In the newly-released indie film "Hello, My Name Is Doris," sweet and eccentric Doris (played by Sally Field) is an older woman who lives in her deceased mother's immensely cluttered house. Needless to say, Doris grapples with hoarding issues, tightly clinging to all kinds of items from her past. Her home's disarray is a barrier of sorts, physically creating entrapment to what was and not what could be.

Doris blossoms through a new relationship with a younger man (played by Max Greenfield). Though the outcome of their relationship may not be the one she unequivocally pines for, their time together symbolizes hope for what is very well possible in her next life chapter. She's merely grateful for the friendship they share — for its impact.

It's not long after this realization that Doris finally summons the courage to embark on another venture: thoroughly cleaning out her house and letting go of everything that's no longer needed.

I found this particular storyline to be rather pertinent. Can emotional progress — the conscious act of emotionally moving forward — eradicate compulsive hoarding habits?

Niki Boon began photography while working as a physiotherapist in Scotland. Her interest waned as life got in the way and her traveling took her far away from her beloved darkroom. It was not until she returned home and settled down to start a family that her passion for pictures reignited.

Boon developed a photo series called "Childhood in the Raw", in which she documented her four children as they went about their technology-free life from the family's acres of property in rural New Zealand. The children do not have a TV or modern electronic devices, nor are they schooled.

She decided soon after enrolling her children in a school that disallowed computers and TV in early education that this philosophy would govern the entirety of their lives; rather than forcing traditional education, the children are encouraged to read and research as they discover new information.

Having more friends really may make you feel better, or at least feel less pain, a new study from England suggests.

People in the study who had larger social networks appeared to have a higher tolerance for pain, according to the findings, which were published today (April 28) in the journal Scientific Reports.

In the study, the researchers wanted to see if people with larger social networks had higher levels of chemicals in the brain called endorphins. Endorphins are linked to feelings of pleasure, as well as reduced feelings of pain. (Endorphins are, in fact, a more powerful pain reliever than morphine, according to the study.)

People with more friends have higher pain tolerance, Oxford University researchers have found.

Katerina Johnson, a doctoral student in the University's Department of Experimental Psychology, was studying whether differences in our neurobiology may help explain why some of us have larger social networks than others.

She said: 'I was particularly interested in a chemical in the brain called endorphin. Endorphins are part of our pain and pleasure circuitry -- they're our body's natural painkillers and also give us feelings of pleasure. Previous studies have suggested that endorphins promote social bonding in both humans and other animals. One theory, known as 'the brain opioid theory of social attachment', is that social interactions trigger positive emotions when endorphin binds to opioid receptors in the brain. This gives us that feel-good factor that we get from seeing our friends.

'To test this theory, we relied on the fact that endorphin has a powerful pain-killing effect -- stronger even than morphine.'

The researchers therefore used pain tolerance as a way to assess the brain's endorphin activity. If the theory was correct, people with larger social networks would have higher pain tolerance, and this was what their study found. Friendships may really help take the pain away!

Growing up, my athletic prospects could best be described as abysmal. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was seven, and I failed swim lessons three years in a row. At the end of the year cross country banquet, the best my coach could say about me was, "She wasn't last in a single race. Except for one, and that was just for most of it." But while I had no hopes of blossoming into an athlete, I could spend as much time as I wanted playing and exploring outside. The outdoors was forgiving. It did not ask me to be talented, fast, or to have hand-eye coordination. Nevertheless, it offered me challenges - to paddle farther, hike longer, or to simply take the time to appreciate it.

Today, the average American child spends as little as 30 minutes outside in unstructured play each day.

When I was a kid, I lived outside. Most warm evenings would have me and most of the neighborhood kids riding bikes, building forts, catching lightning bugs, or just laying in the grass until the streetlights blinked on or our mothers called us for dinner. I grew up in an age when organized athletics for five year olds were rare, when parents didn't orchestrate their children's every waking moment, when mothers and fathers didn't feel so pressured for their kids to perform and succeed. There was an abundance of free time and my mother didn't want me in her hair. I am a much better person for it.

Babies who engage in musical play may have an easier time picking up language skills, a new study suggests.

US researchers compared nine-month-old babies who played with toys and trucks to those who practiced banging out a rhythm during a series of play sessions.

They found the musical group showed more brain activity in regions involved with detecting patterns, an important skill when it comes to learning language.

Previous studies in children and adults have found a relationship between music training and processing sound, but it has been unclear about whether people involved in those studies developed superior sound perception as a result of music training, or they had natural auditory skills that predisposed them towards music in the first place.

"Our study is the first in young babies to suggest that experiencing a rhythmic pattern in music can also improve the ability to detect and make predictions about rhythmic patterns in speech," said lead author Christina Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS).

"This means that early, engaging musical experiences can have a more global effect on cognitive skills," Dr Zhao said.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was small, enrolling just 39 babies and their parents, who took part in a dozen 15-minute play sessions over the course of a month.

Twenty of the babies listened to recorded children's music while they sat with their parents and helped pound out drum beats to music that included waltz rhythms and tunes like Take Me Out to the Ballgame, a baseball classic.

The other 19 babies also attended active play sessions that used toys and blocks, but without music.

I never met a dog I didn't want to hug. The feeling, alas, is likely not mutual. In a giant bummer of an article published recently in Psychology Today, Stanley Coren — who studies canine behavior at the University of British Columbia — makes a sadly strong case against the dog hug, arguing that although humans love embracing their canine pals, the physical contact stresses dogs out.

If you know what to look for, their annoyance becomes obvious. Lesson one: Coren writes that a dog's most common outward signal of stress or anxiety is when he "turns his head away from whatever is bothering or worrying him, sometimes also closing his eyes, at least partially." Lesson two: Just like humans, dogs have whites of the eye — it's just that you never see it unless the animal is stressed. And lesson three: An anxious or stressed-out dog's ears will be "lowered or slicked against the side of his head," Coren writes.

When an emotion can be more powerful in curbing impulsiveness than thoughts.

Being grateful helps to increase self-control and reduce impulsive behaviours, new research finds.

People who cultivate gratitude towards everyday events are also more patient.

Professor David DeSteno, one of the study's authors, said:

"We can all point to the five things in our lives that we're most grateful for, but if we keep thinking about those, we'll habituate to them—they're going to stop being interesting.

Those kinds of daily gratitude boosters will function like a vaccine against impulsiveness and enhance self-control and future orientedness."

You're probably smarter than you think you are, if you seldom assume you're smart at all. So the less intelligent you assume yourself to be, the smarter you probably are.

Years ago researchers discovered that smartness does not equal intelligence. Intelligence is systematically measurable and defined as an ability to acquire new knowledge and skills and to use them.

Genuinely smart people do not have to be 'brainiacs'. Most often than not, they will go through school being average, never drawing attention to themselves by being stellar performers, athletes, or spelling bee champions. Their unique skill set will help them out more in the real world, which is not boxed into a set of academic rules and expectations. Highly intelligent people have the upper hand in a well-organized, structured environment, but they will still often be outperformed by smart individuals who might not be their intellectual equals.

Mental proficiency and ability can be categorized in different ways. A popular manner is 'book smarts' and 'street smarts'. 'Book smarts' refers to academically focused mind, good at abstract thought, but bad at common sense and simple relationships.

'Street smarts' is the opposite strong common sense, good with real world situations, but bad at academic study. There is a group of people that fit within both groups. These people are truly intelligent and use their brilliance to adapt and grow as needed to any situation.