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 »

An excel­lent arti­cle by the Dana Foun­da­tion clar­i­fies what the “Real Deficit in Atten­tion Deficit/Hyperactivity Dis­or­der” is. Thank you to John from our Sharp­Brains’ group in LinkedIn for point­ing it out.

Among other things, this arti­cle shows you that atten­tion is more com­plex than you prob­a­bly thought: Read the rest of this entry »

I recently reported on an intrigu­ing study exam­in­ing the impact of an herbal treat­ment for youth with ADHD. Results from this randomized-controlled trial were quite promis­ing and con­sis­tent with the idea that some indi­vid­u­als with ADHD have defi­cien­cies in essen­tial nutri­ents that com­pro­mise healthy brain devel­op­ment and result in ADHD symp­toms. This idea has sparked the long-standing debate about whether dietary fac­tors play an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of ADHD, at least for some chil­dren, and led to many stud­ies of this issue.
Although results of these stud­ies elude any sim­ple con­clu­sions, dietary fac­tors do appear to con­tribute to ADHD symp­toms in some individuals.

Some have argued that research on the rela­tion­ship between diet and ADHD is more impor­tant than ever because the diets of chil­dren in West­ern coun­tries have shown steady increases in the amounts of heav­ily processed foods rich in sat­u­rated fats, salt, and sug­ars accom­pa­nied by decreases in omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, and folate. Is it pos­si­ble that such ‘West­ern’ style diets are asso­ci­ated with an increased risk of ADHD, and per­haps a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the high preva­lence of the disorder?

This impor­tant ques­tion was exam­ined in a study pub­lished recently online in the Jour­nal of Atten­tion Dis­or­ders [Howard et. al. (2010). ADHD is asso­ci­ated with a “West­ern” dietary pat­tern in ado­les­cents. Jour­nal of Atten­tion Dis­or­ders]. Par­tic­i­pants were 1172 14 year-old Aus­tralian ado­les­cents and their par­ents who had been recruited into the study and fol­lowed since the moth­ers were between 16 and 20 weeks preg­nant. Read the rest of this entry »

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing. It was a fas­ci­nat­ing mix of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors talk­ing with and lis­ten­ing to each other. Some top­ics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought — insight on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed and how they influ­ence each other.

Using dra­matic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies.… The Con­fer­ence cre­ates an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary forum — a meet­ing place for neu­ro­sci­en­tists, edu­ca­tors, psy­chol­o­gists, clin­i­cians, and par­ents — to exam­ine these new research find­ings with respect to their applic­a­bil­ity in the class­room and clin­i­cal practice.

Take-aways

• Humans are a mix­ture of cog­ni­tion and emo­tion, and both ele­ments are essen­tial to func­tion and learn properly
• Edu­ca­tors and pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers need to learn more about the brain, how it grows, and how to cul­ti­vate it
• Stu­dents of all ages need to be both chal­lenged and nur­tured in order to succeed
• Peo­ple learn dif­fer­ently — try to teach and learn through as many dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties as pos­si­ble (engage lan­guage, motor skills, artis­tic cre­ation, social inter­ac­tion, sen­sory input, etc.)
• While short-term stress can heighten your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, long term stress kills you — you need to find bal­ance and release
• Test anx­i­ety and sub­se­quent poor test results can be improved with behav­ioral train­ing with feed­back based on heart rate variability
• Dr. Robert Sapol­sky is a very very enlight­en­ing and fun speaker
• Allow time for rest and con­sol­i­da­tion of learned material
• Emo­tional mem­o­ries are eas­ier to remember
• Con­fer­ences like these per­form a real ser­vice in fos­ter­ing dia­logues between sci­en­tists and educators

Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary 19, 2007 edi­tion of brain fitness.

Today we want to high­light an excel­lent Inter­view with Aaron Beck on the His­tory of Cog­ni­tive Ther­apy sub­mit­ted by the Beck Insti­tute. Dr. Beck was 83 when he gave this inter­view. To the ques­tion “Do you have a view about age­ing?”, he responds “I can only speak for myself. I know that prac­ti­cally all my col­leagues from med­ical school days who are still around have retired. That is not some­thing that I think about. It is no more on my hori­zon now than it was when we first met a quar­ter of a cen­tury ago. I keep look­ing ahead.” He also says “I have always liked to unify dif­fer­ent fields. Given my back­ground in neu­rol­ogy I do not see a con­flict between neu­rol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy. But if you look at the train­ing of con­tem­po­rary psy­chi­a­trists, for exam­ple, the two domains are totally dis­tinct. If psy­chi­a­try is to sur­vive as a dis­ci­pline, a merg­ing of the con­cepts of neu­rol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy will need to occur.” Read the rest of this entry »

We hope you are enjoy­ing the grow­ing cov­er­age of Brain Fit­ness as much as we are. Below you have the Brain Fit­ness Newslet­ter we sent a few days ago-you can sub­scribe to this monthly email update in the box on the right hand side.

In this post, we will briefly cover:

I. Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chicago Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.

II. Events: we are out­reach part­ners for the Learn­ing & the Brain con­fer­ence, which will gather neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors, and for the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week.

III. Pro­gram Reviews: The Wall Street Jour­nal reviewed six dif­fer­ent pro­grams for brain exer­cise and aging, and the one we offer is one of the two win­ners. A college-level coun­sel­ing cen­ter starts offer­ing our stress man­age­ment one. And we inter­view a Notre Dame sci­en­tist who has con­ducted a repli­ca­tion study for the work­ing mem­ory train­ing pro­gram for kids with ADD/ ADHD.

IV. New Offer­ings: we have started to offer two infor­ma­tion pack­ages that can be very use­ful for peo­ple who want to bet­ter under­stand this field before they com­mit to any par­tic­u­lar pro­gram: learn more about our Brain Fit­ness 101 guide and Exer­cise Your Brain DVD.

V. Web­site and Blog Sum­mary: we revamped our home page and have had a very busy month writ­ing many good arti­cles. We also hosted two “Blog Car­ni­vals”- don’t you want to know what that means?
Read the rest of this entry »

Pro­fes­sor Bradley Gib­son is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy at Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame, and Direc­tor of the Per­cep­tion and Atten­tion Lab there. He is a cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist with research inter­ests in per­cep­tion, atten­tion, and visual cog­ni­tion. Gibson’s research has been pub­lished in a vari­ety of jour­nals, includ­ing Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­ogy, Human Per­cep­tion and Per­for­mance, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, and Per­cep­tion & Psychophysics.

In 2006 he con­ducted the first inde­pen­dent repli­ca­tion study based on the Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing pro­gram we dis­cussed with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg.

A local news­pa­per intro­duced some pre­lim­i­nary results of the study Atten­tion, please: Mem­ory exer­cises reduce symp­toms of ADHD. Some quotes from the articles:

- “The com­puter game has been shown to reduce ADHD symp­toms in chil­dren in exper­i­ments con­ducted in Swe­den, where it was devel­oped, and more recently in a Granger school, where it was tested by psy­chol­o­gists from the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame.

- Fif­teen stu­dents at Dis­cov­ery Mid­dle School tried RoboMemo dur­ing a five-week period in Feb­ru­ary and March, said lead researcher Brad Gibson

- As a result of that expe­ri­ence, symp­toms of inat­ten­tion and hyper­ac­tiv­ity were both reduced, accord­ing to reports by teach­ers and par­ents, Gib­son said.

- Other tests found sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in “work­ing mem­ory”, a short-term mem­ory func­tion that’s con­sid­ered key to focus­ing atten­tion and con­trol­ling impulses.

- RoboMemo’s effec­tive­ness is not as well estab­lished as med­ica­tions, and it’s a lot more work than pop­ping a pill.

- Gib­son said Notre Dame’s study is con­sid­ered pre­lim­i­nary because it involved a small num­ber of stu­dents. Another lim­i­ta­tion is that the study did not have a con­trol group of stu­dents receiv­ing a placebo treatment.

We feel for­tu­nate to inter­view Dr. Gib­son today.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (AF): Dr. Gib­son, thanks for being with us. Could you first tell us about your over­all research interests?

Dr. Bradley Gib­son (BG): Thanks for giv­ing me this oppor­tu­nity. My pri­mary research Read the rest of this entry »