In 2005 the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Pedi­atrics (AAP) began an ini­tia­tive to pro­mote an approach to care among its mem­bers in which “…the pedi­atric team works in part­ner­ship with a child and a child’s fam­ily to assure that all of the med­ical and non-medical needs of the patient are met.” A crit­i­cally impor­tant focus of this approach is the role of the fam­ily and child — as devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate — in the devel­op­ment of an over­all plan of care.

This shared decision-making approach is espe­cially impor­tant for con­di­tions like ADHD where there is not a sin­gle treat­ment that is the most appro­pri­ate and pre­ferred option for all patients. How­ever, Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Jensen alerted me to a research study pub­lished in the Feb­ru­ary 4th Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science — Trans­gen­er­a­tional Res­cue of a Genetic Defect in Long-Term Poten­ti­a­tion and Mem­ory For­ma­tion by Juve­nile Enrich­ment. We both had the same ini­tial WOW! feel­ing that we had expe­ri­enced when we first read about the dis­cov­ery of mir­ror neu­rons a decade+ ago.

The study’s find­ings seemed to sug­gest that acquired char­ac­ter­is­tics can be genet­i­cally trans­mit­ted, a Lamar­ck­i­nan belief that had long been dis­carded by biol­o­gists. This seemed improb­a­ble, so we decided to check out what the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity thought. It’s the kind of research that edu­ca­tors cer­tainly need to under­stand because the poten­tial edu­ca­tional impli­ca­tions are pro­found, no mat­ter how this par­tic­u­lar study sorts out.

I’ve thus appended the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion below: (1) the abstract and ref­er­ence of the orig­i­nal sttudy, (2) a link to a non-technical report in the cur­rent issue of New Sci­en­tist, (3) a link to a non– tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion of the research in Med­ical News Today, and (4) a link to a recent extended non-technical New Sci­en­tist arti­cle on the issue of non-genetic inher­i­tance. Eric will post his com­men­tary on the research in the March edi­tion of his Brighter Brain Bul­letin newsletter.

THE STUDY:

To put it sim­ply: The researchers stud­ied long-term poten­ti­a­tion (LTP), in which longer and more robust synap­tic acti­va­tion occurs. LTP is the basic mech­a­nism for learn­ing and mem­ory formation.

Juve­nile mice placed into an enriched envi­ron­ment (EE) devel­oped enhanced LTP capa­bil­i­ties that they later trans­mit­ted to their own off­spring dur­ing embryo­ge­n­e­sis (rather than through later mater­nal instruc­tion), and these effects per­sisted even when the off­spring weren’t in an EE. The study con­cluded that a stim­u­lat­ing juve­nile envi­ron­ment can thus influ­ence the com­po­si­tion of sig­nal­ing net­works that influ­ence synap­tic plas­tic­ity and mem­ory for­ma­tion in the enriched mouse, and also in its future offspring.

The prob­lem with this research appears to be over whether the trans­mit­ted effects occurred via genetic changes or through some­thing else in the mother’s uter­ine envi­ron­ment. A female’s eggs develop early in life to be dis­trib­uted later, so it’s improb­a­ble that a female’s juve­nile expe­ri­ences would alter the DNA in her eggs. A more prob­a­ble expla­na­tion may be that any changes in the mother’s brain that occur via an EE are rep­re­sented as cur­rently ill– under­stood sig­nal­ing mol­e­cules that pass through the pla­cen­tal bar­rier into the embry­onic brain.

THE SIGNIFICANCE:

For edu­ca­tors, this research sim­ply adds to our own strong belief that long-term ben­e­fits accrue from a stim­u­lat­ing early envi­ron­ment that encour­ages curios­ity and explo­ration. The research builds on Read the rest of this entry »

Michael I. Pos­ner is a promi­nent sci­en­tist in the field of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science. He is cur­rently an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon (Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy, Insti­tute of Cog­ni­tive and Deci­sion Sci­ences). In August 2008, the Inter­na­tional Union of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence made him the first recip­i­ent of the Dogan Prize “in recog­ni­tion of a con­tri­bu­tion that rep­re­sents a major advance in psy­chol­ogy by a scholar or team of schol­ars of high inter­na­tional reputation.”

Dr. Pos­ner, many thanks for your time today. I really enjoyed the James Arthur Lec­ture mono­graph on Evo­lu­tion and Devel­op­ment of Self-Regulation that you deliv­ered last year. Could you pro­vide a sum­mary of the research you presented?

I would empha­size that we human beings can reg­u­late our thoughts, emo­tions, and actions to a greater degree than other pri­mates. For exam­ple, we can choose to pass up an imme­di­ate reward for a larger, delayed reward.

We can plan ahead, resist dis­trac­tions, be goal-oriented. These human char­ac­ter­is­tics appear to depend upon what we often call “self-regulation.” What is excit­ing these days is that progress in neu­roimag­ing and in genet­ics make it pos­si­ble to think about self-regulation in terms of spe­cific brain-based networks.

Can you explain what self-regulation is?

All par­ents have seen this in their kids. Par­ents can see the remark­able trans­for­ma­tion as their chil­dren develop the abil­ity to reg­u­late emo­tions and to per­sist with goals in the face of dis­trac­tions. That abil­ity is usu­ally labeled ‚ self-regulation.

The other main area of your research is atten­tion. Can you explain the brain-basis for what we usu­ally call “attention”?

I have been inter­ested in how the atten­tion sys­tem devel­ops in infancy and early childhood.

One of our major find­ings, thanks to neu­roimag­ing, is that there is not one sin­gle “atten­tion”, but three sep­a­rate func­tions of atten­tion with three sep­a­rate under­ly­ing brain net­works: alert­ing, ori­ent­ing, and exec­u­tive atten­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago we pub­lished the first and sec­ond install­ments of this Peace Among Pri­mates series, by neu­ro­sci­en­tist Robert Sapol­sky. Today we pub­lish the third and final one.

Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 3)

Any­one who says peace is not part of human nature knows too lit­tle about pri­mates, includ­ing ourselves.

–By Robert M. Sapolsky

Nat­ural born killers?

Read the rest of this entry »

Inter­est­ing recent news:

For more on these news, and com­men­tary: Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago we pub­lished the first install­ment of this Peace Among Pri­mates series, by neu­ro­sci­en­tist Robert Sapol­sky. Today we pub­lish the sec­ond install­ment. Next Sat­ur­day, April 19th, you can come back and read the third and final part in the series.

Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 2)

Any­one who says peace is not part of human nature knows too lit­tle about pri­mates, includ­ing ourselves.

–By Robert M. Sapolsky

Left behind

In the early 1980s, “For­est Troop,” a group of savanna baboons I had been studying—virtually liv­ing with—for years, was going about its busi­ness in a national park in Kenya when a neigh­bor­ing baboon group had a stroke of luck: Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a few good recent blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of selected blog posts around spe­cific topics)

- Tan­gled Bank: science-related posts across a vari­ety of disciplines.

- 2 edi­tions of the Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion: this week and last one.

- HR car­ni­val: because “human resources” have brains, too.

- Med­i­cine 2.0: how web 2.0 can enhance the prac­tice of medicine.

- Change of Shift: nurs­ing topics.

- Gene Genie: human genetics.

Dr. Robert Syl­wester is an edu­ca­tor of edu­ca­tors, hav­ing received mul­ti­ple awards dur­ing his long career as a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor of the impli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence research for edu­ca­tion and learn­ing. He is the author of sev­eral books and many jour­nal arti­cles, and mem­ber of our Sci­en­tific Advi­sory Board. His most recent book is The Ado­les­cent Brain: Reach­ing for Auton­omy (Cor­win Press, 2007). He is an Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Oregon.

I am hon­ored to inter­view him today.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Let’s start with that eter­nal source of debate. What do we know about the respec­tive roles of genes and our envi­ron­ment in brain devel­op­ment?

Robert Syl­wester: Genetic and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors both con­tribute to brain mat­u­ra­tion. Genet­ics prob­a­bly play a stronger role in the early years, and the envi­ron­ment plays a stronger role in later years. Still the mother’s (envi­ron­men­tal) use of drugs dur­ing the preg­nancy could affect the genet­ics of fetal brain devel­op­ment, and some adult ill­nesses, such as Huntington’s Dis­ease, are genet­i­cally triggered.

Nature and nur­ture both require the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions of the other in most devel­op­men­tal and main­te­nance func­tions. We typ­i­cally think of envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors as things that hap­pen to us, over which we have lit­tle control.

Can’t our own deci­sions have an effect in our own brain devel­op­ment? For exam­ple, what if I choose a career in invest­ment bank­ing, vs. one in jour­nal­ism or teaching?

We make our own career deci­sions in life, and most of us make a com­bi­na­tion of good and bad deci­sions, which influ­ence our brain’s maturation.

My father was very unusual in his career tra­jec­tory in that he worked at one place through­out his entire adult life, and died three months after he retired at 91. I’ve always thought that it’s a good idea to make a change every ten years or so and do some­thing dif­fer­ent either within the same orga­ni­za­tion or to move to another one.

It’s just as good for orga­ni­za­tions to have some staff turnover as it is for staff to move to new chal­lenges. The time to leave one posi­tion for another is while you and your employer are Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers at Yale Uni­ver­sity have just released a good paper show­ing the impor­tance of both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise to main­tain good mem­ory (full text of research paper Sin­gle Enrich­ment Vari­ables Reduce Aged-related Mem­ory Decline in Female Mice).

Some quotes from the Sci­ence Daily release Exer­cise And Men­tal Stim­u­la­tion Both Boost Mouse Mem­ory Late In Life:

• “The results sug­gest that as we get old and maybe less able to exer­cise, cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion can help to com­pen­sate. If the trend holds, write the authors, “These data may sug­gest that enrich­ment ini­ti­ated at any age can sig­nif­i­cantly improve mem­ory func­tion. And exer­cise plus men­tal chal­lenge in mid­dle age — when many peo­ple start to notice sub­tle mem­ory changes — may offer the strongest, most wide­spread ben­e­fits for mem­ory function.”
• The authors note that exer­cise was cen­tral to mem­ory rein­force­ment in all age groups. Says lead author Karyn Frick, PhD, “It is impor­tant for peo­ple of all ages to do 20 to 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic exer­cise sev­eral times a week. Keep­ing a healthy and active brain may pre­vent mem­ory decline in old age, but only a lon­gi­tu­di­nal study that fol­lows mice over time could con­firm this possibility.”

We dis­cussed this topic in more depth in my inter­view on Build­ing Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve with Dr. Yaakov Stern and in the dia­logue with Dr. Michael Merzenich that included fea­tur­ing the pio­neer­ing work of Dr. Mar­ian Dia­mond.

In short, if you want to pro­tect and improve your mem­ory, get ready to exer­cise both body and brain!

Very fun inter­view with Jack and Elaine LaLanne by Dave Bun­nell: read it at Meet Fit­ness Leg­ends Jack and Elaine LaLanne | ELDR.com. See some quotes:

• In 1936, Jack opened America’s first health club in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, called the “Jack LaLanne Phys­i­cal Cul­ture Studio.”
• Through tele­vi­sion shows, pub­lic appear­ances, and books—and by sell­ing health-related products—they have been the most vocal and effec­tive evan­ge­lists for pre­ven­tive health the world has ever known.
• “Elaine works out,” Jack replies, “but I work out eight days a week. I spend an hour and a half in the gym, and then a half hour in the pool, and I change my rou­tine every 30 days completely.”
• “You’ve got to go at it hard and work on dif­fer­ent mus­cles,” he con­tin­ues. “You know how you stay young, don’t you? You work your butt off. Any­thing you do in life that’s worth­while, there’s a price to pay.”

Jack recently cel­e­brated his 92nd birthday!

We all have to be very thank­ful for their life mis­sion: a recent arti­cle from the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science quotes:

“Every­body knows that exer­cise is good for your heart, but in recent years we’ve gath­ered com­pelling evi­dence that exer­cise is also good for your brain,” says Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies. “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”

You can check other tips in Read the rest of this entry »