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One second of life (or two)
brain, cancer, mental health Marcel Ruiz brain, cancer, mental health Marcel Ruiz

One second of life (or two)

At the intersection between psychiatry and oncology, there is a branch of clinical practice known as psycho-oncology. It involves health professionals from medicine, psychology, nursing, and many others.

You may well have had the opportunity to have met or been treated by one of them, just because cancer and mental health go hand in hand.

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Spaces for brain restoration: reserve and resilience
mental health, brain, aging Marcel Ruiz mental health, brain, aging Marcel Ruiz

Spaces for brain restoration: reserve and resilience

Why do some people who lived through war, abuse or terrible loss overcome these situations, becoming stronger? In physics, a material is resilient when deformed by a force, recovering after its original shape. In recent years, neuroscientists have realized that the brain behaves similarly.

For different reasons, our brain can react and restructure itself in traumatic situations, although the 'restoration' capacity varies across the population. The scientific community has focused on this capacity in the last decade to understand it, delve into its mechanisms, and try to find out how to enhance it.

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On brain balance, overthinking, attention, and a basin

On brain balance, overthinking, attention, and a basin

For quite a while I have been thinking about different ideas, such as the balance of the brain, the thoughts that go round and round and the capacity to pay attention. A few days ago I woke up with a need to write about all this. Right after sending the kids to school, I started typing on the computer to see if anything made sense.

After spending some time banging on the keyboard, I realised that all these thoughts needed to come out, perhaps to restore the balance. This article is about biology, brain homeostasis, thoughts, attention and tailoring a story, with a metaphor included.

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