Cerebrum

Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement: Building an Experience Corps

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(Editor’s note: Path­ways respon­si­ble for high­er-order think­ing in the pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC), or exec­u­tive cen­ter of the brain, remain vul­ner­a­ble through­out life—during crit­i­cal ear­ly-life devel­op­men­tal win­dows, when the PFC ful­ly matures in the ear­ly 20s, and final­ly from declines asso­ci­at­ed with old age. At all ages, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and PFC-nav­i­gat­ed social con­nec­tions are essen­tial com­po­nents to main­tain­ing brain health. The Expe­ri­ence Corps, a com­mu­ni­ty-based social-engage­ment pro­gram, part­ners seniors with local schools to pro­mote pur­pose-dri­ven involve­ment. Par­tic­i­pat­ing seniors have exhib­it­ed imme­di­ate short-term gains in brain regions vul­ner­a­ble to aging, such as the PFC, indi­cat­ing that peo­ple with the most to lose have the most to gain from envi­ron­men­tal enrichment.)

Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of social con­nect­ed­ness to late-life cog­ni­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and phys­i­cal health. The inte­gra­tion of these find­ings with our under­stand­ing of indi­vid­u­als’ devel­op­men­tal needs through­out life under­scores the impor­tance of the “social brain.” The pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC) is par­tic­u­lar­ly inte­gral to nav­i­gat­ing com­plex social behav­iors and hier­ar­chies over the life course. [Read more…] about Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involve­ment: Build­ing an Expe­ri­ence Corps

Experience Corps: Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement

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The cur­rent issue of Cere­brum –a great pub­li­ca­tion of the Dana Foun­da­tion– includes the excel­lent in-depth arti­cle Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involve­ment: Build­ing an Expe­ri­ence Corps, writ­ten by researcher Michelle Carlson:

“Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of [Read more…] about Expe­ri­ence Corps: Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involvement

A Decade after The Decade of the Brain – Educational and Clinical Implications of Neuroplasticity

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(Edi­tor’s Note: In 1990, Con­gressCerebrumFeb2010_feat des­ig­nat­ed the 1990s the “Decade of the Brain.” Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush pro­claimed, “A new era of dis­cov­ery is dawn­ing in brain research.” Dur­ing the ensu­ing decade, sci­en­tists great­ly advanced our under­stand­ing of the brain. The edi­tors of Cere­brum asked the direc­tors of sev­en brain-relat­ed insti­tutes at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) to iden­ti­fy the biggest advances, great­est dis­ap­point­ments, and missed oppor­tu­ni­ties of brain research in the past decade—the decade after the “Decade of the Brain.” They also asked them what looks most promis­ing for the com­ing decade, the 2010s. Experts focused on research that might change how doc­tors diag­nose and treat human brain disorders.)

Neu­ro­science is at a his­toric turn­ing point. Today, a full decade after the “Decade of the Brain,” a con­tin­u­ous stream of advances is shat­ter­ing long-held notions about how the human brain works and what hap­pens when it doesn’t. These advances are also reshap­ing the land­scapes of oth­er fields, from psy­chol­o­gy to eco­nom­ics, edu­ca­tion and the law.

Until the Decade of the Brain, sci­en­tists believed that, once devel­op­ment was over, the adult brain under­went very few changes. This per­cep­tion con­tributed to polar­iz­ing per­spec­tives on whether genet­ics or envi­ron­ment deter­mines a person’s tem­pera­ment and per­son­al­i­ty, apti­tudes, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to men­tal dis­or­ders. But dur­ing the past two decades, neu­ro­sci­en­tists have steadi­ly built the case that the human brain, even when ful­ly mature, is far more plastic—changing and malleable—than we orig­i­nal­ly thought.1 It turns out that the brain (at all ages) is high­ly respon­sive to envi­ron­men­tal stim­uli and that con­nec­tions between neu­rons are dynam­ic and can rapid­ly change with­in min­utes of stimulation.

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is mod­u­lat­ed in part by [Read more…] about A Decade after The Decade of the Brain – Edu­ca­tion­al and Clin­i­cal Impli­ca­tions of Neuroplasticity

Work (and Juggle) for Cognitive Health

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Spec­tac­u­lar arti­cle by Dr. Denise Park in this mon­th’s Cere­brum:

Work­ing Lat­er in Life May Facil­i­tate Neur­al Health

- “Car­mi School­er at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, using a tech­nique that allowed him to assess causal rela­tion­ships, found that adults who per­formed intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing jobs across their life span showed more cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty in late adult­hood than those who per­formed less demand­ing jobs.”
— “Per­haps the most com­pelling evi­dence regard­ing the impact of nov­el expe­ri­ences on brain vol­ume and func­tion comes from a study at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Ger­many. Adults with a mean age of 59 spent three months learn­ing to jug­gle three balls. Although only about half the par­tic­i­pants were able to achieve com­pe­tence in this com­plex skill, those who suc­ceed­ed had increased vol­ume in a mediotem­po­ral area of the visu­al cor­tex as well as the nucle­us accum­bens and the hip­pocam­pus, sug­gest­ing that sus­tained nov­el expe­ri­ence can increase the sizes of neur­al struc­tures. Notably, the changes in the nucle­us accum­bens and hip­pocam­pus were [Read more…] about Work (and Jug­gle) for Cog­ni­tive Health

Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cognitive Assessments?

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If you could, you would. You can, but pre­fer not to know it?

More than any oth­er organ, your brain is up to you. You are what you think, not just what you eat. Here’s some food for thought:

Design your Mind

Set­ting cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral goals rais­es chal­leng­ing and wor­thy ques­tions: What do you want from your brain? Will you know it when you achieve it?

To attain the brain of our choos­ing, we must under­stand our selves and cur­rent abil­i­ties. Intro­spec­tion and curios­i­ty are help­ful if they trig­ger and sus­tain the effort to enrich the mind. How­ev­er, objec­tive infor­ma­tion which leads to informed assess­ment of brain func­tion is often lacking.

Mind your Brain

Hon­esty. Open­ness. Self-awareness.

Irrefutable virtues, but in prac­tice most peo­ple fall short. Few reg­u­lar­ly appraise their brain skills; even so, the abil­i­ty to accu­rate­ly judge one’s own men­tal per­for­mance is not guar­an­teed. I believe the first step to mind­ing the brain is shed­ding hang-ups while offer­ing and solic­it­ing frank feed­back from fam­i­ly and close con­fi­dants. In the clin­i­cal set­ting, rou­tine cog­ni­tive screen­ing and “men­tal check ups” are not cur­rent­ly prac­ticed, in part due to time con­straints and lim­it­ed util­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al paper-and-pen­cil tests. From a pub­lic health per­spec­tive, the U.S. Pre­ven­ta­tive Task Force reviewed [Read more…] about Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cog­ni­tive Assessments?

The Future of Computer-assisted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

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The Wall Street Jour­nal had a very inter­est­ing arti­cle yes­ter­day, titled To Be Young and Anx­i­ety-Free, focused on the val­ue of cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py to help chil­dren with high lev­els of anx­i­ety learn how too cope bet­ter and pre­vent the snow­ball sce­nario, when that anx­i­ety grows and spi­rals out of con­trol result­ing in depres­sion and similar

- “…new research show­ing that treat­ing kids for anx­i­ety when they are young may help pre­vent the devel­op­ment of more seri­ous men­tal ill­ness­es, includ­ing depres­sion and more debil­i­tat­ing anx­i­ety disorders.”

- “Of course, most kids have fears with­out hav­ing a full-blown anx­i­ety dis­or­der. And some anx­i­ety is healthy: It makes sense, for exam­ple, to be a lit­tle ner­vous before a big test. Doc­tors and psy­chol­o­gists do cau­tion that the increased focus on child­hood anx­i­ety could lead to an over­diag­no­sis of the prob­lem. What makes anx­i­ety a true ill­ness is when it inter­feres with nor­mal func­tion­ing or caus­es seri­ous emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal distress.”

- “But the use of anti­de­pres­sants in chil­dren has come under fire because [Read more…] about The Future of Com­put­er-assist­ed Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Therapy