Playing the Blame Game
-- Video games stand accused of causing obesity, violence, and lousy grades. But new research paints a surprisingly complicated and positive picture, reports Greater Good Magazine's Jeremy Adam Smith.
Cheryl Olson had seen her teenage son play video games. But like many parents, she didn't know much about them.
Then in 2004 the U.S. Department of Justice asked Olson and her husband, Lawrence Kutner, to run a federally funded study of how video games affect adolescents.
Olson and Kutner are the co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School's Center for Mental Health and Media. Olson, a public health researcher, had studied the effects of media on behavior but had never examined video games, either in her research or in her personal life.
And so the first thing she did was watch over the shoulder of her son, Michael, as he played his video games. Then, two years into her research—which combined surveys and focus groups of junior high school students—Michael urged her to pick up a joystick. "I definitely felt they should be familiar with the games if they were doing the research," says Michael, who was 16 at the time and is now 18.
Olson started with the PC game Continue Reading »
The Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article yesterday, titled To Be Young and Anxiety-Free, focused on the value of cognitive behavioral therapy to help children with high levels of anxiety learn how too cope better and prevent the snowball scenario, when that anxiety grows and spirals out of control resulting in depression and similar
- "...new research showing that treating kids for anxiety when they are young may help prevent the development of more serious mental illnesses, including depression and more debilitating anxiety disorders."
- "Of course, most kids have fears without having a full-blown anxiety disorder. And some anxiety is healthy: It makes sense, for example, to be a little nervous before a big test. Doctors and psychologists do caution that the increased focus on childhood anxiety could lead to an overdiagnosis of the problem. What makes anxiety a true illness is when it interferes with normal functioning or causes serious emotional and physical distress."
- "But the use of antidepressants in children has come under fire because Continue Reading »
One of our favorite popular science publications is Scientific American Mind, a magazine that always brings good articles on brain & mind issues and some fun teasers.
We are therefore pleased that Scientific American is offering a Special Partnership offer for SharpBrains readers: a subscription to Scientific American Mind magazine, at 55% off the cover price. Plus, they offer an exclusive gift for new subscribers: a special publication on Secrets of the Expert Mind.
You can click Here to learn more about this offer.
Description: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND is a new magazine from the editors of Scientific American - taking readers inside the most riveting breakthroughs in psychology, neuroscience and related fields.
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We have all heard about children who have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). Indeed, this condition seems to affect 5 to 8% of school age children. Have you ever wondered what happen to these children? As many as 60% of them become adults presenting AD/HD symptoms! Ron de Graaf and colleagues recently published a study in which they found that an average of 3.5% of workers (in ten countries) meet the criteria for adult ADHD. As you can imagine, being an adult with AD/HD can be a challenge at work.
Before we explore this issue let’s start by describing the symptoms of ADHD.
What is adult AD/HD?
AD/HD is a disorder of the brain. Research clearly indicates that AD/HD is to a large extent genetic, that is it tends to run in families. However, AD/HD is a complex disorder and other causal factors may be at play.
Typically, the symptoms arise in early childhood, unless they are associated with some type of brain injury later in life. Some people have mild AD/HD with only a few symptoms while others have more serious AD/HD with more symptoms.
Symptoms of inattention (adapted from the DSM-IV)
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We just received these two very thought-provoking essays on Alzheimer's Disease and brain health, as part of a writing workshop, led by Susan Hill in Lakeland, Florida, with a group of grade 9-11 homeschoolers.
Without further ado, here you are both Essays:
Essay A. Preventing Alzheimer’s at Work
-- By Josh H
5,000,000: that is the number of people in the United States alone who are affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Research has shown that those who held jobs such as sanitation workers or trash collectors in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are more at risk for Alzheimer’s disease than people who held jobs such as doctors or scientists at the same age. If everyone knew this, the world would benefit, and it could impact the lives of everyone.
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A few very interesting New York Times articles over the last couple of days, plus a great opportunity for clinicians and researchers in Latin America.
- Well: When a Brain Scientist Suffers a Stroke
"Dr. Taylor recounts the details of her stroke and the amazing insights she gained from it in a riveting 18-minute video of her speech at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference in Monterey, Calif., last month."
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Cognitive training (the basis for what we call "brain fitness" these days) has a wide array of applications. The most recent
one, which is capturing public's imagination, monopolizing media coverage, and creating certain confusion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are fortunate to have Dr. Joshua Steinerman, one of our new Expert Contributors, offer today his great voice to this conversation. Enjoy!
- Alvaro
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Minding the Aging Brain
-- By Joshua R. Steinerman, M.D.
Scientists, philosophers, artists, and experts from all fields of human endeavor lament: it ain’t easy getting older. It? Do they refer to frailty and disability? To bodily disease? To life at its essence?
It’s all in your head
The mind is not set in stone, but it is encased by bone. It’s really all about the brain, the hyphen in the mind-body conundrum. That squishy gray neuronal jungle is the interface between internal life and environmental sensations and stimulation. As expected, the brain shows signs of aging just as a wrinkled brow, a stooped posture, or an arthritic finger might. The most common brain changes observed in aging and in age-associated neuropsychiatric disease include:
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The Harvard Business Review just published (thanks Catherine!) this article on cognitive fitness, by Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts. We are happy to see the growing interest on how to maintain healthy and productive brains, from a broadening number of quarters. Without having yet fully read the article...it seems to provide a reasonable introduction to brain science, yet could have more beef regarding assessment, training and recommendations. In such an emerging field, though, going one step at a time makes sense. What really matters is thet fact itself that it was published.
The HBR
Description of the article:
Recent neuroscientific research shows that the health of your brain isn't, as experts once thought, just the product of childhood experiences and genetics; it reflects your adult choices and experiences as well. Professors Gilkey and Kilts of Emory University's medical and business schools explain how you can strengthen your brain's anatomy, neural networks, and cognitive abilities, and prevent functions such as memory from deteriorating as you age. The brain's alertness is the result of what the authors call cognitive fitness--a state of optimized ability to reason, remember, learn, plan, and adapt. Certain attitudes, lifestyle choices, and exercises enhance cognitive fitness. Mental workouts are the key. Brain-imaging studies indicate that acquiring expertise in areas as diverse as playing a cello, juggling, speaking a foreign language, and driving a taxicab expands your neural systems and makes them more communicative. In other words, you can alter the physical makeup of your brain by learning new skills. The more cognitively fit you are, the better equipped you are to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change. Continue Reading »
Great article on the growing brain fitness field. Rethinking the Brain Business: Why a mental-fitness program may be the start of something big. Some quotes:
- "But Merzenich has loftier ambitions. He envisions his company as part of a new industry that will become a "mirror" of the drug industry. He wants to go far beyond simply sharpening memory and cognitive ability to tackle diseases as well. Instead of medications, he sees a business rooted in neuroscience that will use noninvasive computer exercises to rewire the brain, gradually training it back to mental health."
- For now, Merzenich believes the emerging field of "brain health" is cluttered with bad science. He singled out Nintendo's brain games as an example of a product that has no science to back up its claims. But he doesn't expect that to last.
- "This field is undisciplined now and full of trash," he says. "But it will mature and ultimately the snake oil will be cleaned up. It will grow like the fitness industry from almost nowhere. And it will become a part of everyday life."
For help on how to evaluate the growing number of programs, check out our Brain Fitness Program evaluation checklist.
Roundup of recent articles:
1) Awards
-Very smart brains: Fun Slate article, Seven Ingenious Rules: How to become a MacArthur genius, once the 24 new MacArthur Fellows were announced (Dear reader: if you are a past, present or future winner, please forgive me for the title).
-The Tech Museum of Innovation Announces 2007 Awards (we had been nominated, didn't win).
2) Encouraging for the whole field: NASDAQ and NeuroInsights Launching Neurotech Index.
3) Cognitive Training Products: Hype or Hope for Maintaining Independence?.
Great June article we had missed, including a link to a 23-page PDF overview: Intellectual Functioning in Adulthood: Growth, Maintenance, Decline and Modifiability by K. Warner Shaie & Sherry L. Willis (San Francisco: American Society on Aging, 2005).
4) Military Backs Reforms: "The military will expand psychological screening for both new recruits and active-duty service members, and will make safeguarding mental health part of the core training for leaders".
5) Ed Boyden, who leads the MIT leads the Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Group, has a new neurotechnology blog.
6) More blog carnivals: Education, Tangled Bank (Science).
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