psychotherapist

Next: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy?

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How ecsta­sy and psilo­cy­bin are shak­ing up psy­chi­a­try (Nature):

… The Impe­r­i­al study was one of a spate of clin­i­cal tri­als launched over the past few years using illic­it psy­che­del­ic drugs such as psilo­cy­bin, lyser­gic acid diethy­lamide (LSD) and MDMA (3,4‑methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as mol­ly or ecsta­sy) to treat men­tal-health dis­or­ders, gen­er­al­ly with the close guid­ance of a psy­chi­a­trist or psy­chother­a­pist. The idea has been around for decades — or cen­turies in some cul­tures — but the momen­tum has picked up dras­ti­cal­ly over the past few years as investors and sci­en­tists have begun to cham­pi­on the approach again. [Read more…] about Next: Psy­che­del­ic-assist­ed psychotherapy?

Three tips for wise minds to calm coronavirus anxiety

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In the ear­ly days of COVID-19, we faced many dif­fi­cult deci­sions in every­day life: try­ing to weigh risk and decide whether to meet up or stay home, send kids to school or vis­it the gym. Now that my home state of Cal­i­for­nia has its “shel­ter in place” order—and many oth­er cities and states are in var­i­ous stages of lockdown—a wait­ing peri­od has tak­en shape.

In some ways, this is a relief—our minds get deci­sion fatigue in the face of so many choic­es. Now we have our instruc­tions, which are restric­tive but use­ful to our brains. But many oth­er types of uncer­tain­ty still remain, about things like our jobs, whether we will get sick even while tak­ing pre­cau­tions, or when we will see our loved ones and return to some nor­mal routines.

[Read more…] about Three tips for wise minds to calm coro­n­avirus anxiety

The brain virtues of physical exercise

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Dr. Adri­an Pre­da, our newest Expert Con­trib­u­tor, writes today the first in a series of thought-pro­vok­ing arti­cles,physical exercise for the brain chal­leng­ing us to think about phys­i­cal exer­cise as the best and most unap­pre­ci­at­ed form of “brain exer­cise”. A superb article.

And one thing is clear, he points out: “the brain real­ly likes it when it’s asked to be “active”. Pas­sive audi­ences, which are spoon fed infor­ma­tion, score less well when test­ed on reten­tion and under­stand­ing of the pre­sent­ed mate­r­i­al than audi­ences that were kept engaged through the process.”

So, will you write a com­ment below and con­tribute to an engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion? Thoughts? reac­tions? questions?
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Don’t ignore plain old com­mon sense.

Brain Lessons Part 1

– By Adri­an Pre­da, M.D.

Let me start with a list of com­mon bias­es: expen­sive is bet­ter than cheap, free is of dubi­ous val­ue (why would then be free?), rare is like­ly to be valu­able, and while new is bet­ter than old, ancient is always best. Which explains a com­mon sce­nario that is reen­act­ed about twice a week in my office. It starts like this: a patient shows me a fan­cy look­ing bot­tle of the brain sup­ple­ment of the week: ancient roots with obscure names mixed togeth­er in anoth­er nov­el com­bi­na­tion which you can exclu­sive­ly find in that one and only store (rar­i­ty oblige!). And not to for­get: it ain’t cheap either! Of course, there it is, the per­fect the recipe for suc­cess: ancient yet new, rare and expen­sive. It got to be good! But is it, really?

[Read more…] about The brain virtues of phys­i­cal exercise

“Brainfood” Makes the Dictionary!

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A fun arti­cle from the BBC high­lights some of the lat­est entries to the 2.5 bil­lion-word data­base of words in the Collins Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, 9th edition.

We were of course biased and hap­py to see “brain­food” as a new­ly mint­ed word. Accord­ing to Web­ster’s New Millenniumâ„¢ Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish, they define “brain food”:

Part of Speech: n
Def­i­n­i­tion: any food that is con­sid­ered to aid intel­li­gence, mem­o­ry, or cre­ativ­i­ty; by exten­sion, any intel­lec­tu­al sustenance

We’d like to add Sharp­Brains to the list of brain foods! If you need some puz­zles to pick up your men­tal metab­o­lism, see how you do on these. Or maybe delve into some sci­ence and see if that expands your men­tal waist­line a bit. Just save room for dessert!