Archive for the ‘brain’ Category
IVF and fertility problems? Just relax
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009Sleep is needed to form memories
Saturday, February 14th, 2009Sleep is something we all need! If you need help having a good nights sleep take a look at my website to find out how I might help www.anitamitchell.co.uk.
From examiner, posted on 11/02/09
First-of-its-kind study shows how brain connections strengthen during sleep
PHILADELPHIA – If you ever argued with your mother when she told you to get some sleep after studying for an exam instead of pulling an all-nighter, you owe her an apology, because it turns out she’s right. And now, scientists are beginning to understand why.
In research published this week in Neuron, Marcos Frank, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, postdoctoral researcher Sara Aton, PhD, and colleagues describe for the first time how cellular changes in the sleeping brain promote the formation of memories.
“This is the first real direct insight into how the brain, on a cellular level, changes the strength of its connections during sleep,” Frank says.
The findings, says Frank, reveal that the brain during sleep is fundamentally different from the brain during wakefulness.
“We find that the biochemical changes are simply not happening in the neurons of animals that are awake,” Frank says. “And when the animal goes to sleep it’s like you’ve thrown a switch, and all of a sudden, everything is turned on that’s necessary for making synaptic changes that form the basis of memory formation. It’s very striking.”
The team used an experimental model of cortical plasticity – the rearrangement of neural connections in response to life experiences. “That’s fundamentally what we think the machinery of memory is, the actual making and breaking of connections between neurons,” Frank explains
In this case, the experience Frank and his team used was visual stimulation. Animals that were young enough to still be establishing neural networks in response to visual cues were deprived of stimulation through one eye by covering that eye with a patch. The team then compared the electrophysiological and molecular changes that resulted with control animals whose eyes were not covered. Some animals were studied immediately following the visual block, while others were allowed to sleep first.
From earlier work, Frank’s team already knew that sleep induced a stronger reorganization of the visual cortex in animals that had an eye patch versus those that were not allowed to sleep. Now they know why.
A molecular explanation is emerging. The key cellular player in this process is a molecule called N-methyl D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), which acts like a combination listening post and gate-keeper. It both receives extracellular signals in the form of glutamate and regulates the flow of calcium ions into cells.
Essentially, once the brain is triggered to reorganize its neural networks in wakefulness (by visual deprivation, for instance), intra- and intercellular communication pathways engage, setting a series of enzymes into action within the reorganizing neurons during sleep.
To start the process, NMDAR is primed to open its ion channel after the neuron has been excited. The ion channel then opens when glutamate binds to the receptor, allowing calcium into the cell. In turn, calcium, an intracellular signaling molecule, turns other downstream enzymes on and off.
Some neural connections are strengthened as a result of this process, and the result is a reorganized visual cortex. And, this only happens during sleep.
“To our amazement, we found that these enzymes never really turned on until the animal had a chance to sleep,” Frank explains, “As soon as the animal had a chance to sleep, we saw all the machinery of memory start to engage.” Equally important was the demonstration that inhibition of these enzymes in the sleeping brain completely prevented the normal reorganization of the cortex.
Frank stresses that this study did not examine recalling memories. For example, these animals were not being asked to remember the location of their food bowl. “It’s a mechanism that we think underlies the formation of memory.” And not only memory; the same mechanism could play a role in all neurological plasticity processes.
As a result, this study could pave the way to understanding, on a molecular level, why humans need sleep, and why they are so affected by the lack of it. It could also conceivably lead to novel therapeutics that could compensate for the lack of sleep, by mimicking the molecular events that occur during sleep.
Finally, the study could lead to a deeper understanding of human memory. Though how and even where humans store long-lasting memories remains a mystery, Frank says, “we do know that changes in cortical connections is at the heart of the mystery. By understanding that in animal models, it will bring us close to understanding how it works in humans.”
Overthinking 'disrupts golf putt'
Friday, January 30th, 2009Just ask Tiger, he’s ‘gone’ when he makes a shot. Find out how cognitive hypnotherapy and NLP can help reduce your handicap www.anitamitchell.co.uk.
Found on the BBC News website:
Golfers who think too much about their technique between shots could be seriously affecting their performance, a study has suggested.
St Andrews University and US scientists said they had established that too much analysis made the golfer’s game worse.
They said thinking too much about the previous shot can disrupt performance.
In total, 80 golfers were given shots to practise until they got it right. Those who discussed their putting between strokes took twice as long.
The study suggested talking could “overshadow” motor skills Golfers who think too much about their technique between shots could be seriously affecting their performance, a study has suggested. St Andrews University and US scientists said they had established that too much analysis made the golfer’s game worse. They said thinking too much about the previous shot can disrupt performance. In total, 80 golfers were given shots to practise until they got it right. Those who discussed their putting between strokes took twice as long. The study found that when the mix of skilled and novice golfers tried again, those who had discussed the shot took longer to get the shots right as those people who had spent a couple of minutes engaged in other, unrelated activities. Simply describing one’s putting skill after it has been executed can be incredibly disruptive to future putting performance Prof Michael Anderson St Andrews University Psychology Professor Michael Anderson, from St Andrews University, said: “This effect was especially dramatic in skilled golfers who were reduced to the level of performance of novices after just five minutes of describing what they did. “Novices, by contrast, were largely unaffected, and perhaps even helped a little, by verbally describing their movements. “It’s a fairly common wisdom in sport that thinking too much hurts performance; during a game it can be an obvious distraction. “However, what we found surprising is that simply describing one’s putting skill after it has been executed can be incredibly disruptive to future putting performance.” He said overthinking did not seem to affect novices because “they probably haven’t developed enough skills to forget in the first place” and claimed that top professionals would be less susceptible as they were very focused in their approach. The researchers think the loss of performance was due to an effect called verbal overshadowing, which makes the brain focus more on language centres rather than on brain systems that support the skills in question. The study, which also involved the University of Michigan, marks the first time researchers have claimed to demonstrate that verbal overshadowing can adversely affect motor skills. Prof Anderson said the findings may have consequences for people who take part in other sports. “This observation may have repercussions for athletes who depend on effective mental techniques to prepare for events,” he added. “Moreover, those who teach golf, or any motor skill, might be undoing their own talent in the process.”
Slow Starvation of Brain Triggers Alzheimer's
Saturday, January 10th, 2009posted: 24 December 2008 01:06 pm ET
A slow starvation of the brain over time is one of the major triggers of the biochemistry that causes some forms of Alzheimer’s, according to a new study that is helping to crack the mystery of the disease’s origins.
An estimated 10 million baby boomers will develop Alzheimer’s in their lifetime, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The disease usually begins after age 60, and risk rises with age. The direct and indirect cost of Alzheimer’s and other dementias is about $148 billion a year.
Robert Vassar of Northwestern University, the study’s lead author, found that when the brain doesn’t get enough of the simple sugar called glucose — as might occur when cardiovascular disease restricts blood flow in arteries to the brain — a process is launched that ultimately produces the sticky clumps of protein that appear to be a cause of Alzheimer’s.
Working with human and mice brains, Vassar discovered that a key brain protein is altered when the brain’s supply of energy drops. The altered protein, called eIF2alpha, increases the production of an enzyme that, in turn, flips a switch to produce the sticky protein clumps.
“This finding is significant because it suggests that improving blood flow to the brain might be an effective therapeutic approach to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s,” Vassar said.
The best ways to improve blood flow to the brain and thereby reduce the chances of getting Alzheimer’s is to reduce cholesterol intake, manage high blood pressure and exercise, especially entering mid-life.
“If people start early enough, maybe they can dodge the bullet,” Vassar said. For people who already have symptoms, vasodilators, which increase blood flow, may help the delivery of oxygen and glucose to the brain, he added. The study is published in the Dec. 26 issue of the journal Neuron.
No candy bars
When it comes to prevention of Alzheimer’s, eating candy bars is not the solution to improving the flow of blood glucose to the brain, Vassar told LiveScience.
A decreasing blood flow to the brain happens over time, as we age, and that slowly starves the brain of glucose. This could be a general aging phenomenon, or it could be that some individuals are particularly prone to it, Vassar said. Also, decreased blood flow is associated with atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and hypertension, or high blood pressure.
“We need to improve our cardiovascular health, not eat more sugar,” Vassar said. “What is coming out in terms of the epidemiological studies is that exercise during mid-life is one of the best prevention strategies for Alzheimer’s disease, so people should stay active physically, and they should watch their diets and reduce cholesterol intake, because cholesterol contributes to atherosclerosis, and that is true for the heart and the rest of the body as well as for the brain.”
Vassar said it also is possible that drugs could be designed to block the elF2alpha protein that begins the formation of the protein clumps, known as amyloid plaques.
Earlier Alzheimer’s findings
Ten years ago, Vassar discovered the enzyme, BACE1, that was responsible for making the sticky, fiber-like clumps of protein that form outside neurons and disrupt their ability to send messages.
But the cause of the high levels of the protein in people with the disease has been unknown. Vassar’s new study now shows that energy deprivation in the brain might be the trigger starting the process that forms plaques in Alzheimer’s.
Vassar said his work suggests that Alzheimer’s disease may result from a less severe type of energy deprivation than occurs in a stroke. Rather than dying, the brain cells react by increasing BACE1, which may be a protective response in the short term, but harmful in the long term.
“A stroke is a blockage that prevents blood flow and produces cell death in an acute, dramatic event,” Vassar said. “What we are talking about here is a slow, insidious process over many years where people have a low level of cardiovascular disease or atherosclerosis in the brain. It’s so mild, they don’t even notice it, but it has an effect over time because it’s producing a chronic reduction in the blood flow.”
Vassar said when people reach a certain age, some may get increased levels of the enzymes that cause a build-up of the plaques. “Then they start falling off the cliff,” he said.
London cabbies have bigger hippocampi
Monday, December 15th, 2008London cabbies’ brains grow on the job. According to studies by scientists at the University College London Institute of Neurology — the first published in the April 11, 2000, issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with follow-up research presented in 2006 and 2007 — these professional drivers have a larger posterior hippocampus, the brain region tied to learning and navigation.
Researchers credit complex daily tasks, such as navigating a labyrinth of 320 standard routes in a six-mile area, with increasing brain size. And functional MRI demonstrated that the longer on the job, the bigger the brain.
Still, there may be a price. As brain regions continually competed for space, the posterior hippocampus grew while the anterior hippocampus, which is associated with memory, decreased. “The brain has enormous plasticity,” says Edward Taub, PhD, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has studied neuroplasticity since the 1970s. “Every part of the brain is used. The more you use a function, it may be at the expense of another.”
As an outgrowth of the early taxi driver studies, U.S. scientists began exploring the effects of employing complicated navigational skills. At Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., scientists created the virtual taxicab video game to study the way brains work. As subjects play, they become increasingly proficient in navigating complex routes, which researchers believe is tied to building cognitive maps of the environment.
Additionally, German scientists reported in the June 2006 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience that the brains of German medical students, while studying for final exams, showed increases in the posterior hippocampus, similar to the London cabbie study. Three months later, according to MRI imaging, the hippocampus had returned to its former size.
New therapy for eating disorders
Monday, December 15th, 2008This article was taken from the AOL Health website, and is very similar to the approach to eating disorders that Cognitive Hypnotherapists such as myself have been adopting for a number of years. It’s good to see that there is more and more research to back up what we already know to be working.
New psychotherapy to help adults suffering from eating disorders
Eight out of 10 adults suffering from eating disorders could be helped by a new form of psychotherapy, according to research.
The new style of therapy has shown dramatic results in a seven-year research project carried out by an expert from Oxford University.
It focuses on helping people cope with their eating disorder by also tackling a range of common traits, such as low self-esteem and the quest for perfectionism.
The new treatment derives from an earlier form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for bulimia developed by Professor Christopher Fairburn, from the University of Oxford.
The new enhanced version is suitable for people with bulimia, who account for around 15% of eating disorder sufferers, but also those with “atypical” eating disorders, who account for around 60%.
These people may show traits of both anorexia and bulimia, including vomiting, bingeing, exercising too much, using laxatives or starving themselves. Anorexia sufferers are being examined in a separate study using the therapy.
The latest version of the treatment, called CBT-E, has two elements, with the first part focusing on the eating disorder itself and associated body image.
For example, a patient will be equipped with new coping mechanisms so they can stop checking themselves in mirrors or measuring and weighing themselves.
The second part of the treatment looks at tackling related issues, such as low self-esteem and perfectionism. Patients may be helped to adjust the standards they hold for themselves and others, or deal with changes in their mood.
The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, involved 154 people recruited from eating disorder units in Oxfordshire and Leicestershire.
Steps to a nimble mind: Physical and mental exercise help keep the brain fit
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
HEALTH & SCIENCE
Neuroscience is uncovering techniques to prevent cognitive decline.
By Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, AMNews correspondent. Nov. 17, 2008.
The brain — containing 100 billion neurons, 900 billion glial cells, 100 trillion branches and 1,000 trillion receptors — reacts to stimuli in a series of electrical bursts, spanning a complex map of connections. Whether calculating an algorithmic equation or learning the tango, our brain continuously changes in response to our ideas, actions and activities.
Each time a dance step is learned, for instance, new pathways are formed. “Dancing is excellent for the brain and body,” says Vincent Fortanasce, MD, clinical professor of neurology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He wrote the Anti-Alzheimer’s Prescription. “Not only are you moving around more, your brain is in constant motion as it recalls steps and movements.”
It’s an example that highlights a wave of new thinking about the importance of brain fitness.
Until recently, conventional wisdom held that our brains were intractable, hard-wired computers. What we were born with was all we got. Age wore down memory and the ability to understand, and few interventions could reverse this process. But increasingly, evidence suggests that physical and mental exercise can alter specific brain regions, making radical improvements in cognitive function. “When you challenge the brain with new skills and new ways of doing things, it increases connections in the brain,” says Ericka P. Simpson, MD, a neurologist who co-directs the MDA Neuromuscular Clinics and directs the ALS clinical research division at the Methodist Hospital System Neurological Institute in Houston. “It increases synaptic density.”
With nearly 72 million Americans turning 65 over the next two decades, physicians need the tools to handle growing patient concerns about how to best maintain brain health. Armed with this new brand of science, frontline physicians will be better equipped to address the needs of aging baby boomers, already in the throes of the brain fitness revolution. “They are the gatekeepers of information, and people listen,” says Eduardo Locatelli, MD, MPH, a neurologist and medical director of the Florida Neuroscience Center in Fort Lauderdale. Dr. Locatelli implements brain fitness techniques for his postsurgery epilepsy patients as well as patients who present with mild- to moderate-stage Alzheimer’s and dementia. “Encourage new experiences. … Use it or lose it. Challenge it and gain.”
The plastic brain
Within the brain, the pathways and regions that are most utilized generally grow and become stronger while other parts shrink. “The brain is very Darwinian, it’s survival of the fittest,” says Edward Taub, PhD, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who has researched neuroplasticity since the 1970s. “At one time it was believed we did not use 90% of our brain. That is false. The brain is a zero sum game. Every part of the brain is used. It has enormous plasticity.”
Thus, by challenging the brain and forcing the use of different pathways, brain maps can be altered. And such changes offer young and old — even brain-injured individuals — an opportunity to learn or re-learn things. “Vocabulary can increase into age 90,” says Gary J. Kennedy, MD, a professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also directs the geriatric psychiatry division at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. “As people age they may be slower, but they are capable of more and more complex projects.”
Brain volume shrinks up to 1% every year after age 65.
To best illustrate neuroplasticity, consider stroke patients with damaged limbs. Contrary to traditional therapy, which works to strengthen the good limb, Taub restrains the uncompromised limb, forcing patients to use the damaged arm or leg. The therapy, constraint-induced movement therapy, also known as CI therapy, helps to rewire the brain.
“The more you use it, more neurons are available … the more demand for cortical space and the more the patient is able to use the [damaged] arm,” Taub said. Over time, small steps lead to improvements in activities of daily living. Ultimately, the damaged limb, at least in part, recovers because, although the brain does not regrow damaged areas, it re-routes around them.
When the brains of CI patients were examined, a tremendous increase in grey matter was detected, and interestingly, Taub says, the healthy part of the brain was recruited for the task. Some of Taub’s research was published in the Nov. 1, 2006, Journal of the American Medical Association.
CI applications are now being explored for other forms of brain injury.
Young brains, old brains?
Mental agility begins declining around age 24, says Dr. Fortanasce. But there is a big difference between agility and capacity. “I may be slower, but what I know now far outweighs what I knew at 24,” he says. “Some individuals perform their greatest creative work in late life. Verdi, for example, composed Othello at 73 and Falstaff at 79.”
Greg Jicha, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, shares related stories, such as that of an 82-year-old who learned to play the trumpet. “I’ve heard people say, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’ That can’t be further from the truth,” says Dr. Jicha, who also heads the healthy brain aging research group at the university’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. “When you look at the plasticity of the adult brain, it is amazing.”
Mental agility, but not capacity, begins declining around age 24.
But age also brings anatomic changes. Brain weight and blood flow to the brain decrease by 20%. The number of fibers and nerves decrease by 37%. And brain volume shrinks up to 1% every year after age 65. Dr. Fortanasce also points to hormonal shifts, with the presence of dopamine and serotonin diminishing as cortisol, an aging hormone, increases. “Between age 20 and 70, we lose nearly 90% of youth hormones.”
So what keeps some brains younger than their chronology? Experts point to a prescription of neurobics. This concept includes life-long learning, trying new things, a healthy diet, social interactions, sleep and physical activity. “Exercise can actually increase neurogenesis and increase the size of the hippocampus,” says Dr. Fortanasce, who promotes isometrics and weight-bearing exercise. “Exercise also increases youth hormones. And novelty, doing new things, builds branches.”
In a 2006 study in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, Brandeis University researchers found that strength training increased the participants’ working memory span. The higher the level of resistance, the more memory improved, suggesting that strength training benefits not only the muscles but also the mind.
Dr. Locatelli suggests reversing daily patterns. People who take the same route to work every day need to push themselves beyond their comfort zones. A person can try to eat using his or her weaker hand, for instance. Or someone could listen to another type of music than the type usually favored. Activate unfamiliar areas of the brain, Dr. Locatelli says. The key is new places, socializing with different people, and reading new things.
And primary care physicians can help communicate this message.
“When a patient expresses concern about memory loss, never cast it off as associated with age,” says Tom Perls, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at Boston University Medical Center. Dr. Perls also heads the New England Centenarian Study. “This is an incredibly serious issue. Losing brain function is devastating.” Ask about memory. And rule out other conditions like depression or low thyroid first. “Encourage them to exercise the brain in novel and complex ways,” he says.
Exercising new connections
So what about dance steps? At McGill University in Montreal, researchers found that the tango may be better than walking for improving execution of complex tasks because it incorporates elements found in standard neurological rehabilitation programs. It’s also fun and social.
Participants, ages 62 to 90, were randomly assigned to a walking group or a tango dancing group, meeting two hours twice a week for 10 weeks. The tango group improved in balance, posture and motor coordination, as well as cognition.
Physical and mental exercise improve cognitive function.
According to new research published in the October issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, University College London scientists say complex brain processes that enable the memorization and replication of activities such as playing the piano or riding a bicycle require the execution of complicated sequences of movements involving dozens of muscles. According to their research, pianists who learned and practiced their art from an early age had elevated amounts of myelin. This finding suggests that when people learn new skills, myelination might occur. Earlier studies indicated that brains of patients diagnosed with senile dementia had lowered amounts of myelin.
The emphasis, though, is the importance of embracing the complex and novel. And Joe Hardy, PhD, a cognition neuroscientist who develops brain plasticity training programs, says some common-sense advice from physicians is not based on good evidence. “They often recommend doing crossword puzzles,” he says. “But evidence suggests that crossword puzzles are not helpful.”
Hardy has been developing brain games for the San Francisco-based company Posit Science. The games — the Brain Fitness Program and Insight — have been tested in several randomized clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health. The results indicate that the brain age clock can roll back 10 years. “The key thing in terms of exercise for the brain: You need to do new things, thus forming new paths,” he says.
Some have even compared this new era in brain health to the 1950s, when heart health came to the fore. “New things are coming out all the time, and we are going to see a revolution in brain health,” Hardy says. “I think this is going to change the way people age.”
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Increasing cognitive reserve
Who will live to be 100?
In a bit of fortune-telling fun, a series of lifestyle-related questions might offer a calculated prediction. The Life Expectancy Calculator can help patients find out how they rate right now and how changes in diet, exercise or sleep patterns might add years to the forecast. The calculator is available online (www.livingto100.com). This tool was created by Tom Perls, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at Boston University Medical Center, who heads the New England Centenarian Study.
A related and very important question is whether your patients’ brains — or maybe your own — will stay young as bodies age.
According to Dr. Perls, building cognitive reserve delays the onset of memory loss, and research suggests that novel and complex brain activities can delay cognitive decline and extend lifespan. “There’s a natural tendency to lose muscle as we age,” he says, and by building cognitive reserve, people are exercising their temporal lobes as they would their quads.
Dr. Perls has categorized a series of games based on cognitive function, available online (fun.eons.com/brain_games). For instance, stimulating areas in the temporal and frontal lobes with games that focus on recall and retention of past and present information targets memory. For language, focus on the parietal lobe with word-building games that prompt production and understanding of spoken and written communication. Exercising the frontal lobe can be done with problem-solving puzzles and strategy games in which players control and apply mental skills.
For motor function, engage the parietal lobe edge with navigation-type games that encourage body movement through the interaction of the brain, nerves and muscles. For visual-spatial skills, stimulate the occipital and temporal lobes. Games involving discrimination, perception, attention and tracking objects visually can achieve this goal.
10 Ways to Exercise Your Brain Healthy
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008The more you use it, the more you can use it. New learning causes new connections in the brain.
By Daniel G. Amen M.D.
Date: January 01, 2005
Published in: Amen Clinics Inc.
Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you can use it. New learning causes new connections in the brain. No learning causes the brain to start disconnecting itself. No matter what your age, mental exercise has a global, positive effect on the brain. Here are ten tips for mental workouts.
- Dedicate yourself to new learning. Put 15 minutes in your day to learn something new. Einstein said that if anyone spends 15 minutes a day learning something new in a year he will be an expert. As in school or business, commitment is critical to achieving greatness or great brains.
- Take a class about something new and interesting. In many areas of the country community colleges or groups such as the Learning Annex (www.learningannex.com) offer low cost classes on a wide variety of subjects. Attend a new class on a subject totally unrelated to your day-to-day life. It is important to challenge your brain to learn new and novel things, especially processes that you’ve never done before. Examples include square-dancing (great exercise), chess, tai chi, yoga, or sculpture. Working with modeling clay or Playdough can be good for children or adults to help them grow new connections. It helps develop agility and hand-brain coordination.
- Cross train at work. Learn someone else’s job. Maybe even switch jobs for several weeks. This benefits the business and employees alike, as both workers will have new skills and better brain function. For example, in a grocery store employees can be taught to work as check out clerks, stock shelves, order products, and alternately work in the produce, grocery and dairy sections of the store.
- Improve your skill at things you already do. Some repetitive mental stimulation is ok as long as you look to expand your skills and knowledge base. Common activities such as gardening, sewing, playing bridge, reading, painting, and doing crossword puzzles have value, but push yourself to do different gardening techniques, more complex sewing patterns, play bridge against more talented players to increase your skill, read new authors on varied subjects, learn a new painting technique, and work harder crossword puzzles. Pushing your brain to new heights help to keep it healthy.
- Limit television for kids and adults. In a study published in the journal Pediatrics it was reported that for every hour a day children watch TV there is a 10% increased chance of them being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD). This means if the child watches five hours a day they have a 50% chance of being diagnosed with ADD. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry children spend three to four hours a day watching TV. In another study, and several others like it, television watching in children put them at risk for problems as adults that also affect brain health. Dr. R.J. Hancox and colleagues from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine in Dunedin, New Zealand assessed approximately 1000 children born in 1972-73 at regular intervals up to age 26. They found that there was a significant association between higher body-mass indices, lower physical fitness, increased cigarette smoking and raised serum cholesterol. These are all factors that are involved in brain illnesses, such as strokes or Alzheimer’s Disease. In yet another study adults who watched two or more hours a day of TV had a significantly higher risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. Watching TV is usually a no brain activity. To be fair, these studies did not specify if watching programs that teach you something had the same effect as situation comedies or sports. I suspect that no-brain TV shows are the problem.
- Limit video games. As a father of three children and a child psychiatrist I have thought a lot about video games over the past 15 years. At first, I found them great fun to play. Then I started to worry. Action video games have been studied using brain imaging techniques that look at blood flow and activity patterns. Video games have been found to work in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, one of the pleasure centers in the brain (WW). In fact, this is the same part of the brain that lights up when we inject a person with cocaine. My experience with patients and one of my own children is that they tend to get hooked on the games and play so much that it can deteriorate their school work, work and social time, a bit like a drug. Some children and adults actually get hooked on them.I recently had an experience that highlights how important TV and video games are to mental health problems. Joshua, a twelve year old boy, had been seeing me for several years for aggression, oppositional behavior, moodiness and school failure. It took me quite a while to get him stabilized, but with parent training, psychotherapy and some supplements he was doing great! Then he went to stay with his dad for 3 weeks and he totally relapsed (his father let him watch all the TV and play all the video games he wanted). Joshua reverted back to his nasty behavior and actually started to pull out his own hair (a sign of anxiety and compulsiveness). When we stopped both TV and video games he quickly improved.
- Join a reading group that keeps you accountable to new learning. Almost any mental activity you enjoy can be used to protect your brain. The essential requirement is that it activates several different brain areas, one of which should be the hippocampus (in the temporal lobes), which stores new information for retrieval later on. By recalling information (using your hippocampus) you are protecting your brain’s memory centers. In essence, as long as you learn something new about your favorite activity, and work to recall it later for discussions, you are protecting short-term memory. Given this information, it is better to join a reading group, where you are pushed to remember what you read for later discussion, rather than to read novels or newspapers that you just forget.
- Practice well what you are learning. The brain does not interpret what you feed into it; it simply translates it. When learning to play the piano, the brain doesn’t care if you are becoming a great piano player or a terrible piano player. Consequently, if you repeat imperfect fingering, you will become very good at playing imperfectly. If you are training yourself to be a perfect pianist it is essential that you practice perfectly and not learn bad habits or sloppy fingering of the keys. To play well it is helpful to work with a professional who can correct your mistakes. Your brain doesn’t care what you give it, so if you care whether you do something well or badly, you must be certain that you are giving your brain the right training. This is the reason why it is essential that children have good teachers who watch and monitor their progress and why we need to have effective training programs in the workplace. Teaching someone to do something well at the start prevents them from developing bad habits, which get solidified in the brain and are subsequently hard to retrain. I was once a consultant to a large medical practice that had significant employee turn over problems. As I investigated the problem I discovered that the office manager was poorly trained and had little social skill. She was rude and inappropriate with patients and she subsequently modeled that behavior to the front office staff. She was resistant to retraining (a cingulate gyrus that likely worked too hard) and ultimately she needed to be replaced. Effective initial training in the workplace and in school is essential to developing effective, happy employees and student. We do not just train people, we train brains.
- Break the routine of your life to stimulate new parts of the brain. Do the opposite of what feels natural to activate the other side of your brain to gain access to both hemispheres. Write with your other hand, shoot basketballs with both hands, hit baseballs left handed (if you are right handed), play table tennis left handed, shoot a rifle sighting with your other eye, use the mouse with your other hand — make your brain feel uncomfortable. In essence, break the patterned routine in your life to challenge your brain to make new connections.
- Treat learning problems to help kids and adults stay in school. Numerous studies show that better-educated people have less risk of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline. Millions of children, teens and adults suffer from ADD and learning problems that cause them to struggle in school or with learning despite having normal or even high intelligence. Recognizing these problems and getting them the help they need is essential to making “lifelong learning” a reality. You can take an online test for ADD at www.amenclinic.com.Think of mental exercise as important as diet and physical exercise for keeping both you body and brain strong.
From the website of Daniel G. Amen M.D. See this and more at www.brainplace.com