playthink

I just returned home after a week of high-altitude livin’ in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Two great runs bookended my trip: On day one of my vacation in Jackson, I went for a light and easy morning jog to stretch my legs. Twenty minutes into my jaunt through the neighboring community of Wilson (population: 1,300; elevation: 6,100 feet), I looked up at Teton Pass, the mountain road that climbs 2,200 vertical feet at grades of up to 10 percent and cuts through the rugged range that divides the Equality State from the Gem State, and was overwhelmed with a curiosity to run to the top. (In summers past I have busted my quads riding to the summit.) A breathtaking view of the valley floor from an elevation of 8,400 feet was my reward. Incredible.

This run was just a warm-up for when I would play King of the Mountain(s) at the end of my vacation. Starting from Teton Village (elevation: 6,300 feet) at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, I darted up a trail that wraps its way to the top of Apres Vous Mountain (8,500 feet), then crossed over and trekked up to the tippity snow-capped top of Rendezvous Mountain (10,500 feet), and then descended just a wee-bit to Gondola Summit (9,000 feet). This epic trail run sometimes seemed like a Sisyphian challenge (especially the trudge up the steep, slippery, and bowl-shaped Sublette chutte), but was ultimately — because of the difficulty of the trek, the views afforded from the mountain peaks, the wildlife that I found myself surrounded by, and the quiet solitude of such an adventure  — the highlight of my trip.

Having just returned home, I want to share some noteworthy news items from the past week that I am just now having a chance to catch-up on:

** Philosophy Talk, one of my favorite local radio programs, gets some much deserved recognition, courtesy of the L.A. Times article, Yeah, these philosophy professors will give it some thought. “Thank you for thinking.”

** Gretchen Reynolds of the NYT highlights an important and oft overlooked concern about the health of endurance athletes: The sometimes obsessive weight iusses of male and female athletes:

In [a] study published earlier this year in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, 223 Swedish Olympians (125 men and 98 women) were weighed, measured and asked about their eating habits. The thinner athletes, many of them from endurance sports, reported more episodes of wild weight swings and eating disorders than other athletes. Even more startling was that the eating and weight problems were most common among the thin male athletes. The women didn’t worry about their weight nearly as much. In fact, according to Dr. Hagmar Magnus, a physician at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and the study’s lead author, “the female Olympians ate a lot and planned meals well. The men didn’t.”

Magnus says the lessons of the study are broad. For one, “we’ve all been paying a great deal of attention to female athletes, trying to help them avoid eating disorders,” he says. “We need to start doing that for men.”

In addition, “the best female athletes in Sweden eat quite well, which suggests that good eating is a real competitive advantage,” Magnus says. “As a physician, I see many female athletes, not quite so elite, who have eating problems. That may be what has kept them from the top ranks. I’d love to get the message to them, you can eat your way to greatness.”

** Walking book clubs?! Exercise the mind and the body to maximize cognitive and bodily health, says Dr. Arthur Kramer, Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at the University of Illinois, in this interview with Alvaro Fernandez of SharpBrains.

** And follow-this up with another fascinating AF/SharpBrains discussion about why and how smart people do really dumb things, like the Harvard students who paid $204 for a $20 bill. Wha?! Ori Brafman, co-author of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, explains “the different hidden forces” and “psychological undercurrents” of our decision making processes here.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

It reads like the voice-over script for a doomsday-is-eminent-until-Will-Smith-saves-humanity Hollywood produced summer blockbuster:

Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis.

It is a crisis that would threaten long-held notions of who we are, what we do and how we behave. It goes right to the heart - or the head - of us all.

This crisis could reshape how we interact with each other, alter what makes us happy, and modify our capacity for reaching our full potential as individuals.

And it’s caused by one simple fact: the human brain, that most sensitive of organs, is under threat from the modern world.

So when does the movie come out? I’m hooked!

Uh, not so fast.

This is the intro to recent article by Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist and researcher at Oxford University. In “The REAL Brain Drain: Modern technology is changing the way our brains work,” published by the UK’s Daily Mail, Greenfield provides a crash-course about the science of brain plasticity; poses some important ethical questions about the technical and medical advances that allow us to perfect our psychological, genetic, and physical make-up; and ruminates about the unintended consequences of a hyper digital world on our neurological functioning.

Our brains are under the influence of an ever- expanding world of new technology: multichannel television, video games, MP3 players, the internet, wireless networks, Bluetooth links - the list goes on and on.

But our modern brains are also having to adapt to other 21st century intrusions, some of which, such as prescribed drugs like Ritalin and Prozac, are supposed to be of benefit, and some of which, such as widely available illegal drugs like cannabis and heroin, are not.

Electronic devices and pharmaceutical drugs all have an impact on the micro- cellular structure and complex biochemistry of our brains. And that, in turn, affects our personality, our behaviour and our characteristics. In short, the modern world could well be altering our human identity.

Nothing less than our unique self-identities are under threat, says Dr. Greenfield

Her article is a rich and thoughtful written “what if” inquiry about science, technology, psychology, society, and identity. In addition to questions about the search for value and meaning in our hedonistic culture, Dr. Greenfield warns us not to be surprised when the effects of violent video games literally reshape the brains of the younger “games-driven generation.”

Coinciding with the moment when technology and pharmaceutical companies are finding ever more ways to have a direct influence on the human brain, pleasure is becoming the sole be-all and end-all of many lives, especially among the young.

We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment, and are in distinct danger of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the real world.

Throw in circumstantial evidence that links a sharp rise in diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and the associated three-fold increase in Ritalin prescriptions over the past ten years with the boom in computer games and you have an immensely worrying scenario.

We are not doomed to become vapid body sacks, however, absent of any original thought, emotion, spirit, soul, meaning, purpose, or passion. More human than human is not (yet) our collective motto. There are significant reasons to worry about the way scientific, medical, and technological stimuli mold our brains, but so long as we are aware of these concerns and engage in the ethical and moral debates surrounding progress in these fields, Dr. Greenfield is hopeful about our individual and collective futures.

I think it possible that we might one day be able to harness outside stimuli in such a way that creativity - surely the ultimate expression of individuality - is actually boosted rather than diminished.

I am optimistic and excited by what future research will reveal into the workings of the human brain, and the extraordinary process by which it is translated into a uniquely individual mind.

For now, though, it’s probably best to drop the video-game controller and head towards the public library to reserve a copy of Dr. Greenfield’s soon-to-be-published book, ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century. Leave your iPod at home.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

Fluid intelligence (abbreviated Gf) is the ability to understand novel situations and to solve otherwise new-to-you problems by drawing relationships from concepts. In short, it is abstract reasoning — the ability to think and to do without relying on past experience.

Until recently, many psychologists believed that fluid intelligence was a genetic trait. Everyone has some level of fluid intelligence, but just how much is pre-determined by one’s biology.

A fascinating new study, however, hints at the promise that we can increase our fluid intelligence.

Published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), “Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory,” is an article that: (1) explores the relationship between working memory and Gf, and (2) details how improving working memory can increase one’s fluid intelligence.

(What is working memory? Good question. It’s a kind of short-term memory process that allows for the temporary storing and manipulation of information. Just how short-term? Think seconds-long. For example, it’s the kind of memory we use when asking a gas station attendant for directions. We remember “turn left at the third light, stay straight for two blocks, then make a right at the intersection of Jones and Geary” just long enough to process it. But these details do not enter our long-term memory.)

The NYT has a great summary of this exciting research. In “Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower,” Nicholas Bakalar summarizes and offers highlights from the NPAS journal article:

First they measured the fluid intelligence of four groups of volunteers using standard tests. Then they trained each in a complicated memory task, an elaborate variation on Concentration, the child’s card game, in which they memorized simultaneously presented auditory and visual stimuli that they had to recall later.

The game was set up so that as the participants succeeded, the tasks became harder, and as they failed, the tasks became easier. This assured a high level of difficulty, adjusted individually for each participant, but not so high as to destroy motivation to keep working. The four groups underwent a half-hour of training daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days, respectively. At the end of each training, researchers tested the participants’ fluid intelligence again. To make sure they were not just improving their test-taking skills, the researchers compared them with control groups that took the tests without the training.

The results were striking. Although the control groups also made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, improvement in the trained groups was substantially greater. Moreover, the longer they trained, the higher their scores were. All performers, from the weakest to the strongest, showed significant improvement.

“Intelligence has always been considered principally an immutable inherited trait,” said Susanne M. Jaeggi, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the paper. “Our results show you can increase your intelligence with appropriate training.”

Why did the training work? The authors suggest several aspects of the exercise relevant to solving new problems: ignoring irrelevant items, monitoring ongoing performance, managing two tasks simultaneously and connecting related items to one another in space and time.

This is the abstract from the NPAS journal article:

Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory
Susanne M. Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Walter J. Perrig

Abstract

Fluid intelligence (Gf) refers to the ability to reason and to solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge. Gf is critical for a wide variety of cognitive tasks, and it is considered one of the most important factors in learning. Moreover, Gf is closely related to professional and education success, especially in complex and demanding environments. Although performance on tests of Gf can be improved through direct practice on the tests themselves, there is no evidence that training on any other regiment yields increased Gf in adults. Furthermore, there is a long history of research into cognitive training showing that, although performance in trained tasks can increase dramatically, transfer of this learning to other tasks remains poor. Here, we present evidence for transfer from training on a demanding working memory task to measures of Gf. This transfer results even though the trained task is entirely different from the intelligence test itself. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the extent of gain in intelligence critically depends on the amount of training: the more training, the more improvement in Gf. That is, the training effect is dosage-dependent. Thus, in contrast to many previous studies, we conclude that it is possible to improve Gf without practicing the testing tasks themselves, opening a wide range of applications.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

In doing a bit of research around the ideas discussed in the book The Agony of Victory (of which I wrote a brief post about a few days ago), I stumbled upon a short ABC News article that provided an elementary sketch of the science and psychology of pain, with a bit of attention given to the idea of pain in sport:

The article introduced me to the gate theory of pain management, developed in the 1960s by Ronald Melzack and Patrick David Wall.

As explained at spine-health.com, the “scientific beauty” of the gate control theory is that it provided “a physiological basis for the complex phenomenon of pain”:

Is the mind enough to close those gates of pain?

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

More fascinating mind-over-body literature…

“I’m Not Really Running, I’m Not Really Running…,” is an awesome New York Times article that explores the phenomenon of pseudo-maximum performance. This is a fancy way of saying, “No matter how high you jump, how fast you run or swim, how powerfully you row, you can do better. But sometimes your mind gets in the way.”

Dissociation is the mental act of separating one’s self/mind from the physical experience. It can be achieved by deliberately zoning out. Or by engaging in active meditation, such as repeating phrases, concentrating on repeated motions, and settling into a rhythmic breathing pattern.

The volume of our training, the quality of our workouts, and our physiological aerobic capacity help to determine our perceived limits of performance. But it is our mindset that determines whether we will be hamstring by such a preconception or if we will triumph beyond boundaries of perceived physical possibility.

For more mental discipline exercises and techniques, check out the NYT’s complementary article “How to Boost Your Willpower.”

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

A while back I came across Newsweek’s Fast Chat with Steve Friedman, author of the book The Agony of Victory.

Spark is the name of a new book by John Ratey that explains, in part, how exercise helps to alleviate stress and improve mood.

Another book extolling the virtues of exercise? Ugh! It’s like reading a book that says eating a balanced, healthy diet will improve your health. Yeah, we know — exercise is good!

That’s exactly what I thought. But the subtitle intrigued me: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain. Hmmm…

And John Ratey (the author — if you forgot, you might want to lace up those running shoes; exercise helps to improve memory) is a clinical associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and the author of multiple books about the brain.

So I picked-up a copy and have been unable to put it down since. It is nothing short of a wonderful — and accessible — chronicle about the science of, and relationships among, exercise, fitness, neurogenesis, cognitive functioning, and general health and happiness.

I will be sharing some the stories and data from Spark in future posts, no doubt, and kick-off this little new blog with the opening quote of the book:

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection. —Plato

Let’s collapse the distinction between mind and body.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood