News

July 2025

The research topic Mind-body medicine and its impacts on psychological networks, quality of life, and health - Volume II was very well received. In total 40 manuscripts were published, and now the editorial with an overview of all articles has been published: Schulz S, Cysarz D, Musial F, Seifert G. Editorial: Mind-body medicine and its impacts on psychological networks, quality of life, and health - Volume II. Front. Integr. Neurosci. 19: 1658381.

July 2024

The heart rhythm is influenced by many functions of the human organism. A closer look at the heart rhythm reveals, among other things, that many simple everyday movements show a specific pattern in the heart rhythm. We investigated such influences for two everyday movements: kneeling on one knee ('tying shoelaces') followed by standing up, and raising and stretching the arms while sitting ('stretching and yawning'). Both movements show specific and repeatable heart rate patterns (see Heidelbach MJ, Cysarz D, Edelhäuser F. Typical everyday movements cause specific patterns in heart rate. Front Physiol 2024 15: 1379739). Hence, even these simple everyday movements stimulate cardiovascular regulation in a specific way.

May 2024

The publication on the synchronisation between hexmeter recitation and heart rate is about 20 years old (see Cysarz D et al. Am J Physiol - Heart Circ Physiol 2004 287(2): H579-H587), but still attracts sporadic interest. For the BBC London podcast series ‘Just one Thing’ ('If time is tight, what's the one thing that you should be doing to improve your health and wellbeing? Michael Mosley reveals surprisingly simple top tips that are scientifically proven to change your life'), the speech therapist, intiator and co-author of the study, Dietrich von Bonin from Bern (Switzerland), was interviewed about the positive effects of reading poetry aloud.

Listen to the podcast episode ‘Read a poem’ of ‘Just one thing’ on the BBC website.

Enjoy listening - read your favourite poetry aloud and benefit from the positive health effects.

February 2024

Research Topic

The journal Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience (IF: 3.5) is open for submissions to the research topic Mind-body medicine and its impacts on psychological networks, quality of life, and health - Volume II (topic editors: Steffen Schulz, Frauke Musial, Dirk Cysarz and Georg Seifert). Submit your manuscript by 31st July 2024.