Round-up of April arti­cles and news on neu­ro­science, brain devel­op­ment and cog­ni­tive health:

Games for Health Con­fer­ences to host new Cog­ni­tive Health Track:

For the first time, a new Cog­ni­tive Health track –Pow­ered by Sharp­Brains– will cover eleven brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health top­ics dur­ing the 5th Annual Games for Health Con­fer­ence. The cur­rent price is $379, with a 15% dis­count if you use code “sharp09” (with­out quo­ta­tion) when you reg­is­ter Here. Details: June 11-12th at the Hyatt Har­bor­side Hotel in Boston, MA.

Bilin­gual Babies Get Head Start — Before They Can Talk:

- “Unlike the mono­lin­gual group, the bilin­gual group was able to suc­cess­fully learn a new sound type and use it to pre­dict where each char­ac­ter would pop up…The bilin­gual babies’ skill applies to more than just switch­ing between lan­guages. Mehler likened this appar­ently enhanced cog­ni­tive abil­ity to a brain select­ing “the right tool for the right operation”—also called exec­u­tive function.”

- “In this basic process, the brain, ever flex­i­ble, nim­bly switches from one learned response to another as sit­u­a­tions change…Monolingual babies hone this abil­ity later in their young lives, Mehler suggests.”

Study shows how kids’ stress hurts mem­ory:

“Now, research is pro­vid­ing what could be cru­cial clues to explain how child­hood poverty trans­lates into dim­mer chances of suc­cess: Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: I recently came across an excel­lent book and resource, The Alzheimer’s Action Plan: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Diag­no­sis and Treat­ment for Mem­ory Prob­lems, just released in paper­back. Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, one of the authors and lead­ing Alzheimer’s expert, kindly helped us cre­ate a 2-part arti­cle series to share with Sharp­Brains read­ers advice on a very impor­tant ques­tion, “How can we help the pub­lic at large to dis­tin­guish Alzheimer’s Dis­ease from nor­mal aging — so that an inter­est in early iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t trans­late into unneeded wor­ries?” What fol­lows is an excerpt from the book, pages 3–8).

—

As it turns out, Jane did not have Alzheimer’s. She con­sulted a doc­tor, who, in doc­s­peak, told her that the pas­sage of time (get­ting older) had taken a slight toll on her once-superquick mem­ory. She was slow­ing down a lit­tle, and if she relaxed, the name or date or other bit of infor­ma­tion she needed would come to her soon enough. She was still good at her job and home life. She had sim­ply joined the ranks of the wor­ried well.

Nor­mal brain aging, begin­ning as early as the for­ties in some peo­ple, may include:

• Tak­ing longer to learn or remem­ber information
• Hav­ing dif­fi­culty pay­ing atten­tion or con­cen­trat­ing in the midst of distractions
• For­get­ting such basics as an anniver­sary or the names of friends
• Need­ing more reminders or mem­ory cues, such as promi­nent appoint­ment cal­en­dars, reminder notes, a phone with a well­stocked speed dial

Although they may need some assis­tance, older peo­ple with­out a men­tal dis­or­der retain their abil­ity to do their errands, han­dle money, find their way to famil­iar areas, and behave appropriately.

How does this com­pare to a per­son with Alzheimer’s? When Alzheimer’s slows the brain’s machin­ery, peo­ple begin to lose their abil­ity to Read the rest of this entry »

Sev­eral recent arti­cles and news:

Brain Gain: the under­ground world of “neu­roen­hanc­ing” drugs (The New Yorker)

- “Alex remains enthu­si­as­tic about Adder­all, but he also has a slightly jaun­diced cri­tique of it. “It only works as a cog­ni­tive enhancer inso­far as you are ded­i­cated to accom­plish­ing the task at hand,” he said. “The num­ber of times I’ve taken Adder­all late at night and decided that, rather than start­ing my paper, hey, I’ll orga­nize my entire music library! I’ve seen peo­ple obses­sively clean­ing their rooms on it.” Alex thought that gen­er­ally the drug helped him to bear down on his work, but it also tended to pro­duce writ­ing with a char­ac­ter­is­tic flaw. “Often, I’ve looked back at papers I’ve writ­ten on Adder­all, and they’re ver­bose. They’re bela­bor­ing a point, try­ing to cre­ate this air­tight argu­ment, when if you just got to your point in a more direct man­ner it would be stronger. But with Adder­all I’d pro­duce two pages on some­thing that could be said in a cou­ple of sen­tences.” Nev­er­the­less, his Adderall-assisted papers usu­ally earned him at least a B. They got the job done. As Alex put it, “Pro­duc­tiv­ity is a good thing.”

Eschew Enhance­ment: Memory-boosting drugs should not be made avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic (Tech­nol­ogy Review)

- “Who might use them? Stu­dents will be tempted, as might play­ers of any game involv­ing count­ing or remem­ber­ing (chess, bridge, and even poker and black­jack). Cer­tain pro­fes­sion­als might desire a boost in atten­tion or memory”

- “But these poten­tially pow­er­ful med­i­cines should not be made avail­able to every­one, for two rea­sons. The first is safety. The last sev­eral years have pro­vided many exam­ples of side effects, some life-threatening…The sec­ond rea­son is that we still know rel­a­tively lit­tle about learn­ing and mem­ory and how they are inte­grated to make judg­ments and decisions.”

Kel­logg Set­tles with FTC over Health Claims on Cereal (Promo Magazine)

- “The FTC said that Kel­logg pro­moted the cereal as “clin­i­cally shown to improve kids’ atten­tive­ness by nearly 20%,” when in fact the study referred to in the ads showed dif­fer­ent results.”

- “The study found that only about half the chil­dren who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats for break­fast showed any improve­ment in atten­tive­ness, and only about one in nine improved by 20% or more, the FTC said.”

Brain shock: The new Gulf War syn­drome (New Scientist)

- “The US army also screens for symp­toms of mTBI when sol­diers return from a tour of duty, and again three months later. The army is also car­ry­ing out neu­rocog­ni­tive tests on recruits before they are sent into com­bat so that doc­tors can check for dete­ri­o­ra­tion in later tests.”

- “When it comes to com­bat trauma, unpick­ing the phys­i­cal from the psy­cho­log­i­cal is bound to be highly com­plex. As Barth says, per­haps the great­est dan­ger could be in try­ing to sim­plify the pic­ture too much. “I rec­om­mend that we get com­fort­able with the com­plex­ity,” he says, “and treat it as a challenge.”

You may be read­ing all about brain fit­ness and brain train­ing. It seems every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which often con­tra­dict what you read the month before: Does Gingko Biloba help delay Alzheimer’s Dis­ease? Can phys­i­cal exer­cise help you stay sharp as you age? Which computer-based “brain fit­ness pro­grams”, if any, are worth your money?

All this cov­er­age reflects very excit­ing sci­en­tific find­ings but also poses a key dilemma: How to become an informed life­long learner and con­sumer when there are few and con­tra­dic­tory author­i­ta­tive guidelines?

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (to be pub­lished in May 2009; $24.95) aims to fill that void. This guide is the result of over a year of exten­sive research includ­ing more than a hun­dred inter­views with sci­en­tists, pro­fes­sion­als and con­sumers, and a deep lit­er­a­ture review. Below you have some of the main find­ings from our effort. The guide not only cov­ers these aspects in more depth and offers prac­ti­cal guid­ance, but also includes 18 inter­views with promi­nent sci­en­tists to help you under­stand the research better.

Can we intro­duce you to your Brain?

The Guide will start at the obvi­ous start­ing point: The Human Brain. In order to make informed deci­sions about brain health, one needs to first under­stand the basic orga­ni­za­tion of the human brain and how it tends to change as we get older.

* The brain is com­posed of a num­ber of regions serv­ing dis­tinct func­tions. For­get IQ: our life and pro­duc­tiv­ity depend on a vari­ety of brain func­tions, not just one.

* There is noth­ing inher­ently fixed in the tra­jec­tory of how brain func­tions evolve as we age. Your lifestyle, actions, and even thoughts, do matter.

The 4 Pil­lars of Brain Maintenance

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is the life­long capac­ity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stim­u­la­tion of learn­ing and expe­ri­ence. The lat­est sci­en­tific research shows that spe­cific lifestyles and actions can, no mat­ter our age, improve the health and level of func­tion­ing of our brains.

What fac­tors seem to have the most influ­ence? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Sawyer and I just agreed to cre­ate a new Cog­ni­tive Health track –Pow­ered by Sharp­Brains– at the 5th Annual Games for Health Con­fer­ence. I will host the 11-session track, cov­er­ing a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics and an overview of Sharp­Brains’ upcom­ing report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009.

When and where: June 11-12th at the Hyatt Har­bor­side Hotel in Boston, MA.

Con­text: The Games for Health Con­fer­ence is pro­duced by The Seri­ous Games Ini­tia­tive and sup­ported by the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion. The con­fer­ence brings together researchers, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, decision-makers at health­care and insur­ance providers, inno­va­tors and game devel­op­ers. I have attended a few times, and have always been impressed by the cal­iber of both speak­ers and every­one in the audi­ence. Really a very good crowd.

Some options to participate?

1) Attend: The cur­rent price is $379, with a 15% dis­count if you use code “sharp09” (with­out quo­ta­tion) when you reg­is­ter Here. Spe­cial price for stu­dents is $200.

Please note that the Cog­ni­tive Health track is being sched­uled now — we will announce the detailed agenda dur­ing the month of May.

2) Speak: We are look­ing for inno­va­tors, researchers and decision-makers who would like to speak about their ongo­ing projects related to the use of games and other computer-based tech­nolo­gies for cog­ni­tive health.

If inter­ested, please Con­tact Us, by May 1st, a cou­ple of para­graphs sum­ma­riz­ing a) your project, bio and orga­ni­za­tion, b) what key lessons learned and impres­sions you would share if given 20 minutes.

3) Advertise/ Sponsor/ Exhibit: To inquire about options, please con­tact Beth Bryant, one of the con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers, at bbryant at dmill.com

We are proud to col­lab­o­rate with The Games for Health Con­fer­ence and expand the Cog­ni­tive Health dialogue!

My wife and I just came back from an inspir­ing Gold­man Prize Award cer­e­mony, where seven grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal change­mak­ers were rec­og­nized for their work and resiliency, and shared their pas­sion and pur­pose with every­one attend­ing the event. We did hear too from Al Gore, Tracy Chap­man, Robert Red­ford, and the founder of the awards 20 years ago, Richard Goldman.

The BBC recently pub­lished an Op-Ed by Mr. Gold­man on the story behind the Awards them­selves: arti­cle Here. He explains how…

• - “One morn­ing in 1989, as I sat with my daily break­fast and news­pa­per, I read about the most recent Nobel lau­re­ates and won­dered if there was a com­pa­ra­ble award for envi­ron­men­tal work.”
• - “We asked a staff mem­ber at our foun­da­tion to do some research and he found that noth­ing yet existed to recog­nise envi­ron­men­tal work on an inter­na­tional stage, thus the Gold­man Prize was born.”
• - “Our choice to focus specif­i­cally on grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal lead­ers was unique at the time.”

Mr. Gold­man, and the seven win­ners, are clearly help­ing improve the state of the world.

Now, the “state of the world” does include their very own brains — you may have seen this recent paper on how Vol­un­teer Pro­gram Pro­vides Health Ben­e­fits To Older Women

• - “She and her col­leagues found that EC vol­un­teers showed greater improve­ments in mem­ory and exec­u­tive func­tion than those who did not par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gram. In fact, the older adults with the low­est base­line per­for­mance in these areas — those most at risk for health dis­par­i­ties — demon­strated the most sig­nif­i­cant gains.”
• - “Both stud­ies high­lighted above show that every­day activ­ity inter­ven­tions (e.g., EC) can appeal to older adults’ desires to remain socially engaged and pro­duc­tive in their post-retirement years. Simul­ta­ne­ously, these activ­i­ties pro­vide mea­sur­able phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive health benefits.”

Of course, those ben­e­fits do not accrue only for older adults (or just for women), but may help all of us grad­u­ally build Cog­ni­tive Reserves through the added nov­elty, vari­ety and challenge.

Talk about win/ win!

Related arti­cles on social entrepreneurship:

“Every­one a Change­maker”, Ashoka and Google

Richard Dawkins and Alfred Nobel: beyond nature and nurture

(Editor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

At a time when edu­ca­tors are pre­oc­cu­pied with stan­dards, test­ing, and the bot­tom line, some researchers sug­gest the arts can boost stu­dents’ test scores; oth­ers aren’t con­vinced. Karin Evans asks, What are the arts good for?

—
When poet and national endow­ment for the Arts Chair­man Dana Gioia gave the 2007 Com­mence­ment Address at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, he used the occa­sion to deliver an impas­sioned argu­ment for the value of the arts and arts education.

“Art is an irre­place­able way of under­stand­ing and express­ing the world,” said Gioia. “There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as sto­ries, or songs, or images. Art delights, instructs, con­soles. It edu­cates our emotions.”

For years, arts advo­cates like Gioia have been mak­ing sim­i­lar pleas, stress­ing the intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits of the arts at a time when many Amer­i­cans are pre­oc­cu­pied with a market–driven cul­ture of enter­tain­ment, and schools are con­sumed with meet­ing fed­eral stan­dards. Art brings joy, these advo­cates say, or it evokes our human­ity, or, in the words of my 10–year–old daugh­ter, “It cools kids down after all the other hard stuff they have to think about.”

Bol­ster­ing the case for the arts has become increas­ingly nec­es­sary in recent years, as school bud­get cuts and the move toward stan­dard­ized test­ing have pro­foundly threat­ened the role of the arts in schools. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, passed in 2002, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment started assess­ing school dis­tricts by their stu­dents’ scores on read­ing and math­e­mat­ics tests.

As a result, accord­ing to a study by the Cen­ter on Edu­ca­tion Pol­icy, school dis­tricts across the United States increased the time they devoted to tested subjects—reading/language arts and math—while cut­ting spend­ing on non–tested sub­jects such as the visual arts and music. The more a school fell behind, by NCLB stan­dards, the more time and money was devoted to those tested sub­jects, with less going to the arts. The National Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion has reported that the cuts fall hard­est on schools with high num­bers of minor­ity children.

And the sit­u­a­tion is likely to worsen as state bud­gets get even tighter. Already, in a round of fed­eral edu­ca­tion cuts for 2006 and 2007, arts edu­ca­tion nation­ally was slashed by $35 mil­lion. In 2008, the New York City Depart­ment of Education’s annual study of Read the rest of this entry »

Round-up of recent arti­cles on neu­ro­science, brain devel­op­ment and cog­ni­tive health:

Encephalon 68: A car­ni­val of neu­ro­science:

Chris hosts a great col­lec­tion of neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy posts in his sig­na­ture Q&A style.

Bilin­gual Babies Get Head Start — Before They Can Talk:

- Unlike the mono­lin­gual group, the bilin­gual group was able to suc­cess­fully learn a new sound type and use it to pre­dict where each char­ac­ter would pop up.

- The bilin­gual babies’ skill applies to more than just switch­ing between lan­guages. Mehler likened this appar­ently enhanced cog­ni­tive abil­ity to a brain select­ing “the right tool for the right oper­a­tion” also called exec­u­tive function.

- In this basic process, the brain, ever flex­i­ble, nim­bly switches from one learned response to another as sit­u­a­tions change.

- Mono­lin­gual babies hone this abil­ity later in their young lives, Mehler suggests.”

Study shows how kids’ stress hurts mem­ory:

“Now, research is pro­vid­ing what could be cru­cial clues to explain how child­hood poverty trans­lates into dim­mer chances of suc­cess: Chronic stress from grow­ing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leav­ing chil­dren with impair­ment in at least one key area — work­ing memory.”

Return­ing troops get­ting tested for brain injuries:

- “More than 150,000 ser­vice mem­bers from the Marines, Air Force, Army and Navy have under­gone the test­ing that became manda­tory last year. Those who suf­fer a con­cus­sion or sim­i­lar head injury will get a follow-up test.”

Dia­betes ‘impact on brain power’:

- “Fail­ure to con­trol type 2 dia­betes may have a long-term impact on the brain, research has suggested.

- Lead researcher Dr Jackie Price said: “Either hypos lead to cog­ni­tive decline, or cog­ni­tive decline makes it more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to man­age their dia­betes, which in turn causes more hypos.

- “A third expla­na­tion could be that a third uniden­ti­fied fac­tor is caus­ing both the hypos and the cog­ni­tive decline.”

This is one of the slides I cre­ated recently for my talks, and it seems to be get­ting the point across.

Your answer?

The follow-up ques­tion: is your job and life more sim­i­lar to the con­stant problem-solving and men­tal chal­lenge of the cab dri­ver, or to the rou­tine or the bus driver?

Pas­cale wrote an excel­lent arti­cle on this, check it out: Brain Plas­tic­ity — How learn­ing changes your brain.

Have a good Good Friday/ Passover/ holiday/ weekend!

Learn­ing can be inci­den­tal. We all mem­o­rize facts with­out pay­ing much atten­tion to these facts or with­out will­ing to mem­o­rize them. How­ever, when one really wants to mem­o­rize a fact, it is cru­cial to pay atten­tion. Many stud­ies have shown that com­pared to full atten­tion con­di­tions, divid­ing atten­tion dur­ing study time leads to poor mem­ory performance.

This exer­cise will help you prac­tice focus­ing your attention.

It may seem easy but make sure you count twice!

Count the num­ber of “Y” in this text:

Yes­ter­day, Lucy went all the way to Boston. She wanted to buy new shoes. She had to go in many shops before she found the shoes she wanted. She was happy to stop at a restau­rant to have some tea and cook­ies before she took the train back home.

Count the num­ber of “F” in this text:

Fin­ished files are the result of years of sci­en­tific study com­bined with the expe­ri­ence of years.

Count the num­ber of “E” in this text:

Last sum­mer, Jean and Har­riet spent their vaca­tion in Michi­gan. They rented a cabin on the lake. The cabin had two bed­rooms and a nice deck. They used to spend a lot of time on the deck, just look­ing at how the light would change on the water. Sev­eral times, they bor­rowed bikes from their neigh­bors and spent a few hours explor­ing the vil­lages not far from their cabin.

—
Solu­tions

There are 7 “Y” in the first text.

There are 6 “F” in the sec­ond text (got them?)

There are 38 “E” in the third text.

—

For many other Brain Teasers, click Here.
For many other teasers and arti­cles by Dr. Mich­e­lon, click Here.

– Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., is Sharp­Brains’ Research Man­ager for Edu­ca­tional Projects. Dr. Mich­e­lon has a Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy and has worked as a Research Sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in Saint Louis, in the Psy­chol­ogy Depart­ment. She con­ducted sev­eral research projects to under­stand how the brain makes use of visual infor­ma­tion and mem­o­rizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Fac­ulty at Wash­ing­ton University.