The Multiple Faces of “Love Hormone” Oxytocin | Brain Blogger

The Multiple Faces of “Love Hormone” Oxytocin | Brain Blogger



Scientists knew that oxytocin had
a role to play in strengthening the bond between mother and child. But
now they have found out that oxytocin also affects neural signals in the
brain of the mother and influences her social responses.

In an experiment conducted on laboratory mice with pups, scientists
discovered that when the little ones were separated from their mums,
they produced ultrasonic SOS calls. The mother mouse picked up these
signals to locate her pups. The mother mice responded similarly —
started looking for their pups — when the scientists played the pup
distress calls on speakers.

The scientists investigated how oxytocin is involved in this behavior.

The left auditory cortex
of the brain receives the sound signals. This part of the brain has a
large number of oxytocin receptors. The hormone levels increased in the
mother mice when they heard the distress calls of their pups. Oxytocin
not only made the mother mice respond to their pups but also inhibited
her brain’s ability to process other social signals.

In the above experiment, it was also found that female mice without pups did not respond to distress calls
made by pups of other mice. But when they were injected with oxytocin,
they responded to the distress calls by rushing to search for and rescue
the pups even though those were not their own.

This newly-discovered role of oxytocin is, however, not surprising.
After all, babies are helpless and unable to defend themselves if they
are separated from their mums. So it seems natural that nature intended
oxytocin to exert influence on mothers in this way.

Oxytocin and Our Responses to Social Stimuli

The oxytocin system is critical to the expression of three basic social bonds
— parental, filial, and romantic. According to one study, the levels of
oxytocin remain more or less stable in individuals over extended
periods of time and go on to play crucial role in the expression of
other types of social attachment behavior later in their lives.

Scientists also believe that oxytocin interacts with neural,
physical, and mental factors to develop unique expressions of social
cognition and empathy in
humans. For instance, scientists have discovered that the quality of
early-life parental care tends to influence the way children form
attachments in adulthood.

In 2005, an interesting study was conducted on two groups of
children. The kids in one group were raised by their biological parents.
The children in the other group were adopted, but they had been raised
in orphanages where they were deprived of the typical care-giving
environment that the children of the other group were raised in. The
oxyotcin levels in the children from both groups were monitored when
they were in contact with their mothers—biological or adopted. It was
found that the children who were raised by their biological parents
showed an increase in oxytocin levels while levels in the other group of
children remained constant. So it is evident that early-life social
experience influences the way individuals form relationships later on in
their lives.

The above findings led scientists to explore the connection between
oxytocin and social disorders that develop during childhood, like autism spectrum disorders.
And, to their surprise, they also found out that oxytocin plays a role
in managing the symptoms of certain mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

Oxytocin and Mental Illnesses

The “love hormone” oxytocin floods us with feel-good vibes. It has another beneficial face too.

According to a recent study, intranasal administration of oxytocin
can improve the ability of schizophrenia patients to recognize negative
emotions, like fear, in other people. It was found during the study that
schizophrenia patients whose baseline performance was below median
level showed greater improvement when they were administered oxytocin
compared to patients who were more capable.

These findings have already unleashed a slew of research into the
various aspects that need to be considered before administering oxytocin
for therapeutic purposes to patients suffering from mental illnesses.
For instance, one study suggests that the efficacy of intranasal
administration of oxytocin is dependent on gender, hormonal and genetic
profiles, and attachment history. Other scientists have investigated the
effects of different doses of oxytocin on patients.

These studies are crucial for finding out how long the effects of
oxytocin stays in laboratory patients because elevated levels of
oxytocin can also trigger anxiety.

The Adverse Effects of Oxytocin

The “love hormone” oxytocin has been found to have a disturbing
effect as well when present in more-than-normal amounts in the human
body. For instance, it was shown that oxytocin also influences the
memory. In an experiment conducted on laboratory mice, it was found that
under conditions of social stress oxytocin fires the lateral septum
region of the mouse brain, a region that intensifies memories. This
means that oxytocin turns a stressful experience into a long-standing
painful memory that can trigger anxiety and fear every time an
individual confronts similar stressors in future. Chronic anxiety and fear can also lead to depression.

In another study, it was found that women who reported
less-than-satisfactory quality of relationships with their partners and
longer periods of time in their lives spent without romantic attachments
had more oxytocin and the stress hormone cortisol than women who enjoyed more satisfying relationships.

These findings seem crucial considering that scientists are also
toying with the idea of using oxytocin to manage the anxiety symptoms.
It is evident that oxytocin is not only associated with good and happy
feelings.

The discovery of new faces of oxytocin presents intriguing avenues
for further study. These studies should help scientists and
psychiatrists better understand and accurately analyze why we behave the
way we do in specific social situations and with other human beings.

References

Feldman, R. (2012). Oxytocin and social affiliation in humans Hormones and Behavior, 61 (3), 380-391 DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.01.008

Fischer-Shofty,
M., Shamay-Tsoory, S., & Levkovitz, Y. (2013). Characterization of
the effects of oxytocin on fear recognition in patients with
schizophrenia and in healthy controls Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00127

Fries,
A., Ziegler, T., Kurian, J., Jacoris, S., & Pollak, S. (2005). From
The Cover: Early experience in humans is associated with changes in
neuropeptides critical for regulating social behavior Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102 (47), 17237-17240 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0504767102

Guzmán,
Y., Tronson, N., Jovasevic, V., Sato, K., Guedea, A., Mizukami, H.,
Nishimori, K., & Radulovic, J. (2013). Fear-enhancing effects of
septal oxytocin receptors Nature Neuroscience, 16 (9), 1185-1187 DOI: 10.1038/nn.3465

van
IJzendoorn, M., Bhandari, R., van der Veen, R., Grewen, K., &
Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. (2012). Elevated Salivary Levels of Oxytocin
Persist More than 7?h after Intranasal Administration Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00174

MacDonald, K. (2013). Sex, Receptors, and Attachment: A Review of Individual Factors Influencing Response to Oxytocin Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00194

Marlin,
B., Mitre, M., D’amour, J., Chao, M., & Froemke, R. (2015).
Oxytocin enables maternal behaviour by balancing cortical inhibition Nature, 520 (7548), 499-504 DOI: 10.1038/nature14402

Quintana,
D., Kemp, A., Alvares, G., & Guastella, A. (2013). A role for
autonomic cardiac control in the effects of oxytocin on social behavior
and psychiatric illness Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00048

Taylor,
S., Gonzaga, G., Klein, L., Hu, P., Greendale, G., & Seeman, T.
(2006). Relation of Oxytocin to Psychological Stress Responses and
Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenocortical Axis Activity in Older Women Psychosomatic Medicine, 68 (2), 238-245 DOI: 10.1097/01.psy.0000203242.95990.74

Shalev, I., & Ebstein, R. (2013). Frontiers in oxytocin science: from basic to practice Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00250

Dementia is affected by the aging heart muscle - Ockham's Razor - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

New evidence suggests dementia is affected by the aging heart muscle - Ockham's Razor - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Monday 2 February 2015 4:38PM

Professor Jonathan Stone

 

Image: As our heart ages and slows it affects our other essential organs including our brain. (Fred Froese/ Getty Images)

A growing body of evidence suggests that Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are less
like diseases caused by toxic proteins or invading organisms and
more like a natural condition of aging. Professor Jonathan Stone takes a look at how your heart is probably killing you, one beat at a time.

The beat of our heart is symbolic of life, of energy, of courage and
determination. Yet scientists are beginning to take seriously evidence
that if we live to old age, the heart destroys us.

It does so in a terrible way, pummelling the brain beat after beat until its small
blood vessels burst, and lesions, tens of thousands of them, erode its
circuitry, until the brain shrinks around the debris, its function
failing. Slowly, relentlessly—this evidence suggests—the beat of the
heart destroys the memory, the intellect and the personality of the
person it had so long served to keep alive.

If this understanding of dementia is correct, then a previously
unsuspected determinant of longevity has been identified—the beat of
the heart into a stiffening aorta limits our life by destroying the
brain and, incidentally, another very vascular and vital organ, the
kidney.

For scientists working on dementia, this is a challenging
statement. Many workers in the field still accept—or at least hope—that
the cause of age-related dementia, of Alzheimer’s disease, will be less
inevitable, less grounded in the unchangeable nature of our organs; that
dementia will be a treatable disease, not a fate; that it is caused by a
toxic protein or an invading organism, something you can design a drug
against, or a vaccine; something you can face square-on and overcome.

How popular hayfever pills 'could raise Alzheimer's risk' by more than 50% | Daily Mail Online

How popular hayfever pills 'could raise Alzheimer's risk' by more than 50% | Daily Mail Online

• Sleep remedies, hayfever pills and anti-depressants are linked to dementia
• The risk is greatest when high doses are taken over several years
• Risk was 54 per cent higher for people taking the highest doses 
• Found a link between dementia and antihistamines Piriton and Benadryl
• Link was found with sleep remedy Nytol and anti-depressant Doxepin
• Also found with Nytol and Ditropan - treatment for an overactive bladder

By Jenny Hope for the Daily Mail
Published:
04:25 EST, 27 January 2015

View comments

Common over-the-counter hayfever pills could raise your risk of Alzheimer’s, warn researchers.

They found a link between dementia in older people and anticholinergic
drugs, which include the antihistamines Benadryl and Piriton, as well as
sleep remedy Nytol and some older antidepressants.

These medications affect the brain by blocking a key chemical messenger
called acetylcholine, which has a range of functions in the body. 

Popular hayfever pills such as Benadryl and Piriton, sleep remedy Nytol, Ditropan - which is used to
treat an overactive bladder, and the antidepressant doxepin have all been linked to dementia The dementia risk is greatest when high doses are taken over several years, the US study found.

Many of the drugs are more commonly taken by older people, with up to half
of the UK’s elderly population being prescribed at least one
anticholinergic medication.

Study  leader Professor Shelly Gray, of the University of Washington School of
Pharmacy, said no one should simply stop taking the drugs without
speaking to their doctor. 

WHICH MEDICINES ARE LINKED TO ALZHEIMER'S? 

Researchers found a link between anticholinergic medications and dementia. 

Anticholinergic medications affect the brain by blocking a key chemical messenger
called acetycholine, which has a range of functions in the body.

People taking the following drugs for more than three years have an increased risk of dementia:

• At least 10 milligrams(mg) per day of the antidepressant doxepin, 
• Four mg per day of diphenhydramine (Nytol, Benadryl) or 
• Five mg per day of oxybutynin (Ditropan) for overactive bladder 

For those taking the highest doses of these drugs, the risk of dementia was
increased by 54 per cent after seven years, compared with no use.

The risk of Alzheimer's - the most common form of dementia - was increased by 63 per cent. 

But she said: ‘Healthcare providers should regularly review their older
patients’ drug regimens, including over-the-counter medications, to look
for chances to use fewer anticholinergic medications at lower doses.’

Research last year linked the use of anticholinergic drugs with mental
impairment in the elderly. But the new study, in the journal JAMA
Internal Medicine, is the first to show that the higher the dose, the
higher the risk of dementia.

Researchers tracked 3,434 men and women aged 65 and over for around seven years
while monitoring their use of anticholinergic drugs. Of the total, 637
developed Alzheimer’s and 160 were affected by other forms of dementia.

For those taking the biggest doses of anticholinergic drugs, the risk of
dementia was 54 per cent higher than those using none. The risk of
Alzheimer’s was 63 per cent higher.

Of the drugs named in the study, an increased risk of dementia was seen in
people taking at least 10mg a day of the antidepressant doxepin, 4mg a
day of diphenhydramine (which is in Nytol and Benadryl) or 5mg a day of
oxybutynin (Ditropan) for an overactive bladder for at least three  years.

Many newer drugs to treat these conditions do not have anticholinergic
effects, such as the antidepressant Prozac and antihistamines such as
loratadine (Claritin).

Anticholinergic drugs block a chemical transmitter called acetylcholine, leading to
side effects such as drowsiness and poor memory. People with Alzheimer’s
disease are known to lack acetylcholine.
Dr Simon Ridley, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said more research was
needed, adding: ‘This large study adds to some existing evidence linking
anticholinergic drugs to a small increased risk of dementia, but the
results don’t tell us that these drugs cause the condition.’

For people who took the highest doses
of these drugs for the seven-year study period, the risk of dementia was
increased by a statistically significant 54 per cent compared with no
use. The risk of Alzheimer's was raised by 63 per cent

What is dementia? Alzheimer's Society explains (related)

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2927002/Popular-sleep-remedies-hayfever-pills-DOUBLE-risk-Alzheimer-s.html#ixzz3Q19z6Ui6

I Never Expected My Mother to Be Diagnosed With Alzheimer's When I Was 26 | Rebecca Emily Darling

I Never Expected My Mother to Be Diagnosed With Alzheimer's When I Was 26 | Rebecca Emily Darling

Posted:
01/05/2015 9:12 am EST


Updated:
10 minutes ago

September 2012

"Oh look," said my
mother in a sing-song voice, pointing wistfully ahead, "it's the man in
the moon. We haven't seen him in a while, but there he is. He's so
bright tonight, but that's him."

We were driving down the street I
grew up on and the sun was large and orange and just beginning its trek
down toward the horizon. We slowed to a stop at a red light and were
squinting into the brightness, and while I have grown used to odd
exclamations from my mother, this one struck me as something different,
as a magical clue to the dwindling world inside her head.

I turned
over her words, puzzling over them and looking at the sun and trying to
see what she saw. What a beautiful world, I thought, where the moon is
the man in the moon and tonight the moon just happens to be enormous and
orange and blindingly bright, and the night sky behind him glows,
streaked with pinks and yellows and the occasional dab of blue.

What a majestic world wherein such a thing as that is so exceedingly normal that one might say simply, Oh, there's the man in the moon. My, isn't he bright tonight?

October 2013

My
mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and dementia about two years ago.
It was in the early stages then, and manifested mostly in a confusion
about numbers and the Internet and entirely irrational mood swings and
paranoia. To me, she merely seemed more unpleasant than usual. My mother
had always been prone to irrationality, so the early symptoms didn't
seem that out of character.

But despite her flaws, my mother had
always been an exceedingly brilliant woman. She was a gifted historian,
renowned in her field, and students still study -- and will likely
continue to study -- her texts and translations, long after she is gone.
When the symptoms of Alzheimer's first began, the most obvious sign of
them was that she was no longer able to hide the more damaged parts of
herself from her friends and colleagues; that she was no longer able to
direct them only at her family and only in private. And so when her
friends first began to tell me and my sister that something about our
mother was "off," our initial response was, "Well, yeah."

November 2013

This
woman looks like my mother. She sounds like my mother. She smells like
my mother. There is that visceral feeling when I hug her, that I am
hugging the woman I came from, the woman of whom I am a piece, a rib.
But each time she opens her mouth, I find that she is just an echo.

The
thing is, none of my mother's defects ever made me love her any less. I
loved -- and love -- her fiercely, and while she was often not the best
mother, I always knew that she loved me into oblivion -- into an insane
place where only mothers and children are able to exist -- and the two
of us, both easily dramatic and equally troubled, were tangled in a
heated codependency for just about as long as I can remember. I could
count on my mother to say terrible things and I could count on her to
love me ferociously, and when that is what you've grown up with and the
way you've always been loved, those things are one and the same.

February 2014

My
sister and I have counted on our fingers the ways in which our mother
is kinder now, more appreciative, more gentle since the Alzheimer's.

One
morning, I was making breakfast for her in her kitchen (my mother can
no longer cook or figure out how to pair or prepare ingredients), and I
remembered that neither of us had taken our medications yet that day. I
said, "We'll take them together." When she asked me why I took
medication, I felt my eyebrows draw together. "Because I'm bipolar," I
told her uncertainly.

"You are?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, so puzzled that this was something she could forget.

"You don't seem like someone who's bipolar," she said.

I laid out all six of her morning pills in a row beside a glass of water and said wryly,

"That's funny. You used to tell me all the time that I was crazy."

"I did?" she asked.

"Yes,"
I said, "all the time." She paused, the look on her face like something
you might see from a gentle bird who has just flown into a window and
is dazed.

"Well, I guess I wasn't a very good mother," she said, and softly laughed.

My
heart dropped and then pounded painfully. "Oh yes you were," I said,
hugging her to me so that she could not see my tears. "You were an
amazing mother."

It was half-lie and half-truth, but it didn't
matter either way. That something as awful as Alzheimer's could give my
mother's mind enough empty space that she could see herself from outside
of herself, for the first time ever in her life, was touching. And it
was sad.

May 2014

I can see the Alzheimer's
progressing. My mother forgets words more and more frequently. Words
like "ring" and "grapes" and "cats" (she has taken to referring to my
cats as "those big things at Becky's apartment," which she pairs with a
hand gesture that is more suggestive of spider legs or jelly fish than
of anything related to a cat.) She can barely read at all, and doesn't
remember anything she's read almost immediately after she has read it,
but she does like to sit with a book from time to time. She likes to
feel the pages in her hands and she still reads the newspaper every day,
albeit all day long because each time it is new.

She still has a
vague but passionate sense of the news and politics and loves discussing
them; in fact, little makes her happier. There is a part of her still
attached to the academic side of herself, although she is not aware of
it. But she has not even opened the door to her office -- the door that
leads to walls covered in shelves holding book after book after book,
including some of her own, and folders haphazardly splayed across the
room full of documents and notes scribbled in foreign languages -- in at
least a year. Every time I visit her and walk down that hall, I see
that door so poignantly, so utterly closed. That part of her mind is
simply gone.

August 2014

One night, my
mother fell down the stairs and I ran to her. I held her like a mother
holds a child and asked again and again if she was okay. I clutched her
to me and rocked her. I felt completely responsible for her and more
protective of her than I have ever felt of anyone; just the very idea of
her being in pain cut through me. I would do anything to make it
better. I would do anything to make my mother better. I would even give
her up as my mother if it meant she would be living her life as herself,
even if it was without me, even if it was somewhere where I could not
see her. I would do anything.

I try to appreciate her for who she
is now, to appreciate the gentleness and the unabridged and
uncomplicated love she has to offer, but knowing and feeling that I've
lost her, there are times when I believe I would prefer that she hurl
all of that past fights and tears at me all at once if it meant having
her back with me now. If it meant that she would have her brilliant,
glorious mind back and that I could look at her again and know that
nobody, nobody on this earth knows me better than this woman, that this
is the one person who can take all the screaming fights that we can
readily invoke -- and therefore see the absolute worst that my person
has to offer -- and will still love me and love me ferociously.

I
am accustomed now to having a mother with Alzheimer's. I am accustomed
to not having a mother on whom I can depend, in whom I may confide, with
whom I may simply converse. And when I think of how accustomed I am, my
heart breaks all over again. It is a constant ebb and flow, a constant
healing and breaking again like the ocean.

December 2014

I
started this essay in October of 2013. It has now been three years
since my mother was first diagnosed, although it feels closer to 20. My
mother has lost so much of her vocabulary and short-term memory that a
conversation with her is now a couple of oftentimes nonsensical
sentences on loop. Her gait is a tiny shuffle and the extreme difficulty
with which she rises from sitting comes not from any physical ailment,
but from the difficulty her mind has wrapping around even the simple
shift in bearing we all take for granted. She lives in an assisted
living home now with around-the-clock care, and she is happy with all
the safeness and predictability that provides. The worse her illness has
gotten, the quieter her once haphazard mind has become, and I can
almost see the sense of peace and simple joy that has descended upon her
like a cozy blanket or a fresh layer of powdered snow.

It is a
blessing of unspeakable depth that my mother is happy. I am so
massively, overwhelmingly grateful for this simple truth that I am
unable to even think the words without melting into tears of exhausted
relief. I would never have guessed that feeling fortunate could hurt
just as much as feeling loss, and could be equal parts awful and
sublime. The sheer depth of my gratitude feels almost transcendent to
me; if I had been raised differently, I might think that I was feeling
God.

As things stand, I was raised by academics. As things stand, I
am simply bowled over by the immense beauty that is the heart's
capacity to feel so much: so much pain and so much love and so much
anger and gratitude and strength and vulnerability. It is a wonder that
we are able to walk about in the world with such a capacity inside of
us.

I miss my mother. I will never not miss my mother. I will go
months or perhaps -- though I cannot imagine this now -- years without
crying for her and then one day I will cut my finger on a knife in the
kitchen, and I may suddenly collapse into disproportionate tears that
will be some small, childlike part of my mind echoing back a long ago
feeling of a mother's comforting kiss. I will have children of my own
and I will learn that my heart is capable of much more, so much more
love and pain and vulnerability than even this experience has taught me.


If I have learned one thing from my mother's disease, it is that
the heart has no limit to what it can feel. There is always a deeper
love, and always a truer pain. And when I see my mother's eyes light up
at the sight of a simple flower or a chocolate chip cookie, I know that
there is always a purer joy as well.

Unlike our minds, unlike our memories, our hearts are infinite.

You can follow Rebecca Emily Darling (and her cats and vintage dresses) on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

This post originally appeared on HelloGiggles.com.

How to keep your brain young — and slow the process of ageing | Executive Living | The Australian

How to keep your brain young — and slow the process of ageing | Executive Living | The Australian

• RUTH OSTROW  December 08, 2014
  12:00AM
  

One revolutionary tip for longevity is the silly walk, a la John Cleese and Monty Python.

WE don’t have to age — or at least grow old as fast as we do. That’s
the finding of researchers in the US, where a group of specially
trained lab rats equivalent in our years to 60-year-olds became as
“young” and healthy as their 20-year-old companions.

Although our bodies will inevitably decline, scientific evidence presented at the recent international Mind & Its Potential Conference in Sydney suggests that the process can be slowed down by several decades. The things that really matter to us — vitality, libido, memory, and brain power — don’t have to change much into our 70s and 80s. And how can this be achieved? Not through hormones, surgery, vitamins or stem cell replacement.

It’s all about neurogenesis, or our ability to grow new synapses and neurons in our brains well into old age, according to University of California neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, who in Sydney shared advice on how to keep our brains young. “The King of Neuroplasticity”, Professor Merzenich, 72, says that when the brain is rejuvenated it also rejuvenates everything from our skin and organ function to capacity for pleasure and energy. The aim is to “fatten” the brain so the body doesn’t atrophy.

So how do we do this? Merzenich and other leading neuroscientists gave me their best tips for longevity. One of Merzenich’s revolutionary methods would have baby boomers and gen Xers laughing: the silly walk, a la John Cleese and Monty Python. Merzenich finds new and complicated ways to move every day to give his brain huge challenges. He says the brain loves to make decisions and solve problems, and it hates safe ways of doing things. To stay young, he says, don’t make things easy for the brain. Give it big surprises. Get out of the cave. Don’t say “I don’t do that.” Try it.

Exercise is fantastic for overall health, but to specifically grow the brain, the exercises can’t be predictable or routine. So add to the mix Rumba, Tango, gentle acrobatics, and yes, even a silly walk.
Merzenich was one of the stars of eminent psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge’s groundbreaking bestseller on neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, The Brain That Changes Itself. Doidge told me that “What fires together wires together”, and new synapses and pathways are forged constantly as long as the brain is used. With a bit of brain rewiring and practice, a pianist can become a concert pianist; a stroke victim can learn to talk and walk.

The bottom line, says Merzenich, is “use it or lose it”. He warns us to stop using a GPS and other gadgets for simple tasks. “Study road maps, and force yourself to remember where you’re going and the details around you. As primitive beings we survived by roaming the landscape. So listen and look around in a state of mindfulness.” Before sleep he spends five minutes in bed recalling the details he’s seen in the streets that day, in order to stimulate memory. He says to try and remember phone numbers and email addresses rather than using your mobile.

He advocates training the brain with games. Not a big fan of Sudoku or other problem-solving fads, Merzenich has a website of scientifically proven exercises. BrainHQ.com, from Posit Science, was featured in the ABC documentary Redesign My Brain, in which Todd Sampson volunteered himself as a lab rat to test the science of brain plasticity. Sampson turned into somewhat of a genius before our eyes.

Merzenich also praises meditation, which according to experiments by Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of contemplative practices on the brain, opens pathways in unused areas of the mind. Merzenich says we should learn languages, go back to university or do some courses — but to leave our comfort zone. He says try complex subjects you might not be good at, such as maths.

I followed his advice and three years ago went back to university. Despite being a technophobe, I chose to study technical matters such as video production, camera usage, and operating an edit suite. I was often in tears. But I did well, and noticed that my brain improved in other areas of memory and competency. The theory is that if you develop one part of the brain, synapses grow elsewhere.
New hobbies can challenge your brain with enough tension to create small squirts of cortisol and noradrenaline. Unlike dangerous chronic stress that comes from worry, small hits of stress hormones are excellent for stimulating the mind. Perhaps birdwatch and learn the name of new species. Stay curious. Travel is great. After achieving a new skill, reward yourself. Self-praise clinches the lessons and rewires the brain. Positive feedback promotes good habits.

US psychiatrist Stuart Brown was recently in Australia talking about the importance of play in brain health. Activities such as volleyball, running into the sea and ballroom dancing have been shown to trigger parts of the brain associated with social connection and increased intelligence.
Brown first recognised the importance of play by discovering its absence in the life stories of murderers and sociopaths. His research led him to prove that when we play and laugh, we release not only dopamine, oxytocins and other reward neurochemicals but also create synaptic connections.
Social interaction is crucial for wellbeing, according to the “father of social neuroscience”, UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman. He says without love, relationships and community, the deterioration of our health is equivalent to smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. Being with people helps us read facial signs, develop empathy and exercise our prefrontal cortex, which governs higher order functions. It was, and still is, crucial to our survival as a species. So turn off Facebook and go face-to-face.

Neuroscientists have proven that juggling increases thinking speed and one’s ability to focus. Michael J. Gelb, a respected creative thinker from the US, says that while juggling we increase our metacognition — the capacity to think about our thinking processes. This improves motor skills, spatial awareness and problem-solving capacity.

Most of us feel awkward trying new things, which is why we mostly don’t. Tal Ben Shahar, a prominent US expert in positive psychology, says we need to reframe our failures so we see them as “lessons”.

He believes we should not let fear make us shun new things. Developing comes from accepting our failures with grace. “Babies don’t just walk. They need to keep falling down, then they walk,” he reassures those of us who are embarking on a journey towards our full adult potential.


How to jump-start the grey matter

• Find new ways to move or walk every day

• Don’t stay in your comfort zone. Give the brain surprises, decisions and problems to solve

• What fires together wires together. Talent is not important. Practice any skill for 10,000 hours and you’ll master it.

• Stop using a GPS and contact book: memorise maps, phone numbers and email addresses

• Do online exercises such as BrainHQ.com from Posit Science

• Meditate for at least 20 minutes at a time, preferably morning and night

• Study something you are not good at; take up hobbies

• Read, read and read

• Play and increase your social contact

• Before going to sleep, for five minutes recall details of something like the house next door or a friend’s face

• Juggle to increase motor skills and spatial awareness

Neuroscientists speak out against brain game hype | Science/AAAS | News

Neuroscientists speak out against brain game hype | Science/AAAS | News:

ByEmily Underwood

22 October 2014 4:30 pm

 14 Comments

Aging baby boomers and seniors would be better off going for a hike than sitting down in front of one of the many video games designed to aid the brain, a group of nearly 70 researchers asserted this week in acritique of some of the claims made by the brain-training industry. 

With yearly subscriptions running as much as $120, an expanding panoply of commercial brain games promises to improve memory, processing speed, and problem-solving, and even, in some cases, to stave off Alzheimer’s disease. Many companies, such as Lumosity and Cogmed, describe their games as backed by solid scientific evidence and prominently note that neuroscientists at top universities and research centers helped design the programs. But the cited research is often “only tangentially related to the scientific claims of the company, and to the games they sell,” according to the statement released Monday by the Stanford Center on Longevity in Palo Alto, California, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

Although the letter, whose signatories include many researchers outside those two organizations, doesn’t point to specific bad actors, it concludes that there is “little evidence that playing brain games improves underlying broad cognitive abilities, or that it enables one to better navigate a complex realm of everyday life.” A similar statement of concern was published in 2008 with a smaller number of signatories, says Ulman Lindenberger of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who helped organize both letters. Although Lindenberger says there was no particular trigger for the current statement, he calls it the “expression of a growing collective concern among a large number of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists who study human cognitive aging.”

“A major problem” with almost all cognitive training studies is that researchers only measure improvement in skills such as memory based on an individual task, rather than a range of tasks that represent a broad ability, Lindenberger says. Although a handful of the researchers who signed the letter are involved in brain-training game research and development themselves, all signees “draw a clear line” between improvements on a particular task and improvements in general cognitive ability, he notes. In contrast, “brain gaming companies blur this distinction,” he says, leading consumers to believe that getting better at a specific game will positively impact their cognitive abilities and competence in everyday life. “The consensus is that this is not so,” he notes.

Not all researchers agree, however. Lumping all brain game companies together and calling their claims dubious is “a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” said Michael Merzenich, a professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco, and chief scientific officer of the brain-training company Posit Science, to The Chronicle of Higher Education, describing the statement as “irresponsible.”

Roberto Cabeza, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and another signatory on the statement, says that his view is that it’s fine to play such games for fun, but “if you’re doing it like a chore” to postpone cognitive aging and dementia there are other, better established methods of keeping the brain sharp, such as exercising. Cognitive improvements from exercise appear to be modest, but are still greater than any of the small, fleeting gains yet observed in studies of gaming, he says. There are also health benefits to exercise that cannot be achieved by sitting at a computer, he adds. In addition to showing that brain games have benefits that transfer to daily life, “you also have to compare it to what you could have done during those hours,” such as playing an instrument or spending time with family, he says.

For those who choose to play brain games regardless, recent research suggests that playing some video games developed solely for fun may be as effective, or more, than those developed for cognitive self-improvement. Scientists at Florida State University randomly assigned 77 undergraduates to play either Lumosity or the popular video game Portal 2, in which players take on the roles of robots to solve interactive puzzles to face off against a “lethally inventive, power-mad A.I. named GLaDOS.” After 8 hours of play, Portal 2 players scored higher than Lumosity players on three standard cognitive tests of problem-solving and spatial skill, and Lumosity players “showed no gains on any measure,” the team reported online this summer inComputers & Education.

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