brain-based

Every man can, if he so desires, sculpt his own brain

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Santiago Ramon y CajalA Span­ish friend and neu­ro­sci­en­tist just remind­ed me of a great quote by San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934): “todo hom­bre puede ser, si se lo pro­pone, escul­tor de su pro­pio cere­bro”.

Which means: “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”.

Which real­ly means: “Each of us can lit­er­al­ly refine the struc­ture and func­tion of our brains, the same way we can do so with the rest of our body mus­cles” (my 2 cents…).

Our dai­ly thoughts and actions, learn­ings, med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­a­py, the grow­ing num­ber of soft­ware-based pro­grams, and more, are “sculpt­ing” tools…no more no less than tools. Good for some goals and con­texts, like improv­ing con­cen­tra­tion and mem­o­ry, becom­ing “sharp­er”, help­ing pro­tect our minds from decline, or man­age stress better.

I just bought Cajal’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, titled Rec­ol­lec­tions of My Life (thanks, Mind Hacks). Will be writ­ing about it in a month or so‑I have too many books on the table now, and only one brain.

If you want to read some good neu­ro­science blog posts, you can find a nice col­lec­tion in the lat­est edi­tion of Encephalon, host­ed by Dr Deb­o­rah Serani.

For gen­er­al sci­ence ones, try Tan­gled Bank. For edu­ca­tion, enjoy The Edu­ca­tion Car­ni­val.

Final­ly, I will be host­ing the next edi­tion of Car­ni­val of the Cap­i­tal­ists (I don’t real­ly love the name…but it is the old­est and best blog car­ni­val for busi­ness and eco­nom­ics). If you have some good posts, please sub­mit them here.

For some addi­tion­al thoughts on sculpt­ing brains, intel­li­gence, and becom­ing smarter, you can check this post.

Brain Fitness Program 2.0, MindFit, and much more on Brain Training

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Let’s quick­ly review 4 recent arti­cles in both “Times” news­pa­pers: the New York Times and the UK-based Times, on brain fit­ness and a cou­ple of programs. 

1) Cal­is­then­ics for the Old­er Mind, on the Home Com­put­er: good overview of one of the grow­ing areas for cog­ni­tive train­ing, “healthy aging”.emWave for Stress Management

Attention deficits: drugs, therapy, cognitive training

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Shel­ley launched a good dis­cus­sion on The Neu­ro­science of ADHD in her blog, dis­cussing the sit­u­a­tion and pro­vid­ing a tech­ni­cal overview of drug-based inter­ven­tions. Some­thing I had­n’t heard is that “For exam­ple, babies born pre­ma­ture­ly face a sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater risk of devel­op­ing ADHD than full-term babies (socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus was con­trolled for).”

Which helps me bet­ter under­stand the need to think about pre-school­ers, as dis­cussed in the arti­cle Diag­nos­ing ADD/ ADHD in Preschool­ers, at ADDi­tude Mag­a­zine. I quote:

  • “The Preschool ADHD Treat­ment Study, or PATS, con­duct­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH), is the first long-term study designed to eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of treat­ing preschool­ers with ADHD with behav­ioral ther­a­py, and then, in some cas­es, methylphenidate. In the first stage, the chil­dren (303 preschool­ers with severe ADHD, between the ages of three and five) and their par­ents par­tic­i­pat­ed in a 10-week behav­ioral ther­a­py course. For one third of the chil­dren, ADHD symp­toms improved so dra­mat­i­cal­ly with behav­ior ther­a­py alone that they did not progress to the ADHD med­ica­tion phase of the study.”

As Shel­ley’s post and the arti­cle explain, drugs do help when used appro­pri­ate­ly. Now, they are not the only answer. I am hap­py to see that behav­ioral ther­a­py can be as use­ful when appro­pri­ate. Which is not a sur­prise, giv­en the grow­ing lit­er­a­ture on dif­fer­ent meth­ods of cog­ni­tive train­ing, includ­ing ther­a­py and work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing like the one dis­cussed with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gib­son and in our post Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and ADD/ADHD Today.

Manage your feelings for conflict resolution

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Stephanie West Allen kind­ly alert­ed us of her impres­sive new ini­tia­tive and blog, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr. Jef­frey M. Schwartz, titled Brains On Pur­pose. They have part­nered to bring a series of sem­i­nars on neu­ro­science and con­flict res­o­lu­tion: Port­land, Ore­gon, in Novem­ber 2007, and San Fran­cis­co Bay Area in Jan­u­ary 2008-so far. Dr. Schwartz has pre­vi­ous­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sim­i­lar and fruit­ful ini­tia­tive on The Neu­ro­science of Lead­er­ship with David Rock. We wish them best luck in this excit­ing initiative.

Stephanie writes a great blog post on “What are you feel­ing?” “What am I feel­ing?” These ques­tions are tools for brain tam­ing, explain­ing how “A flur­ry of arti­cles appeared this week (such as this one in Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can: “Name that feel­ing: You’ll feel bet­ter”) about the neu­ro­science research show­ing that label­ing your feel­ings can qui­et your brain and increase impulse control”

adding that…

“In our recent arti­cle “Lead Your Brain Instead Of Let­ting It Lead You,” we talk about the prac­tice of mak­ing men­tal notes (first described by Jeff in his book Dear Patrick: Life is Tough — Here’s Some Good Advice). Devel­op­ing your skill in mak­ing men­tal notes can bring relief when high con­flict occurs.” and “The more skilled you get at label­ing, the more quick­ly no mat­ter the sit­u­a­tion you can return to equa­nim­i­ty and composure.”

Check her post to learn more about the label­ing tech­nique. Devel­op­ing men­tal notes can be a very pow­er­ful way to self-reg­u­late behav­ior, not too dif­fer­ent from cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­tion tech­niques.

Excit­ing to see more sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers bring­ing research into prac­tice! As we have men­tioned, Brain Fit­ness is some­thing that applies to dif­fer­ent ages and dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es, and this is a great exam­ple for lawyers.

Brain Fitness June Blog Carnival

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Wel­come to the June 18, 2007 edi­tion of brain fit­ness. We hope you will enjoy some of the great posts below! We are hap­py to see a broad­er inter­est in the top­ic since we launched the car­ni­val in Jan­u­ary-thanks to every­one involved.

 

Education and Professional Development

Brett Steen­barg­er presents a great 3‑part series titled Trade Like a Scientist‑ The Sci­en­tif­ic Mind­set post­ed at Trader­Feed.

Michael Krotchie presents Visu­al­iz­ing your way to suc­cess! post­ed at Tuc­son Real Estate News Straight From the Old Pueblo, say­ing, “Visu­al­iz­ing your way to success!”

Stephanie presents Two gifts for you on the ‘net: One on Neu­roLead­er­ship and the oth­er on sto­ry­telling post­ed at ide­alawg

Scott presents Top Five Things That Stress Col­lege Stu­dents Out post­ed at Col­lege and Finance.

 

Medicine

Sha­heen Lakhan presents The Evi­dence for Neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly Deter­mined Anorex­ia Ner­vosa Behav­ioral Pat­terns post­ed at GNIF Brain Blog­ger.

CT Today presents Research Results: More Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py Stud­ies than We can Keep Up With post­ed at Beck Insti­tute’s Blog

Christo­pher Depel­teau presents [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness June Blog Carnival

Newsweek on Evolution, DNA and The Brain

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Great March 19th issue of Newsweek Mag­a­zine, announc­ing the hir­ing of sci­ence writer Sharon Beg­ley, who leads the cov­er sto­ry on The Evo­lu­tion Revolution. You will find:

Talk­ing about DNA, my wife and I just ordered our par­tic­i­pa­tion kit from Nation­al Geo­graph­ic: The Geno­graph­ic Project to learn more about our ori­gins. Looks like a very wor­thy project. She, from Russ­ian and Ger­man recent ances­tors; me, born in Spain’s Basque Coun­try. We will see what we find out!