Our social relations influence our health not only psychologically but also biologically. For the elderly being socially isolated is as bad for their health as having diabetes or high blood pressure. For teenagers it is as bad as being obese or physically inactive. In youth and old age there is a direct relationship between number...
Prevention is better than treatment. A Swedish study shows that people who are about to fall ill, but do not yet show clinical signs of disease, emit unpleasant olfactory and visual signals. Photographs of people’s faces taken a few hours after their immune system was activated following contagion (and thus a few days before the...
A few considerations on the measles vaccine: Molecular biology studies reveal that many infectious diseases of humans derive from similar diseases in animals of the distant past. Measles used to be, although in a different form, a disease affecting cows. In places where man lived at close quarters with livestock and where the population density...
By the age of 2-3 years most children are capable of asking for an ice-cream or saying they do not want to go to bed or expressing a preference for a doll or a toy train, yet understanding that 2+4=6 is still a long way off. Why this predisposition for language and not for numbers?...
Given the importance of children as a genetic vehicle, it is natural that natural selection facilitated the development of powerful mechanisms to ensure survival of species. It is thus strange that many animal species do not bother to bring up their young ones. In some species both parents are involved in bringing them up, in...
By the age of three years children identify themselves in a cultural group. They choose toys and clothes that are similar to those of their friends and speak like them. They understand that at the heart of this identification there is a concept: “We” do things this way. Children who want to belong to a...
In a study involving 140 three year olds divided into 70 pairs of boys or girls but not mixed groups, children of each group were asked to perform a task to win a prize. Each group faced one of three situations that made completing the task impossible. In the first case a tool necessary to...
The first five years of life are critical for a child’s development in terms of relationship with other people, learning to speak, physical and psychological growth. In this period, called infancy, parents exchange information, visit pediatricians and sometimes child psychologists, they plough through the internet and do whatever is possible to make sure that their...
In an ever more connected world it helps to know the intentions, feelings, requirements and priorities of others. Finding solutions to problems that concern different cultures and religions requires a kind of cooperation we are not familiar with. It is not easy to put yourself in the shoes of people who are running away from...
We spend quite a few years of our life playing and imagining situations that are hardly credible. Why? The evolutionary reply is that it helps us think about the alternatives. Imagining brings in a new dimension, that of what might be and not just of how things actually are. This is a typically human trait...
