Brilliant Blog

The Development of Emotional Intelligence

A Case Study

• By Nadja Reissland, David Cohen

ISBN: 9780415359511

Published December 01 2007 by Routledge.

Here you are have the Monthly Digest of our Most Popular Blog Posts. You can consider it your monthly Brain Exercise Magazine.

 Gratitude is a very important emotion to cultivate, as Professor Robert Emmons tells us in this interview, based on his last book. Please take some time to read it, and to find at least one thing you are thankful for-it will be good for your health.

We are grateful about a very stimulating November:

Brain Fitness Market News

10 Neurotechnology Trends: a leading industry organization released their Top 10 NeuroTrends for 2007, and brain fitness matters appeared in 3 of them. 

Thank Boomers for Buffing Up Brain Market: great overview of the market from a technology point of view, quoting our market projections. To clarify the numbers mentioned: we project $225m in the US alone for the brain fitness software market (growing from $70m in 2003), broken-down as follows: $80m for the Consumer segment, $60m in K12 Education, $50m in Clinical applications, and $35m in the Corporate segment. The Consumer segment, with a healthy aging value proposition, is the most recent one but the most rapidly growing.

Exercise On the Brain: a NYT OpEd: a widely read opinion piece in the New York Times, written by 2 neuroscientists, that somehow seems to miss the research behind the value of mental stimulation and cognitive training. Other neuroscience teams and us write letters to the editor that go unpublished. Should you have any contacts with journalists, please ask them to contact us: we are always happy to serve as a resource to the media.

Posit Science @ GSA: well-designed Brain Training Works: a timely heads up on how well-designed computer-based programs can be a great complement to other interventions. We will be interviewing the leading researcher behind that study during the next 2 weeks, so keep tuned!

Brain and Mind News and Articles: a variety of links to good media reports, including a spectacular special on memory in National Geographic.

News You Can Use

Marian Diamond on the brain: leading neuroscientist Marian Diamond, now 81, shares her prescription for lifelong brain health- diet, exercise, challenge, newness and tender loving care.

From Meditation to MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction): a report on the benefits of meditation and how it is becoming more mainstream in medicine.

Teasers 

50 Mind and Brain Games for adults: you may have seen these teasers, but we want to alert you we have opened a new section in the site where you can easily find our growing collection of teasers

Your Haiku, please?: a friendly challenge to your brain.

Education and Lifelong Learning

Carol Dweck on Mindsets, Learning and Intelligence: we found a fascinating interview on the importance on having a growth and learning oriented mindset. Both for kids and adults.

Is Intelligence Innate and Fixed?: some reflections based on biology.

Corporate Training, Wellness and Leadership

Cognitive Fitness and The Future of Work: an excellent concept map on how neuroscience may influence the workplace of the future, drawn in real time as I spoke at an Institute for the Future event.

Emotional Intelligence and Faces: how many universal emotions and facial expressions are there?

Events

Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together: I spoke at the Italian Consulate in San Francisco, where we explored some of the basic concepts we should all know about how our brains and mind work.

Let me practice the Gratitude concept...Thank You for your attention and participation!

You can also enjoy our previous editions of this monthly digest:

- October

- September 

- August 

- July 

(Dear reader: Here you have a little gift to continue the Thanksgiving spirit. Enjoy the interview, and thank you for visiting our site.)

Prof. Robert Emmons studies gratitude for a living as Professor of Psychology at UC Davis and is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology. He has just published Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, an interdisciplinary book that provides a research-based synthesis of the topic as well as practical suggestions.

Alvaro Fernandez: Welcome. Prof. Emmons, could you please provide us an overview of the Positive Psychology field so we understand the context for your research?

Robert Emmons: Sure. Martin Seligman and colleagues launched what was called “positive psychology” in the late 90s as an antidote to the traditional nearly exclusive emphasis of “negative psychology” focused on fixing problems like trauma, addiction, and stress. We want to balance our focus and be able to help everyone, including high-functioning individuals. A number of researchers were investigating the field since the late 80s, but Seligman provided a new umbrella, a new category, with credibility, organized networks and funding opportunities for the whole field.

And where does your own research fit into this overall picture?

I have been researching gratitude for almost 10 years. Gratitude is a positive emotion that has traditionally been the realm of humanists and philosophers, and only recently the subject of a more scientific approach. We study gratitude not as a merely academic discipline, but as a practical framework to better functioning in life by taking control of happiness levels and practicing the skill of emotional self-regulation.

What are the 3 key messages that you would like readers to take away from your book?

First, the practice of gratitude can increase happiness levels by around 25%. Second, this is not hard to achieve - a few hours writing a gratitude journal over 3 weeks can create an effect that lasts 6 months if not more. Third, that cultivating gratitude brings other health effects, such as longer and better quality sleep time.

What are some ways to practice gratitude, and what benefits could we expect? Please refer to your 2003 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, where I found fascinating quotes such as that “The ability to notice, appreciate, and savior the elements of one’s life has been viewed as a crucial element of well-being.”

The most common method we use in our research is to ask people to keep a “Gratitude Journal” where you write something you feel grateful for. Doing so 4 times a week, for as little as 3 weeks, is often enough to create a meaningful difference in one’s level of happiness. Another exercise is to write a “Gratitude Letter” to a person who has exerted a positive influence on one’s life but whom we have not properly thanked in the past, and then to meet that person and read the letter to them face to face.

The benefits seem to be very similar using both methods in terms of enhanced happiness, health and wellbeing. Most of the outcomes are self-reported, but there is an increasing emphasis on measuring objective data such as cortisol and stress levels, heart rate variability, and even brain activation patterns. The work of Richard Davidson is exemplary in that respect, showing how mindfulness practice can rewire some activation patterns in the frontal lobes.

Now, let me give an overview of the paper you mention, titled Counting Blessings versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life (note: reference below). The paper includes 3 separate studies, so I will just be able to provide a quick glimpse. More than a hundred adults were all asked to keep a journal, and were randomly assigned to 3 different groups. Group A had to write about things they felt grateful about. Group B about things they found annoying, irritating. Group C about things that had had a major impact on them. 2 out of the 3 different experiments were relatively intense and short term (keeping a daily journal for 2-3 weeks), while one required a weekly entry during 10 weeks.

Across the 3 different studies we found that people in the gratitude group generally evidenced higher-levels of well-being than those in the comparison conditions, especially when compared to Group B (the one journaling about hassles), but also compared to the “neutral” group.

In the longer study, which ran for 10 weeks, we also saw a positive effect on hours of sleep and on time spent exercising, on more optimistic expectations for the coming week, and fewer reported physical symptoms, such as pain. Additionally, we observed an increase in reported connectedness to other people and in likelihood of helping another person deal with a personal problem.

We could then say that we can train ourselves to develop a more grateful attitude and optimistic outlook in life, resulting in well-being and health improvements, and even in becoming better-not just happier- citizens. And probably one can expect few negative side effects from keeping a gratitude journal. What do you think prevents more people from benefiting from these research findings?

Great question, I reflect often on that. My sense is that some people feel uncomfortable talking about these topics, since they may sound too spiritual, or religious. Others simply don’t want to feel obligated to the person who helped them, and never come to realize the boost in energy, enthusiasm, and social benefits that come from a more grateful, connected life.

Judith Beck talked to us recently (interview notes here) about her work helping dieters learn important mental skills through cognitive therapy techniques. You talk about gratitude. Other positive psychologists focus on Forgiveness. How can we know which of these techniques may be helpful for us?

The key is to reflect on one’s goal and current situation. For example, the practice of forgiveness can be most appropriate for people who have high levels of anger and resentment. Cognitive therapy has been shown to be very effective against depression. In a sense both groups are trying to eliminate the negative. Gratitude is different in that it is better suited for highly functioning individuals who simply want to feel better - enhancing the positive.

Prof. Emmons, thank you for your time, and research.

You are welcome.

---------------

Related reading

- Book: Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier

- Blog post on Mental Training for Gratitude and Altruism 

- Emmons, R. A. & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377-389

- Other interviews in our Neuroscience and Psychology Interview Series

Just wanted to let you know that we have created this new Teasers section to serve as a repository of the best Mind and Brain Games we offer through the blog. If you need to quickly exercise your brain after Thanksgiving holiday...you can go ahead and find a selection of 50 Brain Teasers. Enjoy!

Visit: Teasers section

Just came accross an excellent Interview with Carol Dweck. Thank you Coert! 

Carol Dweck is a professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Last year she published a great book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, where she elaborates on her (and ours) key message: the way you view your own intelligence largely determines how it will develop. And no matter how you define "intelligence". In this interview Coert asks Carol Dweck about the book and about what the practical implications of her work are for managers. See a couple of quotes below:

- "In my book I identify two mindsets that play important roles in people's success. In one, the fixed mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities are fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that; nothing can be done to change it. Many years of research have now shown that when people adopt the fixed mindset, it can limit their success. They become over-concerned with proving their talents and abilities, hiding deficiencies, and reacting defensively to mistakes or setbacks-because deficiencies and mistakes imply a (permanent) lack of talent or ability. People in this mindset will actually pass up important opportunities to learn and grow if there is a risk of unmasking weaknesses. This is not a recipe for success in business, as ultimately shown by the folks at Enron, who rarely admitted any mistakes. What is the alternative?"
- "In the other mindset, the growth mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities can be developed through passion, education, and persistence. For them, it's not about looking smart or grooming their image. It's about a commitment to learning--taking informed risks and learning from the results, surrounding yourself with people who will challenge you to grow, looking frankly at your deficiencies and seeking to remedy them. Most great business leaders have had this mindset, because building and maintaining excellent organizations in the face of constant change requires it."

Enjoy the whole Interview with Carol Dweck
 

And this related blog post, where we posited that "In short: there is much that each of us can do to improve our brain fitness, no matter our age, occupation or starting point. There are some fundamental capacities that we can train. And we have to care for good physical exercise and stress management on top of mental exercise."

Who has not heard "Use It or Lose It". Now, what is "It"? Last week I gave a talk at the Italian Consulate in San Francisco, and one of the areas attendants seemed to enjoy the most was learning what our brains are and how they work, peaking into the "black box" of our minds. Without understanding at least the basics, how can we make good decisions about our own brain health and fitness?

Let's review at a glance:

The brain is composed of 3 "brains" or main sub-systems, each named after the evolutionary moment in which the sub-system is believed to have appeared.

A) Neocortex, or Human Brain, is the most recent area, where we perform high-level thinking and complex integrative tasks. Other mammals do have this part too, but in smaller proportion of the whole brain volume.  This is where we have our right and left hemispheres.    B) Limbic System, or Mammalian Brain, critical for emotions and for memory,   C) Cerebellum and Stem, or Reptilian Brain, that regulates basic vital variables such as breathing, heartbeat and motor coordination (Credit for pic: Arnold Keyserling and R.C.L.)

B) Limbic system: emotions are generated here, as well as the appetites and urges that help us survive. For instance, the amygdala gets triggered to prepare us to deal with a threatening situation, resulting in our feeling of fear. The hippocampus is key in the formation of memory. (Credit: Sandhills College)

A) The Neocortex is composed of     -Frontal Lobes: or the CEO of the Brain, for sophisticated brain functions such as planning and conceptualizing.   -Parietal lobes: dealing with movement, the senses, and some forms of recognition -Temporal lobes: auditory processes and language -Occipital: visual processing center (credit: Morphonix)

When we exercise our brains, we put our Neurons and connections between neurons in action. Given the diversity of functions outlined above, it is clear that different activities are going to activate different brain areas, which scientists now know thanks to neuroimaging techniques. There is no one magic bullet that is best (either crosswords puzzles, or computer-based programs, or physical exercise): we do need a variety of mental stimulation or "brain exercises".  "Cells that fire together wire together" means that synapses-unions between neurons- get solidified the more often the respective neurons "talk" to each other. (Credit: Peter Furstenberg)

In our Top 50 Brain Teasers post, we concluded with the challenge:

#50. Can you write a haiku describing your experience doing some of the previous teasers? The simple rules: write 3 lines, which don't need to rhyme, containing 5,7, and 5 syllables. You can leave your haiku as a comment for extra points...

There has been a number of great and fun takers so far...enjoy their haikus below! And Happy Thanksgiving.

- Terry says: 

New information
Synthesizing my knowledge
A forward movement

- Frank says:

Painfully easy
Significantly harder
Mental stimulus

- Mark says:

I thought I did well
Then I reviewed my answers
I am retarded

- Chuck says:

This was fun, and no,
I don't intend to haiku.
Thanks for posting it

- Sarah says:

finding your teasers
added fun to my morning,
helped wake my brain up  

- Lorraine says:

teaching math is fun
when you find great resources
sharp brains is the place

Yours , please? You can visit our Top 50 Brain Teasers post for inspiration.

Newsweek's Sharon Begley writes a great note on Brain Training: How It Works based on initial data presented at the Gerontological Society of America over the weekend. Some quotes:

- With the nation’s 78 million baby boomers approaching the age of those dreaded “where did I leave my keys?” moments, it’s no wonder the market for computer-based brain training has shot up from essentially zero in 2005 to $80 million this year, according to the consulting firm SharpBrains.

- Now comes the largest and most rigorous study of a commercially-available training program, and it shows that there is hope for aging brains. This morning, at the meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, scientists are presenting data showing that after eight weeks of daily one-hour sessions with Brain Fitness 2.0 from Posit Science, elderly volunteers got measurably better in their brain’s speed and accuracy of processing. And unlike every other training program tested before, the improvements "generalize to broad measures of cognition and are noticeable in everyday life," Elizabeth Zelinski of the University of Southern California, who led the IMPACT (Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training) Study, reports.

- For the IMPACT study, 468 participants, all healthy adults 65 and over, were divided into two groups. One received an hour a day of training on BrainFitness for eight to ten weeks, and the other (the control group) got the same amount of computer-based learning. That choice of control group is significant. It means that Brain Fitness was being compared not to staring into space or some similarly unhelpful activity, but to one that might reasonably be expected to improve mental ability.

- Because the Brain Fitness group showed greater improvements than the controls, including on tasks that the computer-based exercises did not explicitly target, it suggests that the auditory training has altered something fundamental in the brain and not just specific circuits for, say, memory.

Read full post: Brain Training: How It Works

The Gerontological Society of America press release includes

- Researchers released initial data today at the 60th Annual Meeting of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) that showed that doing the right kind of brain exercise can enhance memory and other cognitive abilities of older adults.

- “We presented these important results at the Annual Meeting of GSA, because aging experts need to spread the word that cognitive decline is not an inevitable part of aging,” said Dr. Zelinski. “Doing the properly designed cognitive activities can actually enhance abilities as you age.”

View Study Poster presented at the GSA. I will be interviewing Elizabeth Zelinski as part of our Neuroscience Interview Series, so keep tuned.

One clarification: this is not the first study to show how cognitive training can generalize beyond the tasks directly trained. Others have already shown an effect on cognitive abilities and even on real-world tasks, on a variety of age groups and trained functions. But the size of it (468 participants) makes it by far the largest that does so, and the effects are very significant and promising.

Some weeks ago we explained how useful Concept Maps can be to quickly visualize the key ideas in a field, and their relationships.

Let me show you this fantastic example. A few weeks ago I was interviewed by David Pescovitz of the Institute for the Future (blog) to discuss The Future of Work and Cognitive Fitness trends. They had an artist who drew the graph below IN REAL TIME, AS WE SPOKE. Very impressive.

Please open the full image by clicking on it, and spend a few minutes reading around, top-down, left-to right.

You will learn much about what the future may bring (will Human Resources staff become "Cognitive Resources Managers"?), and also how to display complex information in beautiful visual form.

"

Kudos to the Institute for the Future, an independent nonprofit research group,  for a fascinating event on The Future of Work.

Credit for the Map: Anthony Weeks, from Grove Consultants.

(Dear RSS readers: I'd really appreciate if you could Digg this post. You can find the Digg button if you visit this post in our blog. Thanks!)

Paul Ekman has conducted extensive research on identifying emotions through facial expressions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of discipline and training, he learned how to consciously manipulate 42 facial muscles, including many that in most of us are beyond our control, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began looking into the universality of facial expressions, all the major contemporary social scientists, like Margaret Mead, believed that expressions were culturally learned, not innate. He proceeded traveled all over the world with pictures of people making distinct facial expressions and found people in cultures everywhere, from modern to stone age, agreed on the emotion behind the expression. He then turned to studying the production of these expressions and the 43 facial muscles that can create 10,000 expressions, which form the basis of his training.

He found seven universal emotions with unique facial expression. The emotions are: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, and contempt. At least five of these are shared with non-human primates as well. Interestingly, the smile is the easiest expression to recognize, and the easiest to identify from afar. These emotions have a specific trigger, come quickly without thought, and interact with your physiology - meaning merely making the fear expression will create a fear response in your body as well. With fear, neurons will signal your body to prepare to flee by sending blood to the large voluntary muscles in your legs. In anger, on the other hand, your brain signals your body to fight by sending blood to your hands. Try practicing on yourself: can you feel a change in your emotional state by making changes in your facial expression?

Emotions have distinct triggers and learning those triggers is an important step in understanding your own emotions and why you respond the way you do. To date, the best way to learn to recognize the the impulse that was triggered before the awareness of the emotion is contemplative practice (meditation). Also, an important point to clarify, emotions are not moods, which are longer affective experiences have an unclear trigger (you may not be sure what sparked the mood you’re in) and tend to filter your view of the environment. 

Based on primary and secondary research, he found that there are seven emotions expressed in the face in universally consistent ways:
- Sadness
- Anger
- Surprise
- Fear
- Enjoyment
- Disgust
- Contempt

Even more interesting: according to his research, feelings and facial expressions influence each other. This is, not only a sad person will naturally look sad, but a person who intentionally smiles will feel more content than a person who doesn't.

You can read his advice on how to recognize feelings in order to communicate better, focused on doctor-patient relationships but useful to everyone (including patients who may want to make sure to get their point across).

Question: from left to right, top then down, what universal feeling does each face indicate?

Here you have a collection of recent news coverage on brain heath, fitness and training topics:

1- Great Memory Special??in National Geographic, including

- Interactive 3D map of the brain

- Memory Game

2- Fascinating What the Beatles Gave Science, by Sharon Begley at Newsweek

- "Even in novices, meditation leaves its mark. An eight-week course in compassion meditation, in which volunteers focus on the wish that all beings be free from suffering, shifted brain activity from the right prefrontal cortex to the left, a pattern associated with a greater sense of well-being."

3- One of the best editions of Scientific American Mind??

- Solving the IQ Puzzle "The 20th century saw the Flynn effect???massive gains in IQ from one generation to another. Now Flynn explains why"

- Anxiety and Alzheimer- A lifetime of stress could lead to memory problems and disease: "Over a period of up to 12 years, volunteers who were anxiety-prone had a 40 percent higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment than more easygoing individuals did. Mild cognitive impairment is thought to be a precursor for Alzheimer???s."

4- Exercise builds strong brains, too - USATODAY.com

- "Phillip Tomporowski, a study co-author and exercise psychologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, says exercise "may well improve the underlying mental processes that are involved in a lot of behaviors and academic tasks."

5- Daily computer game boosts maths- BBC, reporting preliminary results from a small pilot

-??"Playing a daily computer game has helped a class of primary school children improve their maths and concentration, a study says."

6- ADHD and Brain Development- Washington Post

- "Developing more slowly in ADHD youngsters --- the lag can be as much as three years --- are brain regions that suppress inappropriate actions and thoughts, focus attention, remember things from moment to moment, work for reward, and control movement."

Given the recent James Watson "race and IQ" controversy, I took on to read Stephan Jay Gould's classic book The Mismeasure of Man, in which he debunks IQ (and the underlying "g") as measure of defined, innate, "intelligence". Fascinating reading overall, very technical in some areas.

The key take-away? In the last chapter, A Positive Conclusion, he writes that

- "Flexibility is the hallmark of human evolution...In other mammals, exploration, play and flexibility of behavior are qualities of juveniles, only rarely of adults. We retain not only the anatomical stamp stamp of childhood, but its mental flexibility as well...Humans are learning animals"

He then relates this story from T.H. White's novel The Once and Future King

- God, he recounts, created all animals as embryos and called each before his throne, offering them whatever additions to their anatomy they desired. All opted for specialized adult features-the lion for claws and sharp teeth, the deer for antlers and hoofs. The human embryo stepped forth last and said: Please God, I think that you made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourselves and that it would be rude to change. If I am to have my choice, I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which you gave me...I will stay a defenceless embryo all my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron, and the other materials which You have seen fit to put before me.." "Well done", exclaimed the Creator in delighted tone. "Here all you embryos, come here with your beaks and whatnots to look upon Our fist Man. He is the only one who has guessed Our riddle...As for you, Man...You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. Eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. Run along then, and do your best"

For related posts, you may enjoy

Darwin's adult neuroplasticity, with a number of fascinating quotes, including

- "Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most important have been--the love of science-- unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject--industry in observing and collecting facts--and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points."

And Richard Dawkins and Alfred Nobel: beyond nature and nurture

- We have at least the mental equipment to foster our long-term selfish interests rather than merely our short-term ones...We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism-something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machine and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."

You guessed right. We are not big fans of the idea of intelligence as a fix, innate characteristic we are born with. Genes predispose us, but it is the combination of our environments and our actions that we better focus on.

We also need to add better measures of, and training for, Flexibility, Adaptability, and Learning how to Learn, and a number of other cognitive abilities, to our view of "intelligence", so we can "evolve" faster in our lifetimes.

Pic: credit to Dampfred, via Flickr

The New York Times just published an OpEd that, in my view, throws the baby with the bath water.

Exercise on the Brain extols the virtue of physical exercise for brain health, above everything else, at the expense of other important pillars such as good nutrition, stress management and mental exercise. And yes, the latter can include computer-based programs.

We have sent a Letter to the Editor to clarify the subject and put their main recommendation (go out and walk, or join the gym, as if no one does that) in better context.

But let's quickly review the four essential pillars to help maintain a healthy brain. Those pillars are:

• Physical Exercise
• Mental Exercise
• Good Nutrition
• Stress Management

1. 1. Physical Exercise
• - Start by talking to your doctor, especially if you are not currently physically active, have special health concerns, or are making significant changes to your current program.
• - Set a goal that you can achieve. Do something you enjoy for even just 15 minutes a day. You can always add more time and activities later.
• - Schedule exercise into your daily routine. It will be become a habit faster if you do.
• - If you can only do one thing, do something cardiovascular, meaning something that gets your heart beating faster. This includes walking, running, skiing, swimming, biking, hiking, tennis, basketball, playing tag, ultimate Frisbee, and other similar sports/activities.
2. 2. Mental Exercise
• - Be curious! Get to know your local library and community college, look for local organizations or churches that offer classes or workshops
• - Do a variety of things, including things you aren't good at (if you like to sing, try painting too)
• - Work puzzles like crosswords and sudoku or play games like chess and bridge
• - Try a computerized brain fitness program for a customized workout
• - If you can only do one thing, learn something new every day
3. Good Nutrition
• - Eat a variety of foods of different colors without a lot of added ingredients or processes
• - Plan your meals around your vegetables, and then add fruit, protein, dairy, and/or grains
• - Add some cold-water fish to your diet (tuna, salmon, mackerel, halibut, sardines, and herring) which contain omega-3 fatty acids
• - Learn what a portion-size is, so you don't overeat
• - Try to eat more foods low on the Glycemic Index
• - If you can only do one thing, eat more vegetables, particularly leafy green ones
4. Stress Management
• - Get regular cardiovascular exercise
• - Try to get enough sleep each night
• - Keep connected with your friends and family
• - Practice meditation, yoga, or some other calming activity as way to take a relaxing time-out (maybe a bath)
• - Try training with a heart rate variability biofeedback sensor 
• - If you can only do one thing, set aside 5-10 minutes to just breathe deeply and recharge

Quotes from a great article, Professor, 81, proves brain stays young:

- In 1960, Diamond became the first female faculty member in Cal's science department, achieving full professorship in 1974. She still teaches anatomy with her 81st birthday two weeks away.

- Diamond, a professor of anatomy at UC Berkeley, determined that the brain can stay young through stimulation, which can be achieved through her five-point plan: diet, exercise, challenge, newness and tender loving care.

- Using her plan, how is she challenged?

- "Every student who sits in that chair," she said, pointing across the desk in her fifth-floor office in the Life Sciences Building on campus. "They come in here asking questions, and you better have the answers."

- What newness, then, is in her life?

- "I have grandchildren," she said. "What could be better, deciding new things for them, to stimulate their brains."

- She has four children, four grandchildren and a husband, Arnold Scheidel, who teaches anatomy at UCLA. They see each other on school weekends,

- Diamond feels her own brain growing.

Keep reading here.

Related resources

A previous post listing a number of her essays: Marian Diamond and the Brain Revolution

Her great book Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nurture Your Child's Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence, by Berkeley's Marian Diamond and Janet L. Hopson.

Very nice Los Angeles Times article on the growing research behind, and acceptance of, meditation in mainstream medicine (through what is called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR): Doctor's orders: Cross your legs and say 'Om'.

A few quotes:

- "It appears to work. In a new study, published in October in the journal Pain, Natalia Morone, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, tracked the effect of mindfulness meditation on chronic lower back pain in adults 65 and older. The randomized, controlled clinical trial found that the 37 people who participated in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program had significantly greater pain acceptance and physical function than a similar size control group. Subsequently, the control group took the same eight-week program and had similar results."

- "As a meditator, I learned the value of being present and how that allows clarity in processing our daily lives," Zeltzer said. "The clinical team sees children with chronic pain who are very difficult to treat and have been to many other specialists and feel discouraged by the time they come to us. I felt that learning to meditate would help the team feel a sense of balance and equanimity in the face of the anxiety and distress brought to them by these patients and their families."

- "SCIENTISTS have studied the effects of meditation on pain for nearly three decades, ever since 1979, when MIT-trained microbiologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus and founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, used mindfulness meditation in a 10-week program to teach chronic pain patients how to cope. Kabat-Zinn's 1990 bestseller, "Full Catastrophe Living," described the technique he used --- mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR."

Full article: Doctor's orders: Cross your legs and say 'Om'

Related posts:

- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and other stress management techniques

- Mind & Life Institute

Pic: Dennis Collette, via Flickr 

The Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO) just announced the top ten emerging areas of neuroscience that will "impact the future of treatments for brain and nervous system": Top 10 Neuroscience Trends in 2007.

It provides superb food for thought. And some of them will sound familiar to readers of this blog:

* 6. Normal brain aging gets more attention: More research and development is being focused on thinking impairments that only partially limit independence and quality of life for senior citizens, adults and school aged children. Neurosoftware will penetrate nursing homes and schools, as brain fitness software becomes new first-line treatment strategy.
* 8. Prevention evidence grows: You are what you eat; smoking is as bad as we thought; and new studies reveal the effects of environmental substances on Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and others.
* 9. Emotional disorders research advances:  New research continues to link neurogenesis to treatment of depression.  A better understanding of PTSD should lead to new treatment regimes.

Want to read probably the best overview of the neurosoftware/ brain fitness software market? Check this article, fresh from the oven: Thank Boomers for Buffing Up Brain Market.

To clarify the numbers mentioned: we project $225m in the US alone (growing from $70m in 2003), broken-down as follows: $80m for the Consumer segment, $60m in K12 Education, $50m in Clinical applications, and $35m in the Corporate segment. The Consumer segment, with a healthy aging value proposition, is the most recent one but the most rapidly growing.

Following our September edition, here you are have our Monthly Digest of the Most Popular Blog Posts. You can consider it your monthly Brain Exercise Magazine.

(Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Topics section, and subscribe to our monthly newsletter at the top of this page if you want to receive this Digest by email).

October has been a very important month for the brain/ cognitive fitness field and for SharpBrains. Key publications such as the Los Angeles Times and Harvard Business Review have devoted considerable attention to the field. I have spoken in a variety of events and topics, from healthy aging (ASA) to the future of work (Institute for the Future). We see the topic appear in more and more education-related conferences, too. The class at UC-Berkeley has been a pleasure to teach: nothing beats a group of highly capable and motivated adult learners.

Without further ado:

Brain Fitness Market News

Cognitive Fitness as a New Frontier of Fitness: excellent Los Angeles Times article, covering the cognitive exercise angle of healthy aging and leading science-based players.

A Brain Fitness Vacation: what does this mean? Well, read this fun article to discover.

Rethinking the Brain Fitness Business: thought-provoking article on the future of the sector from a business point of view.

Cognitive Fitness @ Harvard Business Review: HBR makes a first attempt to bring neuroscience research into helping leaders perform at peak levels and maintain sharp brains.

News You Can Use

Train Your Brain to Be Happier: implications of neuroscience and positive psychology research for our daily lives-and our happiness. Please keep tuned if you are interested in this topic: we will publish soon a great interview with Dr. Robert Emmons, leading researcher in the field of gratitude.

Cognitive Fitness: 10 Debunked Myths: what are some misconceptions that prevent many people from seeing the tremendous potential from this emerging research?. Read this post to discover and discuss.

10 (Surprising) Memory Improvement Tips: and why stress management is important for memory and our brain.

Teasers 

Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: a list of the most popular mind games in our blog.

Events

10 Highlights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum: a summary of impressions from this great event, including what can happen when you have scientists and politicians in the same room.

Brain Fitness @ Education, Training, Health events: an overview of a number of conferences and university classes with a brain fitness angle.

Thought-provoking posts

Darwin's adult neuroplasticity: reflections of a beautiful mind that -as self-reported at the age of 72- could have been even more beautiful.The Gene Delusion: IQ and the environment: do genes determine our fates? They don't. They why do we seem to believe so so often?.

Discounts for SharpBrains readers

Learning & The Brain Conference: the best conference bringing neuroscience research to educators' minds, February 7-9th in San Francisco. Register before January 25th, 2008, for a discounted price and to make sure you can attend and see our workshop! 

MindFit 10% special discount: a 10% discount on one of the most popular brain fitness programs, that combines both an in-depth assessment of cognitive skills with personalized training.

Books and Resources

Best of the Brain from Scientific American: a superb collection of essays for the curious among us.

Selected Resources: Articles, Books, Papers: numerous links to media articles, scientific papers, and recommended books.

Enjoy!