: Cognitive decline is a common concern in older adults, which is accompanied by rising rates of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. While pharmacological treatments are limited by side effects and high costs, nonpharmacological interventions have received wide attention due to their safety and acceptability. Dance may confer cognitive protection, as it combines physical activity with cognitive training and social interaction. Based on data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs), this review systematically examines the preventive effects on cognitive decline of dance as a nonpharmacological intervention in healthy older adults. Experimental finding reveal that dance interventions significantly improve global cognition, executive function, memory, and attention. These improvements may be mediated by enhanced neuroplasticity and neurotrophic factor modulation. Limitations in current literature include small samples sizes and a lack of long-term follow-up data. Training dose (duration and frequency) and the types of dance interventions are also inconsistent across studies. More high-quality research is therefore needed. As a nonpharmacological intervention, dance can improve cognitive function significantly in healthy older adults, particularly in buffering against cognitive decline. Future research should focus on large-sample, multicenter RCTs, long-term follow-up, comparisons of dance types, and exploration of mechanisms to optimize intervention plans and promote their application in clinical and community settings.
: Teachers have continued to report elevated emotional exhaustion well into the COVID-19 endemic phase, yet the physiological correlates of this exhaustion and of teacher resilience remain poorly understood. This study examined the biopsychosocial associations of teacher well-being during the COVID-19 endemic (May 2022). As educators (n = 44 expatriate teachers in the United Arab Emirates; Mage = 37.2 years, SD = 8.9; 68.2% female) returned to in-person instruction, they faced prolonged professional demands impacting both psychological health and physiological regulation. Using a multimethods quantitative design, this study investigated how levels of perceived emotional exhaustion (MBI Emotional Exhaustion subscale) and resilience (CD-RISC-10) were associated with affective balance during teaching (PANAS-SF) and objective biomarkers of stress. Physiological assessments included the cortisol awakening response (CAR; n = 38) to measure hypothalamic - pituitary - adrenal (HPA) axis activity and heart rate variability (HRV; n = 19-36 depending on parameter) to assess autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation during resting, teaching, and recovery phases. Results indicated that higher levels of perceived emotional exhaustion were significantly associated with lower affective balance and increased total cortisol output (CAR AUCG), suggesting elevated tonal HPA-axis load. Conversely, higher perceived resilience was strongly associated with superior autonomic recovery following classroom instruction (HRV recovery) and a more positive affective balance. These findings suggest that perceived emotional exhaustion and resilience are anchored in divergent physiological pathways: chronic endocrine activation and dynamic autonomic flexibility, respectively. These distinct biopsychosocial associations highlight the importance of recovery-oriented interventions in educational settings. Practical implications focus on HRV biofeedback and systemic structural supports to enhance teachers' self-regulatory capacity and physiological rebound.
: A body of evidence suggests that the pupil dilates in response to expectancy violations and unpredictability, yet evidence from complex and ecologically richer settings remains limited. In this study, we tested whether pupillometry could capture sensitivity to unexpectedness in an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment combining experimental control with greater contextual complexity. Forty-nine participants completed a coin-collection task across two repetitions of the same VR scenario. During the second repetition, participants in the control condition re-entered an unchanged environment, whereas participants in the experimental condition saw the scenario turning upside-down during navigation. Pupil size was recorded through an eye tracker embedded in a head-mounted display and analyzed across two 6-s epochs using linear mixed-effects models and generalized additive mixed models. No difference between conditions was detected before the experimental group had experienced the reversal of the scenario. Yet, pupil trajectories diverged significantly over time after the scenario flipped in the experimental condition, although mean pupil size did not differ between conditions. These results suggest that unexpected events in immersive VR may affect the temporal dynamics of pupil responses, even in the absence of differences in mean dilation. Overall, these findings provide preliminary support for the use of pupillometry in VR-based research on expectancy violation and exploratory cognitive states, while also highlighting the need for further studies to refine and extend this methodological approach.
: Emotions elicited by sensory stimuli offer a powerful lens for examining fundamental issues in emotion theory and measurement. Olfaction is particularly suited for this purpose, as odor-evoked emotional responses often emerge rapidly, automatically, and with limited conscious mediation. This review examines methodologies used to assess emotions elicited by odors. Odor-evoked emotions typically align with valence and arousal dimensions, with happiness and disgust most frequently reported. We evaluate explicit measures - verbal and visual - and implicit techniques, including physiological recordings and facial expression analysis. While self-reports capture consciously experienced feelings, they are influenced by language, culture, and introspective ability. Implicit measures, by contrast, index automatic affective processes with higher temporal resolution. Integrating approaches provides a comprehensive framework for understanding emotional experiences.
