More fun with Neuroplasticity

Posted by on February 13th, 2013 | No Comments

More fun with neuroplasticity. Answer this question: What were you doing last Wednesday night at 6:30PM?

Did you notice your eyes look up – probably to the right? They are looking at the side of the brain where that information is stored and being retrieved. Pretty cool!

We already know the brain rebuilds itself about every other month. It also reorganizes itself on a daily basis in direct relation to our daily experiences. So, it’s definitely not the old lump of gray matter we once considered it. It will physically rewire itself if it’s required.

Good examples of this, believe it or not, are British taxi drivers. Since London is so old and there’s little rhyme or reason to the streets, taxi drivers there have to apprentice for 3 years with another experienced cab driver. During that time, their brains develop GPS-like capability. They can not only tell you the shortest routes, but the landmarks and history of the drive as well.

Their brains rewire. The hippocampus, the part of the brain dedicated to memory, emotion, and long-term learning, was examined with an fMRI scan. Veteran taxi drivers’ hippocampi were nearly twice as large as their colleagues with less experience. Their ‘hard drives’ that store information got bigger because they needed to store more information! That’s exactly what neuroplasticity is: the ability of the human brain to change, to literally rewire itself, when the need arises.

So can we change our functioning with brain training? The answer is obviously yes.
Some wisdom about the human mind –

“All of human unhappiness comes from one single thing, which is not knowing how to remain quietly in one room.“

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Developmental Delay & ADHD

Posted by on July 31st, 2012 | No Comments

Dr. Philip Shaw and his research team at the National Institutes of Health studied 234 children with ADHD and compared them with 231 normally developing children. The researchers scanned each of their brains up to 4 times from age 10 to 17. Their research is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry and mirrors similar research previously performed.

Shaw is particularly interested in surface area of the cerebral cortex — the folded gray tissue that makes up the outermost part of the brain and how it develops during childhood. The researchers’ scans showed that frontal cortex development was delayed in frontal brain regions in the group of children with ADHD. The frontal cortex plays a key role for controlling impulsivity and attention.

The researchers found that in normally developing children, the right prefrontal cortex reached half of its peak area at a mean age of 12.7 years. But the children with ADHD children didn’t reach that mark until 14.6 years; a delay of almost 2 years.

“As other components of cortical development are also delayed, this suggests there is a global delay in ADHD in brain regions important for the control of action and attention,” Philip Shaw, of the National Institute of Mental Health, said in a statement.

Shaw’s findings might encourage scientists to search for the root of this delay and a possible  genetic link that controls the timing of brain development.

The research also begs other questions; if ADHD is simply a developmental delay, then why do approximately 65% to 75% of all children carry it into adulthood? Either, it’s not solely a developmental delay or the developmental delay affects long-term brain function. The possibility exists too that it is not a developmental delay at all, but a different brain structure.  In the meantime, what is one to do? We suggest strengthening the brain you have. Maximize your capacity. Optimize your life: www.playattention.com.

More information: The article is “Development of Cortical Surface Area and Gyrification in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder” by Philip Shaw, Meaghan Malek, Bethany Watson, Wendy Sharp, Alan Evans, and Deanna Greenstein ( doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.01.031 ). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 72, Issue 3 (August 1, 2012).

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Are Some Teens Prewired for Addiction?

Posted by on May 14th, 2012 | No Comments

Researchers gain new insight on the ADHD connection

Robert Whelan and Hugh Garavan of the University of  Vermont  and  a  cohort of international researchers produced the largest imaging study of the human brain ever conducted. The researchers scanned the brains of 1,896 14-year-olds and discovered a number of previously unknown networks that go a long way to understanding addiction.

Their report published in the journal Nature Neuroscience (online April 29, 2012) helps answer whether particular brain patterns are caused by drug use or established before drug use. Professors Whelan and Garavan found that certain networks in some teenagers cause a higher risk for experimentation with drugs and alcohol – simply because their brains are wired differently making the teens more impulsive.

“The differences in these networks seem to precede drug use,” says Garavan, Whelan’s colleague in UVM’s psychiatry department, who also served as the principal investigator of the Irish component of a large European research project, called IMAGEN.  IMAGEN is a new study funded by the European Union that is conducting a systematic neural, genetic and behavioral assessment of teenagers in Ireland,England,France, an d Germany.

The significance of their work is the discovery that different brain networks appear to be involved in the impulsivity problems of substance abuse among teenagers than those with ADHD. Up to now, substance abuse was thought to be the same impulse control network associated with ADHD.

“The behavior might look the same but there may be different brain regions contributing to that behavior,” says Dr. Robert Whelan.

The researchers focused on the orbitofrontal cortex, a network commonly associated with impulse control. Diminished activity in this network can be associated with experimentation with all the vices: marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes and other illegal drugs in early adolescence. While sexual experimentation was not included in this study, research in this area would also be insightful.

“These networks are not working as well for some kids as for others,” says Whelan, making them more impulsive.

A teenager exposed to peer pressure regarding smoking a joint or drinking alcohol, provided parental  boundaries and structure have been set, would refuse the offer while the teenager with lesser orbitofrontal control would likely say, “Yeah, gimme, gimme, gimme!” says Garavan, “and this other kid is saying, ‘no, I’m not going to do that.’”

The researchers used a brain imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). fMRI uses blood flow to indicate brain neural activation and network use. A complex computer algorithm assesses the blood flow and depicts the part of the brain being used by lighting it up on a computer monitor simulation. Whelan says that the researchers have distinguished seven different networks associated with impulse control.  The networks appear to be different among substance abusers and ADHD. Therefore, it is possible that the risk of ADHD is not necessarily a full-blown risk for drug use as some recent studies suggest.

“The take-home message is that impulsivity can be decomposed, broken down into different brain regions,” says Garavan, “and the functioning of one region is related to ADHD symptoms, while the functioning of other regions is related to drug use.”

Some caveats: fMRI imaging relies on complex computer algorithms and a certain amount of subjective analysis of the data presented. And while the research population was large (1896 teenagers), the researchers were actually measuring blood flow in the brain that is thought to be associated with neural activation in varying regions of the brain. In other words, given the limitations of nascent fMRI technology, this method is like using an Etch a Sketch to paint the Mona Lisa; it provides merely a rough outline due to its limitations.

So, is it a step in the right direction? Yes. Is it still a bit crude in detail of the actual neurobiology involved? Yes. Were parental or environmental factors examined? No.

My greatest concern with research like this is what one might do with the results albeit preliminary. Do we actually teach skills to adjust for impulsivity or do we simply offer another pill?

The fMRI is a crystal ball that cannot read the future of an individual. We still need to take control of our lives and shape our brains, not necessarily be just an end product of our genetics and conditioning.

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Cell phone use and attention

Posted by on April 15th, 2008 | Comments off

The September issue of the International Journal of Neuroscience, 2007 published an article entitled, Frequent Mobile Phone Use “Might” Improve Mental Concentration.

The study was performed by researchers from Brainclinics Diagnostics and the Radboud University department of Biological Psychology both from Nijmegen (the Netherlands), the Institute of Psychiatry (London) and the Brain Resource Company (Sydney, Australia).

The researchers based their findings on data from 300 people. This group was segmented into 100 ‘frequent mobile phone users,’ 100 ‘non-mobile phone users,’ and a control group of 100 people. Differences in brain activity on tests of attention, memory, and executive function were measured using QEEG or quantitative EEG. QEEG is more art than science and is a relatively nascent technology.

Curiously, the researchers concluded that frequent mobile phone users demonstrated slowed brain function, but the users also showed better focused attention. The researchers attribute better focused attention as a ‘learning effect’ related to cell phone users filtering out distractions when making phone calls in distractive surroundings.

Wisely, the researchers note that these data are preliminary and need to be replicated. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine whether the healthy or unhealthy.

“The frequent mobile phone user group used their mobile phone – at the time of data collection – only 2.4 years on average which can currently be considered as a short time. Therefore, it is to be expected that the observed effects in this study can be more severe with prolonged mobile phone use” according to Martijn Arns, co-author of the study.

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