Category: neuroscience

How to Beat Procrastination

Procrastination comes in many disguises. We might resolve to tackle a task, but find endless reasons to defer it. We might prioritize things we can readily tick off our to-do list—answering emails, say—while leaving the big, complex stuff untouched for another day. We can look and feel busy, while artfully avoiding the tasks that really matter. And when we look at those rolling, long-untouched items at the bottom of our to-do list, we can’t help but feel a little disappointed in ourselves.

The problem is our brains are programmed to procrastinate. In general, we all tend to struggle with tasks that promise future upside in return for efforts we take now.That’s because it’s easier for our brains to process concrete rather than abstract things, and the immediate hassle is very tangible compared with those unknowable, uncertain future benefits. So the short-term effort easily dominates the long-term upside in our minds—an example of something that behavioral scientists call present bias.

How can you become less myopic about your elusive tasks? It’s all about rebalancing the cost-benefit analysis: make the benefits of action feel bigger, and the costs of action feel smaller. The reward for doing a pestering task needs to feel larger than the immediate pain of tackling it.

Harvard Business Review

Turning off this newly discovered brain pathway could help us block fearful memories

Scientists now know how to make you forget your fears — at least if you’re a mouse. By turning off a newly discovered brain pathway, scientists were able to make mice lose their fear of a shock. It’s early research, but it may point toward methods that could help people with anxiety and PTSD.

After finding a new pathway in the brain important for creating fearful memories, scientists trained mice to fear a high-pitched tone by shocking the rodents every time they heard it, according to a study published today in Nature Neuroscience. They waited til the rodents would freeze in fear even without the shock before proceeding to the next stage: viewing the mouse brains. Using a specialized microscopy technique, the scientists observed that there was growth in the neurons along that pathway. So what would happen if they could turn that pathway off?

TheVerge

My Sleep Button: for Insomniacs

The purpose of this web page is to explain the scientific rationale of mySleepButton.

mySleepButton is based on a new super-somnolent mentation theory of sleep induction proposed by CogSci Apps Corp. co-founder, Luc P. Beaudoin. Beaudoin published this theory in an open-access paper on March 31, 2013 at Simon Fraser University where he is adjunct professor:

The possibility of super-somnolent mentation: A new information-processing approach to sleep-onset acceleration and insomnia exemplified by serial diverse imagining (MERP Report No. 2013–03).Meta-effectiveness Research Project, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University.

MySleepButton

Response to PTSD Treatment Associated With Size of Hippocampus

The study, from researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), was published online in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging on May 4, 2016.

Previous research has shown that having a smaller hippocampus is associated with increased risk of PTSD. In this study, the researchers examined the relationship between hippocampus volume, measured with MRI, and response to treatment in 50 participants with PTSD and 36 trauma-exposed healthy controls. The participants were evaluated at baseline and after 10 weeks, during which time the PTSD group had prolonged exposure therapy, a type of cognitive behavioral therapy that has been shown to help patients with PTSD discriminate between real and imagined trauma.

The study found that patients with PTSD who responded to treatment had greater hippocampal volume at the beginning of the study than non-responders to treatment.

The findings add to growing evidence that the hippocampus is key to distinguishing between cues that signal safety and those that signal threat.

“If replicated, these findings have important implications for screening and treating patients who have been exposed to trauma,” noted Yuval Neria, PhD, professor of medical psychology at CUMC, director of the PTSD Program at NYSPI, and senior author of the paper. “For example, new recruits for military service may be scanned before an assignment to determine whether they are capable of dealing with the expected stress and trauma. Having a smaller hippocampus may be a contraindication for prolonged exposure to trauma.”

Neuroscience News

The Best Medicine for ADHD isn’t Necessarily Medicine

Steve and Michelle were desperate—their 6-year-old son, Sam, was diagnosed with ADHD soon after entering first grade.  Sam’s behavior seemed outright defiant—he “ignored” being called and he moved constantly, often from room to room even when being directly spoken to. Sam let out bloodcurdling screams when forced to stop playing a game on the iPad. Sam’s teacher had struggled with some similar behaviors in class and his guidance counselor said Sam needed to be on medication. Steve and Michelle were not so sure, but began to wonder if they were being negligent by not putting him on Ritalinor something similar.

Despite the relentless advertising in parenting magazines and websites, and the occasional coercion by some school personnel, there is a good chance your young ADHD child may not need medication. Or at least not yet. The Centers For Disease control just released results from their first national study to look at therapy, medication, and dietary supplements to treat kids with ADHD ages 4-17.

Psychology Today

SJ Watson: art, identity and the world’s most famous amnesiac

From Memento to Before I Go to Sleep, the case of Henry Molaison holds an enduring fascination for artists. SJ Watson, whose bestselling novel explored lost memory, asks Kerry Tribe about her video installation H.M. – and what we can learn from the world’s most famous amnesiac

The Guardian

The magical thing eating chocolate does to your brain

In the mid 1970s, psychologist Merrill Elias began tracking the cognitive abilities of more than a thousand people in the state of New York. The goal was fairly specific: to observe the relationship between people’s blood pressure and brain performance. And for decades he did just that, eventually expanding the Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study (MSLS) to observe other cardiovascular risk factors, including diabetes, obesity, and smoking. There was never an inkling that his research would lead to any sort of discovery about chocolate.

And yet, 40 years later, it seems to have done just that.

Washington Post

Chew Yourself a Better Brain

Would you believe that while standing in line to pay for your groceries, you are but an arm’s length away from a potent neurochemical catalyst that costs less than a single pill of any antidepressant?

Yes, gum – wonderful, flavorful, get-your-jaws-moving gum — is an unlikely object of  cognitive science research that turns out to possess qualities Mr. Wrigley would never have guessed.

Gum has been studied for its beneficial effects on memory, alertness, anxiety reduction, appetite suppression, mood and learning.  Attributes of gum that have gone under the microscope include its flavor, texture and density, to name a few.

Forbes

A neuroscientist says there’s a powerful benefit to exercise that is rarely discussed

The immediate effects of exercise on my mood and thought process proved to be a powerful motivational tool. And as a neuroscientist and workout devotee, I’ve come to believe that these neurological benefits could have profound implications for how we live, learn and age as a society.

Let’s start with one of the most practical immediate benefits of breaking a sweat: exercise combats stress. Exercise is a powerful way to combat feelings of stress because it causes immediate increases in levels of key neurotransmitters, including serotonin, noradrenalin, dopamine and endorphins, that are often depleted by anxiety and depression. That’s why going for a run or spending 30 minutes on the elliptical can boost our moods immediately—combatting the negative feelings we often associate with chronic stressors we deal with every day.

qz.com

Junk food is tricking your brain: The depressing science behind your binging

Eating for the sake of pleasure, rather than survival, is nothing new. But only in the past several years have researchers come to understand deeply how certain foods—particularly fats and sweets—actually change brain chemistry in a way that drives some people to overconsume.

Scientists have a relatively new name for such cravings: hedonic hunger, a powerful desire for food in the absence of any need for it; the yearning we experience when our stomach is full but our brain is still ravenous. And a growing number of experts now argue that hedonic hunger is one of the primary contributors to surging obesity rates in developed countries worldwide, particularly in the U.S., where scrumptious desserts and mouthwatering junk foods are cheap and plentiful.

Salon