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Lee Woodruff: the Bob Woodruff Foundation, and You, can help Traumatic Brain Injury survivors

September 10, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

You have may have seen a few weeks ago the inter­view between for­mer US pres­i­den­tial con­tender John Edwards and reporter Bob Woodruff. All the result­ing media cov­er­age cen­tered on Edwards’ dec­la­ra­tions. How­ev­er, there is some­thing much more remark­able that sur­faced at that inter­view: Bob Woodruff’s spec­tac­u­lar recovery.

This is the same reporter who suf­fered a severe trau­mat­ic brain injury when a road­side In an Instant - Bob and Lee Woodruffbomb det­o­nat­ed next to his vehi­cle in Jan­u­ary 29th 2006 as he was cov­er­ing news devel­op­ments in Iraq.

Today we are for­tu­nate to inter­view Lee Woodruff, Bob’s wife and pil­lar through­out his recov­ery. Lee and Bob co-wrote the fan­tas­tic book In an Instant: A Fam­i­ly’s Jour­ney of Love and Heal­ing.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Lee, many thanks for your time. I was amazed read­ing your book, where you share your jour­ney, and then watch­ing Bob inter­view John Edwards, the best dis­play I can imag­ine of his recov­ery. Can you please sum­ma­rize for us what Bob ‑and you- went through since Jan­u­ary 2006?

Lee Woodruff: As you know, Bob suf­fered a life-threat­en­ing trau­mat­ic brain injury in Iraq. He was prompt­ly tak­en under mil­i­tary care and under­went a series of surg­eries for head injuries, with a joint Army & Air Force neu­ro­sur­gi­cal team in Iraq, in a US Army Med­ical Com­mand hos­pi­tal in Ger­many, and at Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal, back here in the US.

Dur­ing this time, span­ning around 4 months, he spent 37 days in coma, and his skull had to be sur­gi­cal­ly rebuilt. The cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion process start­ed then, at a med­ical facil­i­ty clos­er home.

Can you please explain what kind of cog­ni­tive rehab Bob has gone though-both in a for­mal way, with a ther­a­pist, and infor­mal­ly, on his own?

The first thing I’d like to say is that rehab is a long process. Doc­tors told me that Bob, despite the sever­i­ty of his injuries, had bet­ter chances to recov­er than oth­er vic­tims, because of the reserve of neu­rons and con­nec­tions he had built thanks to [Read more…] about Lee Woodruff: the Bob Woodruff Foun­da­tion, and You, can help Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury survivors

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: ABC, Bob-Woodruff, Bob-Woodruff-Foundation, cognitive-care, cognitive-rehabilitation, cognitive-screening, cognitive-therapy, helmets, In-an-instant, intellectually-stimulating, Iraq-War, Lee-Woodruff, National-Guard, Neurons, neurosurgical-team, prevent-TBI, Processing-information, puzzles, Rand-study, seating-belts, Sudoku, TBI, TBI-survivors, To-Iraq-and-Back, Traumatic-Brain-Injury, US-Army-Medical, Walking-Wounded’

Stress Management as Key Factor For Cognitive Fitness, and More News

February 4, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Brain Health NewsA roundup of sev­er­al excel­lent arti­cles this week:

Keep­ing Your Brain Fit (US News and World Report)

- “In a study of more than 2,800 peo­ple ages 65 or old­er, Har­vard researchers found that those with at least five social ties—church groups, social groups, reg­u­lar vis­its, or phone calls with fam­i­ly and friends—were less like­ly to suf­fer cog­ni­tive decline than those with no social ties.”

- “The work­ing hypoth­e­sis is that it has some­thing to do with stress man­age­ment,” says Mar­i­lyn Albert, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at Johns Hop­kins and codi­rec­tor of the Alzheimer’s research cen­ter there. In ani­mal stud­ies, a pro­longed ele­va­tion in stress hor­mones dam­ages the hip­pocam­pus. Social engage­ment appears to boost peo­ple’s sense of con­trol, which affects their stress lev­el. Cre­ative arts seem to be a high­ly promis­ing way to increase social engage­ment. George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cohen has found that elder­ly peo­ple who joined choirs also stepped up their oth­er activ­i­ties dur­ing a 12-month peri­od, while a non­sing­ing con­trol group dropped out of some activ­i­ties. The singers also report­ed few­er health prob­lems, while the con­trol group report­ed an increase.”

We Nev­er For­get Any­thing (Any­more) (Pre­ven­tion Magazine)

- “Pro­cess­ing new infor­ma­tion when we’re anx­ious is tough; the stress itself is a dis­trac­tion. Fer­nan­dez taught Lau­rie this relax­ation trick: [Read more…] about Stress Man­age­ment as Key Fac­tor For Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness, and More News

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Alzheimers, Alzheimers-research, Army, brain-concussions, brain-injuries, Brain-Training, cognitive-decline, cognitive-fitness, hippocampus, Marilyn-Albert, meditation, prevention, Processing-information, PTSD, relaxation-trick, social-engagement, stress-hormones, stress-management

Brain Training: the Art and the emerging Science

May 29, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Tom alerts us (thanks!) of a fun book review in the New York Times today, by Abi­gail Zuger, titled The Brain: Mal­leable, Capa­ble, Vul­ner­a­ble, on the book The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psy­chi­a­trist Nor­man Doidge. Some quotes:

  • “In book­stores, the sci­ence aisle gen­er­al­ly lies well away from the self-help sec­tion, with hard real­i­ty on one set of shelves and wish­ful think­ing on the oth­er. But Nor­man Doidge’s fas­ci­nat­ing syn­op­sis of the cur­rent rev­o­lu­tion in neu­ro­science strad­dles this gap: the age-old dis­tinc­tion between the brain and the mind is crum­bling fast as the pow­er of pos­i­tive think­ing final­ly gains sci­en­tif­ic credibility.”
  • “So it is for­giv­able that Dr. Doidge, a Cana­di­an psy­chi­a­trist and award-win­ning sci­ence writer, recounts the accom­plish­ments of the “neu­ro­plas­ti­cians,”  as he calls the neu­ro­sci­en­tists involved in these new stud­ies, with breath­less rev­er­ence. Their work is indeed mind-bend­ing, mir­a­cle-mak­ing, real­i­ty-bust­ing stuff, with impli­ca­tions, as Dr. Doidge notes, not only for indi­vid­ual patients with neu­ro­log­ic dis­ease but for all human beings, not to men­tion human cul­ture, human learn­ing and human history.”
  • “Research into the mal­leabil­i­ty of the nor­mal brain has been no less amaz­ing. Sub­jects who learn to play a sequence of notes on the piano devel­op char­ac­ter­is­tic changes in the brain’s elec­tric activ­i­ty; when oth­er sub­jects sit in front of a piano and just think about play­ing the same notes, the same changes occur. It is the vir­tu­al made real, a sol­id quan­tifi­ca­tion of the pow­er of thought.”
  • “The new sci­ence of the brain may still be in its infan­cy, but already, as Dr. Doidge makes quite clear, the sci­en­tif­ic minds are leap­ing ahead.”

Here you have some of our inter­views with a few “sci­en­tif­ic minds” that have, for years, been “leap­ing ahead” beyond “pos­i­tive think­ing” into “pos­i­tive training”:

  • Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing. Dr. Gold­berg is a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist and clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine. He was a stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria, and has writ­ten The Exec­u­tive Brain and The Wis­dom Paradox.
  • On Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intel­li­gence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher. Dr. Gopher is Pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy and Human Fac­tors Engi­neer­ing at Tech­nion, Israel’s Insti­tute of Sci­ence, and sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor for Intel­li­Gym.
  • Mem­o­ry train­ing and atten­tion deficits: inter­view with Pro­fes­sor Bradley Gib­son, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, and Direc­tor of the Per­cep­tion and Atten­tion Lab there
  • On Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, pro­fes­sor at Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute, and direc­tor of the Devel­op­men­tal Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Lab, part of the Stock­holm Brain Insti­tute. He is also the sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor for Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing pro­gram (RoboMemo).
  • An ape can do this. Can we not? with Dr. James Zull, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­o­gy and Bio­chem­istry at Case West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, and author of The Art of Chang­ing the Brain.

And a cou­ple of relat­ed blog posts:

  • Can Thoughts and Action Change Our Brains?
  • Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and mem­o­ry training

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: adult-learning, Boston, Brain-Fitness, brain-research, Brain-Training, brett-steenbarger, Cognitive Neuroscience, Gopher, health-club-memberships, K12, Learning, Learning-&-Brain, Learning-&-Brain-Conference, medicines, mind, Processing-information, Roderick-Gilkey, socialization

Books on neuroplasticity and memory training

April 3, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: the brain’s abil­i­ty to reor­ga­nize itself by form­ing new con­nec­tions through­out life. (see more con­cepts in our Glos­sary).

We coud­n’t be hap­pi­er about the grow­ing num­ber of books pop­u­lar­iz­ing the key lessons about brain train­ing that Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg has been research­ing and writ­ing about for years, and that moti­vat­ed us to embark our­selves in the Sharp­Brains adventure.

Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine presents a great arti­cle, Rewiring the Brain, review­ing two recent books.

  • The sub­ti­tle is “Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty can allow for treat­ment of senil­i­ty, post-trau­mat­ic stress, ­obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der, and depres­sion and Bud­dhists have been cap­i­tal­iz­ing on it for mil­lenia.” I would add that the strong val­ue of life­long learn­ing present in jesuit and jew­ish tra­di­tions reflects the same wis­dom. Some quotes:
  • “Two new books, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Bal­lan­tine Books, $24.95) by sci­ence jour­nal­ist Sharon Beg­ley and The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psy­chi­a­trist Nor­man Doidge, offer mas­ter­ful­ly guid­ed tours through the bur­geon­ing field of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty research. Each has its own style and empha­sis; both are excellent.”
  • “Final­ly, both authors con­clude that adult neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is a vast­ly under­tapped resource, one with which West­ern med­i­cine and psy­chol­o­gy are just now com­ing to grips. An impor­tant emerg­ing research agen­da is to [Read more…] about Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and mem­o­ry training

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Ask-a-Scientist, auditory-processing-training, Books, brain-builder, Brain-Fitness, brain-injuries, brain-research, Brain-Training, brain-training-website, chimps-memory, concept-map, David-Pescovitz, dislexia, driving-skills, Glossary, hiv/aids, K12, Lifelong-learning, malleable, meditation, Medscape--Fox-Business-Network, Memory-Training, mindfulness-trainings, Processing-information, processing-speed, PTSD, relaxation-trick, scientific-mindset, test-anxiety, vibrantbrains, visual-processing-training, yoga, yoga-brain

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