Forgive & forget, or forgive & heal?
How your brain can reframe past hurts and heal itself
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
Forgiveness rewrites how the brain stores a hurtful memory: We've always been told to "forgive and forget," but it’s actually more like “forgive and heal.” A new study finds that forgiving someone who hurt you can change how your brain stores the memory, making it feel less upsetting without erasing what actually happened. People still recalled being wronged but they no longer felt wounded by it. Forgiveness is a form of emotional wound care.
They knew the pill was fake but their memory still improved: In a fascinating new trial, healthy older adults saw measurable improvements in memory, physical performance and stress after taking placebo pills for just three weeks.. But the surprising part was that the placebo worked even when participants knew the pills were placebos. This makes “open-label placebos” a promising and ethically acceptable strategy for supporting healthy aging.
There’s more than cuteness behind the tilt: When Fido gives you that endearing head-cock, he may be more than the cutest boi. He could be deep in thought. By studying rare dogs who can learn the names of dozens of toys, researchers found these "gifted word learners" tilted their heads in 43% of trials when asked to fetch a toy by name, against just 2% for ordinary dogs. Each dog favoured the same side to tilt, wherever its owner stood, not listening harder, but thinking harder.
Wondermaker of the week: Professor Claire Spottiswoode: For over a decade, the zoologist could be found in the wooded savannas of northern Mozambique, studying the Yao honey-hunters of the Niassa reserve and the wild birds who work alongside them. Together they've shown that people and a free-living wild bird, the greater honeyguide, actually talk to each other. A hunter calls out with a trill and the bird answers, leading him, tree by tree, to a hidden bees' nest. Spottiswoode uncovered this centuries-old conversation handed down from father to son and from bird to bird, documenting one of the last true partnerships left between humans and a wild animal.
With wonder,
