One Brain's journey

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.

New developments in neuroplasticity happen frequently these days but every so often something turns up that truely inspires awe and wonder. The most recent such news comes from University of Rochester Eye Institute where they have just completed a study in which subjects partially blinded by strokes were able to regain some vision by doing specially designed exercises on a computer every day over a period of several months. The program involved seven patients at the Institute and was led by Dr. Krystel Huxlin who commented at the conclusion, “This is the type of brain damage that clinicians and scientists have long believed you simply can’t recover from. It’s devastating and patients are usually sent home to somehow deal with it the best they can.” He added that the results provide a ray of hope for others with damage to the visual cortex as a result of strokes. With this kind of injury patients typically have trouble reading, driving or even doing ordinary chores such as grocery shopping. The visual cortex acts as a gateway to other areas of the brain and although these patients can technically see they can’t make sense of the information.

The exercises consisted of visual dots moving within a circle on a computer screen and although the patients could not initially “see” anything, they were instructed to stare at the screen anyway and guess which way the dots moved. If their choice, or guess, was correct they heard a chime.

All of the participants had improved vision and were able to see in ways they couldn’t before and two of them were actually able to resume driving. Huxlin commented that the exercises were grueling but who of us would not persevere in similar circumstances to regain our vision…

For the most part in this blog I try to avoid what may look like blatant promotion of Cogmed Working Memory Training and I have explained my relationship with them in the first post. In short, I do marketing work in Canada for them. However, to get to the point of this post, with the recession and the mass lay-offs that are occurring I recalled an article I wrote for HR Professional a year ago. HR Professional is the journal of the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario. Don’t let the Ontario part mislead you, this is one of the largest professional associations in North America. Anyway, to get back to the point, the thesis of the article was that in building a case to fire an employee, a supervisor may turn up what looks like poor performance but could actually be symptoms of problems with working memory and they were listed in the article. For the sake of convenience these symptoms could include work turned in late or not at all, persistent lateness, inability to get along with co-workers. Anyone familiar with HR practices knows the cost in time and revenue in building a case for dismissal, dismissing an employee and the cost of hiring a replacement. The cost of Cogmed Working Memory Training, which has a record of improving working memory in 80% of people who go through the training, is about $1,500 and this cost would certainly be less than the cost of firing any employee in any organization and you get to turn an underperforming employee into a valuable asset. Some analysts say the recession may have bottomed out. Regardless, smart employers, looking to the future, know that now is the time to start to rethink their HR practices including those around individual dismissals. Layoffs don’t usually involve much of a selection process and it is acceptable to most employers that one cost of doing it is losing some good employees. As the recovery begins, individual dismissals, once again, will become a fact of life but why fire an employee who could become a genuine asset to the organization. Retaining an employee and turning him into a valuable corporate asset is good for the company, good for the bottom line and, of course, will ensure the employee’s loyalty for a long time to come. Taking a step back and having another look at what is behind the poor performance of under performing employees could pay off in the long run. If it is a working memory problem it may be worth having a go at trying to improve it with Cogmed Training or something similar.

When I presented this argument to Bob Redford, an independent consultant in labor/management relations in Canada, his only comment was, “Well, when you look at the math its pretty much a no-brainer…”

About five years ago I was diagnosed with social anxiety. I already knew from my reading that ADHD almost always comes with coexisting disorders known as co-morbitities and I was pretty sure I had it from reading the symptoms. So it was no great surprise, but now it was confirmed. I also knew that social anxiety does not equate to shyness neither in the intensity nor in the range of fears. Social Anxiety is usually described as fear of scrutiny and, in my case at least, scrutiny resulting in judgment. I have no fear of public speaking. Well maybe a little, as in the old adage, “If you ain’t scared, you ain’t paying attention.” Mine comes into play around the telephone and with authority figures. I also have trouble in social situations where I don’t know people. I would rather rather walk a plank over a pool of sharks than step into a room full of people. In a lot of ways social anxiety had caused more damage in my life than ADHD and following the diagnosis there was another period of adjustment to that fact. Not long after though, I had the opportunity to participate in group therapy employing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). We met once a week over some two months or so. An early impression of my fellow participants was that they were all articulate, intelligent and if you met them under favorable social conditions you would never guess they had any kind of anxiety. I found the application of CBT somewhat strenuous mentally, although the one time outside the group that I did apply the mechanisms I was taught, I had quite positive results. But it was difficult and I came to the conclusion that if I had been in my twenties, I would have made the effort but at the age I was I wasn’t sure that the benefits equated to the effort of doing it and in my mind that effort was substantial and I couldn’t imagine having to go through it in every social encounter in which I would experience anxiety. However, I came across some research about what happens in the brain with CBT and realize now that I had missed an important aspect of the training. I discovered that it wasn’t just tricking my brain out of the fears. I was actually changing the structure of my brain. In other words, I would not have to go through the CBT process forever, every time I was faced with a social anxiety trigger. Eventually, I just wouldn’t react to the triggers at all because the structure of my brain would have been changed. I think I still have the worksheets I was given in those CBT sessions. I’m going to look for them now…