Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/aSqAIaL7lFo   Before you can come to someone’s rescue in a true altruistic spirit, you must first imagine your plan of attack.  Psychologists at Boston College employed MRI scanning to study the brain activity of 18 young, healthy adults before and while they remembered and imagined helping others in distress.   Those participants whose scans indicate more powerful imaginative thinking indicated a greater willingness to help others.  That help could come with direct physical assistance or with monetary support.  In order to help, you must first imagine how you might safely and effectively pull off the rescue.   This is yet another aspect of life that benefits from a ready imagination.  To exercise and spark yours, you can daydream, doodle, read fiction, exercise, and take calculated risks.     Brendan Gaesser, Josh Hirschfeld-Kroen, Emily A Wasserman, Mary Horn, Liane Young. A role for the medial temporal lobe subsystem in guiding prosociality: the effect of episodic processes on wi