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Tips for managing social isolation during coronavirus, from women on the autism spectrum

Everybody is learning to handle social isolation and social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. People with autism spectrum disorder, like me, have often had to deal with social isolation our whole lives. It gives us a unique perspective and experience honing strategies that could help the rest of the world cope. ASD causes a very…

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Sarah Lansdell

By  Sarah Lansdell
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Everybody is learning to handle social isolation and social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. People with autism spectrum disorder, like me, have often had to deal with social isolation our whole lives. It gives us a unique perspective and experience honing strategies that could help the rest of the world cope.

ASD causes a very wide range of differing thinkers. Some think more verbally, like I do. Temple Grandin, a well-known ASD advocate I spoke with for this article, thinks more visually. Both of us are professors with high-functioning abilities, what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome type symptoms.

ASD is rare, affecting about 1%-2% of the population, and is still poorly understood. While high-functioning manifestations of ASD can often produce highly successful adults, a prominent characteristic in many of us is social communication differences.

People with ASD think differently than most people, and how we face challenges is something everyone can learn from. Here are three strategies.

Schedule your time

Being stuck at home during a pandemic is almost like being on the International Space Station. There, like on Earth during a social lockdown, new rules apply.

“The most important thing is establishing a new schedule,” Grandin said. “It’s a real mess right now and discipline is important. For example, on the ISS, astronauts must even schedule time to be alone.”

Grandin’s advice: Get up, get dressed, get ready for work or online classes just like you normally would, even if you aren’t leaving home.

The ASD person may embrace those new rules more quickly because she knows how important having schedules can be to productivity and happiness. Schedule changes can be very difficult for a person with unsupported ASD. Loud noises, bright lights, different food, scratchy clothes all cause distrust of change.

With adequate support and proactive scheduling, adults with ASD and everyone else can learn to make the best of schedule change.

Listen more, say less

Social distancing may make people feel socially and emotionally disconnected. We don’t speak with others as often, and we don’t understand the impact of this on our emotional well-being.

Some people with ASD have found that slowing down and listening is a successful adaptation for many interactions to more fully understand what another person is saying, particularly when they feel that people don’t say what they mean.

Listen to the other person by watching their body language and movement. Take the time to more fully understand what the other person is saying.

Listen more and say less: People with ASD use this mantra to improve their dealings with others. It’s also an important message for dealing successfully with social distancing rules. Practicing empathetic responses is important for all of us because we are in this for the long haul.

Adapt online learning to meet your needs

Everybody is learning to learn online. As college professors, Grandin and I teach students to use online resources in more productive ways.

Grandin suggests an effective way to teach online is to post prerecorded lectures, then follow them with online discussion groups where students can talk about the material, either by video or online chat. That doesn’t work for everything, though.

Online learning might be harder for visual thinkers, and it may be impossible for the hands-on labs they tend to be attracted to, like Grandin’s animal science labs or biology labs.

As a student, take ownership of not just hearing but really understanding the information being discussed. Memorization of discrete facts is so pre-COVID-19.

Be disciplined and schedule time to watch small segments of multimedia from the instructor and then play an active role during online discussions.

Smaller discussions groups can help accommodate different schedules and styles of using the day and night. Everybody is learning. Be ready to change the system online, as the instructor or individually as a student.

It’s a different Earth

We do not yet know what our world will be like after social isolation and stay-at-home orders are lifted. Online learning will continue, as it already is for many students.

Keep to a schedule, but be ready to adapt the schedule based on new information.

Everybody is learning that the world under social isolation requires discipline as if we were living on another planet. Because we are living on another planet. Earth under quarantine in the time of COVID-19 is different than Earth at any other time before. Everybody is learning what that means for them and those they love.

Sarah Ransdell is a Professor at Nova Southeastern University



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    A low-dose CT scan can help with early detection of lung cancer. In this image, the tumor is the white nodule in the upper right corner of the black space. Atlas of Pulmonary Pathology/Flickr, CC BY-SA
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    Pope Leo XIV’s lung cancer highlights growing number of nonsmokers diagnosed with the disease – and younger people too

    Smoking isn’t the only risk factor, and screening can miss those who never smoked.

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    Estelamari Rodriguez

    Estelamari Rodriguez

    When many people think of an average lung cancer patient, they often imagine an older man smoking. But the face of lung cancer has changed. Over the past 15 years, more women, never smokers and younger people are being diagnosed with lung cancer.

    In fact, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women, and more women die from lung cancer than breast, ovarian and colorectal cancer each year. The American Lung Association reports that while lung cancer rates have risen by 79% for women over the last 44 years, they decreased by 43% for men. And for the first time in history, there are more young women than men diagnosed with lung cancer.

    News about Pope Leo XIV’s lung cancer diagnosis on Oct. 13, 2026, sparked discussion about increasing rates of the disease among people who have never smoked. Leo reportedly is not a smoker. Potential causes for the disease include environmental exposures and genetics, and recognizing the diverse factors that can increase someone’s risk of lung cancer – regardless of their smoking history – is essential for timely and appropriate screening and treatment.

    Cancer that is found at the earliest stages, like that of the pope, can be treated with surgery and cured for both smokers and nonsmokers. The challenge is that people who have never smoked are not currently included in lung cancer screening guidelines, and tumors are often only found by chance.

    As a thoracic oncologist, I have seen many younger women and never smokers walk into my clinic with a new diagnosis of lung cancer. Particularly for never smokers, lung cancer is unexpected for both patients and their doctors, which can often lead to delays in diagnosis. Researchers have described this trend of increasing lung cancer rates among women in different parts of the world and are starting to understand why cases are on the rise.

    Lung cancer in women

    The first explanation of why rates of lung cancer in women have increased is that many started smoking later than men, pushing back their peak in smoking-related lung cancer diagnoses.

    Women also started smoking in the years when filtered cigarettes were most commonly used. This led to an increased risk of a type of cancer called adenocarcinoma due to the way cigarette filters distribute tobacco smoke to the outer parts of the lungs. Some studies suggest that women are more susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of exposure to tobacco and cigarette smoke, including second-hand smoke, and may develop lung cancer after fewer years of smoking compared to men.

    However, it is important to note that most people diagnosed today with lung cancer are not active smokers. About 20% of women with lung cancer have never smoked – higher than for men with lung cancer who’ve never smoked.

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    Lung cancer risk factors

    Besides smoking and secondhand smoke, there are several other lung cancer risk factors. These include a family history of cancer and exposure to asbestos, radon and air pollution.

    Exposure to carcinogens in the workplace in the form of inhaled chemicals such as arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, silica and nickel is still a concern in some parts of the world. The potential lung cancer risk of e-cigarette and marijuana smoke is still under study but of potential concern.

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    Like BRCA1 and BRCA2 in breast cancer, alterations in genes that promote or protect against tumor development can contribute to lung cancer development. Researchers have yet to identify specific mutations that may predispose individuals to lung cancer. However, studying familial genetic predispositions can help elucidate how lung cancer develops and lead to new biomarkers for early cancer detection in high-risk groups.

    Lung cancer screening

    In 2021, the United States Preventive Services Task Force updated its lung cancer screening guidelines to include younger patients with less smoking history. Now, lung cancer screening is recommended for adults ages 50 to 80 who have smoked at least one pack per day for 20 years, current smokers and former smokers who quit smoking within the last 15 years. Women at risk for lung cancer can talk to their doctors about ordering a low-dose CT scan for lung cancer screening.

    Nationwide, more than 70% of eligible women undergo breast cancer screening but less than 6% of all eligible smokers pursue lung cancer screening. Researchers estimate that these new screening guidelines will increase the number of women eligible for lung cancer screening by 40% by including those at a younger age who have less smoking exposure.

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    Lung cancer diagnosis

    In recent years, increasing understanding of the genetic changes that can lead to cancer and how to harness the immune system to treat cancer has led to new targeted therapies and immunotherapies that have improved the prognosis of patients with lung cancer. Women tend to have a better lung cancer prognosis than men, especially if they never smoked and have tumors with molecular changes that can be treated with targeted therapies.

    However, lung cancer symptoms may go unrecognized in women. Symptoms of lung cancer can include coughing, shortness of breath, overwhelming fatigue and pain in the back, chest or shoulder, which could be confused for other ailments. Because women tend to be slightly younger when diagnosed than men, patients may be able to tolerate symptoms longer and delay seeking medical attention. Physicians also might not attribute these symptoms to lung cancer due to a patient’s younger age.

    Recognizing the early symptoms of lung cancer, expanding lung cancer screening eligibility and testing for genetic biomarkers to select the best therapy are some of the steps that could help address the global epidemic of lung cancer in women.

    This is an updated version of an article published on Feb. 1, 2023.

    Estelamari Rodriguez, Associate Director of Community Outreach in Thoracic Oncology, University of Miami

    This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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  • Why does your brain mix up memories? A new study examines how memories are misplaced in your brain’s filing cabinets
    Photo credit: LWA/Stone via Getty Images – Older people may confuse memories rather than forgetting them altogether.
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    Why does your brain mix up memories? A new study examines how memories are misplaced in your brain’s filing cabinets

    A new study explores how aging changes the way our brains store and retrieve experiences.

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    Old age and forgetfulness seem to go hand in hand. But my colleagues and I found that memories actually becomes less precise, not entirely forgotten. Our study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, shows how the brain blends related experiences as you age rather than replaying the exact one you need.

    Memory is a complicated process. Even when everything’s working as it should, the way people remember specific events has many parts.

    Say you have a conversation with a friend. The first stage of memory is when you’re experiencing, feeling and perceiving details of an event as it happens. The second stage involves storing these details in your brain’s file cabinet. The third stage covers when you need to search that file cabinet for just the right file when, a week later, you want to remember that conversation with your friend. This last retrieval stage is what many people think of as memory.

    Imagine that when your brain was retrieving information from that conversation with your friend, it accidentally combined details from that conversation with one you had with your spouse that morning. When you then try to remember the conversation with your friend, you actually pull the file for the conversation with your spouse instead. This kind of mix-up might be an example of what happens with the aging brain.

    Why it matters

    Remembering people and events is important for many social activities. Confusing people’s names can be embarrassing. The fear of confusing memories can even lead to social isolation.

    Scientists already know that confusing memories happens more often than forgetting them altogether. What’s less clear is how the brain gets confused.

    My team’s study tried to understand when in the memory process these mix-ups happen and how the brain’s memory center, called the hippocampus, plays a role.

    The hippocampus is involved in all stages of memory. The patterns of neural firing that occur during the first stage of memory – the initial experience of talking with your friend – often recur while your brain is filing that memory away and later when retrieving it.

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    For our study, we scanned the brains of young, middle-aged and older adults while they went through those same three stages of memory. While in the scanner, they briefly saw images of a face at the top of the screen and an image of either a scene or an object, such as a forest or an apple, on the bottom of the screen.

    We told participants to imagine the person at the top interacting in the scene or with the object. Each image pair served as a separate “event.”

    They then relaxed for 20 minutes while we continued to record their brain activity. Finally, they took a memory test in which a face they had previously seen reappeared on top with four images below. Participants had to remember which of those images had previously been paired with the face. We repeated this test several times to gauge how well people remembered links between faces and scenes and objects across events.

    We found that older people had more memory mix-ups than young adults. For instance, they were more likely to falsely remember a face that was initially paired with an apple as having been paired with a forest. Older people were also less likely to repeat the same brain activity patterns seen when they first experienced, stored and retrieved a specific memory. Surprisingly, even when older adults did repeat the original brain patterns, they were even more likely to confuse their memories.

    Our study provides new evidence that the hippocampus is inappropriately changing memories between different memory phases as one gets older.

    What still isn’t known

    Research in young adults, including those in our study, suggests that the hippocampus is supposed to engage in the same neural firing patterns when remembering an event as when first experiencing it.

    But the older adults who made more memory mix-ups than younger participants showed these same neural patterns. So what is the brain signature when older adults get a memory right? Are other brain regions outside the hippocampus helping? We did not get a good answer for these questions from our study.

    What’s next

    Researchers are still learning how different brain regions talk to one another. One of the next frontiers in neuroscience is understanding how electrically stimulating the hippocampus prevents memory loss or restores lost memories.

    Future interventions might try to strengthen the hippocampus to prevent it from changing a memory after it’s stored. Researchers already have some ideas for this: intensive exercise, mindfulness training, brain stimulation and even recording memory cues on smartphones.

    But researchers still need to investigate whether changing the hippocampus can lead to stable, consistent memories over time.

    The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

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    Getting outside despite your 9‑to‑5 job can improve your mental health – here’s how to spend time in nature during and around working hours

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    The modern workday unfolds largely indoors. Long hours spent commuting, sitting in meetings and staring at screens can make time outdoors feel like a luxury. Finding time for nature in an already packed workday can feel impossible, especially if you think nature only “counts” when it involves hiking boots and camping gear.

    But a growing body of research suggests that nature’s benefits don’t require an exotic vacation getaway or weekend adventure. Even brief, routine interactions with green space can reduce stress, improve mood and promote overall well-being.

    I spent the spring of 2026 teaching and studying urban landscapes in Denmark, a country consistently ranked among the happiest in the world. I expected to find thoughtfully designed parks, courtyards and bicycle paths. I did see those things. But what surprised me was how seamlessly people moved through those spaces as part of their ordinary lives.

    These green spaces weren’t aspirational destinations, reserved for special occasions. They were places to eat lunch, meet friends, walk through on the way home from work, or just pause for a few quiet moments. Getting outside seemed a part of the natural rhythm of the day.

    Denmark‘s outdoor culture stemmed not only from the creation of a meticulously planned network of parks, but also from the way green spaces were fundamentally woven into the routines of everyday life.

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    Everyday parks, everyday benefits

    Evidence linking time spent in nature with health benefits has increasingly shaped public policy. In the U.S., for example, the National Park Service’s Healthy Parks Healthy People and ParkRx initiatives reflect a growing recognition that access to parks contributes to well-being.

    For many Americans, however, the word “park” brings to mind iconic national parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. Yet visiting parks of all kinds can improve your overall health. The greatest public health value may come not from the parks people visit once in a lifetime but from those close enough to visit again and again.

    My own research on Civil War battlefield parks illustrates this point. These are parks that were established to commemorate historic conflicts that were frequently fought on the fringes of major metropolitan areas. Consequently, many of these landscapes preserve forests, grasslands and trails within easy reach of millions of Americans.

    Because they’re accessible without extensive travel or planning, they can become places people return to repeatedly – such as during a lunch break or after work. Reframing the notion of “park” opens up millions of acres of land for everyday uses.

    Designing for everyday nature

    At the University of Richmond, where I work, a stream restoration projects became an opportunity to rethink how nature fits into campus life. Landscape architects designed an Eco-Corridor, as the project became known. It has walking paths, gathering spaces and seating areas for quiet reflection alongside flowing streams and native vegetation.

    The result was a landscape that supports biodiversity and improves water quality while also creating places for students, faculty and staff to walk between meetings, eat lunch alfresco or spend a few quiet moments outside during the workday. Its ongoing care depends on an army of volunteers who spread mulch, remove invasive plants and tend the community garden. For these volunteers, stewardship between classes and meetings meant another opportunity to interact with nature.

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    What we learned was that nature doesn’t have to compete with work, studying or everyday responsibilities. Thoughtful landscape design can make spending time outdoors, even if only for a few short minutes, feel like a normal part of the day.

    This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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