Prozac

Update: Mindful Brain Training and “The End of the Prozac Generation”

by

brainstormingTime for Sharp­Brains’ March 2014 e‑newsletter. We hope you enjoy these thought-pro­vok­ing arti­cles about how to enhance our brains and minds…and hope­ful­ly trans­form brain care and men­tal health along the way.

New think­ing:

New tools: 

New research: 

Have a great month of April!

From Drugs to Brain Training: The Future of Brain Health?

by

EEG.BrainBrain Train­ing And The End Of The Prozac Gen­er­a­tion (Forbes):

“Accord­ing to the Nation­al Insti­tute for Men­tal Health (NIMH), more than 57 mil­lion peo­ple, or 26% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion suf­fer from some form of men­tal health prob­lem. But despite the ongo­ing need, [Read more…] about From Drugs to Brain Train­ing: The Future of Brain Health?

SSRI antidepressants linked to increased risk of stroke

by

Anti­de­pres­sants linked to risk of brain bleeds (Chica­go Tribune):

“Peo­ple using a com­mon class of anti­de­pres­sants may have slight­ly increased odds of suf­fer­ing bleed­ing in the brain — though the risk is still very small, researchers report­ed Wednesday…The anti­de­pres­sants are known as selec­tive sero­tonin reup­take inhibitors (SSRIs), and include wide­ly used drugs like flu­ox­e­tine (Prozac), ser­tra­line (Zoloft), citalo­pram (Celexa) and parox­e­tine (Pax­il).” [Read more…] about SSRI anti­de­pres­sants linked to increased risk of stroke

Closing the Circuit: Helen Mayberg’s research could revolutionize depression treatment

by

Blue, DepressionAt some point in their lives, 5 to 12 per­cent of Amer­i­can men and 10–25 per­cent of women will suf­fer an episode of depres­sion, mak­ing it the most com­mon­ly diag­nosed men­tal dis­or­der today. Unlike nor­mal sad­ness, which pass­es with time, depres­sion feels unstop­pable and caus­es peo­ple to lose inter­est in near­ly all activ­i­ties. Because it affects a per­son­’s abil­i­ty to eat, sleep, work, and func­tion nor­mal­ly, it exacts a huge cost on the econ­o­my, esti­mat­ed at $30 bil­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly. The cost in human suf­fer­ing can­not be measured.

Mil­lions of peo­ple diag­nosed with depres­sion turn to med­ica­tion as a treat­ment, and many of the most pop­u­lar [Read more…] about Clos­ing the Cir­cuit: Helen Mayberg’s research could rev­o­lu­tion­ize depres­sion treatment

emWave in Golf Digest

by

We often talk about how stress man­age­ment is as impor­tant as cog­ni­tive train­ing for brain fit­ness. We have also seen how traders can improve their per­for­mance by learn­ing how to man­age emo­tions of anx­i­ety and fustration.

Golf Digest has just pub­lished an arti­cle on how golfers can see their game improved thanks to stress man­age­ment pro­grams. Golf Digest’s Edi­tion includes the arti­cle Play­ing with heart: Peb­ble Beach’s top teacher wants to choke­proof your game, explain­ing how Laird Small, direc­tor of the Peb­ble Beach Golf Acad­e­my and the 2003 PGA of Amer­i­ca Teacher of the Year, has been using these pro­grams for a num­ber of years.

Even more inter­est­ing­ly, it also relates how [Read more…] about emWave in Golf Digest

Best practice for top trading performance: biofeedback (EmWave personal stress reliever)

by

Brett N. Steen­barg­er , Ph.D. Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at SUNY Upstate Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty, active trad­er for over 30 years, for­mer Direc­tor of Trad­er Devel­op­ment for Kingstree Trad­ing, LLC, author of The Psy­chol­o­gy of Trad­ing and the new Enhanc­ing Trad­er Per­for­mance, and of the blog Trader­Feed: Exploit­ing the edge from his­tor­i­cal mar­ket pat­terns, is writ­ing a great col­lec­tion of best prac­tices for traders (many of which are very rel­e­vant for all high-pres­sure occupations).

He wrote a great arti­cle a few weeks ago on the val­ue of biofeed­back in achiev­ing self con­trol, and now deep­ens the dis­cus­sion with this best prac­tice for traders.

Both arti­cles are a fun read-here go some quotes from the most recent one

  • “This best prac­tice describes biofeed­back as a tool for per­for­mance enhance­ment among traders. It empha­sizes that the role of biofeed­back is to keep us in touch with our (implic­it) knowl­edge, not to elim­i­nate emo­tion from the deci­sion-mak­ing process.”
  • “we want to con­trol the lev­el of cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal arousal so that we retain access to exper­tise that is already present. Biofeed­back is a pow­er­ful tool for achiev­ing such cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal con­trol.”
  • “Through struc­tured prac­tice, peo­ple can learn to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly improve their abil­i­ty to enter and remain in states of calm focus. Such abil­i­ty is impor­tant to trad­ing (and many oth­er per­for­mance activ­i­ties), not because it elim­i­nates emo­tion, but because it pre­serves our access to the somat­ic mark­ers that rep­re­sent our mar­ket feel. The heart rate vari­abil­i­ty feed­back is par­tic­u­lar­ly user friend­ly, because it is com­put­er based and can track progress both in prac­tice ses­sions and in real time performance.”
  • “Using the Freeze-Framer pro­gram, audi­ble sig­nals tell the user when he or she is expe­ri­enc­ing high, medi­um, or low “coher­ence”, which is a mea­sure of emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion. On-screen games require the user to keep a float­ing bal­loon in the air, for instance, based upon sus­tained medi­um and high read­ings. I recent­ly had an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence dur­ing one feed­back ses­sion: I sus­tained a high lev­el of the bal­loon, but then clicked a wrong but­ton on the screen and erased my data acci­den­tal­ly! After that frus­tra­tion, it was *much* hard­er for me to keep the bal­loon in the air. It was a nice illus­tra­tion of the impact of frus­tra­tion even sev­er­al min­utes after an event.”

You can learn more about this best prac­tice for Traders and oth­er high-pres­sure occu­pa­tions where learn­ing how to iden­ti­fy and man­age our emo­tions and lev­els of stress is crit­i­cal for performance.