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 »

In two inno­v­a­tive pilot stud­ies, Ian Gotlib and his col­leagues at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, Cal­i­for­nia, showed that brain train­ing can be used to help elim­i­nate depres­sion, even before it starts. They stud­ied young girls (10 to 14 year old) whose moth­ers were depressed and who thus were at higher risk of devel­op­ing depres­sion them­selves later-on. The girls had not expe­ri­enced depres­sion per se but already showed behav­iors typ­i­cal of depressed brains, such as over­re­ac­tion to neg­a­tive stim­uli. Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today on mem­ory, mem­ory tech­niques and brain-healthy lifestyles with Dr. Gary  Small, Direc­tor of UCLA’s Mem­ory Clinic and Cen­ter on Aging, and author of The Mem­ory Bible. You can learn more about his book  Here, and learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Per­haps one of the best ques­tions and answers was:

2:55
Ques­tion: Gary, you’ve worked many years in this field. Let us in on the secret. What do YOU do you, per­son­ally, to pro­mote your own brain fit­ness?
2:57
Answer: I try to get at least 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing each day; try to min­i­mize my stress by stay­ing con­nected with fam­ily and friends; gen­er­ally eat a brain healthy diet (fish, fruits, veg­eta­bles), and try to bal­ance my online time with my offline time. Which reminds me, I think it is almost time for me to sign off line. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. John Docherty is an Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at the Weill Med­ical Col­lege, Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, Direc­tor of Post Grad­u­ate Edu­ca­tion there, and Chief Med­ical Offi­cer of Brain Resource. Trained as a clin­i­cal research fel­low in neu­ropsy­chophar­ma­col­ogy at NIMH, he later returned as Chief of the Psy­choso­cial Treat­ments Research Branch, respon­si­ble for all fed­er­ally sup­ported psy­choso­cial treat­ment research in men­tal health nation­wide. He over­saw the land­mark National Col­lab­o­ra­tive Study of the Treat­ment of Depres­sion and served as a mem­ber and Chair­man for over 10 years on the NIMH and then NIDA Treat­ment Research IRGs. Dr. Docherty has wide expe­ri­ence in suc­cess­fully imple­ment­ing inno­va­tion in both clin­i­cal oper­a­tions and man­aged health care. He founded North­east Psy­chi­atric Asso­ciates in 1985. As National Med­ical Direc­tor for National Med­ical Enter­prises, he over­saw med­ical con­trol and qual­ity improve­ment in 74 hos­pi­tals in 34 states. He was the Exec­u­tive Vice-President and Chief Med­ical Offi­cer for Merit Behav­ioral Care, which then cov­ered 30 mil­lion peo­ple. In 1998, he founded Com­pre­hen­sive Neu­ro­Science (CNS). Its Care Man­age­ment Tech­nolo­gies are cur­rently imple­mented in 17 state Med­ic­aid plans. Dr Docherty has received numer­ous hon­ors and awards and has authored over 100 sci­en­tific publications.

(Editor’s note: this inter­view with Dr. John Docherty was orig­i­nally pub­lished in Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan, pub­lished in July 2010)

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Dr. Docherty, it is a plea­sure to be with you today to dis­cuss the main theme of Sharp­Brains’ 2010 mar­ket report – how the con­ver­gence of sci­en­tific find­ings and tech­nol­ogy plat­forms and tools is reshap­ing how as a soci­ety and as indi­vid­u­als we will take care of cog­ni­tion and men­tal well­ness along the life­course, giv­ing birth to the emerg­ing dig­i­tal brain health and fit­ness mar­ket. Can you first briefly dis­cuss your career tra­jec­tory and your cur­rent role at Brain Resource?

Dr. John Docherty: Sure. The main theme of my work since the 1960s has remained the same, “How do we put knowl­edge into effec­tive use to improve men­tal health?” Over the last cen­tury, med­i­cine made tremen­dous progress in gen­er­at­ing sci­en­tific and clin­i­cal knowl­edge. Basic research dis­cov­ery sci­ence and clin­i­cal treat­ment devel­op­ment sci­ence have made great progress. Within Psy­chi­a­try there was stan­dard set­ting advance in the 1960’s through the NIMH-VA coop­er­a­tive stud­ies to the method­ol­ogy of assess­ing the effi­cacy of psy­chophar­ma­co­log­i­cal drugs. This work estab­lished prin­ci­ples adopted for the study of med­ica­tions in the other areas of med­i­cine. The study of psy­chother­apy, how­ever, lagged in devel­op­ment. In my role of Chief of the Psy­choso­cial Treat­ments Branch of the NIMH , I helped con­tribute to the advance of that work by sup­port­ing the efforts of an extra­or­di­nary group of indi­vid­u­als led by Irene Waskow who car­ried out the TDCRP. This study estab­lished the method­olo­gies that made pos­si­ble the effec­tive sci­en­tific study of the effi­cacy of psy­chother­a­pies. The evi­dence base and of such treat­ments as CBT, DBT, Moti­va­tional Enhance­ment Treat­ment and other evidence-based psy­chother­a­pies derives directly from this study and its sem­i­nal influ­ence. This was a con­tri­bu­tion to the sci­ence of Clin­i­cal Treat­ment Devel­op­ment research.

I would say that my major inter­est, how­ever, has been in the next step, the sci­ence of knowl­edge trans­fer. There has been and remains a long and costly (in terms par­tic­u­larly of unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing) lag between the devel­op­ment of new knowl­edge and its com­mon and effec­tive use in practice.

In order the help the field moved for­ward, I have worked for the last 20 years in the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of meth­ods to effec­tively trans­fer knowl­edge into prac­tice. Read the rest of this entry »

My apolo­gies for not writ­ing in a few days…the Global Agenda Sum­mit in Dubai has required all my atten­tion — I will sum­ma­rize the great expe­ri­ence when I land back in San Fran­cisco tomor­row night.

The con­cepts of night and day do become chal­leng­ing when work­ing for a few days in a place with a 12-hour time dif­fer­ence with one’s home base. Sleep is indeed very impor­tant to main­tain top cog­ni­tive shape…which leads me to a fas­ci­nat­ing news announcement:

Health insur­ance firms offer­ing online cog­ni­tive ther­apy for insom­nia (Los Ange­les Times)

- “help­ing con­sumers get a good night’s sleep has become a pri­or­ity for most of the top-tier U.S. health insur­ance com­pa­nies, includ­ing Well­Point, Aetna, Cigna, Kaiser Per­ma­nente and sev­eral Blue Cross plans. Their new pro­grams don’t involve sleep­ing pills. Instead, insur­ers are advo­cat­ing the use of cog­ni­tive behav­ior ther­apy. Tra­di­tion­ally, the ther­apy has been done largely through face-to-face ses­sions, but many of the pro­grams are now avail­able online.”

- “And use of sleep­ing pills has sky­rock­eted. A study this year Read the rest of this entry »

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 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 »

Very good arti­cle in Mar­ket­Watch titled Beat­ing for­get­ful­ness and boost­ing the brain. Prob­a­bly the best we have seen so far pro­vid­ing an over­all indus­try per­spec­tive on a nascent field. I rec­om­mend read­ing the whole arti­cle, but here you have some teasers:

• “As boomers age, the drive to cor­rect such dis­com­fort has impli­ca­tions for health and well­ness, employ­ment and cor­po­rate train­ing — even sports. It’s giv­ing rise to a bur­geon­ing busi­ness of brain-boosting prod­ucts and ser­vices, as well as explo­ration into “cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing” pre­scrip­tion drugs.”
• “The mar­ket for brain-fitness soft­ware tar­get­ing U.S. adults is esti­mated to be $80 mil­lion to $100 mil­lion this year, up from $60 mil­lion last year and $2 mil­lion in 2005, accord­ing to Sharp­Brains, a San Francisco-based por­tal that helps indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies nav­i­gate brain-training infor­ma­tion, prod­ucts and services.”
• “It’s also easy to con­fuse age-related mem­ory prob­lems with the effects of undi­ag­nosed depres­sion or anx­i­ety, which are reversible, said Dr. Gene Cohen, direc­tor of the Cen­ter on Aging, Health & Human­i­ties at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Center”
• “The busi­ness of brain train­ing started tak­ing off after Read the rest of this entry »

We were very happy to dis­cover that Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Mind has high­lighted Sharp­Brains in their June/July 2007 issue!

Here’s what they had to say:

“Every­one knows the impor­tance of stay­ing phys­i­cally fit. But what about stay­ing men­tally fit? Research in the past sev­eral years has shown that men­tal “work­outs” may improve mem­ory, relieve stress and even help stave off Alzheimer’s. This new site is an online gym for the mind, offer­ing a blog about the sci­ence of brain fit­ness and links to rel­e­vant research. It also sells “exer­cise” soft­ware and offers per­sonal training.”

If you are here due to that intro­duc­tion, we’d like to wel­come you and show you around a bit. You might enjoy:

• The Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series in our brain health blog, in which we inter­view some of the lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists in brain fit­ness, including:
  • Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing,
  • Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intelligence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher,
  • Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg,
  • Mem­ory train­ing and atten­tion deficits: inter­view with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gib­son,
  • and an upcom­ing inter­view with Yaakov Stern, the lead­ing researcher behind the Cog­ni­tive Reserve theory
• Our col­lec­tion of Brain Teasers and Puzzles
• A selec­tion of Hot Top­ics in Brain Health and Fitness
• Or, sign up for our free monthly brain fit­ness newslet­ter that keeps you up to date with the lat­est arti­cles and events in brain fitness

But most of all, enjoy your­self, learn some­thing new, and let us know what you think!