Finally.

“The House took steps yesterday to improve counseling and care for the tens of thousands of military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.” keep reading the Washington Post’s article House Passes Four Bills Aimed at Aiding Veterans.

Our previous thoughts on TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), Iraq and neuropsychology.

This week we have enjoyed 3 great blog carnivals

• Encephalon (neuroscience and psychology)
• Grand Rounds (medicine and health)
• Tangled Bank (general science)

And, of course, there are more on a varity of topics:

Medicine and web 2.0, Change of Shift, Education, Read the rest of this entry »

I have just read the best blog post I have read in a loooong while, so let me share it here now. Brett Steenbarger is a Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and a Trading Psychology expert who I had the pleasure to interview a while back. He is a master at trading, learning, teaching and coaching. 

And has written this superb post: When Traders Lose Confidence – Part Three: Structuring Your Experience. We talk in this blog a lot about neuroplasticity and cognitive and emotional training, but what Brett outlines is, in summary, a very healthy attitude to life, lifelong brain plasticity, brain health, and success. Not bad!

See below a few of his quotes-but please read the full article here:

• What we call the “self”–how we experience ourselves–is the result of all that we internalize from people and events.
• Because we are always having new experiences–and can internalize these–we are always, to some degree, remaking who we are.
• Every activity we engage in provides us with feedback about ourselves: our abilities, how we’re perceived by others, our character. In selecting what we do, who we do it with, and how we do it, we can structure our experience to create mirrors of success and mastery.
• Experience is our psychological food; it’s vital that we feed ourselves well. But what does it mean to structure our experience and feed ourselves well psychologically?
• The reason I’m effective as a psychologist, I believe, is not because I’m all that more educated than others or utilize such better techniques. Rather, I have an uncanny ability to see the best in people; to push aside the problems of the moment and see through to qualities of greatness that are present within most of us, however fleetingly. It’s because I see the best in people that I can be a good mirror–and help others see in themselves what they otherwise cannot appreciate on their own Confidence comes from the right kind of mirroring–and we can choose our mirrors.

Please enjoy When Traders Lose Confidence – Part Three: Structuring Your Experience.

Dr. Michael Merzenich has written a great post titled A “cognitive reserve” is a good thing to work on!. Recommended reading if you are interested in another scientific perspective for cognitive training.

I agree we should know more (as usual), especially for policy decisions, but there is enough research, from Marian Diamond et al (see beautiful essays below) work on enriched environments to cognitive reserve and training, that is shouting at all of us: Exercise Your Brain! Enjoy Learning! Statistics such as that the average American-including kids- watch 5 hours of TV daily… don’t mean “we need more research” but “how can we change this”?.

See a couple of quotes from my recent interview with Yaakov Stern on the Cognitive Reserve.

• “well…I was pretty surprised when, years ago, a reporter from Seventeen magazine requested an interview. I was really curious to learn why Read the rest of this entry »

Shelley launched a good discussion on The Neuroscience of ADHD in her blog, discussing the situation and providing a technical overview of drug-based interventions. Something I hadn’t heard is that “For example, babies born prematurely face a significantly greater risk of developing ADHD than full-term babies (socioeconomic status was controlled for).”

Which helps me better understand the need to think about pre-schoolers, as discussed in the article Diagnosing ADD/ ADHD in Preschoolers, at ADDitude Magazine. I quote: 

• “The Preschool ADHD Treatment Study, or PATS, conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), is the first long-term study designed to evaluate the effectiveness of treating preschoolers with ADHD with behavioral therapy, and then, in some cases, methylphenidate. In the first stage, the children (303 preschoolers with severe ADHD, between the ages of three and five) and their parents participated in a 10-week behavioral therapy course. For one third of the children, ADHD symptoms improved so dramatically with behavior therapy alone that they did not progress to the ADHD medication phase of the study.”

As Shelley’s post and the article explain, drugs do help when used appropriately. Now, they are not the only answer. I am happy to see that behavioral therapy can be as useful when appropriate. Which is not a surprise, given the growing literature on different methods of cognitive training, including therapy and working memory training like the one discussed with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gibson and in our post Cognitive Neuroscience and ADD/ADHD Today.

Given the stock market performance these days, Brett Steenbarger offers timely tips and resources for traders on managing stress and self-confidence: Updated Psychology of Trading Resources, including a list of relevant blogs such as Afraid to Trade blog, Trader Psychology blog, the Head Coach blog, his Stock Market Psychology blog and Smart Trader blog.

He also offers very good advice to build self-confidence, which can be useful to us all, no matter our profession: When Traders Lose Confidence – Part Two: Changing Your Self-Talk .

• “The key to changing the self-talk is to become aware of when you’re doing it. Most often, the negative talk is automatic. Journals are effective because they force us to reflect on our thinking and interrupt those automatic patterns. Similarly, I’ve had great results working with traders who talk their thoughts out loud into a tape recorder and then play them back. It’s an excellent way to become aware of your thinking, stand apart from it, and break the flow.”
• “Yet another strategy is to go through guided visualizations of challenging market scenarios while you’re calm and focused (before trading starts) and then mentally rehearse the self-talk you’d like to engage in during those situations. This helps to build new, positive patterns of self-talk.
• “The key to all these strategies is repetition: you’re training yourself to process information in new ways, and such training requires practice.”

You may enjoy our interview with Brett N. Steenbarger on Enhancing Trader Performance. And learn more on other techniques at Best practice for top trading performance: biofeedback and solutions for Traders.

Very good article in MarketWatch titled Beating forgetfulness and boosting the brain. Probably the best we have seen so far providing an overall industry perspective on a nascent field. I recommend reading the whole article, but here you have some teasers:

• “As boomers age, the drive to correct such discomfort has implications for health and wellness, employment and corporate training — even sports. It’s giving rise to a burgeoning business of brain-boosting products and services, as well as exploration into “cognitive enhancing” prescription drugs.”
• “The market for brain-fitness software targeting U.S. adults is estimated to be $80 million to $100 million this year, up from $60 million last year and $2 million in 2005, according to SharpBrains, a San Francisco-based portal that helps individuals and companies navigate brain-training information, products and services.”
• “It’s also easy to confuse age-related memory problems with the effects of undiagnosed depression or anxiety, which are reversible, said Dr. Gene Cohen, director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at George Washington University Medical Center”
• “The business of brain training started taking off after Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Yaakov Stern is the Division Leader of the Cognitive Neuroscience Division of the Sergievsky Center, and Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York.

He is one of the leading proponents of the Cognitive reserve theory, which aims to explain why some individuals with full Alzheimer’s pathology (accumulation of plaques and tangles in their brains) can keep normal lives until they die, while others -with the same amount of plaques and tangles- display the severe symptoms we associate with Alzheimer’s Disease. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject.

The concept of a Cognitive Reserve has been around since 1989, when a post mortem analysis of 137 people with Alzheimer’s Disease showed that some patients exhibited fewer clinical symptoms than their actual pathology suggested. These patients also showed higher brain weights and greater number of neurons when compared to age-matched controls. The investigators hypothesized that the patients had a larger “reserve” of neurons and abilities that enable them to offset the losses caused by Alzheimer’s. Since then, the concept of Cognitive Reserve has been defined as the ability of an individual to tolerate progressive brain pathology without demonstrating clinical cognitive symptoms. (You can check at the end of this interview a great clip on this).

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Key take-aways

- Lifetime experiences, like education, engaging occupation, and leisure activities, have been shown to have a major influence on how we age, specifically on whether we will develop Alzheimer’s symptoms or not.

- This is so because stimulating activities, ideally combining physical exercise, learning and social interaction, help us build a Cognitive Reserve to protect us.

- The earlier we start building our Reserve, the better; but it is never too late to start. And, the more activities, the better: the effect is cumulative.

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The Cognitive Reserve

Alvaro Fernandez (AF): Dear Dr. Stern, it is a pleasure to have you here. Let me first ask you this: the implications of your research are pretty astounding, presenting major implications across sectors and age groups. What has been the most unexpected reaction so far?

YS: well…I was pretty surprised when Read the rest of this entry »

Hi,

It’s Andreas, the neuroscience intern from Norway.

Lately, you might have noticed the comedian Judson Laipply’s awesome movie clip, the Evolution of Dance on Youtube?

The dance is part of Laipply’s “Inspirational Comedy” and has become a huge success. As a neuroscientist I’m interested in what are the neural substrates of dance? Further, I thought of ways to express this in an easy way so that people can learn more about the dance and the brain in a fun way. The result is my new Youtube video: A neurocomment on Laipply’s movie clip.

[youtube QQNhP2oOexU]
Read the rest of this entry »

The ABA (American Bar Association) Journal has a good article titled Law Hacks: 101 tips, tricks and tools to make you a more productive, less stressed-out lawyer, combining tips on email usage, software, and some brain tips from us:

• 67 “The Web site SharpBrains suggests self-improvement exercises. Try this one: Take five-minute visu­alization breaks with deep and regular breathing, picturing beautiful landscapes or pleasant or successful memories, especially after finishing a tough task.”
• 68 “Improve your mental acuity by subtracting numbers, i.e., 7 from 200 (200, 193, 186, 179 …) or practicing an exponential series (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 …). The point is not to become a math genius or be smarter than a fifth-grader, but just to keep your mind sharp.”
• 69 “It takes a system to be productive, but it’s also useful to try something different every day to stay sharp. For example, try commuting differently or talking to new people.”

Some more tips?

• Here is our full post on Brain Exercise FAQs.
• And the notes from a Stress Management Workshop we run at Accenture recently.
• You may also be interested in this article on Ten Important Truths About Aging: How we age is at least partially under our control, published by The Complete Lawyer, where you can learn why stress management is important, and more tips.
• And a Best practice for peak performance: emwave biofeedback