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Learning

Study finds that playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial for children than other forms of screentime (social media, watching videos/ TV)

June 1, 2022 by The Conversation

Many par­ents feel guilty when their chil­dren play video games for hours on end. Some even wor­ry it could make their chil­dren less clever. And, indeed, that’s a top­ic sci­en­tists have clashed over for years.

In our new study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how video games affect the minds of chil­dren, inter­view­ing and test­ing more than 5,000 chil­dren aged ten to 12. And the results, pub­lished in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports, will be sur­pris­ing to some. [Read more…] about Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV)

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: cognition, cognitive, cognitive-abilities, cognitive-development, Cognitive-tests, Cognitive-Training, digital media, executive-function, flexible thinking, free time, intelligence, Learning, learning ability, screen time, self-control, social-media, video-games, visual-spatial processing, watching TV, Working-memory

Helping young brains fight off anxiety by training and raising cognitive control

July 23, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

Anx­i­ety is one of the most com­mon child­hood men­tal dis­or­ders. About 7% of chil­dren suf­fer from it at any giv­en time, with near­ly 1 in 3 ado­les­cents expe­ri­enc­ing it some­time dur­ing their teen years.

For an anx­ious child, seem­ing­ly nor­mal activ­i­ties can be hard. Wor­ried kids have trou­ble adjust­ing to school, mak­ing friends, and learn­ing. They can feel inhib­it­ed, avoid­ing chal­lenges by run­ning away or retreat­ing into them­selves. While par­ents may feel des­per­ate to help, their approach­es can back­fire. For exam­ple, try­ing to talk kids out of their feel­ings or keep them away from anx­i­ety-pro­duc­ing sit­u­a­tions may inad­ver­tent­ly make the anx­i­ety worse. [Read more…] about Help­ing young brains fight off anx­i­ety by train­ing and rais­ing cog­ni­tive control

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anxiety, brain markers, brain training, childhood, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, cognitive-capacities, cognitive-control, cognitive-skills, Cognitive-Training, frontal-lobes, Kate Fitzgerald, Kid Power program, Learning, mental-disorders, National-Institutes-of-Health, neurochemicals, neuroscience, Working-memory

On Awe, Wonder, Biofeedback, CBSM, Virtual Reality, Privacy, Being Wrong, and more

March 31, 2021 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, this time fea­tur­ing eleven time­ly resources and research find­ings for life­long brain health and men­tal well-being.

#1. “Awe is the feel­ing we expe­ri­ence when encoun­ter­ing vast things that we don’t under­stand. Around the world and in cul­tur­al­ly vary­ing ways, stud­ies show, we expe­ri­ence awe in response to oth­ers’ kind­ness and courage, nature, music, reli­gious or spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, the visu­al and dra­mat­ic arts, and epiphany … It leads us to share, col­lab­o­rate, and won­der. In expe­ri­ences of awe, peo­ple often speak as if they have found their soul.”

Some­times it IS awesome to learn how the sausage was made: How Pixar’s “Soul” met the Sci­ence of Awe

#2. Here are six sug­ges­tions to incor­po­rate awe into dai­ly rou­tines and improve men­tal well-being, based on the new book Awestruck: Linger, Slow down, Appre­ci­ate your sens­es, Unplug, Awe walks, Awe journaling.

#3. Speak­ing of Awe and Won­der, why not take a few min­utes to appre­ci­ate our most pre­cious nat­ur­al resource via these
five brain teasers?

A few won­derful news for many with unmet mental/ brain health needs:

#4. Pre­dic­tion: In just a few years we’ll look back at today and won­der, why did­n’t we all, of all ages, access biofeed­back tools and games designed to mea­sure and retrain heart rate vari­abil­i­ty? Grow­ing research sup­ports Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty (HRV) biofeed­back train­ing to low­er stress and anx­i­ety, increase sports performance

#5. Blue Note Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $26M to help treat can­cer-relat­ed dis­tress via cog­ni­tive behav­ioral stress man­age­ment (CBSM): “Near­ly half of all can­cer patients expe­ri­ence psy­choso­cial dis­tress, anx­i­ety, or depres­sion. If left untreat­ed, these feel­ings can low­er a can­cer sur­vivors’ qual­i­ty of life and may neg­a­tive­ly affect survival.”

#6. Applied­VR rais­es $29M to help make vir­tu­al real­i­ty the stan­dard of care for treat­ing chron­ic pain: “Chron­ic pain is one of the most com­mon med­ical con­di­tions in the world, yet it still is incred­i­bly debil­i­tat­ing to patients, cost­ly to the sys­tem and com­plex to treat. While our mis­sion has always been to demon­strate that VR can be a pow­er­ful anal­gesic in any set­ting, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed a surge in demand for dig­i­tal med­i­cines like VR that can be deliv­ered safe­ly to patients in their own homes” — Matthew Stoudt, co-founder and CEO of AppliedVR

#7. Hap­pi­fy Health rais­es $73M to deep­en part­ner­ships with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and insur­ance pay­ers: “We are also work­ing with five lead­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal part­ners on dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic solu­tions and four out of the five nation­al pay­ers to help sup­port their mem­bers’ men­tal health and chron­ic ill­ness needs. We look for­ward to reach­ing an even big­ger audi­ence with the sup­port of our new part­ners.” — Tomer Ben-Kiki, cofounder and CEO of Happify

This grow­ing num­ber and range of inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal health tools demands more and bet­ter research, smarter reg­u­la­tions, and more trans­par­ent pri­va­cy policies:

#8. Con­sumer Reports finds unclear, ques­tion­able pri­va­cy prac­tices and poli­cies among pop­u­lar men­tal health apps. “In gen­er­al, these men­tal health ser­vices act­ed like many oth­er apps you might down­load. For instance, we spot­ted apps shar­ing unique IDs asso­ci­at­ed with indi­vid­ual smart­phones that tech com­pa­nies often use to track what peo­ple do across lots of apps. The infor­ma­tion can be com­bined with oth­er data for tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing. Many apps do that, but should men­tal health apps act the same way? At a min­i­mum, Con­sumer Reports’ pri­va­cy experts think, users should be giv­en a clear­er expla­na­tion of what’s going on.”

#9. Tip for dig­i­tal health start-ups: To nav­i­gate reg­u­la­to­ry gray areas, “engage ear­ly and engage often” with the FDA. Impor­tant advice as “…a grow­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies are find­ing them­selves in a gray area of enforce­ment dis­cre­tion, a term the FDA uses for low­er-risk prod­ucts that meet the def­i­n­i­tion of a med­ical device, but do not require reg­u­la­to­ry sub­mis­sion, review and autho­riza­tion before head­ing to market”

#10. Inno­va­tion in COVID times: Otsu­ka and Click Ther­a­peu­tics announce ful­ly vir­tu­al clin­i­cal tri­al, lever­ag­ing Verily’s Project Base­line: “We do believe that the treat­ment land­scape in men­tal dis­ease is going to evolve in a way where obvi­ous­ly phar­ma­cother­a­py will always play a role, but we do think dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics can play an addi­tion­al role, and to some extent, sub­sti­tute as well as aug­ment phar­ma­co­log­i­cal inter­ven­tion.” — Otsu­ka Chief Med­ical Offi­cer Christoph Koenen

#11. Final­ly, much of the oppor­tu­ni­ty around applied neu­ro­science and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty relies not on tools but on mind­sets, as dis­cussed in this fan­tas­tic inter­view (To pre­vent “cog­ni­tive entrench­ment,” think like a sci­en­tist and be wrong often):

“JS: You write that being wrong is tied to a more joy­ful life. Why is that?

AG: I had noticed Dan­ny Kah­ne­man [the Nobel prize–winning behav­ioral econ­o­mist] just lights up with joy when he finds out that one of his hypothe­ses is false … In some ways, the joy of being wrong is the free­dom to keep learn­ing. If you can embrace the joy of being wrong, then you get to anchor your iden­ti­ty more in being some­one who’s eager to dis­cov­er new things, than some­one who already knows every­thing or is expect­ed to know everything.”

Wish­ing you a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing month of April,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Applied Neuroscience, AppliedVR, awe, biofeedback, Blue Note Therapeutics, CBSM, consumer-reports, digital health, Happify Health, heart-rate-variability, Learning, mindset, neuroplasticity, privacy, virtual-reality, wonder

Here’s a toast to a Healthy, Happy & Meaningful New Year!

December 31, 2020 by SharpBrains

“Think­ing about you” — clas­sic Mafal­da by Joaquín Sal­vador Lava­do Tejón, known as Quino, who left us in 2020 to explore future endeavors

And, if you’re look­ing for New Year Res­o­lu­tions, here you can find some inspi­ra­tion and ideas… 

1. To har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, start with enthusiasm

2. How learn­ing changes your brain

3. What you should know about neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and dance

4. Three ways to pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing –and after– COVID-19

5. Can you grow your hip­pocam­pus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters

6. Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright

7. What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?

8. Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress

9. Solv­ing the Brain Fit­ness Puz­zle Is the Key to Self-Empow­ered Aging

10. Read, Play, Train: 3 New Year Res­o­lu­tions and 36 Ideas for a Hap­pi­er & Health­i­er 2021

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Brain-Fitness, cognitive-abilities, hippocampus, Learning, neuroplasticity, New-Year-Resolutions

Indian teacher Ranjitsinh Disale wins annual $1M Global Teacher Prize; shares half with 9 finalists

December 3, 2020 by SharpBrains

Top teacher wins $1m and gives half away (BBC News):

Mr Disale, who teach­es in the Zil­la Parishad Pri­ma­ry School, in the drought-prone vil­lage of Parite­wa­di, in the west­ern Indi­an state of Maha­rash­tra, was named the world’s most excep­tion­al teacher, ahead of 12,000 oth­er nom­i­na­tions … He also pro­vides online sci­ence lessons for pupils in 83 coun­tries and runs an inter­na­tion­al project build­ing con­nec­tions between young peo­ple in con­flict zones.

[Read more…] about Indi­an teacher Ran­jitsinh Disale wins annu­al $1M Glob­al Teacher Prize; shares half with 9 finalists

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Global Teacher Prize, Learning, Ranjitsinh Disale, teacher

How COVID-related stress can disrupt your brain circuits and nine tips to prevent it

September 3, 2020 by World Economic Forum

COVID-19 has touched each of us some­how. Many now rec­og­nize that car­ing for our men­tal health is as essen­tial as address­ing the virus if we are to emerge stronger, more con­nect­ed and more resilient.

The Ancient Greeks said “know thy­self” to live sound­ly, but it is only now that we have the tech­nol­o­gy to start under­stand­ing how our indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences arise from the com­plex­i­ty of our brains. [Read more…] about How COVID-relat­ed stress can dis­rupt your brain cir­cuits and nine tips to pre­vent it

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: accelerated, accelerated learning, Anhedonia, anxiety disorder, biotypes, brain circuits, Brain-Plasticity, chronic-stress, clinical depression, Cognitive Fog, cognitive-control, COVID-19, inattention, Learning, mental health, mindful, negative bias, Precision Mental Health, rumination, Stanford, Stress, technology, Threat Response, wellness

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