We often view mem­ory, think­ing, emo­tions, as com­pletely sep­a­rate enti­ties, but they truly are part of the same process. So, if we want to improve brain health, we need to pay atten­tion to the “weak link” in that process. In today’s soci­ety, man­ag­ing stress and neg­a­tive emo­tions is often that weak link, as we dis­cuss dur­ing Octo­ber Q&A ses­sion with par­tic­i­pants in Sharp­Brains’ new e-course. Time now for Sharp­Brains’ Octo­ber 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing new sci­ence, new resources and new thinking.

New sci­ence:

• Why Both aer­o­bic and cog­ni­tive exer­cise pro­mote brain health
• Beta amy­loid build-up in the brain may increase risk of cog­ni­tive impair­ment more than hav­ing “Alzheimer’s gene”
• Sur­vey: 40% who dis­con­tinue ADHD med­ica­tion treat­ment con­cerned about loss of self
• Dri­ving with satel­lite nav­i­ga­tion con­tributes to inat­ten­tional blindness
• SSRI anti­de­pres­sants linked to increased risk of stroke

New tools:

• Can biofeedback-based videogames help kids reg­u­late anger and emotions?
• Mon­i­tor­ing cog­ni­tion via mobile appli­ca­tions: iPad app analyzed
• Biofeed­back now a “Level 1 — Best Sup­port” inter­ven­tion for atten­tion & hyper­ac­tiv­ity behaviors
• Com­bin­ing non-invasive brain stim­u­la­tion with cog­ni­tive train­ing to treat Alzheimer’s Disease
• The Dig­i­tal Future of Men­tal Health
• New self-paced course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach

New think­ing:

• Can brain train­ing reduce can­cer risk?
• Har­ness­ing neu­ro­plas­tic­ity to drive and repair brain development
• Mas­ter a new lan­guage and grow hip­pocam­pus and cere­bral cortex
• Mea­sur­ing and treat­ing Chemo Brain
• Medicare to update reim­burse­ment cri­te­ria for degen­er­a­tive dis­eases such as Alzheimer’s, MS, Parkinson’s disease
• Octo­ber Q&A ses­sion with par­tic­i­pants in Sharp­Brains new e-course

That’s it for now. Have a Happy Halloween!

Pic cour­tesy of Big­Stock­Photo

Although ADHD used to be con­sid­ered a dis­or­der of child­hood, follow-up stud­ies indi­cate that between 30% and 60% of chil­dren with ADHD con­tinue to expe­ri­ence symp­toms and impair­ment in adult­hood. And, even when ADHD symp­toms decline over time, many indi­vid­u­als con­tinue to expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant impair­ment in impor­tant areas of functioning.

For exam­ple, chil­dren with ADHD have Read the rest of this entry »

ADHD, or atten­tion deficit hyper­ac­tiv­ity dis­or­der, affects mil­lions of chil­dren and adults (up to 5% of chil­dren in the US).  More and more evi­dence sug­gests that brain train­ing may be key to help these indi­vid­u­als. With this in mind, we put together our most recent arti­cles on the topic to  a) help you bet­ter under­stand what is going in the brain of a per­son with ADHD, and b) pro­vide you with up-to-date infor­ma­tion on what can be done to fight the dis­or­der and improve the lives of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from it. We par­tic­u­larly thank Dr. Rabiner from Duke Uni­ver­sity for writ­ing many of these arti­cles.

What is ADHD?

What kind of atten­tion is involved in ADHD? ADHD may be con­sid­ered as a prob­lem in the will­ful con­trol of atten­tion as opposed to a pure deficit in the abil­ity to pay attention.

Self-Regulation and ADHD: The fun­da­men­tal deficit in indi­vid­u­als with ADHD may be one of self-control: Read the rest of this entry »

We have talked about the value of med­i­ta­tion before (see Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools), as a form of well-directed men­tal exer­cise than can help train atten­tion and emo­tional self-regulation.  Which other stud­ies have shown how it strength­ens spe­cific parts of the brain, mainly in the frontal lobe.

Dr. Rabiner shares with us, below, an excel­lent review of a new study that ana­lyzes the ben­e­fits of mind­ful­ness for ado­les­cents and adults with atten­tion deficits. He writes that “although this is clearly a pre­lim­i­nary study, the results are both inter­est­ing and encouraging.”

- Alvaro

Does Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion Help Adults & Teens with ADHD

– By Dr. David Rabiner

Although med­ica­tion treat­ment is effec­tive for many indi­vid­u­als with ADHD, includ­ing ado­les­cents adults, there remains an under­stand­able need to explore and develop inter­ven­tions that can com­ple­ment or even sub­sti­tute for med­ica­tion. This is true for a vari­ety of rea­sons includ­ing:
1) Not all adults with ADHD ben­e­fit from med­ica­tion.
2) Among those who ben­e­fit, many have resid­ual dif­fi­cul­ties that need to be addressed via other means.
3) Some adults with ADHD expe­ri­ence adverse effects that pre­vent them from remain­ing on medication.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ellen recently wrote a nice post titled Top Ten Tips for Men Who Lead Women, and asked for vol­un­teers to offer a com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tive. I hope you enjoy!

1. We men know we are hard to lead, and that can be stress­ful for you and for us. You should know that stress affects short term mem­ory, so it is impor­tant to be able to man­age stress well, with med­i­ta­tion or other meth­ods. Check here your level of stress to see how much this point applies to you. Please remem­ber, laugh­ing is good for your brain.
2. Don’t think too much–we don’t. If we do, we try to find ways to self-talk us out of that uncom­fort­able state.
3. Please remem­ber our hum­ble ori­gins. We are tool-using ani­mals, which is why we like play­ing with all kinds of toys, from a car to that blackberry.
4. When we are stub­born, you are enti­tled to remind us that even apes can learn–if you help us see the point. Show us that change is pos­si­ble at any age. Believe it or not, we can lis­ten.
5. Espe­cially if we can find com­mon ground: what about chat­ting about sports psy­chol­ogy?.
6. Please moti­vate us to lis­ten and be open minded to learn with wise words. If that doesn’t work, please per­se­vere with nice words. Please don’t ever say that we are worse than pink dol­phins–if we feel attacked, we’ll just disengage.
7. Some­times we don’t coop­er­ate enough?. Please give us time for our brains to fully evolve, we have been try­ing for a while!
8. You can help us grow. For the next lead­er­ship work­shop, buy us copies of the Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain book. You may think we don’t need this… but at our core we really want to get bet­ter at Grat­i­tude and Altru­ism. We want to be able to play with the ulti­mate toy: our genes!
9. If that book is sold out, we could also ben­e­fit from read­ing Damasio’s Descartes Error and dis­cover how emo­tions are impor­tant for good decision-making. Or help us improve our abil­ity to read emo­tional mes­sages. As long as we believe we can some­how ben­e­fit from it, we’ll try!
10. If you lead some­one with Bill Gates-like Frontal Lobes, con­grat­u­late him for his brain. If you don’t, encour­age him to fol­low track. Please be patient…

Now, any tak­ers for Top Ten Tips for Women Who Lead Women or Men Who Lead Men?