Very inter­est­ing new study on com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing (or brain train­ing), well sum­ma­rized in LA Times arti­cle Mem­ory train­ing improves intel­li­gence in some chil­dren, report says. Quote:

The train­ing pro­gram used by Jaeggi and co-workers focused on ramp­ing up work­ing mem­ory: the abil­ity to hold in mind a hand­ful of infor­ma­tion bits briefly, and to update them as needed. Cog­ni­tive sci­en­tists con­sider work­ing mem­ory a key com­po­nent of intel­li­gence. But they have Read the rest of this entry »

Today we’ll dis­cuss some of the cog­ni­tive impli­ca­tions of “always on” work­places and lifestyles via a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Mag­gie Jack­son, an award-winning author and jour­nal­ist. Her lat­est book, Dis­tracted: The Ero­sion of Atten­tion and the Com­ing Dark Age, describes the impli­ca­tions of our busy work and life envi­ron­ments and offers impor­tant reflec­tions to help us thrive in them.

This is a 2-part inter­view con­ducted via e-mail: we will pub­lish the con­tin­u­a­tion on Thurs­day March 12th.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: New York Times colum­nist David Brooks said last year that we live in a Cog­ni­tive Age, and encour­aged read­ers to be aware of this change and try and adapt to the new real­ity. Can you explain the cog­ni­tive demands of today’s work­places that weren’t there 30–40 years ago?

Mag­gie Jack­son: Our work­places have changed enor­mously in recent decades, and it’s easy to point to the Black­berry or the lap­top as the sources of our cul­ture of speed and over­load and dis­trac­tion. But it’s impor­tant to note first that our 24/7, frag­mented work cul­ture has deeper roots. With the first high-tech inven­tions, such as the cin­ema, phono­graph, tele­graph, rail, and car, came rad­i­cal changes in human expe­ri­ence of time and space. Dis­tance was shat­tered  long before email and red-eye flights. Tele­graph oper­a­tors  not online daters  expe­ri­enced the first vir­tual love affairs, as evi­denced by the 1890s novel Wired Love. Now, we wres­tle with the effects of changes seeded long ago.

Today, the cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal demands on work­ers are steep. Con­sider 24/7 liv­ing. At great cost to our health, we oper­ate in a sleep­less, hur­ried world, ignor­ing cues of sun and sea­son, the Indus­trial Age inven­tions of the week­end and vaca­tion, and the rhythms of biol­ogy. We try to break the fet­ters of time and live like per­pet­ual motion machines. That’s one rea­son why we feel over­loaded and stressed con­di­tions that are cor­ro­sive to problem-solving and clear thinking.

At the same time, our tech­nolo­gies allow us access to mil­lions of infor­ma­tion bites pro­duc­ing an abun­dance of data that is both won­drous and dan­ger­ous. Unless we have the will, dis­ci­pline and frame­works for turn­ing this infor­ma­tion into wis­dom, we remain stuck on the sur­face of Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to alert you to a very inter­est­ing find­ing pub­lished in a recent issue of Sci­ence, one of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tific journals.

The study was led by Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and his col­leagues from the Karolin­ska Insti­tute in Swe­den. The goal was to learn whether Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing is asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry, thus sug­gest­ing a mech­a­nism by which train­ing may lead to enhanced work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and a reduc­tion in atten­tion prob­lems. Thus, although Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing has pre­vi­ously shown promis­ing results as a treat­ment for work­ing mem­ory and atten­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, this was a basic sci­ence study rather than a treat­ment study.

The major find­ing was that increased work­ing mem­ory capac­ity fol­low­ing train­ing was asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry. Specif­i­cally, the researchers found changes in the den­sity and bind­ing poten­tial of cor­ti­cal D1 dopamine recep­tors in brain regions that are acti­vated dur­ing work­ing mem­ory tasks.

Results from this study sug­gest a bio­log­i­cal basis for the improve­ment in work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and reduc­tions i Read the rest of this entry »

Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Can Alter Bio­chem­istry Of The Brain (Sci­ence Daily)

- “Researchers at the Swedish med­ical uni­ver­sity Karolin­ska Insti­tute have shown for the first time that the active train­ing of the work­ing mem­ory brings about vis­i­ble changes in the num­ber of dopamine recep­tors in the human brain.”

- ““Brain bio­chem­istry doesn’t just under­pin our men­tal activ­ity; our men­tal activ­ity and think­ing process can also affect the bio­chem­istry,” says Pro­fes­sor Torkel Kling­berg, who led the study.”

- “Changes in the num­ber of dopamine recep­tors in a per­son doesn’t give us the key to poor mem­ory,” says Pro­fes­sor Lars Farde, one of the researchers who took part in the study. “We also have to ask if the dif­fer­ences could have been caused by a lack of mem­ory train­ing or other envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. Maybe we’ll be able to find new, more effec­tive treat­ments that com­bine med­ica­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing, in which case we’re in extremely inter­est­ing territory.”

Com­ment:  couldn’t agree more with “Maybe we’ll be able to find new, more effec­tive treat­ments that com­bine med­ica­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing, in which case we’re in extremely inter­est­ing ter­ri­tory.” This study adds a very impor­tant angle to the grow­ing lit­er­a­ture on work­ing mem­ory train­ing, show­ing a more fun­da­men­tal, struc­tural impact, that once thought (such as the well-known effect that “cells that fire together wire together”). The com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive pro­gram used in the study was Cogmed work­ing mem­ory training.

More on Torkel Klingberg’s research:

- Arti­cle writ­ten by Torkel Kling­berg on The Over­flow­ing Brain & Infor­ma­tion Overload

- His recent book, which was The Sharp­Brains Most Impor­tant Book of 2008: The Over­flow­ing Brain: Infor­ma­tion Over­load and the Lim­its of Work­ing Memory

- 2006 Inter­view with Dr. Kling­berg: Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Klingberg

Dear reader and mem­ber of Sharp­Brains’ com­mu­nity,
We want to thank you for your atten­tion and sup­port in 2008, and wish you a Happy, Pros­per­ous, Healthy and Pos­i­tive 2009!

Below you have the Decem­ber edi­tion of our monthly newslet­ter. Enjoy:

Best of 2008

Top 30 Brain Fit­ness Arti­cles of 2008: We have com­piled Sharp­Brains’ 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles, writ­ten by thir­teen Expert Con­trib­u­tors and staff mem­bers for you. Have you read them all?

November-December News: No month goes by with­out sig­nif­i­cant news in the field of cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Sum­ma­rized here are 10 recent devel­op­ments wor­thy of atten­tion, includ­ing an upcom­ing brain train­ing prod­uct for ice hockey play­ers, my lec­ture at New York Pub­lic Library, and more.

Inter­views: Videogames, Med­i­ta­tion

Are videogames good for your brain?: A land­mark study by Dr. Arthur Kramer and col­leagues has shown that play­ing a strat­egy videogame can bring a vari­ety of sig­nif­i­cant men­tal ben­e­fits to older brains. Another recent study, also by Kramer and col­leagues, does not show sim­i­lar ben­e­fits to younger brains (despite play­ing the same game). How can this be? Dr. Kramer, who has kindly agreed to serve on Sharp­Brains’ Sci­en­tific Advi­sory Board, elaborates.

Med­i­ta­tion on the Brain: Dr. Andrew New­berg pro­vides an excel­lent overview of the brain ben­e­fits of prac­tices such as med­i­ta­tion. He rec­om­mends, “look for some­thing sim­ple, easy to try first, ensur­ing the prac­tice is com­pat­i­ble with one’s beliefs and goals. You need to match prac­tice with need: under­stand the spe­cific goals you have in mind, your sched­ule and lifestyle, and find some­thing practical.“

The Need for Objec­tive Assessments

Cog­ni­tive screen­ings and Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: The Alzheimer’s Foun­da­tion of Amer­ica just released a thought­ful report advo­cat­ing for wide­spread cog­ni­tive screen­ings after the age of 65 (55 given the right con­di­tions). Sharp­Brains read­ers, probed by Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, seem to agree.

Quan­ti­ta­tive EEG for ADHD diag­no­sis: Dr. David Rabiner reports on the find­ings from a recent study that doc­u­ments the util­ity of Quan­ti­ta­tive EEG as an objec­tive test to assist in the diag­no­sis of ADHD. If this pro­ce­dure were to become more widely used, he sug­gests, the num­ber of chil­dren and ado­les­cents who are inap­pro­pri­ately diag­nosed and treated for the dis­or­der would dimin­ish substantially.

Shall we ques­tion the brand new book of human trou­bles?: The fights over the new ver­sion of the psy­chi­atric diag­nos­tic man­ual, the DSM-V, are start­ing to come to light. Dr. Vaughan Bell won­ders why the pub­lic debate avoids the key ques­tion of whether diag­no­sis itself is use­ful for men­tal health and why psy­cho­met­rics are sim­ply ignored.

Resources for Life­long Learning

Edu­ca­tion builds Cog­ni­tive Reserve for Alzheimers Dis­ease Pro­tec­tion: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon reviews a recent study that sup­ports the Cog­ni­tive Reserve hypoth­e­sis — men­tally stim­u­lat­ing expe­ri­ences through­out life, such as for­mal edu­ca­tion, help build a reserve in our brains that con­tributes to a lower prob­a­bil­ity of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symptoms.

5 Tips on Life­long Learn­ing & the Adult Brain: Lau­rie Bar­tels asks us to please please 1) chal­lenge our­selves with new learn­ing, 2) remem­ber that neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis are hall­marks of our brains, 3) check for mis-learning on an ongo­ing basis, 4) more visu­als, less text, 5) move it, move it — start today!

Karolin­ska Institute’s Dr. Torkel Kling­berg has just released in the US his excel­lent book The Over­flow­ing Brain: Infor­ma­tion Over­load and the Lim­its of Work­ing Mem­ory

The title was first released in Swe­den with great suc­cess, and our co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg gave a Fore­word to the new US edition.

Dr. Kling­berg will be writ­ing an essay for Sharp­Brains read­ers soon, so we can dis­cuss the impor­tance of this topic and his work in depth. Let me now link to two thought-provoking reviews of the book:

Atten­tion Must Be Paid (Inside Higher Ed)

- “The weak link in the infor­ma­tion age seems to be our human hard-wiring. So one gath­ers from The Over­flow­ing Brain: Infor­ma­tion Over­load and the Lim­its of Work­ing Mem­ory (Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press) by Torkel Kling­berg, who is a pro­fes­sor of devel­op­men­tal cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science at the Stock­holm Brain Insti­tute. A review of recent research on how atten­tion and mem­ory actu­ally func­tion within our gray mat­ter, it is a work of sci­en­tific pop­u­lar­iza­tion rather than a hand­book on how to min­i­mize the cog­ni­tive drain of distraction.”

- “To sim­plify Klingberg’s already pared-down analy­sis, we can dis­tin­guish between two kinds of atten­tion. One is con­trolled atten­tion: the directed effort to apply ones con­cen­tra­tion to a par­tic­u­lar task. The other is stimulus-driven atten­tion, which is an invol­un­tary response to some­thing hap­pen­ing in the envi­ron­ment. (You can tune out the con­ver­sa­tions going on around you in a restau­rant. But if a waiter drops a tray full of dishes, it is going to impose itself on your awareness.)”

- “Kling­berg reports that a two-year study in his lab showed that it was pos­si­ble to increase working-memory capac­ity Read the rest of this entry »