Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

feelings

Shape your environment, shape your mind

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One of the biggest con­trib­u­tors to our hap­pi­ness is some­thing we bare­ly pay atten­tion to: the voice inside our own heads.

As psy­chol­o­gist Ethan Kross describes in his new book Chat­ter, that voice is con­stant­ly ana­lyz­ing the sit­u­a­tions we’re in, reflect­ing on the past and future, and telling us who we are. While some­times friend­ly and optimistic—it’s OK, everything’s going to work out!—it can also be crit­i­cal and down­beat. Our inner voice can berate us for mis­takes or decide our life is ruined. It can rumi­nate on neg­a­tive emo­tions and expe­ri­ences, dredg­ing them up with­out any kind of con­struc­tive resolution.

Accord­ing to Kross, there are three main ways we can turn down the chat­ter in our heads: shift­ing our per­spec­tive so we’re not so immersed in our prob­lems, talk­ing with oth­ers to get sup­port, and chang­ing the envi­ron­ment around us. [Read more…] about Shape your envi­ron­ment, shape your mind

FDA clears first CBT-based digital therapeutic to treat substance abuse disorders

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reSET® for Sub­stance Use Dis­or­der. Image Cred­it: Pear Therapeutics

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The FDA just approved the first app for treat­ing sub­stance abuse (CNBC):

“The app, devel­oped by a start-up called Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, is designed to be pre­scribed by clin­i­cian and used along­side counseling.

Pear’s tech­nol­o­gy dig­i­tizes a form of talk ther­a­py called cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, or CBT, which focus­es on “exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ships between thoughts, feel­ings and behav­iors”, [Read more…] about FDA clears first CBT-based dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic to treat sub­stance abuse disorders

Debunking Myers-Briggs personality test: Can we pigeon­hole people?

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Myers-BriggsWhy the Myers-Brig­gs test is total­ly mean­ing­less (Vox):

“The Myers-Brig­gs Type Indi­ca­tor is prob­a­bly the most wide­ly used per­son­al­i­ty test in the world…The only prob­lem? The test is com­plete­ly mean­ing­less… [Read more…] about Debunk­ing Myers-Brig­gs per­son­al­i­ty test: Can we pigeon­hole people?

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)

Lie to Me, Paul Ekman and Biofeedback

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You may have watched the new series Lie To Me, with Tim Roth, based on the work of Paul Ekman.

The sec­ond episode, which you can watch for free via Hulu.com Here, is pret­ty inter­est­ing, but the best part hap­pens in the begin­ning, so you only need to watch a few min­utes to learn why what are called “lie detec­tors” are noth­ing but biofeed­back sys­tems that mea­sure phys­i­o­log­i­cal anxiety.

Biofeed­back can be a very effec­tive train­ing tool for emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­tion and stress man­age­ment, pre­cise­ly because it enables a faster feed­back-based learn­ing loop. Indeed, we are see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of appli­ca­tions in the mar­ket, with names such as EmWave, StressEras­er, RES­PeR­ATE, Jour­ney to the Wild Divine, and others.

Sim­ply, don’t believe the tech­nol­o­gy is an effec­tive lie detector.

Car­o­line and I wrote an arti­cle on Paul Ekman’s work a cou­ple of years ago — let me repub­lish it now, giv­en his work has made it all the way to main­stream TV!

braintopPaul Ekman has con­duct­ed exten­sive research on iden­ti­fy­ing emo­tions through facial expres­sions. As part of that research, and as part of the pow­er of dis­ci­pline and train­ing, he learned how to con­scious­ly manip­u­late 42 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began look­ing into the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of facial expres­sions, all the major con­tem­po­rary social sci­en­tists, like Mar­garet Mead, believed that expres­sions were cul­tur­al­ly learned, not innate. He trav­eled all over the world with pic­tures of peo­ple mak­ing dis­tinct facial expres­sions and found peo­ple in cul­tures every­where, from mod­ern to stone age, agreed on the emo­tion behind the expres­sion. He then turned to [Read more…] about Lie to Me, Paul Ekman and Biofeedback