Cognitive Health News: August 2008

Here you have a roundup of inter­est­ing recent news on cog­ni­tive health top­ics and my commentary:

1) Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Studies

2) Men­tal Floss at Mil­i­tary Offi­cer Magazine

3) Brain Train­ing dom­i­nates ’08 Euro sales (CVG Online)

4) Dakim’s [m]Power Adopt­ed by 150 Senior Liv­ing Com­mu­ni­ties … (Busi­ness Wire)

5) Clum­sy kids more like­ly to become obese adults: study (CBC)

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1) There were a few inter­est­ing research papers pre­sent­ed at the last  Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion con­ven­tions around the theme:

Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Studies
–Skills Trans­fer to Class­room, Sur­gi­cal Pro­ce­dures, Sci­en­tif­ic Think­ing (press release).

Prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing study was that of 303 laparo­scop­ic sur­geons, which “showed that sur­geons who played video games requir­ing spa­tial skills and hand dex­ter­i­ty and then per­formed a drill test­ing these skills were sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster at their first attempt and across all 10 tri­als than the sur­geons who did not the play video games first.”

The note goes fur­ther to explain the impli­ca­tions from this research:

“The big pic­ture is that there are sev­er­al dimen­sions on which games have effects, includ­ing the amount they are played, the con­tent of each game, what you have to pay atten­tion to on the screen, and how you con­trol the motions,” said Gen­tile. “This means that games are not “good’ or bad,’ but are pow­er­ful edu­ca­tion­al tools and have many effects we might not have expect­ed they could.”

Very thought­ful quote. Please note a few ele­ments about the study and the quote itself:

- “video games requir­ing spa­tial skills and hand dex­ter­i­ty”: mean­ing, that pre­cise type of videogame. Oth­er types may have oth­er effects on cog­ni­tion, depend­ing on, as the note says, “the con­tent of each game”, defin­ing con­tent as what play­ers need to do in order to suc­ceed at the game.
— “laparo­scop­ic sur­geons”: it is clear that these are impor­tant skills for a sur­geon and not so impor­tant, say, for an econ­o­mist. Per­haps more econ­o­mists should be play­ing Age of Empires?

-  “are pow­er­ful edu­ca­tion­al tools”: yes, and in fact that is the premise of the Seri­ous Games field, but there also an unspo­ken fac­tor here: effi­cien­cy. If the main goal is enter­tain­ment, then the more hours of fun, the bet­ter. If the goal is a func­tion­al out­come (cog­ni­tive or real-life), then one would want the inter­ven­tion that works in the least amount of time. In oth­er words, could a videogame be specif­i­cal­ly designed for laparo­scop­ic sur­geons to improve the cog­ni­tive skills they need most for their jobs, and would that be more effi­cient than spend­ing X amount of hours play­ing a vari­ety of gen­er­al games? Prob­a­bly, as you can explore in this inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher on cog­ni­tive simulations.

2) Good arti­cle on the August edi­tion of Mil­i­tary Offi­cer magazine:

Men­tal Floss (August 2008) (link opens a PDF-life doc­u­ment, you can read the text by Zoom­ing In).

My 2 favorite quotes, both by Dr. Mol­ly Wag­ster, chief of the Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy of Aging Branch, Nation­al Insti­tute on Aging (NIA) in Bethes­da, Md:

- “Cer­tain­ly as we age there are declines with brain func­tions and cog­ni­tion. But there’s evi­dence that the aging brain can adapt and change more than we ever thought”.

- “We don’t know how it hap­pens or how long changes last, but even in the face of these unan­swered ques­tions, there is the chance to main­tain our cog­ni­tive function”.

Com­ment: who among us won’t be tomor­row one day old­er than he/she is today? The good news about the “aging brain” does­n’t only refer to adults over 70!

3) Brain Train­ing dom­i­nates ’08 Euro sales (CVG Online)

- “Over­all, four of the ten best­selling DS games in both coun­tries dur­ing the first six months of 2008 were in the brain train­ing genre.”

- “Accord­ing to data released by sales mon­i­tor Media Con­trol GfK Inter­na­tion­al, the DS’s heavy­weight sta­tus in the Euro­pean con­sole mar­ket is close­ly tied to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Nin­ten­do’s Brain Train­ing series and oth­er brain train­ing titles.”

- “The biggest demand for brain games is in Ger­many and Hol­land”, the com­pa­ny said. More Brain Train­ing was the best­selling title in Ger­many dur­ing the first six months of the year, while Brain Train­ing topped the Dutch chart dur­ing the same period.

Com­ment: Fas­ci­nat­ing. Will brain-train­ing-induced employ­ee-pro­duc­tiv­i­ty-increase help turn around the loom­ing reces­sion? we’ll track close­ly the per­for­mance of Ger­man and Dutch economies!

4) Dakim’s [m]Power Adopt­ed by 150 Senior Liv­ing Com­mu­ni­ties … (Busi­ness Wire)

- “Dakim Inc. announced today that its [m]Pow­er® Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Sys­tem has now been adopt­ed by more than 150 senior liv­ing communities”

- “Users include Sun­rise Senior Liv­ing, Front Porch Com­mu­ni­ties, Diakon Luther­an Ser­vices, Ecu­men, Eska­ton, Bench­mark Assist­ed Liv­ing, and Los Ange­les Jew­ish Home for the Aging. Sev­er­al neu­rol­o­gists and a local Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion chap­ter office have also pur­chased the system.”

- “Oth­er prod­ucts are sta­t­ic. You buy a CD, put it in the com­put­er, and that’s it. Peo­ple get bored and stop using them. Dakim has found a way to keep peo­ple com­ing back to chal­lenge their abil­i­ty, and that’s what our res­i­dents are doing. (said said Dou­glas Edwards, Direc­tor of Fund Devel­op­ment for West­min­ster Gar­dens in Duarte, Cal­i­for­nia, part of the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Pres­by­ter­ian Homes)

Com­ment: senior liv­ing is one of the obvi­ous areas where com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing (or “brain fit­ness pro­grams”) has a brighter future to com­ple­ment and enhance exist­ing health and well­ness pro­grams in scal­able ways, as we cov­ered in our Mar­ket Report. We are no longer sur­prised by the week­ly press releas­es announc­ing a new “brain fit­ness cen­ter” in com­mu­ni­ty XYZ. Now, what I find inter­est­ing is that last quote by Dou­glas Edwards, which I inter­pret as a direct com­men­tary on the Posit Sci­ence Brain Fit­ness pro­gram, the oth­er lead­ing ven­dor for the senior liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties market.

5) The arti­cle Clum­sy kids more like­ly to become obese adults: study (CBC)…

- “The study was based on tests of about 11,000 peo­ple in Britain who were test­ed for hand con­trol, co-ordi­na­tion and clum­si­ness at age sev­en and 11, and were then fol­lowed until age 33.”

- “Prof. Scott Mont­gomery of the Karolin­s­ka Insti­tutet in Stock­holm and his col­leagues at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don in Eng­land said they pur­pose­ly chose mea­sure­ments of fine hand con­trol such as pick­ing up match­es, rather than those like­ly to be influ­enced by par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports, such as catch­ing balls.”

- “While it is often assumed that the cog­ni­tive impair­ments seen in adult obe­si­ty are a con­se­quence of excess weight, that could be putting the chick­en before the egg, the researchers say”

…reminds me of Judith Beck­’s words on how to “Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person”

- “The main mes­sage of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py over­all, and its appli­ca­tion in the diet world, is straight-for­ward: prob­lems los­ing weight are not ones fault. Prob­lems sim­ply reflect lack of skills–skills that can be acquired and mas­tered through prac­tice. Dieters who read the book or work­book learn a new cog­ni­tive or behav­ioral skill every day for six weeks. They prac­tice some skills just once; they auto­mat­i­cal­ly incor­po­rate oth­ers for their lifetime.”

- “That is exact­ly my goal: to show how every­one can learn some crit­i­cal skills. The key ones are:”

- “1) How to moti­vate one­self. The first task that dieters do is to write a list of the 15 of 20 rea­sons why they want to lose weight and read that list every sin­gle day.”

- “2) Plan in advance and self-mon­i­tor behav­ior. A typ­i­cal rea­son for diet fail­ure is a strong pref­er­ence for spon­tane­ity. I ask peo­ple to pre­pare a plan and then I teach them the skills to stick to it.”

- “3) Over­come sab­o­tag­ing thoughts. Dieters have hun­dreds and hun­dreds of thoughts that lead them to engage in unhelp­ful eat­ing behav­ior. I have dieters read cards that remind them of key points, e.g., that it isn’t worth the few moments of plea­sure they’ll get from eat­ing some­thing they had­n’t planned and that they’ll feel bad­ly after­wards; that they can’t eat what­ev­er they want, when­ev­er they want, in what­ev­er quan­ti­ty they want, and still be thin­ner; that the scale is not sup­posed to go down every sin­gle day; that they deserve cred­it for each help­ful eat­ing behav­ior they engage in, to name just a few.”

- “4) Tol­er­ate hunger and crav­ing. Over­weight peo­ple often con­fuse the two. You expe­ri­ence hunger when your stom­ach feels emp­ty. Crav­ing is an urge to eat, usu­al­ly expe­ri­enced in the mouth or throat, even if your stom­ach is full.”

Com­ment: A prob­lem like the obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic is, no doubt, a result of many fac­tors, where chick­en and egg are often mixed. What mat­ters, though, is how to set up pub­lic health poli­cies and spe­cif­ic plans that take into account the Cog­ni­tive dimen­sion: if adults can­not reg­u­late their own eat­ing and exer­cise habits, half the bat­tle is lost. And we know that, up to a point, self-reg­u­la­tion skills are learn­able and trainable.