evidence

It’s World Mental Health Day today: Let’s review how a healthy diet can promote mental well-being

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Should you eat an apple—or a bag of Ore­os? Go to McDonald’s—or the veg­e­tar­i­an restau­rant on the corner?

When we make these every­day food choic­es, many of us think first of our phys­i­cal health and appear­ance. But there’s anoth­er fac­tor we may want to con­sid­er in pick­ing foods: their impact on our men­tal health. [Read more…] about It’s World Men­tal Health Day today: Let’s review how a healthy diet can pro­mote men­tal well-being

The debate continues: Review finds weak evidence standards behind commercially-available brain training programs

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balance_scaleBrain Game Claims Fail A Big Sci­en­tif­ic Test (NPR):

“In Octo­ber 2014, more than 70 sci­en­tists pub­lished an open let­ter object­ing to mar­ket­ing claims made by brain train­ing com­pa­nies. Pret­ty soon, anoth­er group, with more than 100 sci­en­tists, pub­lished a rebut­tal say­ing brain train­ing has a sol­id sci­en­tif­ic base.

“So you had two con­sen­sus state­ments, each signed by many, many peo­ple, that came to [Read more…] about The debate con­tin­ues: Review finds weak evi­dence stan­dards behind com­mer­cial­ly-avail­able brain train­ing programs

ADHD @ high schools: Clear mismatch between the Evidence and the Practice

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Study: High School­ers with ADHD Receiv­ing Few Evi­dence-Based Sup­ports (Edu­ca­tion Week):

“A lit­tle over half of high school stu­dents with atten­tion deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der are receiv­ing some kind of ser­vices from their schools, such as addi­tion­al time on tests or extend­ed time to com­plete home­work assign­ments, a recent study finds. But those par­tic­u­lar sup­ports have no report­ed effec­tive­ness in improv­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of stu­dents with ADHD, accord­ing to the study pub­lished [Read more…] about ADHD @ high schools: Clear mis­match between the Evi­dence and the Practice

On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not

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Where does our “Feel­ing of Know­ing” come from? Have you ever felt cer­tain that you knew an answer even though you could­n’t think of it right off? Where does that “feel­ing of know­ing” come from? The answer to this ques­tion is the focus of neu­rol­o­gist Robert Bur­ton’s new book On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.

I recent­ly reviewed Dr. Bur­ton’s book on the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast and last week I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­view him for the show. He explained that one of the ori­gins for his book was his expe­ri­ence with patients with con­di­tions like Cotard’s syn­drome (where the patient thinks he is dead or does not exist). What Dr. Bur­ton calls the “feel­ing of know­ing” is so strong that peo­ple con­sis­tent­ly trust it even when their beliefs con­tra­dict the evi­dence. At first it might seem sur­pris­ing that this feel­ing is gen­er­at­ed at an uncon­scious lev­el in our brain, yet the same sort of pro­cess­ing cre­ates the world we see and hear. It is well-known that what we see is not what enters our eyes, but [Read more…] about On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not