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 »

Obe­sity linked to Cog­ni­tion (Health­Canal):

- “Obese peo­ple tend to per­form worse than healthy peo­ple at cog­ni­tive tasks like plan­ning ahead, a lit­er­a­ture review has found, con­clud­ing that psy­cho­log­i­cal tech­niques used to treat anorex­ics could help obese peo­ple too.” Read the rest of this entry »

The use of a vari­ety of brain train­ing inter­ven­tions is grow­ing in the area of men­tal health. Emerg­ing evi­dence sug­gests that in the near future tar­geted brain train­ing may even be used to pre­vent sub­stance abuse. For exam­ple, train­ing work­ing mem­ory may reduce sub­stance abusers’ dis­count­ing of long-term rewards and pun­ish­ments — such dis­count­ing is one of the rea­sons why peo­ple sus­cep­ti­ble to addic­tions do not ben­e­fit from tra­di­tional informational/ edu­ca­tional approaches to drug prevention.

Let’s explore some expand­ing appli­ca­tions of brain train­ing, and much more, in this lat­est edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter.

Brain Train­ing and Men­tal Health

ADHD: Brain Train­ing, Neu­ro­feed­back, Diet, and More: What can be done to fight ADHD and improve the lives of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from it?

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in the Brain of Chil­dren with Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders: Brain train­ing may be an option for chil­dren suf­fer­ing from Tourette Syn­drom to help reduce the symptoms.

Brain Train­ing and Schiz­o­phre­nia: Social cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams can boost schiz­o­phren­ics’ skills social skills.

Rethink­ing the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Men­tal Ill­ness: How can we rethink the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of psy­chopathol­ogy (via the new DSM-5) to reflect our cur­rent under­stand­ing of the brain as a dynamic system?

Upcom­ing events: Cog­ni­tive Reme­di­a­tion in Psy­chi­a­try (June 10th, NYC), Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Soci­ety (Sep­tem­ber 19–20, San Francisco).

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Lifestyle for Brain Health

More Friends, Big­ger Brain: The num­ber of friends you have could be pre­dicted by the size of our amygdala!

Music and Demen­tia: Play­ing music pro­tects the brain later on. Music may also be used to teach new facts to peo­ple suf­fer­ing from dementia.

Exer­cise and Over­weight Chil­dren: Aer­o­bic exer­cise can boost over­weight chil­dren exec­u­tive functions.

The Brain Grows With Prac­tice…: We know that when the brain mas­ters a new skill, tar­geted brain areas/ cir­cuits get enlarged. We now know that those areas and cir­cuits even­tu­ally shrink back to nor­mal, but per­for­mance gain can be maintained!

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Food for Thought

What is Brain Fit­ness? What are Emerg­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ties to Retool Brain Health? Here are the answers by seven 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Speakers.

Nav­i­gate through the 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles of last year in SharpBrains.com to learn more about the brain and how to maintain/ enhance brain func­tion­ing across the lifes­pan..

Brain Teaser

Can you lis­ten to these laughs and dis­tin­guish whether it is a human or a com­puter laugh­ing? Also, given how good laugh­ing is…how about try­ing this to find out how much stressed you are? You may be surprised.

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We hope you enjoyed this newslet­ter. Please do feel free to share this with friends and col­leagues via Face­book, Twit­ter and LinkedIn.

Neu­ro­feed­back — also known as EEG Biofeed­back — is an approach for treat­ing ADHD in which indi­vid­u­als are pro­vided real-time feed­back on their brain­wave pat­terns and taught to alter their typ­i­cal EEG pat­tern to one that is con­sis­tent with a focused, atten­tive state. This is typ­i­cally done by col­lect­ing EEG data from indi­vid­u­als as they focus on stim­uli pre­sented on a com­puter screen. Their abil­ity to con­trol the stim­uli, for exam­ple, keep­ing the smile on a smi­ley face, is con­tin­gent on main­tain­ing the par­tic­u­lar EEG state being trained. Accord­ing to neu­ro­feed­back pro­po­nents, learn­ing how to do this dur­ing train­ing gen­er­al­izes to real world sit­u­a­tions and this results in improved atten­tion and reduced hyperactive/impulsive behavior.

Neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment for ADHD has been con­tro­ver­sial in the field for many years and remains so today. Although a num­ber of pub­lished stud­ies have reported pos­i­tive results many promi­nent ADHD researchers believe that prob­lems with the design of these stud­ies pre­clude con­clud­ing that neu­ro­feed­back is an effec­tive treat­ment. These lim­i­ta­tions have included the absence of ran­dom assign­ment, the lack of appro­pri­ate con­trol groups, raters who are not ‘blind’ to children’s treat­ment sta­tus, and small sam­ples. For addi­tional back­ground, you can find a recent review I wrote on exist­ing research sup­port for neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment of ADHD — along with links to exten­sive reviews of sev­eral recently pub­lished stud­ies -: How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?

- Results from a New Study of Neurofeedback -

Recently, a study of neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment for ADHD was pub­lished that addresses sev­eral lim­i­ta­tions that have under­mined prior research [Gevensleben, et al., (2009). Is neu­ro­feed­back an effi­ca­cious treat­ment for ADHD? A ran­dom­ized con­trolled clin­i­cal trial. Jour­nal of Child Psy­chol­ogy and Psychiatry.]

The study was con­ducted in Ger­many and began with 102 chil­dren aged 8 to 12. All had been care­fully diag­nosed with ADHD and approx­i­mately over 90% had never received med­ica­tion treat­ment. About 80% were boys. Chil­dren were ran­domly assigned to Read the rest of this entry »

In April 2008, Bay­crest, a lead­ing research insti­tute focused on aging and brain func­tion, received $10-million from the Ontario Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a ground­break­ing Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness. Its stated goal was to “develop and com­mer­cial­ize a range of prod­ucts designed to improve the brain health of aging Ontar­i­ans and oth­ers around the world”.

“Our gov­ern­ment is proud to sup­port Bay­crest and its invalu­able work, which is already lead­ing to the dis­cov­ery of impor­tant new tools and approaches to treat­ing brain dis­eases asso­ci­ated with aging,” said Min­is­ter of Research and Inno­va­tion, John Wilkinson.

We have Baycrest’s CEO with us today, to explore why Ontario and Bay­crest chose to become pio­neers in this area, and dis­cuss some of the main oppor­tu­ni­ties, and chal­lenges. Dr. William E. Reich­man is Pres­i­dent and CEO of Bay­crest. Dr. Reich­man, an internationally-known expert in geri­atric men­tal health and demen­tia, is also Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try on the Fac­ulty of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Bill, thank you for your time. Let me start by ask­ing, given that you just spoke at the recent Con­sumer Elec­tronic Show, what do you make of the grow­ing brain fit­ness field?

Bill Reich­man: it looks like a clas­sic exam­ple of a very promis­ing but still early stage field – a lot of oppor­tu­nity and enthu­si­asm, but also a lot of prod­uct claims that are not backed by solid research. Think about the phys­i­cal fit­ness anal­ogy: even today, after decades of progress, you still see peo­ple buy­ing research-based prod­ucts such as tread­mills but also all types of ran­dom machines they see on TV and have not been sub­ject to any val­i­da­tion. Sim­i­larly, con­sumers today do not know what to make of grow­ing brain fit­ness claims. As another speaker pointed out, for the indus­try to ful­fill its promise, it will need to be care­ful with research and claims, not to end up like the nutraceu­ti­cals category.

By the way, let me rec­og­nize that the work you are doing with Sharp­Brains reports and your web­site is very impor­tant to offer qual­ity information.

Thank you. Let’s step back for a moment. Tak­ing a, say, 10 years view, what is the main oppor­tu­nity that technology-based brain fit­ness can offer to society?

First of all, let me say that I think we have an oppor­tu­nity to make major progress in Brain Health in the XXI cen­tury, sim­i­lar to what hap­pened with Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Health in the XX, and tech­nol­ogy will play a cru­cial role.

Given the rapid advances we are wit­ness­ing today in the research and tech­nol­ogy are­nas, I feel con­fi­dent in say­ing that in less than 10 years we will have both valid and reli­able assess­ments of cog­ni­tive func­tions, that will be used both by Read the rest of this entry »

“For­tu­nately, our field has moved beyond par­ti­san, and some­times polit­i­cal, pref­er­ence and now asks, What treat­ment is most effec­tive for which patients in what con­text?” — Ray­mon A. Levy and J. Stu­art Ablon, clin­i­cal direc­tor and direc­tor of the psy­chother­apy research pro­gram in the depart­ment of psy­chi­a­try at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­eral Hospital.

Yesterday’s New York Times Book Review included some Let­ters to the Edi­tor that were even bet­ter that the orig­i­nal book review of Amer­i­can Ther­apy.

We are see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of research-based tools and tech­niques (includ­ing cog­ni­tive ther­apy, reviewed in the arti­cle) to mea­sure and help main­tain cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health, both technology-based and technology-free. Now, none of them is a gen­eral solu­tion (in the same way that no sin­gle drug is best for every­one and every­thing), so the ques­tion posed above couldn’t be more relevant.

As the Brain Fit­ness indus­try con­tin­ues to gain momen­tum, and peo­ple explore all the incred­i­ble brain-training tools being devel­oped, we hope that enthu­si­asts don’t take their eye off the impor­tance of the phys­i­cal health of the brain and all the sys­tems it com­mu­ni­cates with. The brain is unique in that it houses our cog­ni­tive and emo­tional capac­i­ties in the form of the mind. It is a ‘cog­ni­tive’ organ that hungers for stim­u­la­tion from new expe­ri­ences and chal­lenges. Many brain fit­ness pro­grams strive to sat­isfy this need. Yet the brain is also a phys­i­cal organ that plays by many of the same rules as the heart, lungs, liver and kid­neys. To stay healthy and per­form opti­mally it requires qual­ity nutri­tion, phys­i­cal activ­ity and opti­mal sleep. The brain, espe­cially, relies on a healthy vas­cu­lar sys­tem to effi­ciently deliver oxy­gen and key nutri­ents and remove waste. In fact, the brain uses approx­i­mately 20% of the oxy­gen we breathe to sat­isfy its high-energy demands. Given that the brain only weighs about 2% of the body, we can con­sider it an energy hog and we must cater to its needs very carefully.

Nutri­ents play key roles in brain func­tion. Sev­eral have shown effi­cacy in clin­i­cal tri­als treat­ing cases of mood dis­or­ders, cog­ni­tive decline and of course ben­e­fit­ing the phys­i­cal health of the brain. Nutri­ents are both the raw mate­ri­als employed in cre­at­ing new neural con­nec­tions and Read the rest of this entry »

As you have prob­a­bly noticed, a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors are writ­ing in our blog, so that we can col­lec­tively dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and brain health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­eral for our every­day lives. 

If you haven’t done so already, make sure to sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).

Below you have the pro­files of some of our Con­trib­u­tors and links to their best arti­cles with us so far. Enjoy!

Read the rest of this entry »

Given the cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate, we are pleased to host this thought-provoking arti­cle by 2 of our Expert Con­trib­u­tors. Dear Mr or Mrs Next Pres­i­dent: how can you help our minds take bet­ter care of our brains?

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Ask Not What The Health Sys­tem Can Do For You…

– By Simon J. Evans, PhD and Paul R. Burghardt, PhD.

With the pres­i­den­tial debates gear­ing up again we are sure to hear more about health care. But we pro­pose a slightly dif­fer­ent ques­tion. In addi­tion to ask­ing how we can get more peo­ple health­care cov­er­age, we should also ask why so many peo­ple are sick in the first place.

The words of John Kennedy might today be, “Ask not what the health care sys­tem can do for you. Ask what you can do to reduce the health care bur­den”. But before delv­ing into what we can do, let’s take a look at some real­i­ties that our next pres­i­dent could face in their first ‘State of the Union’ address.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are glad to see that Mind­Fit is finally mak­ing it into the pop­u­lar press, at least in the UK. The pro­gram is mak­ing big news in the UK (BBC, Times, Daily Telegragh, Guardian…) because Baroness Susan Green­field, direc­tor of the Royal Insti­tu­tion and a well-respected neu­ro­sci­en­tist, is endors­ing it. We eval­u­ated it last year and liked what we saw, based on our 10-Question Check­list. Now, remem­ber that no pro­gram is “best”, but that dif­fer­ent pro­grams can be more appro­pri­ate for spe­cific peo­ple and spe­cific goals, so read the check­list first and take a lot at other pro­grams too if you are in the mar­ket for “brain training”.

Mind­Fit is a software-based assess­ment and train­ing pro­gram for 14 cog­ni­tive skills impor­tant for healthy aging. We typ­i­cally rec­om­mend it for peo­ple over 50 (up to any age, you sim­ply need to know how to use a com­puter and a mouse) who want a novel and var­ied men­tal workout.

The pro­gram has Read the rest of this entry »