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We have all heard about children who have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). Indeed, this condition seems to affect 5 to 8% of school age children. Have you ever wondered what happen to these children? As many as 60% of them become adults presenting AD/HD symptoms! Ron de Graaf and colleagues recently published a study in which they found that an average of 3.5% of workers (in ten countries) meet the criteria for adult ADHD. As you can imagine, being an adult with AD/HD can be a challenge at work.

Before we explore this issue let’s start by describing the symptoms of ADHD.

What is adult AD/HD?

AD/HD is a disorder of the brain. Research clearly indicates that AD/HD is to a large extent genetic, that is it tends to run in families. However, AD/HD is a complex disorder and other causal factors may be at play.

Typically, the symptoms arise in early childhood, unless they are associated with some type of brain injury later in life. Some people have mild AD/HD with only a few symptoms while others have more serious AD/HD with more symptoms.

Symptoms of inattention (adapted from the DSM-IV)

* Fails to pay attention to details
* Has difficulty sustaining attention
* Does not appear to listen
* Struggles to follow through on instructions
* Has difficulty with organization
* Avoids or dislikes tasks requiring sustained mental effort
* Loses things
* Is easily distracted
* Is forgetful in daily activities

Symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity (adapted from the DSM-IV)

* Fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in chair
* Has difficulty remaining seated
* Difficulty engaging in activities quietly
* Acts as if driven by a motor
* Talks excessively
* Blurts out answers before questions have been completed
* Difficulty waiting or taking turns
* Interrupts or intrudes upon others

Before you start thinking “I knew it! I have AD/HD”….

One must have serious symptoms in different areas of his or her life (for example, do the symptoms make it difficult to do one´s job or cause problems in one´s relationships?) to be diagnosed with AD/HD. If you have a number of symptoms, but none are serious, you won't be diagnosed with AD/HD.

How does AD/HD affect performance at work?

Ron de Graaf and colleagues recently screened for AD/HD 7,075 18-44 year-old workers in 10 countries (Belgium, Columbia, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States). This was done in ten national surveys in the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative (link to study below).
As mentioned earlier, 3.5% of these workers turned out to have AD/HD. Most of them were undiagnosed and thus untreated. In the US, the percentage increased to 4.5%. ADHD was more common among men than women and more common in developed than developing countries. Let’s think about the AD/HD symptoms and how they could interfere with work:Distractibility or inattention

= Difficulty to ignore external distractions, such as people talking or moving
= Difficulty to ignore internal distraction (thoughts), which may lead to daydreaming
= Difficulty managing complex or long-term projects
= Difficulty to find important papers and to turn in reports on time, which can create the impression of carelessness
= Poor memory resulting from poor attention

Hyperactivity and Impulsivity

= Difficulty to stay still during meetings
= Temper outbursts
= Difficulty to listen, tendency to interrupt, etc, which may cause interpersonal issues

Evidently, AD/HD symptom can indeed interfere with work.

Ron de Graaf and colleagues found that workers with AD/HD spent more than 22 fewer "role performance" days per year (including 8.7 days absent) working compared with non-AD/HD workers. AD/HD workers said they could not carry out their routine tasks.

Furthermore, compared to women without AD/HD, women diagnosed with AD/HD in adulthood were found to be more likely to have depressive symptoms, be more stressed and anxious, and have lower self-esteem.

What can adults do if they think they present AD/HD symptoms?

They should see a doctor to seek diagnostic and take appropriate medications. Perhaps try to structure and organize their environment differently to help cope with the challenges. Perhaps find little ways to gradually train attention.

In any case, this is an important matter, for employees, and for companies.

--- This article was written by Pascale Michelon, Ph. D., for SharpBrains.com. Dr. Michelon, Copyright 2008. Dr. Michelon has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and has worked as a Research Scientist at Washington University in Saint Louis, in the Psychology Department. She conducted several research projects to understand how the brain makes use of visual information and memorizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Faculty at Washington University, and teaches Memory Workshops in numerous retirement communities in the St Louis area.

Further reading:

- Link to the citation and study: Here.

- Promising Cognitive Training Studies for ADHD.

- Mindfulness Meditation for Adults & Teens with ADHD.

- Working Memory Training for Adults.

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News and Analysis

Computerized Cognitive Assessments: opportunities and concerns: health companies and the military are starting to use new tools to assess brain functions in contexts that neither neuroimaging nor traditional neuropsychological testing can reach. This is a critical piece of the brain fitness puzzle that is worth keeping track of, full of opportunities, but also privacy concerns.

Cognitive Health News Roundup: recent news covering studies on mental training and DNA, on nutrition and the brain, and more.

Science

Improve Memory with Sleep, Practice, and Testing: There are whole markets (think crossword puzzles, herbal supplements, drugs, brain fitness software, etc.) aimed at helping us improve our memory. Now, what is "memory"? how does the process of memory work? Dr. Bill Klemm, Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, explains the very important concept of "consolidation."

Brain Science: "Brain Rules" Podcast We are fans of the Brain Science Podcast series hosted by Ginger Campbell. We are pleased to announce that Dr. Campbell will start offering SharpBrains´ readers, periodically, the highlights of her most interesting podcasts. Featured here is her interview with John Medina.

PBS: Secret Life of the Brain and Neuroplasticity: We just watched a very nice PBS series titled The Secret Life of the Brain, that covers brain development accross the lifespan: babies, kids, teenagers, adults, seniors. It is a bit dated (2002) but is excellent watching even today.

Education and Learning

10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn: "If you agree that our brains are designed for learning, then as educators it is incumbent upon us to be looking for ways to maximize the learning process for each of our students, as well as for ourselves," writes educator Laurie Bartels. We hope you enjoy her first contribution to SharpBrains as much as we do.

When Empathy moves us to Action-By Daniel Goleman: In this column, Daniel Goleman outlines some very important distinctions brought forth by Paul Ekman: what is cognitive vs. emotional vs. compassionate empathy?.

Brain Teasers to Exercise Our Minds: Our Top Five: Here you have 4 of the most popular brain games in our blog, plus a bonus stress management tip.

Have a stimulating week

You know your weight. And your physical fitness. And a variety of health-related metrics.

What about your brain fitness?

Two recent announcements bring out how the assessment of cognitive abilities, or brain functions, is increasingly being done thanks to new computerized options:

1) Last week, OptumHealth announced an exclusive 3-year agreement (estimated at $18m) with the Australian company Brain Resource. OptumHealth will be embedding the Brain Resource platform into their overall Behavioral Solutions program.

- OptumHealth Behavioral Solutions will work with Brain Resource to provide clinicians with a Web-based assessment that measures general cognition (how people process information) and social cognition (how people manage their emotions). This 40-minute assessment is based on well-known and validated tests of memory, attention, executive function, and response speed, and mood, social skills and emotional resilience.

- When used by trained clinicians as a tool that is part of the total spectrum of health care, this unique information can be helpful in the treatment decision-making process in several ways.

2) A few weeks ago, we read that U.S. Troops To Get Cognitive Screening

- The military will begin giving cognitive tests this summer to troops heading to war, in an effort to get a baseline measure of their reaction time, memory, concentration and other brain functions, which could be referenced in case they are injured.
- Assistant Defense Secretary S. Ward Casscells recently directed military leaders to begin pre-deployment screening of troops by late-July, using a computer-based test known as the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, or ANAM, a Department of Defense spokeswoman confirmed in written responses to The Courant.

- The testing, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes, will "allow for greater levels of accuracy when making assessments following injury," said the spokeswoman, Cynthia Smith.
- Smith said the new testing is not intended as a diagnostic tool for mild traumatic brain injury, but instead would enable clinicians "to compare a person to their own 'norms' or baseline scores" in the event of an injury.

I see these instruments as a critical part in the brain fitness puzzle. Neuroimaging techniques such as MRI and fMRI are very important to support clinical and research work, but are not mature/ scalable enough to help measure brain functions in millions of healthy individuals. Neuropsychological testing is still today often done with pen and paper, administered by a trained expert, and very resource-intensive.

Computerized cognitive assessments can start offering value in many contexts that neither neuroimaging nor traditional neuropsychological testing can reach.

The media is starting to take note. We recently reviewed a recent article that explained,

- "Cognitive Drug Research is one a handful of businesses, most of them outside of the U.S., that work with pharmaceutical companies to test how new drugs for everything from nicotine addiction to Alzheimer’s disease affect the mind’s ability to remember things, make decisions, and analyze information."

- "Cognitive tests have been around for a century as examinations taken with paper and pencil. In the 1970s and '80s the tests shifted to computers, Cognitive Drug Research founder Keith Wesnes says.

In fact, one of the key highlights from the market report we released in March was that "Large-scale, fully-automated cognitive assessments are being used in a growing number of clinical trials. This opens the way for the development of inexpensive consumer-facing, baseline cognitive assessments." And we profiled a few leading companies in the space: Brain Resource Company, Cognitive Drug Research, CNS Vital Signs and CogState.

Brain scientists don´t recognize one overall "brain age" or "intelligence". We can view our brain functions or cognitive abilities as a variety of skills, some more perception-related, some more memory-related, some more language-related, some more visual, some more abstract-thinking and planning oriented. There is no general "brain age" that can be measured or trained in a meaningful way.

We explored this in more detail in our market report, saying that

-"A major bottleneck in the use and refinement of cognitive training tools for the appropriate groups today and in the future is the time and economic investment involved in mostly manual neuropsychological assessments.

- "Potentially, these (new, computerized) assessments could be repurposed to help establish a cognitive baseline, assess mental functioning before and after clinical conditions, track the consequences of aging, indentify priorities for cognitive training, and measure progress independent from the training itself"

Now, the use of these new technologies also raises concerns, nd not just about their reliability and validity.

John Moore of Chilmark Research just commented on the Brain Resource-OptumHealth announcement in his post Will a Mental Evaluation be a Part of Your Next HRA?, pointing out that "it is fairly well-known that many chronic diseases have a high comorbidity factor with mental health, OptumHealth’s partnership with Brain Resource, and its success (or lack thereof) will be an interesting one to follow. And while I applaud this effort, it also raises some pretty scary privacy concerns. How will these assessments be used beyond the confines of the clinician’s office?, What access will OptumHealth have to the data? And what about the employers who have OptumHealth’s parent, United Health Group as an insurer for their employees? Will employers have access to this data, particularly if they start embedding it within HealthAtoZ?".

These are excellent questions. Humana, a health insurance company, recently announced that they were discontinuing their agreement with Posit Science under which they had been offering the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program to their Medicare members. Whereas a number of reasons were offered for that decision (ranging from low uptake rates of the promotions given the legal complexities of reaching out to Medicare users, to low utilization of the product), another concern was mentioned to us during a set of interviews with Humana members: they were concerned about whether a program that had been given to them for free by their insurance company would somehow transmit data back on the mental performance of the user.

Furthermore, we can expect clear public policy implications in this area. Art Kramer recently explained that "the NIH is preparing an “NIH Toolbox” to provide valid, reliable instruments to researchers and clinicians, to solve the problem that exists today, namely, the lack of uniformity among many measures used. The initiative was launched in 2006, and it is a 5-year effort, so we’ll need to wait to see results".

As with any new tool, we´ll need the define the rules of the road.

1) First of all, we´ll need to make sure it measures what it is supposed to, and with high degrees of reliability.

2) Second, there need to be clear policies in place as to whom can access which data and for which purpose.

3) Finally, we expect the assessments will lead into actionable personalized recommendations to improve if not help maintain cognitive functions.

We will continue to pay close attention to this emerging, and very promising, field.

Daniel Goleman requires no introduction. Personally, of all his books I have read, the one I found most stimulating was Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue With the Dalai Lama, a superb overview of what emotions are and how we can put them to good use. He is now conducting a great series of audio interviews including one with George Lucas on Educating Hearts and Minds: Rethinking Education.

We are honored to bring you a guest post by Daniel Goleman, thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine, a UC-Berkeley-based quarterly magazine that highlights ground breaking scientific research into the roots of compassion and altruism. Enjoy!

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Hot To Help: When can empathy move us to action?

By Daniel Goleman

We often emphasize the importance of keeping cool in a crisis. But sometimes coolness can give way to detachment and apathy.

We saw a perfect example of this in the response to Hurricane Katrina, whose devastation was amplified enormously by the lackadaisical response from the agencies charged with managing the emergency. As we all witnessed, leaders at the highest levels were weirdly detached, despite the abundant evidence on our TV screens that they needed to snap to action. The victims' pain was exacerbated by such indifference to their suffering. So as we prepare for the next Katrina-like disaster, what can the science of social intelligence—especially research into empathy—teach policy makers and first responders about the best way to handle themselves during such a crisis?

This brings me to psychologist Paul Ekman, an expert on our ability to read and respond to others' emotions. When I recently spoke with Ekman, he discussed three main ways we can empathize with others, understanding their emotions as our own. The differences between these forms of empathy highlight the challenges we face in responding to other people's pain. But they also make clear how the right approach can move us to compassionate action.

The first form is "cognitive empathy," simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking, this kind of empathy can help in, say, a negotiation or in motivating people. A study at the University of Birmingham found, for example, that managers who are good at perspective-taking were able to move workers to give their best efforts.

But cognitive empathy can illustrate the "too cold to care" phenomenon: When people try to understand another person's point of view without internalizing his or her emotions, they can be so detached that they're not motivated to do anything to actually help that person.

In fact, those who fall within psychology's "Dark Triad"—narcissists, Machiavellians, and sociopaths—can actually put cognitive empathy to use in hurting people. As Ekman told me, a torturer needs this ability, if only to better calibrate his cruelty. Talented political operatives can read people's emotions to their own advantage, without necessarily caring about those people very much.

And so cognitive empathy alone is not enough. We also need what Ekman calls "emotional empathy"—when you physically feel what other people feel, as though their emotions were contagious. This emotional contagion depends in large part on cells in the brain called mirror neurons, which fire when we sense another's emotional state, creating an echo of that state inside our own minds. Emotional empathy attunes us to another person's inner emotional world, a plus for a wide range of professions, from sales to nursing—not to mention for any parent or lover.

But wait: Emotional empathy has a downside, too, especially for first responders. In a state of emotional empathy, people sometimes lack the ability to manage their own distressing emotions, which can lead to paralysis and psychological exhaustion. Medical professionals often inoculate themselves against this kind of burnout by developing a sense of detachment from their patients.

Cultivated detachment in rescue, medical, and social workers can actually help the victims of disaster. Ekman told me about his daughter, a social worker at a large city hospital. In her situation, he said, she can't afford to let emotional empathy overwhelm her. "My daughter's clients don't want her to cry when they're crying," he says.

The danger arises when detachment leads to indifference, rather than to well-calibrated caring. Today, we face this problem on a global level. "One of the problems of living in a television society is that every bit of suffering and misery that occurs anywhere in the world is shown to us," says Ekman—and generally, we can't do anything about it, at least not directly.

This can make emotional empathy seem futile and hinder the growth of the third kind of empathy, which Ekman calls "compassionate empathy." With this kind of empathy we not only understand a person's predicament and feel with them, but are spontaneously moved to help, if needed.

Compassionate empathy was the vital ingredient missing from the top-level response to Hurricane Katrina—and in responses to many other disasters around the world, including the slow-burning disaster of global warming. Ekman calls compassionate empathy a skill, the acquired knowledge "that we're all connected."

This can lead to outbursts of what he calls "constructive anger." In other words, reacting negatively to injustice or suffering can motivate us to work with others to make the world a better place. Just as empathy has its downsides, negative emotions like anger can have upsides. Staying cool in a crisis might bring some benefits. But sometimes we must let ourselves get hot in order to help.

-- Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., is the author of the bestsellers Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence. His website is www.danielgoleman.info. Goleman’s full conversation with Daniel Siegel can be heard as part of the audio series Wired to Connect: Dialogues on Social Intelligence, available through More than Sound Productions.

We bring you this post thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine, a UC-Berkeley-based quarterly magazine that highlights ground breaking scientific research into the roots of compassion and altruism.

There are whole markets (think crosswords, herbal supplements, drugs, brain fitness software) aimed at helping us improve our memory.

Now, what is ¨memory¨? how does the process of memory work? 

Dr. Bill Klemm, Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, explains a very important concept below.

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Getting from Here to There:
Making Memory Consolidation Work

By Bill Klemm,  Ph. D.

Until consolidation has occurred, a short-term memory is very vulnerable, as all of us have experienced from looking up a phone number only to have some distraction cause us to lose the number before we can get it dialed.

What is "consolidation"? 

Brain researchers use the term “consolidation” for the process whereby short-term memory gets made more permanent.

Here, I would like to discuss some aspects of consolidation that many people may not know about: why sleep is so important, why memory must be practiced, and how testing promotes consolidation.  

1. Over-training: You Can Learn Too Much

Experiments have shown that human memory performance unexpectedly deteriorated if learning sessions were increased to four 60-minute sessions at regular intervals on the same day. In other words, the more the subjects were trained, the poorer they performed. However, this interference did not occur if subjects were allowed to nap for 30-60 minutes between the second and third sessions.

It is hard to explain why over-training disrupts performance, but I suspect that as training trials are repeated the information starts to interfere with memory consolidation, perhaps because of boredom or fatigue in the neural circuits that mediate the learning. Napping must have a restorative function that compensates for the negative effects of over-training. What all this suggests is that memory consolidation would be optimized if learning occurred in short sessions that are repeated but only with intervening naps and on different days with regular night-time sleep. In other words, repeating long study periods in the same day on the same task can be counter-productive. This is yet another reason why students should not cram-study for exams. Learning should be optimized by rehearsing the same learning material on separate days where normal sleep occurred each night.

Sources:

- Maquet, P. et al. 2002. Be caught napping: you're doing more than resting your eyes.Nature Neuroscience. 5 (7); 618-619.

- Mednick, Sara, et al. 2002. The restorative effect of naps on perceptual deterioration.Nature Neuroscience. 5 (7): 677-681. 

2. Losing Your Past

Do you remember the names of your elementary-school teachers? How about the name of the bully in middle school? Or names of your friends when you were a kid? These are all things you remembered well at one time and remembered for a long time. But you may well have forgotten by now.

A recent study on rats suggests what it takes to sustain longer term memories. Rats in the study learned a "bait shyness" task. Rats were given a drink of saccharin-flavored water, and then shortly afterwards injected with lithium, which made them nauseated. This was a typical conditioned learning situation, as with Pavlov's dogs. In this case, rats typically remembered to avoid such water for many weeks. This is the basis for "bait shyness." If rats survive a poisoning episode, they will avoid that bait in the future. In this experiment, one group of rats received an injection directly into the part of the brain that holds taste memories. This injection contained a drug that blocks a certain enzyme, a protein kinase. These rats lost their learned taste aversion. The bad memory was lost irrespective of when the injection was made during the 25 days after learning occurred. Giving the enzyme blocker before learning had no effect on learning to avoid the flavored water. The protein kinase thus seems to be necessary for sustaining a long-term memory. It is possible that other long-term memories the rats may have had were also wiped out by the enzyme-blocking drug.

So what is the practical importance? I suggest that even "long-term" memories have to get rehearsed or they may eventually forgotten. Or if you do remember, there is a good chance that the memory is corrupted, that is, not totally correct. The consequence is that things that happened long ago may be either forgotten, or misremembered.

What sustains the enzyme necessary for long-term memory? I suspect it is rehearsal and periodic reactivation of the memory. Some scientists are excited about the possibility of developing a drug to manipulate levels of the enzyme. The problem with that, however, is that the drug could abolish old memories that you might not want to forget (like your name) or may cause you to remember too much that is now irrelevant.

Source: Shema, R., Sacktor, T. C., and Dudai, Y. 2007. Rapid erasure of long-term memory associations in the cortex by an inhibitor of PKM. Science. 317:951-953.

3. Testing Promotes Consolidation

Tests do more than just measure learning. Tests are learning events. That is, testing forces retrieval of incompletely learned material and that very act of retrieval is a rehearsal process that helps to make the learning more permanent. Testing, and not actual studying, is the key factor on whether or not learning is consolidated into longer term memory.

A recent report from Washington University in St. Louis, examined the role that retrieval had on the ability to recall that same material after a delay of a week. In the experiment, college students were to learn a list of 40 foreign language vocabulary word pairs that were manipulated so that the pairs either remained in the list (were repeatedly studied) or were dropped from the list once they were recalled. It was like studying flash cards: one way is to keep studying all the cards over and over again; the other way is to drop out a card from the stack every time you correctly recalled what was on the other side of the card. After a fixed study period, students were tested over either the entire list or a partial list of only the pairs that had not been dropped during study. Four study and test periods alternated back-to-back. Students were also asked to predict how many pairs they would be able to remember a week later, and their predictions were compared with actual results on a final test a week later.

The initial learning took about 3-4 trials to master the list, and was not significantly affected by the strategy used (rehearsing the entire list or dropping items out as they were recalled). On average, the students predicted that they would be able to remember about half of the list on a test that was to be given a week later. However, actual recall a week later varied considerably depending on learning conditions. On the final test, students remembered about 80% of the word pairs if they had been tested on all the word pairs, no matter whether they had been studied multiple times with all of them in the list or if they dropped correctly recalled words from the list in later study trials. However, recall was only about 30% correct when correctly identified words were dropped from subsequent tests, even though all words were studied repeatedly. In other words, it was the repeated testing, not the studying, that was the key factor in successful longer-term memory.

So, what is the practical application? When using flash cards, for example, you need to follow each study session (whether or not you drop cards from the stack because you know them), with a formal test over all the cards. Then, repeat the process several times, with study and test epochs back-to-back. Can we extend this principle of frequent testing to other kinds of learning strategies? I would guess so.

Why does forced recall, as during testing, promote consolidation? It probably relates to other recent discoveries showing that each time something is recalled the memory is re-consolidated. If the same information is consolidated again and again, the memory is presumably reinforced.

This study also showed that the subjects could not predict how well they would remember, which is consistent with my 45 years experience as a professor. Students are frequently surprised to discover after an examination that they did not know the material as well as they thought they did. Tests not only reveal what they know and don't know, but serve to increase how much they eventually learn. If I were still teaching, I would give more tests. And I would encourage students to use self-testing as a routine learning strategy, something that one study revealed to be a seldom-used strategy. The repeated self-tests should include all the study material and not drop out the material that the student thinks is already mastered.

Source: Karpicke, Jeffrey D., and Roedinger, Henry L. III. 2008. The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science. 319: 966-968.

--- W. R. (Bill) Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D. Scientist, professor, author, speaker As a professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, Bill has taught about the brain and behavior at all levels, from freshmen, to seniors, to graduate students to post-docs. His recent books include Thank You Brain For All You Remember and Core Ideas in Neuroscience.

July is shaping up to be a fascinating month, full of cognitive health research reports and applications. Here you have a roundup, covering cognitive assessments, mental training and DNA, and more. 

1) U.S. Troops To Get Cognitive Screening (Hartford Courant)

- The military will begin giving cognitive tests this summer to troops heading to war, in an effort to get a baseline measure of their reaction time, memory, concentration and other brain functions, which could be referenced in case they are injured.
- Assistant Defense Secretary S. Ward Casscells recently directed military leaders to begin pre-deployment screening of troops by late-July, using a computer-based test known as the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, or ANAM, a Department of Defense spokeswoman confirmed in written responses to The Courant.

- The testing, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes, will "allow for greater levels of accuracy when making assessments following injury," said the spokeswoman, Cynthia Smith.
- Smith said the new testing is not intended as a diagnostic tool for mild traumatic brain injury, but instead would enable clinicians "to compare a person to their own 'norms' or baseline scores" in the event of an injury.

2) Attention class (The Boston Globe)
Paying attention is a more important skill than you might think - and new evidence suggests it can be taught

- It is not yet known how long these gains last, or what the best methods for developing attention may turn out to be. But the demand is clear: Dozens of schools nationwide are already incorporating some kind of attention training into their curriculum. And as this new arena of research helps overturn long-standing assumptions about the malleability of this essential human faculty, it offers intriguing possibilities for a world of overload.

- "If you have good attentional control, you can do more than just pay attention to someone speaking at a lecture, you can control your cognitive processes, control your emotions, better articulate your actions," says Amir Raz, a cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University who is a leading attention researcher. "You can enjoy and gain an edge in life."

- After years of research into how attention networks develop, Posner and colleague Mary K. Rothbart began experimenting a few years ago with training children's attention. They targeted children 6 and under, since executive attention develops rapidly between ages 4 and 7. Inspired by computer-learning work with monkeys, Posner and Rothbart created a five-day computer-based program to strengthen executive attention skills such as working memory, self-control, planning, and observation.

- "We should think of this work not just as remediation, but as a normal part of education," Posner said in an address to the American Psychological Association in 2003, when he presented preliminary findings.

3) Train Your Mind, Change Your DNA (Newsweek)

- Reading what genes a person has is so 20th century. Determining which genes are turned on is where the action is. A rat study I’ve mentioned before, for instance, showed in 2004 that the way a mother rat treats her pups determines whether genes related to neuroticism and fearfulness are on or off. Now comes a study that looks at something similar in people.  

- As they report in PLoS One this evening, the relaxation response alters which genes associated with the body’s response to stress are on and which are off. As Benson said in a statement, “we’ve found how changing the activity of the mind can alter the way basic genetic instructions are implemented.”

- It’s being billed as “the first comprehensive study of how the mind can affect gene expression.” By “mind,” they mean mental practices such as meditation and prayer, which are among the techniques used by the 19 long-term practitioners of the relaxation response who were studied, along with 19 volunteers who had never engaged in such practices.

- It really is time to stop thinking of our DNA as immutable. Even thinking can change it.

4) Train Your Mind, Kick Your Craving (Newsweek)

- Can you think your way out of addiction? Maybe not yet, but the latest results from the burgeoning field of research that examines how mental training can alter the brain—and therefore behavior—say the rest of the answer may be "but probably soon."

- Back in the 1980s, a pioneer in this field, Jeffrey Schwartz of UCLA, taught patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder to think about their urge to check the stove or count cracks in the sidewalk, or whatever form their OCD took, in a new way. Specifically, instead of accepting the obsessive thought ("Oh, no, I left the stove on when I left the house this morning!") as accurate, they learned to regard it as just a brain glitch due to over-activity in the anterior cingulate (the "worry circuit").

- Since then, neuroscientists have been finding more and more conditions in which people can think themselves out of something. In depression, for instance, thinking about things differently—which is what cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) teaches patients to do—can lift depression and reduce the rate of relapse. 

- A new questionnaire may help in both diagnosing older adults facing dementia and also in identifying individuals who need help with daily living.

- "What's nice about this is that it is designed to pick up very early memory problems, and it's an entirely caregiver-based survey," said Dr. Scott Turner, incoming director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, in Washington, D.C. "This is something the caregiver can fill out, while the practitioner is looking at the patient. It could be used for screening, for diagnosis and for drug development, if you want to look for some proof that your drug is having some effect, so it has a lot of potential uses."

- Farias and her colleagues divided everyday functioning into seven cognitive "domains:" memory, language, semantic or factual knowledge, visual and spatial abilities, planning, organization and divided attention.

Ironically, Marc at the blog titled Neuroscientifically Challenged has just released one of the best editions of Encephalon blog carnival. Pay a visit only when you have some time to spare with a collection of excellent and very well presented neuroscience, medicine and psychology blog posts, on topics ranging from fMRI to gene therapy and neuroplasticity.

Visit #49 Encephalon edition at Neuroscientifically Challenged.

Also, you may enjoy taking a look at past editions and calendar for future ones at Encephalon home page: Encephalon Archives & Calendar.

Here you have 4 of the most popular brain games in our blog, plus a bonus stress management tip.

Brain Teaser 1. In which direction is the bus pictured below traveling?

Do you know the answer?

The only possible answers are "left" or "right."

Still don't know?

When pre-school children were shown this picture and question, they all answered "left." When asked why, they answered "Because you can't see the door."

Believe it or not, this simple teaser generated a very lively controversy with over  50 comments...some of my favorites "I've been looking at the bus for a long time now and it is not moving at all" (Peter), "Fools! It is falling, because there is no ground under it! How's that for logic? (Richard), and "I would like to reiterate that this drawing looks like a UFO, and could, therefore, be moving in any direction" (todios).

Brain Teaser 2. You think you know the colors?

Quick! say aloud what color you see in every word, NOT the word you read.        Not that easy, right?  The Stroop test is used in neuropsychological evaluations to measure mental vitality and flexibility, since performing well requires strong inhibition capacity.

Brain Teaser 3. Can You Pay Attention?

Please try this fun experiment. You will watch a brief video clip showing two teams, and your challenge is to count the number of passes made by the team in white.

Click Here to view the Basketball Experiment clip.

Brain Teaser 4.  Find the Homographs

Dr. Pascale Michelon created this one. In the column below you have five pairs of words. Your goal is to find a third word that is connected or associated with both of these two words.

The first pair is PIANO and LOCK. The answer is KEY. The word key is connected with both the word piano and the word lock: there are KEYS on a piano and you use a KEY to lock doors….

Key is what is called a homograph: a word that has more than one meaning but is always spelled the same.

Ready to stimulate connections in your temporal lobe? Enjoy! (Solutions are at the bottom of the post. Please don't check them until you have tried to solve all the pairs!)

1. LOCK – PIANO

2. SHIP – CARD

3. TREE – CAR

4. SCHOOL – EYE

5. PILLOW – COURT

Brain Teaser 5. Have We Stressed You Out?

Here is a very quick test to determine your stress level now. Read the following description completely before looking at the picture.

The picture below was used in a case study on stress levels at St. Mary's Hospital. Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored, scientific study revealed that, in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical, a person under stress would find differences between the two dolphins. The more differences a person finds between the dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing.

Look at the photograph, and if you find more than one or two differences, you may want to take a vacation or at least get a massage.

Click here to see the picture before reading more.

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Solutions to Brain Game 4:

1. LOCK – PIANO > KEY

2. SHIP – CARD > Deck

3. TREE – CAR > Trunk

4. SCHOOL – EYE > Pupil (Exam and Private are also possible)

5. PILLOW – COURT > Case

If you liked this exercise, you can find more pairs of words at Words in your brain.

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I hope you are having a great weekend! How did you do?

Thanks to our 3-month-old daughter, my wife and I have been learning much about baby brains. Mostly learning on the job, as you can imagine.

We just watched a very nice PBS series titled Secret Life of the Brain that covers brain development accross the lifespan: babies, kids, teenagers, adults, seniors. A bit dated (2002) but excellent watching even today.

 Secret Life of the Brain DVD Series (5 programs, $59.98)

To learn more and purchase, you can click Here.

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