Center for Positive Psychology

12/16/2025

12/15/2025

Aging rarely rewires the brain overnight. Instead, it shows up gradually—in slower recall, divided attention, and small cognitive slips. The real question is whether anything can slow it down. While most strategies for improving short-term cognition and memory suggest leaning on odd brain teasers or cryptic crossword puzzles, new research hints that one of the best ways is to broaden your linguistic abilities by speaking multiple languages.

Find out how it works and how to get started: https://on.natgeo.com/4oO3gwE

12/15/2025

https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/services/penn-resilience-training

12/07/2025

NOT an instant process, but as with all learning, repetition makes the links
and patterns stronger. https://www.facebook.com/share/17oSHcAmqj/

🧠🤔 Your brain is literally recording every thought you think. Scientists have discovered something incredible about the way negative thinking actually changes your brain's physical structure. What you're about to learn might change how you think forever. The terrifying part? Most people are doing this to themselves without even realizing it.

How do you break out of a negative thought loop? Has learning about concepts like this changed your perspective?

Disclaimer: This content is for informational and educational purposes only.

12/07/2025

12/07/2025

🧠 As AI “therapists” go mainstream, a new study warns they may quietly be crossing ethical lines that human clinicians are trained never to cross.​

A Brown University team asked trained peer counselors to interact with leading large language models—variants of GPT, Claude, and Llama—using prompts that explicitly instructed them to act like cognitive behavioral or dialectical behavior therapists. Licensed psychologists then analyzed simulated chats and uncovered 15 distinct ethical risks, even though the bots were “wrapped” in evidence‑based therapy language.​

These risks clustered into five troubling themes: shallow, one‑size‑fits‑all advice that ignores personal context; weak collaboration in which the model steers the session or validates distorted beliefs; performative empathy that sounds caring but lacks real understanding; biased responses around gender, culture, or religion; and dangerously inconsistent handling of crises, including conversations involving suicidal thoughts. Unlike human therapists, AI counseling systems currently operate with no clear regulatory bodies or malpractice accountability, despite being marketed for highly vulnerable users.​

The authors stress that AI could still help bridge gaps in mental health access, but only with robust ethical, educational, and legal standards and far more rigorous human‑in‑the‑loop evaluation than today’s quick deployment culture allows. Until such safeguards exist, users are urged to treat AI chatbots as informational tools—not substitutes for professional care—especially when navigating severe distress or life‑threatening situations.​

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📄 RESEARCH PAPER

📌 Zainab Iftikhar et al., “How LLM Counselors Violate Ethical Standards in Mental Health Practice: A Practitioner-Informed Framework”, Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (2025)

12/07/2025

🎻 Picking up an instrument in later life may do more for your brain than simply adding music to your days.

Two new studies suggest that musical training helps preserve “youthful” brain function and may slow age-related cognitive decline. In one experiment, researchers scanned the brains of 50 older adults, half of whom had played an instrument for more than three decades, alongside 24 younger non-musicians while they tried to understand speech in a noisy crowd. Older musicians’ brains responded more like the younger group, relying on efficient right-hemisphere networks instead of recruiting extra regions as non-musicians did, a pattern associated with stronger cognitive reserve.​

The second study followed 53 older adults, average age 73, who learned an instrument for four months and were then revisited four years later. Brain scans showed that those who kept practising had preserved the volume of the putamen – a region crucial for movement, learning, and memory – and performed better on verbal memory tests than peers who had stopped playing.

The findings suggest that sustained musical practice, even begun in old age, may help maintain both brain structure and function, potentially lowering dementia risk when combined with other healthy lifestyle habits and social engagement.​

Follow Science Sphere for regular scientific updates

📄 RESEARCH PAPER

📌 Sylvain Moreno et al., “Long-Term Musical Training Preserves Neural Efficiency for Speech-in-Noise in Older Adults,” PLOS Biology (2024)

12/07/2025

11/26/2025

https://www.ted.com/talks/amishi_jha_how_to_tame_your_wandering_mind

Amishi Jha studies how we pay attention: the process by which our brain decides what's important out of the constant stream of information it receives. Both external distractions (like stress) and internal ones (like mind-wandering) diminish our attention's power, Jha says -- but some simple techniq...