The ter­mi­nol­ogy “fun­da­men­tal attri­bu­tion error” describes the ten­dency to over­value personality-based expla­na­tions for observed human behav­iors, while under­valu­ing sit­u­a­tional expla­na­tions for those behav­iors.  I believe that a pri­mary rea­son behind many per­ceived and real eth­i­cal chal­lenges in the brain fit­ness field is due not so much to cer­tain stake­hold­ers’ lack of per­sonal or pro­fes­sional ethics, but derives from the flawed soci­etal con­struct that under­pins cur­rent, rel­e­vant inno­va­tions. To improve the ethics of the brain fit­ness busi­ness and its appli­ca­tion (and empower con­sumers’ informed deci­sion mak­ing), there must first be agree­ment about a mean­ing­ful, appro­pri­ate way to ana­lyze and guide inno­va­tion. This is the crux of the prob­lem. The cur­rent med­ical model is not up to the task at hand, since it is heav­ily skewed toward inva­sive drugs and devices dri­ven by disease-based mod­els, and fails to lever­age Read the rest of this entry »

Many adults with ADHD do not obtain their diag­no­sis until adult­hood and have strug­gled with dif­fi­cul­ties related to undi­ag­nosed ADHD for their entire lives. As doc­u­mented in recent stud­ies, this includes ele­vated rates of depres­sion, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, sub­stance use, work dif­fi­cul­ties and inter­per­sonal problems.

As with chil­dren and ado­les­cents, med­ica­tion treat­ment for adults with ADHD can be quite help­ful, espe­cially for reduc­ing core ADHD symp­toms of inat­ten­tion and hyperactivity/impulsivity.  How­ever, Read the rest of this entry »

When you think of how the PC has altered the fab­ric of soci­ety, per­mit­ting instant access to infor­ma­tion and automat­ing processes beyond our wildest dreams, it is instruc­tive to con­sider that much of this progress was dri­ven by Moore’s law. Halv­ing the size of semi­con­duc­tor every 18 months catal­ysed an expo­nen­tial accel­er­a­tion in performance.

Why is this story rel­e­vant to mod­ern neu­ro­science and the work­ings of the brain? Because trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­log­i­cal progress arises out of choice and the actions of indi­vid­u­als who see poten­tial for change, and we may well be on the verge of such progress. Read the rest of this entry »

Some recent brain train­ing and health news:

1) A Promis­ing Debut for Com­put­er­ized Therapies

2) Fit­ness pro­tects brain in Alzheimer’s patients

3) Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram Clas­sic comes to Mac

4) Posit Sci­ence gains own­er­ship of Sci­en­tific Learn­ing (NSDQ: SCIL) BrainConnection.

5) Brain train­ing on your mobile

6) You must remem­ber this: how the mind works

Here you have the links and my com­men­tary for these news: Read the rest of this entry »

Not a day goes by with­out a sig­nif­i­cant depression-related announce­ment. Yes­ter­day, one could read that Older Women More Likely to Suf­fer Depres­sion (than Older Men; in the Wash­ing­ton Post). Today, we see that St. Jude Start­ing Trial On Brain Stim­u­la­tion For Depres­sion (CNN). A few days ago, Blue Cross of Cal­i­for­nia Launched Mater­nity Depres­sion Pro­gram (press release).

Time to step back and ask our­selves ques­tions such as, “What is going On”, “What is Depres­sion”, “What Treat­ments Work, and What is the Lat­est Research”. For­tu­nately, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine, Jill Sut­tie offers a fas­ci­nat­ing answers to those questions-and more. Enjoy.

—————————

Clos­ing the Circuit

Helen Mayberg’s research could rev­o­lu­tion­ize depres­sion treatment.

— By Jill Suttie.

At some point in their lives, 5 to 12 per­cent of Amer­i­can men and 10–25 per­cent of women will suf­fer an episode of depres­sion, mak­ing it the most com­monly diag­nosed men­tal dis­or­der today. Unlike nor­mal sad­ness, which passes with time, depres­sion feels unstop­pable and causes peo­ple to lose inter­est in nearly all activ­i­ties. Because it affects a person’s abil­ity to eat, sleep, work, and func­tion nor­mally, it exacts a huge cost on the econ­omy, esti­mated at $30 bil­lion dol­lars annu­ally. The cost in human suf­fer­ing can­not be measured.

Mil­lions of peo­ple diag­nosed with depres­sion turn to med­ica­tion as a treat­ment, and many of the most pop­u­lar Read the rest of this entry »

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).

Zack Lynch from Neu­roIn­sights reminds us that the early­bird reg­is­tra­tion for the Neu­rotech Indus­try Invest­ing and Busi­ness con­fer­ence is about to expire. You can reg­is­ter by April 13th to save $300.

Con­fer­ence Details:

Date: May 17 — 18, 2007
Loca­tion: Westin San Fran­cisco, Mill­brae, CA

Highly rec­om­mended con­fer­ence for any­one work­ing on biotech, med­ical devices, diag­nos­tics and neu­rotech­nol­ogy in gen­eral, and with added value for any­one inter­ested in learn­ing more about science-based Brain Fit­ness thanks to what we hope will be a ground­break­ing panel:

Title: Brain Fit­ness Through Soft­ware and Neurofeedback

Thurs­day May 17th, 4.45–5.30pm

Descrip­tion: Spurred by the dis­cov­ery of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, the aging baby boomer pop­u­la­tion and demand for safe treat­ments for child­hood ADHD, soft­ware com­pa­nies, large and small, are ven­tur­ing into the realm of Read the rest of this entry »