For many neuropsychologists, like myself, science is a labor of love, but seeing patients is bread and butter. Traditionally, the clinical contribution of neuropsychology has been mostly diagnostic, with precious little to offer patients by way of treatment. Neuropsychology is not the only clinical discipline for years consigned to helpless voyeurism. Every discipline concerned with cognition shares this humbling predicament. A psychiatrist treating a schizophrenic patient or a depressed patient finds him- or herself in a similar position. There are ample pharmacological tools to treat the patient’s psychosis or mood, but very few to treat the patient’s cognition. Even though psychiatrists increasingly recognize that cognitive impairment is often more debilitating in their patients than psychosis or mood disorder, traditionally, very little direct effort has been aimed at improving cognition.

A neurologist treating a patient recovering from the effects of head injury does not fare much better. There are adequate means to control the patient’s seizures but not his or her cognitive changes, despite the fact that cognitive impairment is usually far more debilitating than an occasional seizure. Society has been so preoccupied with saving lives, treating hallucinations, controlling seizures, and lifting depression that cognition (memory, attention, planning, problem solving) has been largely ignored. Granted, various neuroleptics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, sedatives, and stimulants do have an effect on cognition, but it is an ancillary effect of a drug designed to treat something else.

Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias have been society’s wake-up call. Here, in the most affluent country in the most affluent of times, human minds were succumbing to decay before human bodies, a sharp challenge to the tacit popular belief that the “body is frail but soul is forever.” This provided an impetus for the development of an entirely new class of drugs, which can be termed familially as “cognotropic.” Their primary and explicit purpose is to improve cognition.

Since medical and public preoccupation with dementia focuses on memory, most of the pharmacological efforts have been directed at improving memory. At the time of this writing, a handful of drugs known as “Alzheimer’s drugs” or “memory enhancers” have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In reality, both designations are somewhat misleading. The drugs in question are anticholinesterases. They are designed to inhibit an enzyme necessary for the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the synapse, and thus to prolong its action after its release into the synapse. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in memory as well as in other cognitive functions. Biochemical processes involving acetylcholine (“cholinergic transmission”) are impaired in Alzheimer’s dementia, but they are also impaired in many other disorders.

My first encounter with this class of drugs took place in the late 1970s and involved physostigmine (Antilirium), a first-generation anticholinesterase, now out of use as a cognitive enhancer. We gave it to a patient recovering from severe head injury. The problem with physostigmine was that its length of action (halflife) was so miserably short that no sustained therapeutic effect could be reasonably expected. At best, a very fleeting, short-term improvement could be hoped for. To capture this improvement, my colleagues and I designed a brief battery of neuropsychological tests, which my research assistants Bob Bilder and Carl Sirio rushed to administer with clockwork timing during carefully calculated, and very narrow, windows of opportunity. Fleeting though it was (and at times overshadowed by vicious diarrhea), subtle memory improvement was reproducibly present. This was a cause for hope that with some improvements this class of medications could someday have real clinical value.

A number of years later, tacrine (Cognex) appeared on the market, followed by donepezil (Aricept). These drugs are also anticholinesterases, but with a much longer action and a more meaningful therapeutic effect. They should not be thought of as exclusively “Alzheimer’s drugs” since their utility is not limited to Alzheimer’s disease. I have observed a significant, albeit transient, therapeutic effect of these drugs on cognition in patients with Parkinson’s disease and brain damage due to hypoxia.

Although their effect is still transient and inconsistent, the advent of these second- and third-generation anticholinesterase drugs opened a new chapter in pharmacology, ushering in cognotropic medications.

More recently, a new drug, Namenda (memantine), was approved by the FDA. It targets several receptors in the brain: glutaminergic, serotonergic, and cholinergic. Its most pronounced effect is presumed to be one of a glutamate antagonist. Targeting glutamate, a ubiquitous neurotransmitter mediating mostly excitatory processes in the neocortex and elsewhere in the brain, has opened a “second front” in the pharmacological assault on dementia. Interestingly, stimulating GABA, a mostly inhibitory neurotransmitter working in tandem with glutamate, was shown to slow the progression of a dementia-like condition in the monkey.

In the next few years we will undoubtedly witness a boom in the cognotropic pharmacology acting on various biochemical systems. Much further research is needed for it to become established and some controversy is inevitable, but the concept of cognotropic drugs is provocative and timely.

Interesting work on cognotropic pharmacology is being done in Europe as well. An audacious program to investigate neuroanatomically precise effects of various drugs has been under way in Russia for some time. Scientists at the Bourdenko Institute of Neurosurgery in Moscow, where I trained in Luria’s lab 40 years ago, have reported an array of specific drug effects. According to them, levodopa (L-dopa), a precursor of the neurotransmitter dopamine, improves the functions we typically associate with the posterior aspect of left frontal lobe: motor sequencing, speech initiation, and expressive language. To put it in technical terms, the Russians claim that L-dopa reduces the symptoms of dynamic aphasia, transcortical motor aphasia, and Broca’s aphasia. By the same token, L-dopa seems to retard the functions commonly associated with the parietal lobes (spatial orientation and spatial construction). According to the Russians, L-glutamic acid, an analogue of the neurotransmitter glutamate, improves other functions associated with the frontal lobes. It improves insight into one’s condition (reduces symptoms of anosognosia) and improves the sense of humor, time estimation, and time sequencing. L-Glutamic acid also improves the functions commonly associated with the parietal lobes. L-Tryptophan, a precursor of the neurotransmitter serotonin, improves the functions of the parietal lobe but retards the functions of the frontal lobes. At the same time, L-tryptophan interferes with the functions of the frontal lobes, particularly the left frontal lobe. Ameridin, an anticholinesterase not commonly known in the United States, seems to improve the functions of the parietal lobes, particularly the left parietal lobe. It improves comprehension of grammar and reduces the symptoms of “semantic aphasia.” These claims made by the Russian scientists associating various neuroactive drugs with particular cortical functions are more specific and in a way more ambitious than most Western claims to this effect. They require careful review and replication, but they are extremely provocative.

But where do the prefrontal cortex and the executive functions fit in? Executive deficit is easily as common and debilitating as memory impairment, and so there should be as much societal pressure for the development of cognotropic frontallobe pharmacology. Here, too, developments are at an embryonic stage, but some forward movement is evident. We have discussed the role of dopamine in frontal lobe function, so it should come as no surprise that dopamine-enhancing pharmacology has shown some promise.

The dopamine system is complex, with a number of different receptors. To be truly effective, dopamine pharmacology must be receptor-specific. As we learn more about the variety of dopamine receptors, we are learning about the receptor-specific action of dopamine-enhancing drugs. Bromocriptine (Ergoset or Parlodel), a dopamine D2 receptor agonist, has been shown to improve working memory, a function closely linked to the frontal lobes, in normal adults. The efficacy of two more recently developed D2 receptor agonists, ropinirole (Requip) and pramipexole (Mirapex), has yet to be established.

Currently, a great deal of interest exists in identifying specific dopamine receptors and developing receptor-specific pharmacology. But the thrust of this research is driven by the treatment of schizophrenia, which requires dopamine receptor–specific antagonists. To boost the function of the frontal lobes, dopamine agonists may be required with an affinity to various dopamine receptors, including D1 and D4. This poses a new challenge to pharmaceutical industry and research.

Cognotropic pharmacology of the frontal lobes holds out particular promise in those disorders where frontal lobe dysfunction is present without massive structural damage to the frontal lobes. In such conditions neurotransmitter receptor sites are largely intact, which makes pharmacological intervention more promising. Mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) is such a condition. This is a particularly poignant disease, since it afflicts young people, often in good physical shape and with undiminished life expectancy. Following traumatic brain injury, problems with working memory, decision making, attention, motivation, and impulse control are common. Bromocriptine tends to improve these functions in patients with head injury. So does amantadine (Symmetrel), a drug presumed to facilitate dopamine release and delay dopamine reuptake following its release into the synapse. Mirtazapine (Remeron), typically used to treat depression, has been shown to enhance dopaminergic transmission in the frontal lobes.

The advent of these drugs signals the beginning of frontal-lobe cognotropic pharmacology. Here, too, a second front was recently opened. A new “schizophrenia” drug is in clinical trials at the time of this writing. Developed at Lilly by pharmacologist Darryle Schoepp, this as of yet unnamed agent is supposed to impact in particular the frontal lobes, but by acting on the glutamate system instead of the dopaminergic one. As is the case with the anticholinesterases, even though the motivation behind the development of the drug was triggered by a particular disorder, its biochemical target may have an impact on a wide range of other disorders; these patients may also benefit from the drug.

I hope there is much more to follow. But the true excitement will come when the cutting-edge pharmacology is combined with cutting-edge neuropsychology, when fine cognitive measures are used to guide cognotropic pharmacology in precise, individualized ways. The actor-centered cognitive tasks shown to be so exquisitely sensitive to distinct variants of frontal lobe dysfunction may prove to be particularly useful in guiding custom-tailored cognotropic pharmacology of the frontal lobes.

– Reprinted with permission from The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes In A Complex World by Elkhonon Goldberg, published by Oxford University Press, Inc. © 2009, Oxford University Press. Available via Amazon.com Here.

Our previous interview with Dr. Goldberg:

- On Cognitive Training and Brain Fitness Computer Programs

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!

This is a 2-part interview conducted via e-mail: we will publish the continuation on Thursday March 12th.

Alvaro Fernandez: New York Times columnist David Brooks said last year that we live in a Cognitive Age, and encouraged readers to be aware of this change and try and adapt to the new reality. Can you explain the cognitive demands of today’s workplaces that weren’t there 30-40 years ago?

Maggie Jackson: Our workplaces have changed enormously in recent decades, and it’s easy to point to the Blackberry or the laptop as the sources of our culture of speed and overload and distraction. But it’s important to note first that our 24/7, fragmented work culture has deeper roots. With the first high-tech inventions, such as the cinema, phonograph, telegraph, rail, and car, came radical changes in human experience of time and space. Distance was shattered – long before email and red-eye flights. Telegraph operators – not online daters – experienced the first virtual love affairs, as evidenced by the 1890s novel Wired Love. Now, we wrestle with the effects of changes seeded long ago.

Today, the cognitive and physical demands on workers are steep. Consider 24/7 living. At great cost to our health, we operate in a sleepless, hurried world, ignoring cues of sun and season, the Industrial Age inventions of the weekend and vacation, and the rhythms of biology. We try to break the fetters of time – and live like perpetual motion machines. That’s one reason why we feel overloaded and stressed – conditions that are corrosive to problem-solving and clear thinking.

At the same time, our technologies allow us access to millions of information bites – producing an abundance of data that is both wondrous and dangerous. Unless we have the will, discipline and frameworks for turning this information into wisdom, we remain stuck on the surface of the “knowledge economy.” Today, half of college students can’t judge the objectivity of a website, and just 30 percent of college graduates can read a document as simple as a food label proficiently. A third of workers say they are often so busy and interrupted that they don’t have time to reflect on the work they do. I worry that we are creating new forms of ignorance, based not on a lack of information but on a lack of will or ability to wrest knowledge from the oceans of information surrounding us. Google isn’t making us stupid. And yet, are we using Google wisely?

Finally, we have developed a highly fragmented workstyle, thanks in part to the enormous influence of Frederick W. Taylor. Taylor was an efficiency guru who taught workers to chop up tasks so that each part of a project could be made to go faster. His theories, according to management guru Peter Drucker, have influenced the world as much as those of Marx or Freud. Today, the average office worker switches tasks every three minutes all day long, and nearly half of such interruptions – both external and internal – are self-imposed. Such a workstyle is correlated with stress, frustration and even lower creativity.

In this new world, we can revel in our ability to move freely across the globe, connect with millions of others instantly and tap newfound sources of potential knowledge. Yet too often, our new ways of working undermine our powers of attention, a tripartite set of skills related to awareness or wakefulness; focus or the spotlight of the mind; and executive attention, a package of higher-order skills related to judgment and planning. Our split-focus, frenetic, diffused lives undermine our powers of attention, leaving us detached, unfocused and scattered.

Q – What may the role of spending hours per day in front of a TV?

A – Today, we are exposed to far more than television everyday. YouTube, movies, animated billboards, laptops, Muzak, iPods and other devices envelop us by choice and by default in streams of visual and aural distractions, information and ads. The average American child is exposed to nearly six hours of non-print media a day. So determining the specific impact of just one type of media is difficult in this new mediated world. Still, it’s certain that this environment shapes us, and molds our incredibly plastic brains, in ways we can only begin to fathom. According to work by Daniel Anderson at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, toddlers exposed to “background television” – tv running in the background of family life – are more likely to show attention deficiencies. They play more briefly with toys, show less focus with their play, and interact less with parents.

As humans, we are born interrupt-driven. In order to survive, we need to focus on new stimuli in our environment and stay vigilant to changes around us. This is why we are prey to and delighted by quick-moving, enticing, complex media – at home and at work. In the office especially, if we’re constantly reacting to the new, new thing, we wind up doing nothing more than putting out fires and keeping our email inbox empty. We are less inclined to wrestle with the bigger, messy, problems of the day. Today, we must place ourselves back in the driver’s seat of our attention. We need to take charge of our environment and our attentional skills, and recapture time for reflection, deep problem-solving and creativity. As one top executive once told me, “thinking can’t be done in sound bites.”

Q – In your Harvard Management Update interview, you said that “When what we pay attention to is driven by the last email we received, the trivial and the crucial occupy the same plane.” As well, it seems to be that a problem is our culture’s over-idealization of “always on” and “road warrior” habits, which distract from the importance of executive functions such as paying attention to one’s environment, setting up goals and plans, executing on them, measuring results, and internalizing learning. How can companies better equip their employees for future success? Can you offer some examples of companies who have positive cultures that encourage and reward employees fully put their frontal lobes into good use?

A – As I mentioned above, we are working and living in ways that undermine our ability to strategize, focus, reflect, innovate. Skimming, multitasking and speed all have a place in 21st-century life. But we can’t let go of deeper skills of focus and thinking and relating, or we’ll create a society of misunderstanding and shallow thinking.

To create workplaces that foster strategic thinking, deep social connection and innovation, we need to take three steps:

First, question the values that venerate McThinking and undermine attention. Recently, my morning paper carried a front-page story about efforts “in an age of impatience” to create a quick-boot computer. “It’s ridiculous to ask people to wait a couple of minutes to start up their computer,” explained one tech executive. The first hand up in the classroom, the hyper business-man or –woman who can’t sit still, much less listen – these are icons of success in American society. Still, many of us are beginning to question our adoration of instant gratification and hyper-mobility.

To Be Continued…

Please remember: we will publish the continuation of this interview on Thursday March 12th. (yes, you can consider this a test of your executive functions and/ or your memory).

Book: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.

Related articles and resources:

- The Overflowing Brain: Most Important Book of 2008

- Top 10 Brain Fitness Books

“7. Doctors and pharmacists will help patients navigate through the overwhelming range of available products and interpret the results of cognitive assessments. This will require significant professional development efforts, given that most doctors today were trained under a very different understanding of the brain than the one we have today.”

The American Medical News, a weekly newspaper for physicians published by the American Medical Association, just published an excellent article along those lines:

Steps to a nimble mind: Physical and mental exercise help keep the brain fit
– Neuroscience is uncovering techniques to prevent cognitive decline.

A few quotes:

- It’s an example that highlights a wave of new thinking about the importance of brain fitness.

- Until recently, conventional wisdom held that our brains were intractable, hard-wired computers. What we were born with was all we got. Age wore down memory and the ability to understand, and few interventions could reverse this process. But increasingly, evidence suggests that physical and mental exercise can alter specific brain regions, making radical improvements in cognitive function.

- With nearly 72 million Americans turning 65 over the next two decades, physicians need the tools to handle growing patient concerns about how to best maintain brain health. Armed with this new brand of science, frontline physicians will be better equipped to address the needs of aging baby boomers, already in the throes of the brain fitness revolution.

- “Encourage them to exercise the brain in novel and complex ways,” he says.

Full article: here

One of the physicians quoted in the article is Gary J. Kennedy, MD, Director of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in NYC and a professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

To put the AMA article in better perspective for SharpBrains readers, we asked Dr. Kennedy a few follow-up questions. Below you have his questions.

Alvaro Fernandez (AF): Can you summarize how cognitive functions tend to evolve as we age?

Gary Kennedy (GK): As we age cognitive functions that rely on processing speed or reaction time decline, slow down.  Problem solving speed declines. This is in part the result of frayed neuronal insulation as the myelin sheath surrounding the axons wears thin with advanced age or illness. However it is possible to specialize and optimize some cognitive processes through experience, practice and planning. For example vocabulary can increase to age 90 provided there is ongoing stimulation and motivation to learn. And the growth and development of new brain cells can be augmented with the stimulating effects of physical exercise.

AF: Now, there are very significant cognitive differences among individuals of the same age, so age itself is not the main predictor. Can you explain what may be?

GK: Age also has the effect of amplifying differences between individuals. This is the result of variability in aging itself, freedom from or accumulation of illnesses and injury, and life style. The influence of genetics is largely exhausted by the 6 and 7^th decades of life which means that habitual activities and social relationships have a larger and larger impact resulting in greater and greater variability between individuals.

AF: Can you please explain the relationship between cognitive and emotional health (what we typically call “brain fitness”)

GK: Cognitive health requires motivation to sustain it and motivation depends on emotion and social reinforcement. Emotional self-regulation is not simply self control. Rather it is the capacity to respond to an emotional stress without prolonged loss of equilibrium. And it is the capacity to modify emotional reactions to resonate with others in the environment. Thought and feeling when linked together can be a powerful stimulus for learning, both for better and for worse. A positive outlook with an active response style is more protective than a tendency toward negativism and withdrawal.

AF: What advice would you give to people who want to maintain their brain in top shape?

GK: Simply finding a partner for regular physical activity is one of the best prescriptions for improving brain function. Staying emotionally, intellectually and socially engaged is also good advice.  And the more the better. The brain is a muscle – use it or lose it.

AF: And what advice would you give to doctors and health professionals on how to help their patients?

Doctors and all health professionals need to know how to motivate their patients to make the changes in life style that will promote healthy aging. Small, meaningful changes are relatively easy to achieve if the professional simply asks. Two straightforward examples: “how often do you enjoy an alcoholic beverage?” and “how often do you get a half hour of physical activity, walking or exercising?” can help the older person to minimize alcohol and maximize exercise. Brief interventions work surprisingly well.

Related articles:

- Wellness Coaching for Brain Health and Fitness

- Build Your Cognitive Reserve-Yaakov Stern

- “Seemingly random questions like these have become commonplace in Silicon Valley and other tech outposts, where companies aren’t as interested in the correct answer to a tough question as they are in how a prospective employee might try to solve it. Since businesses today have to be able to react quickly to shifting market dynamics, they want more than engineers with high IQs and good college transcripts. They want people who can think on their feet.”

What are technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) and consulting companies (McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture…) looking for? They want employees with good so-called Executive Functions: problem-solving, cognitive flexibility, planning, working memory, decision-making, even emotional self-regulation (don’t try to solve one of these puzzles while being angry, or stressed out).

Want to try a few? Below you have our Top 7 Guesstimations/ Logic Puzzles for Brain Challenge:

Please try to GUESS the answers to the questions below based on your own logical approach. The goal is not to find out (or Google) the right answer, but to 1) identify the logic approach that will help “guesstimate” an appropriate range, say + or – 30% of the actual answer, and then 2) complete the calculations (ideally mentally, but you can also take notes) to provide an estimate.

Ready. Set. Go!

1) How many times heavier than a mouse is an elephant?.

2) How many firefighters are there in San Francisco?.

3) How many trees are there in NYC’s Central Park?.

4) How many shoes have you had in your life?.

5) How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?.

6) In 1999, how were these baby boy names ranked by popularity: Kevin, Jose, Hugh.

7) What is the weight of a large commercial airplane?.

The Answer appear below. Again, the key here is to try, plan the steps towards the solution, and do the mental calculations to find a reasonable range. That’s the brain challenge. The goal is not to find the precise correct answer.

Answers:

1) Around 150,000. An average elephant weighs 4,000 kg on average; an average mouse 25 grams.

2) Around 350 firefighters on duty on any given day, out of a pool of 1700 firefighting overall staff.

3) There are over 26,000 trees (of approximately 175 species) in the Park.

4) We don’t know (or need to know) how many pairs you have had.

5)  About 500,000, assuming the bus is 50 balls high, 50 balls wide, and 200 balls long.
6) Rankings of baby boy names in 1999, according to Social Security Administration: 1. Jose (#30), 2. Kevin (#32), 3. Hugh (#830).

7) For a Boeing 747:
- Empty: around 400,000 pounds (lbs), or 181 metric tons
- Maximum Takeoff Weight: around 825,000 pounds, or 374 metric tons
- For context, the weight of an empty Hummer is 8,600 pounds.

More Context on Executive Functions:
If you want to learn more about what they are, here are some quotes from my Interview with neuropsychologist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg:

Alvaro Fernandez: Please tell us more about what the Frontal Lobes are.

Elkhonon Goldberg: We researchers typically call them the Executive Brain. The prefrontal cortex is young by evolutionary terms, and is the brain area critical to adapt to new situations, plan for the future, and self-regulate our actions in order to achieve long-term objectives. We could say that that part of the brain, right behind our forehead, acts as the conductor of an orchestra, directing and integrating the work of other parts of the brain.

I provide a good example in The Executive Brain book, where I explain how I was able to organize my escape from Russia into the US. Significantly, the pathways that connect the frontal lobes with the rest of the brain are slow to mature, reaching full operational state between ages 18 and 30, or maybe even later. And, given that they are not as hard-wired as other parts of the brain, they are typically the first areas to decline.

—-
Ready for that job interview now (on either end of the table)? In case they help, here you have more brain teasers.

Dr. David Elkind, author of The Power of Play: Learning That Comes Naturally, discusses the need to build a more “playful culture” in this great article brought to you thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine.

- Alvaro

——————–

Can We Play?

– By Dr. David Elkind

Play is rapidly disappearing from our homes, our schools, and our neighborhoods. Over the last two decades alone, children have lost eight hours of free, unstructured, and spontaneous play a week. More than 30,000 schools in the United States have eliminated recess to make more time for academics. From 1997 to 2003, children’s time spent outdoors fell 50 percent, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland. Hofferth has also found that the amount of time children spend in organized sports has doubled, and the number of minutes children devote each week to passive leisure, not including watching television, has increased from 30 minutes to more than three hours. It is no surprise, then, that childhood obesity is now considered an epidemic.

But the problem goes well beyond obesity. Decades of research has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotional development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the unstructured, self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind, where children initiate their own games and even invent their own rules.

In infancy and early childhood, play is the activity through which children learn to recognize colors and shapes, tastes and sounds—the very building blocks of reality. Play also provides pathways to love and social connection. Elementary school children use play to learn mutual respect, friendship, cooperation, and competition. For adolescents, play is a means of exploring possible identities, as well as a way to blow off steam and stay fit. Even adults have the potential to unite play, love, and work, attaining the dynamic, joyful state that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.”

With play on the decline, we risk losing these and many other benefits. For too long, we have treated play as a luxury that kids, as well as adults, could do without. But the time has come for us to recognize why play is worth defending: It is essential to leading a happy and healthy life.

Play and development

Years of research has confirmed the value of play. In early childhood, play helps children develop skills they can not get in any other way. Babbling, for example, is a self-initiated form of play through which infants create the sounds they need to learn the language of their parents. Likewise, children teach themselves to crawl, stand, and walk through repetitious practice play. At the preschool level, children engage in dramatic play and learn who is a leader, who is a follower, who is outgoing, who is shy. They also learn to negotiate their own conflicts.

A 2007 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics documents that play promotes not only behavioral development but brain growth as well. The University of North Carolina’s Abecedarian Early Child Intervention program found that children who received an enriched, play-oriented parenting and early childhood program had significantly higher IQ’s at age five than did a comparable group of children who were not in the program (105 vs. 85 points).

A large body of research evidence also supports the value and importance of particular types of play. For example, Israeli psychologist Sara Smilansky’s classic studies of sociodramatic play, where two or more children participate in shared make believe, demonstrate the value of this play for academic, social, and emotional learning. “Sociodramatic play activates resources that stimulate social and intellectual growth in the child, which in turn affects the child’s success in school,” concludes Smilansky in a 1990 study that compared American and Israeli children. “For example, problem solving in most school subjects requires a great deal of make believe, visualizing how the Eskimos live, reading stories, imagining a story and writing it down, solving arithmetic problems, and determining what will come next.”

Other research illustrates the importance of physical play for children’s learning and development. Some of these studies have highlighted the importance of recess. Psychologist Anthony Pellegrini and his colleagues have found that elementary school children become increasingly inattentive in class when recess is delayed. Similarly, studies conducted in French and Canadian elementary schools over a period of four years found that regular physical activity had positive effects on academic performance. Spending one third of the school day in physical education, art, and music improved not only physical fitness, but attitudes toward learning and test scores. These findings echo those from one analysis of 200 studies on the effects of exercise on cognitive functioning, which also suggests that physical activity promotes learning.

In recent years, and most especially since the 2002 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, we’ve seen educators, policy makers, and many parents embrace the idea that early academics leads to greater success in life. Yet several studies by Kathy Hirsch-Pasek and colleagues have compared the performance of children attending academic preschools with those attending play-oriented preschools. The results showed no advantage in reading and math achievement for children attending the academic preschools. But there was evidence that those children had higher levels of test anxiety, were less creative, and had more negative attitudes toward school than did the children attending the play preschools.

So if play is that important, why is it disappearing?

The perfect storm

The decline of children’s free, self-initiated play is the result of a perfect storm of technological innovation, rapid social change, and economic globalization.

Technological innovations have led to the all-pervasiveness of television and computer screens in our society in general, and in our homes in particular. An unintended consequence of this invasion is that childhood has moved indoors. Children who might once have enjoyed a pick-up game of baseball in an empty lot now watch the game on TV, sitting on their couch.

Meanwhile, single and working parents now outnumber the once-predominant nuclear family, in which a stay-at-home mother could provide the kind of loose oversight that facilitates free play. Instead, busy working parents outsource at least some of their former responsibilities to coaches, tutors, trainers, martial arts teachers, and other professionals. As a result, middle-income children spend more of their free time in adult-led and -organized activities than any earlier generation. (Low-income youth sometimes have the opposite problem: Their parents may not have the means to put them in high-quality programs that provide alternatives to playing in unsafe neighborhoods.)

Finally, a global economy has increased parental fears about their children’s prospects in an increasingly high-tech marketplace. Many middle-class parents have bought into the idea that education is a race, and that the earlier you start your child in academics, the better. Preschool tutoring in math and programs such as the Kumon System, which emphasizes daily drills in math and reading, are becoming increasingly popular. And all too many kindergartens, once dedicated to learning through play, have become full-day academic institutions that require testing and homework. In such a world, play has come to be seen as a waste of precious time. A 1999 survey found that nearly a third of kindergarten classes did not have a recess period.

As adults have increasingly thwarted self-initiated play and games, we have lost important markers of the stages in a child’s development. In the absence of such markers, it is difficult to determine what is appropriate and not appropriate for children. We run the risk of pushing them into certain activities before they are ready, or stunting the development of important intellectual, social, or emotional skills.

For example, it is only after the age of six or seven that children will spontaneously participate in games with rules, because it is only at that age that they are fully able to understand and follow rules. Those kinds of developmental markers fall by the wayside when we slot very young kids into activities such as Little League. When Little League was founded in 1939, the adult organizers looked to children themselves in setting the starting age, which ended up being about age nine or older. But the success of Little League was not lost on parents eager to find supervised activities for young children. Before long, team soccer was promoted for younger children because it was an easier and less complex game for the six- to nine-year-old age group. The rapid growth of soccer leagues challenged the popularity of Little League. This led to the introduction of Tee Ball, a simplified version of baseball for children as young as four.

By pushing young children into team sports for which they are not developmentally ready, we rule out forms of play that once encouraged them to learn skills of independence and creativity. Instead of learning on their own in backyards, fields, and on sidewalks, children are only learning to do what adults tell them to do. Moreover, one study found that many children who start playing soccer at age four are burned out on that sport by the time they reach adolescence, just the age when they might truly enjoy and excel at it.

Bring back play

Play is motivated by pleasure. It is instinctive and part of the maturational process. We cannot prevent children from self-initiated play; they will engage in it whenever they can. The problem is that we have curtailed the time and opportunities for such play. Obviously we cannot turn the clock back and reverse the technological, social, and economic changes that have helped silence children’s play. Television, computers, new family models, and globalization are here to stay.

What is important is balance. If a child spends an hour on the computer or watching TV, equal time should be given to playing with peers or engaging in individual activities like reading or crafts. It is important to involve the child in making these decisions and setting the parameters for how they spend their time. If we give children some ownership of the rules, they are usually more willing to follow them than when they are simply imposed from above. It is also important to appreciate individual differences. You will not be able to keep some children from playing sports, while others prefer more sedentary activities.

Another way we can help bring play back into children’s lives is to have schools restore recess for at least half an hour. As research demonstrates, academics are unlikely to suffer from this change; if anything, they’ll benefit. Schools also argue that they cannot afford recess because of high insurance costs and parents’ greater appetite for litigation. But when I speak with insurance officers about this issue, they claim that argument is overblown. Either way, children could still be taken outside, or to the gym, for calisthenics to exercise their bodies.

We must also address the more general problem of test-driven curricula in today’s schools. When teachers are forced to teach to the test, they become less innovative in their teaching methods, with less room for games and imagination. More creative teaching methods build upon children’s interests and attitudes—their playful disposition—and this encourages them to enjoy their teachers, which in turn enhances their interest in the subject matter. Though computers are one of the forces limiting play, they can be creatively used in the service of playful learning. As more young teachers who are proficient in technology enter the schools, we will have the first true educational reform in decades, if not centuries.

But you don’t have to be a teacher to help bring back play. Many neighborhoods badly need more playgrounds. This was also the case in the 1930s; in response, we saw the “playground movement,” when local communities set up their own playgrounds. A new playground movement is long overdue, especially for our inner city neighborhoods, where safe play spaces are often in short supply. A playground should be required of any new large-scale housing development.

We could go further. In Scandinavian countries, there are play areas in even the best restaurants, as well as in airports and train stations. These countries appreciate the importance of play for healthy development, and we could well follow their example.

Finally children do as we do, not as we say. That gives us incentive to bring play back into our adult lives. We can shut off the TVs and take our children with us on outdoor adventures. We should get less exercise in the gym and more on hiking trails and basketball courts. We can also make work more playful: Businesses that do this are among the most successful. Seattle’s Pike Fish Market is a case in point. Workers throw fish to one another, engage the customers in repartee, and appear to have a grand time. Some companies, such as Google, have made play an important part of their corporate culture. Study after study has shown that when workers enjoy what they do and are well-rewarded and recognized for their contributions, they like and respect their employers and produce higher quality work. For example, when the Rohm and Hass Chemical company in Kentucky reorganized its workplace into self-regulating and self-rewarding teams, one study found that worker grievances and turnover declined, while plant safety and productivity improved.

When we adults unite play, love, and work in our lives, we set an example that our children can follow. That just might be the best way to bring play back into the lives of our children—and build a more playful culture.

David Elkind, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of child development at Tufts University and the author of the books The Hurried Child, Miseducation, and, most recently, The Power of Play: Learning That Comes Naturally. Copyright Greater Good. Greater Good Magazine, based at UC-Berkeley, is a quarterly magazine that highlights ground breaking scientific research into the roots of compassion and altruism.

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News and Events

Stress Management is Key Factor For Cognitive Fitness: a great cover story in US News & World Report, and an excellent article in Prevention Magazine that was highlighted on the Today Show this week, both feature the importance of managing stress, one of the 4 pillars of brain health.

Brain Training Games: Context, Trends, Questions: We presented SharpBrains’ upcoming report, The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008, on Tuesday Feb 12th at an event sponsored by the MIT Club of Northern California, the American Society on Aging, and SmartSilvers.

Stress and Neural Wreckage: Part of the Brain Plasticity Puzzle: an insightful article by one of our new Expert Contributors, Gregory Kellet-a researcher at UCSF- who provides context on how stress kills neurons.

Closing the Circuit: Helen Mayberg’s research could revolutionize depression treatment: accumulated chronic stress can build into depression over time. Thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine, Jill Suttie offers a fascinating overview of depression and a promising new treatment.

Posit Science Brain Fitness Program 2.0: Open Questions: we ask several questions to one of the leading “brain fitness gyms”, trying to help consumers and institutions navigate through this emerging landscape.
Improving Driving Skills and Brain Functioning- Interview with ACTIVE’s Jerri Edwards: in-depth interview with Dr. Jerri Edwards, an Associate Professor at University of South Florida’s School of Aging Studies and Co-Investigator of the influencial ACTIVE study, on the value of cognitive training.

Education & Learning

Are Schools (Cognitively) Nutritive for Children’s Complex Thinking?: educators Thomas O’Brien and Christine Wallach present a very stimulating essay on the importance of problem-solving, encouraging complex game-playing for children’s complete “cognitive nutrition”.

Musical training as mental exercise for cognitive performance: We often hear (gladly!) how teachers use our blog articles and brain teasers in their classes. So we are going to recognize and publish a great essay by high school student Megan.

Brain Teaser

Words in your brain: Pascale Michelon presents a brain exercise whose aim is to stimulate the connections or associations between words in your temporal lobe. Learn as you exercise!

Recommended Book

Spark: the Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by John Ratey: a superb overview on why and how physical exercise is so important for our mental health.

Enjoy the weekend!

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Children’s Complex Thinking

– By Tom O’Brien and Christine Wallach

Pop over to your neighborhood school and visit some classrooms. Is what’s happening cognitively nutritive? That is, does it satisfy present needs and provide nourishment for the future health and development of children’s thinking?

Or is it punitive, with little concern for present nourishment and future health and development?

The Genevan psychologist and researcher Hermina Sinclair said,

All of us concerned with education should view children as wearing signboards saying ‘Under Construction’. No, wait a moment. I didn’t say that strongly enough. All of us should look at people as wearing signboards saying, ‘Under Construction—Self Employed’. (See Reference 1.)

We are in the fifth year of research, work which sheds light on Sinclair’s claim, shows that present educational goals for children are often trivial, and which suggests that current methods of causing learning to take place should be re-thought.

The work shows that children at grades 1-5 are capable of stunningly complex thinking and that this goal can be achieved with no direct teaching, but rather by posing problems for the children to solve.

Our work involves casual logical games created by O’Brien. Reports on the research appear in Reference 2.

The games are available for Palm pdas through OS 5 at Handango.com under the title Treasure Hunt. See Reference 3.

The games involve a search for jewels on a 4 by 4 grid.

In all games, players ask for information and then assess the consequences of the information to locate the jewel(s) with logical necessity. The issue is inference: the deriving of new information (conclusions) from old information (data).

In all games, two levels are available: 1) search for 1 jewel and 2) search for 2 jewels.

In one game, Find the Emerald, an emerald is hidden at random and the player chooses a box (in this case, A-2.)The distance from A-2 to the mystery jewel is 2. The distance is left-right and up-down, not diagonal. So if a child asked about A-2 and if the feedback were 2, the Emerald would have to be in B-1, C-2, B-3, or A-4. Which box would you ask about next?

 

 

 

 

 

In a different game in the Treasure Hunt suite, Rubies, players choose a box and the computer looks in that box and all the boxes which touch that box and tells the players whether or not it sees a Ruby. (In the case of the two-Ruby game, the computer reports 0, 1 or 2 Rubies seen.)

In a third game, Diamonds, the player chooses a box. If the mystery jewel is in that box or if it is touching that box sideways, the feedback is Hot. If the mystery jewel is touching the child’s box cornerwise, the feedback is Warm. If the two boxes are not touching, the feedback is Cold. (In the two-Diamond game, the child’s box may be Hot to one jewel and Warm to another. The feedback is Hot, because Hot overrules Warm. Similarly, Hot overrules Cold. And Warm overrules Cold.)

During our research, no teaching took place aside from giving children an explanation of the rules of the game. Children worked together with the teacher as the data-giver. Sometimes a Palm device and a projection device were used and sometimes the teacher calculated the feedback and recorded the data on a chalkboard.

Although three-jewel games have not been programmed for the Palm, recent research has involved three-jewels (with the teacher hiding the jewels and calculating the feedback.)

One-jewel games are accessible to most children, even as early as grade 1. Two- and three-jewel games, however, are very complex. Readers are encouraged to play the games with friends with or without an electronic device.

Conclusions

The main findings were four:

1. In general, children’s thinking—from grade 1 to grade 5—was very complex and economical. Children very rarely asked a useless question and very rarely made a false inference.

2. Children worked together with enthusiasm and respect. They questioned each other’s thinking in ways that were considerate, and they supported each other’s learning by explaining how they arrived at their conclusions. This behavior would be a surprise to many teachers. How to explain what happened? Children were trusted to tackle very complex tasks rather than being spoon fed with the accompanying hidden message, “You are capable only of following the teacher’s instructions.”

3. Virtually all children were successfully engaged and it was often the case that children who had had little classroom success did very complex thinking. One implication is that the traditional method, direct teaching, often doesn’t encourage original and complex thinking Our research shows that they crave it.

One girl who was birth-deformed and who never spoke above a whisper, took over the class at one point, “Tell me, John, What box do you want to know about? A-3? A-3 is 3. What are the consequences? Now, Susan, tell me what you have to add to what John just said.” Another child, Boris, had had no success, academically or socially, from kindergarten to grade 5. He thrived on the search games. Unknown to the school staff, Boris was an Asperger’s logic machine, capable of incredibly complex thinking.

4. Throughout the years of research, evidence has been presented to support the view that learning involves provoked adaptation. People revise their original networks of ideas and construct new ones in the face of challenges, novelty and problem situations. This is far from what’s commonplace in today’s world of fundamentalist absolutist authoritarian policies and practices.

Comments

The notion that knowledge is constructed is not popular in these days. Indeed, a denial of this fundamental human act—perhaps the must fundamental cognitive act of all—has led American educational critics to impose an approach to education appropriate only for parrots. See Reference 3.

But in our research one sees children constructing important ideas concerning logical necessity.

The research supports the idea that knowledge evolves in terms of coherence, stability, economy and generalizability. And when it achieves equilibrium it quests.(See Reference 4. It was routine—no, universal—that kids finished a game and said, “Can we do a harder one?”

Are these experiences nourishing? That is, will they have an effect twenty years from now? We don’t know. Come back in twenty years.

We think that the answer is yes. We base this hunch on the fact that we meet parents in the schoolyard or the grocery story who say, “What are these logic games Johnny is playing in class? He likes them very much and he has the whole family playing Emeralds and Rubies and Diamonds around the dinner table at night.”

Other kids pop back to class two or three years after their class has moved on. “Can I play Diamonds? I remember the game well.” And they play a game or two of Diamonds with all their tactics still fresh.

Indeed, it is the rare teacher who can cite such events. Rather, they say, “With the traditional curriculum it often seems as though that kids forget everything they’ve learned when summer vacation arrives. They come back in September having forgotten nearly everything. It seems like they had never been to school in the first place.”

— Thomas C. O’Brien is professor emeritus, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He is a former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Senior Research Fellow in Science. He is a consultant, author, and software developer. His website is http://www.professortobbs.com/.

— Christine Wallach is a veteran teacher at New City School, St. Louis MO.

References

1. Extracts from a Seminar, “Intellectual Development, Research and Education,” by Hermina deZwart Sinclair (University of Geneva), Teachers’ Center Project, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, 1977.

“The Child as Scientist,” an interview with Hermina deZwart Sinclair (University of Geneva), Teachers’ Center Project, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, 1977.

2. Thomas C. O’Brien and Judy Barnett, “Fasten your seat belts,” Phi Delta Kappan, 85(3), 201-6, November 2003.

Thomas C. O’Brien and Judy Barnett, “Hold on to your hat,” Mathematics Teaching, 87, June 2004.

Thomas C. O’Brien and Chris Wallach, “Children Teach a Chicken,” Mathematics Teaching, 93, December 2005.

Thomas C. O’Brien, “A Lesson on Logical Necessity,” Teaching Children Mathematics, 13(1), August 2006.

Thomas C. O’Brien and Chris Wallach, “Children’s Construction of Logical Necessity,” Primary Mathematics, Autumn 2007.

3. The Treasure Hunt games are available for purchase at www.Handango.com. See Here.

Two other suites of O’Brien’s software, Find It and Mystery Three, show identical research results, These can be found at the Handango site.

According to Palm experts, all three software suites work with all models of Palm devices including handhelds and smart phones — i.e., M100 series, M500 series, Lifedrive, Tungstens, Zires, Treos and Centro.

4. Thomas C. O’Brien, “Parrot Math,” Phi Delta Kappan, 80(6), February 1999.

5. Thomas C. O’Brien, “What’s Basic—a Constructivist View” in Handbook of Basic Issues and Choices, National Institute of Education, USOE, March 1982.

Thomas C. O’Brien, “Some Thoughts on Treasure-Keeping,” Phi Delta Kappan, January 1989.

Thomas C. O’Brien, and Ann Moss, “What’s Basic in Mathematics?,” The Principal, November 2004

 

I am honored to interview him today.

Alvaro Fernandez: Let’s start with that eternal source of debate. What do we know about the respective roles of genes and our environment in brain development?

Robert Sylwester: Genetic and environmental factors both contribute to brain maturation. Genetics probably play a stronger role in the early years, and the environment plays a stronger role in later years. Still the mother’s (environmental) use of drugs during the pregnancy could affect the genetics of fetal brain development, and some adult illnesses, such as Huntington’s Disease, are genetically triggered.

Nature and nurture both require the significant contributions of the other in most developmental and maintenance functions. We typically think of environmental factors as things that happen to us, over which we have little control.

Can’t our own decisions have an effect in our own brain development? For example, what if I choose a career in investment banking, vs. one in journalism or teaching?

We make our own career decisions in life, and most of us make a combination of good and bad decisions, which influence our brain’s maturation.

My father was very unusual in his career trajectory in that he worked at one place throughout his entire adult life, and died three months after he retired at 91. I’ve always thought that it’s a good idea to make a change every ten years or so and do something different – either within the same organization or to move to another one.

It’s just as good for organizations to have some staff turnover as it is for staff to move to new challenges. The time to leave one position for another is while you and your employer are still happy with what you’re doing. You’ll take what you learned in your prior job to your new job, and you’ll add competencies from your new job that you otherwise wouldn’t have developed.

I find that, in an emerging field like cognitive science, we need to start by clarifying the language we use. Can you define some words such as Learning, Education, Brain Development and Cognition.

Sure.

LEARNING: Most organisms begin life with most or all of the processing systems and information that they need to survive. Humans are a notable exception in that an adult-size brain is significantly larger than a mother’s birth canal, so we’re born with an immature one pound brain that develops additional mass and capabilities during its 20 year post-birth developmental trajectory. Parenting, mentoring, teaching, and mass media are examples of the cultural systems that humans have developed to help young people master the knowledge and skills they need to survive and thrive in complex environments. Learning is one the main activities we do, even if we often are not aware of it.

EDUCATION: Education, like the culture it subsumes, is a conservative phenomenon. Science and technology move rapidly, but education doesn’t. So if schools often resemble the schools of 50 years ago, that should not be surprising. Parents remember their school experiences, and since they survived them, they are typically leery about educators experimenting with their children. This explains in part why schools have not incorporated many of the recent developments in neuroscience and cognitive psychology.

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT: Childhood brain development is focused on systems that allow children to recognize and remember the dynamics of environmental challenges – challenges that protective adults will solve for them. Adolescent brain development is more focused on frontal lobe development, the systems that allow us to respond appropriately and autonomously to the challenges we confront.

COGNITION: Every experience will alter our brain’s organization at some level, so our brain’s processing networks continually change throughout our life. This process is called brain plasticity. For example, since my brain has adapted to my switch from a typewriter to a computer, it would now be difficult (but not impossible) for me to write again on a typewriter. Now, cognition is linked to other concepts: emotion is the processing system that tells us how important something is; attention focuses us on the important and away from the unimportant things; problem-solving determines how to respond, partly on the basis of our memory of prior related experiences; and behavior carries out the decision. The general term cognition encompasses these various processes.

You recently published a book titled The Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy (2007. Corwin Press). What advice would you give to parents and educators of adolescents?

Biological phenomena always operate within ranges. For example, leaves fall from trees in the autumn, but typically not all at once. Developmental changes similarly do not occur at the same time and at the same rate in all child and adolescent brains. And just as it’s possible for wind or temperature to alter the time when a leaf might fall, unexpected events can alter the time when an adolescent has to confront and respond to given environmental challenges.

The important thing for adults to do is to carefully observe an adolescent’s interests and abilities, and insert challenges that move maturation forward at a reasonable level. If you push too fast, you end up with a stressed out adolescent. If you do not challenge sufficiently, you end up with a bored adolescent. No magic formula exists for getting this just right. This means, for example, that we celebrate the skills of artists and athletes who function beyond typical human capacity, and we create judicial sanctions for those whose behavior does not reach culturally acceptable levels. Most human behavior is personally chosen and executed within wide ranges. We can easily observe this wide range in such phenomena as political discourse and religious belief or practice. Adolescents strive towards autonomous adulthood as they gradually discover their interests and capabilities, and what is biologically possible and culturally appropriate. They adapt their life to wherever they’re most comfortable within the marvelous sets of possible and appropriate ranges that exist.

Adolescents take risks, no doubt about that. If you want to eventually function within any range, you have to locate its outer positive and negative limits. Speed limits and other regulations provide direction, but adolescents (and adults) still tend to move towards the limits – and maybe just a smidgen beyond. Bad things can then occur. Part of learning, that each person needs to learn to self-regulate.

In short, parents and educators need to pay attention to observe where adolescent’s interests and abilities lie, and engage them with experiences that will enable them to move forward. Theorists, such as Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg, and David Perkins have proposed that intelligence involves multiple components, and can’t be reduced to a single point on a numerical scale, as I.Q. attempts to do.

Education is still a field with many competing, fragmented, approaches. A typical tension is between movements that advocate focusing on intellectual strengths, vs. those that advocate training and shoring up weaknesses, or bottlenecks. What is your take?

The answer is probably both– but do let me know when you’ve figured out the correct balance in that issue, and I’ll contact the folks in Stockholm who give out the Nobel Prizes.

I take good note of that offer…what are the most exciting areas of brain research, and what are some resources for educators to learn about brain and refine teaching? Websites, books?

The cognitive neurosciences are currently so dynamic. It seems that an exciting new development occurs every day, and many of these new developments are reported in the mass media.

I write a monthly non-technical column on educationally significant developments in the cognitive neurosciences for the Internet journal Brain Connection. All 90 of my earlier columns are archived within the following link, so many questions of readers have probably been explored in previous columns: here.

Sharpbrains.com is another great resource. Both websites will link folks to other useful websites.

In terms of books, I always think an author’s most recent book is the best one to read, since it incorporates new developments that have occurred since earlier books were published. For example, I’m now reading Steven Pinker’s intriguing new book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (2007, Viking). It’s the fifth in 14 years in his series of books for general readers, and I’ve benefitted from each, and from their cumulative effect. As indicated above, my most recent book is The Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy. I’m currently working on a companion book, A Child’s Brain: The Need for Nurture, which Corwin Press will publish in 2009.

One nice thing about committing to write a book is that I now have to stay alive or at least lucid for another year or so.

And you will be both. Robert, many thanks for your time, and see you in San Francisco next month.

Same. Always a pleasure to talk.

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Announcements: both Robert Sylwester and Alvaro Fernandez will be presenting at the upcoming Learning & The Brain Conference. You can learn more about the conference, and the special discount for SharpBrains’ readers, clicking here.

You may enjoy some of our previous interviews in our Neuroscience Interview Series:

- James Zull on the Art of Changing The Brain.

- Elkhonon Goldberg on Cognitive Training.

- Yaakov Stern on Lifelong Learning and building a Cognitive Reserve.

Finally, a reminder that we just released a Whitepaper titled 10 Brain Fitness Myths Debunked, based on the interview series: here.

We have a variety of cognitive abilities, from attention to processing speed to problem-solving to emotional self-regulation to, yes, memory. (And more). Even memory is not one whole thing, but has different types and processes: working memory vs. long-term, auditory vs. visual, events vs. facts vs. skills.

I say this in the context of this article and video you may already have seen, where a young chimp displays amazing visual working memory capability, beating humans.

- Read insightful blog post here. Quote

“This study shows that chimps can memorize at a glance the numerals presented on the screen, and that they can do so just as well – and even better – than humans can. Note that the superior performance came from a young chimp, and that the performance of older chimps on the same task was more similar to that of humans.”

- Watch video

Impressive, isn’t yet? Yet, a clear indication that memory is not all that matters. Please compare the “intelligence” (in any way you want to define it), the quality of thinking, displayed by those apes, with the one displayed in this recent interview with Bill Drayton at Good Magazine, founder of Ashoka and one of the parents of the social entrepreneurship movement. Quotes:

- “Ashoka (and all of us in the GOOD community) are serving the most profound historical transformation in the structure of society since the agricultural revolution–the shift from a world led by small elites to an “everyone a change-maker” global society.”

- “Social entrepreneurship is the field Ashoka has been building for 27 years that helps the world’s most promising new ideas and the social entrepreneurs behind them get started, succeed over their long life cycles, work and collaborate together through the local to global community we are building.”

Full interview: here (via Huffington Post)

You can read more about Ashoka at “Everyone a Changemaker”, Ashoka and Google

Some important cognitive abilities are what neuropsychologists call Executive Functions, which reside in our frontal lobes (behind your forehead), the most recent part of our brains in evolutionary terms. Some examples:

- Planning: foresight in devising multi-step strategies.

- Flexibility: capacity for quickly switching to the appropriate mental mode.

- Inhibition: the ability to withstand distraction, and internal urges.

- Anticipation: prediction based on pattern recognition.

- Critical evaluation: logical analysis.

- Working memory: capacity to hold and manipulate information “on-line” in our minds in real time.

- Fuzzy logic: capacity to choose with incomplete information.

- Divided attention: ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time.

- Decision-making: both quality and speed.

A highly recommended book, if you are interested in learning more about Executive Functions and Frontal Lobes, is The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind , by Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg. You can read an in-depth review here.

 

On a related note, you may enjoy this Time Magazine special on What Makes Us Moral.