Tag: brain

Steph Curry Literally Sees the World Differently Than You Do

In the third quarter of game two of this year’s Western Conference finals, the Golden State Warriors were ahead of the Oklahoma City Thunder by ten points. Then, Steph Curry, in the words of one sportswriter, went “supernova”: With 7:10 left in the quarter, Curry sunk an open three-pointer, then got fouled on another triple — plus a technical — making a four-point play, then made another triple, then a long two, then another three-pointer. Fifteen points in under two minutes. Golden State up by 20. Game over.

It was yet another display of Curry’s absurd abilities, a collection of talents that have transformed NBA basketball. After winning the most valuable player award and the league championship last season, Curry followed up by leading the Warriors to the best single-season record in NBA history (73–9) and claiming another MVP award (unanimously, for the first time in league history). Now, the Warriors are a win away from another title, thereby setting off an explosion of barroom arguments about whether they could be the the best team ever, and if Curry is the best shooter ever — if not, heretical as it is to say, the greatest player of all time.

NYmag.com

This Is Your Brain on Nature

When you head out to the desert, David Strayer is the kind of man you want behind the wheel. He never texts or talks on the phone while driving. He doesn’t even approve of eating in the car. A cognitive psychologist at the University of Utah who specializes in attention, Strayer knows our brains are prone to mistakes, especially when we’re multitasking and dodging distractions. Among other things, his research has shown that using a cell phone impairs most drivers as much as drinking alcohol does.

Strayer is in a unique position to understand what modern life does to us. An avid backpacker, he thinks he knows the antidote: Nature.

National Geographic

Making Music Boosts Brain’s Language Skills

Do you have trouble hearing people talk at cocktail parties? Try practicing the piano before you leave the house.

Musicians—from karaoke singers to professional cello players—are better able to hear targeted sounds in a noisy environment, according to new research that adds to evidence that music makes the brain work better.

National Geographic

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

Your Brain During Hypnosis

Many skeptics consider hypnotism as some sort of a trick, but being hypnotized really does change the way your brain works. According to a recent study conducted by Dr. David Spiegel, the associate chair of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, reveals interesting facts about how the brain changes during hypnosis.

For the hypnosis study, Spiegel and his colleagues chose 57 people to participate. More than half of the participants were highly hypnotic, whereas 21 did not appear to be successfully hypnotized.

“I hope this study will demonstrate that hypnosis is a real neurobiological phenomenon that deserves attention. We haven’t been using our brains as well as we can. It’s like an app on your iPhone you haven’t used before, and it gets your iPhone to do all these cool things you didn’t know it could do.”

During the study, MRIs were used to display the difference in blood flow through the brain. First, a scan was completed while the participants was resting. Next, the MRI scanned their brains while recalling a memory. Lastly, the participants were scanned while being induced into a hypnotic state.

Inquisitr

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 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