Psychology in the News – relationship and Neuropsychology Research

Online dating research findings

0:00Hey Ralph.

0:30Hey Jim, how are you doing today? I'm good. And we had some interesting feedback from our viewers and listeners that really liked last week, or the week before when we did psychology in the news. Remember that? Right one. So we've come up with some new things, new research that's in the news and in the area of relationships and neuroscience. Yeah. Okay. Now, relationships kind of are interesting because somewhere along the line of 50% of relationships today start from online dating.

1:13Uh-huh. And I wonder if that's a good way to begin a relationship, or is that a good way to continue a relationship? Well, here's what the research says. You know, it used to be back in the day that people met each other at a church social, they met each other at a friend's get-together or something like that by coincidence.

1:47You know, just happenstance. Yeah, just happenstance. Just happenstance. Mm-hmm. But today, people seem to say, okay, I'm lonely, which we can talk about. That's kind of an epidemic today. But, and I would like to go on a dating site and find somebody who's compatible with me and just go out, have coffee. Mm-hmm. So, they do that, and then they find that the person who seemed to be compatible is, in fact, compatible.

2:18And so, the next thing, you know, their relationship turns serious. Now, you would think, perhaps, guys like me, being old, would say, oh, no, that would be much worse than finding somebody through happenstance. Uh-huh. Turns out not to be the case. That's right. The research that's just come out says that, indeed, there's no more probability of a bad relationship or a failed relationship via online beginning than there is with the happenstance, the church social or whatever.

2:58So, hey, viewers, if you're thinking about getting out of the house, taking care of some of your loneliness through online dating, the research right now, at least, says it's okay. Yeah. No. Now, I got one. Okay, go ahead, Ralph. I was going to say, you might want to be a little careful in, you know, who seems compatible just because, you know, random strangers, et cetera, et cetera.

3:32But, you know, that's kind of your job to do the research. Yeah. Yeah, it's no more scary than random strangers that you meet at the… Church socials. Or at the bar. Yeah. And, you know, as my grandmother said to me, nothing good happens at a bar after midnight. Okay. How would a granny know that one? I wonder.

Fathers of daughters and marital sensitivity

3:57Okay. I got one here for you, Ralph. Okay. Okay. You and I are both the fathers of girls. Yes. You have one girl, Shauna, right? Shauna. And I have Lundley, Alicia, and Bridget. Right. What would the research say, do you think, about the difference between guys like us who are dads of girls versus, oh, maybe a neighbor who's dads of boys? Yeah. Any idea what the research could say?

4:29Well, I would think that dads of boys would be more resolute, more man up, kind of less sensitive to their boys saying, I was bullied at school. So, you know, okay. But what about the carryover to the marital relationship? Any thoughts?

4:59Well, suppose I was the father of a girl. Would that make me more sensitive to my wife's life? Bong! You got it, kid. Yeah, that's what the research says, that dads of girls, like you and I, are more sensitive to our spouse in a marital relationship. Okay. Whether our spouses would say that or not, Ralph, that's a whole other thing. Yeah. That's another piece of research.

5:30Well, I think my spouse would have mixed feelings. She says that sometimes I'm a very sensitive man, and she says sometimes I'm an idiot. Oh, you're mainly an idiot around me, Ralph. I don't know. So she sees another part of the profile here. Yeah. Okay.

Positivity and relationship success

5:55Hey, got one more here for you. Okay. Okay. And this kind of goes along with being an idiot or sensitive, I suppose. Because within a relationship, some people are kind of down, kind of like Eeyore. Remember Eeyore? Yeah. The donkey in Bethany the Pooh. Everything was bad. Everything's bad. Yeah. Yeah. And some people are like, Pooh, everything's wonderful. Yeah. Everything's positive. You know, I wouldn't say that you're an idiot, Ralph.

6:25I'd say that you were a very creative individual. How does that feel? Yeah. That feels better. Better than me saying that you're an idiot, right? Yeah. Okay. So how does that work within a relationship? Now, this should be a no-brainer, right? Right. Yeah. Well, my assumption would be that people who are mostly positive, I don't think everybody can be positive all the time, but people who are mostly positive are going to have a

6:56better relationship with their spouse. And that seems to be the research. And so, folks out there, if you have a choice between being a New York for a moment or being a Winnie the Pooh, choose Pooh. Okay. Your spouse will enjoy it. Yeah. So, you know, generally speaking, be happier. And, you know, I just, I had a thing from somebody I was with yesterday who said that after the

7:31faculty meeting, she was getting together with her husband and they were going to eat sushi at a local place and she'd maybe have a martini. And she was very happy about it. Happy after a faculty meeting? Well, happy looking forward to date night with her husband. Okay. Yeah. So, the thing is that, you know, date nights, getting together to just go for a walk in the

8:02park, something that's positive, that's all good. Mm-hmm. This research, I think, looked mainly at verbal behavior. And so, verbal behavior that is positive was the one that cemented the relationship. Now, you have some things here today about neuroscience, right?

Brain proteins and aging research

8:21I do.

Brain proteins and aging research

8:22Okay. And there's a few things that are really interesting. And one of them, and it's a totally random selection of things to start with, but one of them, I'm going to start with mice. Mice? Mice. Wee little white mice. Okay. So, you think to yourself, okay, well, why would somebody do neuroscience research with

8:53mice? And the answer is... Look, they're cheap, and you can get several generations of mice, you know, and they're easy to take care of in the lab. Yeah. How am I doing? Very good. Okay. So, mice are a common subject. Now, what the scientists found is that there's a level of a brain protein called MENIN, M-E-N-I-N. MENIN? MENIN. That used to be a deodorant, I think.

9:23Yeah. MENIN deodorant? MENIN deodorant. Okay. Yeah. Well, anyway, this is a different thing. It's a protein in the brain. Mm-hmm. And it may help drive aging. You mean it speeds up aging? Yeah. Oops. Lower levels in mice are linked to inflammation, cognitively decline, weaker bones, and thinner

9:56skin. Yeah. Well, inflammation will do that to you. That's no question. So, if you took a mouse and you deliberately interfered with their production of MENIN in the brain, and then you looked at how they were aging, you would find that they were aging faster than a cohort that didn't have the MENIN reduced. Oh, okay. You're saying that MENIN in the brain, which is probably a natural substance, right?

10:26Natural substance. Okay. Is good for knocking down inflammation and these other side effects. Yeah. So, you want to do something to keep the MENIN up, right? Right. So, if you then took those mice who deliberately had been reduced in MENIN production, and you said, okay, what are we going to do? We're going to introduce MENIN into them again. Okay. And, you know, just kind of miraculously, their skin thickened up, their weaker bones strengthened,

11:05their cognitively decline reversed, and they could do mazes again as well as they ever could. And the other thing that's part of this is there's an amino acid called D-serine, which improved cognition noticeably. Okay. Is this something that we can get over the counter at the drugstore? Unfortunately, right at the moment, it has not in any way been applied to primates like

11:38monkeys, and it hasn't... How about human beings? It hasn't been applied... Or primates, for heaven's sakes. Yeah. It hasn't been applied to humans yet. Okay. But I think the research suggests that it is coming probably 10, 15 years from now, and this could affect people who have things like Alzheimer's. Possible, yeah. Maybe Parkinson's, maybe Huntington's. All those things are associated with inflammation, maybe.

12:13Okay. Yeah. And tau tangles in the brain that you say, okay, well, how can we reduce that? Well, it may be that helping D-serine and Menin to assume normal levels or maybe even more than normal levels will help to unclog the brain. Yeah. So it's not available at the local pharmacy. And folks, don't go into the dark web looking for this stuff, okay? It's...

12:43The product that you get there is probably not good. Probably not good, yeah. Okay. So that's hopeful. You know, we're looking more and more at things that keep the brain healthy. And a healthy brain kind of goes along with a healthy body. Yeah.

Pink noise and cerebral spinal fluid

13:04Yeah.

Pink noise and cerebral spinal fluid

13:05Now, one of the things, Jim, that I want to ask you is what's your reaction to noise? That kind of noise? Okay. Noise, I don't like. Okay. You know, I just... I have a couple of grandkids. They were over yesterday and they were making noise. Just random stuff like that. And every time they went, you know, I would... Yeah.

13:35You know, so... And Karen is very sensitive to noise and she... So is Sheila. Yeah. And so a lot of people are really noise aversive. Noise aversive, yep. Yeah. They really don't like it. But there's a positive kind of noise called pink noise. Mm-hmm. Now, pink noise is basically a staticky sound. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

14:06Mm-hmm. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. And there are two things with it. The staticky sound is low-level vibration and higher-level vibration at a level that people don't attend to. They don't notice. Mm-hmm. But it's there. Okay. Now, what happens is through the day, we are doing all the stuff that we do through the

14:41day. Mm-hmm. And we generate lactic acid, which is an acid that results from, for example, exercise. Right. And worn-out proteins that have exhausted their utility. And what happens is they pass into a fluid that surrounds our spine known as cerebral spinal fluid. Aha, yep. And that fluid is around the spine. But where does it end up?

15:12We talked about the brain a few minutes ago. Where does the fluid end up? Cerebral. Cerebral. That's a clue, right? Right. Okay. So it ends up in the brain. Right. So you've got lots of waste products in the brain. You want to get rid of them. When do you get rid of them? Is that when a person gets wasted, Ralph? No, unfortunately. Okay. So when do you get rid of them? You get rid of them when you sleep. Yep. That's another advantage of getting some sleep. Yeah. Right? So the thing is that you say, okay, well, that's good.

15:45But cerebral spinal fluid, which moves up to the brain and down through the spine, and as it moves down through the spine, it passes waste products into the rest of your system that deals with waste products, kidneys and livers and so on and so forth. Right. That is good. Yeah. But the cerebral spinal fluid only moves so fast. And so if you've got a lot of junk in it, it might be like the Mississippi River kind

16:17of going slow. Slow, yeah. Uh-huh. So what we want to do is increase the flow of the cerebral spinal fluid. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now- Get it. Stop moving out. Okay. I get it. So one of the ways that we're finding that we can do that is pink noise.

16:40Okay. Now, how do we administer this? Well, you can administer it. You need, right at the moment, you need two things. You need an MRI on the brain and an MRI on the spine to find out how fast cerebral spinal is moving. Okay. In you. Mm-hmm. So it's not a general thing. It's particularly to you. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then you also have to find out whether you sleep deeply.

17:12Mm-hmm. So some people seem to sleep very lightly. Some people fall into deep sleep. Mm-hmm. Delta sleep. Delta sleep. So we want as much delta sleep as we can. So one of the things that pink noise does, it encourages delta sleep. Okay. And it also encourages faster movement of cerebral spinal fluid, CSF. Yeah. So the thing is, you say, okay, well, that's great, but I don't want to go and have, you

17:48know, an MRI and have to pay for it. Well, now they're getting to the point where they say, we can maybe do this, and instead of going to bed with speakers on your head, what you do is you get a little headband. Mm-hmm. And you put it over your head, and that'll encourage deep delta sleep, and it'll encourage fast movement of CSF. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's a good idea.

18:19Because I was thinking, you know, most of us don't have an MRI in our backyard. Probably not. Yeah. And I don't think insurance is going to pay for something that experimental. But you can go onto the internet and type in pink noise or pink. Pink noise. Yeah. And you'll get. Yeah. And you can hear it. So what you can do, and as a matter of fact, Ralph, we've done this in the past. We've had some, our viewers can go back into past episodes where we have actually had green

18:55noise and yellow noise, which are also associated with relaxation. Yeah. And then we had various visual images that went along with it. So, you know, I was working yesterday with Flixr, and that was the program that actually helped us make these things. And I think what we'll do is try and do a Flixr with some pink noise. Now, we'll, I say, we'll try it. And if you see it, when you log in, you know, give it a try.

19:29You can, you know, put your earphones on and just relax. Right.

HEPA filters and executive function

19:36Yeah. And then, Jim, the third one for neuroscience, and this, I think, is going to be kind of interesting to a lot of people because this is actually practical. Okay. So do you and Sheila at your house have a HEPA filter, an air movement HEPA filter kind of thing? I think so. So we, I did a scientific survey of one person as we came into the studio today, and one of

20:14the faculty said, yes, she had a HEPA filter because she had allergies. And I told her congratulations because the study shows that people who use a HEPA filter in their house reduce things like pet dander, dust mites, air pollution, et cetera. And overall, they end up having about a 12% faster speed on executive function and decision-making.

20:54Thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, impulse control. Well, that sounds great, Ralph, because the first one you talked about, we can't get at all, the second one requires a lot of workup, but hey, we can go, any of you can go to the local hardware store and get a HEPA filter, right? Yeah. And that will help your executive function, your decision-making and so on and so forth. Now, the thing is, 12% is probably not going to jump out and say, oh, I'm much better, but

21:28it's going to be there. Mm-hmm. Especially if you start with 40%, then 12% gets you up to 52. So I think that incremental stuff, I think, is kind of good. Yeah. Well, it was fun looking at some of the new things in the literature. They're not really exciting, but most research isn't. You know, the thing is that these are on the horizon, and so it's a question of five or six years ago, years from now, what are we going to see?

22:00Indeed.

22:05So don't forget to keep your stick on the ice, because we're all in this together.