In a new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago, researchers examining post-mortem brain tissue from people ages 79 to 99 found that new neurons continue to form well into old age. The study provides evidence that this occurs even in people with cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease, although neurogenesis is significantly reduced in these people compared to older adults with normal cognitive functioning.

They publish their results in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

The idea that new neurons continue to form into middle age, let alone past adolescence, is controversial, as previous studies have shown conflicting results. The UIC study is the first to find evidence of significant numbers of neural stem cells and newly developing neurons present in the hippocampal tissue of older adults, including those with disorders that affect the hippocampus, which is involved in the formation of memories and in learning.

"We found that there was active neurogenesis in the hippocampus of older adults well into their 90s," said Orly Lazarov, professor of anatomy and cell biology in the UIC College of Medicine and lead author of the paper. "The interesting thing is that we also saw some new neurons in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and cognitive impairment." She also found that people who scored better on measures of cognitive function had more newly developing neurons in the hippocampus compared to those who scored lower on these tests, regardless of levels of brain pathology.

Lazarov thinks that lower levels of neurogenesis in the hippocampus are associated with symptoms of cognitive decline and reduced synaptic plasticity rather than with the degree of pathology in the brain. For patients with Alzheimer's disease, pathological hallmarks include deposits of neurotoxic proteins in the brain.

Have you noticed the remarkable cluelessness in atheist arguments about science and metaphysics? It's really on display in a recent essay by atheist philosopher Justin E. H. Smith. In a nutshell, Smith, a professor of philosophy at Concordia University and author of Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, argues that reason is inferior to the non-rational behavior of animals. Permit me to offer some responses to his essay, "If reason exists without deliberation, it cannot be uniquely human," which advanced that view recently at Aeon:

Philosophers and cognitive scientists today generally comprehend the domain of reason as a certain power of making inferences, confined to the thoughts and actions of human beings alone. Like echolocation in bats or photosynthesis in plants, reason is an evolved power, but unlike these, the prevailing theory goes, it emerged exactly once in the history of evolution (porpoises and shrews also echolocate, cyanobacteria photosynthesise).

It's not clear why Smith defines reason as "a certain power of making inferences." The accepted definition of reason is simple and straightforward: it is the power to think abstractly, without concrete particulars. Abstract thought entails comprehension of concepts that are disconnected from particular objects. When I think about the ham sandwich I am eating for lunch, I am thinking concretely. When I think about the nutritional consequences of my choice of sandwich, I am thinking abstractly.

Only man thinks abstractly; that is the ability to reason. No animal, no matter how clever, can think abstractly or reason. Animals can be very clever but their cleverness is always about concrete things - about the bone they are playing with, or about the stranger they are barking at. They don't think about "play" or "threat" as abstract concepts.

Reason is a power characteristic of man, to be sure, but it is not "an evolved power." It didn't "evolve." The ability to reason didn't evolve because it's not a material power of the mind. Reason is an immaterial power of the mind - it is abstracted from particular things, and cannot logically be produced by a material thing.

People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline.

Though there are legitimate questions about the relationship between IQ and intelligence, and broad recognition that success depends as much on other virtues like grit, IQ tests in use throughout the world today really do seem to capture something meaningful and durable. Decades of research have shown that individual IQ scores predict things such as educational achievement and longevity. More broadly, the average IQ score of a country is linked to economic growth and scientific innovation.

So if IQ scores are really dropping, that could not only mean 15 more seasons of the Kardashians, but also the potential end of progress on all these other fronts, ultimately leading to fewer scientific breakthroughs, stagnant economies and a general dimming of our collective future.

As yet, the United States hasn't hit this IQ wall - despite what you may be tempted to surmise from the current state of the political debate. But don't rush to celebrate American exceptionalism: If IQs are dropping in other advanced countries but not here, maybe that means we're not really an advanced country (too much poverty, too little social support).

Regular readers of the Grail will know that legendary comedian and Monty Python alumni John Cleese has a deep interest in research into the survival of consciousness beyond death. And if you're interested in that topic, the place to go is the Division of Perceptual Studies (DoPS) at the University of Virginia, which has hosted researchers of the caliber of Dr Bruce Greyson (NDEs) and the late Dr Ian Stevenson (reincarnation memories).

So it's no surprise to see a video posted recently online, embedded below, by the DoPS in which another researcher there, Dr Jim Tucker, is interviewed by John Cleese himself.

In the nine-minute-long video, Tucker gives a short history of the reincarnation research performed by the DoPS since the 1960s, beginning with Ian Stevenson, through which they have now collected 2500 cases of past-life recollection.

He then goes into detail about how they collect case information and evidence, along with a description of one of their 'best' evidentiary cases.

It's not just in politics where otherwise smart people consistently talk past one another. People debating whether humans have free will also have this tendency. Neuroscientist and free-will skeptic Sam Harris has dueled philosopher and free-will defender Daniel Dennett for years and once invited him onto his podcast with the express purpose of finally having a meeting of minds. Whoosh! They flew right past each other yet again.

Christian List, a philosopher at the London School of Economics who specializes in how humans make decisions, has a new book, Why Free Will Is Real, that tries to bridge the gap. List is one of a youngish generation of thinkers, such as cosmologist Sean Carroll and philosopher Jenann Ismael, who dissolve the old dichotomies on free will and think that a nuanced reading of physics poses no contradiction for it.

List accepts the skeptics' definition of free will as a genuine openness to our decisions, and he agrees this seems to be at odds with the clockwork universe of fundamental physics and neurobiology. But he argues that fundamental physics and neurobiology are only part of the story of human behavior. You may be a big bunch of atoms governed by the mechanical laws, but you are not just any bunch of atoms. You are an intricately structured bunch of atoms, and your behavior depends not just on the laws that govern the individual atoms but on the way those atoms are assembled. At a higher level of description, your decisions can be truly open. When you walk into a store and choose between Android and Apple, the outcome is not preordained. It really is on you.

In some areas of psychology (especially in psychodynamic theory), psychologists talk about "defense mechanisms," or manners in which we behave or think in certain ways to better protect or "defend" ourselves. Defense mechanisms are one way of looking at how people distance themselves from a full awareness of unpleasant thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Psychologists have categorized defense mechanisms based upon how primitive they are. The more primitive a defense mechanism, the less effective it works for a person over the long-term. However, more primitive defense mechanisms are usually very effective short-term, and hence are favored by many people and children especially (when such primitive defense mechanisms are first learned). Adults who don't learn better ways of coping with stress or traumatic events in their lives will often resort to such primitive defense mechanisms as well.

Most defense mechanisms are fairly unconscious - that means most of us don't realize we're using them in the moment. Some types of psychotherapy can help a person become aware of what defense mechanisms they are using, how effective they are, and how to use less primitive and more effective mechanisms in the future.

New study examines egalitarianism, religion in 21st-century relationships

Both religion and egalitarianism have something to offer those seeking a happy marriage in a world of shifting mores-though religion leads to more children-a new report on international perspectives on marital happiness shows.

The report, a joint project of the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institution, uses data from two surveys of respondents in eleven countries: Argentina, Australia, Chile, Canada, Colombia, France, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors set out to examine the now standard bromide that progressive, secular social values lead to happier marriages.

As study authors W. Bradford Wilcox, Jason S. Carroll, and Laurie DeRose wrote in the New York Times, the recipe for a happy marriage is either being religious or being egalitarian - those stuck in the middle are consistently the worst off.

To reach this result, the study's authors looked at roughly 5,000 couples surveyed in the Global Family and Gender Survey (GFGS). Based on frequency of religious attendance, these couples were classified as either secular, religious, or mixed. What the survey data show is that high religious couples report higher rates of marital and sexual satisfaction than their mixed or secular peers.

The educational system is being swept along in the race for technological advancement and supremacy in nearly every country. I'm not anti-technology, but I'm aware of the disadvantages of the Computer Age.

Students don't engage in interesting practical work in some schools around the world anymore. Some instructors will merely project a virtual lab or a live video on a big screen. Some don't even have to dissect animals anymore. What happened to the hands-on work? The "big screen" teaches them exactly how to do that.

I'm glad some schools are still holding on to the frog-dissection culture.

Laptops and tablets are increasingly replacing exercise books, pens, and paper. In some ways, it has become a standard to measure the modernity of a school. Laptops are becoming smaller, flatter, faster, and hence, more ubiquitous than ever. Tablets aren't backing down in the race either. Colleges where students still take hand-written notes and use paper textbooks are thought of as archaic and non-progressive; however, this would not be entirely accurate to say. At many schools, it's a requirement for students to show up with a reliable laptop for their coursework. Some colleges provide these for all their students.

New research clarifies drivers of YouTube overuse.

Look in my eyes, what do you see?
The cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I've been everything you want to be
I'm the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I'm the cult of personality

-In Living Color, The Cult of Personality

Addiction to personality porn?

Are one-sided, simulated relationships replacing real relationships, a compensation for something not fully realized? More and more people seem to be replacing relationships with real intimate others with interactions on social media. Is this necessarily a bad trend, or is it perhaps superior to dealing with messy, potentially risky traditional human relations?

Video-intensive platforms present us with a massively diverse array of YouTubers, officially called "Creators" (religious overtones, anyone?). It's hard to tell fact from fiction, so real and engaging are these simulators of human experience for one able to become immersed in the fantasies they conjure up.

The trend is toward greater self-disclosure, and highly personal revelations are powerful in creating a sense of real connection with virtual partners. Similar to robotic partners, substitutive relationships with pseudo-personalities meet attachment needs while potentially rewarding insecure attachments. For dismissive attachment style, not needing actual people works great, and for anxious attachment, know that what you want is going to be there 24/7 is a huge relief.

What happens when we 'die?' We can't quite answer that question, but we can perhaps say that something indeed does happen. The evidence for reincarnation, for example, is quite unbelievable. There have been a number of cases of children who clearly remember their past lives, describing in detail their previous family members as well as how they died and other factors that have been confirmed by their supposed past families. This is precisely why Carl Sagan said that reincarnation is worthy of "serious scientific study." Other near death studies have suggested that consciousness does not depend on our biology, as those who are close to death or pronounced dead and then come back to life have told tales and described details about their surroundings at the time that would have been impossible had they not been 'outside' of their bodies. This information was presented to the United Nations, and you can read more about that here and watch the full video presentation.

There could be multiple things that happen when one passes away. Perhaps their soul can go multiple routes, as if it has a choice? Perhaps consciousness is something separate from the soul? Perhaps bits and pieces of our consciousness stick around while our soul goes off to a new experience? Who knows, but again, the evidence suggesting something does indeed happen is pretty interesting to say the least.

A study conducted a couple of years ago added to the mystery, as researchers from the University of Milan found that there is a "very high prevalence" of people who have experience with receiving messages from their deceased loves one, like seeing or hearing them. The study, however, labels these as "post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences," and the researchers don't seem to be open to the idea that these experiences could actually be real.