Our Thinking Place

Our gut has millions of good, live bacteria that help keep us healthy. These bacteria are called probiotics. The probiotics are part of the microbiota which also includes microorganisms such as viruses and fungi. The gut microbiota helps with bodily processes such as digestion and immune defences. We can find probiotics in foods such as yoghurts, fermented cheeses, pickles, dark chocolate, and pills that we can quickly get over the counter. It is exciting to learn that two-way communication exists between our brain and gut microbiota. Scientists suggest that these good bacteria might help relieve low mood and that healthy microbiota might help healthy people keep healthy brains. But what…

I will critically discuss the concept of Quality of Life, including its application and value in understanding mental health burdens. Quality of Life (QOL) is a human construct that can be understood from diverse dimensions (CDC, 2000, 2021). One of its domains is the subjective experience of individuals and their families/caregivers concerning their health and, if unwell, its concurrent treatment. The personal experience of QOL can help understand disease burdens, including mental health ones, in a two-way process. The World Health Organization, Harvard School of Public Health, and the World Bank developed the concept “global burden of disease” (GBD) to describe the loss of health and death due to diseases…

I have always been interested in neuropsychology, neuroscience, emotion regulation, and the intrinsic relationship between the mind perspective and the brain perspective. Some time ago I had the luxury to read Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience. Dr Panksepp’s discoveries and publications in the late 1990s about animal mental experience set the cornerstone to guide further research and empirical-based findings that keep on explaining the underpinnings of human subjective experience and objective brain functioning. The field of neuropsychoanalysis, nurtured by Dr Panksepp’s findings in affective neuroscience thru animal research, has been growing for 20 years now, and keeps on moving forward. As a psychologist, my learnings on this field enrich me professionally…

Es claro que nuestras dinámicas interpersonales cambiaron radicalmente como consecuencia de la pandemia. Sé que muchísimas variables están en juego, y dependiendo del país en el que cada uno de nosotros esté viviendo, los desafíos son menores, o mayores, y, seguro, diferentes. Te propongo que hagamos un recorte de esa inmensa e inabarcable realidad y pensemos en una parte que, por mas que sea recortada, es clave en nuestros estados afectivos de placer. La pregunta que me hago acá es: ¿Qué esta pasando en nuestra dinámica intrapersonal en lo referente al placer? ¿Qué nos pasa en ese circulo sin fin en el que los seres humanos estamos inmersos como seres…

Our differences are highlighted with the Pandemic (thinking about “Trauma”) We hear statements about the “Traumatic” experience of the Pandemic. Let’s think about a single, young person in New York living in a tiny apartment. Let’s think about a middle age person living with her family in a beautiful house in the countryside, in Vermont. Let’s think about an 85-year-old person living in the North of Brazil. Let’s think about a child in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Let’s think about that person who lives very close to Orange Beach, in Alabama, and cannot believe the level of denial of all those large groups of people gathered at the beach drinking margaritas…

Cambiaron las reglas de nuestra vida diaria. El escenario en el que nos movemos con la pandemia del coronavirus es de incertidumbre. Una parte de la población, sin dejar de estar preocupada, puede transitar este desafío encontrando puentes de Creatividad. Otra parte de la población presenta diversos niveles de angustia. La angustia paraliza, y este contexto de cuarentena nos obliga a una quietud física, en las formas, que no ayuda para nada intuitivamente a quien está angustiado. Compartir las emociones, abrir puentes de comunicación es una forma de canalizar nuestras preocupaciones. Ocuparse. Acerquémonos online o en casa si es un conviviente, a personas con quienes nos sentimos cómodos conversando, y…

We live in a chronological time. We have a schedule. We have to do lists. We have a timeline to achieve objectives. Our work on our productivity is organized around a timeline. Things, activities, experiences, happening in a linear way. Past, Present, Future. What happens if life circumstances open up a door to live a different kind of time? A time in which we are not forced to live linearly but in which we can experience moments when the deep feeling of Here and Now can be achieved? When nobody will actually pass judgment about it. Quarantining. A time when, in chronological words, we can say that it’s all Present,…