Richard A Dienstbier

After receiving his PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Rochester, Dienstbier joined the Psychology Department of the University of Nebraska, where he has spent his entire professional career. He served as the Head of that Social-Personality program and (for 8 years) as Psychology Department Chair. He was the Series Editor of the annual Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. He is now Professor Emeritus of Psychology.Dienstbier's interests in aging, stress, and emotion led to research...See more

After receiving his PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Rochester, Dienstbier joined the Psychology Department of the University of Nebraska, where he has spent his entire professional career. He served as the Head of that Social-Personality program and (for 8 years) as Psychology Department Chair. He was the Series Editor of the annual Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. He is now Professor Emeritus of Psychology.Dienstbier's interests in aging, stress, and emotion led to research and to graduate courses in research methods, emotion, and stress, with emphasis on how programs of regular exercise, mental stimulation, meditation, and even some social activities lead to modifications to both neurochemistry and neural structures. Those physiological modifications slow and even reverse the negative impacts of stress and aging on the brain, resulting in enhanced cognitive capacities and even resilience.That research was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health, and it ultimately led to his 2015 book Building resistance to stress and aging: The toughness model (published originally by Palgrave Macmillan, now Springer). Although that book described how much activities such as physical exercise and cognitive stimulation contribute to cognitive capacities and resilience, and how they lead to those benefits, an obviously missing piece was the contribution of nutrition to preserving cognitive capacity and resilience, especially in older people. Recognizing the importance of that missing element of nutrition led to research on how much and how major dietary programs and individual nutrients lead to the modifications to neurochemistry and neural structures that ultimately preserve cognition, defend against dementia, and lead to psychological resilience. See less