Alvaro and I had the good fortune to attend a great conference last week called Learning & The Brain: Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning. It was a fascinating mix of neuroscientists and educators talking with and listening to each other. Some topics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought - insight on where science and education are headed and how they influence each other.
Using dramatic new imaging techniques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neuroscientists are gaining valuable information about learning. This pioneering knowledge is leading not only to new pedagogies, but also to new medications, brain enhancement technologies, and therapies.... The Conference creates an interdisciplinary forum — a meeting place for neuroscientists, educators, psychologists, clinicians, and parents — to examine these new research findings with respect to their applicability in the classroom and clinical practice.
Take-aways
- Humans are a mixture of cognition and emotion, and both elements are essential to function and learn properly
- Educators and public policy makers need to learn more about the brain, how it grows, and how to cultivate it
- Students of all ages need to be both challenged and nurtured in order to succeed
- People learn differently - try to teach and learn through as many different modalities as possible (engage language, motor skills, artistic creation, social interaction, sensory input, etc.)
- While short-term stress can heighten your cognitive abilities, long term stress kills you — you need to find balance and release
- Test anxiety and subsequent poor test results can be improved with behavioral training with feedback based on heart rate variability
- Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a very very enlightening and fun speaker
- Allow time for rest and consolidation of learned material
- Emotional memories are easier to remember
- Conferences like these perform a real service in fostering dialogues between scientists and educators
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Welcome to the February 19, 2007 edition of brain fitness.
Today we want to highlight an excellent Interview with Aaron Beck on the History of Cognitive Therapy submitted by the Beck Institute. Dr. Beck was 83 when he gave this interview. To the question "Do you have a view about ageing?", he responds "I can only speak for myself. I know that practically all my colleagues from medical school days who are still around have retired. That is not something that I think about. It is no more on my horizon now than it was when we first met a quarter of a century ago. I keep looking ahead." He also says "I have always liked to unify different fields. Given my background in neurology I do not see a conflict between neurology and psychology. But if you look at the training of contemporary psychiatrists, for example, the two domains are totally distinct. If psychiatry is to survive as a discipline, a merging of the concepts of neurology and psychology will need to occur." Continue Reading »
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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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.
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Given the growing awareness of this emerging field, let's review some of the most relevant concepts:
Brain Fitness: the general state of good, sharp, brain and mind, especially as the result of mental and physical exercise and proper nutrition.
Brain Fitness Program: structured set of brain exercises, usually computer-based, designed to train specific brain areas and functions in targeted ways, and measured by brain fitness assessments.
Chronic Stress: ongoing, long-term stress. Continued physiological arousal where stressors block the formation of new neurons and negatively impact the immune system's defenses.
Cognitive training (or Brain Training): variety of brain exercises designed to help work out specific “mental muscles”. The principle underlying cognitive training is to help improve "core" abilities, such as attention, memory, problem-solving, which many people consider as fixed.
Cognitive Reserve (or Brain Reserve): theory that addresses the fact that individuals vary considerably in the severity of cognitive aging and clinical dementia. Mental stimulation, education and occupational level are believed to be major active components of building a cognitive reserve that can help resist the attacks of mental disease.
fMRI: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive neuroimaging Continue Reading »
The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives is keeping up its great outreach initiatives:
1- Check their blog with posts such as Resolve to be good to your brain, too. Tip: "Brain change takes time; allow your brain time to get used to new circumstance" (from the Dana Guide to Brain Health).
You can read our The Dana Guide to Brain Health book review.
2- The Brain Awareness Week 2007, March 12-18th, with many activities around the world to "advance public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. The Dana Alliance is joined in the campaign by partners in the United States and around the world, including medical and research organizations; patient advocacy groups; the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies; service groups; hospitals and universities; K-12 schools; and professional organizations."
Learn how you can participate!
(Note: the following is inspired by real events but not quite. Caroline is a colleague, not my grandma!)
Over the weekend, I dropped by to say Hi to my grandma Carolina, the Wise Neuroscientist every family should have. She always helps me out. Imagine, then, my relief when she happily spent a few hours with me going over the printed submissions for Encephalon #15. The conversation went so well, that we are adding it to our Neuroscience Interview Series on learning and "brain gyms".
Alvaro: Thanks again! I have heard organisms have something called a biological clock — what is that?
Carolina: According to Bora of A Blog Around The Clock, a biological clock is a structure that times regular re-occurrence of biochemical, physiological and behavioral events in an organism in constant environmental conditions. The word “clock” is a metaphor, and the concept tries to exclude direct responses to the environment. Make sure to understand this properly, otherwise Bora suggests explaining it to you this way: “If I give you an electroshock every two hours, you will exhibit a 2-hour cycle of convulsions…but that’s not a biological clock”.
Alvaro: Crystal clear. Hmmm, I am thinking of nothing in particular right now, my mind wanders, like a river stream…what may be happening in my brain?
Carolina: Nothing special, as The Neurocritic seems to argue in his series Default Mode or Detritus?, , and . Don’t be easily seduced by sexy neuroimaging into believing that “default” constitutes some kind of baseline.
Alvaro: I wouldn’t dare do so, by no means. Continue Reading »
We announced last week the CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neuroplasticity and Memory Exercises.
Now, Time Magazine has published a spectacular special issue with many good brain-related articles. Enjoy TIME Magazine - A User Guide to the Brain.
Thanks to the over 40 people who submitted posts. We have had to select the posts we enjoyed the most to help facilitate an engaging and informed conversation.
Learning is physical. Our experience literally shapes our brains. And vice versa. The media seems to be focusing mostly on brain fitness for seniors, but its implications go beyond that, as you will see in this post by Caroline: What is Brain Fitness?, and the articles in this carnival.
Science-based understanding is evolving from “Use it or Lose It" to “Use It and Improve It”. As Fast Company's Alan Deutschman provocatively puts it in his last book, Change or Die. We couldn’t agree more with his summary recommendation: “Relate. Repeat. Reframe.” Alan presents a blog article announcing his book (here is his original article). Continue Reading »
CBS News and TIME magazine are teaming up for a five-part series on the "The Complicated, Mesmerizing World of the Brain". The first report by CBS Evening News contributor Dr. Sanjay Gupta focused on neuroplasticity – "the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by creating new brain cells through mental and physical exercises."
Dr. Gupta interviewed Arthur Kramer, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois who studied the effects of exercise, diet, and social and mental stimulation on older adults. According to Kramer, the break through anti-aging treatment is exercise.
We found in our study that walking will increase the volume of the brain, increase the efficiency of the brain and increase improvements in the number of cognitive functions such as memory and attention.
Kramer and McAuley's research showed that aerobic exercise led to increased brain volume in the prefrontal and temporal cortices – areas that show considerable age-related deterioration.
To go beyond physical exercise and look at mental exercise, Dr. Gupta also interviewed Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. of UCSF and Posit Science. Merzenich said, "The brain is actually revising itself. It is actually plastically changing itself as you develop new skills and abilities, as you learn new things." Merzenich has been studying neuroplasticity and how the brain changes with experience since the 1980s.
To Catch the Series, Here's the Schedule:
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A few heads up:
- Chris posted a new edition of Encephalon at Mixing Memory.
- We will be hosting the new edition of this neuroscience blog carnival on January 29th. Submissions can be sent to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com.
- Neurophilosopher has posted a couple great posts, one on how Bilingualism may delay onset of dementia (via the Cognitive Reserve theory), the other highlighting some of his best posts for his new readers (congratulations!), with A warm welcome to all my new readers
- Bora announced the release of a great ebook and book at The Science Blogging Anthology - the Great Unveiling!
- And Chris has been writing a series on the PreFrontal Cortex, a bit technical but interesting to read The Anterior Frontier: Prefrontal Cortex
Enjoy
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the 