Test­ing Pro­gram Fails Sol­diers, Leav­ing Brain Injuries Unde­tected (ProPublica):

“In 2007, with road­side bombs explod­ing across Iraq, Con­gress moved to improve care for sol­diers who had suf­fered one of the war’s sig­na­ture wounds, trau­matic brain injury.

Law­mak­ers passed a mea­sure requir­ing the mil­i­tary to test sol­diers’ brain func­tion before they deployed and again when they returned. The test was sup­posed to ensure that sol­diers received proper treatment.

Instead, an inves­ti­ga­tion by ProP­ub­lica and NPR has found, the test­ing pro­gram has failed to deliver on its promise, offer­ing sol­diers the appear­ance of help, but not the real­ity. Read the rest of this entry »

Very inter­est­ing new study pub­lished in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence: Short-Term Music Train­ing Enhances Ver­bal Intel­li­gence and Exec­u­tive Func­tion.

Abstract: Researchers have designed train­ing meth­ods that can be used to improve men­tal health and to test the effi­cacy of edu­ca­tion pro­grams. How­ever, few stud­ies have demon­strated broad trans­fer from such train­ing to per­for­mance on untrained cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties. Here we report the effects of two inter­ac­tive com­put­er­ized train­ing pro­grams devel­oped for preschool chil­dren: one for music and one for visual art. After only 20 days of train­ing, Read the rest of this entry »

Train­ing the brain is pos­si­ble because of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity. Our daily expe­ri­ences can trig­ger neu­ro­plas­tic changes in the brain, such as the growth of new brain cells (neu­rons) and new con­nec­tions (synapses) between neu­rons. Plas­tic­ity is observed at all ages but is at its peak dur­ing brain devel­op­ment, as a baby and then a child learns basic knowl­edge and skills nec­es­sary to sur­vive. We should thus expect that the brain of a baby could be eas­ily trained. This is what Wass and his col­leagues recently demon­strated in a new study with 11-month-old babies. Read the rest of this entry »

Like all psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, ADHD is diag­nosed based on the pres­ence of par­tic­u­lar behav­ioral symp­toms that are judged to cause sig­nif­i­cant impair­ment in an individual’s func­tion­ing, and not on the results of a spe­cific test. In fact, recently pub­lished ADHD eval­u­a­tion guide­lines from the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Pedi­atrics (AAP) explic­itly state that no par­tic­u­lar diag­nos­tic test should be rou­tinely used when eval­u­at­ing a child for ADHD.

While most ADHD experts would agree that no sin­gle test could or should be used in iso­la­tion to diag­nose ADHD, there are sev­eral impor­tant rea­sons why the avail­abil­ity of an accu­rate objec­tive test would be useful.

First, many chil­dren do not receive a care­ful and com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment for ADHD but are instead diag­nosed with based on eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures that are far from optimal.

Sec­ond, although AAP guide­lines indi­cate that spe­cific diag­nos­tic tests should not be rou­tinely used, many par­ents are con­cerned about the lack of objec­tive pro­ce­dures in their child’s eval­u­a­tion. In fact, many fam­i­lies do not pur­sue treat­ment for ADHD because the the absence of objec­tive eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures leads them to ques­tion the diag­no­sis. You can read a review of an inter­est­ing study on this issue at www.helpforadd.com/2006/january.htm

For these rea­sons an accu­rate and objec­tive diag­nos­tic test for ADHD could be of value in many clin­i­cal sit­u­a­tions. Two impor­tant con­di­tions would have to be met for such a test to be useful.

First, it would have to be highly sen­si­tive to Read the rest of this entry »