Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast, and Slow is the title of the current best selling book by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman has won the Nobel Prize, not in psychology as there is no Nobel Prize in psychology, but for his work with Amos Tversky in Economics. This work ushered in the era of behavioral economics and further debunked the myth of the rational human being. Kahneman has been misinterpreted for arguing that humans are irrational or seriously flawed. What he has been arguing is that our information processing capabilities are limited, and that we use clever heuristics to deal with this limitations. These limitations lead us astray.

The title refers to two systems we use for processing information. System 1 is fast and allows us to cope with high rates of information in a dynamic environment. Without System 1, we would not have survived as a species. But this fast processing speed has its costs, which sometimes lead to errors. System 2 is slow, and is what can be thought of as thinking. If you know your multiplication tables, if I ask you what is 6 time 7, you’ll respond 42 without really thinking about it. But if I ask you to multiply 67 times 42 you would find it difficult to compute in your head, and would most likely use a calculator or use paper and pencil (which are examples of transactive memory). This multiplication requires System 2 processing without or most likely with technological aids.

System 1 requires little or no effort. System 2 requires effort. It is not only faster, but also less demanding to rely on System 1 processes. Consider the following question.

A bat and a ball cost $1.10

The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?

The number that quickly comes to mind is 10 cents. But if you take the time and exert the mental effort you will note that the cost would be $1.20 (10 cents for the ball and $1.10 for the bat). If you do the math, which takes a little algebra, you will find that the ball costs 5 cents (the bat costing a $1.00 more than the ball would be $1.05 and $1.05 and $0.05 is $1.10). System 2 must be engaged to get the correct answer. This question has been asked of several thousand college students. More that 50% of the students at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton gave the wrong, System 1, answer. At less selective universities more than 80% of the students gave the wrong answer. Good students tend to be suspicious of a question that is too easy!

If this example does not strike you as relevant, Kahneman provides many examples with clear relevance throughout the book. We shall be hitting some of these examples in future Healthymemory Blog posts. Kahneman’s Two System Theory is not new to the Healthymemory Blog (enter “Two System View” in the search block). Kahneman has already had a clear influence on economics. Additional behavioral and brain imaging research has further enhanced his view. Unfortunately it is still not the dominant view in economics, which still embraces the model of the rational man. An argument can be made that our current economic problems are due to an outdated paradigm in economics, and the wholesale adoption of behavioral problems could help us avoid these reoccurring disasters. I also think that the two system view is relevant to Political Science. I think a compelling reason why people do not vote in their own best interests can be found in the two system view. System 1 is automatic, whereas System 2 requires effort.

The Dumbledore Hypothesis regarding the effects of aging on the brain fits well within the two system view. According to the Dumbledore Hypothesis, we have learned so much as a result of our aging, that we rely on our old habits and do not make as many demands on our attentional resources. In other words, too heavy a reliance on System 1 at the cost of not engaging System 2 causes cognitive decline because we are not exercising System 2. It’s a matter of use it or lose it.

Thinking, Fast, and Slow is a must read for anyone interested in human cognition. Actually everyone should be interested because it provides examples and insights regarding the errors we make everyday. Although Thinking, Fast, and Slow is certainly not a cure all, it provides us with awareness and does offer some means of coping with our information processing shortcomings.

Note that the book is a best seller, so it is an easy read and not an imponderable academic tome. Kahneman also includes personal stories, especially of his relationship with Amos Tversky, that are interesting and entertaining.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Paraprosdokians and a Healthy Memory

Probably the first question is, “what is a paraprosdokian?” A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that caused the reader or listener to re-frame or re-interpret the first part. Here are some examples¹:

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.

If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.

Hospitality: making your guests feel like they’re at home, even if you wish they were.

Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go.

I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not sure.

When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

Some people hear voices. Some see invisible people. Others have no imagination whatsoever.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

I didn’t say it was your fault; I said I was blaming you.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

So what do paraprosdokians have to do with a healthy memory? First of all, the show how your memory processes sentences. It is doing it bit by bit constructing a meaning which leads you to expect a certain kind of ending. A paraprosdokian leads you to a different meaning, hopefully humorous, than you expected. So picture what is happening to your brain, certain circuits are being activated, but new circuits must be found to interpret the meaning correctly, and, we hope, appreciate a joke. So it is this activation of memory circuits that can foster memory health.

Now we can think of two ways of processing paraprosdokians. We’ll call one passive because it simply involves reading or hearing a paraprosdokian. Of course, active processing by your brain is required to interpret the paraprosdokian correctly, and, we hope, get the joke.

A second way of processing paraprosdokians we shall call active. This is when you create a new paraproprosdokian. Now this places special demands on your brain circuits and creativity, but it can lead to your perception as a humorous individual who can make friends and influence people.

This activity is similar to punning, but it is less demanding and much less likely to elicit groans than puns do.

Feel free to enter any new paraprosdokians as comments.

1http://www.economicnoise.com/2011/09/05/182-paraprosdokians/

A Cognitive Safety Net

Prospective memory is the memory “to do” list, that is the memory to do things. A number of Healthymemory Blog posts have addressed failures of prospective memory, some which have been personally embarrassing (“An Embarrassing Failure of Prospective Memory, and “Another Embarrassing Failure of Prospective Memory”), and others that are quite tragic (“Prospective Memory and Technology”), such as leaving a child unattended for a day in a car and returning to find that the child has died. Atul Gawande is a surgeon who has addressed the problems of medical errors during surgery. These errors are documented in his book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Frightening numbers of surgical errors have been taking place every year without being systematically addressed. Dr. Gawande and his fellow researchers have addressed them and come up with a solution that markedly reduces these errors, but only if it is employed. That is the World Health Organization (WHO) safe surgery checklist.

The solution is the humble checklist. Unfortunately, the checklist is too humble, resulting in it being ignored by highly esteemed professionals, such as surgeons. The checklist encompasses both types of transactive memory. It is an external prompt, which can employ one of the simplest technologies, ink or graphite on paper. It also encompasses the social aspect of transactive memory, the memories of fellow human beings. Although checklists can be used by single individuals, it is also frequently used by duets or teams, with each party being responsible for different items on the checklist. For example, a surgical team will introduce themselves to each other and identify the portions of the checklist for which they are responsible. Gawande also gives a detailed account of how checklists were used by Captain “Sully” Sullenberger and his crew in safely landing their airliner in the East River.

It is clear that I need to get my personal house in order and start using checklists. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right is highly recommended. It is both entertaining and informative, although perhaps a bit scary in its documentation of medical errors. But reading this book could save your life if you inquire whether they are going to use the World Health Organization (WHO) safe surgery checklist during your surgery. This checklist can be found at

http://www.who.int/patientsafety/safesurgery/en/

As for checklist applications, searches indicate that a variety are available. If you have any experience with these APPS, please leave comments.

Words With Friends

Alec Baldwin is responsible for a large amount of publicity going to the word game Words With Friends, www.wordswithfriends.com. So the Healthymemory Blog does not want to miss the opportunity to say that Words With Friends exemplifies both types of transactive memory, technical and human. As the Healthymemory Blog advocates both types of transactive memory for fostering both memory and brain health, it seems that a few words are in order given the opportunity that Alec Baldwin’s inappropriate behavior has afforded.

The game itself fosters vocabulary building, activates brain circuits searching through memory for appropriate words, as well as strategic thinking. All of which contribute to a healthy memory. Add to this the interaction with your fellow players that in itself is beneficial to a healthy memory.

It would be interesting to see brain imaging studies during the playing of Words with Friends. I would envision a large degree of activation of the hippocampus, the associative cortex, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The competitive aspect of the game might activate the amygdala. I would also wager that glucose metabolism would increase during the playing of the game, but would gradually decrease during the playing of the game as proficiency was gained.

It should be understood that this blog post in no way endorses the behavior of Alex Baldwin, and when the flight attendant tells you to shut down the game, shut down the game.

For readers who might not be so technologically oriented, I would suggest that an older form of technology, a scrabble board, would provide similar benefits.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Improving Working Memory

As readers of the Healthymemory Blog well know, the primary constraint on cognitive performance is our limitation in working memory. The simplest way of thinking about working memory is that it is the information you can hold at one time. Phone numbers are a common example, although they are less relevant with today’s technology than they use to be. But suppose someone shouts out a phone number you want before you can get to your desk and either write it down or dial it. It is likely that you will need to keep rehearsing the number or it will be forgotten before you return to your desk. Phone numbers might appear to be trivial, but working memory limits the number of ideas you can keep active in your memory at one time. In other words, it limits the number of things that you can actively think about at the same time. Unfortunately, working memory is a function that tends to decline as we age. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is the physiological substrate where working memory takes place. It requires glucose to operate. As working memory improves, the rate of glucose metabolism decreases (that is, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex functions more efficiently).

Given the importance of working memory, exercising it to improve its efficiency is highly recommended. Fortunately, there are exercises that do just that. Paul Verhaegen published a paper titled “A Working Memory Workout: How to Expand the Focus of Serial Attention from One to Four Items in 10 Hours or Less” published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 30. no.6, 2004. Suppose you toss a handful of coins, somewhere between 10 and 15, and then count the number of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. The easiest way to do this is to count each denomination before moving to the next. Unfortunately, this places minimal demands on working memory. If you want to expand your working memory, begin by tossing two denominations of coins. Rather than counting them systematically, count them randomly removing each coin as you count it. Here you need to keep a running count of each denomination in working memory. This should be easy, but do this until you can count each denomination without error. Then move on to three denominations. This will place much greater demands on working memory as you need to keep track of three tallies. Keep doing this until you can do it accurately consistently. This might take some time, multiple days, weeks even. When this is mastered move on to four denominations and keep working until you can keep count of four denominations accurately. This will probably take even more time. But once you reach this point you will have reached what is currently as the capacity of working memory, four items. You can be proud to have a highly efficient dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Google Effect and Transactive Memory

A brief piece¹ in Scientific American Mind reports on some of the results of experiments done by Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow. In one of the experiments two groups of undergraduates were presented with trivia statements. One group was told that they could retrieve this information later on their computers, and the other group were told that they could not retrieve this information on the computer. The former group exhibited worse recall than the latter group. This finding should not surprise anyone. Sparrow said that this finding does not mean that the internet is dumbing us down. Rather we are adapting to an internet world.

Readers of the Healthymemory Blog should realize that relying on the internet is an example of transactive memory. When we can readily access the information on the internet, that is referred to as accessible transactive memory. When we need to search for information on the internet, then that is an example of available transactive memory. All the information that is resident on the internet is part of the vast amount of information in potential transactive memory.

I can imagine tests in the internet age allowing students to bring their computers to class and to access the internet while taking essay examination. The capacity to find and assemble this information into coherent essays should easily be accepted as a valid measure of understanding. It is understood that the essays should include references and links to references.

Still, there are dangers to relying too heavily on transactive memory. There is useful analogy here to physical exercise. Currently, there is technology available to allow some of us to avoid all physical exertion. Unfortunately, making heavy use of this technology can have adverse effects on physical health. Similarly, placing too heavy reliance on transactive memory might have adverse effects on brain health. There are also questions regarding epistemology, how do we know what we know. A reasonable assumption is that information that can be recalled from our personal memories is more deeply encoded and better understood, than information we need to look up in some external source. Too much reliance on transactive memory can led to us becoming familiar with a large amount of information, without having anything akin to mastery with any of it. Whenever we encounter new information we need to decide how well we need to know it. Transactive memory is a great convenience. Committing everything to personal memory would slow us down and limit the breadth of our knowledge. There is this tradeoff between breadth and depth of knowledge that needs careful consideration.

1Casselman, A. (2012). The Google Effect. Scientific American Mind, January/February, 7.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

31 Ways to Get Smarter in 2012

“31 Ways to Get Smarter in 2012” was an article in Newsweek, (2012) Jan 9 & 16, pp. 31-34.  This Healthymemory Blog Post summarizes and categorizes them into the Healthymemory categories:

Human Memory: Theory and Data

Mnemonic Techniques

Transactive Memory

Human Memory: Theory and Data

Eat Tumeric. Turmeric is a spice that contains curcumin, which may reduce dementia’

Tak Tae Kwon Do. or any physical activity that raises your heart rate and requires a lot of coordination.

Eat Dark Chocolate. Chocolate is supposed to have memory improving flavonoids as does red wine.

Join a Knitting Circle. Refining motor ability can benefit cognitive skills.

Wipe the Smile Off Your Face. The act of frowning can make you more skeptical and analytic.

Eat Yogurt. Probiotics may benefit your brain as they have in studies on mice.

Refine Your Thinking Understand how your systems of memory work (System 1 fast; System 2 slow), and learn how to use them for maximum benefit. (See the Healthymemory Blog Posts, “The Two System View of Cognition,” “Review of the Washington Post‘s “The Aging Brain,”, and “Disabusing the Myth that Older People Do No Have New Ideas”)

Hydrate. Dehydration forces the brain to work harder and can hinder its planning and decision making ability.

Play an Instrument. This can boost IQ by increasing activity in parts of the brain controlling memory and coordination.

Write By Hand. Brain imaging studies had shown how handwriting engages more sections of the brain than typing. It might also help you remember what you have written.

Drink Coffee. Studies have shown that coffee can bolster short-term memory and assist in warding off depression.

Delay Gratification. This can help you focus your attention and increase the probability of achieving your goalss

Mnemonic Techniques.

Build a Memory Palace. Mnemonic techniques can both boost memory and provide cognitive exercise. The Memory Palace is described in the Healthymemory Blog Post “How the Memory Champs Do It.”

Zone Out. Strictly speaking Zoning Out and Meditation are not mnemonic techniques.
They are include under mnemonic techniques as they are specific processes that can enhance memory.

Transactive Memory

Play Words with Friends. Transactive memory involves using both your fellow humans and technology to maintain and enhance a healthy memory.

Get News from Al Jazerra. Using unused sources of information broadens your view and enhances cognition.

Toss Your Smartphone. This involves getting rid of technology that can disrupt your focus and sap your productivity.

Download the TED APP. On the other hand there is information available in technology that fosters cognitive growth.

Go to a Literary Festival is an example of an transactive memory activity that involves your fellow human beings in your cognitive enhancement.

Learn a Language can involve both humans and technology and can genuinely enhance cognitive health.

Play Violent Videogames. Well, perhaps not violent videogames, but appropriately chosen viedogames can quicken reactions and improve multitasking.

Follow These People on Twitter. Although this is an example of transactive memory, the Healthymemory Blog respectfully disagrees and urges you to avoid Twitter (so never mind the “who” part).

Install Supermemo. This software can help you catalog new data and then remind you to remember it before it slips away.

See a Shakespeare Play. Viewing the work of the bard is an example of transactive memory involving interactions with your fellow humans.

Check Out ITUNES U. Top schools put their lectures online at iTunes U in subjects ranging from philosophy to astrophysics.

Visit MOMA. That is the Museum of Modern Art to enhance your cognitive experience.

Become an Expert. Becoming an expert in a subject involves interactions with both your fellow humans and technology.

Write Reviews Online. Be proactive in your use of technology.

Get Out of Town. This involves interacting with humans but remember to bring along your laptop.

In Summary

This should give you some ideas. Feel free to substitute relevant appropriate activities of your own choosing.

Disabusing the Myth that Older People Do Not Have New Ideas

A valuable article¹ by Vivek Wadhwa in the Washington Post argued against the common misconception that the best entrepreneurs are young. The article began with a quote from the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla who said, “People under 35 are the people who make change happen. People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.” This is a common misconception.

Wadhwa counters this misconception with research of his own. He and his research team explored the backgrounds of 652 chief executives and heads of product development in 502 successful engineering and technology companies established from 1995 to 2005. The median age of successful founders was 39. Twice as many founder were older than 50 as were younger than 25, and there were twice as many over 60 as under 20. Another researcher, Dane Stangler, analyzing Kaufman Firm Survey Data and the Kaufman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity found that the average age of U.S. Entrepreneurs is rising, and that the highest rate of entprepreneurial activity shifted to the 55 to 64 age group.

Wadhwa provided further evidence that people do not stop being creative when they reach middle age. Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod when he was 44, discovered, electricity at 46, helped draft the Declaration of Independence at 70, and invented bifocals after that. Henry Ford introduced the Model T when he was 45. Sam Walton built Wal-Mart in his mid-40s. Ray Kroc built McDonald’s in his early 50s. Ray Kurzweil published “The Singularity is Near” in his 50′s. Alfred Hitchcock directed “Vertigo” at 59. The architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater, was built by Frank Lloyd Wright when he was 68. Wadwha goes on to note that the most significant innovations of the highly celebrated Steve Jobs, the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, came after he was 45.

Reader’s of the Healthymemory Blog should be aware that these examples of successful aging are due to their continuing to engage their attentional and System Two processes (See the Healthymemory Blog Posts “Review of the Washington Post’s The Aging Brain, More on Attention and Cognitive Control,”, “Passing 65,” “Memory and Aging,” and The Two System View of Cognition.” ) (Note that clicking on the hyperlinks will take you to other articles and not the Healthymemory Blog Posts.  To read the posts, enter the title in the blogs Search Box.)

1Wahwha, V. (2011). Who says the best entrepreneurs are young? Not the numbers. Washington Post, 11 December, G4.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Happy Holidays from Healthymemory Blog!

The Healthymemory Blog will be taking a brief hiatus until 2012. Although there will be no new posts until 2012, there are 258 posts for your perusal. As its name implies, the Healthymemory Blog is devoted to the promotion of healthy memories. Posts are divided into three categories:

Human memory includes relevant posts regarding how memory works, its strengths and failures, as well as factors and practices that benefit memory.

Mnemonic techniques includes relevant posts on techniques that not only improve recall, but also provide beneficial brain and cognitive exercise.

Transactive memory includes posts on how to interact with fellow humans and to best use technology to promote cognitive growth.

The overall objective is to promote cognitive health throughout our lives, and not to just reduce or stop cognitive decline, but to continue to grow mentally as we age.

Why Are New Year’s Resolutions So Difficult to Keep?

It’s that time of year when we choose and make our resolutions for the new year. Although making New Year’s Resolutions is a splendid idea, the problem is that we fail to keep most of these resolutions. A recent book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister & John Tierney, explains why. Keeping New Year’s Resolutions results in ego depletion. You can think of ego depletion as being a loss in will or mental energy and it can be measured by glucose metabolism. Whenever you are trying to resist temptation, make a decision, or need to concentrate on certain tasks, there is this loss in willpower or mental energy, such that it is difficult to resist additional temptations, to make more decisions, or to concentrate on additional tasks. So it is unwise to try to give up two vices at the same time. The probability of success if much greater if you address one vice and then later address the other vice.

So the more resolutions you make, the less likely you are to keep them. And the more difficult a given resolution is, the more difficult it will be to keep it. So here is a strategy for your consideration. Decide upon only two resolutions. One should be fairly easy, and the other more difficult. You are more likely to keep the easy resolution, so you will have one in the win column. Should you also keep the second resolution, then you are entitled to a YAHAH moment. This strategy should produce at least a .500 win percentage.

As for what resolutions to make, the Healthymemory Blog has some suggestions.

Taking at least a forty minute walk at least three times a week.

Learn at least three new words a day (or 21 words a week) in the language of your choice.

Contribute to a Wikipedia page on a topic of interest and continue to build you knowledge in that topic or a new topic.

Find several new friends with a similar interest and pursue that interest with a passion.

Engage in deliberate practice in a skill of interest (See the Healthymemory Blog Post “Deliberate Practice”)

Develop and practice mnemonic techniques on a regular basis (Click on the Category “Mnemonic Techniques” and you find a comprehensive listing of mnemonic techniques along with descriptions of the techniques and exercises. Try starting at the bottom of the category and proceeding up. There is a specific Healthymemory Blog post, “Memory Course”, which suggests an order in which the mnemonic techniques should be approached). There are also some websites for learning and developing proficiency in mnemonic techniques. One is www.NeuroMod.org. Click on the Human Memory Site. Then click on the “read more” link under your preferred language. You can open up an account and record and track your progress. Another site is www.Thememorypage.net. Both of these websites are free.)

Good luck.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

How Using Mnemonic Techniques Exercises the Brain

The Healthymemory Blog has a category labeled “Mnemonic Techniques.” Not all of the posts in this category are strictly speaking mnemonic techniques. Posts on specific activities you can do to foster a healthy memory, meditation, for example, are also included here. But the mnemonic techniques specific to remembering specific items of information are touted as being doubly beneficial as they not only directly improve memory, but they also provide good mental exercise for the brain. Today’s post elaborates on how the different parts of the brain are exercised.

The first action that needs to be taken on information that you want to remember is to pay attention. Paying attention involves using working memory. This involves the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Maintaining information here requires glucose metabolism. The initially encoding is done in the hippocampi (there is one hippocampus in each of the two brain hemispheres) from which it is distributed throughout the rest of the brain. This distribution is needed to determine the meaning, or lack of meaning, of this information. Where there is meaning, this meaning is used to elaborate the meaning by relating it to other associations in the associative cortex. When there is little or no meaning, then the mnemonic provides a means of making the apparently meaningless information meaningful. This involves recoding, which involves the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activating other associations found in the associative cortex. Often the technique involves the formation of a visual image which activates associative networks in both cerebral hemispheres via transmissions across the corpus callosum. There is no central memory center in the brain. Rather information is stored throughout the brain. Sensory information in the sensory portions, motor information in the motor portions, and verbal and semantic information is the associative portions. Information that you know well likely has many many links to other items of information, the job of the mnemonic technique is to establish solid new links to this new information you want to remember.

Mnemonic techniques require you to pay attention. Paying attention increases the glucose metabolism to the brain. This, in turn, activates the all important hippocampi and activates memory pathways throughout the associative and sensory cortices of the brain.

Click on the Category “Mnemonic Techniques” and you find a comprehensive listing of mnemonic techniques along with descriptions of the techniques and exercises. Try starting at the bottom of the category and proceeding up. There is a specific Healthymemory Blog post, “Memory Course”, which suggests an order in which the mnemonic techniques should be approached.

There are also some websites for learning and developing proficiency in mnemonic techniques. One is www.NeuroMod.org. Click on the Human Memory Site. Then click on the “read more” link under your preferred language. You can open up an account and record and track your progress. Another site is www.Thememorypage.net. Both of these websites are free.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice is a term coined by K. Anders Ericsson¹ to define the type of practice needed to achieve superior performance or expertise. He wrote, “ For the superior performance in any field the goal isn’t just repeating the same thing again and again, but achieving higher levels of control over every aspect of performance. That’s why they (experts) don’t find practice boring. Each practice session they are working on doing something better than they did the last time. Intense solitary deliberate practice is the hallmark of the superior in every competitive field that I have studied over my forty year career.” He contrasts the practice method of professional versus amateur golfers: Most amateurs participate almost exclusively in recreational play with others. When they ‘practice’ they tend to do things that they are comfortable with and can do with minimal control, such as whacking buckets of golf balls at a driving range. Professionals, in contrast, engage in practice activities that require full concentration to improve specific aspects of their performance, Further, they voluntarily choose practice routines in which they initially experience difficulties in order to improve a specific weakness…The expert golfer’s ability to perceive minute differences and exert control of the ball trajectories does not emerge naturally but through the process of acquiring refined mental representation for perceiving, monitoring, and controlling the muscles involved in the various required movements.”

The pianist Angela Hewitt wrote, “In my recording sessions I find that the improvement comes not in endlessly repeating a piece, but in listening intently to what has been recorded and then thinking about how it can be done better. The editing process then becomes an art in itself and requires intelligent musical decisions.”

In formulating his theories of relativity Einstein needed to master non Euclidean geometries. Acquiring expertise requires constantly going beyond what you know and mastering new material.

See the Healthymemory Blog Post “How the Memory Champs Do It” to understand the fantastic feats of memory that they can perform as well as the types of deliberate practice they employ to build these phenomenal skills.

Remember the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall? “Practice man, practice.” This needs to be changed to, “Deliberate practice, man, deliberate practice.”

It is remarkable what you can do. But true expertise requires deliberate practice.

1Anderson, K.A. (2007). Deliberate Practice and the Modifiability of Body and Mind: Toward a Science of the Structure and Acquisition of Expert and Elite Performance. International Journal of Sports Psychology.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Are We Becoming More Intelligent?

The Flynn Effect¹ refers to the substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores that has occurred over the last one hundred years in the industrialized countries. The average score for an IQ test is 100. Periodically these tests are redone and renormed (that is the average is recomputed with a standard deviation of 15). When the scores of people taking the new test are compared against the scores of the same people taking the previous test, the scores are typically higher. One estimates is that an IQ of 80 today would equate to an IQ of 100 in 1932. How can this be? Are we becoming more intelligent? If we are becoming more intelligent this increase is occurring much more quickly than could be explained by genetic evolution.

According to Flynn, statistical estimates are that genes account for 36 percent of the IQ variance and that environmental and experiential factors account for the remaining 64 percent. The problem is that it is impossible to conduct a study where genetic and environmental factors are independently controlled. The reality is that there is an interaction between these two factors, and it is this interaction that explains the Flynn effect.

Flynn uses an analogy with basketball to make his point. Suppose a pair of identical twins genetically endowed to play basketball are separated at birth. Regardless of the different environments under which they are raised, they are both likely to play basketball and to practice assiduously. Consequently they will excel at basketball and eventually attract the attention of coaches who will further foster their talents and abilities. A similar interaction between genetic inheritance and environmental factors can be found with identical twins with high IQs who are raised in different environments. Regardless of their respective environments they are more likely to be drawn to learning and will perform better in school. They are more likely to be admitted to competitive universities where their IQs will be increased even more.

Flynn says, “There is a strong tendency for genetic advantage or disadvantage to get more and more matched to a corresponding environment.” Accordingly, the environment will always be the determining factor of whether or not a genetic predisposition gets expressed. This applies to all our cognitive powers, not just IQ. So we can increase our own cognitive powers by our own deliberate efforts. This calls to mind what Thomas Edison said about genius, that it was one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

So the answer to the question, “Are We Becoming More Intelligent?”, the question to the answer is “What is Intelligence?” But we do have the ability to increase our cognitive powers throughout our lifetimes through our own deliberate efforts.

1Flynn, J.R. (2007). What Is Intelligence? Cambridge University Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Review of The Washington Post’s The Aging Brain

This piece¹ is informative and offers some good advice, but is woefully deficient in some areas that should have been included. The article is basically an annotated diagram that begins with the first step of the eye seeing something. The second step is the information arriving at the visual cortex that identifies what the eyes see. The third step is the information flowing through the associative cortex to develop further understanding. The fourth step is the information arriving at the hippocampus (actually it should be hippocampi as there is one hippocampus in each hemisphere of the brain. Information must be processed by these hippocampi if it is to be recalled later. People who have lost their hippocampi via surgery, accidents, or dementia, are unable to learn/remember new information. But it is the prefrontal cortext decides whether this new information warrants processing by the hippocampi for later use. The prefrontal cortex is an important part of the brain as it not only decides what is worth remembering, but it is involved in all the decisions we make and is responsible for regulating our behavior. Unfortunately, it is late maturing (not until our twenties) and early to decline (sometime after age 50). So far this description is accurate and it is understood that there would be similar, but not identical stages of processing for other modalities of information.

There is another section of the article on how to slow the effects of aging that provides the following advice:

Calm Down – this is good advice as the piece correctly states that stress can destroy synapses , it fouls up the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. It does not mention that the various types of meditation are beneficial in helping us to calm down.

Exercise – this is good advice as the increased blood flow and oxygen uptake it engenders is beneficial to the brain.

Make friends – more good advice. There have been a number of Healthymemory Blog Post extolling the benefits of socialization.

Sleep well – more good advice. Getting adequate sleep is important not only to general health, but is also critical to important brain and memory processes.

Ask about estrogen – Ladies, you can judge this one for yourselves. This recommendation is based on one study. Given the somewhat uneven results from estrogen therapies, some skepticism might be in order.

Do what you do best – Although it is true that expertise is maintained well into old age and that you are less likely to lose what you know well, it is a somewhat misleading strategy for slowing the effects of aging. Although it is fine to continuing growing in your area of expertise, it would be a mistake not to expand into some new areas. Research has indicated that maintaining brain and cognitive health should not be a reactive, defensive matter, but rather a proactive effort to continue growing cognitive competence.

An interesting question to ask, is why does the prefrontal cortex start to decline after age 50? Is it solely a matter of aging? There is the Dumbledore Hypothesis regarding the effects of aging on the brain (See the Healthymemory Blog posts, “More on Attention and Cognitive Control,”, “Passing 65,” and “Memory and Aging.). This hypothesis fits well with the Two System View of Cognition (see the Healthymemory Blog post “The Two System View of Cognition.”). According to this view, there are two primary means of processing information. System One is fast and automatic. It is the result of prior learning. This is the system that is doing the majority of the processing when we converse, drive a car, etc. System Two is slow, effortful, and demands attention. This is what is at work when we are trying to learning something new, to solve a math problem, or recognize something that is illogical or contradictory in what the person we are conversing with has said (or in our own conversation if we recognize something illogical or contradictory in what we have said. According to the Dumbledore Hypothesis as we age we increasingly rely on System One processing because we have learned much and don’t need to do as much processing as a younger person who does not have such a wealth of experience to draw upon. The problem is that since we do less System Two processing we use our prefrontal cortex less. The use it or lose it advice that we know from physical exercise also applies to cognitive exercise. When we use our prefrontal cortex more glucose is sent there. So the loss in the functioning in the prefrontal cortex might not be solely do to aging. It might be in part, perhaps in large part, to a loss in the frequency of its use.

So the new idea is to challenge our minds and to continue to learn new things as we age. (See the Healthymemory Blog post, “A Quote Worth Pondering.”) It is not too late to learn a new language, or new subject matter. These activities will engage the prefrontal cortex. Mnemonic techniques have the benefit of not only being a technique that enhances memory, but are also means of providing cognitive exercise that exercises the prefrontal cortex and activates both cortices of the brain. So aging should not cause us to be reactive and defensive, but we should go on offense, be proactive, and continue to grow cognitively.

1Berkowitz, B. & Cuadra, C. (2011). The Aging Brain in The Washington Post Health & Science Section, E1, 6 December.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Memory and Its Underlying Brain Structures

A variety of Healthymemory Blog posts have discussed the various brain structures underlying memory. As a book¹ I have been reading has provided a succinct overview describing the interacting structures and areas of the brain that are responsible for memory I have decided to write the following post.

The initially encoding is done in the hippocampi (there is one hippocampus in each of the two brain hemispheres) from which it is distributed throughout the rest of the brain. This distribution is needed to determine the meaning, or lack of meaning, of this information. This takes place in short term or working memory. Meaningless information is quickly lost without further processing. Even the current instance of meaningful information will be lost without further processing (for example I need to meet Fred for lunch or I need to remember this for the examination). This working memory is maintained in an active mental state within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes. Maintaining information here requires glucose metabolism.

This glucose metabolism is the physiological indication of paying attention. So when you are performing a task that requires you to pay attention, glucose metabolism is required. It is interesting to note that as you become more proficient in performing the task, the rate of glucose metabolism actually decreases. This indicates that you need to pay less attention due to your increase in proficiency.

The successful storing of information in long term memory via the hippocampi requires the establishing of links to other items in long term memory. Mnemonic techniques are developed to make what appears to be inherently meaningless into something meaningful so it can be linked to other items I long term memory for later retrieval. There is no central memory center in the brain. Rather information is stored throughout the brain. Sensory information in the sensory portions, motor information in the motor portions, and verbal and semantic information is the associative portions. Information that you know well likely has many many links to other items of information. Some memory theorists have likened human memory to a hologram. Holograms differ from photographs in that the entire image can be reconstructed from portions of the hologram. So if you break a hologram into two pieces, the entire hologram can be reconstructed from either piece, but the resulting image will be less distinct.

Memory theorists make a distinction between information being available in memory and information being accessible in memory. Information that can be readily retrieved is said to be accessible. However, if you cannot retrieve something at a given time, it is likely that that information is still not available in memory, but it is still accessible. Moreover, even after you have consciously given up trying to recall this information, it sometimes happens that at a later point in time when you are consciously thinking about something else, that this apparently lost memory pops into consciousness.

So how does this relate to maintaining and growing a healthy memory? Engaging in activities requiring significant amounts of attention increase the metabolic activity going to your working memory. This metabolic activity will decrease as you become more proficient in the activity. In many respects this is analogous to the effects of physical activity on cardiopulmonary activity. It should be noted that this practice effect is the result of transferring information to long term memory so less attention is required.

To maintain and grow long term memory developing new associative pathways throughout the brain is required. This will not be done by simply surfing the internet (which is primarily a working memory exercise). Long term memory growth is a matter of pursuing knowledge and skill in more depth to develop and strengthen associative pathways so that they are more resistant to forgetting. In other words, increasing the accessibility of the information. The very act of retrieving information is beneficial even if your initial retrieval attempts are unsuccessful. The searching for information activates memory pathways, some of which might have been long inactive. The memory search can reactivate them. Moreover, your memory will likely continuing working even after you have consciously given up the attempt.

1Restak, R., (2009). Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Brain Performance. New York: Riverhead Books.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Adult Brain

The brain reaches its maximum size (by weight) in early adult life.¹ It decreases by about ten percent over the remainder of the life span. It ways about three pounds and contains about one hundred billion brain cells (neurons). There are about a million billion connections (synapses) linking those cells together. As a person ages the number of synapses generally decreases, but the commonly cited figure of 50,000 cells a day is no longer believed by most neuroscientists. The loss of neurons that does occur is not evenly distributed across the brain. There is little or no significant loss in many cortical regions used in normal cognition.

More important than the loss of neurons and the thinning of synaptic connections that occurs as we age, is the loss of cells from cluster of cells (nuclei) about the size of a pinhead located in the brain stem. This brain stem is about the length of an adult forefinger. The neuroscientist Paul Coleman calls these nuclei “juice machines.” They send ascending fanlike projections to many parts of the cortex. The brains neurotransmitters travel along these projections. Reductions in levels of these neurotransmitters leads to many of the infirmities that inflict us as we age: memory loss, depression, decrease in overall mental sharpness, and inefficient mental processing. Fortunately these infirmities can be improved by drugs that increase these neurotransmitters.

Although the loss of neurons occurs normally with aging, this loss can be compensated for by increases in the networking capacity of the remaining neurons. Although the number of neurons decreases from birth onward, fewer but stronger and more enduring connections form among the remaining neurons (see the healthymemory blog posts “HAROLD,” “Is Dementia an Inevitable Part of Aging,” and “Hope for an Aging Population: STAC”).

“This capacity to compensate for the loss of its components makes the brain the only known structure in the universe that works more efficiently despite a loss of its components. To this extent the brain is unique among both biological and mechanical structures: over the years it doesn’t ‘wear out’.”²

1Much of this blog post is abstracted from Restak, R. (2009).Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance. New York: Riverhead Books.

2Ibid. p.21

A Quote Worth Pondering

“To remain mentally sharp, you have to deal with familiar things in novel ways. But most important of all, you have to have a sense of curiosity. If interest and curiosity stop coming automatically to you, then you’re in trouble, no matter how young or old you are.” – Art Buchwald

That is Art Buchwald the Pulitzer Prize winning humorist offering a profound insight. He’s written many books and many, many columns. My favorite book is his last, Art Buchwald: Too Soon to Say Goodbye. He wrote this book while he was in a hospice waiting to die. He had had one of his legs amputated and was told that he needed to go on dialysis if he wanted to continue living. He decided that he had had enough and did not want to go on living. So he moved to a hospice where he lived much longer than anyone would have expected. He lived long enough to write his last book.

I found this quote on the page before the introduction to Richard Restak‘s book, Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance. He regards Art Buchwald as one of the most intelligent people he has ever met. Dr. Restak has written many interesting books and this one certainly does not disappoint. The book is divided into six parts followed by an epilogue. They are

Part One Discovering the Brain

Part Two Care and Feeding of the Brain: The Basics

Part Three Specific Steps for Enhancing Your Brain’s Performance

Part Four Using Technology to Achieve a More Powerful Brain

Part Five Fashioning the Creative Brain

Part Six Impediments to Brain Function and How to Compensate for Them

Epilogue The Twenty-first-Century Brain

Some Healthymemory Blog posts will be on excerpts from this book. But there is no way that I can do this book justice. I highly recommend it.

And please ponder Buchwald’s quote and give it the attention it deserves.

Happy Thanksgiving 2011

Happy Thanksgiving, readers. As its name implies, this is the time of the year to be optimistic and thankful. Among our many blessings are our memories and cognitive abilities. They are many and remarkable and we need to be thankful. One of the best ways of giving thanks is to not only take care of your abilities and keep them healthy, but also to grow and develop them. These are the objectives of the Healthymemory Blog. It provides information on our brains and cognitive faculties as well as advice on how to keep them healthy and to grow them.

Focusing on Your Breathing

A short article¹ in Scientific American Mind reported a couple of studies that demonstrated the benefits of focusing on your breathing. One study reported in the May issue of the International Journal of Psychophysiology and conducted at the Toho University School of Medicine in Japan taught research participants to breathe deeply into their abdomen and to focus on their breathing. They did this for 20 minutes. They reported fewer negative feelings. More of the mood-boosting neurotransmitter serotonin was found in their blood. The prefrontal cortex, an area associated with attention and high-level cognitive processing, exhibited more oxygenated hemoglobin.

Another study reported in the April issue of Cognitive Therapy and Research conducted at Ruhr University in Germany examined the effect focusing on breathing had on depression symptoms. The research participants were asked to stay in mindful contact with their breathing and to try to maintain continual awareness without letting their minds wander. During 18 minute trials the researchers asked the participants whether they were successful in doing so. Those who were successful reported less negative thinking, less rumination and fewer other symptoms of depression.

You can do this. You can sit up comfortably and breathe naturally (or deeply, if you prefer). Focus your attention on your breath and feel it in detail, in your nasal cavity, in your chest, and in your abdomen. Don’t be critical if your mind wanders, just try to refocus. With practice, you should improve your ability to stay focused. Try to build up to 20 minutes. Once you become skillful, even a few minutes of this mindful breathing can help you become more calm and collected.

See the Healthymemory Blog Post “The Benefits of Meditation,” for more information. It does not appear that you need to be a Buddhist monk to benefit from meditation. It is thought that even very short periods of meditation can be beneficial.

1Rodriguex, T. (2011). Therapy in the Air. Scientific American Mind, November/December, p. 16.

The Importance of Fiction

An Article¹ in Scientific American Mind extolled the value of fiction in understanding others and in learning to empathize with others. It presents a variety of data, both behavioral and brain images, that support this contention. I also find this intuitively plausible. Fiction takes one into the minds and feelings of others. You develop a sense of the characters in the piece as to what motivates them and why they do what they do. The article reminded me of an old television series, Remington Steele, about two private detectives, one who has an encyclopedic knowledge of movie plots. Any given case they need to solve reminds him of a relevant movie plot which led to the solution of the crime.

I’ve long thought that an understanding of Shakespeare’s plays would provide an very thorough understanding of humans and their interactions. Certainly, Shakespeare is not required, but I don’t think that all fiction provides this understanding. Tom Clancy writes thrilling novels, but his character development is a tad thin. The fiction that is beneficial in helping us to understand and to interact well with others has characters who reveal their thoughts and feelings.

My degrees are in psychology, and I believe that many students choose psychology as a major because they want to understand and interact well with others. I think these students would both benefit more and enjoy more a major emphasizing literature. I think that too many of us psychologists are not as well practiced in interpersonal skills as we should be (I exclude clinicians and counselors here). But I do think that psychology is a good major for someone who wants to understand science. Psychologists study everything from individual neural cells to large groups of people, and they need to know experimental design, statistics, and mathematical modeling. Unfortunately, the understanding of students in the physical sciences and engineering tends to be constrained to their respective disciplines. I hurry to add, however, that I know many personal exceptions to this statement.

I become extremely annoyed when I do not here psychology in the category of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math ) disciplines as it is regarded as a soft discipline. Psychology is involved in all these disciplines. Moreover, when you consider the critical problems we face today, you should find that most fall into the so-called soft areas of science.

1Oatley, K. (2011). In the Minds of Others. Scientific American Mind, November/December, 63-67.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams are dreams that are extremely intense while the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. Approximately eight out of 10 people have had a lucid dream at least once in their life and a small fraction of these have them as often as once or twice a week.¹ Lucid dreams are of interest as their study can inform us about both dreaming and the functioning of the brain. There is evidence that lucid dreaming is useful for treating chronic nightmares and perhaps even anxiety.²

One of the first problems is studying lucid dreaming is to have a method for determining whether a lucid dream is occurring. Sleep researcher Stephen LaBerge of Stanford University came up with the technique of instructing research participants to move their eyes a certain way when they realized they were dreaming. These eye movement signals enabled the researchers to distinguish them from REMs that occur during regular dreaming. Later Ursula Dross and her research team discovered another electrical signal from the brain that distinguished lucid dreaming. This was increased activity in the 40-hertz range(the “gamma band”), that occurred primarily in the frontal lobe. These are the same high frequency waves we generate when we concentrate on a particular object. The coherence of electrical activity in the brain is increased, whereas it is generally decreased during REM sleep. You can thinkof the brain’s activation during REM sleep as being similar to a party where all the guests are speaking simultaneously. In lucid dreams, the party guests tend to converse with one another with lower overall background noise.³

Lucid dreaming has been found useful in treating people who suffer from nightmares. People who learned how to increase their frequency of lucid dreams reported fewer nightmares. It is also hoped that lucid dreaming might alleviate anxiety or phobias, but more research is needed. Lucid dreaming has been helpful for creative endeavors such as creating metaphors, but not for rational exercises such as solving brain teasers.⁴ Much more research into clinical and practical applications is clearly needed.

It is said that people who follow the following regimen regularly are able to have one or two lucid dreams per week:

Throughout the day, ask yourself repeatedly if you are awake. When this habit becomes ingrained, you might find yourself asking the same question in a dream—at which point your chances of realizing you are dreaming skyrocket.

Look in a mirror or read a bit of text every so often as a “reality check.” In dreams our appearance is often altered and the written word can be hard to pin down. You may carry the habit of checking for these dream signs into sleep, where they could alert you to the fact that you are dreaming.

Keep a dream journal by your bed and jot down the dreams you remember immediately upon waking. Studies who that this practice makes you more aware of your dreams in general, and people who are more aware of their dreams are more likely to have a lucid dream.

Before falling asleep, focus intently on the fantasy you hope to experience in a much detail as possible. Research show that “incubating” an idea just before bed dramatically increased the likelihood that you will dream about it . And if you suddenly notice that you are dancing with a moving star you hoped to meet, you might just realize you are having a dream and be able to take control of what happens next.⁵

Leonardo da Vinci is said to have practiced this “incubation” before he went to sleep.

1Voss, U. (2011)/. Unlocking the Lucid Dream. Scientific American Mind, November/December 2011, pp. 33-35.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

5Adapted from the Lucidity’s Institute Web Site, www.lucidity.com.

Dreams Can Work For You

An article¹ by Deidre Barret recounts incidents in which dreams resulted in creative discoveries. Perhaps the most famous is the dream of a snake of atoms biting its tale that lead to his discovery of the benzene ring. Others include Mendeleyev’s dream enabling him to come up with the final form of the periodic table. A dream enabled Loewi to design a neuroscience experiment that ultimately lead to a Nobel Prize. Paul Horowitz dreamed of the designs for laser telescope controls and Alan Huang dreamed of laser computing.

It is not just science and engineering, bu dreaming has had beneficial impacts on the arts. Mary Shelly‘s dreams helped her write Frankenstein. Dreams also helped Robert Louis Stevenson write Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. As for music, Beethoven, Paul McCartney, and Billy Joel all awoke with ideas for new themes and tunes. An in the area of social activism, Mahatma Gandhi reported that it was a dream that lead him to call for a nonviolent protest of British Rule of India.

Leonardo da Vinci made it a practice to mull over a problem before falling to sleep.

That dreaming can be productive should not be too surprising to readers of the Healthymemory Blog, as a large part of mental activity takes place below the level of conscious awareness. Our minds are actively working even when we are not aware that they are working. Dreaming is just another cognitive state; one that can result in productive results. Barret reports a variety of studies that report some success in setting up people so that their dreams will solve problems. Often, the results are nil, but sometimes they are fruitful.

Barret provides the following tips on how to intentionally try to dream about a problem in the hope that it will lead to a solution:

At bedtime, imagine yourself dreaming about the problem, awakening, and writing on a notepad besides your bed.

If possible, arrange objects connected to the problem on a bedside table or on the wall across the room.

Write down a brief description and keep this note close to your bed. Also keep pen, paper, and a flashlight besides it.

Then review the problem for a few minutes before actually going to bed.

When in the bed, imagine the problem, as a concrete object if possible.

Convince yourself that you want to dream about the problem before your drift off to sleep.

Lie quietly when you awake before you get out of bed. Try to recall as much of the dream as you can and write it down.

If you are interested in this topic, Barret has written a book, The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving__and How You Can Too. Crown (Random House) 2001. The International Association for the Study of Dreams also has a website: www.asdreams.org.

1Barrett, D. (2011). Answers in Your Dreams. Scientific American Mind, November/December, 27-33.

Brain Conversations

For most lay people, consciousness is psychology. It is how we deal with the world. These people would be surprised to learn that for many psychologists and philosophers, consciousness is an epiphenomenon, meaning that it is not real. They would argue that we do experience consciousness but that it is a byproduct of cognitive processes that have already occurred at an unconscious level. In other words, consciousness is just along for the ride. Articles¹ in a recent Scientific American Mind present this view.

Although it is true that the vast majority of cognitive processing does occur below the level of consciousness, does that mean that consciousness is irrelevant? The purpose of consciousness has been and continues to be a hotly discussed topic. Baumeister has provided perhaps the most compelling explanations of the purpose of consciousness. He argues that conscious thought is for internal processing that facilitates downstream interaction with the social and cultural environment. Consciousness enables the construction of meaningful, sequential thought. These constructions are found in sentences and narratives, logical reasoning, quantification, causal understanding, and narratives. In short, it accounts for intellectual and social life. It is used for the simulation of events. (See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “Conscious Thought”)

An article² written for a different purpose provides support for Baumeister’s ideas. This article dealt with awareness. This topic is important in the context of trying to diagnose patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious state. Misdiagnosis rates here can be as high as 40 percent. A neural correlate for consciousness is much needed. For many years theorists thought that the prefrontal cortex was key and that neural thoughts that reached this area emerged from unconscious obscurity into awareness. However, new research supports the notion that consciousness is a conversation rather than a revelation, and that no single brain structure leads the dialogue.

The neuroscientist Simon van Gaal conducts experiments in which he asks participants to push a button every time they see a certain symbol flash on a screen, except when they see a different symbol that means “stop.” On some trials the stop signal is presented below the level of conscious awareness. Although participants do not see the stop signal, they do hesitate to push the button as though some part of the brain perceived the information. Brain activity is recorded during the experiment via functional MRI and electroencephalography (EEG). The unconsciousness inhibitory signal seems to make it all the way up to parts of the prefrontal cortex despite the participants not being consciously aware of the signal.

Another study supports the claim that awareness emerges when information travels back and forth between brain areas rather than from an ascending linear chain. EEG signals were recorded in patients with brain damage as they listened to stimulating tones. All the patients were awake and alert but exhibited different levels of responsiveness. Mathematical models derived from the data suggest that feedback between the frontal cortex and lower-level sensory areas are crucial to producing conscious awareness. Similar results have been obtained with monkeys and healthy human participants.

Although these studies do not prove Baumeister’s notions regarding the role of consciousness, they do seem to provide supportive evidence.

1Nichols, S. (2011). Is Free Will an Illusion? Scientific American Mind, November/December, 18-19.

and

Koch, C. (2011). Probing the Unconscious Mind, Scientific American Mind, November/December,, 20-21.

2Peck, M.E. (2011). A Conversation in the Brain. Scientific American Mind, November/December, 12.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Importance of Ikigai

Ikigai is a Japanese word roughly translated as “the reason for which we wake up in the morning.” In other words, having a purpose in life. Knowing your purpose in life is important to your well being.¹ Many studies have purported to show a link between some aspect of religion and better health. For example, religion has been associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke, blood pressure, metabolic disorders, better immune functioning, improved outcomes for infections such as HIV and meningitis, and lower risk of developing cancer. Of course, it was not possible for any of these studies to be Random Controlled Trials (RCTs), where participants were randomly assigned to religious and non-religious groups. So it is possible that there is a strong element of self-selection here.

However, there are other possible reasons for these results. Religious people tend to pursue lower risk lifestyles. Churchgoers typically enjoy strong social support. And, of course, seriously ill people are less likely to attend church. However, there was recent study that tried to statistically control for these factors and concluded that “religiosity/spirituality” does have a protective effect, but only for healthy people.² Some researchers attribute this to the placebo effect (See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “”Placebo and Nocebo Effects”). Others believe that positive emotions (See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “Optimism”) associated with “spirituality” promote beneficial physiological responses.

Still others think that what really matters is having a sense of purpose in life, whatever it might be. Presumably knowing why we are here and what is important increases our sense of control over events making them less stressful. Remember the study by Saron that was reported in the Healthymemory Blog Post, “The Benefits of Meditation.” The increase in the levels of the enzyme that repairs teleomeres correlated with an increased sense of control and an increased sense of purpose in life. The meditators were doing something they loved and provided a purpose in life.

So, it is important to have a purpose in life when you awaken in the morning. This is important throughout one’s life and is something that needs to be considered before retiring (See the Healthymemory Blog Posts, “The Second Half of Life,” and “Could the AARP Be Telling Us Not to Retire?”).

1Much of this post is based on an article, Know your purpose, by Jo Marchant in the New Scientist, 27 August 2011, p. 35.

2Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 78, p.81.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Self Hypnotism

It has been said that all hypnotism is actually self hypnotism. The New Scientist published an interesting article¹ on hypnotism. It describe the treatment program that Peter Whorwell has developed for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). IBS is a serious disorder that results in some sufferers contemplating suicide. Whorwell presents a tutorial to his patients on how the gut functions. Then he has his patients effectively hypnotize themselves to use visual and tactile sensations of warmth and to imagine the bowel working normally. The United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has recommended hypnosis as an effective treatment for IBS. Whorwell has shown that under hypnosis some IBS patients can reduce the contractions of their bowel, something that can not normally be done under conscious control². Their bowel linings become less sensitive to pain.

The question is why this works. Irving Kirsch of the University of Kull thinks that hypnosis taps into physiological pathways that are similar to those involved in the placebo effect (See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “Placebo and Nocebo Effects”). The medical conditions that benefit from the placebo effect and hypnotism are similar. They both involve suggestion and expectation. The disappointing part is that there are individual differences in how well people respond to hypnosis.

For those who do respond well to hypnosis, the effects can be quite impressive. A common test used in studies of pain perception is called the cold presser test. The research participant is asked to keep her hand in ice water for as long as she can stand it. This does become quite painful. The research participant gives ratings of the pain as it increases as the time in the ice water increases. Eventually, the pain becomes unbearable and the participant removes the hand. People who are effectively hypnotized can keep their hand in the bucket for a long period of time. They are told when to remove their hand to prevent organic damage. They also give accurate ratings of the pain, so although they remain aware of the painful stimulus, the pain remains bearable.

1Marchant, J. (2011). Hypnotise Yourself. New Scientist, 27 August, 35.

2Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 64, p. 621.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Benefits of Meditation

The benefits of meditation are many.¹ There is evidence that meditation boosts the immune system in vaccine recipients and people with cancer. Meditation protects against relapses in major depression and soothes skin conditions. It has even been shown to slow the progression of HIV.

There is even some evidence that meditation might slow the aging process. A proposed theoretical process by which this might happen is interesting. It is believed that telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes play a role in aging. These telomeres get shorter every time a cell divides. It is thought that this process fosters aging. Research conducted by Clifford Saron of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, found that the levels of an enzyme that builds up telomeres were higher in people who attended a three-month meditation retreat than in a comparable control group who did not meditate.² The increase in this enzyme and the build up of telomeres, could play a role in slowing aging.

It is also likely that meditation works by influencing stress response pathways. Meditators tend to have lower cortisol levels. A study sowed that meditators also have changes in their amygdalae.³ Amygdalae are brain areas involved in fear and the response to threat.

The good news is that you do not need to be a monk meditating in a monastery or a participant in a three-month study to benefit from meditating. Imaging studies have shown that meditating can cause structural changes in the brain in as little as 11 hours of training. A psychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco, Elissa Epel, suggests that fitting in short “mini-meditations” during the course of a day, such as taking a few minutes at your desk to focus on your breathing can be effective. “Little moments here and there all matter.”

Previous Healthymemory Blog posts on this topic can be found by entering “The Benefits of Meditation” in the search block.

1Much of this post is based on an article, Meditate, by Jo Marchant in the New Scientist, 27 August 2011, pp. 34-35.

2Psychoneuroendocrinology, 36., p.664

3Social and Affective Neuroscience, 5, p.11.

The Adverse Effects of Social Isolation

Lonely people have a higher risk of everything from heart attacks to dementia, and from depression to death. However, people who are satisfied with their social lives sleep better, age more slowly and have more favorable responses to vaccines. John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago, an expert on the effects of social isolation, says that curing loneliness is as good for your health as giving up smoking. Charles Raison of Emory University studies mind-body interactions agrees with Cacioppo. He has said, “It’s probably the most powerful behavioral finding in the world. People who have rich social lives and warm open relationships don’t get sick and they live longer.”¹

Although it is true that some people who are lonely might not take good care of themselves, Cacioppo states that there are direct physiological mechanisms that are related to the effects of stress. Cacioppo has found that genes involved in cortisol signaling and the inflammatory response are up-regulated in lonely people and that immune cells important in fighting bacteria were more active too. His conjecture is that our bodies might have evolved so that in situations of perceived social isolation, they trigger branches of the immune system involved in would healing and bacterial infection. On the other hand, people in a group might favor the immune response for fighting viruses, which are more likely to be spread among people living in close contact.

It is important to note that these differences relate most strongly to how lonely people believe themselves to be, rather than to the actual size of their social network. Cacioppo thinks that our attitude to others is key here. Lonely people become overly sensitive to social threats and see other people as potentially dangerous. In a review of previous studies that he published last year, he found that disabusing lonely people of this attitude reduced loneliness more effective than giving people more opportunities for interaction, or teaching social skills.²

Only one or two close friends might suffice if you are satisfied with your social life. Problems arise when you feel lonely.³ In the jargon of the Healthymemory Blog, this is largely a matter of transactive memory. Transactive memory refers to shared memories and of the knowledge one has of other memories. These memories can form as a result of person-to-person interactions or via means of technology, such as the internet. It should be noted that having hundreds of friends on Facebook would not necessarily indicate that you are not lonely. “What is important is the quality rather than the quantity of these relationships. An evolutionary biologist, Robin Dunbar, came up with a number he modestly named, “Dunbar’s number.” He bases this number on the size of the human brain and its complexity. He calculates that the maximum number of relationships our brain can keep track of at one time to be about 150 . This number includes all degrees of relationships. This is the maximum number of relationships. The number of close, meaningful relationships is much smaller. He estimates that we have a core group of about five people with whom we speak frequently. I find this absolute number a tad small, but to be in the general ballpark. At the other extreme there are about 100 people with whom we speak about once a year. The 150 number is an absolutely maximum of people we can even generously consider as friends. So Facebook users who have friended several hundred friends have essentially rendered the term “friend” meaningless.” (From the Healthymemory Blog post, “Why is Facebook So Popular?”, also see the Healthymemory Blog post “How Many Friends are Too Many?”).

1From “Trust People” in Heal Thyself by Marchant, J. (2011), New Scientist., 27 August, p. 35.

2Cacipoppo, J. (2010). Annals of Behaviorl Medicine, 40, p. 218.

3This part of this post was based heavily on the article by Marchant in the first footnote above.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Optimism

There are many benefits that accrue to those who are optimistic.¹ Optimists recover better from medical procedures, and have healthier immune systems. They live longer both in general and when suffering from conditions such as cancer, heart disease and kidney failure.²

It is common knowledge that negative thoughts and anxiety can make us ill. The belief that we are at risk triggers physiological pathways such as the “flight or fight” response by the sympathetic nervous system. Although these have evolved to protect us from danger, when they are switched on long-term they increase the risk of conditions such as diabetes and dementia.

The new perspective on optimism is that positive beliefs don’t just work by quelling stress. They have unique positive effects. Feeling safe and secure and believing things will turn out fine seems to help the body maintain and repair itself. A review of recent studies concluded that the health benefits of positive thinking happen independently of the harm caused by negative states such as pessimism or stress, and are roughly comparable in magnitude.³

It is thought that optimism reduces stress-induced inflammation and levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. It might also reduce susceptibility to disease by dampening sympathetic nervous system activity and stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system governs the “rest and digest” response—the counterpart to the “fight or flight” response.

Even if you are not an optimist, you can train yourself to think more positively, and it seems that the more stressed or pessimistic you are to begin with, the better it works. David Cresswell of the Carnegie Mellon University asked students facing exams to write short essays on times when they had displayed qualities that were important to them. The aim was to boost their sense of self-worth. Compared to the control group, these self-affirmed students had lower levels of adrenaline and other fight or flight hormones in their urine on exam day. The effect was greatest for those students who had been most worried about their exam results.⁴

Tali Sharot has written an interesting book claiming that we have an optimism bias because it provided us with an evolutionary advantage.⁵ When most people are asked what is going to transpire in the upcoming month, they tend to give an overly optimistic account. Similarly, when asked to provide an estimate of their longevity or of their having certain diseases, they also tend to provide overly optimistic accounts. The people who are able to provide fairly accurate estimates for these same questions tend to be those who are clinically diagnosed as being mildly depressed. This phenomenon is called depressive realism.⁶ So the idea is that truly accurate realism can be depressive. A species of mildly depressed individuals probably could not have evolved.

To conclude, although optimism can be good, there is also the possibility of too much of a good thing. See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “Can Optimism Be Bad?”

1Much of this post is based on an article, Think Positive, by Jo Marchant in the New Scientist, 27 August 2011, p. 34.

2Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 39, p.34.

3Psychosomatic Medicine, 70, p.741.

4Health Psychology, 28, p.554.

5Sharot, T. (2011). The Optimistm Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain., New York: Pantheon Books.

6Alloy, L.B., & Abramson.  (1979) Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students:   Sader but wiser.?  Journal of Experimental Psychology:  General, 108, 441-485.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Placebo and Nocebo Effects

Although you’ve probably heard of placebo effects, it is less likely that you have heard of nocebo effects. The placebo effect occurs when an inert substance, say a sugar pill or a saline injection, has curative or beneficial effects. The nocebo effect is the opposite; merely believing that a drug has harmful effects can make you suffer them. The nocebo effect can even kill.¹

The expression, “It’s only a placebo effect” has almost become a cliché. But the placebo effect is one of the most amazing effects in medicine. It underscores the role that the psychology of the mind plays in healing. No respectable research in medicine can be done without a placebo control. Otherwise the effect of whatever is being tested could be attributed to a placebo effect. Placebo effects are the rule, rather than the exception, and they can be substantial.

What is more remarkable is that placebos work even when the people receiving them know that they are placebos. In one study² the experimental group was given placebo pills with the open label placebo pills presented as “placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) through mind-body self healing processes.” The no treatment control group had the same quality of interaction with the providers, but they were not given the placebo.

The placebo group showed significantly higher scores than the control group on the IBS Global Improvement Scale, the IBS Symptom Severity Scale, and the IBS Adequate Relief Scale.

So the placebo effect cannot be simply the result of deception. Somehow, belief, a psychological variable, affects the body.

1Marchant, J. (2011). Fool Yourself. New Scientist, 27 August, 33.

2Kaptchuk, T.J., Friedlander, E., Kelley, J.M., Sanchez, M.N., Kokkotou, E., Singer, J.P., Kowalczykowski, M., Miller, F.G., Kirsch, I., Lembo, A.J. (2010). Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Http://www.plosone.org/article/info/doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015591

Why Have Our Brains Shrunk?

According to an article¹ in the New Scientist in the past 10,000 to 15,000 years the average size of the human brain compared to the human body has shrunk from 3 to 4 per cent. The question is why. One explanation for this shrinkage is that the brain has evolved to make better use of less gray and white matter. Some genetic studies suggest that our brain’s wiring is more efficient than it was in the past. However, another explanation is that this shrinkage is a sign of a slight decline in our cognitive abilities.

David Geary of the University of Missouri-Columbia believes that after complex societies developed, the less intelligent could survive on the backs of their more intelligent peers. Previously, the less intelligent would either have died or failed to mate. It appears that this decline might be continuing. Studies have found that the more intelligent people are, the fewer children they have. Today intellectual and economic success are not linked with larger families.

It is interesting to speculate whether this trend will continue or perhaps even accelerate given the widespread use of technology. Is this technology making us smarter by giving us greater access to computations and to external storage (transactive memory)? Or is it making us dumber due to our increasing reliance on technology? At one time multiplication tables needed to be memorized. Now the use of calculators is widespread. At one time more information needed to be committed to memory. Now it can be looked up.

There is even the suggestion that at some point we might no longer need our biological brains. Ray Kurzweil contends that there will be a singularity in the future when our biological brains are replaced by silicon brains (See the Healthymemory Blog Posts, “Are Our Memories Becoming Too Dependent on Technology,” “Achieving the Max in Technical Transactive Memory,’ and “Brain, Mind, and Body”). These questions are interesting to ponder.

1Robson, D. (2011). A brief history of the brain. New Scientist, 24 September, 40-45.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

An Inspirational and Informative Case of Memory Loss

A recent article¹ reported a case of memory loss that was both inspirational and informative. This was the story of Lonni Sue Johnston who was an accomplished illustrator, musician, pilot, and farmer. She had done half a dozen covers for the New Yorker magazine. Then a virus invaded her brain causing encephalitis and severely injury her hippocampus. As readers of the Healthymemory Blog know, the hippocampus is a subcortical structure that plays a key role in the formation of new memories. Initially she had trouble walking, talking, and eating. Her cognitive functioning was severely affected. She recognized only a few people, her mother, her sister, and a few faces from her childhood. She could no longer draw.

Her mother had her daughter try to copy simple shapes. Although progress was slow, she eventually was able to draw again. A friend, who was a puzzle-maker, dropped off word search books. These exercises enabled her to rebuild her vocabulary. She started making grids with words hidden in them and created her own puzzles. She created elaborate word lists, then puzzles from the lists, and them images from the puzzles. A grid of words for things that hang in the closet formed the shape of a coat hanger. Words related to trousers formed a pair of pants.

She still can’t recognize art that she adored before her illness, Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” for instance, but she can recognize her own past work. Although she has not reached the degree of proficiency that she once had, she has improved enough to have her own exhibition at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

It is instructive to consider what she can and cannot do. She remembers how to fly an airplane, but doesn’t remember the death of her father. She doesn’t remember that she was married for ten years, but she can play Bach suites on her viola. When her mother thanks her for playing, she does not remember that she has played.

She continues to rise at 5:30 in the morning and spends most of her working hours drawing and creating puzzles. Her family is keeping everything she has produced, hoping that it will offer insight into the relationship between neural science and creativity.

It is interesting that most of what has recovered has been what is termed implicit memory (see the immediately preceding blog post, “Explicit and Implicit” memory). Motor skills are primarily in the domain of implicit memory, which appears to be more robust than explicit memory. She had developed an interesting technique for rebuilding her vocabulary, which seems to capitalize on using implicit to make memories explicit.

For another inspirational story of recovery from memory loss, see the Healthymemory Blog Post, “An Amazing Example of the Neuroplasticity of Memory.”

1Pancake, J. (2011). A “self” portrait of an artist with memory loss. Washington Post Style Section, September 19.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Explicit and Implicit Memory

When we normally think of memory, we are thinking of explicit memory. Memory techniques and most of the posts on memory in this blog are concerned with explicit memory. Implicit memory refers to memory that occurs without your consciousness awareness. Implicit memory covers a wide range of activities. Classical conditioning, habit learning, emotional memory, procedural and motor memory typically are implicit. So implicit memory involves both maladaptive behaviors, such as bad habits and addiction, but it is also involved in the development of optimal strategies in skill acquisition. Implicit learning could also be helpful for amnesiacs and Alzheimer’s patients.¹

Theorists have wondered why we have two types of memory. Although theorists wonder about this, it is nice to have a type of memory that requires little or no consciousness. Although consciousness might not be required, trials or repetitions are required. For example, classical conditioning in which a conditioned stimulus, say a bell, is paired with an unconditioned stimulus, say food, before the sound of the bell alone will cause you, or a dog, to salivate. Similarly habits take repetitions to develop, and procedural and motor skills can take a great deal of practice to perfect. On the other hand, emotions, depending on the strength of the emotion, can be learned quite rapidly.

I think it is obvious why we have explicit memory. Explicit memory involves consciousness. Had we only implicit memory we would be acting like Zombies, behaving and learning with little or no understanding as to why. So it is understandable that most educational practices and most of the Healthymemory Blog posts involve explicit memory. But we should be thankful for these implicit memory processes. Consider how burdensome it would be if all memories were explicit.

We do need to learn more about implicit memory. Much athletic and artistic performance is a matter of practicing to the point where skills become automatic. Usually performance falters when the performer or athlete starts to think about what they are doing. Implicit memory also offers a path into the memories of those for whom explicit memory has been lost such as Alzheimer’s patients and other suffering from traumas to the medial temporal lobes.

1Much of this blog post is taken from an article by David W.L. Wu. Implicit Memory: How It Works and Why We Need It. The Joournal of Young Investigators, Vol. 22, Issue, 1, July 2011.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Why Do We Dream?

Given that we are asleep about one-third of our lives, and given that dreaming is a predominant part of sleeping, dreaming must be important. Researchers have been working on this problem for many years and an article¹ in the New Scientist summarizes some recent research. Changes in electrical activity in the brain and movements of the eyes allow us to identify five stages of sleep. Sleep begins with two stages of light sleep, followed by two stages of deep sleep, followed by a stage of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. This sleep cycle lasts approximately 90 minutes and is repeated until we awaken.

One of the roles of dreaming is memory consolidation (See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “To Remember It, Sleep on It). There are a substantial number of studies reporting that sleep facilitates memory. The New Scientist article reported a study in which non-REM dreams boost people’s performance on a problem. The research participants were given an hour of training on a complex maze. Some participants were allowed to take a ninety-minute nap, while other participants were kept awake. When tested again on the maze, people who dreamed showed bigger improvements than people who did not dream. The largest improvements were in people who dreamed about the maze. This dream content could be somewhat bizarre. One of the participants who showed the largest improvement reported the following dream: “there were people at checkpoints in the maze as well as bat caves that he had visited a few years earlier.”

REM dreams contain more emotion, more aggression, and more unknown characters than non-REM dreams, whereas non-REM dreams are more likely to involve friendly encounters. A conjecture is that non-REM dreams help us practice friendly encounters, whereas REM dreams help us to rehearse threats. REM sleep strengthens negative emotional memories² . The notion here is that if we don’t remember bad experiences, we will not learn from them. It is also thought that reliving the upsetting experience in the absence of the hormonal rush that accompanied the actual event helps to strip away the raw emotion from the memory. This is somewhat analogous to desensitization techniques employed by therapists. Although these REM dreams can be helpful for many situations, they do not work for people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorders. This is unfortunate.

So sleep and dreaming are activities that are important to both cognitive and emotional health. Shortchanging yourself of this needed activity has adverse effects on your memory health.

1Young, E. (2011). The I in Dreaming. New Scientist, 12 March, 36-39.

2Cerebral Cortex, vol 19, p.1158

Managing Stress

There is an interesting article on managing stress in a recent Scientific American Mind.¹ The author outlines four general competencies in managing stress: Practicing Relaxation Techniques, Managing Thoughts, Managing Sources of Stress, and Preventing Stress from Occurring. Relaxation Techniques have been covered in this Healthymemory Blog (enter “Relaxation Techniques” in the search block of this blog). They can range from simple visualization and breathing techniques to intensive methods of meditation. Managing thoughts is a matter of trying to control your thoughts and reinterpreting stressful situations into something less stressful. If you seek counseling for your stress issues, the therapist is likely to coach you in thought management techniques. Managing sources of stress is a matter of arranging your workspace and time to avoid stress. Preventing stress from occurring is the practice of avoiding, when possible, stressful situations, planning your day, keeping a list of things to do, and having a clear picture of how you’d like your life to proceed over the next few years.

The author conducted a study of how people managed stress. The research participants completed a survey (which is accessible at http://MyStressManagementSkills.com) asking them how stressed they were, how generally happy they were, and how much success they had had in their personal and professional lives. The author expected that relaxation techniques and thought management would be the two most effective methods of managing stress. To his surprise he found that stress management and stress prevention were the two most effective methods. Presumably this reflects the old adage, an ounce of prevention is worth of pound of cure. Although this is certainly true, it is also possible that relaxation and thought management techniques are both less well known and possibly, more difficult to practice. Of course, there is no reason not to practice all four techniques. And for those of us who are not that well organized, it is good that we have relaxation and thought management techniques to fall back on.

As a result of the study, the author offers six strategies for fighting stress before it starts.

1. Seek and kill – (e.g., if your cell phone annoys you, get a new phone.)

2. Commit to the positive – engage in healthy as opposed to self-destructive activities (e.g,, yoga)

3. Be your own personal secretary – get organized.

4. Immunize yourself – Through exercise, thought management, and the practice of daily relaxation techniques.

5. Make a little plan – in the morning to prioritize and organize your activities for the day.

6. Make a big plan – for the next few years of your life.

1Epstein, R. (2011). Fight the Frazzled Mind, Scientific American Mind, September/October, 30-35.

Stress and Memory

The relationship between stress and memory is complex. A recent article¹ provided a discussion of this relationship. It is believed that stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol can facilitate or impair memory. These hormones may affect memory by strengthening or weakening the connections between nerve cells. It is thought that specialized cell-adhesion molecules play a key role in the learning process at the cellular level. These proteins connect two nerve cells and stabilize the synapse between them enabling the transmission of signals from cell to cell. These cell-adhesion molecules play an important role in reestablishing contact between nerve cells. They also help enable the synapses to change strength in response to increased or decreased signal transmission.

Whether memory is facilitated or impaired depends on when the hormones were released. Marian Joels and her colleagues formulated the theory² explaining this relationship. According to their theory stress facilitates memory only when it is experienced close in time as the event that needs to be remembered and when stress hormones activate the same systems as those activated by the event. So stress only aids memory “when convergence in time and space takes place.” The stress hormones need to be released during or immediately after the event to be remembered. If they are released too soon before the event or a considerable time after, they have the opposite effect.

So their explanation involves two phases. During the first phase, stress launches hormones and neurotransmitters that increase attention and strengthen connections between brain cells forming new memories. In the second phase the cortisol initiates a second process within an hour or so to the stressful event. This second process works to consolidate memories suppressing any information not associated with the stressful event.

Stress does not affect all types of memory. The effects described refer to episodic, or personal biographic memory. Memory of motor skills, such as riding a bicycle, typically do not suffer adverse effects from stress. Stress limits the focus of attention, often overlooking helpful or relevant options. It calls upon strong crystalized memory circuits, limiting access to new or creative options.

1Schmidt, M.V., & Schwabe, L. (2011). Splintered by Stress. Scientific American Mind, September/October, 22-29.

2Joels et al. (2006). Learning Under Stress: How Does It Work? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 152-158.

Is Texting Bad?

This post was motivated by an article in Newsweek¹. According to a recent survey done by the National Endowment for the Arts, the proportion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who read a book not required at school or at work is now 50.7%. This is the lowest for any adult age group under 75. Twenty years ago this was 59%. The difference in reading ability between the 15 year-olds in the Shanghai district of China and those in the United States is as big as the gap between the U.S. and Serbia or Chile.

Another article² reported that SAT reading scores had dropped to the lowest point in decades. Nationally the reading score for the Class of 2011was 497. Last year it was 500 and it was 530 in 1972, which was the last year for which these comparisons are possible. This article notes that more students are taking the test and this could account for some percentage of the loss.

Many variables are involved here. Texting is just one of them. Personally, I have difficulty understanding the popularity of texting. I don’t do it. I have a large number of text messages on my phone which are unread and which shall remain unread. The internet and the vast amount of information in cyberspace is another. Although there is much junk on the internet, there is also an enormous amount of useful information on substantive topics. I think the problem is that the junk is accessed much more frequently than the substantive content. By necessity, texting needs to be short. So, although it has the virtue of conciseness, it sacrifices depth and breadth. Moreover, I am led to believe that most of the content is trivial.

So there is much to be said about conventional books. Perhaps electronic books should be added. They also have the virtue of breadth and depth plus the added benefit of search functions, but I am not aware of any research on the topic. If you know of any such research, please point me to it.

I was amused by the recommendations made by the author of the Newsweek article. They were all from what is regarded as classical literature. I have nothing against the classics, but in today’s world to be a truly informed citizen, one needs to read books in both the natural and social sciences, mathematics and computing, business, economics, religion, and history, for perspective. Frankly, I find little time for fiction, but reading should also be done for recreational purposes. There is simply too much good to read. A healthy dosage of quality periodicals and newspapers is also needed.

1Ferguson, N. (2011). Newsweek, Texting Makes U Stupid. September 19, p. 11.

2Chandler, M.A. (2011). SAT reading scores drop to lowest point in decades, 14 September.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Mnemonic Techniques for Cognitive Exercise

The Healthy Memory Blog is concerned with developing and maintaining a healthy memory throughout one’s lifespan. Mnemonic techniques are techniques that have been developed specifically for enhancing memory. So it should not be surprising that one of the blog categories is titled mnemonic techniques. It might be surprising that the category is relatively small and that postings to the mnemonic techniques are not that frequent. Mnemonic techniques are very old; they go back to the ancient Greeks at least, and probably further. At one time they played a key part of education, rhetoric and elocution. With the development of external storage media, what the Healthymemory Blog calls transactive memory, less and less reliance was placed on mnemonic techniques. So when paper became generally available, they became less commonly used. Now that we have electronic storage, some might argue that they have become irrelevant.

I would argue that they are not irrelevant and that it was a mistake to drop them from formal education. Although I could make that argument, I shall not make it in this blog post. Instead, I am going to argue that they provide a good form of cognitive exercise, one that promotes memory health. First of all, they obviously involve the memory circuits in the brain. They also require recoding and creativity. Imagery is typically involved, so both hemispheres of the brain are exercised.

Most of these mnemonic techniques are found in older posts. The reason that postings in this category are infrequent, is that practically all of these techniques have already been presented. That does not mean that simply reading these old posts will be sufficient. You need to do them conscientiously and then continue practicing on your own.

I would recommend by beginning with the Healthymemory Blog Post “The Method of Loci.” This is a classic mnemonic technique used by the ancients and also used in contemporary memory contests. Then I would do “The One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic” post. The next post would be “Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Concrete Pairs” The I would recommend “How to Memorize Abstract Information,” followed by “Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Abstract Pairs,” “Paired Associates Learning: Abstract Concrete Pairs,” and “Paired Associates Learning: Abstract Abstract Pairs.” Then I would recommend “Remembering the Names of People.” Then I would recommend “More on Recoding: Learning Foreign and Strange Vocabulary Words.”

Numbers are abstract and one of the most difficult types of information to remember. Here I recommend “Remembering Numbers,” “More on Remembering Numbers,” “Three Digit Numbers,” and “Remembering Even Larger Numbers.”

If you want to learn about memory competitions and how memory champs become memory champs I would recommend “Moonwalking with Einstein,” and “How the Memory Champs Do It.” Given the importance of preserving memory as we age, I think it would be a good idea to start memory competitions for Baby Boomers and Senior Citizens. I think this is an activity the AARP should seriously consider.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Few Words of Caution to My Fellow Baby Boomers

Although I enjoy writing the Healthymemory Blog, I am usually disappointed when I view the number of visits to what I regard as important posts. For example, the preceding posts on Alzheimer’s has not drawn the number of readers that I think these posts deserved. As a psychologist, I understand why these posts are not popular, but I am disappointed nevertheless. People are optimists, so they avoid unpleasant topics. Consider the situation in which we find ourselves. Issues regarding the environment, energy, and the national debt are ignored. People blame politicians, but we should not forget that it is these same people who elected these politicians. Politicians pander to voters by glossing over these issues and being optimistic; voters then vote for them.

Alzheimer’s is not a pleasant topic. The prospect of spending our golden years being unable to recall our past, where we are living, and barely remembering who we are. The Myth of Alzheimer’s is written by one of the foremost experts on Alzheimer’s. He warns us that a magic pill or cure is unlikely to be found, but he provides us with activities that can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. These posts should be of interest to a large number of baby boomers. Even if you are engaging in these risk reduction activities, you probably know fellow baby boomers who are not. Why not sent these posts to those people? And please keep reading the Healthymemory Blog so I can try to keep you up to date.

The Healthymemory Blog is dedicated to these activities. There are many from which to choose. It is important to choose activities that are enjoyable to do. In many ways these activities are similar to physical activity. Sometime I do not feel like going on a bike ride, but after doing so I feel exhilirated and am very glad that I went. I think you will find a similar result for some of the cognitive exercises presented in this blog.

A Call to Us Baby Boomers

Dr. Whitehouse is one of us; he is a Baby Boomer. In The Myth of Alzheimer’s he issues a call to action for us Baby Boomers.¹ As an extra incentive, he states that studies have shown that engaging in politics and keeping apprised of world events may be protective against cognitive loss.

He recommends that we encourage our local politicians to make life-span aging a priority issue. To argue for a more equitable distribution between funding for the “cure” and for “care.’ Currently most of the funding goes for the search for a cure, and in Dr. Whitehouse’s informed opinion, a cure is a long way off if one is ever found. Federal and state labor policies should help expand the pool of front-line caregivers. Youth apprenticeship programs can be created in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in which high school students can experience hands-on learning in the workplace in conjunction with classroom instruction and to have mentored on-the-job learning in an eldercare setting. These programs can provide up-and-coming workers with the skills and competencies they will need to care for the growing number of elders in our society and provide them with the knowledge, insight, and real-world experience they will need to take care of us in the future.

He also recommends that we e-mail the leaders of our local Alzheimer’s disease chapters and express the belief that money raised for AD should be invested in care and prevention, and not just in the race for a cure that might never be forthcoming. Investing in caregiving creates a compassionate infrastructure in our communities that can last for generations. Investing in prevention allows more of us living longer with clearer minds. Children are included to ensure that they are provided a good start in their development.

We need to think about the communities of the future that will emerge to care for our elderly. Creative living arrangements such as co-ops for the elderly, inter-generational living spaces, environmentally sound assisted-living facilities that promote cognitive stimulation and inclusion in community need serious consideration. The following is a direct quote, “I am not sure we want or can afford too much institutional care for the frail elderly. If we can break down the barriers between those with dementing conditions and the healthy, and the young and other old, perhaps we can create living arrangements where people help each other across the cognitive and ageing divides. Cooperative group arrangements supported by architectural and environmental design may allow groups of mutually halping and helpful people to survive and thrive through cooperation arrangements. We are entering a challenging era as a human species. But humans are the most adaptable beings on the planet and I hope that we can rise to the challenges of the twenty-first century.²

We Baby Boomers can considered ourselves “called.”

1Whitehouse, P.J., & George, D. (2008). The Myth of Alzheimer’s. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

2Pages 277-278.

Alzheimer’s and Transactive Memory

According to the authors of The Myth of Alzheimer’s,technology and social interaction play an important role in mitigating its risk.¹ Readers of the Healthymemory Blog should know that transactive memory includes the information stored in technological devices and in our fellow human beings. Hence transactive memory plays an important role in reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s. Technology ranges from the simple book to the vast area of cyberspace. Dr. Whitehouse jokingly refers to the book as a multi-neurotransmitter lexical enhancement device. Both giving and receiving information from our fellow human beings is a healthy means of social interaction.

The remainder of this blog post lists online resources provided in The Myth of Alzheimer’s.

www.eldercare.gov provides information on community organizations offering programs that stimulate, thought, discussion, and personal connections.

www.themythofalzheimers.com is an online community that shares stories of dementia. The hope is that it will foster acknowledgment of the complexity and multiplicity of the many narratives of dementia and the stories of individual lives which make them up and that this will diminish the tyranny of dementia.

www.storycoprs.net records the life histories of elders and stores them in the Library of Congress.

www.duplexplanet.com is a site designed to portray the stories of elders who are in decline.

www.memorybridge.com is the site of an organization with a mission to foster intergenerational communication and facilitate relationships between younger persons and people with dementia

www.storycenter.org is the website of a nonprofit organization that assists young people and older adults in using tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value stories of individuals and communities in ways that improve all our lives

www.elderssharethearts.org is a web site that affirms the role of elders as bearers of history and culture by using the power of the arts to transmit stories and life experiences throughout communities

www.alz.org is the website of the Alzheimer’s Association. There is a network of local chapters that provide education and support for people diagnosed with AD, their families, and caregivers. Chapters offer referrals to local resources and services, and sponsor support groups and educational programs. The site also offers online and print publications

http://adcs.ucsd.edu is the website of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) which is the result of a cooperative agreement between the National Institute of Aging and the University of California at San Diego to advance the research in the development of drugs to treat AD

www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers is the website of the Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral (ADEAR) Center. It provides information on AD, caregiving, fact sheets and reports on research findings, a database of clinical trials, reading lists, and the Progress Report on Alzheimer’s Disease. It also provides referrals to local AD resources

www.caps4caregivers.org is the website for the Children of Aging Parents, a nonprofit organization that provides information and referrals for nursing homes, retirement communities, elder-law attorneys, adult-day-care centers, and state and county agencies. It also provides fact sheets on various topics, a bi-monthly newsletter, conferences and workshops, support group referrals and a speaker’s bureau

www.caregiver.org is the website for the Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA), a non-profit organizatin that offers support services for those caring for adults with AD, stroke, traumatic brain injuries, and other cognitive disorders. They also publish and Information Clearninghouse for FCA publications

www.nhpco.org is the website for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), a nonprofit organization working to enhance the quality of life for individuals who are terminally ill and advocating for people in the final stage of life. They provide information and referral to local hospice services. The provide information on many topics including how to evaluate hospice services

www.nia.nih.gov is the website for the governments lead agency for research on AD. It offers information on health and aging, including an Age Page series, and the NIA Exercise Kit, which countains and eighty page exercise guide

www.nlm.nih.gov is the website for the National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medicl library with six million items (and growing), including books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs, and images. A large searchable health informationo database of biomedical journals called MEDLINE/PubMed is accessible via the internet. A service called MEDLINEplus links the public to general information about AD and caregiving, plus many other sources of consumer health information. A searchable clinical trials database is located at

http://clinicaltrials.gov

www.wellspouse.org is the website of the Well Spouse Foundation, a nonprofit organizatin providing support to spouses and partners of the chronically ill and/or disabled. It maintains support groups, publishes a bimonthly newsletter, and helps organize letter writing program to help members deal with the effects of isolation.

1Whitehouse, P.J., & George, D. (2008). The Myth of Alzheimer’s. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

What Can an Individual Do About Alzheimer’s?

According to the authors of They Myth of Alzheimer’s¹, Alzheimer’s is not a disease but rather a conglomeration of debilitating effects that can occur during aging. They offer a prescription for successful aging across the life span. This blog post cannot do their prescription justice, but can only hit the main points.

They go into a good deal of detail about diet. Perhaps the best way to summarize their recommendations is to say what is good for the heart is good for the brain. So dietary recommendations for the heart also pertain to the brain. The same can be said for exercise. Exercise benefits both the heart and the brain.

Keeping stress to a minimum is another recommendation. Of course, stress is a part of modern life, so it is real and needs to be addressed. Physical exercise reduces stress. Walking, particularly in nature, is beneficial (see the Healthymemory Blog posts “Taking Advantage of Nature to Build a Healthy Memory,” “Restoring Attentional Resources,” and “More on Restoring Attentional Resources”). Yoga and Tai Chi are helpful, as are most types of meditation (See Healthymemory Blog posts, “Change Your Brain by Transforming Your Mind,” “Does Meditation Promote a Healthy Memory?” “Costly Gadgets or Software Are Not Required for a Healthy Memory,” “The Relaxation Response,”, and “Intensive Meditation Training Increases the Ability to Sustain Attention.” ). Avoiding individuals who are annoying or argumentative can also be helpful in reducing stress.

Remember that autopsies of people who showed no indication of cognitive decline revealed the same amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles that would confirm a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The most common explanation for these individuals is that they had built up cognitive reserves during their lifetime. The brain can use this reserve capacity to respond to damage that might occur from aging. These are the possible mechanisms offered by the authors.

“Building a higher synaptic volume of connections between neurons

Increasing cerebral blood flow

Developing resistance to the neurotoxic effects of excess levels of hormones like cortisol and other glucocorticoids

Promoting resistance against the depletion of neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine and dopamine, which occur with age

Recruiting other brain regions to perform tasks

Increasing cerebral flow and metabolism and conferring greater resistance to the neurotoxic effects of environmental toxins”²

The obvious question is how to accomplish this. Formal education is one answer. The higher the level of education, the greater the resistance to Alzheimer’s. Fortunately, returning to school is not required. Consider the following list of helpful activities: learning a new language, learning to play an instrument, playing board and card games, engaging in intellectually stimulating conversations, reading intellectually challenging books, picking up a new skill, keeping a notebook, or starting an online blog. This list is by no means exhaustive, but you should get the idea.

Building and maintaining social relationships is also beneficial to a healthy mind. The authors provide the following list of psychosocial benefits:

“Availability of emotional support

A source of information, guidance, and advice, diversion from the stresses of life and the day-to-day travails of aging

Self-esteem

A sense of coherence, purpose, usefulness, and meaning

An increased propensity to take care of yourself and seek out professionl help

A sense of intimacy and belonging

A belief in something beyond oneself”³

Depending on the job and profession, staying employed can also be beneficial. Research has found that countries with lower retirement ages also have lower ages for the onset of dementia (See the following Healthymemory Blog Posts, “Could the AARP Be Telling Us Not to Retire,” “Passing 65,” “Can Early Retirement Lead to Memory Decline,” and “Aging and Productivity.”). Retirement is not necessarily bad, provided that post-retirement activities provide the same mental and social stimulation that was provided in the workplace.

The importance of an optimistic or positive outlook is also important (See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “Positive Psychology”).

In short, the selection of the appropriate activities you pursue during your lifetime is the best means of reducing the risk of dementia. And you are never to old to start.

1Whitehouse, P.J., & George, D. (2008). The Myth of Alzheimer’s. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

2Pages 244-245.

3Pages 252-253.

Sigmund Freud and Alzheimer’s Disease

No, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud did not have Alzheimer’s Disease. And, to the best of my knowledge, he knew of neither Alzheimer’s disease nor its founder, Alois Alzheimer. But according to at least one knowledgeable source¹, Freud might have played an inadvertent role in Alzheimer’s being declared a disease. Alois Alzheimer was deeply conflicted about this issue. Clearly his patient was cognitively impaired. But was his patient suffering from a unique disease or was this just another manifestation of the many symptoms of dementia?

Alzheimer was offered a position in the laboratory of Emil Kraepelin. Emil Kraepelin was one of the most prominent psychiatrists of the era as was Sigmund Freud. However, the differed drastically in their approaches to psychiatry. Kraepelin was strongly of the opinion that psychiatry should be physically based just as the other medical specialties. However, at that time, Freud was all the rage with his psychological approach. Kraepelin wanted to move the emphasis in psychiatry back to a physical basis. Terming Alzheimer’s a disease, put it in the same category as tuberculosis and influenza. He was not claiming that mental diseases were necessarily infectious and transferable, but rather that they had a physical basis. As Alzheimer was an employee of Kraepelin, this might have played some role in it being declared a disease.

Some might wonder whether this is an important distinction. It is, as it affects the approaches taken. If it is a distinct disease, then it has a distinct diagnosis, and perhaps a distinct cure or treatment. If it is just another manifestation of dementia, then the question remains as to what is being treated. The best single predictor of whether a person will come down with Alzheimer’s is the person’s age. So Alzheimer’s is a product of aging, although it is not a necessary result of aging, as many age without suffering from the dementia known as Alzheimer’s. But the best predictor is not found in the genetics of an individual, although some people are more susceptible than others, but in age. Whether a person’s cognitive impairment can be diagnosed confidently must await an autopsy and the presence of amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangles. But autopsies have been performed on people who had amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangles, yet never showed any evidence of cognitive impairment while living. So what is Alzheimer’s? Fortunately we can take actions to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. Identifying these actions is one of the principal objectives of the Healthymemory Blog.

1Whitehouse, P.J., & George, D. (2008). The Myth of Alzheimer’s. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

The Myth of Alzheimer’s

The Myth of Alzheimer’s by Peter J. Whitehouse, M.D., Ph.D. and Daniel George, M.Sc. is an important book. The myth is that Alzheimer’s is a single disease, and that a drug will be developed that serves as a silver bullet and eradicate Alzheimer’s. Whitehouse is no crackpot. He know whereof he speaks. Note that he has a Ph.D and an M.D. Although he is now working as a clinician, he spent many years at the forefront of research on drugs to mitigate or eradicate Alzheimer’s disease (AD). He was a prominent researcher who was well funded and promoted by drug companies. When he became convinced that a cure for Alzheimer’s was not forthcoming, he turned his efforts to treatment.

Note that a definitive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, even with today’s brain imaging technology cannot be made while the patient is living. It must await the autopsy of the individual. The presence of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles would confirm a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The problem is that autopsies of people who have shown no indications of cognitive impairments have also shown the presence of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Most drug treatments have been targeted to remove or mitigate these amyloid plaques or neurofibrillary tangles. Although some drug treatments have been able to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s in some people, these drugs typically have side effects and cannot prevent its progression. In some cases they just slow the occurrence of death, which prevents release from this degraded state. In an interesting history of the disease it becomes clear that its founder, Alois Alzheimer, had doubts that this was a distinct disease and that scientific competition forced Alzheimer’s employer to convince Alzheimer to call it a distinct disease.

The thesis of the book is best captured from the following excerpt from page 220, …”It is unlikely that there will ever be a panacea for brain aging and baby boomers should not rely on extraordinary advancements being made in their lifetimes besides the promises of the AD empire that make their way into our headlines. Our attention must begin shifting from mythical cure to hard-earned prevention, from expecting a symptomatic treatment for AD to choosing behaviors that may delay the effects “of cognitve decline over the course of our lives.” Many, if not most, of the behaviors he discusses have been mentioned and advocated in the Healthymemory Blog.

The book provides a superb tutorial on the history of AD from its unassuming beginnings to the development of an AD Empire. It reviews the science underlying AD and the role of genetics in AD. It discusses past and present treatments for AD. It explains how to identify someone who might need a prescription for memory loss, and how to prepare for a doctor’s visit. It presents a new model for living with brain aging as well as a prescription for successful aging across the life span. An epilogue is titled “Thinking Like a Mountain: The Future of Aging.”

This is an important and interesting book for everyone, but especially for us Baby Boomers.

Healthy Memory: Physical versus Cognitive Activity

Many articles on maintaining brain health and cognitive competence advocate the benefits of physical activity. This point is indisputable. Physical activity is good for the brain. However, cognitive activity is mentioned only rarely in this context, even though there is ample evidence that cognitive activity benefits both brain health and cognitive competence.

A study¹ compared the benefits of mental and physical activity in older women over a period of six months. Two hundred and fifty-nine women aged 70 to 93 years were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a computer course, an exercise course, or a control group (for comparison purposes). Both the computer group and the exercise group showed improved delay story recall compared to the control group. They maintained performance in delayed word recall and working memory as opposed to the control group, which showed a decline over the 6 month period.

The authors concluded the following: “ In healthy older women, participation in new stimulating activities contributes to cognitive fitness and might delay cognitive decline. Exercise and computer classes seem to generate equivalent beneficial effects.”

An obvious question here is whether physical activities combined with cognitive activities would produce additive effects. I know of no study that has assessed the effects of both activities together. If anyone does know of such a study, please leave a comment. Nevertheless, a good argument could be made for engaging in both activities. Physical activities can maintain and build the body, and mental activities can maintain and expand the mind.

1Klusman, V., Evers, A., Schwarzer, R., Reishies, F., M., Heuser, I., &Dimeo, F.C. (2010). Complex mental and physical activity in older women and cognitive performance: a 6-month randomized and controlled trial.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Positive Psychology

Positive Psychology is a movement that was started by the psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman. In a way, this is a bit ironic as he gained earlier recognition in psychology for his research on learned helplessness. In this research he showed that if animals were exposed to an environment of random shocks from which there was no escape, these animals were unable to learn in another setting that they could avoid these shocks. These findings were extrapolated to a human setting in which there are few positive rewards and few opportunities in which people simply give up and stop trying.

Seligman was disturbed by the emphasis placed in clinical and counseling psychology on malfunctioning individuals. He was not arguing that these populations did not deserve attention, but, rather, that attention should also be given to positive behaviors and thought that lead to happiness. The website for Positive Psychology can be found at http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/index.html.

There was a session at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) on Positive Psychology. On the whole, I am impressed with this movement. In other words, I am positive about Positive Psychology. My position should no be surprising given some previous Healthymemory Blog posts (“Continuing to Be Positive After Thanksgiving, “The Second Half of Life,” and “Change Your Brain By Transforming Your Mind.”). Buddhism encourages a positive attitude both to others and yourself. Positive thinking leads to happiness. It can also encourage perseverance and lead to success.

But there are parts of Positive Psychology that give me some concern. Emphasis is placed on finding and developing personal strengths. Although this is certainly good advice, I think it would be a mistake to focus on and develop personal strengths exclusively. If there are certain skills that are important to achieving your goals, but which are skills at which you do not excel, I think it would be a grave mistake to ignore them. For example, it certain mathematical skills would be helpful to achieving your interests, it would be good to focus on them and develop certain proficiencies. Once you have worked at something long enough you can become good enough where you actually enjoy the skill as it becomes a strength. Similarly, if giving presentation or public speaking is important to your pursuits, but you, like many, are fearful of speaking in public, consider addressing that fear. There are programs to help you overcome this fear and speak in public effectively and persuasively. Successful athletes do not usually work on what they are good at, but what they don’t do well, so they become more skilled at their sport. Deliberate practice is the term describing practice that focuses on correcting weaknesses or shortcomings.

Optimism is generally a good disposition, but it can be overdone (See the Healthymemory Blog Post “Can Optimism Be Bad?”). So be positive, but not too positive. Be optimistic, but not too optimistic.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Thought Suppression

The title of Daniel Wegner‘s Invited Address for receiving the 2011 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award at the APA meeting was “Setting Free the Bears: Escape from Thought Suppression.” The title of the address comes from a challenge by the novelist Dostoevsky to try not to think of three bears. This is very difficult to do except for a very short period of time. Although this is a challenging mind game, it relates to the more serious psychological problem of trying not to think unwanted thoughts. Wegner’s Ironic Process Theory provides an explanation of why this is so difficult to do. According to Ironic Process Theory there are two opposing mechanisms at work. The first process unconsciously and automatically monitors for occurrences of the unwanted thought. The second is the conscious operating process. When there is an increase in the cognitive load with which your mind is dealing, your unconscious monitoring process supplants your conscious operating process and the unwanted thought becomes conscious.

Most regard the Ironic Process Theory as providing a good theoretical explanation of the phenemonon. But the obvious question is, what can be done about it. Wegner presented a detailed and thorough discussion of possible remedies for thought suppression. But the remedy that he personally found most effective, and the one that I think is most effective, I shall call meditative breathing. This involves trying to focus on one’s breathing to the exclusion of all extraneous, intruding thoughts. Doing this for five to ten minutes can be effective although proficient meditators can do this for many hours.

The general benefits of this type of meditation go far beyond thought suppression. More information can be found in the following Healthymemory Blog Posts: “The Relaxation Response,” “Does Meditation Promote a Healthy Memory?” “Continuing to Be Positive After Thanksgiving,” and “Costly Gadgets or Software Not Required for a Healthy Memory.”

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Conscious Thought

The topic of consciousness has been addressed in a number of Healthymemory Blog Posts (“Change Your Brain by Transforming Your Mind,” “We Are the Law: Free Will, The Human Mind, and the Limits of Determinism,” “Consciousness and the Grandmother Cell,” “Fluid Intelligence and Working Memory,” “What is Incubation,” “How Do We See,” “Brain, Mind, and Body,” “What is Consciousness,”, and “Attention”) because it is an important topic. For most lay people, consciousness is psychology. It is how we deal with the world on a daily, and nightly, basis. It is a tad ironic, that for many academic psychologists consciousness is an epiphenomenon that we view in our minds, and that most, if not all, behavior and thought occur below the level of consciousness. So consciousness is viewed by some as a movie we see in our head as we proceed through our life. The believe it has no real function.

Consequently, it was refreshing to hear the presentation by Ray F. Baumeister at this year’s annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) titled the “What, Why, and How of Consciousness.”¹ Most theories that contend that consciousness is epiphenomenal focus on input and or output processes. Baumgartner does not address these theories as for him the role of consciousness is central to what occurs between input and output processes. He argues that conscious thought is for internal processing that facilitates downstream interaction with the social and cultural environment. Consciousness enables the construction of meaningful, sequential thought. These constructions are found in sentences and narratives, logical reasoning, quantification, causal understanding, and narratives. In short, it accounts for intellectual and social life. It is used for the simulation of events.

It is estimated that people focus an average of 30% to 40% of their thoughts on concerns that are unrelated to their present behavior. Some people’s minds wander from the here and now more than 90% of the time. Even when tied to present behavior, conscious thoughts are often used for to recall similar behaviors from the past, anticipating the consequences of present behaviors, or considering alternative courses of action.

Baumeister contends that thought sequences resemble film clips that the brain makes for itself, allowing different parts of the brain and mind to share information. The production of conscious thought is linked to the production of speech, because the human mind evolved to facilitate social communication and information sharing. This led to culture and the adaptive success of humankind as the social species.

1Although it might be difficult obtaining this address, much of its content and the citations found in this blog post can be found in “Conscious Thought Is For Faciliting Social and ‘Cultural Interactions: How Mental Simulations Serve the Animal-Cultural Interface” by Roy F. Baumeister and E.J. Masicampo in the Psychological Review, (2010), 117. 945-971.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Reducing the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease: Knowns and Unknowns

This title was the title of an invited address at the 2011 Meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA). The address was delivered by Dr Margaret Katz who is a professor of psychology, gerontology, and preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, where she directs the education core of the USC Alzheimer Disease Research Center. She is also the foreign adjunct professor in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

The projections are that, unless there is signficant progress in prevention by 2040, there will be about twelve million people in the United States suffering from Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s accounts for about two-thirds of the cases of dementia. There is a genetic component contributing to the risk of getting Alzheimer’s, but the degree of that risk is still under research. In any case, the genetic risk factor is not something that any individual can control, so the remainder of this post will be focused on activities that reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Diabetes and obesity are risk factors that increase the probability for Alzheimer’s. Depression, stress, neuroticism, and tooth loss also increase the probability of Alzheimer’s. However, there are many activities that can reduce the probability of Alzheimer’s

The higher the level of education, the lower the risk of Alzheimer’s. So returning to school and increasing one’s level of education might be an option to consider. It can also lead to a job with more occupational complexity (see below).

Cognitive engagement, that is engaging in activities that require the use of the mind. The Healthymemory Blog is devoted to increasing cognitive engagement. Mnemonic techniques are activities that engage one’s creativity, recoding abilities, imaging abilities, and also involves both hemispheres of the brain.

Occupational complexity refers to the cognitive and social demands of a job. To the extent that your occupation is complex, your risk factor is reduced.

Diet is important. The diet that is good for your heart is also good for reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Light or regular physical exercise reduces risk.

Social engagement also reduces the risk for Alzheimer’s. Transactive memory involves other human beings and can lead to greater social engagement and the lowering of the risk for Alzheimer’s.
These activities also tend to lead to an increase in cognitive reserve. This refers to a reserve that retards the onset of Alzheimer’s. However, once Alzheimer’s sets in, the rate of decline is much faster. Although this might seem like bad feature, it can be interpreted that should you get Alzheimer’s and have this cognitive reserve, the amount of time suffering from the disease should be less.

The conclusion of Dr . Gatz’s presentation was that there should be a lifetime commitment to brain health. The Healthymemory Blog strongly concurs.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Gone to the Annual Meeting of the APA

APA stands for the American Psychological Association. I’ll be meeting friends and colleagues and attending presentations and symposia. I hope to bring back some interesting content for the Healthymemory Blog. There will be a brief hiatus in blog postings while I attend the meeting, assimilate the material, and decompress. Then, too, I need to produce the posts.

In my absence I would remind you that there is plenty of material already on the Healthymemory Blog for your perusal. There are more than 200 posts that provide information on human memory, mnemonic techniques, and transactive memory, which includes the memories of fellow humans and the wealth of information available via technology.

The objective of this blog is to promote brain and memory health, and to maintain and grow effective cognitive functioning. The primary audience for this blog are the baby boomers. I am at the leading edge of the baby boomers, so I have a great deal of personal interest in this topic. I hope, however, that the Healthymemory Blog has general interest. I find these topics fascinating and want to share them with others of all ages. Besides, we all need to be concerned about effective memories throughout our lives, not just when we are studying in school, or later in life when we are concerned about warding off dementia. Our memories define who we are, and they are key to both a successful and a fulfilling and enjoyable life.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Augmented Reality Glasses

An article¹ describes the development of glasses that allow the wearer to read the emotions from the face being viewed. They are the result of research done by Rosalind Picard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. The glasses use a vision algorithm to analyze 24 points on the face of the person being viewed. Head gestures and facial expressions (e.g., head tilt, lip part, pucker, smile, frown) are integrated over time to identify facial emotions (e.g., confused, agreeing, disagreeing, tinkering, concentrating, interested). These analyses are rolled up and portrayed as a traffic light system: red=negative, amber=neutral, green=positive. These are displayed on the glasses via an earpiece and LED traffic lights providing a summary of information about how the person you are talking to is responding. Eventually a full range of information could be displayed graphically, although its display would be challenging.

Unfortunately no data were providing regarding the performance of these glasses. Did they miss or misread cues? Perfect performance strains credulity, mine at least, so I would like to have seen some data. However, it does seem clear that the augmented glasses improved upon our normal unaugmented performance. They also used auditory inputs that use variations, in the pitch, tone, clip, and volume of the voice. These auditory inputs were recorded using in a small electronic badge that hangs around the neck. It was called the “jerk-o-meter.” This provided good feedback to users regarding whether they were being obnoxious or too self-effacing. They also provided good feedback to group performance regarding who was talking too much and who was being ignored.

The commercial world has expressed substantial interest in these devices. Some were interested in trying to identify units of speech that make a person sound more persuasive so that they could be taught to sales representatives to make them more persuasive. Research has also indicated that wearers retain some ability to read emotions after they removed the glasses.

Although the business case for this technology is clear, there are questions that should be raised regarding their general use. In our normal unaugmented state we can misread facial expressions. These misreadings can lead to problems in personal interactions. Would these augmentations increase our accuracy and enhance personal interactions or would we become too sensitive so that more tiffs broke out. Sometimes we do need to suppress the expression of our feelings to avoid offending people or precipitating an argument. These augmentations would make this suppression more difficult. There is much for careful considerations and discussion here.

1Adee, S. (2011). Your Seventh Sense. New Scientist, 2 July, 32-36.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Why Would Alzheimer’s Patients Perform Better on a Memory Test?

A recent study by Mickael Laisney and his colleagues that was summarized in the APS Observer¹ replicated certain paradoxical results and provided an interesting explanation for the paradox. They studied the word-recognition abilities of 16 Alzheimer’s patients and eight patients with semantic dementia. Their performance was compared against healthy patients not suffering from these disorders. The patients were shown pairs of words in succession and were asked to indicate whether they recognized the second word in each pair. There is an effect known as semantic priming whereby a word is recognized more quickly (“zebra” for example) if they had recently seen a related word (“giraffe”). Patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease exhibit a paradoxical “hyperpriming” effect whereby they show a more pronounced priming effect than do normal control subjects. So why should people suffering from a memory disease perform better on a memory test than people not suffering from this disease?

Laisney and his colleagues offered an explanation regarding why these patients perform better. They showed that the first elements of semantic memory to deteriorate were the distinguishing characteristics of a concept such as the stripes of a zebra or the long neck of a giraffe. Once these distinguishing characteristics are lost, zebras and giraffes become generic four-legged mammals. So the concepts become more related and the priming effect increases during the early stages of the disease. As the disease advances, this hyperpriming effect disappears.

This is an interesting effect and explanation that does provide some insight into the progress of the loss of memory in Alzheimer’s and semantic dementia. However, it should be understood that this is not a test for Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s should be diagnosed by a professional, both to increase the accuracy of the diagnosis and to begin a regimen for treating the disease.

1“When the Zebra Loses Its Stripes” APS Observer February 2011, 7.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Cognitive Training and Fluid Intelligence

An earlier Healthymemory Blog Post, “Improving Cognition”, reported an interesting and important study on the successful training of fluid intelligence. Crystalized intelligence refers to knowledge that we have learned. Fluid intelligence refers to the ability to comprehend new information and to solve problems. Typically, it is fluid intelligence that declines as we age. Absent dementia, crystalized intelligence remains fairly constant and can increase. So, although this study was done using elementary and middle school children, it still holds promise for us baby boomers. Research using baby boomers is in the future. This experiment was too detailed and complicated to include in a short blog post. Fortunately, this research is available on line for free. It is “Short- and long-term benefits of cognitive training” by Susanne M. Laeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Priti Shah. It is available at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1103228108.

The experiment did present evidence not only for the boosting of fluid intelligence, but also for its successful transfer after a 3 month hiatus from training. Unfortunately, not all students benefited from the training. Only those students who performed well on the training tasks exhibited the benefit. Students who had difficulty with the training tasks did not show the benefit. The authors also presented the following conclusion, which is as valuable as the findings themselves.

“We conclude that cognitive training can be effective and long lasting, but that there are limiting factors that must be considered to evaluate the effects of this training, one of which is individual differences in training performance. We propose that future research should not investigate whether cognitive training works, but rather should determine what training regimens and what training conditions result in the best transfer effects, investigate the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms, and, finally, investigate for whom cognitive training is most useful.”

When you read statements like, “IQ cannot be increased”, or “Cognitive training does not transfer to other tasks,” remember that you cannot prove that there is no effect. Rather, the null hypothesis (no difference) fails to be rejected. The distinction here is subtle, but important. Moreover, the conclusion is restricted to the particular training programs, and to the population of subjects from which the sample in the study was drawn. So we need to understand why programs work and for whom they work. And when programs do not work we need to understand why and for which populations they do not work. Then they need to be modified so that they do work for specific populations. And we need to research for whom different types of cognitive training are most useful.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Problem with Google Alerts

As I have a blog titled Healthymemory it should not be surprising that I have a Google Alert for the topic Healthy Memory. I find it both surprising and depressing that I receive so few alerts. I am even more depressed as most of these alerts are from hucksters hawking some new miracle product for solving all your memory problems. In the past, occasionally, but only occasionally, I would be alerted to one of my posts to the healthymemory blog. Now one might think that, given the title of my blog, I would receive an alert to all my posts. But that is not in the case. It is only in rare cases that I receive an alert. I have tried to determine what types of posts would provide me an alert. Although the title to my blog is the healthymemory blog, one might content that not all posts are directly on this target. But even posts that are clearly directly on the topic are typically missed. Nor are my posts that receive a high number of hits more likely to generate an alert.

Recently I did receive an alert for the post “Glial Cells and Alzheimer’s Disease.” Although this might have been regarded as good news, when I clicked on the link, it took me to the first page of the blog, to my most recent posting. To get to the actual article I would have needed to do some searching.

There is a serious problem here if one is looking for quality posts on a specific topic. It seems that the Golden Rule is at play here. He who pays the most money is the one who sees material returned in searches or alerts. Frequency is supposed to be the primary driver, although the specifics of Google’s search algorithms are a well kept secret. But it is clear from pop culture that frequency and quality are often at odds with each other.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Second Half of Life

Gene Cohen has two medical specialties, psychiatry and gerontology. He has formulated his own depiction of the second half of life. This blog post provides a brief overview of Cohen’s depiction. It is taken from his book, The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain, which I highly recommend.

According to Cohen the second half of life consists of the following four phases: Phase I is reevaluation that occurs between the mid-thirties to the mid sixties, but most frequently between the early forties to late fifties. Phase II is liberation that occurs from the mid fifties to mid seventies, but most frequently during ones late fifties to early seventies. Phase III is recapitulation that occurs from the late sixties to the nineties, but most frequently during the late sixties through the eighties. Phase IV is continuation(encore) that runs from the late seventies to the end of life. Note that these phases are overlapping and that one does not go to sleep in one phase and then wake up in the next.

It is during Phase I, reevaluation, when we confront our own mortality. Plans and actions are shaped by a quest or crisis. Fortunately there are brain changes during this phase that spur developmental intelligence, which provides the basis for wisdom.

During Phase II, liberation, the question, “If not now, when?” is frequently asked. Plans and actions are shaped by a new sense of personal freedom to say what we want and to act upon our personal needs. This is supported by new neuron formation in the information processing part of the brain that is associated with a desire for novelty. Retirement of partial retirement provides the time for us to experiment with new experiences.

During Phase III, recapitulation, we are motivated to share our wisdom. Our plans and actions are shaped by the desire to find meaning in life as we look back, reexamine and sum up. We often feel compelled to attend to unfinished business and unresolved conflicts. Phase III is supported by the bilateral involvement of our hippocampi to the recall of our personal memories.

During Phase IV, continuation (encore), plans and actions are shaped by the desire to restate and reaffirm major themes in our lives and also to explore novel variations on those themes. Our desire to live well to the very end has a positive impact on our families and communities. Changes in our amygdalae promote positive emotions and morale.

There is a Japanese word, ikigai,which means the reason we wake up in the morning. It is important that we have ikigai throughout our entire lives, right to the very end.

Cohen relates a wealth of research and personal stories that fill out his four phases of the last half of life in The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain.

The PFC: Vulnerable for Both Young and Old

The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is an executive center housing pathways for the selection of information and higher order thinking. The PFC remains vulnerable throughout life, but particularly during the critical early life development window, the PFC does not mature until the early 20′s, and then starts to decline in old age. The Experience Corps¹ provides a paradigm for addressing both these groups. At all ages, PFC-navigated social connections along with physical activity are essential components to maintaining brain health. The Experience Corps² is a community based social engagement program. It partners seniors with local schools to promote purpose-drive involvement. Both the young, who benefit from the experience of the participating seniors, and the participating seniors benefit. Participating seniors have shown immediate short term gains in brain regions vulnerable to aging such as the PFC. Consequently, the people with the most to lose also have the most to gain from environmental enrichment.

The PFC is the newest and the largest region of the brain to evolve. The increasing importance of social behavior to human survival has been manifested in the continued growth of the PFC over the millenia. The PFC takes so long to develop because the ability to integrate multiple streams of information requires the maturation of physical, linguistic, and emotional sensory networks. Its extended development window involves maturation of networks that control attention steadily from childhood to adulthood allowing the efficient filtering of multiple streams of information.

As we age, difficulties in executive control become increasingly common. Longitudinal research has found that components of executive function decline earlier than memory in older community dwelling adults and that interventions targeting these components may delay and mitigate memory decline that leads to dementia. Studies of the aging human brain show that loss of brain volume is greater in the PFC than in the posterior areas of the cortex.

Healthy aging involves healthy behaviors that include physical activity, social supports and engagement, and cognitive activity. These activities remain important to both overall health and the prevention of cognitive decline and disability well into old age. Moreover, the effects of cumulative environmental risks can be reversed in later life (see the Healthymemory Blog Post “To Improve Your Memory, Build Your Hippocampus”).

The developmental psychologist Erik Erikson says that the third act of life represents an opportunity to use a lifetime of accumulated knowledge, the kind of knowledge that is not necessarily memorized from books, classroom lectures, or online searches, to find purpose. The Experience Corps find this purpose by working with young school children. Volunteers engage in mentoring activities including supporting children’s literacy and math skill development, assisting in school libraries and promoting positive conflict resolution. Volunteers exercise functions via collective problem solving with team members and teachers.

This research is still in progress. But the results already indicate gains for both the old and the young.

1Carlson, M.C. (2011). Promoting Healthy Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement. Cerebrum, June. Available online at http://dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=33556

2http://www.experiencecorps.org/index.cfm

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Why is Facebook So Popular?

I am definitely confused. No only is there an enormous number of individual users, but companies, societies, organizations, television programs, and many other entities also feel a necessity to establish a presence on Facebook. Although most of these entities have good websites, they still feel compelled to maintain a Facebook presence.

Personally, I find regard Facebook to be an annoyance. It can be difficult to use, and I see little value in it. I have loads of requests from people I don’t know who indicate that they want to friend me. Early on, I consented because I did not want to be rude. Even now I worry that I might refuse the request of someone I did know long ago. I still accept requests from people who have been recommended by someone I know. But I do this only not to offend a true friend. I know of nothing that ever develops from this “friending.” With the exception of birthday greetings I receive from old acquaintances, I have seen nothing of value on Facebook. Just one inanity after another. I worry about people who do engage extensively in these activities.

I asked a friend of mine, who is extensively knowledgeable about cyberspace and who apparently spends significant time there, what he thinks about Facebook. His response was, “Never have touched it.  Who wants to be “connected” to everybody out there?!  Not me!”

I think he raises a good question. An earlier Healthymemory Blog post entitled “How Many Friends are Too Many?” addressed that very question. An evolutionary biologist, Robin Dunbar, came up with a number he modestly named, “Dunbar’s number.” He bases this number on the size of the human brain and its complexity. He calculates that the maximum number of relationships our brain can keep track of at one time to be about 150 . This number includes all degrees of relationships. This is the maximum number of relationships. The number of close, meaningful relationships is much smaller. He estimates that we have a core group of about five people with whom we speak frequently. I find this absolute number a tad small, but to be in the general ballpark. At the other extreme there are about 100 people with whom we speak about once a year. The 150 number is an absolutely maximum of people we can even generously consider as friends. So Facebook users who have friended several hundred friends have essentially rendered the term “friend” meaningless.

MIT social psychologist Sherry Turkle contends that social networking is eroding our ability to live comfortably offline.¹ Although she makes a compelling argument, it is not the technology that is to be blamed, but rather how we use the technology. After all, the technology is not going to go away. There might be underlying psychological, genetic, or epigenetic substrates that contribute to the problem. Facebook, itself, can be regarded as providing affordances that contribute to this abuse.

1Price, M. (2011). Questionnaire; Alone in the Crowd. Monitor on Psychology, June, 26-28.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Alzheimer’s and Amyloid Plaques

Much research is being done to develop tests for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. But conclusive diagnosis must await death and an autopsy. Amyloid plaques are the defining characteristic of Alzheimer’s Disease.¹ But these require an autopsy to observe. Virtually everyone with the ailment has these plaques present in their brain. Thus, the presence of amyloid plaques appears to be a necessary condition for the disease. However, their presence is not a sufficient condition. There are people whose autopsies find that their brains are ravaged by amyloid plaques, yet they never exhibited any signs of cognitive impairment.

So the question is are the amyloid plaques the cause of Alzheimer’s or are they a symptom? An earlier Healthymemory Blog Post, “Glial Cells and Alzheimer’s Disease”, discussed the possible role that glial cells play. In spite of a large amount of research, we still don’t know what causes Alzheimer’s. Nevertheless, drugs have been developed. To this point, no drug has been found to cure or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s, but there are drugs that slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. A friend of mine told me about his father-in-law who suffers from Alzheimer’s. The father-in-law’s disease has progressed to the point where he does not remember who his son-in-law is. He no longer remembers who he himself is. Still he receives expensive drugs that will slow his death as well as slow his release from his miserable state.

Much work is also being done to develop tests that can diagnose Alzheimer’s early. The hope is that early diagnosis will enable early treatment which will either cure Alzheimer’s or reduce the progression of the disease to a crawl. But, there are no treatments yet. Personally, I have no interest in taking a test that will inform me I have an incurable condition. I do, however, applaud those who take tests and participate in experimental trials of drugs with the hope that they will lead to a successful treatment.

It should be remembered that all tests are flawed and produce false alarms. That is they can inform you that you have the condition, when in fact you do not. Also remember the cases discussed above in which brains that are ravaged with amyloid plaques belonged to people who exhibited no evidence of cognitive decline. How can this be? The most prominent theory is that these people had a cognitive reserve that either prevented the occurrence of the disease or slowed its progression to the point where it was not noticeable. These cognitive reserves are thought to be the result of people who stayed mentally active. Leading a healthy lifestyle is also important. So the path I am following is to build up this cognitive reserve. The Healthymemory Blog is devoted to activities and information that should be helpful in building this cognitive reserve.

1Weir, K. (2011). Memory keepers. Monitor on Psychology, June, 32-35.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Could the AARP Be Telling Us Not to Retire?

One might think so from the title of an article in AARP The Magazine, Why Work is Good for Brain Health.¹ The article reports the results of a study from the RAND Center for the Study of Aging and the University of Michigan. This study showed that cognitive performance levels drop earlier in countries that have younger retirement ages.

So what is going on here? Is the American Association for Retired People (AARP) discouraging people from retiring? First of all, it should be realized that not all of the members of the AARP are retired. Secondly, the article goes on to explain the reasons the cited research offered for the harmful effects of early retirement. One reason was that the social interactions that occur in most work places decline when someone retires. Social interaction is believed to be one of the activities that establish a “cognitive reserve.” This cognitive reserve provides a brain-backup system that allows you to function normally even when there is age-related brain damage. A decrease in mentally stimulating activities can also occur when someone retires, Mentally stimulating activities also play an important role in establishing a cognitive reserve.

So retirement should not be harmful if it is an active retirement with social engagements and mentally stimulating activities. The article cites a Japanese word, ikigai. It means “the reason for which we wake up in the morning.” In other words it is our reason for living. If our reason for living has been our career, then we need to establish a new reason for living when we retire, And this reason for living should include social engagements and mentally stimulating activities. Physical activity is also important.

With respect to mentally stimulating activities and social engagement, the Healthymemory Blog has something to offer. It is hoped that the posts themselves provide mental stimulation. Mnemonic techniques provide an activity that not only boosts memory performance, but also provide mental exercise. Transactive memory refers to memories held in the minds of our fellow humans and in technology. So social engagements that engage the memories of others is highly recommended. Technology ranges from the printed word in books or magazines to the enormous wealth of information in cyberspace. Potential transactive memory refers to all the information available in fellow humans and technology. It is overwhelming, but provides a source for cognitive growth. Available transactive memory refers to information that you know exists, but you don’t know who knows or where that information is. Accessible transactive memory refers to information that you know where to find or whom to ask. And the most important and personal information resides in your own biological memory.

1http://www.aarp.org/health/brain/info-03-2011/keeping-your-brain-plugged-in.print…. 6/19/2011.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Bilingualism

A recent article¹ extolled the benefits of bilingualism. It stated that recent research found that it can enhance multitasking (by helping you focus) and stave off Alzheimer’s. Although the research was based on lifelong bilinguals, it stated that scientists say that late-life learning can exercise your mind and help you maintain cognitive function. The Healthymemory Blog agrees.

In addition to the benefits of mental exercise and the learning of new information, there is the benefit of meeting new people and broadening social networks, activities in and of themselves that promote healthy memories. The article relates the story of a 59 year old man who decided to learn Arabaic. Two years later he now Skypes with a new friend who lives in Egypt.

The article notes that 48 percent of Rosetta Stone’s customers are 50 plus. So Baby Boomers are availing themselves of technology to learn new languages. Learning a new language in and of itself is a demanding activity with promises of cognitive enhancement. But there are associated activities that also can be beneficial. Learning about new cultures is one. The benefits of meeting new people has already been mentioned. But there is also the prospect of travel in which you would be able to communicate with the people you are visiting in their own language.

The Healthymemory Blog provides many suggestions for mental growth and enhancement. Mnemonics techniques include one broad category. There is also cybertechnology that offers the possibility not only of cognitive growth through the learning of new material, but also through meeting new people and the resultant social interactions. In the aggregate the recommendations and suggesitons of the Healthymemory Blog are overwhelming. They are way more than a single individual could pursue. These offering are made in the spirit of a menu offered at a restaurant. There is way more there than could be enjoyed even after many visits to the restaurant. So it is a matter of picking and choosing a sample you find enjoyable. It is in this spirit that the offerings of the Healthymemory Blog are made.

Please continue reading even after you have filled your plate. The posts are short and can be quickly enjoyed. New material is constantly being offered, so it is good to review, learn something new, and perhaps change the selections on your plate. So consider subscribing so you never miss a post.

1Wooldrige, L.Q. (2011). Say Hello to a Second Language., AARP The Magazine, July/August, 14.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

An Amazing Example of the Neuroplasticity of Memory

The Washington Post published an article¹ about a woman, Su Meck, who lost her memory when she was 22. A ceiling fan fell on her head, erasing her memory. After a week in a coma she awoke with the mental capacity of a young child. She did not recognize her husband or her two baby sons. She could no longer read or write, walk, eat, dress, drive, and she could barely speak. An MRI scan revealed that her brain was suffused with cracks. It was said that it looked like shaken Jell-O. She had complete retrograde amnesia, the inability to remember the past. Initially she could not learn new information, so her hippocampi apparently had also been damaged. She had lost her personality.

Fortunately she had a very supportive family. They patiently worked with her. Her mother assembled a photo album filled with images of the childhood she had completely forgotten. She actively tried to regain her lost capacities. She relearned her muliplication tables from her children. She volunteered in her children’s school library so she could hide in the stacks and read. During the first few years talking on the telephone was disorienting, so she communicated with her family using letters. She had the spelling and penmanship of a small child.

When she left the hospital she completed a checklist of tasks that she wanted to accomplish such as riding a bicycle, preparing a meal and reading a children’s book. The first book she read was Dr. Seuss’s “Hop on Pop.” Her functionality gradually returned. When she drove home, she had difficulty remembering where home was so she would click her garage door opener looking for a hint as to which address was hers.

Nineteen years after the accident Su started Montgomery Junior College. Her children gave her tips on what to bring to class, how to take notes, how to ask questions, and how to write papers. Learning was difficult and slow. But she persevered and struggled along until she learned. And she learned well. She earned her associates degree with a 3.9 average and became chapter president of the Phi Theta Kappa honor society. Su and her husband are planning to move to Massachusetts where she will enroll in Smith college as a transfer student and start working on her bachelor’s degree.

This is the most remarkable example of neuroplasticity of which I am aware. How could she possibly do this? I think there are two essential elements. She had a very supportive family who perservered under adverse circumstances and stuck with her all the way. Su also deserves most of the credit herself. She believed in herself under the most adverse circumstances and persevered to where she was able to return to her own self and continue her life. Lesser individuals likely would remain in a vegetative state or only achieve modest degrees of recovery.

1de Vise, D. (2011) Gaithersburg Woman Earns a College Degree Two Decades After Complete Memory Loss. Washington Post, 21 May.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Are Our Memories Becoming Too Dependent on Technology?

My recent attendance at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) brought this question to the forefront of my mind. Traveling to the meeting on the metro, many, many people were engrossed with their mobile devices. Although people were meeting, greeting, and conversing at the convention, many were interacting with their mobile devices. Even during presentations at the convention, attendees were still working with their mobile devices. Now in the lingo of the Healthymemory Blog, these mobile devices are examples of technical transactive memory. Concerns with technical transactive memory are not new. Socrates was concerned that the introduction of the Greek alphabet would lead to the decline of civilization. As technology has advanced through the printing press up to today’s cyber technology, people have continued to raise these concerns. Although all these advancements in technology have lead to advances in civilization, I still think it prudent to ask if our memories have become too dependent on technology.

The major risk is that the capabilities of our personal biological memories will decline. This loss would be analogous to the loss in physical fitness and increase in obesity that has resulted from technological advances that have reduced our physical activity. We, or at least some of us, engage in physical activity in an attempt to reduce these losses in our physical fitness. Do we need to engage in similar activities to exercise our biological memories? (See the Healthymemory Blog posts, “Moonwalking with Einstein,” “How the Memory Champs Do It,” “Remembering Poems,” “The Talented Tenth,” and “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Bottom Line”).

There is the view that eventually transactive memory will supplant our biological memories (See the Healthymemory Blog post, “Achieving the Max in Technical Transactive Memory.” Ray Kurzweil maintains that in the future there will occur a singularity in which biology and silicon will become one. This is highly speculative and it might never occur, so don’t give up on your personal biological memory. Carefully consider what it means to you and what you might want to do to maintain and enhance it.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Joy of Theorizing

“The Joy of Theorizing’ was the title of Daniel Wegner‘s William James Fellow Award Address, which he presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Wegner’s forte is developing theories and, as the title implies, he enjoys it. He has developed four theories of note. Action Identification is a theory of what people think they are doing. Ironic Process Theory is a theory about how our minds turn against us to produce unwanted thoughts. Apparent Mental Causation is a theory of how our minds create the feeling of conscious thought. Clearly Wegner’s thinking on this topic is at odds with Michael Gazzaniga‘s (See the Healthymemory Blog Post “We Are the Law: The Human Mind, Free Will, and the Limits of Determinism”). In my view his most valuable is his theory of transactive memory.

It should not be a surprise that transactive memory is my favorite theory as it is one of the healthymemory blog categories. Wegner proposed two types of transactive memory. One type refers to external technical storage (note pads, books, journals, computer files, the internet, etc.) The other type refers to our fellow humans. Now both types of transactive memory are important, and the healthymemory blog discusses both types. But it is only the second type of transactive memory, fellow humans, that he has developed. Moreover, this is the only type of transactive that has received attention from other researchers.

I have taken it upon myself to develop the former concept of transactive memory as I think it is an important concept, particularly in our technological age. Historically, technical transactive memory has undergone several stages. One of the first steps was the development of the alphabet. Few people realize that Socrates  fought against the development and adoption of the Greek alphabet. For Socrates, it was only human transactive memory that mattered, and the reliance upon this external crutch would depreciate human transactive memory. Socrates was wrong about this, as external storage allowed the advancement of the human intellect to new levels. The printing press was another technical development that caused a major leap in transactive memory and the enhancement of the collective human intellect. Today we have the internet which comprises yet another major leap in transactive memory.

I think it worthwhile to distinguish different types of transactive memory. Accessible transactive memory refers to information that we cannot recall, but know how to find quickly. This information can be resident in other humans, in a library, or in cyberspace, but we can access it quickly. Available transactive memory refers to information that we know exists, but cannot find it quickly. So we need to find someone who know the information, or search for it via technical means or on the internet.

Whenever we encounter new information we need to decide is this worth knowing. If it is, then we need to decide whether to commit it to memory or to some form of external storage. Bookmarking, or Favorites, provide a means of making this information accessible if we do not need to remember it. If we don’t take these actions, then we are confronted with the possibility of knowing the information exists, but being unable to find it so we have to search for it.

Potential transactive memory refers to all the information and knowledge resident in other humans or available in some technical storage medium. I term it potential as this information offers the potential for cognitive and social  growth.

I have been disappointed that Wegner never developed his concept of technical transactive memory. I have also wondered why he did not develop what I regard as a valuable concept. Now I think I understand. Wegner’s strength lies in his breadth of theorizing, not in its depth. He prefers moving on to new areas rather than mining further the brilliant concepts he has developed.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Improving Cognition

Improving Cognition was the title of the presentation John Jonides made as his William James Fellow Award address at this year’s meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). The specific cognition Jonides sought to improve was fluid intelligence (see the blog post “Fluid Intelligence and Working Memory”). Typically intelligence is broken down into two generic types: crystalized intelligence and fluid intelligence. Crystalized intelligence is comprised of everything we know. This component of intelligence, absent pathology, typically remains intact as we age. As we age, it might take longer to remember certain information, but we typically can recall it given enough time and cues. Fluid intelligence is the component that deals with processing new information and novel problems. Fluid intelligence consists of the capacity of working memory (the amount of information it can hold at one time) and the attentional processes that work on this information and solve the novel problems. It is this component of intelligence that tends to decline as we age.

Jonides reported a program that after seventeen days of training produced an average gain of six IQ points in fluid intelligence. I will not get into the specifics of the training program, but it was quite demanding . The general characteristics of this program were as follows. It energized all processes of working memory. It did not use material specific processes. Task difficulty was increased as performance became better. However, performance needed to reach a stable level before difficulty was increase. If performance fell, then the task difficulty was decreased. Practice periods were spaced.

fMRI of the brains of research participants was also done. The trained regions brain requied less blood flow indicating that the trained brains had become more efficient.

This was great news, but the question remains whether this training can remediate age-related loss in cognitive skills. Jonides intends to address this question in future research. I think we can count on him following through on this research. He is a baby boomer so this research is of personal significance to him.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Change Your Brain by Transforming Your Mind

“Change Your Brain by Transforming Your Mind” was the title of a presentation given by Richard J. Davidson at this year’s annual meeting of the American Psychological Society (APS). This was part of a Theme Program titled “Consciousness: From Neural Systems to Phenomenological Experience.” Davidson’s presentation is in the new arena of contemplative neuroscience or contemplative practice (see the Blog Post “Buddha’s Brain”). The goal here is to use contemplative practices to take advantage of the neuroplasticity of the brain and produce enduring changes in the habits of the mind. They are looking for neurally inspired behavioral interventions that put the brain back into biomedicine, a pathway back to the mind.

He described a study that assessed the effects of meditative expertise on the regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion.¹ Both fMRI and subjective reports were collected. The specific neural structures and circuits involved in the circuitry of emotion were identified. The data indicated that the mental expertise to cultivate positive emotion alters the activation of circuits previously linked to empathy and theory of mind in response to emotional stimuli.

Readers of the Healthymemory Blog should be well aware of the importance of attention and the ability to selectively attend to desired information. The famous psychologist, William James, noted that the facility of voluntarily bringing back wandering attention over and over is extremely important. Research indicates that meditation develops this facility. Meditation in Sanskrit means familiarization. So meditation is a matter of becoming familiar with our own minds. There is a positive correlation between gamma activity in our brains and clarity ratings.

There are a variety of Healthymemory Blog Posts on meditation such as “Does Meditation Promote a Healthy Memory,” “Is Daydreaming Bad for You,” “Costly Gadgets or Software are Not Required for a Healthy Memory,” “Continuing to Be Positive After Thanksgiving,” “Intensive Meditation Training Increases the Ability of to Sustain Attention,” “Restoring Attentional Resources,” “More on Restoring Attentional Resources, “The Relaxation Response,”, and “How to Avoid Temptation.”

1Lutz, A. Brefczynski-Lewis, J., Johnstone, T., & Davidson, R.J. (2008). Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation> Effects of Meditative Experience., PloS one, www.plosone.org, March, Volume 3, Issue 3, e1897.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

We Are the Law: The Human Mind, Free Will, and the Limits of Determinism

The title of this post is identical to the name of the presentation Michael S. Gazzaniga gave at the recent annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Some are convinced that the world, indeed the universe, is deterministic. Albert Einstein did not believe in free will. One of the founders of the DNA helix, Francis Crick, does not believe in free will. Richard Dawkins, the ethologist, evolutionary biologist, atheist, and author of The Selfish Gene, does not believe in free will. Benjamin Libet conducted experiments in which he demonstrated that measurements in the brain indicated that the action to move a finger occurred before the individual realized that her finger was moving. Some have taken this as proof of determinism, that there is no free will, and that consciousness is only along for the ride. It is interesting to note that Libet himself did not take this position. He spoke of free won’t, in which consciousness can reject an action proposed by the brain. That is conscious volition is exercised by the power of rejection.

Results from brain imaging research also can be interpreted as being supportive of determinism. For example, juvenile impulsivity can be attributed to the low level of utility in the medial prefrontal cortex. So are delinquent juveniles to be excused on the grounds that their medial prefrontal cortices are not performing correctly. Actually, one can go further than this. The medial prefrontal cortex does not reach its full maturity until the mid to late twenties. By this time, most of us have already needed to make important decisions that could have adverse effects on our lives. Do we all have this excuse for the poor decisions of our youth?

On the other hand, there remains much to be said for free will. Although Einstein with his deterministic bent said the “God does not play dice with the universe” findings in quantum mechanics by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg indicated that quantum mechanics did behave in a probabilistic manner and, at least at the subtomic level, God did play dice with the universe.

There is also the notion of emergent properties. These are properties that occur as a result of underlying processes. So consciousness can be regarded as an emergent property that emerges from the underlying psychophysiological processes. In the case the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and consciousness can exert its effects on underlying psychophysiological processes.

Gazzaniga’s own work with Roger Sperry on split brain phenemona support this notion. In these split brain studies the corpus callosum is split (for medical and not research purposes). Because of the wiring from eye to brain, stimuli can be selective presented to the respective hemifields that go to the left or right hemispheres. So different stimuli can be sent to the left and right hemispheres. Under normal viewing circumstances this does not present a problem as the different stimuli would go to both hemisperes. But in the experimental condition the two hemispheres are unaware of what the other has seen. In this situation the experimental participant is asked what is seen. Different reports will be made for each hemisphere. No matter how bizarre the differences, the experimental participants are able to make sense of what they have seen. In other words, consciousness is making sense of the different reports of each hemisphere.

Gazzaniga notes that cognition is both parallel and distributed. Cognition is also modular, yet it is modular with apparent psychological unity. He also noted that there exists innate notion of fairness. This has been demonstrated with experiments involving infants.

Gazzaniga concludes that the notion of free will is a bad idea. He asks “Free from what?.” He notes that while brains might not be free, people are free. There exist notions of fairness and responsibility and that we need to have a contract with our fellow humans.

Essentially Gazzaniga is a pragmatist. William James, the famous psychology and philosopher, was also a pragmatist. He also believed in free will. When free will is contrasted with pragmatism, it is clear that free will is the more pragmatic notion. It is much better to adopt the belief in free will and believe that we can affect our brains and our lives via the exercise of our free will. Determinism can promote passivity via the belief that consciousness is only along for a free ride.

What Makes a Nation Intelligent?

There were many outstanding presentations at the recent meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). One of the best of these outstanding presentations was one by Earl Hunt with the title, “What Makes a Nation Intelligent?” This was his James McKeen Fellow Award Address. Hunt, who has a rich and diverse background in Physics, Business Administration, and Computer Science as well as Psychology, is currently a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington.

One of his primary interests is intelligence, and he published a book last year on the topic titled, appropriately enough, Human Intelligence. The approach he takes to intelligence is that of a cognitive psychologist rather than the traditional psychometric approach to intelligence. The psychometric approach provides estimates of the percentage of intelligence that is inherited versus the percentage of intelligence that is a product of the environment. The psychometric approach is primarily descriptive and offers few ideas for improving intelligence with the exception of eugenic approaches. The cognitive approach is interested in the cognitive processes that underlie intelligence as well as artifacts and interventions that can improve intelligence.

That is not to say that the psychometric approach is useless. Hunt points out that the correlation between IQ and occupational success is about 0.5 (the coefficient ranges with 0.0, no relationship, to 1.0, a perfect relationship, with a positive or negative sign indicating whether the relationship is direct or inverse). He said that this relationship is about twice as high as various personality measures. IQ tests measure what IQ tests measure, which is what is easy to measure. They’re good at assessing tasks that require speed, but they tend to miss culturally important skills.

To return to the question “What Makes a Nation Intelligent?”, one of his responses is cognitive artifacts. One example of such a cognitive artifact would be written records (e.g., cuneiform tables, papyrus, paper), where both business transactions and ideas could be recorded. I would call these examples of technical transactive memory, he calls them explicit artifacts. Hunt also uses the term implicit artifacts to refer to communication systems and personal trust. I would call these examples of human transactive memory. Regardless of what they are called, they are essential to a Nation’s intelligence.

Nation’s also need to respond to and adopt beneficial new ideas. Ideas spread along the Silk Road Trade Route and countries along this trade route tended to benefit from this intelligence and prosper. However, their needed to be an openness to new ideas. Japan initially closed up and ignored new ideas in favor of their own traditions. This was also true of China and Korea. These countries did not prosper until they opened up to new ideas from foreign cultures. This increased their respective national intelligence and led to increasing prosperity.

So what contributes to a nation’s intelligence? Of course there are explicit and implicit cognitive artifacts, but factors such as nutrition and environmental pollution cannot be ignored. Nutrition is essential to the development of intelligence, whereas environmental pollution degrades intelligence. The family and a formal education system are important. As Diane Halpern noted, “You learn to do what you practice doing”

Cultures, such as the Jewish culture and Northeast Asian cultures, that place a heavy emphasis on education do well on intelligence tests. Although there are sleight differences in mathematical performance between males and females, this gender effect is overwhelmed by practice. In other words, females who work at mathematics to very well on mathematics.

Hunt noted that when three outlier countries were removed, they was a correlation of 0.65 between IQ and financial success. As he put it there is an interaction between intelligence and financial success, the rich get smarter and the smart get richer.

Hunt advocates the creation of a cognitive elite, which he defines as college graduates. But he lists the obstacles to fostering this cognitive elite such as:

Lack of trained teachers and equipment.

The economic costs of a college education (this needs to be affordable and not require the acquisition of heavy financial debts).

The opposition of education aimed at modern cognitive skills.

The opposition to scientific ideas such as the opposing to vaccination because it is not in the Koran (or in our society the opposition to vaccination based on faulty scientific evidence and reasoning).

His conclusion: It is possible, although difficulty, to create better interactive environments to improve national intelligence.

Taking Advantage of Nature to Build a Healthy Memory

This post is intended to encourage readers to take advantage of pleasant warm weather to build a healthy memory. Research indicates that nature offers benefits in restoring those attentional resources that are essential to effective cognitive functioning (See the Blog Post, “Restoring Attentional Resources”). Research has also indicated that walking enhances brain health and memory performance (See the Blog Post, “To Improve Your Memory, Build Your Hippocampus”).

So be sure to take advantage of the good weather and take some nature walks. I walk with my wife and she is frequently asks me questions about birds, insects, various animals and plants. My typical response is “I don’t know, you should have married an ornithologist, entomologist, zoologist, or botanist. Such an answer is not beneficial either to her or me. Better I should try to find the answers using transactive memory and look them up on the internet or in a more conventional reference. That enables me to grow my own memory and to satisfy my wife’s curiosity (of course, she would benefit by undertaking the same activity). I could benefit further by studying up prior to these walks and perhaps using mnemonic techniques to memorize content and to amaze my wife with my mastery of these esoteric topics.

There is also a potential social benefit here. My wife and I comprise a very small, but compatible social group. By joining larger groups, more people are engaged which is beneficial to both physical and cognitive health.

So we should be sure to take advantage of the opportunities that nature affords us.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Can Optimism Be Bad?

Optimism and positive thinking are heavily advocated as means to not only happiness, but also to better physical and mental health. A recent article¹ calls these beliefs into question. According to the authors, “…positivity is not all it is cracked up to be. Although having an upbeat attitude undoubtedly has its benefits, gains such as better health and wealth from high spirits remain largely undemonstrated. What is more, research suggests that optimism can be detrimental under certain circumstances.”

It should be appreciated that it is difficult to conduct research that does provide hard evidence that a positive attitude is beneficial. Most of the research is correlational and that can make it difficult to distinguish cause from effect. Obviously if you question a group that is healthier, happier, or more successful and rate their optimism or positivity scores against a group lacking in any of these attributes, it should not be surprising that the former group has higher ratings than the latter. It is also difficult to conduct controlled experiments on this topic. Suppose one group is given training on optimism and positive thinking and another group is not given this training and serves as a control. If the group given the training does score significantly than the control group, it could be the due to their being given special treatment, rather than the treatment it, oneself. This artifactual result is known as the Hawthorne Effect.

I think it is useful to make a distinction between the optimism/pessimism dimension, and the positive/negative thinking dimension. I think that the optimism/pessimism dimension is best regarded as a personality trait. That is, whether people see the glass as half empty or half full is basically determined by a personality trait. I tell people that I am a congenital pessimist. I definitely have a tendency to see the downside. There are benefits to being a pessimist, however. For example, pessimists have been found to be less prone to depression than were optimists after experiencing negative events such as a friend’s death. Although I need not extol the benefits of being an optimist, one obvious benefit is that optimists are more likely to persevere. It seems like most successful people have typically undergone failures, sometimes many failures, be before achieving success. Pessimists, however, having given up early, rarely achieve success.

Regardless of one’s innate disposition with respect to the optimism/pessimism dimension, I think it is important that everyone engages in both positive and negative thinking. Pessimists need to engage in positive thinking so that they will not overlook possible opportunities and will not give up prematurely in the pursuit of opportunities. If they like being miserable, fine, but positive thinking can make one happier and be more pleasant. The important point for pessimists is that they also activate the positive circuits in their brains (and if there aren’t any, to build some).

Optimists need to engage in negative thinking to keep them from pursuing foolish or unrealistic events. I remember reading about a married couple who were so energized after seeing the movie Rocky (the original, not one of the numerous sequels) that they put their entire wealth on a lottery tickets. Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but I think you get the idea, to be sure to activate the negative circuits of your brain (and if there aren’t any, to build some).

Unfortunately, positivism is oversold. I become angry when I hear someone tell a child that they can be anything they want provided they put their mind to it. While it is true that most people can probably achieve more than they think they can, a substantial contributor to success is opportunity, If opportunities are not available at the appropriate times, success is likely to be stunted. For example, the famed football coach, Vince Lombardi spent many years as an assistant coach before finally being offered the head coaching job with the Green Bay Packers. If memory serves me correctly, I believe I saw a movie² in which Lombardi was ready to quit coaching before being offered the Packers’ job. As a result of this opportunity, he went on to become one of the most famous coaches of all time and had the Super Bowl Trophy named after him. This is a conjecture on my part, but believe that there were many potential Lombardi’s in the NFL assistant coaching ranks who never got the chance. Similarly, I think that there were potential Hall of Famers at the quarterback position, who either never were drafted, or who never got a chance at a starting position. There is nothing special about professional football. I think you can find examples in any endeavor you choose. Although you can and should prepare yourself for opportunity, you might need to realize that the opportunity might not come. And if it does not come, you should not view yourself as a failure, but rather as someone who did fulfill their existing potential.

1Lilienfeld, S.O., & Arkowitz, H. (2011). Can Positive Thinking Be Negative? Scientific American Mind, May/June, 64-65.

2I understand another movie is scheduled to come out in February 2012 with Robert DeNiro playing the role of Lombardi.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Two Brains, One MRI Scanner

The New Scientist reported that Ray Lee of Princeton has developed the first dual-headed fMRI scanner.¹ Up until now these machines had been unable to handle more than one brain at a time. And for reasons that I don’t understand (because I don’t understand the technology), they cannot synchronize two or more scanners to scan different individuals at the same time. Although they can scan people in different machines and link them by video. But Lee has designed his scanner that scans two brains at the same time in the same scanner.

In one of the first tests, Lee asked couples to face each other and to blink in unison. The fusiform gyrus, which is involved in facial recognition, was tightly correlated in the two brains. He also had couples embrace, which revealed similar synchronous brain activity.

James Coan of the University of Virginia has some interesting ideas on how to use this device. He notes that “People distribute neural processing across multiple brains when solving problems. …You essential contract out part of a given problem to someone else’s mind. Lee’s work would give us the opportunity to see two brains reacting to a problem simultaneously.” Using the terminology of the Healthymemory Blog, this activity involves transactive memory, memories that are stored in someone else’s brain.

Many of our activities involve, either implicitly or explicitly, transactive memory. When you are trying to communicate with somebody or some group, successful communication requires that the material be pitched at the appropriate level. This entails knowing something about what the other party(ies) knows. When you are trying to persuade somebody, it is extremely helpful to know what that person knows and believes. And it games, you are constantly trying to decipher what the other person is thinking. Transactive memory is a big player in many activities.

1Ferris jabr (2011). At last, an MRI scanner for the man with two brains. New Scientist, 29 January, 12. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Passing 65

Just recently I passed my 65 birthday. Being at the forefront of the Baby Boomers, many more will soon be passing this milestone. For those who are younger, let me warn you how quickly this age descends upon you.

But what exactly is the significance of reaching 65? At one time it indicated that you were eligible for full Social Security Benefits, but not for us Baby Boomers. For us that age has been increased to 66. It also was the traditional age for retirement. Some people were forced to retire when they reached this age. So this meant leaving the productive workforce and beginning the pursuit of leisure activities.

But the significance of reaching 65 has changed and it involves more than the year increase in the required age to receive full Social Security Benefits. There are a variety of reasons for this change. One is demographic. People are living longer. This, in turn, has financial consequences. As people live longer a greater burden is placed on Social Security. A greater burden is also placed on the individual as Social Security Benefits were intended as a safety net and not as a guarantee for a comfortable retirement. So the retiree is confronted with the dilemma of how quickly to spend down whatever has been saved for retirement. There is the risk of outliving one’s money. There is also the risk of outliving the ability to enjoy one’s retirement nest egg. Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia have the prospect not only of outliving one’s ability to enjoy retirement, but also of outliving one’s ability to understand what is going on or even one’s personal identity. That is, the risk of outliving one’s memory.

My Mom is living in an assisted living facility. I visit her a couple of times each week. For the past several years I’ve watched her cognitive decline. Once we were able to enjoy watching television programs together. We were able to watch both sporting events and stories. I saw her ability to understand both the sporting events and stories slip away. When I gave her a Mother’s Day card, she thought she needed to sign it and send it on to her Mom. Now my Mom will be 99 in a couple of months, yet she thought that her mother was still alive. She confuses me with my brother who passed away some time ago. And I know that it is only a matter of time before she will no longer either recognize me or confuse me with my brother.

My primary objective is to die with my cognitive facilities intact. The psychologist Stine-Morrow has an interesting hypothesis about cognitive aging.¹ She argues that choice in how cognitive effort, attention, is allocated may be an essential determinant of cognitive change over the life span. .  Stine-Morrow argues that cognitive effort can directly impact cognitive change in the form of attentional engagement and indirectly as it alters neuronal changes that give rise to component capabilities.  Her ideas coincide nicely with those of Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., a professor at the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscienses at the University of California at San Diego.  In turn, Dr. Merzenich’s ideas fit nicely with Kahneman’s Two System Theory (see blog post, “The Two System View of Cognition”). System One processes are effortful and require attention.  System Two processes, which are the product of learning and experience, are relatively effortless.   The older an individual is, the more developed are those System Two processes that facilitate cognition.  Consequently, there is a great temptation to rely upon these System Two processes and become a creature of habit.  Merzenich and the Stine-Morrow Hypothesis warn against relying too heavily on System Two Processes.  Effortful engagement of System One processes can be beneficial in warding off cognitive decline.  System One processes are engaged whenever we try or learn new things.  Thus engaging in new activities and in new areas of knowledge can be quite beneficial. 

Consequently, I am continuing to work and I plan on continuing to work as long as possible. My primary reason for working is that it forces me to use my System One processes and to learn and understand new concepts. Although I make use of my System Two processes that have developed over the years, I continue to learn new topics, new activities, and to meet new people. Yes, social engagement is critical to maintaining and growing a healthy memory. I also try to grow cognitively outside of work. This Healthymemory Blog is just one of those activities. I also engage in physical exercise and mental exercise. I try to maintain a positive attitude. I also try to watch my diet, although this item is engaged with less enthusiasm.  

1Stine-Morrow, A.L.  (2008).  The Dumbledore Hypothesis of Cognitive Aging.  Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16,  295-299.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Is Googling Sufficient?

Googling has become synonymous with internet searching, but is googling sufficient? What about other search engines? I did a search using the keywords “healthy memory” on google.com, bing.com, yahoo.com, and ask.com. The first item returned was the same for all the search engines. After that, discrepancies appeared, although there was notable commonality among the four lists. I found it disturbing that all four searches also returned urls for foam mattresses. I also was disturbed, but not surprised, to see that the healthymemory blog was not among the items returned on the first page. This similarity in search results is not surprising as the search algorithms are quite similar and apparently companies can buy their way to a higher listing. I find it particularly annoying when you search for a tax form for a particular state and still see commercial firms at the top of the listings. It would be nice to have a search engine that did not allow firms to buy their way to the top of the listings. If anyone know of such a search engine, please comment.

I have maintained a standing query on Google to send me notices of entries on healthy memory. The returns I receive are slim. I find this depressing because I think this would be a topic of general interest, particularly among baby boomers who are facing the prospect of losing their memories. For a while I did receive notices occasionally about postings I had made to the healthymemory blog. Google changed some of its search criteria and I have not seen a single return regarding the healthymemory blog since. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a hot topic. Its objective is to recommend keywords that increase the probability of your blog or website being picked up by a search engine. I would like to increase the readership of this blog. But I don’t want to compromise it by trying to work “Lindsay Lohan” into my postings, nor do I have the resources to pay for high placements. On the other hand, I have little difficulty finding most of my published professional papers on the scholar.google.com search engine.

So how does one find websites and blogs like healthymemory? Using Google’s blog search, blogsearch.google.com, has some chance of catching one of healthymemory’s postings. Using the regular google.com the following query will yield healthymemory postings

wordpress.com:healthymemory.

The bottom line is that search engines are driven by a sites popularity and by commercial payments. Quality, by itself, does not come in to the search. So users need to use their wits, multiple search engines, and clever search strategies.  

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Glial Cells and Alzheimer’s Disease

A preceding post (“Our Neurons Make Up Only 15 Percent of Out Brain Cells”) highlighted the importance of glial cells to brain function. It was based on an article¹ in Scientific American Mind, on which this current blog post is also based. The discoverer of Alzheimer’s Disease, Alos Alzheimer noted that microglia surround the amyloid plaques that are the hallmark of the disease. Recent research suggests that microglia become weaker with age and begin to degenerate. This atrophy can be seen under a microscope. In aged brain tissue, senescent microglia become fragmented and lose many of their cellular branches.

One more sign of microglial involvement can be found in the way Alzheimer’s courses through the brain. Damage spreads in a predetermined manner. It begins near the hippocampus and eventually reaches the frontal context. Microglial deneneration follows the same pattern but precedes the advance of neuronal degeneration, Alzheimer and most experts had presumed that microglial degeneration was a response to neuron degeneration. This new research suggests that the senescence is a cause of Alzheimer’s dementia. The hope is that once researchers learn why microglia become senescent with in some people but not in others, new treatments for Alzheimer’s could be developed.

It is also interesting to note the path of progression of the disease. It begins near the hippocampus, a cortical structure critical to memory. Memory loss can be an early indicator of Alzheimer’s. The disease then progresses through the cortex to the frontal cortex. So more memory loss occurs as more cortex is destroyed. The frontal cortex is where most planning occurs. It plays an important role in focal attention. The executive functions of the frontal lobes include the ability to recognize future consequences from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions, to override and suppress unacceptable social actions, and determine similarities and differences between things and events. In short, it is key to higher mental functions.

1Fields, D.R. (2011). The Hidden Brain. Scientific American Mind. May/June, 53-59.

Our Neurons Make Up Only 15 Percent of Our Brain Cells

So what makes up the rest of our brain cells—glial cells. When I was a graduate student no one had a good idea what glial cells did. Glia comes from the Greek word for glue, so the best bet was the glial cells helped hold the brain together. An article¹ in Scientific American Mind brought me up to date and demonstrated how woefully ignorant we were at that time. There are different types of glial cells. Astrocytes ferry nutrients and waste and mediate neuronal communication. Oligodendrocytes coat axons with insulating mylein, boosting signal speeds. Microglia fight infection and promote repair.

Previously, the neuron doctrine governed our understanding of the brain. According to the neuron doctrine all information in the nervous system is transmitted by electrical impulses over networks of neurons linked through synaptic connections. Recent research has demonstrated that some bypasses neurons completely, and flows without electricity through networks of glial cells. It has shown the role of glial cells in information processing and learning, as well as in neurological disorders and psychiatric illness.

In contrast to neurons, which communicate serially across chains of synapses, glia broadcast their signals widely throughout the brain, similar to cell phones, In contrast to the rapid communication throughout neural networks, the chemical communication of glia is very slow and spreads like a tidal wave through neural tissue at a pace of seconds or tens of seconds.

New brain imaging techniques have shown that after having engaged in such activities as learning to play a musical instrument, to read, or to juggle, structural changes occur in brain areas that control these cognitive functions. What is remarkable is that changes are seen in regions whee there are no complete neurons. These are “white matter” areas that are formed from bundles of axons coated with myelin, a white electrical insulator. All theories of learning had held that it is solely by strengthening synaptic connections is how learning occurs. As there are few synapses in while matter, clearly something else is happening that involves glial cells.

With respect to neurological and psychological illnesses, glial cells have been found to play a role. Alzheimer’s Disease is one of these illnesses, but the discussion of Alzheimer’s and glial cells will be postponed to a subsequent post. Glial cells account for the mystery of why spinal cord injury results in permanent paralysis. Proteins in the myelin insulation that oligodendrocytes wrap around axons stop injured axons from sprouting and repairing damaged circuits. Chronic pain is the result of microglia do not stop releasing the substances that promote the healing processes after healing is complete. Consequently, sensitivity to pain continues after healing is complete.

It is not surprising that glia play a central role in neurological disease as astrocytes and microglia are first responders to disease. Compulsive behavior, schizophrenia, and depression might all have there roots in the glial cells. Epilepsy is also regarded as a prime-candidate for glial-based therapeutics.

1Fields, D.R. (2011). The Hidden Brain. Scientific American Mind. May/June, 53-59.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

How to Avoid Temptation

An article¹ in Scientific American Mind presents a theory regarding how temptation works. It states that there are two different information processing systems in the brain: impulses that lead to immediate gratification and reason, that is aimed at our well-being and long-term objectives. This is very similar to the two system view of cognition (see the blog post, “Two System View of Cognition”). System 1 is named Intuition. It is very fast , employs parallel processing, and appears to be automatic and effortless. For the most part System 1 works outside conscious awareness. System 2 is named Reasoning. It is controlled processing that is slow, serial, and effortful. It is close to what we commonly regard as conscious thinking. One can think of this two two process views as being identical but working in different domains.

Unfortunately, impulses that lead to immediate gratification are System 1 processes that operate very quickly and can operate outside your conscious awareness. So you might buy a candy bar without thinking about it. No effort is involved in immediately yielding to temptation. Resisting temptation, however, is a System 2 process, so it is effortful and depletes cognitive resources. This might seem like an unfair match, and that is why avoiding temptation can be so difficult. You need to understand how temptation works and that it takes cognitive resources to avoid temptation. When you are under stress, say studying for an exam, your cognitive resources are depleted and you can more readily yield to temptation.

Since it does require mental effort to avoid temptation, and since mental resources are depleted when you try to avoid temptation, you need to marshal your mental resources carefully. It is a bad idea to try to give up more than one bad habit at a time, as it takes mental resources to give up this habit . Try to avoid stressful situations and undertake activities that restore mental resources, such as taking a walk in nature or meditation (see the blog posts “Restoring Attentional Resources,” “More on Restoring Attentional Resources,” “Intensive Meditation Training Increases the Ability to Sustain Attention,” and “The Relaxation Response”).

Another article² in the same issue of Scientific American Mind provides a curious technique to help you when you are dieting, or when you simply don’t want to gain wait. The technique is to imagine the act of eating what you want to eat. This might seem counter intuitive, but for it to be successful you must vividly imagine eating what you want to eat. The reason this does work is that imagining an experience evokes the same physiological responses as the real experience. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University had study participants think about eating a specific food, either M&Ms or cubes of cheese, one morsel at a time. A control group imagined putting thirty quarters into a laundry machine. Those who imagined eating 30 M&Ms ate half as many candies as those who pictured putting thirty quarters into a laundry machine. The thought was specific to the type of food that was imagined, with those thinking about eating cheese consuming about half the amount of cheese as those who thought about eating M&Ms.

1Hofmann, W. & Friese, M. (2011) Control Yourself. Scientific American Mind, May/June, 43-47.

2Solis, M. A Thinking Persons Diet, p.11 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Search Tips from a Google Scientist

Transactive memory refers to information that is not resident in one’s own biological memory but resides externally. This external source could be human, a knowledgeable person whom you ask. Or the external source could be technological. Technology can range from a note on a postit pad, to someplace in cyberspace. Memory theorists make a distinction between information that is accessible and information that is available. Memories that are accessible are memories that can be recalled with little or no effort. Available memory is a superset of accessible memories (all accessible memories are available). Information can be available, but not accessible at the moment. Often we know that we know something, but just cannot recall it. Metamemory refers to our knowledge of our own memories. Sometimes long after we have expended great effort in trying to recall something, it will suddenly pop into our minds. Your brain can continue to search after you have abandoned your conscious attempts.

Similarly, transactive memory can be divided into three sets. The superset being potential transactive memory. Potential transactive memory includes all information stored in any form of technology and/or in any human being. Available transactive memory is information that you know exists and have probably accessed previously, but need to search for it know. Accessible transactive memory is information that you know how to access immediately without having to search for it.

So there are two circumstances when you have to resort to your search tool. One is the available case, in which the know the information exists, but have forgotten how to access it. And the other is the potential transactive memory case, in which you think the information might be available, but you are not sure. The APS Observer published a piece by a Google scientist offering search tips.¹ The article pointed out that searching that there are similarities between searching on the internet and searching in your own mind. The author used the term “framing” the query. So a successful search involves finding the correct context and retrieval cue for the desired information.

Difficult search tasks are called “long tail” problems because they are tasks that require more than the usual number of searches to find. Most searches are accomplished quickly. But difficult searches can take a long, long time in to find the successful key term. These difficult search tasks are more commonly found in the technical literature. Popular searches tend to be easier. Once you have done a search on Google, you will receive a list of many potential responses. If you don’t find a good response on that first page of results, you can look at the left column for a variety of options. Clicking on “Search Tools” will provide a variety of options. Clicking on “related searches” will provide a list of searches made on this or similar topics. This can provide an aide for refining your search. It also might lead you to some serendipitous site with some interesting and useful information.

Google has an advanced search option that is quite easy to use. Many who have had bad experiences trying to search databases with arcane formulae might be scared off this option. It is quite easy to use. You can specify sites that contain all the words, you specify, some of the words you specify, and you can even include words that would exclude the site for consideration. There are also options on language, file type, and even reading level.

If you know the website where the information is located, you can put that in your search. For example if you were on google and looking for something on this blog you could simply enter

healthymemory.wordpress.com method of loci and you would be find a variety of listings specific to this topic and this blog.

1Russell, D.M. (2011). Making the Most of Online Searches. Observer, 24, April, 3-4.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

To Improve Your Memory, Build Your Hippocampus

A previous post, “If You Do Not Like Mnemonic Techniques, Try Walking”, was a little thin given the importance of the topic. So I’ve gone to the original article¹. The hippocampus is a component of the brain that is critical to memory function. Unfortunately, the hippocampus shrinks 1-2% annually in older adults without dementia, and this loss of volume increases the risk of developing cognitive impairment. This experiment was undertaken to assess whether exercise and what kind of exercise might mitigate this decline.

Participants between the ages of 55 and 80 years old were recruited, who did not have any pertinent diseases or disabilities. 120 participants were randomly assigned: half to a stretching and resistance training control group, and half to an aerobic walking group. Sessions for each group were held three times a week and lasted roughly one hour. Participants in the aerobic group started walking for ten minutes the first week and increased walking durations by five minute increments until a duration of 40 minutes was reached by week seven. Each session began and ended with approximately 5 minutes of stretching. The control group engaged in four muscle-toning exercises using dumbbells or resistance bands, two exercises designed to improve balance, one yoga sequence and one exercise of their choice. The program lasted for one year. MRIs, fitness, and short term memory were assessed before the program began, 6 months into the program, and at the end of the one-year program. Blood samples were taken at the beginning and end of the program.

Aerobic exercise (walking) increased hippocampal volume by 2%. This increase effectively reverses the expected age-related loss by 1 to 2 years. Moreover, increased hippocampal volume was positively correlated with improvements in short term memory performance. Increased hippocampal volume was also associated with greater levels of serum Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which helps support the survival of existing neurons and encourages the growth and differentiation of new neurons and synapses.

Hippocampal volume did decrease in the control group, but higher preintervention fitness partially attenuated the decline. The control group also exhibited improvement in short term memory performance.

Changes in fitness are associated with increased hippocampal volume. The aerobic exercise group showed a 7.78% improvement in maximal oxygen consumption (VO₂) after intervention, whereas the stretching control group showed a 1/11% in VO₂ max.

So although both exercise regimes were beneficial, the aerobic regime appeared to be more beneficial, especially with respect to its beneficial effects on hippocampal volume. Given the importance of the hippocampus to brain and memory, this finding is extremely important. Moreover, this aerobic exercise regimen was fairly mild and undemanding.

1Erickson, K.I., Voss, M.W., Prakash, R.S., Basak, C., Szabo, A., Chaddock, L., Kim, J.S., Heo, S., White, S.M., Wojcicki, T.R., Malley, E., Viera, V.J., Martin, S.A., Pence, B.D., Woods, J.A., McAuley, E., & Kramer, A.F. (2011). Exercise Training Increases Size of Hippocampus and Improves Memory. PNAS Early Edition, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.10159550108.

Does Meditation Promote a Healthy Memory?

An interesting article¹ in AARP online describes the benefits of meditating. It cites a study done by Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital in 2005. It found that a group practicing meditation for about 40 minutes a day had measurably thicker tissue in the left prefrontal cortex. This is an area of the brain important to cognitive emotional processing and well-being.

At the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging the brains of experienced mediators were compared with a control group of nonmediators. The mediators’s brains contained more gray matter than those of the nonmediators. This gray tissue is responsible for high-level information processing especially in the areas associated with attention, body awareness and the modulation of emotional responses.

In a study published in 2010, neuroscientists scanned the brains of volunteers before and after they received eight weeks of training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). They found growth in the hippocampus and shrinkage in the amygdala. As readers of the Healthymemory Blog probably know, the hippocampus is an important part of the brain that is critical to memory and learning. The amygdala is a portion of the brain that initiates the body’s response to stress.

An MRI study at Emory University showed that experienced meditators were much better than a nonmeditating control group at ignoring extraneous thoughts and focusing on the matter at hand when bombarded by stimuli. This capability to focus at will is especially important in today’s multitasking world when we are constantly bombarded by information, often noise, from a variety of sources. This capability grows more important as we age, because research has indicated that the elderly have more difficulty focusing their attention that those who are younger.

Meditation along with positive emotion might even result in a healthier immune system.

This quote from Dr. Richardson is worth remembering. “We know that the brain is the one organ in our body build to change in response to experience and training. It’s a learning machine.”

It should be understood that meditating does not require going to an ashram or sitting in the lotus permission. Here are some guidelines for meditating that were provided in the AARP article.

1. Sit in any position that’s comfortable for you; a chair is fine. Or, and this is my personal favorite, you can lie down.

2. Start with a 5-minute session and then gradually increase to longer times.

3. Start by just feeling your breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils. You don’t need to adjust the breath to make it deeper or finer; simply notice it as it is and as it changes.

4. Sometimes thoughts or emotions come up and sweep us away, or we fall asleep. Know that your mind will wander, just notice where it went and then gently bring it back to the breath—every time, over and over.

5. Above all, have patience with yourself. The more you practice meditation, the easier it gets to stay focused. So don’t get discouraged by your wandering mind. Eventually, it will get easier to return to concentrating on your breathing.

I would add that whenever you feel stressed or upset, it is a good idea, if possible, to go someplace where you will no be noticed and try to meditate. Even five minutes can be helpful in such situations.

1Salzberg, S. www.aarp.org/personal-growth/life-long-learning/info-0202011/meditation_grows_t…, February 25, 2011

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

If You Don’t Like Mnemonic Techniques, Try Walking

So you don’t like mnemonic techniques (Click the Mnemonic Techniques Category to see blog posts). Even though they improve memory. Even though they provide cognitive exercise involving creativity, recoding, imagining, and focusing attention. Even though they exercise both hemispheres of the brain. Then try walking.

Kirk Erickson did an experiment¹ on the effects of aerobic exercise on 120 adults with an average age around 60. Different groups walked around a track, did yoga, or resistance training. They continued this exercise for a year. All groups performed better on spatial memory tests after exercising, but walking provided the greatest benefit. Brain scans were also done on the experimental participants. The brains of those in the walking group increased in volume by 2 percent on average. The other exercise groups decreased in volume by 1.4 percent on average. You should not infer that their exercise decreased their brain volume as a 1.4 percent is normal for sixty-year-olds. But the walking group increased by 2 percent over the normal 1.4 percent loss that was expected.

So the bottom line is that most any physical exercise is good for memory, walking seems to provide the best protection against aging-related brain shrinkage.

Of course, there is no need to wait until you are sixty to start walking. Clearly walking is beneficial to physical health, brain health, and a healthy memory. This also applies whether or not you use mnemonic techniques. Using mnemonic techniques likely add to healthy memory in addition to improving memory performance.

1In press in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/25/1015950108. Also summarized in Monitor on Psychology, April 2011, 42, p. 18 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Moonwalking with Einstein: the Bottom Line

The preceding five blog posts have been based on Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything¹. This book relates an extraordinary example of participatory journalism in which the author trained himself in mnemonic techniques to the point where he was able to compete at the World Championship level. Historically humans have developed extraordinary memorization skills. With advances in technology, these skills have diminished as increasingly reliance is placed on external memory storage (transactive memory). The question is whether this heavy reliance upon external sources of memory is mistaken.

Foer explores this question in the Epilogue. One of the first decisions that confronted Foer was whether he wanted to continue to compete in national and world memory competitions. Given the extraordinary speed of his memory accomplishments, he did have the prospect of becoming a world champion. He had the option of a career change and become a professional mnemonist who would not only compete, but give exhibitions, provide training, write books and develop courses for memory improvement. He admits that his competitive instincts had been whetted and that this option was quite tempting. However, he decided against this, because of the time commitment required, and his desire to work primarily as a journalist.

So, was it all worth it? He tells of an incident when he met his friends for dinner that occurred after he had become an accomplished mnemonist. He returned home via metro and only then realized that he had driven to the restaurant! But he does understand why this happened (he failed to attend) and how it could have been avoided (to have paid attention). Even though he knows how to commit phone numbers to memory, he still finds it easier just to punch them into his cell phone. The following is a direct quote from the Epilogue. “The most important lesson I took away from my year on the competitive memory circuit was not the secret to learning poetry by heart, but rather something far more global and, in a way, far more likely to be of service in my life. My experience had validated the old saw that practice makes perfect. But only if it’s the right kind of concentrated, self-conscious, deliberate practice. I’d learned firsthand that with focus, motivation, and, above all, time, the mind can be trained to do extraordinary things.”

So, what is the importance of our own internal memories? To quote from the Epilogue again. “How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory.” And later, “Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture. All these essential human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are.”

Moonwalking with Einstein is an outstanding read. I have not done it justice. I highly recommend it.

1Foer, J. (2011). New York: The Penguin Press 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Achieving the Max in Technical Transactive Memory

As you probably know, if you are a regular reader of this blog, transactive memory refers to external memory storage. There are two varieties of transactive memory: human, where the information is held by other humans, and technical, where the information is held in some type of technology, be it paper, book, journal, computer file, or on the internet. In Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything¹, Joshau Foer relates the story of Gordon Bell, who regards himself as the vanguard of a movement that takes the externalization of memory to its logical extreme. Bell is a seventy-three year old computer scientist who now works at Microsoft. He has advanced his ideas in his book Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything². Bell has gone well beyond writing a book and has started to code and store all information that he can find and that bears upon his life. For the last decade, Bell has kept a digital “surrogate memory”, a lifelog, to supplement the one in his brain. He is keeping a record of anything and everything that might be forgotten. He uses a SenseCam, a digital camera, that dangles around his neck and records every sight and sound that passes before his eyes. He uses a digital recorder to record every sound he hears. Every phone call received by his landline is recorded and every piece of paper he reads is immediately scanned into his computer. A pack rat with boxes of stuff, he has digitized all of his photo, engineering notebooks, and papers. Today his lifelog takes up 170 gigabytes of memory and is growing at a rate of about a gigabyte a month. This includes over 100,000 emails, 65,000 photographs, 100,000 documents, and 2,000 phone calls.

Now as readers of the Healthymemory Blog know, storing information is half the battle. The other half is being able to retrieve, access, the information when it is wanted. This is the basic distinction between available and accessible memory. Just as information can be available, but not accessible in biological memory, information can be available, but inaccessible, from transactive memory. Bell has a search engine to accomplish this retrieval. However, to use this he needs to us his biological memory and senses to re-input it into his brain through his eyes and ears. His vision of the future is that there will be electronic chips implanted in the brain to accomplish this automatically.

A couple of issues need to be considered here. First of all is what is the utility of storing everything? Is this truly adaptive or is the efficiency of information retrieval being damaged by much extraneous and irrelevant bits of what might technically be regarded as information, but have little bearing upon knowledge.

An implicit assumption underlying Bell’s thesis is that information does not need to be attended to, it merely needs to be stored to be useful. I question this assumption. All that I know about memory is that information needs to undergo conscious processing for it to be useful. That is, it requires attention. Although it is true that out unconscious minds are constantly at work, and that information and solutions sometimes simply pop into consciousness, I would argue that at some time this information received conscious attention.

So the future that Bell sees, might not work as he thinks, and could even be counterproductive.

1Foer, J. (2011). New York: The Penguin Press.

2Bell, C.G., & Gemmel, J. (2009). New York: Dutton 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Talented Tenth

The Talented Tenth is the title of a chapter in Joshua Foer‘s Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything¹ . The Talented Tenth refers to a class in Raemon Matthews’ class in the Samuel Gompers Vocational High School. This school in located in the South Bronx in New York City. In this neighborhood nine out of ten students are below average in reading and math. Four out of five are living in poverty, and almost half don’t graduate from high school. Matthews named his class the Talented Tenth after W.E.B. DuBois‘ notion that an elite corps of African Americans would lift the race out of poverty. He teaches his students mnemonic techniques and how they can be used to learn the names, dates, and places in the content he presents. He does not only use mnemonic techniques. He does not even use the word “memory” in his class. Matthews says that education is the ability to retrieve information at will and analyze it. But you can’t have higher-level learning, you cannot analyze, without retrieving information. Mnemonic techniques are useful in enabling the students to quickly assimilate names, dates, and places so they can more readily think about the historical events, their context, how these events developed, and why they developed as they did. He also places demands on his students in his tests. Every in-class essay his students write must contain at least two memorized quotations.

He also uses mind maps. Mind maps are drawings where information written in boxes is linked to other information. Each of his students creates an intricately detailed Mind Map of the entire history book.

His methods are successful. Every single member of the talented tenth has passed the New York State Regents exam in the last four years, and 85% of his students have scored ninety or better. It is not surprising that his students do well on advanced placement tests. And they come across as quite impressive individuals. Matthews has a little over forty students in his class. He brings the best twelve students along with him when he attends the U.S. Memory Championships where they compete.

At this point a reasonable question is why are mnemonic techniques not commonly employed in classrooms. One reason might be that teachers don’t know them (and if they had known them, they probably would have done better in college). You might want to read, or reread the Healthymemory Blog Post “Pseudo-Limitations of Mnemonics.” There are pronounced biases against using mnemonics in instruction that are ill-founded. Mnemonics are not to be used for all materials, but rather to provide a means of making initially meaningless material meaningful. It expedites the efficient coding of material so that it can be used for more meaningful higher level cognitive processing.

1Foer, J. (2011). New York: The Penguin Press. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Remembering Poems

According to Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything¹ memorizing poetry is a standard task for memory competitions. I find this a tad ironic. One of the reasons for poetry, at least poetry that rhymes and has a specific meter, is to aid memory. Epic poems originated in preliterate societies before there was a written language. There are mechanical techniques used to memorize poems that are used by many competitors in memory competitions. But remember that mnemonic techniques are intended primarily for material that has little or no inherent meaning. The material might be meaningful, but the learner has not advanced far enough to decipher that meaning, so mnemonic techniques are called upon.

Some people in these memory competitions use the meaning and the emotion inherent in the poem to memorize the poem. To me, this is the appropriate technique for poetry. Using a mechanical technique circumvents the inherent meaning, emotion, and beauty of the poetry. I find using poetry in memory competitions somewhat obscene. Random digits, playing cards, names and faces are fine, but not poetry. It encourages the skirting of the essence of poetry.

Poetry should be read for enjoyment and savored. True, there are educational situations when one is forced to read and sometimes to memorize poetry. Make an effort to understand and feel poems on their own terms. This reminds me of one of my friend’s opinions regarding speed reading. He said that for technical material, speed reading did not work because the material would not be understood. And when he was reading for pleasure, he saw no sense in rushing through it. True, there are times when it is either necessary or convenient to skim material, but skimming should be done to find meaningful material that should be read more slowly.

I find an analogy between poetry and the way that most actors learn their lines. Some may use mnemonic techniques, but these are the exceptions. Most use what are termed “beats.” This is referring to the motivation and feelings of the character when the actor is delivering the lines. The actor is really into the script. And if an error occurs, it might even be an improvement to the script!

So if there is meaning or feeling in the material to be learned, use that meaning or feeling to aid memorization. Mnemonic techniques are appropriate when no meaning of feeling is apparent in the material.

1Foer, J. (2011). New York: The Penguin Press.

How the Memory Champs Do It

In Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything¹ Joshua Foer describes the memory techniques that memory champions use and that he emulated in his preparation for participation in the U.S. Memory Championships. A familiarity with mnemonic techniques or with the postings under the Healthymemory Blog category “Mnemonic Techniques” would be helpful in understanding these techniques.

To become a Grand Master of Memory, the following requirements must be met:

Memorize a list of 1,000 random digits in one hour.

Memorize the precise order of ten shuffled decks of cards in one hour.

Memorize the order of one shuffled deck in less than two minutes.

Memory competitions involve additional tasks such as remembering lists of words, the names of pictures of individuals, and poems.

I was surprised by the prominent role that the Method of Loci (see the Healthymemory Blog Post, “Memory of Loci”, it was the first posting in this category so consequently it is at the bottom of the “Mnemonic Techniques” posts) played. They use the strategy of creating what they term “memory palaces.” A memory palace could be your home. You would place items you wanted to be remembered in different locations in your house and form a mental image of the object in specific locations. When it came time to recall, you would simply take a mental walk through your home and see the images of the different items as you examined the part of the house in which you had placed them. Obviously a memory palace need not be a palace or even indoors. You could take a mental walk in a familiar park forming mental images of the items you wanted to remember in different locations throughout the park. These memory experts use an extraordinary number of these memory palaces. I found it interesting that about a week before an important competition, they would mentally clean out these memory palaces from the items they had placed there so they would not be unwanted intrusions in the memory competitions. I did find this reliance on the method of loci surprising. I usually present this method as a matter of historical interest. For myself, I’ve found numeric pegwords more useful for remembering lists of items. This requires having a system for recoding numbers (see the blog posts “Remembering Numbers,” “More On Remembering Numbers,” “Three Digit Numbers,” and “Remembering Even Larger Numbers.” I’ve used numeric pegwords developed using these techniques in lieu of the loci provided by memory palaces. I’ve found this more convenient, and you can recall the precise numerical order of any item without having to take a mental walk through some memory palace. Regarding remembering numbers, Foer credits Johann Winkelmann for developing this technique known as the “Major System” around 1648. My references (see Blog Post “Remembering Numbers” credits Pierre Hergione (1540-1643) a French mathematician and astronomer with eventing the technique. It is possible that they developed their systems independently, but the systems appear to be identical, Perhaps Winkelmann plagiarized the system or was improperly credited with its development.

The Person Action Object (PAO), Einstein Walking on the Moon for example, is another technique, although the fundamental forming of mental images is central to all mnemonic techniques. These images need to be vivid. Bizarre and/or obscene images can be quite effective. I found it curious that the PAO system was used to remember numbers. For example, Frank Sinatra might be used for 34. The number 13 could be David Beckham kicking a soccer ball. And 79 could be Superman. So 791334 could become an image of Superman kicking a soccer ball into Frank Sinatra. So unique arbitrary images are used for these number. A unique PAO image is developed for each number from 0 t0 99 is created. Advanced mnemonists might generate unique PAO images from 0 to 999. Why they do this rather than relying on the Perionne or “Major System” is beyond me. Perhaps they want an independent system to avoid confusion. I don’t know. But compared to these guys, I’m a village idiot.

What is interesting is the time needed to become proficient enough in these techniques to compete in a world championship and have any chance of winning. Foer practiced about four hours a day. He also used earplugs and goggles that restricted his field of view to focus his attention. He employed what is termed deliberate practice where the focus was on remediating errors and increasing speed and proficiency. So when a performance plateau is hit one needs to challenge oneself by practicing failing and putting onesself in the mind of someone more accomplished with the task. One needs to maintain some conscious control to improve and not remain on autopilot. Actually four hours a day is a reasonable amount of time to spend in an activity at which you hope to be expert. It is remarkable that Foer was able to achieve the proficiency that he did in what was a little less than a year.

Although it takes an extraordinary amount of commitment to be able to compete on a national or world level, it does not take that much time to benefit from mnemonic techniques. Usually in a simple experiment where one group of people is given a memory technique and another group is not, the benefit of the memory technique is quite apparent. To achieve some immediate benefit should not take much effort. The greater the proficiency desired, the greater the effort that needs to be extended. The techniques presented in this Healthymemory Blog should be quite helpful. And since they require creativity, imagination, and recoding, and that they force you to attend and to used both hemispheres of your brain, they should provide helpful mental workouts.

1Foer, J. (2011). New York: The Penguin Press. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Moonwalking with Einstein

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything¹ is one gem of a book. Its author, Joshua Foer, is one remarkable individual. This book was an exercise in participatory journalism. The memory of participatory journalism I have is George Plimpton‘s Paper Tiger. Back in the sixties George Plimpton convinced the Detroit Lions that they allow him to participate during the preseason. So he worked out as a quarterback and, if memory serves me correctly, took a couple of snaps during an exhibition game. He wrote a book about this time from which a motion picture was made. Although this was entertaining, it was a lark as Plimpton clearly participated in an activity to which he didn’t properly belong. Joshua Foer became intrigued about the competitive memory circuit after attending the World Memory Championships. After consulting with a variety of experts he decided to take it upon himself to train his memorization skills so that he would be able to participate in the U.S Memory Championship. This was a daunting undertaking. For example, the world memory champion, Ben Pridmore, is able to memorize the precise order of 1528 random digits in one hour. To become a Grand Master of Memory, of which there were 36 at the time the book was written, the following requirements must be met:

Memorize a list of 1,000 random digits in one hour.

Memorize the precise order of ten shuffled decks of cards in one hour.

Memorize the order of one shuffled deck in less than two minutes.

The memory championships involved a variety of tasks that are described in the book and each of them requires their own preparation. Joshua had what we would regard as a normal memory. He was willing to learn the mnemonic techniques that the experts employ and to bring them to the proficiency so that he would be a credible competitor at the U.S. Memory Championships.

Moonwalking with Einstein chronicles his journey from novice to participating in the championship in a most entertaining fashion. Along the way he addresses many interesting issues, issues that will be discussed in subsequent posts to the Healthymemory Blog. However, I would advise you against relying on this blog for learning the content of Moonwalking. I cannot do justice to the book. You would be missing a great read.

For the ancient Greeks mnemonic skills were an essential component of rhetorical skills. In pre-literate societies stories were memorized and historical records committed to memory by skilled memorizers. A skilled memory was essential to scholarship until the printed word became commonplace. Ever since then reliance has been increasingly placed on transactive memory, a term Foer does not use. Transactive memory refers to external storage media like paper, books, journals, storage media, the internet, and even fellow humans. Our brains remain biologically capable of doing what the ancient Greeks did. I should take pains to point out that although the title is Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, the book argues that remembering everything would be a mistake and might be a personal handicap. But it is also most likely a mistake to rely almost exclusively on transactive memory. The book states that on average, people squander forty days annually compensating for things that they have forgotten. Although the book is fairly well documented, I do have to regard this particular claim with skepticism. I would be willing to accept “ a lot” rather than the precise estimate. But there might be even more compelling reasons for making greater use of biological memory. The Healthymemory Blog argues that mnemonic techniques provide a good means of exercising our cognitive skills to include focusing attention, creativity, imagination, and recoding. They activate memory circuits and exercise both hemispheres of the brain.

1Foer, J. (2011). New York: The Penguin Press 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Remembering Names of People

The basic problem for most people is that we do not pay attention to the name when the person is introduced.  Usually we are thinking of what we are going to say or some other aspect of the situation and we miss the name.  So the first rule to remember people’s names is to pay attention when we are introduced or first hear the name.  It is good to repeat the person’s name when you are introduced.  Most people will be flattered when you express interest in their name.  So if you ask a question about it, you will both flatter the person and strengthen your memory.  By now you know that to remember something you need to make it meaningful.  .  Some names are inherently meaningful, for example, Rose, Temple, Church, Carpenter.  Take advantage of this.  You also know that forming mental pictures or images enhance memorability.  So you could imagine the individual holding a rose, going into a temple, going into a church, or working as a carpenter.  Concentrate on the sound rather than the spelling of the name.  Consider the following names and how easy it is to form a mental image of them:  Taylor, Cook, Barber, Skinner, Glazer, Pacer, Blocker, Fisher, Shepherd,  Potter, Mayer, Forman, Judge, King, Noble, Winter, Sommer, Spring, Snow, Rains, Bagel, Crown, Bridges, Turner, Brown, Miller, Coyne, Glass, Bell, Tucker, Katz, Bolling, Frett, Powers, Freed, Hart, Stamp, Walker, Graves, Berry, Gill, Storm, Rich, Post, Marsh, Moore, Roper, Hyde, Prince, Park, Price, Holliday, Colt, Rodes, Fawcett, Holland, Bush, Bushman, Martini, Land, Baker, Brooks, Porter, Love, Mailer, Tanner, Baron, Ashe, Banks, Allwood, Tower, Crater, Fountain, Hedges, Bloom, Starr, Burr, Fairweather, Feather, Lemmon, Cobb, Roach, Cruz, Plummer, Trapper, Bateman, Gates, Bellow, Rivers, Keyes, Bishop, Goldwater, Ford,  Booth, Foote, Trout, Gallup, Carver, Potts, March, Bolt, Garland, Byer, Angel, Farmer, Brewer, Webb, Dancer, Flagg, Bowler, Spinner, Nichols, Bowes, Silver, Gold, Frank, Marshall, Lane, Boyle, Knot, Teller, Steel, Bacon, Klapper, Pullman, Archer, and Kane.  There are many more, these are just some examples.  Some other names can be made more memorable with a little elaboration.  Smith, a common name, is one that is especially embarrassing to forget.  Smith can easily be elaborated to blacksmith.  Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt are also hotel names so you can form a specific image for each hotel.  See if the sound of the name can be converted into an image that you can then combine with the image of the person or certain features on a person’s face.

            Another technique is to see if the name is shared by someone who is famous. 
For example, if the name was Hooper, you could think of the actor, Dennis Hooper.   Given all the famous and historical people there are, this provides a rich source of remember names.  Consider the following names:  Winfrey (Oprah), De Niro (Robert), Spears (Britney), Hughes (Howard),  Kidman (Nicole), Brokaw (Tom), Parton (Dolly), Picasso (Pablo), Armstrong (Louis), Beethoven (Ludwig Von), Mozart (Wolfgang), Warhol (Andy), Hoffman (Dustin), Bancroft (Ann), Brooks (Mel), Allen ( Woody), Gable (Clark), Cooper (Jackie), Marx (Groucho, or Chico, or Harpo), Streep (Meryl), Redford (Robert), Reiner (Carl or Rob), Seinfield (Jerry), Bonds (Barry), Castro (Fidel), Lee (Robert E), Aaron (Hank), Williams (Ted), Mantle (Mickey), Jeter (Derek), Rodriguez (Alex), Torre (Joe), and Sinatra (Frank).  Former Presidents can also be used, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt (Franklin or Teddy), Lincoln, Washington.  They key here is that you be able to form a clear image of the former President or any famous person you are using to help you remember the name.  You form an image of the person you are trying to remember with the famous person sharing the same name.  There is no need to match for sex or age, all you need to is to form an image so that when you see the person, it triggers the image and you are able to recall the name.  Do not overlook the obvious.  If the name is meaningful, associate the person with an image of the sound of the name.  If the person shares a famous name, form an image of the person interacting with the famous personage.

            Still, there will be many names that are new and strange and do not immediately suggest an image.  These names require a little work in recoding the sound of the name so that a meaningful image can be formed.  Consider the recodings for the following names:

Dembowski                 a donkey (Dem for Democrat) with a bow on a ski

Rudolph                      the red nosed reindeer

Wellington                  imagine beef Wellington if you can’t imagine the Duke

Gibbons                       imagine primates playing

Rossitter                      someone sitting on roses

Lewyckyj ( pronounced loo wit ski)   someone in the lou drinking whiskey wearing skis

Bordelais                     a lay of flowers placed on a border

Lembo                         someone dancing the limbo

Harrington                   someone issue a harangue from a ton of steel

Leifester                      someone lying faster and faster

Now try generating your own images based on the sounds of the following names:

Altman

Caldwell

Eckstein

Forbes

Hamilton

Ingram

Lieberman

Nugent

Pomerantz

Zimmer

Kim

Ku

Yu

Rodriguez

Lopez

If you had problems with any of the above, here are some suggestions

Altman            an old man

Caldwell          a cold well

Eckstein          ink making a stain

Forbes             four bees

Hamilton         hammering a ton

Ingram             pouring ink on a ram

Lieberman       a man laboring, a labor man (union organizer?)

Nugent              a new gent (a new gentleman to whom you have been introduced)

Pomerantz       a palm tree surrounded by aunts

Zimmer            a pot simmering

Kim                 imagine your next of Kin with M&Ms

Ku                   image a coup

Yu                   imagine a large letter “U”

Rodriguez       picture a rod reeking of gas

Lopez              picture someone who lopes

However remembering names is only part of the problem. The name usually needs to be associated with a face. Linking the mnemonic to an image of the individual will work, if you can do it.  Another technique that was advocated by the famous mnemonist Harry Lorayne was to link the mnemonic to something conspicuous or salient in the person’s face. 

Suppose you meet a lady with a broad nose named Hamilton. You could form a mental picture of someone hammering a ton on her nose.

Suppose a Mr. Forbes has a distinctive hairline. You could imaging four bees coming out of his hairline.

You encounter a Mr. Zimmer whose most distinguishing feature is a deep indentation from the center of his nose to the center of his upper lip (this is called a philtrum). You could form a mental picture of a pot simmering in this indentation (philtrum).

Let’s consider a Mr. Ingram next.  Perhaps the most distinctive features on his face are his large, bushy eyebrows.  You can imagine a ram pouring ink on his eyebrows.

Now consider Ms. Lembo.  She has an upswept hairdo.  You could imagine someone doing the limbo on the top of her hairdo.

Next consider Ms. Coldwell.  She has a tunnel-like, or inverted V-shaped hairline.  You could form a picture of some drawing water from a cold well in this tunnel.

Now consider Mr Kim.  You can picture in his mouth his next of kin eating M&Ms.

Notice Ms. Ku’s hair.  You can imagine a coup taking place in her hair.

Here is Ms. Yu. You can imagine large letter “”U’s” placed around her hair.

This is Mr. Rodriguez.  You can imagine a rod reeking of gas coming out of his nose.

This is Ms. Lopes.  You can imagine someone loping across her eyes.

The more information you can associate with the person, the better the overall memory.  So what is important about the person?  Knowing the occupation or the position someone holds is important.  Recoding and forming images to remember are not always necessary.  Of course, you can form an image of this person performing her job it you find this helpful.  Knowing the person’s hobbies and interests is another plus.  Again, you can form images of the person with her hobbies and interests if you find this helpful.  Knowing if the person is married and how many children, and of what kind and ages these children are good things to know.  If you find images helpful here, fine.  But the very act of devoting the time and attention to remember this information will facilitate memory.  Not only will this facilitate memory, but it will also facilitate your relationships.   Being able to recall this information and to work it into the conversation demonstrates to the individual that you both know and care about them. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Will Baby Boomers Be More Vulnerable to Scams?

I recently read an article¹ stating that the elderly are more prone to scams. Three reasons were given: More Trusting, Loneliness, and Memory Loss.

This made me wonder whether baby boomers will be more trusting. We were supposed to be more skeptical to begin with. My personal experience has increased this skepticism several orders of magnitude. For years I had been promising myself that I would read the annual reports that were sent to me as a stockholder. I was just starting to do this when the Enron scandal broke. That taught me that reading these reports was futile.

We have bought several homes in our lifetime. Each experience was traumatic to me. I worried about the debt I was assuming. However, I reasoned to myself that these mortgage companies would not make foolish loans or they would lose money. But one of the primary reasons for our recent financial crisis was that the mortgage companies did not care because they sold the mortgages to conglomerates that either did not know or not care what risk they were assuming. During our most recent home purchase I was amazed at the amount of debt that they would let us assume. Now I understand. They did not care if we defaulted because by that time the default would be someone else’s problem.

Then there is the financial crisis itself. It appears that deregulation and the scant enforcement of the regulations that existed were primary factors underlying the crisis. But the reforms that were passed were weak and in the view of most knowledgeable individuals, inadequate. Moreover, the recent elections indicate that it is even less likely that adequate protections will be provided.

Then there are the defaulted pensions. First were the companies that went into bankruptcy and defaulted on their pension obligations. I had thought that there were government agencies to assure that pension funds were adequately funded. Either there were not such agencies or these agencies were remiss in fulfilling their objectives. Now we have state and local governments revoking or modifying commitments that had been made to their employees.

So current events should have disabused baby boomers, at least, of being more trusting.

Peter A. Lichtenberg of Wayne State University’s Institute of Gerontology has said that his research indicated that loneliness or feeling undervalued that increases a senior’s risk. of falling for scams by 30 percent. Now Healthmemory Blog readers should realize that transactive memory involves the interaction with other humans. There are benefits here not only in the knowledge gained, but perhaps more importantly, in the interaction and building of relationships with fellow humans. The knowledge and confidence gained through interactions with both the technological and human aspects of transactive memory should also boost self esteem.

As for memory loss, the objective of the Healthymemory Blog is not only to forestall memory loss, but to promote cognitive growth. By continuing to learning about new topics and learning new skills memory health is promoted. Readers of the Healthymemory Blog should be aware of the benefits of nonconscious processing. Sleep on a decision before making it. Transactive memory involves interactions with both technology and fellow humans to build social relationships and to continue to grow cognitively. Mnemonic techniques are presented that not only provide a direct means of improving memory, but also provide a good means for cognitive exercise. Even if disease should strike, having a cognitive reserve should forestall the rate of progress of the pathology.

1Kirchheimer, S. (2011). Brain Games. Aarp.org/bulletin March, 26. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Google Art Project

I find searching for online art frustrating. Most of the websites are commercial, and that is not surprising. Should any readers know of sites that are good just for viewing art, please leave comments. For the future, however, the Google Art Project¹ bodes well. Google is using its “street view” technology. Frankly, I was freaked when I first saw my neighbor’s house when I did directions on Google. I have tried a few “virtual galleries” in the past, but have been disappointed. Navigating them was difficult and the art seemed to loose quality.

Google promises to remedy these shortcomings. The “street view” technology allows the viewer to stroll through a gallery or museum and browse. But the viewer can choose to zoom in on pieces of interest. A gigapixel process is employed. On average, there are 7 billion pixels per image. This is a thousand times more than the average digital camera. In the digitized version of Whistler’s “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” it is possible to see the faintest trace of white paint Whistler used to make his subject’s eyes glisten, as well as the nubby, gridlike texture of the canvas. Clearly, Google is offering a much more vivid rendering of online art than has been previously available.

Julian Raby, the Director of the Freer Gallery said that “the giga-pixel experience brings us very close to the essence of the artist that simply can’t be seen in the gallery.” Brian Kennedy, the Director of the Toledo Museum of Art, said that these giga-pixel images can bring out details that might not be visible to ordinary museum-goers in a gallery, but that scholars would still want a three-dimensional view of art.

Kennicott, the author of the Washington Post article, gave the technology a mixed review. During the walk-through images often appeared to be washed out and grainy. Navigation also presented some problems. I think that Google is working on these problems.

So far Google has teamed up with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Gallery in New York, the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art in DC, as well as museums in London, Madrid, Moscow, Amsterdam, Florence, Berlin, and St. Petersburg (Russia).

The Google Art Project is currently available, although it does require perseverance and the clicking on links on multiple menus. Go to google.com. Click the “more” link. Then click “even more”. Then click “labs”. Then you should find the Art Project Powered by Google. There is a video, click on learn more, explaining how to use the Google Art Project. You have the capability of saving paintings and building your own collection. We’re anxious to hear your comments and opinions.

1Kennicott, J.P. National Treasures: Google Art Project Unlocks Riches of World’s Galleries. February 2 Style Section, C1. also Washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/01/AR2011020106321_pf.html 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Flash Seminars: A Good Idea

Laura Nelson is a senior at the University of Virginia. She has won a Rhodes Scholarship. She was disappointed in the paltry number of students who were interested in learning outside the classroom. It seems that the general attitude regarding higher education is its utilitarian value. You go to college to get a good job so you can earn more money so you can buy more expensive things. Articles are written analyzing whether the cost of a college education warrants its benefits. So education seems to be regarded purely in materialistic terms. When I taught college classes and asked students why they were taking the class, the typical answer was to get a job. Few students seemed to be interested in the actual topic of the class. But there is substantive value in a college education in terms of intellectual growth. This can lead to better jobs, but, more importantly, it can provide the basis for personal growth and for being a better citizen.

To redress this shortcoming, Laura and her colleagues came up with the idea of “flash seminars.”¹ They would invite a favorite professor to present a seminar on a topic of interest. She would publicize the seminar via e-mail and students would come. And they did come, which belies the notion that all students are attending college solely for its utilitarian value.

It occurs to me that this activity can be extended beyond university campuses. It could be conducted in meeting halls, libraries, or even individual homes. A knowledgeable speaker or moderator could be invited and an announcement could be sent to potential participants. Of course, the topic would be included in the announcement with perhaps some relevant references and websites. Then attendees could do some advance research. There are so many benefits here from the perspective of intellectual growth and building a healthy memory. Both technical and human transactive memory are involved. The benefits are both intellectual and social.

The topics need not be esoteric. They can involve sports, the theater, movies, even social topics if you are willing to risk addressing contentious issues.

1Some of this blog post is based on the following article in the Washington Post. By Daniel De Vise. A U-VA student’s bright idea. B1 February 21, 2011 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

More on the Dangers of Information Overload

I recently read another article on the dangers of information overload. In my view there cannot be too many articles on information overload as this is a serious problem. This Newsweek article¹ is quite good. It reported the reseach of the Director of the Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University, Angelika Dimoka, who employed brain imaging (fMRI) techniques to examine how the brain respond people are trying to make decisions when they are severely overtaxed. She found that activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region behind the forehead that is responsible for decision making and the control of emotions, suddenly fell off when the information load increased. It was similar to a circuit breaker popping. Now activity in the parts of the brain registering emotional activity, the parts of the brain normally kept in check by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ran wild. So the research participants made stupid decisions and their anxiety levels soared.

The article also points out that this concern with information overload is not new. Leibniz bemoaned the “horrible mass of books which keeps on growing,” in the 17^th Century. In 1729 Alexander Pope warned of “a deluge of authors covering the land.” But the problem today is many, many orders of magnitude larger, both respect to the amount of information and the rapidity with which it arrives.

The article notes that one reason for this limitation is the limited capacity of short-term memory. One way of looking at short-term memory is the number of items that we can attend to at one time. Here is where the Magic Number 7 Plus or Minus Two, created comes in. Actually subsequent research has indicated that the true magic number might be 5 or even lower. An important factor is the nature of the items to be remembered. It is prudent that you do not consider more options at a time than is warranted by your magic number. So if more items need to be evaluated, it is good to evaluate them in groups, with run-offs, if necessary.

Another ramification of this limitation in short-term memory is that recency trumps quality. So there is the risk of a poorer choice being made simply due to the order in which the options were considered. So in addition to considering options in groups, also consider the order in which the option was considered.

When the number of options is large, it is good to resort to transactive memory. That is, write things down, use a spreadsheet, whatever. Try to develop a systematic scoring system to evaluate options.

The Newsweek also mentions the neglected unconscious. Provide sufficient time to allow your unconscious mind to work for you. The article presents evidence supporting the benefits of unconscious processing. Also remember that making the optimal decision is often not realistic. Be satisfied with satisficing, the process identified by the Nobel Lauerate Herbert Simon. Be satasified with considering enough information to assure yourself that the decision is satisfactory and should not lead to disappointment.

1Begley, S. (2011). I Can’t Think. Newsweek, March 7, 28-33.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Pseudo-Limitations of Mnemonics

I’ve recently reread an article by Higbee, “Some Pseudo-limitations of Mnemonics.¹” This article reminded me of the resistance that has, and presumably continues, regarding the use of mnemonic techniques. So I am using Higbee’s article to refute this limitations.

One pseudo-limitations is that mnemonics are not practical. There is much information to the contrary. Mnemonic techniques provide a good means of dealing with absent-mindedness, remembering people’s names, remembering numbers and dates, in learning foreign vocabulary, as well as in other educational applications.

Another criticism is that mnemonics do not aid understanding. Although it could be argued that mnemonics can aid understanding, it should be conceded that in learning a new subject there often is a problem of learning new vocabulary and terms that appear to be meaningless. Mnemonics provide a means of rendering the meaningless meaningful. So mnemonics can be quite helpful in the early stages of learning. As the student progress and as what was once meaningless becomes meaningful, the need for using mnemonics diminishes. No one advocates using mnemonics all the time. But for certain tasks and for certain stages of learning they can be quite helpful.

A third criticism is that mnemonics are a crutch. But so is writing something down, what the Healthymemory Blog terms using transactive memory. Yes, they are a crutch, but technology is also a crutch. There is a very interesting educational problem here. One might argue that with the proliferation of handheld computers, one need never remember anything provided they new how to look it up. That is a rather extreme position. There is likely an epistemological need to maintain some information and knowledge, other than knowing how to look things up, in one’s personal memory.

A fourth criticism is that mnemonics are a trick similar to the tricks done by magicians. Although both mnemonics and magic are a part of show business, that provides no reason for discounting either of them. Cognitive psychologists have started studying magic tricks to learn about human information processing. Mnemonics are used in show business, but they were essential to knowledge and oratory in the time of the ancient Greeks. They remained a central part of education until the ramifications of the development of the printing press and the availability manifested themselves. What happened was that technological “crutches” replace mnemonic “crutches.” There remains the question of how extensively these technological “crutches” should be used.

The Healthymemory Blog, being about healthy memory advocates the use of mnemonic techniqus as a mental exercise. Mnemonics involve creativity, recoding, visualization, and employ both hemispheres of the brain.

Please peruse the offerings under the “Mnemonic Techniques” Category. The blog post, “A Memory Course” provides a suggested order in which to read the Mnemonic Techniques postings.

1Higbee, K. L. (1978). Some Pseudo-limitations of Mnemonics. In Gruneberg, M.M., Morris, P.E., & Sykes, R.N. (Eds.) Practical Aspects of Memory. New York: Academic Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

To Remember It, Sleep on It

A recent article¹ reports an interesting experiment² illustrating the role of sleep in memory. They had 191 adults perform different memory tasks, for example, learning word-pairs. Approximately half of the adults were told to expect a memory retest 9 hours later. The remainder were misled and told that they would be performing a different kind of task. Both groups were re-tested and those who expected the retest recalled 12 percent more word pairs than those who slept with no expectation of a test. Their brain waves were monitored during their sleep and those who were anticipating a test exhibited more slow-wave sleep. Slow-wave sleep is known to be linked to memory consolidation.

Sleep alone did not significantly improve memory. Those participants who were not expecting a retest performed just as badly regardless as to whether or not they had slept before the exam.

The principal author of the report, Jan Born of the University of Tubingen, noted that “There is an active memory process during sleep that selects certain memories and puts them in long-term storage.” Another memory researcher, Penny Lewis of the Univerity of Manchester who also studies sleep said that the study is “very convincing.” She also noted, “It looks like if you tell someone something is important, it gets enhanced more.”

Historically, sleep has presented a mystery. We spend about one-third of our lives sleeping and the question has been why. Sleep is both necessary and beneficial. It has been theorized that memory consolidation is one of the benefits of sleep. This study indicates that an intention to learn improves memory consolidation during sleep.

I have read that Leonardo da Vinci would go over his notes before going to sleep. Apparently, he had some insight that doing so would cause his mind to keep working on this information during sleep. This would appear to be a good general process.

Students should realize that one of the worst ways to prepare for a test is to pull an all-nighter. Sleep is critical to test performance. So get the studying out of the way before going to sleep and let the enhanced memory consolidation proceed.

1(2011). Sleep Sorts the Memory Wheat from the Chaff, New Scientist, 5 February, 8.

2Born, J. (2011). The Journal of Neuroscience, DOI:10.1523/jneurosci.3575-10.2011. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Consciousness and the Grandmother Cell

The notion of a grandmother cell is that there are specific neurons that represent a specific concept of object, such as your grandmother. Initially this concept was not generally accepted. The primary criticism was that too many cells would be needed to identify each individual face because each orientation, expression, and lighting on the face would be different. Moreover, the appearance of the face would change over time.

However, recent research summarized in a Scientific American Mind article¹, not only resurrects the notion of the grandmother cell, but also relates it to the phenomenon of consciousness. This research involves placing electrodes in the brain to measure electrical activity. This procedure is so invasive that it is only justified for medical diagnosis and treatment. Neurons in the medial temporal lobe are the source of many epileptic seizures. This region includes the hippocampus and turns visual and other sensory percepts into memories. Although most neurons respond to categories of objects, a few of the neurons were much more discriminating. One hippocampal neuron responded only to photos of Jennifer Aniston, and not to pictures of other actresses. Moreover, the cell responded to seven different pictures of Jennifer Aniston. They also found cells that responded to images of Mother Theresa, to cute little animals, and to the Pythagorean theorem.

Further research, by a highly creative and painstaking research team, developed a technique for making concepts visible. They took a volunteer patient and recorded from a neuron that responded to images of the actor Josh Brolin (who was in her favorite movie) and to another neuron that fired in response to the scene of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grill. The patient looked at a monitor where these two images were superimposed. The activity of the two cells controlled the extent to which she saw Brolin or Monroe in the hybrid image. When the patient focused her thoughts on Brolin, the neuron associated with Brolin fired more strongly. Similarly when the patient focused her thoughts on Monroe, the neuron associated with Monroe fired more strongly. Feedback was arranged such that the more one cell fired relative to the other, the more visible that image became as the competing image faded. The image on the screen kept changing until only Brolin or only Monroe remained on the screen. The patient loved it and felt that she was controlling what she saw, which she was.

We know that we can control what we are thinking about and that corresponding neurons and neural circuits respond. But this is, as far as I know, the first demonstration of this phenomenon. By using and controlling the appropriate memory circuits we are able to build and maintain our minds.

1Koch, C. (2011). Being John Malkovich. Scientific American Mind, March/April, 18-19. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Is Daydreaming Bad for You?

Your answer to this might be “yes” should you have heard some estimates that we use only 10% of our brains (See Healthymemory Blog Post, “How Much of Our Brain Do We Really Use”). If you have read that post  you should know that our brains our chugging away 24 hours a day, even when we are sleeping. Daydreaming has connotations of wasting time. A recent article¹ puts the benefits and risks of daydreaming in perspective. Estimates are that, on average, we spend about 30% of our waking day daydreaming. Moreover, a neural network for daydreaming has been identified. It consists of three main regions: the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, and the parietal cortex. The medial prefrontal cortex helps us imagine both ourselves and the thoughts and feelings of others. The posterior cingulate cortex brings up our personal memories. The parietal cortex has connections to the hippocampus, that key memory structure that is responsible for our personal episodic memories (our personal histories). This network is key to our sense of self.

Daydreaming can be bad. Indeed uncontrolled daydreaming can become pathological and require clinical interventions. On the other hand, daydreaming can be quite beneficial. Letting our minds run freely can be enjoyable and enlightening. When you can’t solve a problem, letting your mind run freely can sometimes stumble upon a solution. Even if it doesn’t lead to a solution, it can relax and refresh your mind. Daydreaming can also foster creativity. Creative people are sometimes characterized as dreamers. It has been noted that people who regularly catch themselves daydreaming and who notice when they’re doing it, seem to be most creative. Daydreaming can also be beneficial when you are bored or are in an uncomfortable situation, as it provides a means of escape.

Daydreaming can also be harmful when you dwell on unpleasant thoughts. Although it is good to learn from negative experiences, leave it at that (See the Healthymemory Blog Post, “Buddha’s Brain”). Like most activities, daydreaming is best done in moderation. Meditation is the exact opposite of daydreaming. In most types of meditation you focus your attention on a concept or process (see the Healthymemory Blog Posts “Costly Gadgets or Software Are Not Required for Healthy Memory,” “Continuing to Be Positive After Thanksgiving,” “Intensive Meditation Training Increases the Ability to Sustain Attention,” and “The Relaxation Response.”

Just as with your body, your mind needs a healthy balance of activities.

1Glausiusz, J. (2011). Living in a Dream World. Scientific American Mind, March/April, 24-31. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Learning on the Web (and Elsewhere as Well)

Most surfing done on the web is superficial. Consequently, little learning takes place.¹ Readers of the Healthymemory Blog will already know that effective learning requires the spending of attention. Most of the time people scan text on websites instead of reading it closely. This is the appropriate technique if someone is just trying to find something of interest or relevance. However, if someone just scans the web, little learning will take place. Moreover, bad habits can be developed if someone is constantly enticed by “hot” topics or keeps moving from one url to another without slowing down to think about and process something of interest.

Nielsen (see the first footnote) reports the results of a paper by Karpicke and Blunt that was published in Science. They measured the amount of information people could remember a week after reading a scientific text. So these people were not reading online, rather they were reading a conventional text book. The experiment involved two groups of students. One group simply read the text. The other group completed an elaborate test after reading the text. The students who had completed the elaborate test after reading remembered 145% more content after a week than students who simply read the text and did not do anything else. It is interesting to note that the people who took the test actually thought that they had learned 15% less than people who had read the text but did not take the test. The reason the test-takers thought they had learned less was that the test-taking exposed the gaps in their knowledge, though undermining their confidence, whereas the group that had not taken the test remained ignorant of their ignorance.

The test-taking condition employed here was a retrieval practice test. This involves

1.  Reading the Text
2. Recalling as much of the information as they could on a free-recall test.
3. Reading the text again.
4. Completing another free-recall test.

There was another group that simply read the text four times. Although these people remembered more than the people who read the text only once, the recall of the group doing the retrieval practice test was 64% better than the group that just read the text four times. So replacing 2 rereads with 2 tests substantially boosted people’s week-later performance. It is reasonable to think that the retrieval practice group in step 3 was aware of any information they had missed during their recall efforts in step 2. The reread only group remained ignorant of these gaps in their knowledge.

Of course, much more effort is involved in the retrieval practice test. One is constantly confronted with the problem of how much attention should be paid to an item of information. Does it need to be stored in memory so that in can be easily recalled, that is, accessible in personal memory. Or does one only need to take note of it and make a note, bookmark, or tag it. This is what the Healthymemory Blog terms accessible transactive memory. This is information that you cannot recall, but can easily find. Oftentimes, we know that the information is someplace, but cannot remember where. In this case, we say it is in available transactive memory, in that we know it is there, but cannot readily access it, In these cases we need to look for it or search for it.

It should be noted that it can be advantageous to take a test on a topic before you read or study the material. Previous Healthymemory Blog Posts on the work by Roediger demonstrate provide evidence for the benefits of this practice (“To Get It Right, Get It Wrong First”, and “The Benefits of Testing”).

1Nielsen, J. (2011). Test-Taking Enhances Learning. Http://www,useit.com/alertbox/learning-recall.html 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Jeopardy, Watson, and Transactive Memory

The recent competition between expert human contestants and the IBM computer, Watson, raises some interesting questions. These questions relate to transactive memory. Transactive memory refers to information that is not stored in one’s personal memory, but resides in another human’s memory or in some technological artifact, such as the internet or a library. So consider the answers presented on Jeopardy to which the contestant, human or Watson, needs to find the appropriate question to ask. In the case of the Jeopardy competition, either the individual memories of the participating humans had to find the correct question, or a technological artifact, Watson, had to find the correct question.

Normally, when someone needs to find a piece of information, they can either ask someone, or look it up in a reference, or search for it with a computer. In either case they are relying on transactive memory. If they know that the information exists someplace, that is termed available transactive memory. If they know where to find or whom to ask, then that is termed accessible transactive memory.

Given the ready availability of technology, one question is whether humans need to commit any information to personal biological memory if they can simply look it up or search for it. Of course, if no human commits any information to personal biological memory, asking other humans will not be an option. I would argue that the answer to this question is “no” for a couple of reasons.

Given the philosophy of the Healthymemory Blog, a healthy memory requires mental exercise, and committing information to memory is a good means of providing this exercise. This is true if mnemonic techniques are employed. Mnemonic techniques employ both hemispheres of the brain, and require imagination, creativity, and recoding. Now some Jeopardy contestants might employ mnemonic techniques some of the time, but I doubt that they are a major activity. Jeopardy contestants read widely. For material to be remembered, it needs to be meaningful. So much knowledge on a wide variety of topics has been linked together in their brains’ memory circuits. This activity also makes for a healthy memory. Moreover, most of the topics employed on Jeopardy are not trivia. Most represent substantive learning. However, even the learning of trivia can be healthy to the brain, as it does exercise the brain and build memory circuits. Although one might argue that the time could be better spent, if the activity is enjoyable that should be justification enough.

Nevertheless, given the wide availability of technology, there is a serious educational question here. Historically, most learning has been assessed by determining how much material has been memorized via true false, multiple choice, fill in the blank, or essay questions. Is this still the best way to assess learning? Rather than assessing what knowledge has been memorized, might it be better to assess how well a student can use this knowledge. In this case, there might be no need for closed book tests, and students might be given access not only to their own notes, but also to the internet. Exam questions would require them to solve problems given access to all these resources. Of course, giving citations for the sources of material should be a requirement.

I don’t know the answer to this question. The stage of education and the type of material are relevant considerations. But testing does need to be reconsidered given the new technology.

When we encounter new information we are confronted with several questions. One is whether the information has any interest or relevance. If the answer is yes, then the question is how much attention needs to be paid to it. Does it need to be committed to personal biological memory? Or do I simply need to know how to access or whom to ask, when this information is needed? 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Buddha’s Brain

Buddha’s Brain: the practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom¹ is not a book proselytizing Buddhism. Its authors are Rick Hanson, Ph.D., and Richard Mendius, MD, who are a neuropsychologist and a neurologist, respectively. They address the intersection of three disciplines: Psychology, Neuroscience, and Contemplative Practice. In doing so, they avail us of wisdom from the East, wisdom that is not addressed by the West, in general, and by the Western educational system, in particular. Buddha’s Brain provides readers with a great deal of potential for cognitive growth and personal fulfillment.

Here are some basic facts from Buddha’s Brain. The brain consists of about 1.1 trillion cells, 100 billion of which are neurons. The average neuron receives about 5,000 connections, synapses, from other neurons. Chemicals called neurotransmitters carry signals across these synapses. A typical neuron fires from 5 to 50 times a second. The number possible neurons firing or not firing is about 10 to the millionth power (1 followed by a million zeroes). Now the number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be about 10 to the eightieth power. Conscious mental events, which represent a small percentage of brain activity, are based on temporary coalitions of synapses that form and disperse. Although the brain is only about 2 percent of the body’s weight, it consumes from 20 to 25 percent of the bodies oxygen and glucose. The brain is constantly working and uses about the same amount of energy whether you are sleeping or thinking hard. The brain interacts with the rest of your body and is shaped by the mind as well. Your mind is made by your brain, body, and natural culture as well as by the mind itself.

Buddha’s Brain covers the structures of the brain and neurotransmitters and explanations of what does what and how the different structures interact. More importantly, Buddha’s Brain explains how you can affect these structures and processes and mold your own brain and behavior. Readers of the Healthymemory Blog should know the importance of attention and selective attention to effective memory. Buddha’s Brain covers how to control and expand attention as well as how to control your emotions to lead to, as the title promises, happiness, love, and wisdom. People who are deeply into contemplative practices are able to control heart rate and blood pressure.

One prediction that I have read, and which I believe, is that within twenty years meditative practices will have become as frequent as aerobic exercising is today.

Some future blog posts will be based on excerpts from Buddha’s Brain, but they cannot do justice to the entire book. I strongly recommend its reading.

1Hanson, R., & Mendius, R. (2009). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Google vs. Facebook Revisited

A number of blog posts back I expressed disappointment that Facebook had replaced Google in terms of usage. The stated grounds for my disappointment was that Facebook consisted primarily of superficial postings. True, they are enjoyable and fun, but little is learned and there is little cognitive growth. Although it is true that there are trivial searches on Google, a Google search is more likely for some useful point of knowledge. So, according to my line of reasoning, Google users were more likely to benefit from cognitive growth than were Facebook users.

In retrospect, I think that I might have been a bit unfair with my Facebook criticism, even though I did admit that many professional organizations are on Facebook. This blog post falls into the category of transactive memory. Now if you search for transactive memory on the Wikipedia (or you can search for it on Facebook that will link you to the Wikipedia) you will find that it is memory shared among a group. Actually the Healthymemory Blog is waging a rather lonely vigil by including the other meaning of transactive memory, namely, information that is found in all forms of technology (the internet, but also in conventional libraries). Although I do think that Google provides a more ready entry to transactive memory in the sense of technology, Facebook provides an entry to transactive memory in terms of memories shared with people.

I should also note that cognitive growth does not require delving into deep academic topics. For purposes of a healthy memory, information about sports and movies can form new memory circuits and reinvigorate old memory circuits in the brain. So the important point is to be cognitively active. In this respect Facebook can be quite helpful. It can serve as a resource for sharing information and collaborating with fellow human beings.

Personally, I provide a poor example. The Healthymemory Blog does have a Facebook posting, but I have done nothing with it, so it is rather sparse. I am interested in any experiences readers of this blog might have had in using Facebook in learning about topics of interest and in sharing information regarding those topics of interest. Please leave your comments. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Day in the Life of Mr. and Mrs. Healthymemory

Mr. and Mrs. Healthymemory are a retired couple who are interested in memory health and stay mentally active. The following is a summary of a typical day in their lives.

They sleep in as they are careful to be sure that they get enough sleep. During breakfast the share the morning paper and discuss topics of mutual interest. They include flavonoids in their breakfast as they do with all their meals (See the Healthymemory Blog Post “Flavonoids for a Healthy Memory”). They discuss their plans for the day both to assure that they are efficient (they are not making unnecessary trips or taking routes that are time consuming) and mutually supportive (their plans fit well together). They commit both their plans to prospective memory so that each know where the other will be at what times. They use mnemonic techniques to commit their plans for the day to memory. They don’t feel a need to use technical transactive memory (to write the plans down or enter them into a Personal Digital Assistant) because they are confident that they will remember and that nothing catastrophic will result in the event that either forgets something.

Mrs. Healthymemory prepares to leave to go to the supermarket. Again she chooses not to write down a shopping list, but rather uses a mnemonic technique to commit the list to memory. Mr. Healthymemory goes to the computer to work on a history of their families. Currently, he is using geneological websites to see how far back he can trace their family histories.

Later in the morning, they take a walk before lunch, recognizing that physical health is important to a healthy memory. During lunch they converse about topics of mutual interest.

In the afternoon they meet with their separate friends. Mrs. Healthymemory meets with her book discussion group. Her group not only discusses the book, but also does research online regarding the author, critiques of the book, and about the context in which the book takes place. So in addition to reading the book, each member spends time doing research online and preparing presentations to the group.

Mr. Healthymemory is in a sports trivia group. Currently they are researching the history of baseball. Most of this research is done online. This research involves numbers in addition to names. They are especially interested in how such statistics as batting averages, home runs, complete games pitched and earned run average have changed over time and have animated discussions regarding possible reasons for these changes.

During dinner they discuss their respective days. Each makes an effort to understand some of the interests of the other in the interests of fostering mutual transactive memories. This is beneficial both to their respective memories and their relationship. They also discuss strategy for the bridge games they have planned with another couple for the evening. They have developed a fairly sophisticated bidding strategy using mnemonic techniques. Later that evening, they find that they are tired and ready for a good night’s sleep. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Walking and a Healthy Memory

The Health Day Newsletter contained an article¹ summarizing a news release from the November 29, 2010 meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. The research suggests that walking about five miles a week may help slow the progression of cognitive illness among seniors already suffering from mild forms of cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s Disease. The research also indicated that walking just six miles a week can help prevent the onset of disease.

Two appealing features leap out at me from this news. First is the cost. Walking costs nothing (unless you choose walking shoes or consider the minimal wear placed on shoes). Secondly, this is a reasonable regimen. Six miles is not excessively demanding, particularly when you consider that it can be spread out over an entire week.

3-D MRI scans were done to measure brain volume. After accounting for age, gender, body-fat composition, head size, and education, it was found that the more the individual engaged in physical activity, the larger the brain volume. Greater brain volume is a sign of a lower degree of brain cell death as well as general brain health. Cognitive tests were also administered and these also indicated improved cognitive performance in healthy individuals and lower losses in cognitive performance for those who already had begun to decline cognitively.

Physical activity improves blood flow to the brain, changes neurotransmitters, and improves cardiac function. It also lessens the risk of obesity, improves insulin resistance and lowers the risk of diabetes, and lowers blood pressure, All of these things are risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease.

Clearly the Healthymemory Blog endorses physical activity in addition to the mental activities advocated in this blog. These include mnemonic techniques and transactive memory. Transactive memory entails cognitive growth via technology and our fellow human beings.

1Regular Walking May Slow Decline of Alzheimer;s, http://consumer;healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=646656

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Can Early Retirement Lead to Memory Decline?

An article in the SharpBrains Blog¹ noted that an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives titled “Mental Retirement” stated that data from the United States, England and 11 other European countries suggested that the earlier people retire, the more quickly their memories decline.

Of course, the question to be asked here is “why?” A variety of possible causes come to mind. There is the social engagement and interaction that is found on most jobs. Or it could be the cognitive component of work. Or perhaps even the aerobic component of work. Or it could be the TV watching that increased subsequent to retirement.

None of these possibilities are mutually exclusive. They could all be working to different degrees depending on the job and the individual. The critical question is which of these activities have declined since retirement. So retirement per se is not the culprit, but certain changes that have resulted from the retirement.
Some people retire to second careers so that the nature and mix of the activities do not change significantly. Others become preoccupied with their hobbies and activities for which there was insufficient time to pursue when they were working. Unfortunately, others watch television and become couch potatoes and engage in minimal social activity.

The answer to the question posed in the title can be found in the title of the SharpBrains Blog Post “When Early Retirement Equals Mental Retirement and Memory Decline.” That is, if there is no mental retirement, then memory decline will be unlikely.

The Healthymemory Blog provides a means of preventing mental retirement through cognitive and social activity. Reading its blog postings provide information and data regarding human memory to include the effects of aging and the mitigation of these effects. It also provides information on mnemonic techniques, techniques specifically designed for improving memory. In addition to improving memory, these techniques provide mental exercise for both hemispheres of the brain. They also exercise creativity and recoding. Articles in the transactive memory category provide suggestions regarding how to use the internet not only to provide for mental activity, but also to achieve cognitive growth. An important component of transactive memory is social interaction. Although the Healthymemory Blog should be of special interest to baby boomers, it should have interest and value for all visitors.

1Http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2010/10/14/work-helps-maintain-the-brain/ When Early Retirement Equals Mental Retirement and Memory Decline by Dr. Pascale Michelon 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Costly Gadgets or Software Not Required for a Healthy Memory

The Healthymemory “Blog has consistently maintained that costly equipment or software is not required for a healthy memory. Indeed, that is one reason why memory techniques are recommended. Even transactive memory does not require a computer. Conventional storage media like books, journals, and magazines will suffice as well as your fellow human beings. Meditation can also provides a less costly beneficial activity in terms of monetary expense, but the time demands can be substantial. Research¹ by Posner and his colleagues indicates that beneficial meditation need not consume excessive amounts of time.

The training technique is called integrative body-mind training (IBMT; or integrative meditation). This technique integrates body relaxation, breathing adjustment, mental imagery and mindfulness training, There was also a coach who could help each participant increase the amount of mindfulness experienced to maximize the benefit of each practice session. Comfortable background music was also employed. Forty Chinese undergraduates took this training for five days. Each session lasted twenty minutes. An additional forty Chinese undergraduates were assigned to a control group that was given a form of relaxation training.

Both groups were given a battery of tests one week before the training and immediately after the final training session. The Attention Network Test (ANT) measures the ability to resolve conflicting demands upon attention, in other words, selective attention. Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrix provides a measure of fluid attention. Measures of mood were also taken. A mental arithmetic task was used to present a stress challenge followed by measures of cortisol and secretory IgA, which provide indications of the body physiological response to stress. The two groups did not differ on any of these tests before undergoing training.

After training, the IBMT group showed superior performance with respect to conflict resolution. The IBMT group also showed better regulation of emotion. The IBMT group also performed better on the Raven’s Test indicating improvement in fluid attention. Five days of IBMT training reduced the stress response to the mental challenge especially after an additional 20 minutes of practice.

All-in-all, these are most impressive results given the limited total amount of IBMT training.

1Tang, Y.Y., Yinghua, M., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., Sui, S., Rothbart, M.K., Fan, M., & Posner, M.I.. (2007). Short-term Meditation Training Improves Attention and Self-Regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. October 23, 104(43): 17152:17156. Published online 2007 October 11. doi: 10.1073/pnas.07067678104. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Fluid Intelligence and Working Memory

Regular readers of the Healthymemory Blog should be familiar with the distinction between fluid and crystalized intelligence. Crystalized intelligence basically is a matter of what you know. Your vocabulary, for instance, reflects your crystalized intelligence. On the other hand, fluid intelligence reflects how well you deal with novel situations or solve novel problems. Absent pathology, crystalized intelligence does not decline significantly when we age. Fluid intelligence does decline with age. At times, crystalized intelligence can compensate for fluid intelligence. But ways of stemming losses in fluid intelligence as we age represent an important research problem.

Working memory refers to the information we can work with in what can be regarded as consciousness. In other words, it represents what we commonly experience as thinking. Working memory capacity has been found to bear a strong relationship to fluid intelligence. Now working memory itself can be divided into two factors: they are the number of components that can be maintained in working memory and the quality of those components. Recent research¹ has indicated the role played by each of these factors. In a very clever, but complicated, experiment researchers were able to ferret out the respective contribution of each of these factors. They discovered that it was the number, and not the quality of the representations that played the important role in fluid intelligence.

Suppose that you are trying to solve some problem. There are a number of factors and potential hypotheses that need to be considered. How many of these can you keep in working memory at the same time. Of course, you can use transactive memory (write them down) to record the items that you cannot keep in working memory at the same time, but to bring them into working memory you need to move something out of working memory. So it would seem to be advantageous to be able to keep as many factors in mind at the same time when exercising your fluid intelligence. Now the quality of these representations is not important. So there might be an item with such poor resolution that you cannot recall what it is, but you know that it exists. Here you can use transactive memory to increase the resolution of the item. The important consideration for fluid intelligence was that you remembered that there was something else that was important.

Some interesting questions come to my mind. One question is whether the capacity of working memory can be increased. If the answer is yes, then I would like to know whether this might forestall or prevent losses in fluid intelligence as we age. If anyone knows of any relevant research on these issues I would appreciate your leaving a comment.

1Fukuda, K. Vogel, E., Mayr, U., & Awh, E. (2010). Quantity Not Quality: The Relationship Between Fluid Intelligence and Working Memory Capacity. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 17, 673-679.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Google vs. Facebook

I found the news that Facebook had surpassed Google in usage quite depressing, particularly with respect to considerations regarding cognitive growth and development. Of course, it seems that everyone, myself included, is on Facebook. Included here are professional organizations and businesses. So the news should not be surprising; so why then do I find it depressing?
Let us compare and contrast the reasons for using Google against the reasons for using facebook. Someone who uses Google is usually trying to learn something. This might simply be information on a restaurant, or a movie, or a stock investment. Or someone might be looking for the definition of a word or trying to understanding a topic. Someone who is really interested in a topic might be using Google Scholar. Or someone might be trying to remember what the name of something is by searching for other things that remind you of the thing. It seems to me that these activities lead to cognitive growth, of course, some to deeper levels than others. And you can use Google to find people and build social relationships.

Perhaps it is this last activity where Facebook excels over Google. It is true hat one can build and renew social relationships, but it seems that most “friending” is done at a superficial level. Some people “friend” just to boast of the number of friends they have. I continually receive “friend” requests from people I don’t know and can find no reason for wanting to know. With the exception of genuine social relationships, I see little on Facebook that would foster cognitive growth or a healthy memory. When I review most of the postings on Facebook, I do not think that it would be any great loss if they were lost forever. Now the loss of a truly great search engine like Google would be catastrophic.

Of course, Myspace was once a top website that has declined seriously in popularity. I just looked at the top websites as of January 5, 2011 and saw that Google was back on top. Now wikipedia.org was in 7^th place. Wikipedia should be one of the premier websites for cognitive growth.

I would like to hear your opinions on this topic. Please submit your comments.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Flavonoids for a Healthy Memory

A recent article, “Your Brain on Blueberries”¹, extolled that benefits of flavonoids on a healthy memory. Blueberries happen to be the most visible food containing these valuable flavonoids. The article recounts a number of empirical studies that show that consumption of these flavonoids does result in improved memory, learning, and general cognitive function. Moreover, it is believed that flavonoids could slow age-related decline in cognitive function.

Flavonoids are powerful antioxidants protecting us from the cellular damage caused by free radicals, which are formed by our bodies during metabolism as well as by pollution, cigarette smoke and radiation. However, researchers now believe that flavanoids primarily affect cognition by interacting with proteins that are key to brain-cell structure and function.

To this point, scientists have identified more than 6,000 different flavonoids. They can be found in fruits and vegetables, cereal grains, cocoa, soy foods, tea, and wine. The table below shows the food sources for different flavonoid groups.

Flavonoid Group	Food Sources
Flavonois	Spinach, peppers, and onions
Flavones	Parsley and celery
Flavonones	Citris fruits
Flavonois	Tea, cocoa and wine
Anthocyandins	Berries, grapes, and wine
Isoflavones	Soy foods such as tofu

 Some spices and herbs are also filled with flavonoids. Included here are sage, oregano, and thyme. Recent research has indicated that these compounds might also be beneficial to mood as well as our mental facilities.

Clearly there are many opportunities here to boost our memory, learning, and general cognitive function. Moreover, there is the potential of slowing age-related decline in cognitive function and of bneficial effects on mind. It would be foolish for us to not take advantage of these opportunities.

Of course, the Healthymemory Blog believes that there is no one magic bullet.  Cognitive growth should be a goal.  To this end learning new information and cognitive exercise are key components. 

1Franz, M. (2011). Scientific American Mind. January/February, 55-59.

Yet Another Justification for Writing This Blog

 Several blog posts back I wrote about an article in the Washington Post that contained errors and missed some important information (scroll down several posts and you’ll find it). I have found another example of misinformation contained in the popular press. This one is the cover article in Newsweek¹. The article states “Blueberries and crossword puzzles aren’t going to do it. But as neuroscientists discover the mechanisms of intelligence, they are identifying what really works.” The author goes way beyond this and debunks other diets, drugs, and training regimens before getting to the big three that do work at the end of the article. The author uses an evaluation done by the National Institutes of Health. The citation for this study is not provided, however. The principal justification for this claim is that there are very few rigorous well-controlled studies. Now the gold standard for evaluations are randomized controlled trials. Unfortunately, randomized controlled trials frequently are neither feasible nor practical. For example, the studies documenting the health hazards of smoking are epidemiological. That is, they are correlational and subject to other interpretations. The famous statistician, Sir Ronald Fisher, who was also a heavy smoker, refused to accept the evidence against smoking because the data were correlational. So he refused to the accept the evidence. Now would not the health of our nation be in fine shape if data from randomized controlled trials had been required before taking actions to get people to stop smoking?

It is not generally understood that a failure to find that something does work is not proof that it does not work. This is a subtle, but important, distinction that is understood by people who know inferential statistics. There could be many reasons why an effect was not found to be statistically significant. It could be the result of insufficient statistical power, too small a sample, or a biased sample. It should also be realized that the conclusions apply to the group. It is quite possible that although the group as a whole did not benefit, that there were individuals in the group who did. This notion has increased acceptance due to the emergence of epigenetics. Moreover, the primary interest is in whether these benefits will extend well into old age. Conclusions here await longitudinal studies that have yet to be completed. And for we baby boomers, by the time these studies have been completed, it will be too late.

It is true that there is much hucksterism and that claims should be regarded skeptically. But there are also many legitimate researchers doing the best they can with the resources available. This Healthymemory Blog reviews such research. So if you are eating blueberries, doing puzzles, or doing something else you enjoy, keep doing it. If something is costing you money, you might want to be more cautious and perhaps switch to less costly activities.

Also, use your common sense in evaluating activities. The Healthymemory Blog recommends mnemonic techniques, and evidence is presented in this blog regarding the effectiveness of these techniques. But it is also known that mnemonic techniques require the learning of new information, creativity, and involve both hemispheres of the brain as well as information transfer across the corpus callosum. So there are good reasons to believe that they should foster a healthy memory.

The Newsweek article presents neuroscience as a new science that will tell us what really works. It appears that the NIH Study that the article was based on was written by neuroscientists with a pronounced disciplinary bias. Well neuroscience, like any vibrant science, is in a constant state of flux. When I was a graduate student, the notion of plasticity in the human nervous system was anathema. Had I been an advocate of plasticity in the human nervous system it is unlikely that would have been able to earn a Ph.D.

There are three items that do work according to the article. They are physical exercise, meditation, and some video games. This Healthymemory Blog has no argument with these conclusions. However, it is ironic that these conclusions are attributed to neuroscience. Now it is my turn to demonstrate my disciplinary bias. These conclusions could be based entirely on psychological research. Indeed, the data justifying these conclusions are necessarily performance data based on psychological studies. To be sure, neuroscience is helpful. It can provide theoretical ideas that are helpful. Imaging studies of the brain along with other physiological data can provide a warm fuzzy feeling to us psychologists. But the critical data are psychological and involve behavioral performance.

1Begley, S. (2011) Grow Your Mind: The Truth About How to Boost Your Brain’s Performance. Newsweek, January 10 & 17, 40-45. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Neurobics

Neurobics¹ purports to do for the mind/brain what aerobics does for the cardio-pulmonary systems. It is very much in synch with the Healthymemory Blog. The authors are Chris Maslanka and David Owen. Maslanka is an experienced puzzler and puzzle creator. He sees puzzles and games as a way of stimulating creativity and of promoting healthy cognitive processes. Owen is an engineer who moved from the aerospace industry into scientific writing and journalism. They have collaborated on a splendid volume.

The first two chapters provide background for the book. They discuss the potential for building a better brain and a strategy for assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of your brain.

Chapter 3, “Build Mental Muscle”, consists of logical puzzles. These involve common-sense reasoning, proceeding from information that is already known. The chapter provides strategies for solving these puzzles.

Chapter 4, “Find Yourself in Space”, consists of spatial puzzles. Tactics for solving these problems are presented.

Chapter 5, “Boost Your Word Power”, consists of verbal puzzles. Methods for solving these probems are discussed.

Chapter 6, “Figure It Out”, presents of numerical puzzles. The different types of numerical puzzles and their solutions are provided.

Chapter 7, “Hold That Thought”, presents memory puzzles along with memory techniques for dealing with them. Readers of the Healthymemory Blog should find many of the postings under Mnemonic Techniques helpful here.

Chapter 8, “Get Creative”, discusses means of promoting creativity and, of course, creative puzzles.

In each of the chapters each puzzle is labeled as a “Light Workout”, “Getting Harder”, or “Feel the Burn.” The second chapter recommends going through the “Light Workout” puzzles in each chapter to see how many you can solve. This should provide a indication of the relative strengths and weaknesses of your current cognitive functioning. The solutions to all of the puzzles are provided at the end of each chapter apart from the initial presentation of the puzzles (so there will be less of a temptation to cheat).

Chapter 9, “Brain Conditioning”, discusses diet and exercise issues that are relevant to a healthy brain.

The only criticism I have of this book is its lack of documentation. Although I agree with most of the claims made in the book, and could find the references for many of them, I still think it is incumbent on authors to provide as much documentation as is feasible. 

1Maslanka, C. & Owen, D. (2010). A Reader’s Digest Book. Quintet Publishing Limited.

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year from the Healthymemory Blog

 

Enjoy the season, but consider making a New Year’s Resolution not to be a cognitive couch potato. Now “couch potato” has become a cliché for not going out and exercising. A cognitve couch potato is someone who does not exercise his cognitive abilities. Just as failures to exercise the body can lead to physical failures and premature and exacerbated effects of aging, the failure to exercise the mind can result in declines in cognitive performance and premature and exacerbated effects of aging. The Healthymemory Blog provides recent information on the brain and cognitive performance, and how to enhance cognitive performance and and avoid or reduce the effects of aging. Blog posts to this effect can be found under the category of “Human Memory: Theory and Data.” It also provides information of specific techniques used to improve memory performance, mnemonic techniques. Blog posts on the topic can be found under the category titled, appropriately enough, “Mnemonic Techniques.” The category “Transactive Memory” refers to the use of technology and your fellow human beings to grow cognitively. New technology, the internet for example and old technology, books and journals for example, provide the basis for cognitive growth. Moreover, interactions with your fellow human beings can aid not only cognitive growth, but also social growth. As you can see, there is a feast of offerings under each of these topics.

Sometimes I make the claim that you might be able to improve your memory over what it was when you where young. This is especially true it you have never used mnemonic techniques before. Mnemonic techniques might well improve your performance over when you where young. Similarly, you can learn new topics, perhaps even master another language and become someone who has managed to grown head and shoulders over what they once were. So do not become a cognitive couch potato. Either start or continue on the path of cognitive improvement over the coming year.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Why I Write This Blog

Sometimes I ask myself this question, “Why DO I write this blog, Healthymemory.” Surely there are better ways I could spend my time. However, on December14th I came across an article¹ in the Washington Post that provided justification for spending the time. Now the Washington Post is a newspaper I respect. I have been a subscriber ever since I moved to the D.C. Area twenty years ago.

But this article contained misinformation and, more egregiously, missed important information.

For example, it presented a test, which it called a measure of short-term memory. It consisted of a shopping list of twenty items each with a specified amount to purchase. First of all, this was not a test of short-term memory. Although there are technical disputes among experts, the most common example given of short-term memory is looking up a phone number and then needing to keep rehearsing it until the number is dialed. There are two features of short-term memory: it has a small capacity, and it needs to be actively rehearsed or the information will be lost. A shopping list of twenty items exceeds the capacity of short-term memory. And unless the plan is to keep rehearsing the information until all the items are purchased, more than short-term memory needs to be involved. The shopping list needs to be transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory. The article notes that it is good to know that if people practiced, they could improve their memory. Although this is good to know, it is even better to know that there are memory techniques that can greatly facilitate the recall of lists like this one. These techniques can be found under the mnemonic techniques category on the healthymemory blog (healthymemory.wordpress.com). Some specific blog posts bearing on this task are “The Method of Loci,” “The One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic,” “Remembering Numbers,” and “More on Remembering Numbers.”

There is also a test on associating names with faces. Again, the article states that it is good to know that practice tends to improve performance. But it is even better to know that there are specific techniques to enhance performance on this task. A specific blog post bearing on this task is “Remembering Names.”

For each of these tests norms are presented for different age groups. The justification for this is that we live in a competitive culture, and that we like to keep score. But what if a person falls below what is expected for a given age group? Does that person start to worry that she is beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s or some other type of dementia?

What is completely missing from this article is the new research that has documented the remarkable plasticity of the brain, and techniques that might not only forestall the effects of aging, but might also produce memory performance that exceeds that of her performance earlier in life. This is the news that should be reported.

1Are You Acting Your Age?, Washington Post, Health & Science Section, E1, 14 December 2010.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Aging, Age-Related Cues, and a Healthy Memory

A recently published article¹ provides evidence regarding the effect of our minds on our health as we age. The article presented the effects of a variety of age-related cues. The presence of these cues may prime diminished capacity; the absence of these cues may prime improved health. Here are their findings:

Women who think they look younger after having their hair colored/cut show a decrease in blood pressure and appear younger to independent raters who view their photographs in which their hair has been cropped out.

Clothing is an age-related cue and uniforms eliminate this age-related cue. Those who wear work uniforms have lower morbidity than than do those who earn the same amount of money and do not wear work uniforms.

Baldness cues old-age. Men who bald early see an older self and accordingly age faster. Prematurely bald men have an excess risk of getting prostate cancer and coronary heart disease than do men who do not prematurely bald.

Women who bear children later in life are surrounded by younger age-related cues. Older mothers have a longer life expectancy than do women who bear children earlier in life.

Large differences in ages between spouses result in age-incongruent cues. Younger spouses live shorter lives and older spouses live longer lives than do those in a comparison control group.

What has this to do with a healthy memory? The message here is that what we perceive in our minds affects our bodies. Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that a positive young looking attitude will have a similar effect our our memories. So maintain a positive attitude. DO NOT ADMIT TO SENIOR MOMENTS. The memory you remember having is not as good as you thought it was. Memory failures occur at all ages. So do not assume and casually attribute memory failures to aging. Maintain a positive, youthful attitude as you age, and engage in proactive activities such as those advocated in this Healthymemory Blog.

1Hsu, L.M., Chung, J, & Langer, E.J. (2010). The Influence of Age=Related Cues on Health and Longevity. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(6), 632-648.

An Interesting and Helpful Book

I apologize for this long overdue book review of Brain: the Complete Mind, How It Develops, How it Works, and How to Keep It Sharp by Michael S. Sweeney. It is published by National Geographic. The following is from the foreword by Richard Restak: “…here is the most inspiring of insights about the brain: We can enhance our brain’s performance by our own efforts. Thus learning about the brain provides a wonderful mix of instruction, amazement, and self-improvement. As you gain knowledge, you’re in a better position to improve its functioning and thereby increase the quality of your life.” So I think that this book should be of interest to anyone following the Healthymemory Blog.

To give you an idea of the breadth of topics, here is a rundown of the chapter titles:

The Amazing Brain

The Nervous System

Brain Development

The Senses

Motion

States of Mind

The Feeling Brain

Learning and Memory

The Aging Brain

Future of the Brain

Each chapter is divided into subsections. Each chapter has a glossary that defines key concepts within each chapter. There are diagrams showing the inner workings of the brain, its processes, and functions. There are fast facts that present bits of information that are not only informative but which you can pass on when you’re speaking. There are tables, fact boxes, and cross references. There are sidebars explaining what can go wrong. Flow charts illustrate processes and functions. There are Breakthrough Sidebars that describe the amazing discoveries that deepen our understanding of the brain. This is another source for interesting conversation. There are history sidebars that tell the stories behind historical neuroscience beliefs and practices and the men and women who shaped them. And there are Staying Sharp Sidebars that document smart practices and strategic tactics for keeping the brain healthy. These should be of special interest to readers of the Healthymemory Blog.

Take a Nap: Sleep is Important for a Healthy Memory

A recent article¹ in the SharpBrains blog relates a study by Matthew Walker presented at this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) convention. Young adults were separated into two groups: one that napped and one that didn’t. At noon, both groups performed a learning task. At 2 PM the napping group took a 90 minute nap while the other group remained awake. Then both groups performed more learning tasks. The group that had napped performed better than the group that remained awake.

Readers of the Healthymemory Blog should be familiar with the role of the hippocampus. The hippocampus is critical for learning. These researchers interpreted their findings as supporting the notion that a function of sleep is to clear away all the clutter stored in the hippocampus to make room for new information. Walker said “Sleep is critical to learning. It’s like the brain is a sponge. Sleep wrings certain key regions out so you’re able to soak up new information the next day. It’s as though the e-mail box in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you’re not going to receive any more mail. It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it to another folder.

We spend about one-third of our lives sleeping. So sleep must serve some important functions. There is much theory and conjecture regarding why we sleep, but experiments such as this one provide empirical evidence. It is well established that sleep is good for you. Getting the appropriate amount of sleep is tied to a better immune system, metabolic control, memory, learning, and emotional functioning.

It is said that pulling an all-nighter the night before an exam can decrease the ability to remember information by about 40 percent. Personally, I worked my way through the entire educational system receiving a Ph.D and I never pulled an all-nighter.

As we get older, we tend to sleep less. Learning proficiency also declines. Walker is interested in investigating whether there is a cause and effect relationship here. It is also interesting to speculate regarding the direction of any cause and effect. If we continue to learn and remain mentally active as we age, will our sleep increase proportionately. Perhaps this observed relationship is due to disengaging from life and new experiences when we age, which results in reduced sleep and perhaps even neurogenerative decline. Remaining mentally active, as advocated by the Healthy Memory Blog, might reduce or eliminate this decline.

1www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2010/10/18/take-that-nap-it-may-boost-your-learning.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Review of Brain Exercises and Training Induced Learning

This post in based on a review article in Psychology and Aging.¹ This article notes that there are volumes of evidence that even as we age, training in specific tasks generally results in improved performance on those tasks. The problem is that most of this research indicates that improvements are specific to the task and do not generalize to measurable benefits in daily life. This does not mean that this training is worthless. It can still provide beneficial exercise to the brain. Consider doing push-ups for physical exercise. Undoubtedly, doing push ups regularly is beneficial to your health. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to find that doing them provided measurable benefits in daily life outside your exercise regime.

So providing measurable benefits in daily life, say an overall increase in the rate of learning, is a difficult goal to achieve. Yet certain programs have provided evidence to this effect, and the authors of this article sought to capture the features of these programs that lead to generalizable results. They identified the following characteristics: Task difficulty, motivation and arousal, feedback, and variability.

With respect to the characteristic of task difficulty it is important to begin with an easy level of difficulty and then gradually advance through levels of increasing task difficulty. Obviously, if the task is too difficult to begin with, people become discouraged and learning suffers. However, if people are able to accomplish the task fairly easily, then can gradually increase their skill while advancing to increasing levels of difficulty.

Perhaps it is obvious, but if people are motivated to learn, they are more likely to succeed. Arousal goes hand in hand with motivation. Aroused learners, within limits, learn faster. So tasks that are enjoyable and rewarding increase arousal levels, and so forth, and so forth.

Feedback is important so that people know that they are performing the task correctly. This also relates back to motivation, arousal, and task difficulty. When task difficulty can be accommodated, the feedback is positive, which is arousing and increases motivation. Now task difficulty can be too easy, in which case the feedback is trivial, not rewarding and does not lead to arousal and increased motivation. So task difficulty is what is termed a “Goldilocks” characteristic—not too easy and not too difficult, but just right.

Variability is the final key characteristic. The training program should exercise a wide variety of skills. It is this variability that increases the likelihood that the benefits will transfer to everyday life and learning.

Unfortunately, too many Baby Boomers and looking for the magic exercise, the magic program, or the magic vitamin or dietary supplementary to ward off the effects of aging. There is no magic exercise or pill. What is required is a range of activities and exercises to ward off the effects of aging. The Healthymemory Blog recommends such activities. Its blog posts provide a variety of mnemonic techniques (click on the category mnemonic techniques) that increase the efficiency of memory and provide mental exercises that make requirements on creativity, recoding, and both hemispheres of the brain. The Healthymemory Blog provides information on human cognition, that provide both exercise and insight into cognitive processes. Transactive memory provides for cognitive growth via the technology, the internet, books, as well as for interactions with your fellow human beings.

1Green, C.S., & Bavilier, D. (2010). Exercising Your Brain: A Review of Human Brain Plasticity and Training-Induced Learning. Psychology and Aging, 23, 692-701. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Continuing to Be Positive After Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the holiday devoted to being thankful for all the good things we have and all the good people we know (more commonly called blessings). It is a positive holiday when we should focus on the positive features of our lives. Continuing to focus on the positive contributes to a healthy memory. Consequently, it is good to carry the positive frame of mind fostered by Thanksgiving throughout the entire year.

Positive thinking fosters more positive thinking. The expression is “neurons that fire together wire together.” So thinking positive thoughts activates circuits that will be more likely to fire together in the future. How you feel is affected by how you interpret your environment. You see a glass with water at the halfway mark. Do you interpret that as half empty or half full? The interpretation is up to you, and this interpretation will affect the way you think and feel. In other words you have the capacity to change your brain if you choose to exercise it.

Paying attention to the internal sensations of your body can also have effects. The insular cortex is a part of the brain that tracks the internal state of the body. When a person meditates, her insular cortex becomes thicker as a result of neurons making more and more connections with each other. (See the Healthymemory Blog posts “The Relaxation Response,” “Restoring Attentional Resources,” “More on Restoring Attentional Resources,” and “Intensive Meditation Training Increases the Ability to Sustain Attention”). The insular cortex plays a role in emotion, homeostasis, perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience. A malfunctioning insular cortex can lead to psychopathology. In addition to meditation activities such as paying attention to your breathing, yoga, Tai Chi, and dancing can put you in touch with the internal sensations of your body.

Remember the phrase “neurons that fire together wire together.” If you think negatively, you are reinforcing negative circuits and the further promotion of harmful negative thoughts. So foster positive circuits by thinking positively. I hope you had a happy thanksgiving and I hope you continue this happiness throughout the entire year.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Healthymemory Blog Wishes You a Happy Thanksgiving!

And, of course, a healthy memory. The Healthymemory Blog pursues this objective via three themes. One is to provide theory and data about human memory and cognition. Another theme is to provide memory techniques and results bearing upon the effectiveness of these memory techniques and how they may facilitate a healthymemory. A third theme is called Transactive Memory. This theme explores how technology and our fellow human beings can enhance memory health.
     The author of this blog is at the leading edge of the Baby Boomers. Although this blog should be of special interest to Baby Boomers, it should be of interest to anyone interested in the workings of memory, in techniques for improving memory, and in how technology and fellow humans can enhance memory health.
     Look under “Categories” in the right hand border of this blog. One category, Overview, provides a general overview of the Healthymemory Blog that is quite similar to this current blog post. Human Memory: Theory and Data provides information about human memory and cognition. Mnemonic Techniques presents specific techniques for improving memory. It is also thought that employing these techniques, in addition to improving memory, provides exercise to the brain that promotes memory health. One can find an entire memory course under this category. The category, Transactive Memory, provides information on how our fellow humans and technology can promote brain health. You will also find here topics regarding how the internet works and problems and dangers regarding the internet.
     Just click on the category to get to your current topic of interest, Remember that blogs are presented in reverse order. So to get to the beginning of the category, you need to go the the bottom and start from there.
     You should be able to find something of interest. There are 151 postings for your perusal.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hope for an Aging Population: STAC

By 2050 in wealthy, developed countries it is estimated that there will be many more older adults (26%) than children under 15 (about 16%). Today adults aged 85 and older have a dementia rate of nearly 50%. Projecting this into the future yields a frightening prospect. It portends a large percentage of underproductive older people. Beyond that, there would be a large percentage of older people living unfulfilling lives.

Looking at both the neurological and behavioral changes that occur in the aging brain can also be discouraging. There are decreases of volume in the caudate nucleus, the lateral prefrontal cortex, both cerebral hemispheres, and the hippocampus. There are also decreases in processing speed and in the ability to focus and screen out extraneous information. Fortunately, not everything declines. The primary visual cortex and the entorhinal cortex suffer minimal or no loss in volume. Similarly our vocabularies and expertise typically do not decline. Although sometimes it might be difficult finding a word, it usually comes to mind eventually.

Fortunately there is evidence that there are compensatory mechanisms to counter or ward off this decline (see the Healthymemory Blog Post “HAROLD”). And it is clear that these mechanisms work. Many people function quite well even in to advanced old age. What is even more remarkable that some people show little or no evidence for cognitive decline in spite of a great deal of pathology discovered during autopsies.

What is needed is a theory to understand the mechanisms that ward off this decline. The Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition (STAC)¹ provides such a theory. Some of the basis of this theory comes from brain imaging, fMRI especially. This imaging has revealed differences in the pattern of neural activation between young and older adults. Whereas young adults show focal left prefrontal activity when engaged in certain cognitive tasks, older adults show activity in both the left and right prefrontal areas.

It should be understood that scaffolding is a process that occurs across the lifespan. It is not just the brain’s response to normal aging; it is the brain’s response to challenge. For anyone acquiring a new skill an initial set of neural circuits must be engaged and developed to provide the structure for task performance in the early stages of skill acquisition. With practice, performance becomes less effortful and the neural circuitry becomes more specific to the task.

The basic idea underlying STAC is that this same mechanism can compensate for losses in brain structure and function as we age. So what can be done to activate this mechanism? The answer is to challenge the brain and then address this challenge. As we age it becomes easier to rely upon old habits and ways of thinking and to avoid new challenging activities. But it is these challenging activities that activate the STAC process that can ward off cognitive decline.

One can regard the Healthymemory Blog as a means of providing this cognitive challenge. First of all, it provides information and data about human cognition. This can be new learning that can provide challenge in itself if not insight into the working and malfunctions of human cognition. It also presents mnemonic techniques that not only can improve cognitive performance, but offer cognitive exercise and challenge in trying to implement them. Finally, there is transactive memory, where there is knowledge from fellow humans and from the internet (and more traditional sources of knowledge) to challenge the mind.

1Park, D.C. & Reuter-Lorenz, P. (2009). The Adaptive Brain: Aging and Neurocognitive Scaffolding. Annual Review of Psychology,60, 173-196.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Coping with Complexity

I’ve just finished a book¹ by Donald Norman that I highly recommend.

More on Dangers of the Internet: Are We Incurable Infovores?

An article¹ in the New Scientist compels me to address this question. An analogy is made between our obesity problem and an internet problem. The problem of obesity, not only in the United States but in most advanced countries, is well known. One reason offered for this problem is that our evolutionary history has made us predisposed to crave fat and sugar. Long ago when food was scarce it was adaptive to consume these high energy foods. Unfortunately, now when such foods become easily accessible we tend to overeat them with the resultant obesity.

The New Scientist article argues that we are similarly predisposed to seek novel information because it was biologically adaptive. So we are infovores just as we are carnivores (more properly omnivores with the exception of those who have chosen to be vegetarians or vegans). And with the arrival of the fire hose of information provided by the internet we are being placed in danger from the consequences of information overload.

According to the article, in 2009 the global data traffic was around 15,000 petabytes (1 petabyte equals 1 million gigabytes). The projects is that this volume will exceed 20,000 petabytes this year and will grow to more than 50,000 petabytes in 2013. Of course, no individual will encounter even a small percentage of this information. And as is frequently argued in this Healthymemory Blog, one should use the internet wisely not only to avoid the dangers of addiction, but also to enhance the prospects for cognitive growth.

This article makes no mention of what percentage of this so-called information is quality information. I would not be surprised if a majority of this so-called information is incorrect and is not truly information. Then there is hateful traffic, which cannot be rightfully called information. I would like to see some breakdowns on estimates of the quality of the information on the internet. If anyone knows of any such sources on internet information quality, please provide the names, URLs, addresses of these sources in the comment box. I am thanking you in advance.

1Parsons, P. (2010). Ignorance is Bliss. New Scientist, 16, 38-39. 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Intensive Meditation Training Increases the Ability to Sustain Attention

Vigilance tasks require an observer to note when a target occurs. Much research has been done in this area due to important military and security applications. For example, an observer might need to detect enemy planes approaching on the radar scope. Or it might be security personnel monitoring baggage at an airport. Moreover, there is need to distinguish dangerous from benign targets on the scope. Although this is obviously a very important task, it would also appear to be a very simple task. The problem is that over prolonged periods of time performance drops off. In spite of all the research that has been done, techniques for sustaining attention have been found lacking. A recent article¹ presented research that found that intensive meditation training can aid sustained attention. Other research² has found that vigilance requires hard mental work and is stressful. Research using questionnaires and measurements of cerebral blood flow velocity have documented that vigilance is stressful and hard mental work. Attentional resource theory has been used to account for the vigilance decrement. The notion is that attentional resources are rapidly depleted by the demands of the vigilance task.

The meditation training used in the first article was quite intensive. It involved going to a retreat. Shamantha³ meditation training was used in at least five three day retreats. The meditation training was found to sustain vigilance for a longer time, presumably by increasing attentional resources.

You might ask, so what? My job does not involve vigilance tasks. The relevance to you is that meditation apparently does increase attentional resources. Meditation training has been found to be beneficial to temporal attention, attentional alerting, and visual discrimination. Moreover, readers of the Healthymemory Blog should be well aware of the critical role of attention in cognitive performance, and that many failures and breakdowns in cognitive processing are due to limited attentional resources.

See the Healthymemory Blog Posts, “The Relaxation Response,” “Attention Its Different Roles,” “Restoring Attentional Resources,” and “More on Restoring Attentional Resources.”

1MacLean, K. A., and many others (2010).  Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention.  Psychological Science, 21, 829-839.

2Warm, J.s., Parasururaman, R., & Matthews, G. (2008). Vigilance Requires Hard Mental Work and is Stressful. Human Factors, 50, 433-441.

3Wallace, B.A, (2006). The Attention Revolution. Boston: Wisdom 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

How Many Friends Are Too Many?

There are people who boast of having more than a thousand friends on Facebook. A blogger once indicated that he was following over a thousand blogs. Does this make sense? An evolutionary biologist, Robin Dunbar, has come up with an hypothesis that provides an answer.¹

The hypothesis is called the social intelligence hypothesis. Dunbar notes that social relationships make demands on cognition that are reflected in larger brains. Apes and monkeys are social animals that have a particularly large neocortex, a region of the brain that regulates language abilities, emotion, and the awareness of others. Our social relationships are much more complex and that is reflected in an even larger neocortex. Our brains consume about twenty percent of our energy. Dunbar has come up with a number called, oddly enough, “Dunbar’s number.” He bases this number on the size of the human brain and its complexity. He calculates that the maximum number of relationships our brain can keep track of at one tine to be about 150 . This number includes all degrees of relationships. He estimates that we have a core group of about five people that we speak with frequently. Personally, I find this number to be a tad low. At the other extreme we have about 100 acquaintaces we speak with about once a year. Although we can quibble about these numbers, I would hang my hat on 150 being the maximum number of people we can call friends.

If you count the number of friends you have had over a lifetime, you might well exceed 150. But it is likely that most of these friends have dropped out and you no longer interact with them regularly. Of course, you are glad to see them again and are happy to chat up old times. However, human relationships take time and cognitive resources, so the number of true friends with whom you interact is limited. Although you might have more acquaintances, know more people, they are probably not adequately characterized as friends.

I would argue that there is a trade-off between the number of friends you have and the quality of these friendships. The number of true friends you have might be much lower than the 150 maximum, but they are likely of high quality. Again, the limitation is one of cognitive resources.

I would also argue that online friends can well be true friends. But they make the same demands on resources and you should spend your cognitive resources wisely.

1Dunbar, R., (2010). How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks. Harvard University Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Efficacy of Group Memory Training for Older Adults

Given the importance of memory for successful aging, programs for improving memory that work for older adults are especially important. A recent article¹ provides evidence for just such a program. The program involved the training of groups of 15 people with an average age of 67.8. The training involved the types of techniques discussed under the Mnemonic Techniques category in the Healthymemory Blog. The training consisted of ten sessions lasting 90 minutes each. Two sessions were conducted each week. Here is a synopsis of what was covered in each session.

Session 1 – Introduction to the course and instructor. Discussion of stereotypes and beliefs about memory. Attention exercises and homework assignment.

Session 2 – Explanation and exercises on the visualization technique. Application of the technique to daily life. Attention exercises and a homework assignment.

Session 3 – Visualization exercises. Explanation of the different tion of the types of memory and states. Attention exercises. Homework assignment.

Session 4 – Group comments on the application of the visualization technique in their daily lives. Visualization of text and visualization of things they were going to do (prospective memory). Homework assignment.

Session 5 – Explanation of the cognitive simulation concept. Perception, language and attention exercises. Homework assignment.

Session 6 – Cognitive simulation exercises. Homework assignments.

Session 7 – Explanation of the association exercises. Group discussion on the use and application of the technique. Homework assignment.

Session 8 – Association as a technique to remember names. Name recall exercises. Homework assignment.

Session 9 – Strategies to overcome everyday forgetfulness. Practical exercises for everyday forgetfulness. External cues. Homework assignments.

Session 10 – Review of memory types and stages. Review of true and false beliefs about memory. Participants’ comments on what they learned in the workshops.

Memory was assessed by both objective and subjective assessments. The objective memory test was the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT)². This test evaluates associative memory (remembering first names, surnames, and faces), prospective memory (tasks to be performed)memory with both visual and verbal material, and topographical memory (getting around a room). The subjective memory test was the Memory Failures in Everyday Life (MFE) questionnaire.³ This was a subjective report by each individual with respect to the frequency of common memory errors.

These tests were administered three times: before the training course, just after the training course, and 6 months after that. For comparison purposes there were two control groups. A Placebo Group attended the same number of sessions, except that they were on health and did not involve memory training. A second control group simply took the two tests at the three different testing intervals.

On the RBMT scores between 0 and 3 indicate severe memory impairment, between 4 and 6 moderate memory impairment, 7 and 9 weak memory impairment, and between 10 and 12 normal memory. For the memory training group the average scores were 7.66, 9.93, and 10.84, for the Pre, Post, and 6 month tests, respectively. This improvement is impressive and continued to increase 6 months after completion of the course. The comparable scores were 7.40, 7.66, 8.78 for the Placebo Group, and 8.06, 7.60, and 7.30 for the Control Group.

For the MFE higher scores indicate more forgetting and lower scores less forgetting. The Pre, Post, and 6 month scores for the training group were 74.80, 56.26, and 50.75, respectively. These decreases in incidents of forgetfulness are impressive. The comparable scores were 67.46, 66.66, and 56.92 for the Placebo Group, and 61.33, 57.33, and 62.46 for the Control Group.

This is impressive evidence for the effectiveness of this group memory training. Benefits lasted and grew well after the end of the formal training.

1Postigo, J.M.L., Viadel, J.V.H., &b Trives, J.J.R. (2010) Efficacy of Group memory Training Method for Older Adults Based on Visualization Techniques: A Randomized, Controlled Trial with a Control Group. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 956-968.

2Wilson, B.A., Cockburn, J., & Baddeley, A. (1985).The Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test. Titchfield: Thames Valley Test Company.

3Sunderlan, A., Harris, J., & Gleave, J. (1984). Memory Failures in Everyday Life Following Sever Head Injury. Journal of Clinical Neurology, 6, 127-142.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.