The secret to aging successfully may not be what you think. Instead of focusing on physical exercise or mental stimulation alone, research suggests that cultivating curiosity can play a significant role in maintaining cognitive health and even preventing Alzheimer’s disease. An international team of psychologists has found that older adults who maintain a curious mindset and seek out new knowledge relevant to their interests may be able to offset or prevent dementia.

This finding challenges prior research that suggested curiosity decreases with age. The study, published in the journal PLOS One, was led by UCLA psychologist Alan Castel and involved a large sample of participants between the ages of 20 and 84. The researchers aimed to tease apart two types of curiosity: trait curiosity (a general level of inquisitiveness) and state curiosity (a momentary feeling of curiosity experienced when engaging with specific topics).

To assess these forms of curiosity, the researchers asked participants to complete an online questionnaire and guess answers to hard trivia questions. Analysis showed that while trait curiosity did decline across the adult lifespan, state curiosity increased sharply after middle age and continued upward well into old age.

The study’s lead author, Mary Whatley, notes that this finding may be related to selectivity theory, which suggests that as people get older, they become more selective about what they want to learn. This aligns with research on lifelong learning, where many older adults engage in activities like taking classes or picking up hobbies.

Castel’s own work on memory has shown that people tend to quickly forget information that doesn’t engage their curiosity. Anecdotally, many older adults report that staying curious is crucial for maintaining cognitive health and preventing dementia.

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The findings suggest that cultivating curiosity can be a key factor in healthy aging and may even help prevent or offset Alzheimer’s disease.

The Feeling of Control: Uncovering the Secrets of Sense of Agency in Motor Learning

Have you ever tried to control a robot or a computer cursor with your body? If so, you might have experienced a feeling of agency – a sense that you are in charge of what’s happening. This sensation is crucial for tasks and well-being in everyday life, but its mechanisms are still not fully understood.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have shed new light on how we develop this sense of agency when learning new motor skills. They used a specialized glove to track changes in people’s feelings of control as they learned to map their hand movements onto a computer cursor.

Traditionally, the brain was thought to build an internal model of expected outcomes from actions, which would then be compared with actual sensory feedback to create a sense of agency. However, this “comparator model” doesn’t fully explain how we learn new skills, like playing a sport or relearning everyday activities after an injury.

The researchers found that when people first start learning a new motor skill, they rely on temporal synchronicity – the hand and cursor movements are in sync – to judge whether they’re in control. However, as they practice more, they develop a sense of agency when their hand movements align with the learned mapping.

In contrast, simply imitating gestures without actively discovering the underlying rules doesn’t lead to a strong sense of agency. This suggests that motor exploration is essential for building a structural representation of the skill and developing a sense of control.

These findings have important implications for the development of human-computer interfaces in new technology, as well as for rehabilitation and virtual reality applications. By understanding how we develop a sense of agency when learning new skills, researchers can design more effective training programs that enhance our feelings of control and confidence.

(Word count: 420)

The Unseen Impact: How Father’s Mental Health Can Affect Children for Years to Come

When we think of happy families, we often imagine a loving mother and father who are supportive and present in their children’s lives. However, the reality is that fathers can struggle with mental health issues just like mothers, and when this happens, it can have a profound impact on their children.

Research from Rutgers Health has shown that when paternal depression goes undiagnosed or unaddressed, the negative social and behavioral effects on children can persist for years. In fact, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that children exposed to paternal depression when entering kindergarten are far more likely to have teacher-reported behavioral difficulties and poor social skills at age 9.

The study, led by Kristine Schmitz, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, analyzed data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a national birth cohort that randomly sampled births in 20 large U.S. cities from 1998 to 2000.

The researchers found that children whose fathers reported depressive symptoms when they were age 5 were significantly more likely to exhibit restlessness, defiance, and anger as well as present lower levels of cooperation and self-esteem by the time they were age 9.

Schmitz emphasized the importance of considering depression in both parents, not just mothers. “Depression is treatable, and to support the whole family, pediatricians must start talking with dads about it and developing father-focused interventions that meet their needs,” she said.

The study’s findings suggest that interventions to identify and support fathers with depressive symptoms, and their children, could help attenuate the link between paternal depression and child behavior in school. By acknowledging and addressing paternal depression, we can improve not only fathers’ well-being but also the well-being of their children.

As Schmitz said, “As parents, we can model that when we struggle, we reach out and get help. That’s a lesson children will carry for a lifetime.”