playthink

So. Much. Good. Stuff.

*** “Can We Play?,” by Dr. David Elkind and published on the SharpBrains blog, is a summary of the “research [that] confirms the value of play.” It makes for an interesting, science-rooted companion to a book that deserves a deep and thorough re-read every year, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, by Thomist philosopher and Christian theologian Josef Pieper, who makes a compelling case that purposeless activity is the most purposeful activity that we can and should engage in!

*** What is the best way to boost cognitive functioning? By exercising the body or by exercising the mind? What about the use of nutrition supplements and the practice of meditation? Jeremy at PsyBlog explores these questions in, Brain Health: Physical or Mental Exercise?, also republished on the SharpBrains blog. (If you regularly peruse only one or two sites about the brain sciences, SharpBrains is the best.)

*** Light reading: Boris Johnson, the recently-elected Mayor of London, analogizes bike riding with and without a helmet to the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” sharp elbow game of politics in Get a bike helmet to get ahead - or maybe not, an opinion piece in Britain’s Daily Telegraph.

*** To listen to: NPR’s Talk of the Nation has an audio archive of today’s discussion with Alan Schwartz of the NYT about his front-page profile of Kendall Bailey, a “6-foot-6-inch 19 year-old”  diagnosed with cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and autism, but who also happens to be one the fastest disabled swimmers in the world. Kendall is so fast that he is favored to win gold, if not set a world record in the breastroke, at this summer’s 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. That is, if he is allowed to compete. Officials of the event have been slow to confirm whether Kendall, because of his intellectual and mental handicaps, would be allowed to compete alongside physically disabled athletes. The politics of sport and the heart of a champion. Read Schwartz’s article here.

*** Another provocative read: This story about how the government of Japan is responding to its own national obesity epidemic (it seems everyone, everywhere — not just those of us in the U.S. — is getting fatter) by imposing limits to the size of its citizens’ bellies. (!) If you are a male, it is against the law for your waist to exceed 33.5 inches; for women, the government says your waist can be no bigger than 35.4 inches. If you eat too much and are too plump around the mid-section, you can be fined and forced to attend health education courses. Too much government intervention, or a necessary public policy?

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

I read an interesting little blurb by Leah Garchik in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle about the programming at the Equal Justice Society luncheon:

Neurobiologist Maninder Kahlon described how the brain works and how biology can result in the formation of biased notions. Here is your workbook today: [Click here* to] take the Stroop test. This involves forcing one’s brain to use its power of observation rather than relying on habits of perception. It’s an astounding experiment that demonstrates only a fraction of what humans are up against when they try to change preconceived notions.

*Note, the link in the above excerpt requires you to have Shockwave software downloaded on your computer to take the Stroop test. If you do not have the Shockwave plug-in, PBS’s awesome scientific program, Nova, has a “non-Shockwave demonstration of the Stroop effect” available here.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

“My Amygdala, My Self,” by Jeffrey Goldberg, is a fun and fascinating article in this summer’s Ideas Issue of The Atlantic:

Intrigued (and alarmed) by the new science of “neuromarketing,” our correspondent peers into his own brain via an MRI machine and learns what he really thinks about Jimmy Carter, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bruce Springsteen, and Eddie Falco.

Article.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

Some of the better recent resources related to the brain sciences…

• From the Society for Neuroscience, a free downloadable “64-page primer on the brain and nervous system.”

• The TImes of London, voted the best news website of the year, has a great interactive gallery of brain training resources and puzzles at Surprise Yourself.

• Sharon Begley’s article for Newsweek, The Lotus and the Synapse, makes accessible recent research that shows how compassion mediation can actually change the structure of the brain. The paper that inspired Begley’s article, Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise, was published in the journal Public Library of Science One (PLoS ONE). A quick overview of the research project and its findings is provided by the University of Wisconsin.

• As part of its Author Speaker Series, the fantastic people over at SharpBrains (my favorite resource for brain science news and information) invited John Medina, biologist and author of the new book Brain Rules, to provide a “good, non-technical, summary of the implications of recent brain science in our daily lives.” Check out the post at Brain Rules: science and practice. 

In the Mind Matters section of Newsweek’s online health section, Wray Herbert authored an interesting article that introduces executive function (EF) “an emerging concept in student assessment and could eventually displace traditional measures of ability and achievement.”

In EF: The School Skill That Matter More than IQ, Herbert writes:

EF comprises not only effortful control and cognitive focus but also working memory and mental flexibility—the ability to adjust to change, to think outside the box. These are the uniquely human skills that, taken together, allow us keep our more impulsive and distractible brain in check. New research shows that EF, more than IQ, leads to success in basic academics like arithmetic and grammar. It also suggests that we can pump up these EF skills with regular exercise, just as we do with muscles.

Lynn Meltzer is the editor of Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, a compilation of rich essays that explores the science of, and curriculum for implementing, high-order thinking.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood 

Big news today. Best to go straight to the Reuters article:

A computer has been trained to “read” people’s minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers from the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University announced today.

They hope their study, published in the journal Science, might lead to better understanding of how and where the brain stores information.

How’s it work? Volunteers were asked to think of 58 different words while researchers recorded their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The researchers were able to create an “average image” of each word based on the brain activity of each volunteer.

The computer was then trained to recognize the “subtle differences” among the brain images that corresponded to one of the 58 words.

Then the computer was given two new words that it had not yet seen — celery and airplane – and “was asked to choose which brain image corresponded with which word.” 

By comparing the new brain images to the brain images of the 58 words that the computer did know,

The computer passed the test, predicting when a brain image was taken when a person thought about the word “celery” and when the assigned word was “airplane.”

Researchers hope their work “might lead to better treatments for language disorders and learning disabilities.”

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J.R. Atwood 

Monkeys… Sitting in a chair… Using an arm-like machine to grab marshmallows… And controlling this machine with their brains.

Seriously.

Scientists have made a quantum-leap in brain-machine interface technology, according to a new article in the the journal Nature. In “Cortical control of a prosthetic arm for self-feeding,” researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University built an arm-like machine, complete with “shoulder joints, an elbow and a grasping claw with two mechanical fingers” and then gave two macaques joysticks that could control the mechanical arm.

Then, as explained by Benedict Carey, in a great article for the International Herald Tribune:

Just beneath the monkeys’ skulls, the scientists implanted a grid about the size of a large freckle. It sat on the motor cortex, over a patch of cells known to signal arm and hand movements. The grid held 100 tiny electrodes, each connecting to a single neuron, its wires running out of the brain and to a computer.

The computer was programmed to analyze the collective firing of these 100 motor neurons, translate that sum into an electronic command and send it instantaneously to the arm, which was mounted flush with the left shoulder.

The scientists used the computer to help the monkeys move the arm at first, essentially teaching them with biofeedback.

After several days, the monkeys needed no help. They sat stationary in a chair, repeatedly manipulating the arm with their brain to reach out and grab grapes, marshmallows and other nuggets dangled in front of them. The snacks reached the mouths about two-thirds of the time — an impressive rate, compared with earlier work.

The monkeys learned to hold the grip open on approaching the food, close it just enough to hold the food and gradually loosen the grip when feeding.

On several occasions, a monkey kept its claw open on the way back, with the food stuck to one finger. At other times, a monkey moved the arm to lick the fingers clean or to push a bit of food into its mouth while ignoring a newly presented morsel.

The animals were apparently freelancing, discovering new uses for the arm, showing “displays of embodiment that would never be seen in a virtual environment,” the researchers wrote.

This is radical research, leading to technology that will “allow people with spinal cord injuries and other paralyzing conditions to gain more control over their lives. Brain-controlled prosthetics are technically within reach.”

Click here to view a video of a monkey controlling a robot arm with using its brain activity.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood 

From researchers at Princeton University: Running by yourself could be bad for your brain. Or at least, not as good as running with a group.

According to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience, as reported by the BBC, exercise can have “negative effects on activity in the brain… Running is known to increase levels of stress hormone corticosterone, which can reduce the creation of new brain cells - a process known as neurogenesis.”

But wait, right?! Isn’t exercise good for the brain? Doesn’t physical activity promote neurogenesis?

Here’s where things can get a bit complicated.

Yes, exercise “has been found to increase spatial awareness and to boost communication between neurons.”

But… Only (or at least, especially) if exercise is done with others. Or if done for a really long time. Here’s the rundown on this study (no pun intended):

The researchers at Princeton looked at rats that ran in groups and rats that ran in social isolation. In both groups, “running caused similar elevations of the stress hormone, which can impair neuron generation.”

However, “running was found to increase neuron generation when rats were housed in groups. In rats that ran in social isolation, neurogenesis was suppressed.”

So even though running increased stress on the brain, which can impair neuron generation, group running “increase[d] spatial awareness and boost[ed] communication between neurons.” Running is stressful for the brain, but the social aspect of group running produced more good things for the brain than it hurts.

The rats that ran in isolation, however, experienced no such gain. “Only animals that ran alone were vulnerable to its negative influence. They also had higher levels of the hormone compared to group runners.”

So running alone could be bad for the brain. Unless…

Unless you go for a really long run. “When isolated rats ran for a long time, they did see the same benefits as their short-term runner peers [who ran in groups] - but only when they had been running for a much longer period.”

The Princeton research team was led by Dr. Elizabeth Gould. In their article, “Social isolation delays the positive effects of running on adult neurogenesis” (aka “The Stress of Running Alone” article), in the journal Nature Neuroscience, she explained, “In the absence of social interaction, a normally beneficial experience can exert a potentially deleterious influence on the brain.”

So what to do? Grab a friend and hit the trails. Or, if going solo, go long. Real long.

Fascinating research. It’s enough to make you…

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

In my very first post on this blog, I referenced a book called Spark, the most successful and accessible mass-market publication that explains the science of, and relationship between, physical exercise and overall mental health.

John Ratey, the book’s author and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says “[I] cannot underestimate how important regular exercise is in improving the function and performance of the brain. … Exercise stimulates our gray matter to produce Miracle-Gro for the brain. It’s such a wonderful medicine.”

The more rigorous the physical exercise, the better it is for your brain. But as noted in “Train Your Brain: Can Jogging Make You Smarter?“, an article by Simon Usborne in The Independent (UK), “Even regular brisk walks can books memory, alleviate stress, enhance intelligence, and allay aggression.”

The short article provides a fantastic CliffsNotes summary of Spark. Some excerpts:

Happiness

Evidence suggests that pounding the pavement can change the way our brains work to make us happier, or even stave off depression. “Exercise is as good as any anti-depressant I know,” Ratey claims.

Last December, scientists from Yale University wrote in the journal Nature Medicine that regular exertion affects the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for mood. Tests on mice showed that exercise activated a gene there called VGF, which is linked to a “growth factor” chemical involved in the development of new nerve cells. Tests show that this brain activation lifts a person’s mood.

Participants in one recent German survey were asked to walk quickly on a treadmill for 30 minutes a day over a 10-day period. At the end of the experiment, researchers recorded a significant drop in depression scores

Stress

We respond to stress in the same way our ancestors did – by adopting a “fight or flight” response. Adrenalin and other hormones are released into our bloodstreams and our muscles are primed for response. The problem is that, these days, stress is more likely to be brought on by a tricky PowerPoint presentation or a job interview than an attack by marauding lions, so the toxins that build up for a physical response have no outlet.

The results can be good; the cardiovascular system is accelerated and we can work harder (for a while, at least), but others are not so good; stress slows down the gastrointestinal system and reduces appetite, and can overexcite the brain, fuzzing our thought.

By responding to or anticipating stress with fight (kickboxing or judo, say) or flight (30 minutes on the treadmill, say, or 50 lengths of the pool), blood flow to the brain is increased, allowing the body to purge the potentially toxic by-products of stress.

According to Ratey, exercise also helps in the long term. “It builds up armies of antioxidants such as Vitamins E and C,” he says. “These help brain cells protect us from future stress.

Intelligence

Says Ratey, “Exercise doesn’t make you smarter, but what it does do is optimise the brain for learning.”

Physical activity boosts the flow of blood to the part of the brain that is responsible for memory and learning, promoting the production of new brain cells. Several schools in the US and the Netherlands have taken note. Pupils at Naperville Central High School near Chicago, for example, start the day with a fitness class they call “Zero Hour PE”. Equipped with heart monitors, they run laps of the playground, and teachers say exam results have soared since the keep-fit initiative kicked off.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, a test involving 241 people, aged 15-71, compared physical activity with the results of cognitive tasks. The researchers documented improved results among people who were more active, especially those in younger age groups.

Yet more research suggests that exercise boosts intelligence in the very, very young. Experiments on rats at the Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine in Berlin showed that baby rats born to mothers who were more active during pregnancy had 40 per cent more cells in the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for intelligence.

Aggression

“People assume exercise reduces aggression by burning energy. In fact, exercise changes your brain so you don’t feel aggressive in the first place,” says Ratey.

The frontal cortex is the part of the brain that decides whether you throw a punch or take something on the chin. Reduced activity in the region can result in an inability to control violent urges. “This area makes us evaluate the consequences of our actions,” Ratey says. Exercise increases activity in that area, boosting rational thought, which makes us less likely to lash out.

Memory

“When we’re exercising, we’re using nerve cells in the brain which help build up what I call brain fertilizer,” Ratey says. He is talking about new research that suggests exercise increases blood flow to the part of the brain responsible for memory, and improves its function.

In MRI scans on mice, conducted last year by neurologists at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, the animals were shown to grow new brain cells in the dentate gyrus, which is affected in age-related memory decline.

“Exercise does more than anything we know of to boost memory.”

Addiction

Research by British scientists suggests that as little as five minutes of brisk walking can reduce the intensity of nicotine withdrawal symptoms. In the tests, researchers asked participants to rate their need for a cigarette after various types of physical exertion. Those who had exercised reported a reduced desire to smoke. “If we found the same effects in a drug, it would immediately be sold as an aid to help people quit smoking,” Adrian Taylor, the study’s lead author at the University of Exeter, said last year.

The principle is that exercise can stimulate production of the mood-enhancing hormone dopamine, which can, in turn, reduce smokers’ dependence on nicotine. “Dopamine works by replacing or satisfying the need for nicotine,” Ratey explains

So how much does one have to exercise to realize these results?

In Spark, Ratey advocates that we invest as much time and effort as we reasonably can afford into exercising. But as noted in the article, “You don’t have to become a marathon runner to benefit your brain. The mainstay of exercise is simple, brisk walking.”

Especially beneficial is interval training - “really pushing yourself for between 20 and 30 seconds so that you are momentarily exhausted.” Thirty seconds of sprinting, for example, sandwiched between two minutes of walking, for a total of 20-30 minutes, four-to-five times a day, will radically boost your brain power.

“The side effects on the body aren’t bad either - I lost 10 pounds in no time,” Professor Ratey says.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

From a recent survey published by the journal Nature:

Twenty percent of scientists admit to using performance-enhancing prescription drugs for non-medical reasons. The overwhelming majority of these med-taking brainiacs said they indulged in order to “improve concentration,” and 60 percent said they did so on a daily or weekly basis.

It’s a funny story, kind of. And a sad story, definitely. It’s certainly a concerning story that illustrates a tragic symptom — and cause — of our me-first-gotta-get-ahead-now culture.

The survey reveals that of the 1,400+ scientists who participated in the survey (most of whom live in the United States), “more than a third [!] said that they would feel pressure to give their children such drugs if they knew other kids at school were also taking them.”

Almost 70 percent “said they would be willing to risk mild side effects in order to ‘boost your brain power’ by taking cognitive-enhancing drugs.”

As the boundary between treating illness and enhancing wellbeing continues to blur, taking performance-boosting products continues to gain in cultural acceptance.

“Like the rise in cosmetic surgery, use of cognitive enhancers is likely to increase as bioethical and psychological concerns are overcome,” opined Nature in a commentary.

In the survey, 80 percent of all the scientists — even those who did not use these drugs — defended the right of “healthy humans” to take them as work boosters, and more than half said their use should not be restricted, even for university entrance exams.

More than 57 percent of the respondents were 35 years old or younger.

Was it utterly naive of me to expect that professional academics and researchers would think differently, and act differently, than professional athletes when presented with the opportunity to cut-corners by engaging in substance abuse?

Play, think..
J.R. Atwood