Social Connectivity, Mind States, and Biological Aging

This lecture will review salient examples of social connectivity — in mood, mind states, and physiology. We will explore how different states or tendencies — biases toward threat appraisals, mind wandering, and engagement in the present, are related to social, psychological, and biological well being. Elissa Epel will focus more deeply on social influences on the biology of aging (telomere/telomerase maintenance system and inflammation) and discuss what we have learned so far from meditation interventions that examine impact on markers of biological aging.