HUMAN RIGHTS BENEFIT THE BRAIN

When societies provide citizens with basic human rights, it helps them to thrive – and it also seems to improve brain health, according to a review out of the University of Cambridge in the UK and Brown University in the US. Published in the Annals Of The

New York Academy Of Sciences, the review looked at 146 studies. Among those, several found that people who had a greater sense of agency – the ability to shape one’s choice and actions in the world – also had a greater volume of grey matter in a number of different areas of the brain. Grey matter is crucial because it processes information and is important for learning and memory. The bottom line: advocating for the rights of fellow citizens locally and globally can have a wide-ranging impact.