Dr. David Rabiner's Attention Research Update drew my attention to some recent research articles on the potential of fatty acid dietary supplementation to help treat ADD/ADHD.
Stimulant medication for children with ADD/ADHD has been the predominant treatment for years. Thus far, it has been quite successful, but we have yet to see the long term effects of chronic medication. Given that, it is worth at least investigating alternative therapies that can be used either in place of or in conjunction with traditional pharmaceutical and behavioral treatment.
As one of the four pillars of brain health, nutrition has a significant impact on both physical structures in the body and behavior. Studies suggest children with ADHD have lower levels of both omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids. Continue Reading »
"In bookstores, the science aisle generally lies well away from the self-help section, with hard reality on one set of shelves and wishful thinking on the other. But Norman Doidge’s fascinating synopsis of the current revolution in neuroscience straddles this gap: the age-old distinction between the brain and the mind is crumbling fast as the power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility."
"So it is forgivable that Dr. Doidge, a Canadian psychiatrist and award-winning science writer, recounts the accomplishments of the “neuroplasticians,” as he calls the neuroscientists involved in these new studies, with breathless reverence. Their work is indeed mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff, with implications, as Dr. Doidge notes, not only for individual patients with neurologic disease but for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history."
"Research into the malleability of the normal brain has been no less amazing. Subjects who learn to play a sequence of notes on the piano develop characteristic changes in the brain’s electric activity; when other subjects sit in front of a piano and just think about playing the same notes, the same changes occur. It is the virtual made real, a solid quantification of the power of thought."
"The new science of the brain may still be in its infancy, but already, as Dr. Doidge makes quite clear, the scientific minds are leaping ahead."
Here you have some of our interviews with a few "scientific minds" that have, for years, been "leaping ahead" beyond "positive thinking" into "positive training":
Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg on Brain Fitness Programs and Cognitive Training. Dr. Goldberg is a neuropsychologist and clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine. He was a student and close associate of the great neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, and has written The Executive Brain and The Wisdom Paradox.
An ape can do this. Can we not? with Dr. James Zull, Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at Case Western University, and author of The Art of Changing the Brain.
The great MIT OpenCourseWare initiative offers a lot of free materials on Brain and Cognitive Sciences. You can browse lecture notes, readings, and more on a variety of psychology and neuroscience courses.
"The human brain is the most complex, sophisticated, and powerful information-processing device known. To study its complexities, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology combines the experimental technologies of neurobiology, neuroscience, and psychology, with the theoretical power that comes from the fields of computational neuroscience and cognitive science."
"The Department was founded by Hans-Lukas Teuber in 1964 as a Department of Psychology, with the then-radical vision that the study of brain and mind are inseparable. Today, at a time of increasing specialization and fragmentation, our goal remains to understand cognition- its processes, and its mechanisms at the level of molecules, neurons, networks of neurons, and cognitive modules. We are unique among neuroscience and cognitive science departments in our breadth, and in the scope of our ambition. We span a very large range of inquiry into the brain and mind, and our work bridges many different levels of analysis including molecular, cellular, systems, computational and cognitive approaches."
"Neurogenesis: Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks. A surprising discovery in the last few years in neurobiology has been that neurons are born, neurogenesis, in the adult mammalian brain. Initially, this had been shown in animals and, more recently, in the humans hippocampus, the site of declarative memory formation. (See Greenough). Furthermore, the rate of neurogenesis in animals has been enhanced by experience, both physical activity and living in enriched environments (See Continue Reading »
"In the February, 2007 issue of Psychological Science, Langer and colleague Alia Crum reported that they took 84 hotel workers and told one group that “the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. Examples of how their work was exercise were provided.” Langer and Crum told the control group nothing. Four weeks later, Langer and Crum returned to find some measurements of both groups: the control group hadn’t changed physically, but the test group had decreased all of the following: weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index.
Langer and Crum describe this study as supporting the theory that exercise affects health at least partly due to the placebo effect. Furthermore, we can ask, what are the stories that these hotel workers are telling themselves? Why do the hotel workers suddenly believe that they actively affect their exercise regiment?"
Implication: the placebo effect is real, and it can help our health.
A few fun questions to consider:
- How do we prevent other people from selling us stuff that only works based on the placebo effect?
- Once we decide to do something, shouldn't we try to "placebo" ourselves in order to get the most of it? this is another manifestation of the importance of emotional self-regulation.
"The steady formation of new brain cells in adults may represent more than merely a patching up of aging brains, a new study has shown."
"The new adult brain cells may serve to give the adult brain the same kind of learning ability that young brains have while still allowing the existing, mature circuitry to maintain stability."
"The researchers found that the new adult neurons showed a pattern of changing plasticity very similar to that seen in brain cells in newborn animals. That is, the new adult brain cells showed a "critical period" in which they were highly plastic before they settled into the less plastic properties of mature brain cells. In newborn animals, such a critical period enables an important, early burst of wiring of new brain circuitry with experience."
"The researchers also observed in the new adult neurons anatomical evidence of the same kind of formation of new connections that take place in the brains of newborns as they wire new pathways in response to experience."
"They concluded that "adult neurogenesis may represent not merely a replacement mechanism for lost neurons, but instead an ongoing developmental process that continuously rejuvenates the mature nervous system by offering expanded capacity of plasticity in response to experience throughout life."
In short: not only do we know today that the adult brain is capable of creating new neurons, but this shows that our experience influences what happens to those neurons once created. Pretty revolutionary understanding, that still needs to permeate through society and influence our lifestyles and habits.
I was sent these links to a free online crossword puzzle game and sudoko. While we often talk about the excellent computer-based brain fitness programs available, puzzles can still be good mental exercise ... they are just not a complete workout for your whole brain.
Word games like crossword puzzles and SCRABBLE® exercise your lexical recall (memory for words that name things), attention, memory, and pattern recognition. They can help maintain your vocabulary and avoid the frustrating tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon that all of us experience from time to time. Sudoko is not a mathematics game in that you don't actually manipulate the numbers as mathematical entities, but it is a pattern recognition game using symbols (numbers). A very legitimate reason to play casual games is that they can be social and fun - which is good for reducing stress.
The drawbacks to puzzles and games is that they are hard to calibrate to ensure increasing challenge, and they generally only exercise a limited number of brain functions.
So by all means, do puzzles if you enjoy them! But be sure to push yourself to keep finding harder ones that fall just short of frustrating you. Also, just as you cross train your voluntary muscles, be sure to cross train your mental muscles by balancing your workout with other types of mental work (motor coordination, auditory, working memory, planning, etc.). The computerized programs make it easier for you in the sense that they are individually calibrated for you to employ novelty, variety, challenge, and practice to exercise your brain more thoroughly in each session.
Further reading on language production, comprehension, and goofs:
Steven Edwards at Wired Blog writes a post titled Yoga Boosts Brain's GABA Levels, saying that "Participants in the yoga group had a 27% increase in GABA levels, while those in the reading group remained unchanged. Co-authors Chris Streeter from BUSM and Domenic Ciraulo pointed out that this research shows a method of treating low GABA states. Fairly obvious --- yes --- but this shows a nonpharmacological method for increasing GABA levels that people can act on now, without waiting for a drug to go through FDA approval."
Having attended last week a conference where neuropharma executives presented all their future drugs against obesity, anxiety, depression...I couldn't agree more. The rates of serious side effects of these drugs are astounding, yet as a society we seem to prefer to rely on taking drugs when are sick rather than proactively taking charge of our health and lifestyles and do our best (which not always is enough) to protect our fitness and wellness.
One of the companies presenting at our panel on Brain Fitness at Neurotech Industry Conference, May 17th in San Francisco, was Cogmed. They offer a working memory training program focused now on kids with attention deficits. What was exciting in the panel was to hear how Cogmed is helping kids train working memory, Posit Science is helping (mostly) seniors train auditory processing, and there is a growing field starting to provide structured brain exercise to people of all ages with different priorities and needs.
"Working memory is the ability to store information in the brain for a short time, typically a few seconds. In daily life, working memory helps people remember instructions, solve problems, control impulses and focus attention."
"Cogmed Working Memory Training, developed by Swedish brain researcher Dr. Torkel Klingberg, features video game software on an engaging robot interface. The research-validated program has been successful in Europe, and now is being offered in the United States."
"The program may not apply to everyone with attention deficit, according to Graham, because not all people with ADD have a deficit in working memory. Schools or psychologists can determine whether Continue Reading »
Here is new brain teaser written by puzzle master Wes Carroll.
The Really, Really, Really Big Number
Difficulty: HARDER Type: MATH (Numerical/Abstract) Intimidation Factor: HIGH --- but don't be scared!
Question:
When you divide 12 by 5, the remainder is 2; it's what's left over after you have removed all the 5s from the 12. When you raise 4 to the fifth power (that is, 45), you multiply four by itself five times: 4×4x4×4x4, which equals 1,024.
What is the remainder when you divide 100100 by 11?
"Leading Source of Brain Exercise Information Establishes 10 Must-Ask Questions for Consumers Choosing Brain Fitness Software Programs"
"SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The influx of brain exercise programs during the past six months has lead SharpBrains.com, the nation's first online brain fitness center and leading provider of mental exercise information and programs, to establish a 10-question checklist to help consumers choose the best brain fitness program for their needs."
10 Questions to Choose the
Right Brain Fitness Program for You
BASED ON SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
1. Are there scientists (ideally neuropsychologists) and a scientific advisory board behind the program?
2. Are there published, peer-reviewed scientific papers written by those scientists? How many?
MEASURABLE CLAIMS AND BENEFITS
3. What are the specific benefits claimed for using this program? Continue Reading »
In the February, 2007 issue of 
