We have all heard about chil­dren who have Atten­tion Deficit/Hyperactivity Dis­or­der (AD/HD). Indeed, this con­di­tion seems to affect 5 to 8% of school age chil­dren. Have you ever won­dered what hap­pen to these chil­dren? As many as 60% of them become adults pre­sent­ing AD/HD symp­toms! Ron de Graaf and col­leagues recently pub­lished a study in which they found that an aver­age of 3.5% of work­ers (in ten coun­tries) meet the cri­te­ria for adult ADHD. As you can imag­ine, being an adult with AD/HD can be a chal­lenge at work.

Before we explore this issue let’s start by describ­ing the symp­toms of ADHD.

What is adult AD/HD?

AD/HD is a dis­or­der of the brain. Research clearly indi­cates that AD/HD is to a large extent genetic, that is it tends to run in fam­i­lies. How­ever, AD/HD is a com­plex dis­or­der and other causal fac­tors may be at play.

Typ­i­cally, the symp­toms arise in early child­hood, unless they are asso­ci­ated with some type of brain injury later in life. Some peo­ple have mild AD/HD with only a few symp­toms while oth­ers have more seri­ous AD/HD with more symptoms.

Symp­toms of inat­ten­tion (adapted from the DSM-IV)

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Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

News and Analysis

Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments: oppor­tu­ni­ties and con­cerns: health com­pa­nies and the mil­i­tary are start­ing to use new tools to assess brain func­tions in con­texts that nei­ther neu­roimag­ing nor tra­di­tional neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing can reach. This is a crit­i­cal piece of the brain fit­ness puz­zle that is worth keep­ing track of, full of oppor­tu­ni­ties, but also pri­vacy concerns.

Cog­ni­tive Health News Roundup: recent news cov­er­ing stud­ies on men­tal train­ing and DNA, on nutri­tion and the brain, and more. Read the rest of this entry »

You know your weight. And your phys­i­cal fit­ness. And a vari­ety of health-related metrics.

What about your brain fitness?

Two recent announce­ments bring out how the assess­ment of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, or brain func­tions, is increas­ingly being done thanks to new com­put­er­ized options:

1) Last week, OptumHealth announced an exclu­sive 3-year agree­ment (esti­mated at $18m) with the Aus­tralian com­pany Brain Resource. OptumHealth will be embed­ding the Brain Resource plat­form into their over­all Behav­ioral Solu­tions program.

- OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions will work with Brain Resource to pro­vide clin­i­cians with a Web-based assess­ment that mea­sures gen­eral cog­ni­tion (how peo­ple process infor­ma­tion) and social cog­ni­tion (how peo­ple man­age their emo­tions). This 40-minute assess­ment is based on well-known and val­i­dated tests of mem­ory, atten­tion, exec­u­tive func­tion, and response speed, and mood, social skills and emo­tional resilience.

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Daniel Gole­man requires no intro­duc­tion. Per­son­ally, of all his books I have read, the one I found most stim­u­lat­ing was Destruc­tive Emo­tions: A Sci­en­tific Dia­logue With the Dalai Lama, a superb overview of what emo­tions are and how we can put them to good use. He is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio inter­views includ­ing one with George Lucas on Edu­cat­ing Hearts and Minds: Rethink­ing Education.

We are hon­ored to bring you a guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine, a UC-Berkeley-based quar­terly mag­a­zine that high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Enjoy!

- Alvaro

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Hot To Help: When can empa­thy move us to action?

By Daniel Goleman

We often empha­size the impor­tance of keep­ing cool in a cri­sis. But some­times cool­ness can give way to detach­ment and apathy.

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There are whole mar­kets (think cross­words, herbal sup­ple­ments, drugs, brain fit­ness soft­ware) aimed at help­ing us improve our memory.

Now, what is “mem­ory”? how does the process of mem­ory work?

Dr. Bill Klemm, Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity, explains a very impor­tant con­cept below.

- Alvaro

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Get­ting from Here to There:
Mak­ing Mem­ory Con­sol­i­da­tion Work

By Bill Klemm,  Ph. D.

Until con­sol­i­da­tion has occurred, a short-term mem­ory is very vul­ner­a­ble, as all of us have expe­ri­enced from look­ing up a phone num­ber only to have some dis­trac­tion cause us to lose the num­ber before we can get it dialed.

What is “consolidation”?

Brain researchers use the term “con­sol­i­da­tion” for the process whereby short-term mem­ory gets made more permanent.

Here, I would like to dis­cuss some aspects of con­sol­i­da­tion that many peo­ple may not know about: why sleep is so impor­tant, why mem­ory must be prac­ticed, and how test­ing pro­motes con­sol­i­da­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

July is shap­ing up to be a fas­ci­nat­ing month, full of cog­ni­tive health research reports and appli­ca­tions. Here you have a roundup, cov­er­ing food for the brain, cog­ni­tive assess­ments, men­tal train­ing and DNA, and more.

1) Brain foods: the effects of nutri­ents on brain func­tion (Nature Neuroscience)

Iron­i­cally, Marc at the blog titled Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Chal­lenged has just released one of the best edi­tions of Encephalon blog car­ni­val. Pay a visit only when you have some time to spare with a col­lec­tion of excel­lent and very well pre­sented neu­ro­science, med­i­cine and psy­chol­ogy blog posts, on top­ics rang­ing from fMRI to gene ther­apy and neuroplasticity.

Visit #49 Encephalon edi­tion at Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Challenged.

Also, you may enjoy tak­ing a look at past edi­tions and cal­en­dar for future ones at Encephalon home page: Encephalon Archives & Cal­en­dar.

Here you have 4 of the most pop­u­lar brain games in our blog, plus a bonus stress man­age­ment tip.

Brain Teaser 1. In which direc­tion is the bus pic­tured below traveling?

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Thanks to our 3-month-old daugh­ter, my wife and I have been learn­ing much about baby brains. Mostly learn­ing on the job, as you can imagine.

We just watched a very nice PBS series titled Secret Life of the Brain that cov­ers brain devel­op­ment across the lifes­pan: babies, kids, teenagers, adults, seniors. A bit dated (2002) but excel­lent watch­ing even today.

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My nat­ural rhythms are in cycle with the school cal­en­dar. Jan­u­ary 1st takes a back seat to my new year, which gets ush­ered in with the month of Sep­tem­ber when there is crisp­ness in the air that grad­u­ally shakes off the slower, more relaxed pace of summer.Conveniently, my career in teach­ing meshes with my nat­ural cycli­cal year. And as this year draws to a close, I am re-energized by the pace of sum­mer, know­ing that any­thing may pop in to my mind as I engage in activ­i­ties not directly related to school. But before that hap­pens, I’d like to reflect on this past year, in par­tic­u­lar as it was my first year of blog­ging about the brain.

My inter­est in the brain stems from want­ing to bet­ter under­stand both how to make school more palat­able for stu­dents, and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment more mean­ing­ful for fac­ulty. To that end, I began my Neu­rons Fir­ing blog in April, 2007, have been doing a lot of read­ing, and been attend­ing work­shops and con­fer­ences, includ­ing Learn­ing & the Brain.

If you agree that our brains are designed for learn­ing, then Read the rest of this entry »