The burger or the salad? The treadmill or the sofa? Spend or save? Throughout the course of a single day, choices like these test our willpower repeatedly . . . and sometimes the choices we make can leave us feeling like a failure. If you’ve ever made a vow to practice better self-control, you know how much of a challenge it can be. But change is possible. According to Kelly McGonigal, PhD, willpower is trainable. She’ll show you how to get started with this simple and effective technique. Click on the video below to check it out – it’s just…

What if your doctor’s brain felt your pain – from being pricked with a needle all the way to surgery? It might be tough for them to get anything done, huh? Jean Decety, PhD, and his colleagues from the University of Chicago wanted to see whether physicians empathized with pain differently from the general population. They had a hunch that physicians’ brains would be better at regulating their emotional responses to pain, allowing them to stay focused on treatment. Current models suggest that empathy to pain involves two stages: an automatic, emotional sharing component, followed by a cognitive evaluation. Decety…

Stress is no joke. Aside from the sleepless nights and lots of tension, stress can also have a range of negative health effects. So how do you reduce stress? A team of researchers at the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine started looking for answers. They gathered 18 patients who had received diagnoses of breast cancer but were not in active treatment. Arguing that this was a population of people who were under high stress, researchers randomly assigned the patients to two different groups. One group received a mindfulness-based art therapy course, while the other received an education program to…

As a psychologist, empathy is obviously important. When people feel like they’re getting compassion and understanding, they are much more likely to make the changes that up until now have felt all too scary. But can empathy change our experience of pain? Does it have any impact upon how the brain responds to pain? Researchers at Michigan State University wanted to find out whether certain types of doctor-patient interaction could influence how patients react to pain. Issidoros Sarinopoulos, PhD and his colleagues randomly assigned participants to one of two groups. One group received patient-centered interviews (PCI), a style that involves…

If you’re like me, you might think that video games are just for kids. But according to Richard Restak, MD, video games can improve the brain at any age. In fact, certain types of games have even been shown to increase IQ in older adults. Richard Restak is the Clinical Professor of Neurology at George Washington Hospital University and author of Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance. Watch below to learn how video games can change the brain.   Click here to sign up. It’s fascinating to hear how these games could make us sharper and…

We can’t control the brain we’re born with, but we can control the brain we end up with. And according to Sharon Begley, there are two forces that shape our brain throughout life. Sharon Begley is the Senior Health & Science Correspondent at Reuters and co-author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain with Richard Davidson, PhD. Watch below as she talks about these two forces. Click here to sign up. As Sharon said, that’s neuroplasticity! We’ll get into a whole lot more about ways to change the brain in our interview with Sharon. You can watch the entire interview…