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Mindfulness as Brain Training

Monday, April 1st, 2013
mindfulness for brain training

Mindfulness

A team from UC Santa Barbara has shown that just two weeks of mindfulness training can significantly improve reading comprehension, working memory capacity, and focus.

Published in Psychological Science and led by Michael Mrazek, the study, “Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering” surprised the researchers with its clear-cut results: “What surprised me the most was actually the clarity of the results,” said Mrazek, “We found reduced mind-wandering in every way we measured it.”

Mindfulness is another term for full conscious engagement or presence of mind on the task at hand. When the mind wanders our performance on tasks requiring our attention declines.

Mrazek and his colleagues randomly assigned undergraduate students to either a mindfulness class or a class on nutrition. Before the classes started the students took a test of verbal reasoning from the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and a working memory capacity (WMC) test. The researchers also measured mind-wandering during the tests.

After the classes the students re-took the tests.  Those who had taken the mindfulness class scored significantly better on both the verbal GRE test and the working memory capacity test. Their mind-wandering during testing had also diminished. For those who had taken the nutrition class, the researchers measured no such improvement.

“This is the most complete and rigorous demonstration that mindfulness can reduce mind-wandering, one of the clearest demonstrations that mindfulness can improve working memory and reading, and the first study to tie all this together to show that mind-wandering mediates the improvements in performance,” said Mrazek.

Brain Training with MindSparke’s Brain Fitness Pro is already a great mindfulness booster.  Here are three more that would be wonderful adjuncts to the training:

1. RAIN.

To be used when a strong feeling comes up:

R – recognize what you’re feeling.

A – acknowledge it.

I – investigate its various aspects, and

N – non-identify; “it’s not me, it’s something I’m feeling.”

2. STOP.

Give yourself room to breathe when you’re thoughts are racing:

S - Stop what you are doing.

T - Breathe normally and be mindful of your breath entering and leaving your body.

O - Observe your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Don’t try to keep thoughts or feelings out, just acknowledge them and move on.

P - Proceed by giving yourself you need to feel supported; reach out to someone who can listen, for instance, or deliberately put your current thoughts and feelings into a broader perspective.

3. Walk.

Not an acronym this time. Just a great activity for helping us practice mindfulness.  Rather than walking in a state of distraction, though, focus on the physical and mechanical aspects of the act of walking, your legs and feet moving, your balance shifting, your breath supporting your movements. Likewise you can turn your mindful attention to the world around you.  The sights, sounds, smells and sensations of the places you’re walking through.

 

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Brain Training & Magnetic Fields Help Alzheimer’s Patients

Thursday, January 24th, 2013

A trial in the UK is using a combination of brain training and magnetic pulses to reduce the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

“The treatment stimulates key regions of the brain involved in memory and learning, enhancing patients’ ability to make new memories.

“The scientists behind the technique say it can allow Alzheimer’s patients to live far more independently than they otherwise would and extends the time they can spend with their families before suffering the devastating mental decline associated with the disease.”

As reported in the Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9637946/Magnetic-pulses-while-brain-training-provides-new-treatment-for-Alzhiemers.html

 

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Brain Food: Omega 3 Boosts Cognitive Performance

Thursday, January 24th, 2013

In a study of young adults, scientists from the University of Pittsburgh found that a dietary increase of Omega-3 supplements boosted working memory.

“We found that [young people] can enhance their working memory performance even further, despite their already being at the top of their cognitive game,” said Bita Moghaddam, professor of neuroscience on the team.

The researchers used n-back training to determine working memory performance prior to a 6 month period of Omega-3 supplementation.

“What was particularly interesting about the presupplementation n-back test was that it correlated positively with plasma Omega-3,” said Moghaddam. “This means that the Omega-3s they were getting from their diet already positively correlated with their working memory.”

“So many of the previous studies have been done with the elderly or people with medical conditions, leaving this unique population of young adults unaddressed,” said Matthew Muldoon, project coinvestigator and associate professor of medicine at Pitt. “But what about our highest-functioning periods? Can we help the brain achieve its full potential by adapting our healthy behaviors in our young adult life? We found that we absolutely can.”

(For anyone interested in taking an Omega-3 supplement, our colleagues at Zortho have an excellent multi-omega product Super Critical PEO.)

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Upgrade Coming – MindSparke v3.1

Monday, January 7th, 2013

We’re upgrading the Brain Fitness Pro training system later today, adding some exciting new features:

Facebook integration: Connect your training account to your Facebook account through the Account panel and you can login with Facebook and share your training progress and blog posts with your Facebook friends.

Focus Helper: In the training panel you’ll see the “Focus Helper” audio player.  Listen to this background audio while training and it will help you focus.

We’re taking steps to make sure that the upgrade goes smoothly, but if you notice any odd behavior please log out, close your browser and log back in.

If you have questions or comments on the upgrade, please let us know.

Martin Walker
CEO, Founder

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Brain Training for Chemobrain

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

A new study gives hope to those suffering from cognitive impairment after chemotherapy (so-called “chemobrain”). The research paper presented in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, found that brain training for breast cancer patients lead to better memory and improved cognition as well as a reduced tendency to anxiety and depression.

Cognitive problems after chemotherapy affect as many as three-quarters of breast cancer patients and the impact can last up to 10 years. The study gives the first glimpse of hope for addressing this problem. “It is exciting that the computerized brain training program improved both memory and information processing speed,” said Diane Von Ah, PhD, RN, lead researcher and assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Nursing.

After two months of brain training the participants displayed marked improvements in memory, processing speed, depression, and fatigue; benefits that held two months later, at which point anxiety symptoms also showed improvement.

 

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Piano Tuners And The Plastic Brain

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Tuning a piano by ear requires a great deal of skill. Piano tuners need to remember and compare complex sound patterns which vary across the piano keyboard. This led researchers from UCL and Newcastle University to target the brains of piano tuners for a study investigating changes in brain structure associated with brain use. (We’ve written before about a similar study on the brain structure of London cabbies.)

The study found that the piano tuners’ brains showed marked differences in white and gray matter in the hippocampus when compared to non-piano tuners. What’s more, the degree of difference corresponded to how long the tuners had been at their profession.

“Perhaps surprisingly, the changes related to tuning experience that we found were not in the auditory part of the brain. In fact, they actually occurred in the hippocampus, a part of the brain traditionally associated with memory and navigation,” says Dr Sukhbinder Kumar from Newcastle University, joint first author.

Study lead Dr Tim Griffiths (Newcastle University,) added: “There has been little work on the role of the hippocampus in auditory analysis. Our study is consistent with a form of navigation in pitch space as opposed to the more accepted role in spatial navigation.”

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Why Stress Affects Working Memory

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Where's The Cheese? Stress Disrupts Working Memory

Prior studies have shown that stress reduces working memory capacity, and now a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) sheds light on the neural processes behind this phenomenon. By observing individual neural activity while rats followed a maze, the team discovered how stress affected the firing of neurons and reduced the rats ability to focus and remember their way through the maze. The researchers discovered that stress doesn’t inhibit neural activity but instead changes it, making it less effective at staying on task.

The brain uses working memory (a function of the prefontal cortex) to hold pertinent information in the foreground, swapping vital data in and out of longer term storage as needed.

“You don’t need that part of the brain to hear or talk, to keep long-term memories, or to remember what you did as a child or what you read in the newspaper three days ago,” said Dr. Craig Berridge, UW–Madison psychology professor. But it’s essential for focusing attention and modulating emotions.

“People without a prefrontal cortex are very distractible,” Berridge said. “They’re very impulsive. They can be very argumentative.”

Using a novel statistical modeling method the researchers showed that rat prefrontal neurons fired and re-fired regularly to keep important information fresh.

“Even though these neurons communicate on a scale of every thousandth of a second, they know what they did one second to one-and-a-half seconds ago,” Devilbiss said. “But if the neuron doesn’t stimulate itself again within a little more than a second, it’s lost that information.”

When the researchers added a blast of white noise a rat’s ability to complete the maze dropped from 90% to 65%. Neural monitoring shows that the stressed rats couldn’t retain information about how to get to the next chocolate chip reward, reacting to distractions such as noises and smells around them instead.

“The literature tells us that stress plays a role in more than half of all workplace accidents, and a lot of people have to work under what we would consider a great deal of stress,” Devilbiss said.

“Air traffic controllers need to concentrate and focus with a lot riding on their actions. People in the military have to carry out these thought processes in conditions that would be very distracting, and now we know that this distraction is happening at the level of individual cells in the brain.”

“Based on drug studies, it had been believed stress simply suppressed prefrontal cortex activity,” Berridge said. “These studies demonstrate that rather than suppressing activity, stress modifies the nature of that activity. Treatments that keep neurons on their self-stimulating task while shutting out distractions may help protect working memory.”

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Post-Operative Brain Training Helps Restore Cognitive Function

Saturday, September 22nd, 2012
Brain training helps to significantly reduce attention and memory problems after coronary bypass surgery.  This is the conclusion of a study by Dr. Louis Bherer, PhD from the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM). Dr. Bherer is also Canadian Research Chair at the Aging and the Prevention of Cognitive Decline.

“It is clear that seniors’ brains have a certain degree of plasticity,” Dr. Louis Bherer noted, “[the research] suggests that patients should receive cognitive training in addition to the usual medical follow-up.” Prior to surgery, the researchers tested the participants’ overall cognitive function including memory, processing speed, and attention. The tests were repeated 3 to 7 days post-surgery and again one month later. Those who received attention and memory training showed greater and more rapid cognitive recovery than those who received no training.

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Week 5, trying DoubleTrouble

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

As my son has ADHD, we are following the Brain Fitness Pro Jr recommendation to move up to two training sessions per day starting this week (Week 5). My son is 9, but decided to give Double Trouble a try anyway (the Help file suggests that it is recommended for children ages 10 and up).

His first session of Double Trouble went well and he immediately grasped the concept and moved from 2 items up to six in relatively short order. I think the novelty of the new game was a good motivator for him. So for his first session each day this week, he continued with Double Trouble. His scores were:

4.38

4.88

5.13

5.88

4.88

He found Double Trouble very challenging, so for his second session each day he chose Straightahead (except for Day 1 of Week 5, where he tried Switchback, but found it very confusing to mix that with Double Trouble). His Straightahead scores were:

6.25

6.75

6.63

7.25 (new high score)

His Straightahead scores have improved steadily; his average scores have been:

Week 1 5.73

Week 3 6.68

Week 5 6.72

So at this point, I do have some questions:

1) Is mixing two different games in one day a good idea, or should he should he do the same game twice each day? What about changing games from day to day, or week to week? I’m trying to let my son drive the process, but at the same time, would like to advise him as to how to make the best use of his time and effort.

2) Have the effects of the Junior games been studied, and have the use of Straightahead, Switchback, and Double Trouble been shown to have the same effects on working memory as duel N-back training?

3) At times my son appears focussed on the game, but still has trouble progressing (for example, today he started Double Trouble with 6 items, but quickly went down to 4 items). Is there some strategy or technique I can suggest to him to help him focus his attention? Now that the novelty of the games has worn off, I fear that he is just glazing over at times.

 

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Brain Fitness Pro Jr, weeks 3 and 4

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

After completing one week of Straightahead, and one week of Switchback, my sons scores for weeks 3 and 4 were as follows:

Week 3, Switchback: 4.63, 5.75, 4.5, 5.75, 6.00

Week 4, Straightahead: 5.88, 7.13, 7.13, 6.75, 6.5

I’m not sure how to interpret the results. Given that my son scored 6.5 on his third day of Straightahead, I was hoping for more consistent improvement after four weeks. His usual mid-week spike is encouraging though. His Switchback scores for his second week were marginally better than during his first week. I haven’t noticed any improvements in his ability to focus during written tasks, or math work, or even during his Brain Fitness Pro Jr sessions.

He definitely finds the exercises very hard, and is sometimes reluctant to move up a level when given the choice. I always encourage him to move up, and he’s been pleased when he’s succeeded at the higher levels, but typically moves down again within the same session. As he moved up to 7 and then 8 objects in Straightahead, I suggested strategies to use, such as grouping the numbers into 3-digit and 4-digit numbers. This seems to work for him when he says them aloud, although he’s not always quick enough to say them before the program’s auditory prompts start. Sometimes I also see him tracking the positions of the objects with his cursor as he listens to the auditory prompts, and I think that might be a useful strategy for him as well.

We’re now ready to begin phase 2, which will entail two Brain Fitness Pro sessions per day for the next four weeks. My son is still doing the sessions willingly, but I can tell he is growing frustrated by his slow progress. Hopefully he will start to see some consistent improvement, which would be encouraging for him.

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