Dana Foundation Blog

Immunization for Alzheimer's disease?

2010-08-31T10:27:19-04:00

This post, by Andrew Byrne at the University of Albany, is the first of an occasional series written by undergraduate neuroscience students. If you are an undergraduate interested in writing about neuroscience for the Dana blog, or a professor who might have interested students, please contact Andrew Kahn at akahn@dana.org for more information.

Imagine if Alzheimer’s disease joined the ranks of Polio and the Measles. To prevent it, all you would have to do is stop by the doctor’s office and get a shot every year or so. As farfetched as it may seem, the idea for an Alzheimer’s immunization has been around for the better half of a decade and while we are far from a magic bullet, researchers have uncovered several promising leads.

The idea for an immunization is largely based around the amyloid cascade hypothesis, attributing the neuropathology of Alzheimer’s to aggregates or plaques of the protein beta-amyloid. Originally the toxicity of beta-amyloid was thought to reside in its tendency to form plaques in areas of the cortex like the hippocampus and the amygdala, big players in memory formation and retrieval. More recent studies show that other types of beta-amyloid may be a cause of the toxicity as well.

Researchers determined that targeting plaques with antibodies directed against beta-amyloid might increase clearance from the nervous system while preventing amyloid aggregation, thereby improving cognition in Alzheimer’s patients.

Results thus far have been mixed. Elan and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals recently published a long-term follow up of patients immunized with synthetic beta-amyloid 1-42, AN1792, in conjunction with QS-21, an immunologic adjuvant. The original study was discontinued in Phase IIa clinical trials when some subjects developed encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain. The follow-up, conducted five years after the initial immunization, found that some subjects (referred to in the paper as “antibody responders”) continued to produce antibodies directed against AN1792. In addition, these subjects out-performed placebo groups in several measures of cognitive functioning.

Admittedly the study is not without its flaws. Of the 300 patients originally treated with the vaccine, only 20 percent were deemed antibody responders. The remaining participants either did not produce antibodies or did not produce enough to be of therapeutic value. While one-in-five may not seem like a pharmaceutical triumph, I see it as a big step in the right direction.

So how close are we to an Alzheimer’s vaccine? With at least ten amyloid-targeted vaccines in clinical trials and countless more preclinical animal studies, I’d say a lot closer than we were 10 years ago. New ways of immunizing are being explored, targeting the genome as well as other proteins. For now we will have to wait.

--Andrew Byrne, University of Albany, May 2011

http://www.albany.edu/neuron/center/

www.albany.edu/mcnaylab

Lady Gaga not only one misinterpreting ideal "poker face"

2010-08-26T16:52:10-04:00

I recently spent a night in Atlantic City with some friends to celebrate my birthday. As far as I knew, my brain was simply trying to decide between red or black, hit or stay, keep playing or walk away. Little did I know this was only a fraction of the activity going on in my head.

Two recent studies have delved into the psychology of gambling. The results of one of the studies are in line with my casino visits. The other, however, clashes a bit with my experience. I’ll start with the study that I found to be more congruent with my opinions.

Spanish psychologist Josep Marco-Pallares paired partners to play a very simple computer gambling game. Only one participant was doing the actual wagering, while the other either (1) had money on the same outcome as the gambler, (2) had money on the opposite outcome, or (3) was a neutral observer.

As expected, the brain responses of the active gamblers were distinct for wins and losses. The researchers were interested in the partner’s brain activity, though, and in the first two scenarios those responses were as expected: in the first, it mirrored the gambler’s; in the second, it was the opposite.

However, even when the gambling partner had no stake in the outcome, the brain responses of the two were the same when the gambler lost money. In other words, the observer reacted as if he/she had lost money as well. Interestingly, this similarity of responses was not evident when the gambler won.

I have certainly noticed this behavior in the casino, even if I could only go by outward reactions as opposed to brain scans. Last weekend, my friends and I huddled around another friend who was playing blackjack. I was certainly happy when he won, and congratulated him for a good hand. But I didn’t truly feel all that happy for him. I guess I was just happy he didn’t lose.

When he lost a hand, though—which, unfortunately, happened far more frequently—my empathy was definitely authentic. In fact, at times it seemed like I was more upset than he was over a losing hand (perhaps because I’m a more conservative gambler than he is).

Later in the night we played Pai Gow poker, and the results of Marco-Pallares’ study were happening before my eyes. With just one seat open at the table, I was the only one who sat down. However, two of my friends and I pooled our money to buy some chips. When my hand won, we split the profits three ways. Likewise, we all took a financial hit when we lost. It was clear we were all experiencing the same emotions—the joys of winning and the devastation of defeat.

After about an hour of playing, our other two friends joined us at the table. They stood with the two friends who were betting with me, but they simply observed. When I revealed a weak hand, all four shook their heads in disappointment. But when I had a monster hand, only my two fellow bettors seemed to show excitement.

The second study, conducted by Wellesley College psychologist Erik Schlicht, deals with how our opponents’ facial expressions influence the way we bet in poker. Participants were pitted against a computer opponent displaying a variety of facial expressions (as represented on the screen by a photo of a human). By giving participants similar hands and making them wager the same amount, researchers were able to isolate distinct facial expressions to record their effect.

They discovered that a trustworthy face gave players the most difficulties. When facing a computer opponent with such an honest countenance, players made more mistakes and were more likely to fold (the thought being, if someone looks trustworthy and bets, that person must have a good hand). The neutral “poker face,” the researchers found, did not make much of a difference.

Although poker was at the heart of the study, the implications don’t apply to actual poker. In the study’s FAQ section written by Schlicht, he admits that this experiment doesn’t carry over to casino poker. “I purposefully ‘strip away’ many of the factors that contribute to decisions in a ‘real’ poker game,” he writes.

At the same time, he also notes that “research is important as it allows for implicit (unconscious) effects to be uncovered, whereas poker [players] who are exclusively relying on experience need to be consciously aware of effects in order [to realize they exist].” This brings up the possibility that I’m simply not always aware of why I’m betting/folding at the poker table.

Either way, both studies have implications beyond a simple wager at a casino, according to the Scientific American article. The first can help learn more about gambling addictions—recovering addicts could relapse simply by observing others play—while the study on faces could aid in our understanding of how we assess certain people/situations, not just at the poker table but in the real world.

--Andrew Kahn

Dog gone smart

2010-08-17T11:34:47-04:00

My one-year-old Weimaraner dog, Jasper, is an expert at getting his message across. For example, when he stands by the door and barks loudly, he wants to go outside. When he puts his 70 pound "puppy" frame on my lap, he wants affection and/or attention. He does all of this, obviously, without verbal communication.

Animals are much smarter than they appear, as evidenced by an article in Time magazine* that explores the minds of animals. In the August 16, 2010 issue of the magazine, reporter Jeffrey Kluger discusses how apes are able to learn languages through pictures and signs. The apes can put together sentences, which helps to show that their minds are capable of learning like a human.

Kluger says that "mammals are members of the cerebral-cortex club," so the bigger that region of the brain is, the smarter the animal. Animals such as birds have a smaller brain size compared to dogs and apes, but the bird uses better creative skills for everyday functions. A bird can collect food and build a nest, and some can even be taught to talk (the parrot for example).

The study shows that the animal's environment also contributes to their brain capacity, and feelings such as a sense of loss and awareness are very much present in animals. Elephants and apes mourn the dead; other animals wait for reinforcements before they plan an attack. Animals have emotions and have shown awareness to things going on around them.

The Time article includes a diagram, which shows the smartest animals:

"Apes and cetaceans (such as dolphins): The animal elite, they have complex societies, big brains and awareness of self.
Corvids (birds): They excel at tool use and problem solving; have strong social bonds.
Social Carnivores (such as lions): Group hunting requires coordination and communication.
Herd Animals (such as buffalo): They live collectively but have no social structure; very limited intellect.
Bivalves (shellfish): No smarts to speak of; may well lack even consciousness."

Nobody can tell me that Jasper does not think methodically, because it takes brain power and emotions for him to carry out his actions. He shows how manipulative he can be when he jumps on the couch and pretends to nuzzle me affectionately, but is really trying to push me off so that he can have it to himself. He displays a sense of moodiness when he avoids his bedtime and starts to throw a tantrum before he finally enters his crate.

Jasper thinking about how to avoid an early bedtime.

Jasper shows happiness, understanding at times, and a lack of enthusiasm when it rains and he refuses to go outside until it stops. Yes, indeed, animals can feel, think, and can sometimes outsmart us humans.

*The full version of the article appears in the August 16, 2010 print version of Time magazine.

--Blayne Jeffries

The mixed bag of mixed handedness

2010-08-05T15:25:39-04:00

I use my left hand for almost everything: writing, eating, and (if I were athletic) throwing—I am strongly left-handed. But some people—who are referred to as mixed-handed—don’t strongly favor one hand; they may use one hand for writing, another for throwing, and so on.

As reported this month in Scientific American, a study of 8,000 Finnish children determined that those without a dominant hand were more likely to have attention and language difficulties than children with left- or right-hand dominance. This indicates that when one hemisphere of the brain is not dominant, the two hemispheres may work together differently. Language is generally controlled by the left hemisphere, and attention the right; mixed-handed children with these difficulties might be getting too many signals from the right hemisphere and not enough from the left.

Alina Rodriguez of Uppsala University, the study’s lead researcher, is quick to point out that mixed-handedness is just one risk factor for a language or attention problem. In an earlier study, she suggested that mixed-handedness—and learning difficulties—can be caused in part by prenatal stress.

But mixed-handedness may also have benefits. Stephen Christman of the University of Toledo in Ohio has found that mixed-handed people tend to have earlier first memories than strongly right-handed people. The corpus collosum—the bundle of nerve fibers linking the brain’s hemispheres—tends to be larger in mixed-handed people. He posits that this leads to better memory recall, as episodic memory is encoded in the left hemisphere and retrieved in the right.

Cristman has also authored a study finding that mixed-handers are more gullible and more easily persuaded than people with dominant hands.

But fear not, mixed-handed people: there is a Facebook group just for you where you can discuss all the joys and difficulties of non-dominance.

-- Johanna Goldberg

Unhappy camper: The myths of vacations

2010-07-30T13:00:42-04:00

As I worked through my final semester at grad school this spring, my June vacation to Turkey motivated me to get my work done. Just thinking about what I would see and do on vacation made me incredibly happy—and planning it was just part of the fun. According to recent studies, this feeling of pre-trip happiness is the norm. Travelers better enjoy it while they can, though, because despite the assumption that vacations rejuvenate us, the euphoria may not last long.

A study of 1,530 adults conducted by Dutch scientists and published earlier this year found that although most people enjoyed their vacations, they were actually happiest when they were planning their trips. This anticipation can amount to up to eight weeks of increased happiness prior to a trip.

Preparing for and actually viewing this sight were enjoyable. The return to everyday life? Not so much.

As for the extended benefits of vacation, the study found that most people return to their usual levels of stress almost immediately upon returning home. Those who experienced a “very relaxed” vacation felt the benefits the longest—for up to two weeks. This “post-vacation let-down,” as dubbed by science writer Sharon Begley, is corroborated by several previous studies, noted in this week’s Newsweek. It is also suggested by a second, smaller Dutch study published in the August issue of Work & Stress.

Despite these findings, some believe that vacations can have lasting health benefits. A research team led by Dr. Sebastian Filep at Victoria University in Australia interviewed travelers and reviewed their journal entries to measure their levels of happiness. They found that experiences before, during, and after vacation were linked to three main elements of happiness: positive emotion, meaning, and engagement. Based on evidence that has linked happiness and longevity, Dr. Filep believes that vacations could contribute to longer lives. He also suggests that they could be prescribed as a future component of treatment plans for depression.

Now that’s one prescription I wouldn’t mind receiving from a doctor.

--Ann L. Whitman

Inception and the neuroscience of dreaming

2010-07-21T11:57:00-04:00

First things first: no spoilers here. I don’t think I could provide any even if I wanted to—Inception was that complex a movie. I saw it last night, and its intricate plot revolving around dreams got me thinking about them. I rarely remember my dreams, and when I do, they contain only a few possible “plots.” The images and themes represented in Inception were far more interesting and intricate than what I remember of my dreams, leaving me once again jealous of Leonardo DiCaprio (or at least Cobb, the character he plays).

Dreaming has long fascinated psychologists and neuroscientists, as well as many of the rest of us. Why exactly do we dream? Does dreaming serve any purpose? Dr. Guy McKhann wrote about dreaming in the April Brain in the News, and offered three reasons: memory consolidation, pruning, and creating.

One recent study represents dreaming as a combination of all three. In the study, volunteers studied a maze before attempting to navigate through it. After a few attempts, half of the participants napped. All were given the maze test again later in the day, and those who napped performed better than those who had stayed awake. And nappers who dreamed about the maze performed 10 times better than the other nappers.

I can’t say I’ve ever had useful dreams. While in school I never dreamed about course material I had just reviewed, as some of the participants in the study did. Sleeping without dreaming is still very valuable, but Cobb and others seem to be luckier at making better use of their resting times.

--Andrew Kahn

New Cerebrum article: Enhancing Brains: What Are We Afraid Of?

2010-07-15T12:21:43-04:00

A new Cerebrum article by Stanford Law Professor Henry T. Greely was published on the Dana Web site this week. In it, Professor Greely builds on a 2008 commentary he co-authored in Nature concluding that “safe and effective cognitive enhancers will benefit both the individual and society.”

In the new article, he argues that only some concerns about the use of cognitive enhancements are justified; it's proper to give attention to address these issues. But rather than banning cognitive enhancements, as some have suggested, we should determine rules for their use.

What do you think? Should widespread use of cognitive enhancements be allowed? In what settings?

--Johanna Goldberg

In an octopus’ garden

2010-07-14T14:41:09-04:00

In light of the amazing World Cup forecasting abilities of Paul the Octopus, I know exactly what you’re thinking: How do octopus brains work, anyway?

OK, maybe you’re not thinking that. But as a cephalopod fan (they use tools! They’re giving people ideas for horror flicks!), I know I’m interested.

There have been quite a few studies on the octopus’ neural capacity—a basic PubMed search brings up 267 hits for “octopus and brain.”

So what do we know? Here’s an incomplete list:

Octopus brains have half a billion neurons, found in distinct and complex lobes. They have the largest brains of all invertebrates.
There are great similarities between octopus and mammalian brains in the areas of memory and learning in terms of the structure and wiring of the brain networks involved.
Octopuses (octopi?)* have navigational abilities. Not only do they have a sense of their position in space, but they maintain a working memory of places where they recently searched for food.
Octopuses plan for the future. They have been seen collecting and storing coconut halves, to be used later as “portable armor.”
Octopuses play. In laboratory settings, some have directed streams of water repeatedly at items introduced to their tanks. In one case, two octopuses appeared to be playing catch by shooting an object back and forth for a couple of minutes.
They have an uncanny ability to open jars:

No word yet on how widespread psychic abilities are in octopuses.

*Octopodes, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But who actually says that?

--Johanna Goldberg

Perfectionism as a health risk

2010-07-13T12:41:49-04:00

While we’re often told, “nobody’s perfect,” that doesn’t stop people from trying. Lofty goals can lead to great achievements and high-self-esteem, but they can also lead to negative affects such as mental and physical health problems.

Many studies suggest that perfectionists are at higher risk of suffering from stress, eating disorders, and depression. As Jeff Szymanski, executive director of the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, says in a Boston Globe article, "Perfectionism is a phobia of mistake-making. It is the feeling that 'If I make a mistake, it will be catastrophic.'"

In an article for LiveScience, Rachael Rettner discusses the results of a study of 100 first-time mothers in Canada, suggesting that women can suffer from “socially prescribed perfectionism,” feeling pressure from others to be perfect. The study found the strongest link between perfectionism and postpartum depression in women who cope by acting as if they had no problems.

In a separate article, Rettner notes that some people compound the problem by trying to maintain the appearance of perfection. Many perfectionists will not seek support and may even distance themselves from friends and family in an attempt to avoid offers of help.

While there is no definitive origin of perfectionism, experts have pointed to aspects of parenting and genetics. According to Alice Domar, executive director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health in Boston, it is more commonly found in women.

To find out if you have perfectionist tendencies, York University psychology professor and perfectionist expert Gordon Flett has devised a list of ten signs:

*Top Ten Signs Your a Perfectionist

You can’t stop thinking about a mistake you made.
You are intensely competitive and can’t stand doing worse than others.
You either want to do something "just right" or not at all.
You demand perfection from other people.
You won’t ask for help if asking can be perceived as a flaw or weakness.
You will persist at a task long after other people have quit.
You are a fault-finder who must correct other people when they are wrong.
You are highly aware of other people’s demands and expectations.
You are very self-conscious about making mistakes in front of other people.
*You noticed the error in the title of this list.

--Ann L. Whitman

Fans in the booth

2010-07-08T16:32:37-04:00

Next time you go to the polls, you may want to give some extra thought to why you plan to vote for a particular candidate. That goes double for those of you whose favorite football team won a big game the day before.

Wait, what?

A Stanford University study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that incumbents gain two percentage points when the election is held shortly after a home-team victory. The results of college football games should obviously have nothing to do with political elections, but it’s possible that voters are in a better mood following a win, and therefore more likely to vote for the candidate who’s already in office. The thinking could be: “Things are going well, might as well stick with this person.”

It’s a stretch, I know, but the researchers also found that college basketball games affected presidential approval ratings.

The benefit of knowing that an unrelated event such as a football game can impact important decisions like government elections is that hopefully something can be done about it. Peoples’ moods can’t be controlled, but as the researchers note, “making people more aware of the reasons for their current state of mind reduces the effect that irrelevant events have on their opinions.”

Awareness sounds like a wise goal: It doesn’t make much sense to remove the incumbent just because your team has a bad defense.

--Andrew Kahn

Using words as both diagnosis and cure

2010-06-30T11:05:38-04:00

Just as movement needs to be relearned in some cases of stroke, other people need to find a way to recover speech and language.

Researchers from New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center have developed a metric to predict stroke recovery of language based on extent of early impairment. The researchers, led by Ronald Lazar, Ph.D., tested patients’ language function one to three days after the stroke, and again three months later. Using their test scores immediately following stroke, the researchers could roughly predict how the patient would score after 90 days. Most patients with mild to moderate aphasia, or language impairment, who received language therapy were about 70 percent improved when they were tested for the second time.

In the second, not-yet-published study, Swathi Kiran, Ph.D., of Boston University, assessed language recovery of bilingual stroke patients. She determined that when patients practiced the language in which they were less fluent, their improvement was greater in both languages than when they practiced the language with which they were more familiar. If patients go digging for information, connections in the brain are strengthened.

The Dana Guide to Brain Health article “Trouble with Speech and Language” offers more information on language and brain function. You can also read a more general essay on “Speech, Language, and Reading.”

--Johanna Goldberg

Brains are built to change

2010-06-09T14:27:16-04:00

In Matt Ritchel’s New York Times recent article, “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price,” a dire picture is painted: We are hooked on technology (e-mail, text messages, phone calls, social media), and our technophilia is changing our brains.

But what Ritchel does not make clear is that everything changes the brain, and that these changes are not necessarily a bad thing. For an excellent explanation of how this works, check out a Mind Hacks blog entry from earlier this week, "Neuroplasticity is a Dirty Word.”

This is not to say that the heavy technology use covered in the article is a good thing—it sounds like the dynamics of the family featured in the article are paying a more serious price than the brains in question. And, as has been covered before, the brain was not built for serious multitasking.

But I know I will think critically the next time someone says that something is problematic or of particular interest because it changes the brain.

--Johanna Goldberg

Music and the mind

2010-06-07T11:43:28-04:00

“I don’t like a lot of music very much.” I was surprised to hear such a statement from a speaker during a discussion called “Making Music in the Dome,” but cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky did also say he appreciated most forms of “classical” music.

The discussion, part of the World Science Festival, took place last Thursday at the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It featured music, video, and a discussion between two forward-thinking minds: Minsky and Tod Machover.

Minsky, 82, co-founded the artificial intelligence lab at MIT and continues to write books and present new theories. Machover, also at MIT, is an innovative composer who fuses music with new technologies. He gave hope to millions of untalented musicians when he helped create the game “Guitar Hero.”

Machover and Minsky discussed the future of music and technology, including the idea of musical medicine—creating music that could produce desired effects on a single person, as opposed to creating music for large groups of people.

They have collaborated on the “Brain Opera,” an interactive project on display in Vienna, and showed still images and video from it on the planetarium’s ceiling. Machover talked about how we may one day be able to “download our brains,” a concept he explores in his upcoming opera, “Death and the Powers.” We saw clips from this blend of music, technology, and the mind (musical robots!) on the high ceiling, as well. “Mind immortality” is certainly an interesting, though mind-bending, concept.

For someone who dislikes most forms of music, Minsky sure does spend a lot of time thinking about and helping to create it.

--Andrew Kahn

Vision, in depth

2010-06-04T15:00:39-04:00

One thing I learned from Eye Candy: Science, Sight, and Art, a World Science Festival event, other than that legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer (or God, as moderator Lawrence Weschler called him in his introduction) is all kinds of amazing, is that impaired stereo vision can be beneficial if you want to be a famous artist.

Stereo vision—or stereopsis—allows humans to perceive depth. Simply put, our brains translate the information taken in from each eye to form a single, three-dimensional image. But when eyes don’t track together—when someone is cross-eyed (eyes facing in) or wall-eyed (eyes facing out)—the perception of depth is impacted.

Margaret Livingstone, Dana Alliance member and professor of neurobiology at Harvard, has studied photos of a large number of successful artists. By looking at eye tracking and light reflection in the artists’ eyes, she determined that stereoblindness is more common in artists than in the population at large. Even Rembrandt appears to have been stereoblind.

This is not to say that people with strabismus, or eye misalignment, should go without treatment in the hopes of becoming an artist—untreated strabismus can have serious consequences. But it does mean that an artist’s ability to flatten a vividly three-dimensional world may have a great deal to do with how the artist’s eyes and brain perceive depth.

But what about the non-artists among us? Christopher Tyler—who, among many other accomplishments, wrote the algorithm behind the Magic Eye images—presented three random-dot stereograms, which the audience looked at through 3D glasses. Shapes popped out at some audience members right way, while others (like me) took more time to see them, or didn’t see them at all (I saw two of the three).

The reasons for these discrepancies were not discussed at length. It could be that some people’s eyes converge more quickly, allowing a shape to pop out and the illusion of depth to be created. Some people might be stereoblind to some degree. But it is clear that the way we process visual information varies greatly from one person to the next.

But on the most basic level, how we translate what we see to paper has remained surprisingly static. As cognitive Harvard psychologist Patrick Cavanaugh explained, line drawings on the walls of ancient caves depict animals in the same ways that modern line drawings do.

And yet line drawings don’t exist in the world. From a young age, Jules Feiffer knew that the world was made up of shapes, tones, colors, and dimensions. But drawings making use of only these elements didn’t look how the world looks. Our brains know how to interpret and add meaning to lines—they are something that the visual system evolved to understand. “Our connection to the [art] itself is what excites us,” said Feiffer. Interpreting lines, especially lines drawn well, requires “the beauty of imagination.”

--Johanna Goldberg

What are your favorite books about the brain?

2010-06-03T10:15:38-04:00

--update, July 12: The survey is closed. Members of our Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives are reviewing the suggestions and adding some of their own. Stay tuned --

We are gathering a list of the best neuroscience books for general readers, to publish later this year in our Cerebrum e-magazine. Our current list was published in 1999, so it's time for an update.

Please help us out by taking our quick survey. You can name just one book, or as many at ten. Just name, author, and reason why -- we won't collect your name or e-mail; we just want your opinion.

Thanks! Take the survey

Hockey IntelliGym wins brain fitness award

2010-05-25T15:27:04-04:00

USA Hockey is used to receiving gold medals for winning games. Yesterday the organization grabbed the award for an off-ice achievement: First place in the first annual Brain Fitness Innovation Awards.

Presented by SharpBrains, the 10 finalists demonstrated a commitment to brain fitness through their “results-oriented, scalable initiatives.” A panel of 16 judges made up of researchers and corporate executives judged the Hockey IntelliGym program the best, calling IntelliGym a “personalized program that gives very specialized feedback to players and allows them to improve their skills.” The judges were also impressed that the Under-18 and Under-17 USA Hockey National Teams reported they have seen improved play since using the IntelliGym.

Co-developed by USA Hockey (ice hockey’s national governing body) and Applied Cognitive Engineering (ACE), the Hockey IntelliGym may look like a videogame but serves as a cognitive training device. Danny Dankner, CEO of ACE, wrote in an e-mail that the IntelliGym helps players with perception, short-term memory focus, and decision-making, brain skills necessary for on-ice success.

“The system also develops skills like anticipation, attention control, working memory (particularly in the context of covered areas), planning, and pattern recognition,” he wrote. “The tasks embedded in the training system stimulate a similar skill-set, only in a more intense workload (and thus this technology is dubbed ‘Cognitive Simulation’). The player is presented with a video-game-like scenario, where spaceships serve as the contextual representation of the objects in the real environment.”

Dankner also noted that ACE chose to develop products for athletes (they also make the Basketball IntelliGym) because athletes want to outperform competitors, and by using the product they’ll be able to see tangible results.

“When you talk to hockey experts, a lot of people believed you either have (hockey sense) or you don’t,” said Ken Martel during a conference call yesterday. Martel is the director of the American Development Model, a USA Hockey initiative focusing on age-appropriate training and long-term athlete development. “The really fascinating thing for us is we firmly believed we could teach this. We were looking for ways to make our players smarter on the rink—allow them to make better decision. We were extremely excited with the results (of the IntelliGym).”

With the help of ACE, USA Hockey is helping to disprove the myth that “game IQ” is an innate characteristic that can’t be enhanced. As Dankner wrote, “Just like lifting weights or working out your aerobic fitness, cognitive performance can also be dramatically improved if only addressed by the right ‘fitness room.’”

The Hockey IntelliGym will be available to the public in October.

--Andrew Kahn

New fathers can—and do—suffer from postpartum depression

2010-05-20T13:54:41-04:00

Can fathers have prenatal or postpartum depression?

According to a meta-analysis by James Paulson and Sharnail D. Bazemore at Eastern Virginia Medical School, yes they can—and 10.4 percent of fathers do.

Paulson, who published his analysis in this week’s issue of JAMA, also presented the findings at a media briefing in New York on Tuesday.

His meta-analysis included 43 studies, with 28,004 fathers represented. Overall, the rate of depression in these men was two times higher than the rate of depression found in men generally.

Paulson said that the analysis showed a “moderate positive association” between maternal and paternal depression and severity of depression, but the “cause and effect has not been determined.” Because of this association, Paulson recommends that if one parent is depressed, the other be screened (which he acknowledges is easier said than done).

Prior research has shown that a child suffers adverse outcomes when a parent (in most studies, a mother) is depressed. There can be attachment and bonding issues, along with psychosocial adjustment problems and psychiatric risks. There are also family dynamic problems, which can result in marital conflicts and compromised parenting.

Paulson is now recruiting subjects—mothers and fathers from the third trimester of pregnancy to six months postpartum—for research into family systems. Looking into relational factors and aspects of co-parenting, he will try to determine “how parents together might affect child outcomes.”

--Johanna Goldberg

NIMH director: Time to rethink mental illness

2010-05-19T11:17:57-04:00

Mental disorders are the No. 1 cause of disability for people ages 15-45 in the developed world.

There are 33,000 suicides every year in the US—twice as many suicides as homicides.

The life expectancy of people with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, 56, is 25 years earlier than the population at large.

There are three times as many people with serious mental illness in jails and prisons than in hospitals.

These statistics define where we are in the field, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health and a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. But the field will be transformed in coming decades, he argues, as what we learn from genetics, brain science, and behavior come together to change how we diagnose, treat, and think about mental illness.

Insel wrote a commentary on the topic in this week’s issue of JAMA; yesterday he elaborated on his ideas during a media briefing discussing the special issue, which focuses on mental illness.

For example, advances in genetics have led to the discovery of structural variations in the genome. In mental illnesses like schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, OCD, and ADHD, researchers have found hundreds of common variations—deletions or duplications in the genetic code—that have “completely changed the way we think about genetics in psychiatric disease,” he said.

These variations—all associated with neurodevelopmental genes—“could not be associated with a single illness even in the same family,” said Insel; the same variation could indicate schizophrenia for one person, and autism for another. But they could point to a more general risk for mental illness.

Discoveries about brain circuitry also may change how we may view disorders. Much mental illness is associated with the developing brain—the age of onset peaks in the teen years, when the brain’s grey matter is undergoing a “pruning effect” and becoming more efficient. Some disorders might be described as “poor pruning.”

For example, it may be that people likely to develop schizophrenia lose too many synapses during this period, Insel suggested. He hopes that by 2020, we can detect schizophrenia before psychosis begins. “We are going to shift the curve and get earlier in diagnosis and treatment,” intervening when people have risk factors but before they have symptoms.

This may lead to a change in the way diseases are defined. “We have been locked into presentation,” said Insel, citing the way the DSM characterizes diseases by symptoms, not underlying causes. “Most of medicine has moved beyond that. We want to add all the things we can’t see,” like genetics and imaging.

In a decade, predicts Insel, “We will have entirely different names and ways of thinking about disorders.”

--Johanna Goldberg

Are we fostering a generation of anxious learners?

2010-05-17T14:20:14-04:00

What is up with kids today?

I recently attended back-to-back conferences on learning and the brain, the first on “Attention and Engagement in Learning” in Baltimore (see my story for more), the second the three-day Learning & the Brain conference in Washington, DC, also focused on the topic of attention and motivation in education (look for the story, by writer Aalok Mehta, later this week).

At each conference, I heard from both the speakers and from teachers about an apparent tsunami of stress among students.

"In the last 10 years of my 40 years of practice, I have been so bowled over by the amount of anxiety I'm seeing in children," said Martha Bridge Denckla, a clinician and researcher at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, during the Baltimore conference. "We're bathing our schoolchildren in an anxious environment," she said. She argued for stopping the push to teach everyone algebra in eighth grade, and suggested we not teach handwriting until a child actually has the motor skills to do handwriting. She suggested that inattention (the topic of the conference) might be secondary or a response to this "anomalous emotional environment."

Her remarks and those of others at the Learning & the Brain drew a lot of response from attendees. The teacher in my break-out group during the Baltimore session said kids, without prompting, tell her how they worry all year long about the mandatory end-of-year state exams.

“Anxiety is a tremendous stimulator of ADHD,” Denckla continued during her lecture at the conference in DC. Children may show symptoms of the disorder, such as failing to sit still or focus on a task, when their true trouble is that their minds are diverted by excess worry, often caused by adults asking them to perform activities they are not cognitively ready for, she suggested. “We’re making pseudo-diagnoses of everyone because we’re asking too much of them at an early age.”

The next day, William Stixrud, a clinical neuropsychologist who also sees children in his practice, seconded Denckla’s observations. “Kids seem to be increasingly less ready than years ago, and yet we’re asking them to do so much more. From the developmental point of view, this is absurd.”

“Virtually everything is easier to learn at a later age” during childhood, he said. For example, for most children, learning to read at seven years old is easier and makes better readers than learning at five. “You pay a price if you rush,” including the chance that a child’s frustrations at not meeting expectations lead to acting out.

“The level of stress in kids, Stixrud said, “is a similar crisis to global warming.” He recommends movement and meditation to offset daily anxiety and chronic sleep loss (he said children today sleep an hour less each night than children in the 1970s did). “If we take care of the nervous system, if we take care of development, we get better results.”

Along with Stixrud and Denckla, other speakers, including Judy Willis, a neurologist turned middle-school teacher, reinforced the idea that children need to feel safe before they can be completely ready to learn. “Safety first, then stimulate their curiosity,” she advised during a teacher-skills lecture.

I don’t remember feeling stressed-out very often during my early grades, at least about school, and I am the sort who does worry about things. I took standardized tests in third, seventh, and eighth grades, and didn’t fret about them for a moment; I don’t remember my teachers worrying about them.

The idea that young children today do fret about such things, and that we may be pushing them beyond what their bodies can perform worries me. Nobody wants a generation of stressed-out adults with cramped-hand handwriting and trouble paying attention. And if, as Stixrud suggests, we don’t get good results from all this pushing, shouldn’t we stop?

--Nicky Penttila

Not All Wins Are Equal

2010-05-06T11:42:19-04:00

    “A win is a win.” It’s an old cliché tossed around by athletes and coaches who are stressing that victory—even if it was expected, or looked ugly, or was downright lucky—is still a victory, and that’s all that matters.

    This is not the case for sports fans, however, at least according to researchers at Ohio State University. In a study that was published last December, the researchers monitored the emotions of fans watching a sporting event. They determined that if fans, at some point in the game, think their team might lose, they enjoy the victory more than if the contest was never in doubt.

    Put more scientifically, “You need the negative emotions of thinking your team might lose to get you in an excited, nervous state,” said co-author Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick. “If your team wins, all that negative tension is suddenly converted to positive energy, which will put you in a euphoric state.”

    With the NHL and NBA playoffs in action, and baseball one month into its season, this behavior can be witnessed in homes, sports bars, and stadiums across the country. Being a fan of the New York Mets and the University of Michigan basketball and football teams, part of me feels that I should take a win any way I can get it. (After all, my favorite teams haven’t been all that successful the past few years.) But I can’t deny that I take more enjoyment from a thrilling victory than I do from a blowout win.

    To use another well-known sports saying: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” To fans, that’s certainly not true.

    --Andrew Kahn