clinical-neuropsychologist

The Luria Neuroscience Institute announces new webinar series on Executive Functions, Dementia, TBI, Creativity and more

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Hap­py to share that the Luria Neu­ro­science Insti­tute, an esteemed Part­ner of the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, is host­ing a new webi­nar series aimed at bet­ter equip­ping pro­fes­sion­als help­ing those with men­tal health and with brain and brain disorders.

Dates and top­ics: [Read more…] about The Luria Neu­ro­science Insti­tute announces new webi­nar series on Exec­u­tive Func­tions, Demen­tia, TBI, Cre­ativ­i­ty and more

Transcript: Paul Nussbaum on Meditation, Neuropsychology and Thanksgiving

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: [Read more…] about Tran­script: Paul Nuss­baum on Med­i­ta­tion, Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and Thanksgiving

Reminder: Brain Health Q&A Today

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Reminder: Join Live Q&A with Dr. Paul Nuss­baum by click­ing HERE, today Novem­ber 22nd at 11am Pacif­ic Time/ 2pm East­ern Time. Chat about about a holis­tic approach to brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain, recent­ly named a Best Book on Brain Fit­ness by AARP. You can also learn more about the Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series.

Tran­scripts of pre­vi­ous Q&A Sessions:

From Distress to De-Stress: helping anxious, worried kids (Part 2 of 2)

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Last week, in this arti­cle’s first part, we dis­cussed the impor­tance of actu­al­ly teach­ing chil­dren how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed, explored sev­er­al sug­ges­tions I hope you found useful.

Let’s con­tin­ue.

Teach­ers can help stu­dent over­come stress by teach­ing them to iden­ti­fy the imped­i­ments they might encounter in doing a cer­tain task. 

The teacher can ask:

What’s going to get in the way of you doing this work?
He or she may have to jump-start the stu­dents think­ing by sug­gest­ing such things as:
— com­pet­ing events (fam­i­ly activ­i­ties, friends call, IM-ing, new video game, etc.)
— lack of ade­quate place to study
— inad­e­quate pri­or prepa­ra­tion or skills
— a neg­a­tive atti­tude (this is not nec­es­sary, I can’t do math, I’ll nev­er need to know this, etc).
— health fac­tors (I’m sick; I’m tired)

Con­verse­ly, teach­ers have to teach stu­dents to iden­ti­fy the enhancers; What’s going to make it more like­ly that you will do this, and do this well?
(exam­ples)
— I have con­fi­dence in my ability
— I feel com­pe­tent in this skill
— I am com­mit­ted to learn­ing this because: I have the nec­es­sary resources to com­plete this task, such as mate­ri­als, sources of infor­ma­tion, peo­ple sup­ports; par­ents, tutor, oth­er kids

Teach­ers can turn dis­tress into de-stress by using the Lan­guage of Success

The key is to de-empha­size PRAISE and empha­size SELF-APPRAISAL.

Teach­ers can encour­age self-eval­u­a­tion by [Read more…] about From Dis­tress to De-Stress: help­ing anx­ious, wor­ried kids (Part 2 of 2)

From Distress to De-Stress: helping anxious, worried kids (Part 1 of 2)

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Teach­ing kids how to relax.

Con­sid­er this vignette:

-Rox­anne: (agi­tat­ed and loud­ly) I can’t stand this freakin book!

-Teacher: Rox­anne, you need to take it easy. Just calm down! Try to relax.You need to fin­ish your reading.

-Rox­anne: (to her­self) Right easy for you to say, teacher. But very hard for me to do. What do you mean calm down? I feel like my head is going to explode.

-Teacher: (see­ing no response) Well if you can’t set­tle down, maybe a trip to the office will help you!

Some kids are so agi­tat­ed that even if they know how to relax, they can’t. If you think about it, calm­ing down when you’re upset is the hard­est time to do it! Oth­er kids can’t calm down or relax because they don’t know what that feels like. Teach­ers, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists, phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion teach­ers and par­ents need to actu­al­ly teach chil­dren (of all ages) how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed. This does­n’t hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly. If it did, there would­n’t be so many adult yoga classes!

Set­ting the men­tal and emo­tion­al stage for success.

Teach­ers who want to reduce stress and increase learn­ing know that get­ting kids into a pos­i­tive mind­set will do both. They say [Read more…] about From Dis­tress to De-Stress: help­ing anx­ious, wor­ried kids (Part 1 of 2)

Head Games and neuropsychological assessments

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You may have seen this insigh­ful OpEd last Fri­day in the New York Times, by clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Ger­ald Tramontano:

Head Games

- “CHILDREN aged 5 to 18 suf­fer at least 96,000 sports-relat­ed con­cus­sions every year in the Unit­ed States, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion esti­mates. Even more trou­bling, as many as 20 per­cent of all high school foot­ball play­ers sus­tain con­cus­sions annu­al­ly, stud­ies show.”

- “The only way to know for sure whether a con­cus­sion vic­tim’s brain has returned to nor­mal is to com­pare the results of neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests con­duct­ed before and after the injury. That requires prepar­ing ath­letes for the sea­son by putting them through base­line testing.”

Com­ment: Great OpEd, rais­ing aware­ness of a prob­lem with grow­ing impor­tance — not only in terms of sports con­cus­sions, but also car acci­dents, strokes, and a vari­ety of life-events that may pro­voke brain dam­age — and intro­duc­ing read­ers to the need for cog­ni­tive base­lines for spe­cif­ic individuals.

Now, we will prob­a­bly need to go fur­ther than the author of the OpEd sug­gests. There are sim­ply not enough neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists in the whole plan­et to test one-per­son at a time for 4‑hours each, and the cost of try­ing so would be astronomical.

The more real­is­tic route is to com­bine a) ful­ly-auto­mat­ed com­put­er-based assess­ments as a base­line, b) the involve­ment of a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist when need­ed, prob­a­bly both to super­vise the whole assess­ment pro­gram for a sports team, for exam­ple, and then to super­vise the post-dam­age reha­bil­i­ta­tion process.