May of 2019. Since then, usage across the U.S. has bloomed significantly. Often known for a hallucinogenic effect, many people have started using psilocybin as a mental health and pain treatment. A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine examines the increase in psilocybin consumption along with the benefits and risks of taking it. “We found that since 20 ...read more
Scientists have gradually shifted their stance on lucid dreams (LD) — the ability to know that you are dreaming and even controlling your fate within that dream state.Many were initially skeptical when, in the 1970s, Stanford psychophysiologist Stephen LaBerge proposed the concept. Psychologists slowly came around, conducting research and tapping into patients’ lucid dreaming capacity for therapeutic purposes.Now, a team of neuroscientists has collected and analyzed the largest known set of ...read more
In February 2025, police found actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, dead in their California home. Authorities now believe that Arakawa died from an infection. Hackman, who had dementia, appeared to have died a week later from an inability to care for himself. Hackman was one of many Americans living with memory loss. Currently, almost 7 million Americans ages 65 and older are living with dementia. The number is predicted to almost double by 2060 while the amount of available caregiv ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine