See Bird’s Eye View of Cognitive Health Innovation

Description: Scientific, technological and demographic trends have converged to create a new $265m market in the US alone: serious games, software and online applications that can help people of all ages assess and train cognitive abilities. Alvaro Fernandez will provide a Bird’s Eye View of the science, market segments and trends, competitive landscape, and main challenges ahead, based on The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2009 report released in May, which included Research Executive Briefs prepared by 12 leading scientists and a survey of 2,000+ decision-makers and early adopters.

61% of respondents to the survey Strongly Agreed with the statement “Addressing cognitive and brain health should be a healthcare priority.” But, 65% Agreed/Strongly Agreed with “I don’t really know what to expect from products making brain claims.” In this session, Alvaro will publicly unveil the new book The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: 18 Interviews with Scientists, Practical Advice, and Product Reviews, To Keep Your Brain Sharp, co-authored by neuropsychologist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg and himself, aimed at helping consumers and professionals understand and navigate this growing field.

To see slides, check out Bird’s Eye View of Cognitive Health Innovation

Enjoy the 4th of July!

Prof. Robert Emmons studies gratitude for a living as Professor of Psychology at UC Davis and is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology. He has just published Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, an interdisciplinary book that provides a research-based synthesis of the topic as well as practical suggestions.

Alvaro Fernandez: Welcome. Prof. Emmons, could you please provide us an overview of the Positive Psychology field so we understand the context for your research?

Robert Emmons: Sure. Martin Seligman and colleagues launched what was called “positive psychology” in the late 90s as an antidote to the traditional nearly exclusive emphasis of “negative psychology” focused on fixing problems like trauma, addiction, and stress. We want to balance our focus and be able to help everyone, including high-functioning individuals. A number of researchers were investigating the field since the late 80s, but Seligman provided a new umbrella, a new category, with credibility, organized networks and funding opportunities for the whole field.

And where does your own research fit into this overall picture?

I have been researching gratitude for almost 10 years. Gratitude is a positive emotion that has traditionally been the realm of humanists and philosophers, and only recently the subject of a more scientific approach. We study gratitude not as a merely academic discipline, but as a practical framework to better functioning in life by taking control of happiness levels and practicing the skill of emotional self-regulation.

What are the 3 key messages that you would like readers to take away from your book?

First, the practice of gratitude can increase happiness levels by around 25%. Second, this is not hard to achieve – a few hours writing a gratitude journal over 3 weeks can create an effect that lasts 6 months if not more. Third, that cultivating gratitude brings other health effects, such as longer and better quality sleep time.

What are some ways to practice gratitude, and what benefits could we expect? Please refer to your 2003 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, where I found fascinating quotes such as that “The ability to notice, appreciate, and savior the elements of one’s life has been viewed as a crucial element of well-being.”

The most common method we use in our research is to ask people to keep a “Gratitude Journal” where you write something you feel grateful for. Doing so 4 times a week, for as little as 3 weeks, is often enough to create a meaningful difference in one’s level of happiness. Another exercise is to write a “Gratitude Letter” to a person who has exerted a positive influence on one’s life but whom we have not properly thanked in the past, and then to meet that person and read the letter to them face to face.

The benefits seem to be very similar using both methods in terms of enhanced happiness, health and wellbeing. Most of the outcomes are self-reported, but there is an increasing emphasis on measuring objective data such as cortisol and stress levels, heart rate variability, and even brain activation patterns. The work of Richard Davidson is exemplary in that respect, showing how mindfulness practice can rewire some activation patterns in the frontal lobes.

Now, let me give an overview of the paper you mention, titled Counting Blessings versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life (note: reference below). The paper includes 3 separate studies, so I will just be able to provide a quick glimpse. More than a hundred adults were all asked to keep a journal, and were randomly assigned to 3 different groups. Group A had to write about things they felt grateful about. Group B about things they found annoying, irritating. Group C about things that had had a major impact on them. 2 out of the 3 different experiments were relatively intense and short term (keeping a daily journal for 2-3 weeks), while one required a weekly entry during 10 weeks.

Across the 3 different studies we found that people in the gratitude group generally evidenced higher-levels of well-being than those in the comparison conditions, especially when compared to Group B (the one journaling about hassles), but also compared to the “neutral” group.

In the longer study, which ran for 10 weeks, we also saw a positive effect on hours of sleep and on time spent exercising, on more optimistic expectations for the coming week, and fewer reported physical symptoms, such as pain. Additionally, we observed an increase in reported connectedness to other people and in likelihood of helping another person deal with a personal problem.

We could then say that we can train ourselves to develop a more grateful attitude and optimistic outlook in life, resulting in well-being and health improvements, and even in becoming better-not just happier- citizens. And probably one can expect few negative side effects from keeping a gratitude journal. What do you think prevents more people from benefiting from these research findings?

Great question, I reflect often on that. My sense is that some people feel uncomfortable talking about these topics, since they may sound too spiritual, or religious. Others simply don’t want to feel obligated to the person who helped them, and never come to realize the boost in energy, enthusiasm, and social benefits that come from a more grateful, connected life.

Judith Beck talked to us recently (interview notes here) about her work helping dieters learn important mental skills through cognitive therapy techniques. You talk about gratitude. Other positive psychologists focus on Forgiveness. How can we know which of these techniques may be helpful for us?

The key is to reflect on one’s goal and current situation. For example, the practice of forgiveness can be most appropriate for people who have high levels of anger and resentment. Cognitive therapy has been shown to be very effective against depression. In a sense both groups are trying to eliminate the negative. Gratitude is different in that it is better suited for highly functioning individuals who simply want to feel better – enhancing the positive.

Prof. Emmons, thank you for your time, and research.

You are welcome.

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Related reading

- Book: Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier

- Emmons, R. A. & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377-389

- Excellent blog post analyzing that study

- Other interviews in our Neuroscience and Psychology Interview Series

(Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Topics section, and subscribe to our monthly newsletter at the top of this page if you want to receive this Digest by email).

Brain Fitness Market News

Cognitive Fitness as a New Frontier of Fitness: excellent Los Angeles Times article, covering the cognitive exercise angle of healthy aging and leading science-based players.

A Brain Fitness Vacation: what does this mean? Well, read this fun article to discover.

Rethinking the Brain Fitness Business: thought-provoking article on the future of the sector from a business point of view.

Cognitive Fitness @ Harvard Business Review: HBR makes a first attempt to bring neuroscience research into helping leaders perform at peak levels and maintain sharp brains.

News You Can Use

Train Your Brain to Be Happier: implications of neuroscience and positive psychology research for our daily lives-and our happiness. Please keep tuned if you are interested in this topic: we will publish soon a great interview with Dr. Robert Emmons, leading researcher in the field of gratitude.

Cognitive Fitness: 10 Debunked Myths: what are some misconceptions that prevent many people from seeing the tremendous potential from this emerging research?. Read this post to discover and discuss.

10 (Surprising) Memory Improvement Tips: and why stress management is important for memory and our brain.

Teasers

Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: a list of the most popular mind games in our blog.

Events

10 Highlights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum: a summary of impressions from this great event, including what can happen when you have scientists and politicians in the same room.

Brain Fitness @ Education, Training, Health events: an overview of a number of conferences and university classes with a brain fitness angle.

Thought-provoking posts

Darwin’s adult neuroplasticity: reflections of a beautiful mind that -as self-reported at the age of 72- could have been even more beautiful.The Gene Delusion: IQ and the environment: do genes determine our fates? They don’t. They why do we seem to believe so so often?.

Discounts for SharpBrains readers

Learning & The Brain Conference: the best conference bringing neuroscience research to educators’ minds, February 7-9th in San Francisco. Register before January 25th, 2008, for a discounted price and to make sure you can attend and see our workshop!

MindFit 10% special discount: a 10% discount on one of the most popular brain fitness programs, that combines both an in-depth assessment of cognitive skills with personalized training.

Books and Resources

Best of the Brain from Scientific American: a superb collection of essays for the curious among us.

Selected Resources: Articles, Books, Papers: numerous links to media articles, scientific papers, and recommended books.

Enjoy!

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In honor of the Week of Science presented at Just Science from Monday, February 5, through Sunday, February 11, we will be writing about “just science” this week. We thought we would take this time to discuss more deeply some of the key scientific publications in brain fitness.

Today, we will highlight the key points in an excellent review of cognitive reserve: Scarmeas, Nikolaos and Stern, Yaakov. Cognitive reserve and lifestyle. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. 2003;25:625-33.

What is Cognitive Reserve?
The concept of a cognitive reserve has been around since 1998 when a post mortem analysis of 137 people with Alzheimer’s Disease showed that the patients exhibited fewer clinical symptoms than their actual pathology suggested. (Katzman et al. 1988) They also showed higher brain weights and greater number of neurons when compared to age-matched controls. The investigators hypothesized that the patients had a larger “reserve” of neurons and abilities that offset the losses caused by Alzheimer’s. Since then the concept of cognitive reserve has been defined as the ability of an individual to tolerate progressive brain pathology without demonstrating clinical cognitive symptoms.

Despite many studies that demonstrate an association between higher participation in more intellectual, social and physical activities and more reserve, most of these studies were not done over a long enough time period to rule out whether the stimulating activities were promoting higher cognitive performance or higher performers were more likely to engage in stimulating activities. The longitudinal studies show a mutually reinforcing cycle between an initially high intellectual functioning person, an engaged lifestyle, and more cognitive reserve, but also a maintenance of intellectual performance. (Arbuckle et al. 1992, Gold et al. 1995, Hultsch et al 1999, Schaie 1984, Schaie 1996, Schooler and Mulatu 2001)

In one study of 1772 nondemented individuals over seven years that controlled for factors like ethnic group, education, and occupation, participants with high leisure activity had 38% less risk of developing dementia, and that risk was reduced by approximately 12% for each additional leisure activity adopted. (Scarmeas, Levy, et al. 2001) Later studies, including imaging studies of cerebral blood flow, continue to build up data showing frequent participation in cognitively stimulating activities reduces risk for Alzheimer’s and slows the rate of cognitive decline. Interestingly, physical, social, and intellectual activities all help, although intellectual activities were associated with the lowest risk of incident dementia. Furthermore, it has been shown that people with high cognitive reserve decline more rapidly, supporting the idea that the pathology is more advanced by the time it is clinically apparent. (Stern, Tang, et al. 1995)

Causality

The association between engaged lifestyle and dementia risk could be either mediated or confounded by abilities like IQ or education. If this is the case then it could be that either IQ or education represent the true causal links with dementia or that subjects with higher IQ or education tend to adopt lifestyles which themselves causally reduce the risk of dementia (such as exercise, diet, etc.). Nevertheless, in studies where education and occupation (Scarmeas et al. 2001) or education and IQ (Scarmeas et al. 2003) were controlled for, the association between leisure activities and dementia risk was still there.

Other possibilities are that high functioning and engaged lifestyle are results of an innate capacity. Or perhaps borderline dementia patients are less active as a result of the pathology. Or perhaps the connection has yet to be found.

How Does it Work?
If it is a causal relationship, there are four possible explanations of how it might work:

1. Participation in stimulating activities spurs neuronal growth and a larger number of neurons to compensate for the pathology
2. High activity people use the same number of neural networks more efficiently
3. High activity people use alternate neural networks more efficiently to compensate for the pathology
4. The factors that affect cognitive reserve disrupt the development of the disease pathology by decreasing neurodegeneration

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Update: we now have an in-depth interview with Yaakov Stern, leading advocate of the cognitive reserve theory, and one of the authors of the paper we review below: click on Build Your Cognitive Reserve-Yaakov Stern.  

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Further Reading

• Arbuckle TY, Gold DP, Andres D, Schwartzman A, Chaikelson J. The role of psychosocial context, age, and intelligence in memory performance of older men. Psychol Aging. 1992;7:25–36.
• Gold DP, Andres D, Etezadi J, Arbuckle T, Schwartzman A, Chaikelson J. Structural equation model of intellectual change and continuity and predictors of intelligence in older men [published erratum appears in Psychol Aging 1998;13(3):434]. Psychol Aging. 1995;10:294–303.
• Hultsch D, Hertzog C, Small BJ, Dixon RA. Use it or lose it: Engaged lifestyle as a buffer of cognitive decline in aging? Psychol Aging. 1999;14:245-63.
• Katzman R, Terry R, DeTeresa R, et al. Clinical, pathological, and neurochemical changes in dementia: A subgroup with preserved mental status and numerous neocortical plaques. Ann Neurol. 1988;23:138-44.
• Roe CM, Xiong C, Miller JP, Morris JC. Education and Alzheimer disease without dementia: support for the cognitive reserve hypothesis. Neurology. 2007;68:223-8.
• Scarmeas N, Levy G, Tang MX, Manly J, Stern Y. Influence of leisure activity on the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. Neurology. 2001;57:2236-42.
• Scarmeas N, Stern Y. Cognitive reserve and lifestyle. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2003;25:625-33.
• Scarmeas N, Zarahn E, Anderson KE, et al. Cognitive reserve-mediated modulation of positron emission tomographic activations during memory tasks in Alzheimer disease. Arch Neurol. 2004;61:73-8.
• Scarmeas N, Zarahn E, Anderson KE, et al. Association of life activities with cerebral blood flow in Alzheimer disease: implications for the cognitive reserve hypothesis. Arch Neurol. 2003;60:359-65.
• Schaie KW. Intellectual development in adulthood: The Seattle longitudinal study. San Diego: Academic Press, 1996.
• Schaie K. Midlife influences upon intellectual functioning in old age. International Journal of Behavioral Development. 1984;7:463–78.
• Schooler C, Mulatu MS. The reciprocal effects of leisure time activities and intellectual functioning in older people: A longitudinal analysis. Psychol Aging. 2001;16:466–82.
• Stern Y. Cognitive reserve and Alzheimer disease. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord. 2006;20:S69-74.
• Stern Y. Cognitive reserve and Alzheimer disease. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord. 2006;20:112-7.
• Stern Y, Habeck C, Moeller J, et al. Brain networks associated with cognitive reserve in healthy young and old adults. Cereb Cortex. 2005;15:394-402.
• Stern Y, Tang MX, Denaro J, Mayeux R. Increased risk of mortality in Alzheimer’s disease patients with more advanced educational and occupational attainment. Ann Neurol. 1995;37:590-5.