Empathy often avoided because of mental effort

 NEUROSCIENCE NEWS    APRIL 22, 2019

Summary: The cognitive cost of empathy may cause people to be less empathetic to others.

Source: APA

Even when feeling empathy for others isn’t financially costly or emotionally draining, people will still avoid it because they think empathy requires too much mental effort, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Empathy, the ability to understand the feelings of another person, is often viewed as a virtue that encourages helping behaviors. But people often don’t want to feel empathy.

“There is a common assumption that people stifle feelings of empathy because they could be depressing or costly, such as making donations to charity,” said lead researcher C. Daryl Cameron, PhD. “But we found that people primarily just don’t want to make the mental effort to feel empathy toward others, even when it involves feeling positive emotions.”

The study, which was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, included 11 experiments with more than 1,200 participants. Cameron led a team of researchers at Penn State University, where he is an assistant professor of psychology, and the University of Toronto.

The researchers designed an “Empathy Selection Task” to test whether cognitive costs or mental effort, could deter empathy. Over a series of trials, the researchers used two decks of cards that each featured grim photos of child refugees. For one deck, participants were told just to describe the physical characteristics of the person on the card. For the other deck, they were told to try to feel empathy for the person in the photo and think about what that person was feeling. Participants were told to choose freely from either deck in each trial.

In some additional experiments, the researchers used decks that featured images of sad or smiling people. When given the choice of choosing between decks, participants consistently picked the decks that didn’t require feeling empathy, even for the photos of happy people.

“We saw a strong preference to avoid empathy even when someone else was expressing joy,” Cameron said.

Across all of the experiments, participants on average chose the empathy deck 35% of the time, showing a strong preference for the deck that didn’t require empathy.

There also weren’t any financial costs for feeling empathy in the study because no one was asked to donate time or money to support child refugees or anyone else featured in the photos.

In survey questions after each experiment, most participants reported that empathy felt more cognitively challenging, saying it required more effort and that they felt less good at it than they did at describing the physical characteristics of other people. Participants who reported that feeling empathy was mentally demanding or made them feel insecure, irritated or distressed were more likely to have avoided the empathy deck during the experiments.

Across all of the experiments, participants on average chose the empathy deck 35% of the time, showing a strong preference for the deck that didn’t require empathy. The image is in the public domain.

Can people be encouraged to feel empathy if they think they are good at it? In two experiments, half of the participants were told that they were better than 95% of others on the empathy deck and 50% better for the objective physical characteristics deck, while the other group was told the opposite. Participants who were told they were good at feeling empathy were more likely to select cards from the empathy deck and report that empathy required less mental effort.

The cognitive costs of empathy could cause people to avoid it, but it may be possible to increase empathy by encouraging people that they can do it well, Cameron said.

“If we can shift people’s motivations toward engaging in empathy, then that could be good news for society as a whole,” Cameron said. “It could encourage people to reach out to groups who need help, such as immigrants, refugees and the victims of natural disasters.”

ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Source:

APA

Media Contacts: 

Media Office – APA

Image Source:

The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: Closed access

“Empathy Is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of Its Cognitive Costs”

C. Daryl Cameron, PhD, Julian A. Scheffer, MA, Eliana Hadjiandreou, BA, Pennsylvania State University; Cendri A. Hutcherson, PhD, Amanda M. Ferguson, MA, and Michael Inzlicht, PhD. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 18 APR 2019 doi:10.1037/xge0000595

Abstract

Empathy Is Hard Work: People Choose to Avoid Empathy Because of Its Cognitive Costs

Empathy is considered a virtue, yet it fails in many situations, leading to a basic question: When given a choice, do people avoid empathy? And if so, why? Whereas past work has focused on material and emotional costs of empathy, here, we examined whether people experience empathy as cognitively taxing and costly, leading them to avoid it. We developed the empathy selection task, which uses free choices to assess the desire to empathize. 

Participants make a series of binary choices, selecting situations that lead them to engage in empathy or an alternative course of action. In each of 11 studies (N = 1,204) and a meta-analysis, we found a robust preference to avoid empathy, which was associated with perceptions of empathy as more effortful and aversive and less efficacious. Experimentally increasing empathy efficacy eliminated empathy avoidance, suggesting that cognitive costs directly cause empathy choice. When given the choice to share others’ feelings, people act as if it is not worth the effort.

https://neurosciencenews.com/mental-effort-empathy-12027/

Brain regions linked to memory and emotion help humans navigate smell Neuroscience News

 NEUROSCIENCE NEWS   APRIL 22, 2019 

Summary: During navigation tasks using a ‘smell scape’, the entorhinal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex elicit grid cell-like activity.

Source: University of Pennsylvania

Species like dogs and rodents use their sense of smell to navigate toward desirable items and places and away from those they should avoid. But do humans have the same capabilities? It’s a question University of Pennsylvania neurobiologist Jay Gottfried has been trying to answer, and by mixing pine and banana scents to create a unique “smellscape,” he was able to decipher how the human brain uses such odor information to move through particular two-dimensional environments.

“Each of our five senses plays a unique role, but smell seems to be treated like the black sheep of the family,” says Gottfried, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the departments of Psychology and Neurology. “Obviously, you don’t need your sense of smell to take a test or drive a car, but it has a major impact on our quality of life.”

Gottfried has been studying the science of smell for more than 15 years. This work initially explored how the brain allows humans to detect, discriminate, and identify odors. More recently though, his research focus has shifted to olfactory spatial navigation, arguably one of the olfactory system’s most important functions.

That subject is the basis of a new paper he and colleagues published in the journal Neuron. Their study used varying combinations of pine and banana scents to build a two-dimensional grid, what Gottfried describes as a smellscape. As participants moved between “start” and “end” grid points–based on the odor mixtures they smelled–their brain responses revealed an activation pattern with hexagonal symmetry that was acting as a de facto olfactory map. What’s more, this pattern resembled grid-like mapping structures previously shown to assist animals in other forms of spatial navigation.

“Several exciting papers have revealed that using functional imaging techniques, you can find proxies of this grid-like architecture in the human brain,” Gottfried says. “What we did in this study is bring together conceptual ideas about odor navigation with grid-cell models, then used a set of smells to define a two-dimensional space.”

Grid-cell models gained traction with human cognitive neuroscientists after May-Britt Moser, Edvard Moser, and John O’Keefe won the 2014 Nobel Prize for their discovery of this system in rats. Their model showed that as the animals moved around a circular arena, neurons fired at periodic intervals, creating a pattern that resembled a tightly packed array of hexagons. The resulting six-fold coordinate system was shown to provide an anchor for spatial orientation, guiding an animal’s search strategy within an environment.

Gottfried and his colleagues applied this idea to their study, recruiting 25 subjects to complete an olfactory navigation task through an “arena” defined by six intensity levels of pine and six intensity levels of banana. Picture a grid with 36 squares, with banana defining one axis and pine defining the other. In the experiment, subjects had to mentally navigate from a “start” odor (some combination of the banana-pine mixture) to an “end” odor (a different combination), then indicate whether their movement matched their predicted final position in this smellscape.

With this experimental design, the Penn scientists were first trying to understand whether subjects could successfully complete such an odor task, and their results show that humans can learn to navigate this way.

But they also wondered whether their results might reveal a grid-cell structure similar to the one already documented in animals. Their functional imaging data suggest that odor navigation in humans elicits similar grid-cell activity in the entorhinal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and anterior piriform cortex, three brain areas intimately connected to the limbic and olfactory systems. Importantly, the researchers discovered that participants with stronger grid-like activity in the entorhinal cortex more successfully moved from the first odor to the second.

Gottfried acknowledges that unlike a real-world setting, in this experiment subjects weren’t actively, physically moving through space. Rather, “movement” involved mental navigation between two odor coordinates in the smellscape. But this study setup turned out to have something else in common with true-to-life scenarios.

“Odor intensity increases with distance to the smell’s source,” Gottfried says. “For example, as you get closer you to your favorite donut shop, the stronger the donut smell becomes. In this way, the odor space we created, where banana and pine smells go from strong to weak, suggests that this design roughly captures what a person might naturally encounter.”

In the future, Gottfried plans to alter his experimental set-up, from a more abstract perceptual prediction task, to a virtual reality computer game in which participants will need to track and locate a specific scent as they move through an odor-filled arena. “Through trial and error, they’ll start building up an understanding of the relational position of the odors in virtual space,” he explains. “Then we’ll apply similar analyses to see whether grid cells come into play.”

It’s all part of a body of work meant to foster a greater understanding of smell, which Gottfried says he feels fortunate to study.

“Imagine everyone gathering around a Thanksgiving table and one person can’t smell the food. They can’t really engage in that conversation or feel connected to the shared experience of the meal. There are a lot of examples like that,” he says, adding, “The sense of smell serves a very unique purpose and confers one-of-a-kind behavioral advantages that other senses can’t provide.”

Funding: Funding for the work came from National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (Grant R01DC010014).

Jay Gottfried is a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor an

d the Arthur H. Rubenstein University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with joint faculty appointments in the Department of Neurology in the Perelman School of Medicine and the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences.

ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Source:

University of Pennsylvania

Media Contacts: 

Michele Berger – University of Pennsylvania

Image Source:

The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: Closed access

“Grid-like Neural Representations Support Olfactory Navigation of a Two-Dimensional Odor Space”

Xiaojun Bao, Eva Gjorgieva, Laura K. Shanahan, James D. Howard, Thorsten Kahnt, Jay A. Gottfriedi. Neuron 22 APR 2019 doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2019.03.034

Abstract:

Grid-like Neural Representations Support Olfactory Navigation of a Two-Dimensional Odor Space

Highlights

• How the human brain supports navigation in an odorous landscape is poorly understood

• Subjects learn to orient within a 2D intensity space defined by two different odors

• Odor navigation elicits grid-cell-like activity in prefrontal and entorhinal cortices

• Findings suggest a mechanism by which the brain constructs olfactory cognitive maps

Summary

Searching for food, friends, and mates often begins with an airborne scent. Importantly, odor concentration rises with physical proximity to an odorous source, suggesting a framework for orienting within olfactory landscapes to optimize behavior. Here, we created a two-dimensional odor space composed purely of odor stimuli to model how a navigator encounters smells in a natural environment. We show that human subjects can learn to navigate in olfactory space and form predictions of to-be-encountered smells. During navigation, fMRI responses in entorhinal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex take the form of grid-like representations with hexagonal periodicity and entorhinal grid strength scaled with behavioral performance across subjects. The identification of olfactory grid-like codes with 6-fold symmetry highlights a unique neural mechanism by which odor information can be assembled into spatially navigable cognitive maps, optimizing orientation, and path finding toward an odor source.

https://neurosciencenews.com/olfaction-memory-emotion-12026/

Early Genetic Mutations May Contribute to Mitochondria Dysfunction and Parkinson’s Development, Study Suggests

APRIL 22, 2019  BY ALICE MELÃO 

Genetic mutations and consequent impaired activity of mitochondria — known as the powerhouses of the cell — may be a first step contributing to the development of Parkinson’s disease later in life, a new study suggests.

The study, “Neural Stem Cells of Parkinson’s Disease Patients Exhibit Aberrant Mitochondrial Morphology and Functionality,” was published in Stem Cell Reports.

Parkinson’s disease is characterized by the degeneration and death of a specific group of nerve cells — called dopaminergic neurons —  in the midbrain, which are responsible for producing a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This neurotransmitter acts as a chemical messenger used by nerve cells to communicate.

It remains unclear what exactly triggers these damaging effects, but several studies have provided evidence that both genetic and environmental factors play a critical role.

Mitochondria are small organelles inside cells that provide energy and are known as the cell’s “powerhouses.” Parkinson’s patients are known to have impaired mitochondriaactivity, which is believed to contribute to the underlying mechanisms of the disease. Still, mitochondria’s role in Parkinson’s disease remains elusive.

An international team of researchers has now found that stem cells carrying a mutated LRRK2 gene —  previously linked to familial and sporadic Parkinson’s cases — recapitulate key mitochondrial defects described only in mature dopaminergic neurons.

The team analyzed 13 cultures of human-derived neuroepithelial stem cells (NESCs) — early progenitors of brain cells — that were obtained from three Parkinson’s patients carrying the mutated LRRK2 gene and four age- and gender-matched healthy donors.

They found that patient-derived NESCs had significantly altered patterns of mitochondrial gene expression compared with NESCs from healthy donors. Also, LRRK2 mutated stem cells had more mitochondria but these had aberrant structures and showed reduced capacity to produce energy. Gene expression is the process by which information in a gene is synthesized to create a working product, such as a protein.

Overall, these findings indicate that mutated LRRK2 “interferes with mitochondrial dynamics, suggesting reduced mitochondrial quality,” the researchers wrote.

Further analysis confirmed that Parkinson’s patient-derived NESCs had increased production of toxic oxygen reactive species (ROS) — involved in oxidative stress — and had reduced survival compared with stem cells from healthy donors, which was consistent with impaired mitochondria activity.

Oxidative stress is an imbalance between the production of free radicals and the ability of cells to detoxify them. These free radicals, or ROS, are harmful to the cells and are associated with a number of diseases, including Parkinson’s disease.

In addition, patient-derived NESCs showed impaired ability to clear these damaged mitochondria, meaning that they were unable to restore the normal mitochondria balance and prevent their toxic effects.

“The detection of these (mitochondria features) in a developmentally early neural stem cell model” supports the hypothesis that “preceding mitochondrial developmental defects contribute to the manifestation of the (Parkinson’s disease) pathology later in life,” the researchers concluded.

https://parkinsonsnewstoday.com/2019/04/22/lrrk2-mutation-may-contribute-to-mitochondria-dysfunction-in-parkinsons/

Microglia, immune cells of the central nervous system, shown to regulate neuroinflammation

by  Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary   April 22, 2019

Retinal microglia (green), the resident immune cell of the central nervous system, and the retinal vasculature (magenta), in a retinal flat mount. Credit: Connor Laboratory - Dong Ho Park, M.D.

A research team at Massachusetts Eye and Ear has shown that microglia, the primary immune cells of the central nervous system—including the retina of the eye—serve as "gatekeepers," or biosensors and facilitators, of neuroinflammation in a preclinical model of autoimmune uveitis. Uveitis is one of the leading causes of blindness, accounting for approximately 10% of significant visual impairment worldwide.

In a report published online today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers describe, for the first time, a role for microglia in directing the initiation of autoimmune uveitis by orchestrating the inflammatory responsewithin the retina. In reaction to disease induction, microglia closely associate with the retinal vasculature and facilitate inflammatory immune cell entry past the blood brain, or ocular, barrier into the retina. When the researchers depleted microglia in this model, they observed that the disease was completely blocked.

"Normally, the blood brain barrier serves as an impediment and prevents the immune response from going into tissues of the central nervous system, including the retina. However, our results provide clear evidence, that in the context of uveitis, microglia can facilitate entry of inflammatory immune cells into the retina, and enable the host immune responses to attack cells that are not normally recognized by the immune system," said senior author Kip M. Connor, Ph.D., vision researcher at Mass. Eye and Ear and Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. "Until now, the role of microglia in retinal disease has not been fully understood, but our research shows—for the first time—that these cells serve as gatekeepers from the immune system to the central nervous system. This gateway not only has implications for treating uveitis, but may provide future avenues for drug delivery across the blood brain barrier for other diseases of the central nervous system."

Despite significant advances in research and therapeutics, the prevalence of uveitis has not been reduced in the past 30 years. Uveitis is characterized as inflammation of the retina as well as the uveal tissues, optic nerve and vitreous, wherein a large influx of immune cells into the eye coincides with elevated inflammatory destruction. Uveitis caused by an autoimmune disease occurs in a variety of diseases including Bechet's disease, sarcoidosis, and Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease. Patients with uveitis often suffer serious visual loss after persistent inflammation due to immune mediated damage to the neuronal cells of the retina.

Since microglia have multiple phenotypes and/or different stages of activation that can be associated with either harmful or beneficial effects in disease pathogenesis, their role and function in disease progression is not well defined. Researchers across all fields of medicine have recently begun to elucidate the function of microglial cells in various conditions. For example, in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases of the brain, microglia are thought to be harmful. In ophthalmology, it is known that microglial cells are activated in response to a number of developmental and disease indications and their roles in disease are thought to be context dependent, where they can be either beneficial or harmful.

"These findings provide the first insights into how microglia respond and function during a systemic autoimmune disease targeting the eye," said lead author Yoko Okunuki, MD, Ph.D., an investigator in Dr. Connor's laboratory and Instructor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School.

"This novel work by Dr. Connor and colleagues identifies that microglia regulate entry through the blood-retinal barrier, and it is our hope that these finding can be harnessed for future targeted therapies for uveitis," says Joan W. Miller, MD, the David Glendenning Cogan Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Ophthalmology at Mass. Eye and Ear and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Ophthalmologist-in-Chief at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "It is becoming increasingly clear that microglia are involved in a number of retinal disorders as well as neuroinflammatory disorders of the central nervous system.

More information: Yoko Okunuki el al., "Retinal microglia initiate neuroinflammation in ocular autoimmunity," PNAS (2019). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1820387116

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary 

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-04-microglia-immune-cells-central-nervous.html

Parkinson's results beyond researchers' wildest dreams

April 22, 2019 By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC New

A treatment that has restored the movement of patients with chronic Parkinson's disease has been developed by Canadian researchers. 

Previously housebound patients are now able to walk more freely as a result of electrical stimulation to their spines.

A quarter of patients have difficulty walking as the disease wears on, often freezing on the spot and falling.

Parkinson's UK hailed its potential impact on an aspect of the disease where there is currently no treatment.

Prof Mandar Jog, of Western University in London, Ontario, told BBC News the scale of benefit to patients of his new treatment was "beyond his wildest dreams".

Scientists monitor their patients' improvement using sensors on a specially made suit.

"Most of our patients have had the disease for 15 years and have not walked with any confidence for several years," he said. 

"For them to go from being home-bound, with the risk of falling, to being able to go on trips to the mall and have vacations is remarkable for me to see."

Normal walking involves the brain sending instructions to the legs to move. It then receives signals back when the movement has been completed before sending instructions for the next step.

The parts of the brain involved with movement (red on the left-hand scan) are not working properly, but three months into the trial those areas are now functioning

Prof Jog believes Parkinson's disease reduces the signals coming back to the brain - breaking the loop and causing the patient to freeze. 

The implant his team has developed boosts that signal, enabling the patient to walk normally. 

However, Prof Jog was surprised that the treatment was long-lasting and worked even when the implant was turned off.

He believes the electrical stimulus reawakens the feedback mechanism from legs to brain that is damaged by the disease.

"This is a completely different rehabilitation therapy," he said. "We had thought that the movement problems occurred in Parkinson's patients because signals from the brain to the legs were not getting through.

"But it seems that it's the signals getting back to the brain that are degraded."

Countryside walks

Brain scans showed that before patients received the electrical treatment, the areas that control movement were not working properly. But a few months into the treatment those areas were restored.

Gail Jardine, 66, is among the patients who has benefited from the treatment. 

Before she received the implant two months ago, Gail kept freezing on the spot, and she would fall over two or three times a day. 

She lost her confidence and stopped walking in the countryside in Kitchener, Ontario - something she loved doing with her husband, Stan.

Now she can walk with Stan in the park for the first time in more than two years.

"I can walk a lot better," she said. "I haven't fallen since I started the treatment. It's given me more confidence and I'm looking forward to taking more walks with Stan and maybe even go on my own".

Guy Alden used to rely on a wheelchair but after his treatment he had his first holiday in seven years with his wife, Barb

Another beneficiary is Guy Alden, 70, a deacon at a catholic church in London, Ontario. He was forced to retire in 2012 because of his Parkinson's disease. 

His greatest regret was that it curtailed his work in the community, such as his prison visits.

"I was freezing a lot when I was in a crowd or crossing a threshold in a mall. Everyone would be looking at me. It was very embarrassing," he told me.

"Now I can walk in crowds. My wife and I even went on holiday to Maui and I didn't need to use my wheelchair at any point. There were a lot of narrow roads and a lot of (slopes) and I did all of that pretty well."

Dr Beckie Port, research manager at Parkinson's UK, said: "The results seen in this small-scale pilot study are very promising and the therapy certainly warrants further investigation. 

"Should future studies show the same level of promise, it has the potential to dramatically improve quality of life, giving people with Parkinson's the freedom to enjoy everyday activities."

To see video:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47803496

Tai Chi May Improve Balance and Quality of Life

HEALTHY LIVING: EXERCISE     BATCHELLER, LORI J     APRIL/MAY 2019

Tai chi is an ancient Chinese martial art that incorporates breathing, visualization, and specific movements called forms. Some experts say it may be an effective therapeutic tool for people with neurologic disorders.

Several studies have found that tai chi can help with balance, reduce the incidence of falls, and enhance quality of life for people with Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), and stroke. For example, a 2018 review published in the Journal of Rehabilitative Medicine said that tai chi may improve walking in the short term among stroke survivors. And a 2017 analysis published in Parkinsonism and Related Disorders noted a potential benefit of tai chi for improving mobility, depression, and quality of life for people with Parkinson's disease.

Experts agree that additional, more rigorous studies of tai chi are warranted, with larger sample sizes and more standardized protocols regarding length of treatment, style of tai chi, and longer-term follow-up periods.

Gaining Control

Tai chi's emphasis on rhythmic weight-shifting, symmetrical foot-stepping, controlled movements, and coordinated breathing can improve function and lower stress and anxiety levels, says Peter A. Harmer, PhD, MPH, professor of exercise and health science at Willamette University in Salem, OR, who has studied the effects of tai chi on reducing the incidence of falls in older people.

The martial art's focus on meditation, relaxing, and breathing could decrease anxiety and depression, says Danny Bega, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Practicing tai chi also may help patients feel more in control of their disorder and improve their overall quality of life, says Dr. Bega, who recommends combining it with a comprehensive treatment program.

Before starting any exercise program, discuss it with your primary care physician or neurologist, Dr. Bega advises. Be sure you understand your abilities and moderate your practice accordingly, he adds. For example, you can do tai chi in a chair or using a chair for support or standing independently-all would help improve your functional ability, Dr. Harmer says.

LinLin Choy, a tai chi instructor who trains teachers at the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene and other locations around the country, recommends the three forms pictured here. "They train you to stand still and quietly in place," she says. "Alternating between motion and stillness is especially useful for helping people with neurologic disorders move voluntarily."

For a video demonstrating each of the forms below by Fuzhong Li, PhD, a research scientist at the Oregon Research Institute who has studied tai chi, visit http://bit.ly/Li-TaiChi . Parting Wild Horse's Mane goes from 1:15 to 2:20, Repulsed Monkey is from 4:43 to 5:24, and Brush Knees is from 5:24 to 6:35.

Form: Parting Wild Horse's Mane

Tai Chi by Keneda

What it teaches: Stepping forward diagonally; learning how to set an intention before shifting your weight; engaging both sides of the body, which may improve stride length.

How it helps: Strengthens the core, boosts control of posture, aids in balance.

Form: Repulsed Monkey

What it teaches: Stepping backward; improving the ability to stop and start comfortably.

How it helps: Reinforces the ability to step backward safely.

Form: Brush Knee

What it teaches: Rotating the body; balancing on a single leg.

How it helps: Supports increased trunk rotation to ease turning and reaching for an object.

Find a Tai Chi Class Near You

Tai chi is best learned in a class where the nuances of breathing and mindful movement are taught. Classes may be offered at community centers, senior centers, health clubs, gyms, and tai chi or martial arts studios.

To find classes for people with multiple sclerosis (MS), contact the local National MS Society chapter or visit http://bit.ly/MS-TaiChi ; for people with Parkinson's, contact your local American Parkinson Disease Association at http://bit.ly/APDA-TaiChi .

Tai Ji Quan: Moving for Better Balance, a program initiated at the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene, offers classes throughout the country with instructors specifically trained in tai chi for fall prevention. Visit http://bit.ly/MBB-TaiJiQuan to see if classes are held in your area.

https://www.brainandlife.org/the-magazine/article/app/15/2/11/tai-chi-may-improve-balance-and-quality-of-life