(Editor’s note: below you have part 5 of the 6-part The Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy of Stress series. If you are join­ing the series now, you can read the pre­vi­ous part Here.)

Stayin’ Alive

The Human Brain Likes to Be in Balance

For­tu­nately, the brain has some built — in safety sys­tems. Too much cor­ti­sol in the blood sig­nals the brain and adrenal glands to decrease cor­ti­sol pro­duc­tion. And under nor­mal con­di­tions, when the stress is over­come or brought under con­trol (by fight­ing, flee­ing, or turn­ing into an immo­bile statue, or by mas­ter­ing the threat), the hypo­thal­a­mus starts send­ing out the orders to stand down. Stop pro­duc­ing cor­ti­sol!  Event over!  Under con­tin­u­ous stress, how­ever, this feed­back sys­tem breaks down. The hypo­thal­a­mus keeps read­ing the stress as a threat, furtively send­ing mes­sages to the pitu­itary gland, which screams out to the adrenal glands to keep pump­ing out cor­ti­sol, which at this point begins to be neu­ro­toxic — poi­son to the brain. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s going on in the brain while we sleep? A lot! Specif­i­cally, processes sup­port­ing the con­sol­i­da­tion of mem­o­ries. This Dana Foun­da­tion arti­cle reviews fas­ci­nat­ing stud­ies in which mem­o­ries are reac­ti­vated dur­ing sleep thanks to either an odor or an audi­tory cue. Results sug­gest that such reac­ti­va­tion leads to bet­ter memory:

reac­ti­va­tion dur­ing slow-wave sleep sup­ports the trans­fer of the mem­ory rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the hip­pocam­pus to long-term stor­age in the neo­cor­tex, and also strength­ens it

one pos­si­ble appli­ca­tion of such find­ings could be to over­write unwanted trau­matic memories

another appli­ca­tion would be to use the deep-sleep reac­ti­va­tion to enhance mem­o­ries in stu­dents, or in elderly peo­ple Read the rest of this entry »

Who will Ben­e­fit From Train­ing?  New research shows that mea­sur­ing brain activ­ity pat­terns can pre­dict who may ben­e­fit most from tran­ing inter­ven­tions –and who may not. Please note that the Kramer lab involved in this research is now offer­ing a post­doc­toral fellowship.

A Quick Test to Detect Ath­letes’ Con­cus­sions:  This new test can be per­formed at the side­line of sport­ing events to help detect con­cus­sions by look­ing at dif­fer­ent types of eye movements.

The Best Way to Learn: Tak­ing a test in which you recall what you have read seems to be a much bet­ter strat­egy than either study­ing the mate­r­ial repeat­edly or draw­ing detailed dia­grams of what you are learning.

Inter­ven­tions

Brain Train­ing Games for Seniors: Donal O’Brien, from Queens Uni­ver­sity at Belfast, tells us about what moti­vates seniors to use a brain train­ing app.

Vit­a­min D and Cog­ni­tive Decline: This study sup­ports that patients with vit­a­min D defi­ciency show an increased risk of cog­ni­tive decline.

Baby Sleeps and Brain Devel­op­ment: How much sleep a 12 month old baby gets can influ­ence the devel­op­ment of his/her exec­u­tive functions.

PTSD: Can we Dis­rupt the Recon­sol­i­da­tion of Trau­matic Mem­o­ries? A dis­cus­sion of the dif­fer­ent tech­niques used/ under research that can help PTSD patients.

;

Books and Sum­mit Updates

Visual Illu­sions in Art and Sci­ence: These sur­pris­ing clas­sic illu­sions illus­trate how art and magic can help sci­ence in under­tans­ing how we per­ceive the world around us.

2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Agenda: You can now view the lat­est Agenda for the whole Sum­mit and a 3-minute clip to learn how the Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st) will work.

;

Brain Teaser

Both chil­dren and adults need a good night sleep to func­tion at their best. A recent study, sum­ma­rized here, sug­gests that this is true for babies too: How much sleep a 12 month old baby gets can influ­ence the devel­op­ment of his/her exec­u­tive func­tions. Exec­u­tive func­tions, sup­ported by the frontal lobes of the brain, are often con­sid­ered as indi­ca­tors of children’s like­li­hood of suc­ceed­ing in school. They involve decision-making, problem-solving, plan­ning, inhibit­ing, as well as other high-level func­tions (social behav­ior, emo­tional con­trol, work­ing mem­ory, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »

Any­one who knows me knows that my favorite pas­time is nap­ping. In Col­lege, I would come back to my dorm room, and like clock­work, would take a nap. My best friend in Eng­land, who got quite a kick out of my pas­sion for nap­ping, once tried to per­suade me to drink a cup of tea after lunch instead of tak­ing my cus­tom­ary nap. I really tried, but I soon gave in to my nap crav­ings. Some­times I feel like I really need to re-charge my brain batteries.

Well, now sci­ence is on my side. I just love this new study, which was pre­sented by Matthew Walker, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at UC Berke­ley, at the annual meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) con­fer­ence in San Diego this past Sun­day (Feb. 2010).

Walker and his col­leagues Bryce A. Man­der and Sangeetha San­thanam split up a batch of 39 healthy young adults into two groups. One group napped, the other did not.

At noon, both groups took a learn­ing task thought to recruit the hip­pocam­pus. The hip­pocam­pus is a region of the brain known to play an impor­tant role in the for­ma­tion of new mem­o­ries. Over the past few years, var­i­ous researchers have found that fact-based mem­o­ries are tem­porar­ily stored in the hip­pocam­pus before other regions of the brain can oper­ate on the con­tent, espe­cially the regions of the brain respon­si­ble for higher-order rea­son­ing and think­ing.  At this point in the exper­i­ment, both groups showed sim­i­lar lev­els of performance.

Then, at 2pm, the nap group took a 90-minute nap while the no-nap group stayed awake, pre­sum­ably watch­ing the nap group enjoy­ing their nap. After nap-time both groups then took more learn­ing tests. The nap­pers did bet­ter on the tasks than those who stayed awake, demon­strat­ing their higher capac­ity to learn. Read the rest of this entry »

Sev­eral months ago we came across an excel­lent resource for cognitive/ brain fit­ness aimed at help­ing com­pa­nies offer qual­ity brain health infor­ma­tion to their employees.

While it is true that we often tend to believe all this “brain fit­ness” stuff is most rel­e­vant to our par­ents and/ or grand­par­ents, trust me, if you are read­ing this, you need it. Every­one with a brain can ben­e­fit from learn­ing about how his or her brain works and how to main­tain it with proper care.

And, from a company’s point of view, aren’t “tal­ent” and “human cap­i­tal” really all about brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive performance?

The Con­fer­ence Board and the Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives (descrip­tions below) pub­lished in 2008 a 44-page book­let to “teach sim­ple, prac­ti­cal strate­gies for incor­po­rat­ing brain-friendly prac­tices into day-to-day life”.  Your Brain at work: Mak­ing the sci­ence of cog­ni­tive fit­ness to work for you is the first of three planned book­lets on cog­ni­tive fitness.

The Con­fer­ence Board and the Dana Alliance have allowed Sharp­Brains to share the fol­low­ing Action Plan with our read­ers, straight from Your Brain at work brochure. At the bot­tom of this post we also share instruc­tions on how indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies can get their own copies of this excel­lent brochure. Read the rest of this entry »

With sum­mer draw­ing to a close and schools start­ing up for a new sea­son, what bet­ter time to take a look at how schools uti­lize research about the brain in deter­min­ing the tim­ing of the flow of school. Not only cur­rent brain research, but com­mon sense, tells me the fol­low­ing areas need tweaking.

• - School start times and sleep
• - Expo­sure to nat­ural light
• - Sched­ul­ing of classes

SCHOOL START TIMES AND SLEEP
Left to your own devices, what time would you go to sleep each evening and what time would you wake up? Read the rest of this entry »

Chris hosts a superb edi­tion of Encephalon, pre­sent­ing the arti­cles as an engag­ing and pretty com­pre­hen­sive Q&A ses­sion. If you want to read the answers, to the ques­tions below, by some of the best neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy blog­gers, sim­ply visit Encephalon 52: Q&A.

Q: What is the rela­tion­ship between neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and depres­sion?

Q: For that mat­ter, is there a rela­tion­ship between depres­sion and dia­betes?

Q: What is the mol­e­c­u­lar basis of bipo­lar dis­or­der?

Q: Can brain stim­u­la­tion make you a bet­ter dri­ver? Read the rest of this entry »

As promised in my pre­vi­ous post (10 Brain Train­ing Tips To Teach and Learn), here are some of the resources that inform my under­stand­ing of the brain: books, con­fer­ences, and websites.

BOOKS

There are a mul­ti­tude of books about the brain. For edu­ca­tors, the best of these are books that demys­tify the lan­guage of neu­ro­science while pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion applic­a­ble to the teaching/learning process.

Among the more pro­lific or well-known authors of this type include Jeb Schenck, Robert Syl­wester, Bar­bara Givens, Robert Marzano, Mar­ilee Sprenger, and Eric Jensen.

I have found books Read the rest of this entry »

Try eat­ing food with one chop stick.

It is pos­si­ble, for cer­tain types of food. But prob­a­bly not the best approach.

Let’s now talk brain health.

Dr. Larry McCleary is a for­mer act­ing Chief of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­surgery at Den­ver Children’s Hos­pi­tal, and author of the The Brain Trust Pro­gram (Perigee Trade, 2007). He agreed to help us answer an impor­tant, yet often neglected, ques­tion: Given That We Are Our Brains, How do We Nour­ish Them?

Alvaro: Dr. McCleary, Why did a for­mer neu­ro­sur­geon such as your­self develop an inter­est in brain health pub­lic education?

Dr. McCleary: For two rea­sons … I am a Boomer and am try­ing to max­i­mize my own brain health. Also, there is much excit­ing research doc­u­ment­ing how we can be proac­tive in this regard. This infor­ma­tion needs to be dis­sem­i­nated and I would like to help in this process.

And what is the sin­gle most impor­tant brain-related idea or con­cept that you would like every per­son in the planet to fully understand?

The most impor­tant take home mes­sage about brain health is that we now know that no mat­ter what your brain sta­tus or age, there is much you can do to sig­nif­i­cantly improve brain func­tion and slow brain aging. Based on emerg­ing infor­ma­tion, what is espe­cially nice is the fact that unlike many things in life our brain health is largely under own control.

What are the most impor­tant ele­ments to nour­ish our brains as we age?

I approach this ques­tion much like an ath­lete pre­pares for com­pe­ti­tion. They uti­lize a holis­tic approach. Read the rest of this entry »