One Brain's journey

In the last post, I promised to write more about a recent study on mindfulness and its effect on mind fitness. They study was conducted by Amishi Jha of the Department of Psychoogy and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and Elizabeth Stanley of Georgetown University.  Their conclusion was that mindfulness training made a measurable improvement on mood and working memory in a Marines training for deployment in Iraq.  The program called Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT) was designed to produce protective results on the psychological health in individuals who were enter into situations that would produce extreme stress (read combat) and was incorporated into pre-deployment training. Study participants included 48 males with an average age of 25 from a detachment of Marine reservists. The experimental group comprised 31 Marines with 17 in the control group. The MMFT group attended an eight week course. The effect of the training on mood was measured by the Positive and Negative Schedule (PANAS) while working memory improvement was measured using the Operation Span Task. Working memory capacity degraded and negative mod increased over time in the control group during training. The MMFT group, on the other hand, experienced improved working memory capacity and a decrease in negative mood. You can read more about the study in the journal, Emotion as well as the latest edition of Joint Force Quarterly, the advisory journal of the Join Chiefs of Staff.

I have been a fan of natural health products since I managed to lower my blood pressure with Omega 3 capsules and so am a little more friendly to reports such as this one from a study conducted at the Center for Learning and Memory at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Guosong Liu, the center’s director, found that magnesium, “led to significant enhancement of spatial and associative memory in both young and aged rates.” Magnesium is found in some fruits and most leafy vegetables but the study made use of a new magnesium compund–Magnesium-L-threonate (MgT)–but the new compound was just a more efficient way of delivering magnesium to the brain. Mr. Liu said, “Half the population of industrialized countries has a magnesium deficiency which only worsens with age.” He went on to say, “If normal or even higher levels of magnesium can be maintained, we may be able to affect cognitive function.” Mr. Liu is a former professor at MIT in Boston and is co-founder of Magceutics, a California-based company developing pharmaceuticals for the prevention and treatment of age-dependent memory decline and Alzheimer’s disease. He claims that if you consume less than 400 milligrams of magnesium per day, you could be at risk for allergies, asthma and heart disease.

Just last week, I was telling a friend about this research and he mentioned that he had been told by a natural health practitioner to take a magnesium supplement for Restless Leg Syndrome, (RLS) a condition in which, legs at rest, usually when you are just lying down to go to sleep, feel as if they are twitching. I have RLS and thought that perhaps a magnesium supplement would improve my cognitive functioning as well as my sleep if it could stop that dreadful sensation of leg twitches. I would love to report at the end of this post that I immediately went out to the health food store and got some but…I forgot.

Once again a study, this time at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, examined role of working memory, and some other cognitive functions, in the development of schizophrenia. This time they were studying the pattern of cognitive disorders schizophrenics exhibit as children long before they have symptoms of schizophrenia. Duke researchers drew on the results of a long-term study conducted in New Zealand with more than 1,000 participants and found a consistent pattern of developmental difficulties starting at age seven. Co-author of the study, Richard Keefe, director of Duke’s Schizophrenia Research Group said, “These kids are lagging behind to begin with and they continue to fall behind.”

There were two patterns emerging:

1. Children who later developed schizophrenia had early deficits in verbal and visual learning, reasoning and conceptualization and these remained as they grew older

2. They also developed more slowly than their peers in processing speed, attention, visual-spatial problem solving and working memory

How all this ends up as schizophrenia is still unknown but another co-author in the study, Avshalom Caspi, who is the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychiatry at Duke, speculates that a child who struggles to make sense of the world becomes more socially isolated or more delusional.

Keefe said that eventually he hoped that they might be able to intervene, perhaps with anti-psychotic medication, in childhood and head off the adult psychosis. The study suggests that adult psychosis doesn’t just emerge fully formed but has early roots in the developmental process.

I have thought for a long time that schizophrenia is one of the saddest disorders as it seems as if one’s mind turns against oneself but there is another disorder that it is even sadder where one’s mind does something quite similar. That disorder is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). One of the required symptoms for a diagnosis of OCD is that the person must be conscious of their obsessive or compulsive behavior but be helpless to do anything about it. I know at least one person who has OCD and my heart goes out to her. Many times when she is exhibiting symptoms, she is in tears. I have, for a brief time in the past, had OCD symptoms and so have some understanding of how this plays out. In my case the behavior was checking and it was like I had forgotten whether I had locked a door again and again and again. I had, as a child, seen my father do this (so maybe it’s a family trait) and at the time a part of me marveled at the fact that I was repeating this simple action so many times. In my case it passed and has not returned. It happened at a time of great stress so I do have a worry that it could, at some point, return but the person that I was describing earlier has it most of the time and spends much of that time locked in her apartment because it is so painful for her to go outside. Her behavior is also checking but it involves looking at every scrap of paper she comes across to see if one of her friends or family has left her a personal message. A mutual friend who was trying to help her by walking with her one time asked her, “Do you really think that a friend would leave a note for you on the street in the gutter.” The friend with OCD just looked down and cried.

I am so glad that my own symptoms were so short lived but I also hope that this new study will lead to the possibility of earlier intervention and perhaps head of the disorder–at least for schizophrenia.

By now, two weeks into the new year, some of you may already have made and broken at least one New Year’s resolution. Don’t despair. If your resolution involved forming a new habit, like going to the gym at least twice a week, it may take just a little longer than two weeks to become fully formed. Neuroplasticity research indicates that new habits can rake three to four weeks to become part of your daily life. I have written about the dark side of neuroplasticity in previous posts but the lessons are these for breaking old habits and forming new ones:
1. You can do it but it will take time and effort and, most importantly, planning
2. You will have to go about it very deliberately
3. You will have to persist–three or four weeks or longer
4. If you revert to an old habit, just try again…persist

For myself, I am renewing a resolution I and a friend made last year. We had done our grading for first degree black belts in karate two years previously, and were going to go for our second degree. We didn’t make it. His health had worked against him and as for me…well the teachers who were guiding us didn’t think I was ready. So this New Year’s resolution is the same. Just last week I ran into another black belt that went for the grading as my friend and I and he told me he did the second degree grading last June. I was dismayed and amongst the many thoughts that ran through my head was one about dropping out of karate altogether. That one saddens me since I took up the martial art in the first place to improve my cognitive functioning. I didn’t entertain that thought for long and have now recommitted.

More on this at a subsequent date…

I had promised another post more-or-less on the same topic as the last and the one I propose I think is appropriate for this time of year. I have often spent too much on a Christmas gift, or more selfishly, bought something for myself that was too expensive or unnecessary or both. The resultant feeling of anxiety can be overpowering. If I am lucky when this strikes, I can take the item back for a refund but more and more I have been shopping at places that don’t allow refunds or exchanges. I did it last Saturday. Ostensibly I bought a bluetooth headset for a friend for Christmas at a discount electronics store. When I got it home I realized two things. My friend is useless with anything electronic and that, knowing this, I really bought it for myself.  Buyer remorse then set in unrelieved by a return to the store which was expressly forbidden on the receipt. I already had a bluetooth car speaker system. I bought it on an impulse but there is something creepier in there and that is that I knew it would make me feel better. Anyone with ADHD (and perhaps a couple of other disorders) can identify with this trick. But the trick can backfire, as was happening in this case, and make you feel worse. I tried to rationalize that it was a Christmas gift from me-to-me but my conscience wasn’t buying it. And I’m stuck with it. Well, I thought, at least I’ll get a post out of it.

It is called buyer remorse or, more correctly, cognitive dissonance and I came across an excellent explanation of it here.  Essentially cognitive dissonance according to this blog describes “the negative tension that results from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one’s beliefs.”  Wikipedia says the cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.  It goes on to say that beliefs often change to match behavior when beliefs and behavior are in conflict.  Buyer remorse is a well-known consumer phenomenon and with high-ticket items, the manufacturers’ often include a folder or card that explains to the buyer why they have made a wise choice.  The point is, of course, to keep them from returning the item.

There are far more serious consequences though in terms of addiction and cognitive dissonance then expresses itself as denial.  The plays out in the scenario where the individual is getting drunk, or stoned, everyday.  Addicts get stoned everyday.  I can’t be an addict so therefore getting stoned everyday is okay.

To make this whole post even more relevant you could say that the world is living in a time of global warming.  Governments, and individuals, aren’t doing much about it.  Therefore, if we are all sane, then doing nothing must be okay.  Or even better, since we aren’t doing anything about it then global warming can’t be happening.

Addiction and the accompanying denial are the downside of neuroplasticity.  Neural pathways can keep us in habits that are self-destructive.  To change this requires deliberate and continuous action to move us in the opposite direction.

I’ve taken this far from just a bit of Christmas shopping and in so, in keeping with the most positive actions of the season, I will stop and wish you all a great holiday.  (Or is breaking off here just more denial…)