BrainBlog

From HealthGrades : Download a copy of the report

Kashdan TB, & Rottenberg J. Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical Psychology Review. 2010 Mar 12. Traditionally, positive emotions and thoughts, strengths, and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for belonging, competence, and autonomy have been seen as the cornerstones of psychological health. Without disputing their importance, these foci fail to capture many of the fluctuating, conflicting forces that are readily apparent when people navigate the environment and social world. In this paper, we review literature to offer evidence for the prominence of psychological flexibility in understanding psychological health. Thus far, the importance of psychological flexibility has been obscured by the isolation and disconnection of research conducted on this topic. Psychological flexibility spans a wide range of human abilities to: recognize and adapt to various situational demands; shift mindsets or behavioral repertoires when these strategies ...

The Novel Tech Ethics research team at Dalhousie University, where today's Neuropsychology Abstract of the Day originated: Novel Tech Ethics website From the homepage: "The Novel Tech Ethics research team led by Françoise Baylis and based at Dalhousie University, focuses on novel technologies that promise transformation. These technologies challenge us to explore the social, political, and cultural understandings of the self, and to reexamine our ethical obligations to others, including those with whom we will not co-exist. "Currently, the Novel Tech Ethics research team has a particular focus on neural, genetic, and reproductive technologies. Grant-funded projects in these areas address the concerns of the individual, the community and the species. Academic exchanges, public discussion and debate contribute to our understanding of these issues and also help to inform public policy." Among other features at the website, podcasts of presentations for their 2009 conf...

Outram SM. The use of methylphenidate among students: The future of enhancement? Journal of Medical Ethics. 2010 Apr, 36(4), 198-202. Novel Tech Ethics, Dalhousie University, 1234 LeMarchant Street, Halifax NS B3H 3P7, Canada. During the past few years considerable debate has arisen within academic journals with respect to the use of smart drugs or cognitive enhancement pharmaceuticals. The following paper seeks to examine the foundations of this cognitive enhancement debate using the example of methylphenidate use among college students. The argument taken is that much of the enhancement debate rests upon inflated assumptions about the ability of such drugs to enhance and over-estimations of either the size of the current market for such drugs or the rise in popularity as drugs for enhancing cognitive abilities. This article provides an overview of the empirical evidence that methylphenidate has the ability to significantly improve cognitive abilities in healthy individuals, and exa...

Last week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report about individuals with chronic diseases and their use of the Internet to obtain and share information. The report is available at the link below: Pew Report on Chronic Disease and the Internet From the summary: "The deck is stacked against people living with chronic disease. They are disproportionately offline. They often have complicated health issues, not easily solved by the addition of even the best, most reliable, medical advice. "And yet, those who are online have a trump card. They have each other. This survey finds that having a chronic disease increases the probability that an internet user will share what they know and learn from their peers. They unearth nuggets of information. They blog. They participate in online discussions. And they just keep going. "

Study Evaluating Rebif, Copaxone, and Tysabri for Active Multiple Sclerosis (SURPASS): ClinicalTrials.gov Description === Corporate press release ===

Tam F, Churchill NW, Strother SC, & Graham SJ. A new tablet for writing and drawing during functional MRI. Human Brain Mapping. 2010 Mar 24. Writing and drawing are understudied with fMRI, partly for lack of a device that approximates these behaviors well while supporting task feedback and quantitative behavioral logging in the confines of the magnet. Consequently, we developed a tablet based on touchscreen technology that is accurate, reliable, relatively inexpensive, and fMRI compatible. After confirming fMRI compatibility, we conducted preliminary fMRI experiments examining the neural correlates of a widely used pen-and-paper neuropsychological assessment, the trail making test. In two subjects, we found left hemisphere frontal lobe activations similar to the major results of a previous group study, and we also noted individual differences mostly in the right hemisphere. These results demonstrate the utility of the new tablet for adaptations of pen-and-paper tests and suggest p...

From today's Observer : Colin Blakemore: how the human brain got bigger by accident and not through evolution Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore tells Robin McKie why he thinks a mutation in the human brain 200,000 years ago suddenly made us a super-intelligent species Robin McKie 28 March 2010 The Observer Read the article

Bueti D, Bahrami B, Walsh V, & Rees G. Encoding of temporal probabilities in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience. 2010 Mar 24, 30(12), 4343-4352. Anticipating the timing of future events is a necessary precursor to preparing actions and allocating resources to sensory processing. This requires elapsed time to be represented in the brain and used to predict the temporal probability of upcoming events. While neuropsychological, imaging, magnetic stimulation studies, and single-unit recordings implicate the role of higher parietal and motor-related areas in temporal estimation, the role of earlier, purely sensory structures remains more controversial. Here we demonstrate that the temporal probability of expected visual events is encoded not by a single area but by a wide network that importantly includes neuronal populations at the very earliest cortical stages of visual processing. Moreover, we show that activity in those areas changes dynamically in a manner that closely acco...

From The Dana Foundation Blog : Battle of the Brains

Several days ago, the CDC released a report entitled, "Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: Emergency Department Visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths, 2002-2006" - available as a .pdf (and .doc) download. Download the report

C-SPAN Video Library: Carl Zimmer's "Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain" : Watch the Talk From 23 February 2004, "Carl Zimmer talked about his book, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, published by The Free Press. The book examined the way the brain has been perceived throughout history."

Santoro A, Siviero P, Minicuci N, Bellavista E, Mishto M, Olivieri F, Marchegiani F, Chiamenti AM, Benussi L, Ghidoni R, Nacmias B, Bagnoli S, Ginestroni A, Scarpino O, Feraco E, Gianni W, Cruciani G, Paganelli R, Di Iorio A, Scognamiglio M, Grimaldi LM, Gabelli C, Sorbi S, Binetti G, Crepaldi G, & Franceschi C. Effects of donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine in 938 italian patients with Alzheimer's disease: A prospective, observational study. CNS Drugs. 2010 Feb 1; 24(2): 163-176. doi: 10.2165/11310960-000000000-00000. Department of Experimental Pathology, University of Bologna, Via S. Giacomo 12, Bologna, Italy. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) have been used to improve cognitive status and disability in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, while the efficacy of AChEIs (i.e. how they act in randomized controlled trials) in this setting is widely accepted, their effectiveness (i.e. how they behave in the real world) remains controv...

An interesting post at MindHacks about their presentation for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Scientific Research in Learning and Education: Lords, Ladies, and Video Games The posting also provides a link to the presentation's PowerPoint file. Enjoy!

Here is the website for the "Beauty and the Brain" exhibit discussed in the previous posting: Walters Art Museum

A good read from The Dana Foundation Blog : Gazing with New Eyes Enjoy!

Visit The Dana Foundation's website: Brain Awareness Week

Doody RS, Pavlik V, Massman P, Rountree S, Darby E, & Chan W. Predicting progression of Alzheimer's disease . Alzheimers Res Ther. 2010 Feb 23; 2(1):2. [Epub ahead of print] Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center, Baylor College of Medicine, 6501 Fannin Street, NB302, Houston, TX 77030, USA. ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: Clinicians need to predict prognosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and researchers need models of progression to develop biomarkers and clinical trials designs. We tested a calculated initial progression rate to see whether it predicted performance on cognition, function and behavior over time, and to see whether it predicted survival. METHODS: We used standardized approaches to assess baseline characteristics and to estimate disease duration, and calculated the initial (pre-progression) rate in 597 AD patients followed for up to 15 years. We designated slow, intermediate and rapidly progressing groups. Using mixed effects regression analysis, we e...

Elfgren C, Gustafson L, Vestberg S, & Passant U. Subjective memory complaints, neuropsychological performance and psychiatric variables in memory clinic attendees: A 3-year follow-up study. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics. 2010 Mar 6. [Epub ahead of print] Department of Geriatric Psychiatry, Clinical Sciences, Lund University Hospital, SE-221 85 Lund, Sweden. The aims were to evaluate the cognitive performance and clinical diagnosis in patients ( PMID: 20211500 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

From King's College London: Innovative Partnership for Pain Research 10 Mar 2010, PR 48/10 "King’s has partnered with Pfizer to create an open innovation laboratory for pain research. As part of the partnership, a small team of Pfizer scientists will be based at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases to conduct research in pain biology." read the full article