Response to “A Sound Mind in a Sound Body”

Of sound, mind, and body:

Physical activity and beta-amyloid pathology in Alzheimer's disease: A sound mind in a sound body

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia worldwide. Since curative treatment has not been established for AD yet and due to heavy financial and psychological costs of patients' care, special attention has been paid to preventive interventions such as physical activity. Evidence shows that physical activity has protective effects on cognitive function and memory in AD patient...

A sound children's mind in a healthy children's body

“Mens sana in corpore sano” (i.e., “A sound mind in a healthy body”) is possibly one of the phrases in human history with the widest range in meanings. Originally this phrase comes from Satire X of the Roman poet Juvenal (∼60–127 AD). Juvenal’s intention with this phrase was rather to teach his fellow Roman citizens the right virtues worth praying for, than making any scientific statement about...

A sound mind through fasting?

Disruption of autophagy–a key homeostatic process in which cytosolic components are degraded and recycled through lysosomes–can cause neurodegeneration in tissue culture and in vivo. Upregulation of this pathway may be neuroprotective, and much effort is being invested in developing drugs that cross the blood brain barrier and increase neuronal autophagy. One well-recognized way of inducing aut...

Sound mind, irrational behavior?

Jonathan St. B. T. Evans, in his engaging article “Rationality and the illusion of choice” (Evans, 2014) argues that erroneous answers to questions posed in the study of reasoning and decision-making (RDM) ought not be viewed as irrational, just as errors in other cognitive domains are not viewed as irrational. He attributes misuse of the term partly to use of normative models borrowed from eco...