A new study from the prestigious University of Oxford indicates that learning to juggle can lead to a sharper and better co-odinated brain.The study, reported by the BBC website here, was conducted by the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) and was designed to discover if learning a complex phystical skill could alter brain structure. The test group of 12 subjects was given weekly training in juggling and asked to practice for 30 minutes every day. The study lasted six weeks. The control group of 12 simply continued on with their daily living. Both groups were given MRI scans before and after the six weeks. There were no differences before and after in the control group but the experimental group showed a five percent increase in white matter in the rear of their brains where the skills of reaching and grasping objects in peripheral vision are located. One conclusion drawn by the researchers is that any complex skill would result in an increase in white matter in the brain but not necessarily in the same region as the study showed. Dr. Johansen-Berg said, “This should provide some hope for those with neurological diseases such as MS where neural pathways have become degraded.” One interesting sidebar of the study was that all the subjects in the experimental group showed increases in white matter even though the level of their juggling skills varied. This was interpreted by the scientists as meaning that there were benefits to complex physical skills training that related to the time spent training and practising and not the level of skill attained.
Today I transferred the ownership for a motor scooter that I purchased the day before yesterday and went for a ride–the first on my scooter. I bought the scooter for a number of reasons. I plan on saving a lot of money on gas. I hope to save money on parking. Scooter and motor scooters park free in Toronto. But mostly I just like the idea of travelling slower, being aware of the passing scenery in a new way, the wind in my face… I had originally thought I would buy a motor cycle but then last summer, everyone I knew that owned one crashed and all of them were injured–one quite seriously. Scooters go slower. Certainly mine does. It’s only 5o cc with a top speed of about 35 mph. Having ADHD I’m easily distracted and driving a car I miss a lot of stuff. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a good driver but I miss things I would rather enjoy. I feel when I’m on the scooter a bit like the feeling I described while Nordic walking a kind of zone thing and I guess that would be reason enough for getting it. Those moments certainly help to ease the tension of coping with the distractions and tensions that go with having ADHD.
Today I went to buy a lock that immobilizes the scooter when it is parked. The sales guy said to me, “Don’t lose the key. We’ll have to take a cutting torch to it to get it off.”
I replied, “I’m going to lose the key I have ADHD.”
He said, without a pause, “That’s why some people buy a third key.”
Most of the time I think I’m the only one (plus a few of my friends) who loses things like keys and directions and receipts. Hell I even lost the ownership certificate on the way back from registering the scooter this morning. The truth is I lose a lot of things but wallets and keys I don’t (touch wood). I use a trick I learned many years ago to always leave them in the same place. My wallet is only ever in two places. One is in my pocket and the other is on my bedroom dresser top. Same with the keys. Oh I have occasionally left my wallet on a counter top while paying for somethings but I’ve been lucky. Either the clerk found it and hurried after me or I’ve noticed before I got to far away. Once or twice I’ve left my keys in the lock in the door after opening it and noticed they weren’t in my pocket (or on my dresser ) and gone to look at the door.
My worry now is that I have put the scooter key and the lock key on one ring that is different from the one I use for all the rest of the keys. The reason is that I don’t want the whole bunch of them dangling together hanging from the scooter ignition. I am worried but I plan to follow the same rules although it will mean having two sets of keys in my pocket or on the top of my dresser. I do know that I won’t have to worry about leaving them in the door.
Approximately 45 years ago a passion that had enriched my life and gave it meaning came to an end. Last Sunday, quite deliberately, I chose to revisit that passion to see what would happen.
Usually, this blog is about neuroplasticity and working memory but the overall theme is about the journey I have been on to understand my brain and how it works. It is with this greater theme in mind that I write this post. Beginning around the time I was 12 years old I had an all consuming interest in guns. That interest, or more correctly that passion was at first kindled by a regular birthday present from my father–our yearly visit to the Sportsman’s Show in Toronto in March to look and talk with manufacturers (Winchester, Remington, Browning, Mossberg, Savage) about their guns. My father was rather distant and we rarely did much together. Looking back now it probably was largely because as a dedicated bank employee, he had little free time. But the Sportsman’s Show was one event we regularly connected through and I loved him for it. It was a different era back then. If I was growing up now I’m sure my parents would have discouraged this passion but they not only allowed they encouraged it. My graduation present from public school from them was a Winchester 22 caliber slide-action rifle and I used it every Saturday morning for two years to shoot targets with a friend at a range in the basement of York Armories in Toronto. In high school, I joined the rifle club and also shot once a week in the basement of the school with Lee Enfield 303 cal. rifles converted to 22 cal. I joined the Army Cadets to get a chance to shoot more guns and the summer, after my first year in high school, I went to Central Command Cadet Camp where we fired Lee Enfields using 303 caliber cartridges and the Bren light machine gun (same caliber). After my second year in high school I joined the student militia and got to fire the Canadian Forces new assault rifle–the FN C1 on ranges near Niagara-on-the-Lake. I ended up as Commanding Officer of my cadet corps and a Bombardier (Corporal) in the Artillery Militia. The artillery regiment was a medium one and they had really big guns–155mm howitzers. In my first year in university I joined the Canadian Officer Training Corps and went off to train at the Armored Corps School at Base Borden north of Toronto that first summer. We spent a lot of time on ranges learning to operate every weapon an ordinary front-line infantry soldier would come across.
But something happened at this point. I got discouraged. For reasons I won’t go into here I decided I wanted none of it–not the army, not the guns, not the career in the military and I quit before that training that summer was complete and asked to be discharged. I let the passion die. It was different times by then. The Vietnam war was just beginning to fill headlines and there was a general feeling, which still predominates, that guns kill people and therefore were bad. I really have nothing to say about this debate now. This post is about passion not politics but at the point I left Base Borden and eventually went back to my second year in university, I had a sour taste in my mouth about the military and about guns.
There was only one weapon that I did not get to train with that summer at Borden–the standard sidearm of the Canadian military at the time–the Browning 9mm automatic pistol.
As part of the exploration of my brain’s journey I, and a friend, decided to try our hand at pistol shooting and were invited to come last Sunday to a range used by the Forest Hill Revolver Club. As we were being briefed on range safety and operation of a 22 cal. target pistol made available by our host, I felt my brain stirring with old memories. I was invited to pick up the weapon and shown how to hold and fire it and then we stepped onto the range and into a vacant firing position and I heard the noise of pistols being discharged around me and the smell of gun smoke and felt like I had come home. I did okay with the target pistol. I scored 74. Not bad considering the 45 year gap. I guess our host was encouraged by my performance and leaned over to ask, “Would you like to try something larger.” I did and he produced a larger caliber automatic pistol, loaded it and handed it to me. I fired 10 rounds finding it much more difficult that the smaller caliber pistol I had just used. It wasn’t till I stepped back to let my companion shoot that she asked what it was. Our host said, “It’s a 9mm Browning automatic pistol.” I was home. All the sensations combined with the sense of completion at firing the Browning pistol that I had missed training with at Borden all those years ago …it all just felt right. I do pay attention to signs and as if just firing the Browning was not enough some how the pistol had deposited a 9mm shell casing in my pocket which I discovered when I stopped at a convenience store on the way home and pulled out my change. There it was amongst my change much to the alarm of the clerk behind the counter. In order to get there it would have had to bounce at least twice after being ejected from the pistol.
I will keep you posted.
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 fascinated by the idea of mindfulness ever since I first heard it described in a bar by a tennis pro who was trying to seduce my tennis partner…the most unlikely circumstances indeed. I have headed down a lot of blind allies since then including attending a class on mindfulness meditation by some well-meaning practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. For awhile I thought that I was confused about the idea of separating mindfulness from meditation or was it the idea that I could be meditating and doing something else such going for a walk or eating a meal? Recently, in bookstore specializing in psychology and spirituality I came across a most-unlikely guide–The Idiot’s Guide To Mindfulness. In this book was all that I had been searching for–instructions on how to practice mindfulness in any activity and completely removing it from its Tibetan Buddhist roots (not that I have anything against Tibetan Buddhism). Now it is quite possible that it is entirely coincidental but since I began reading the book and trying to be completely in the moment I have felt better, happier. In addition, a few weeks ago, I started Nordic walking in the cemetery right across the street from where I live. Nordic walking is an exercise that seems to lend itself to mindfulness practice.
While doing it, you are traveling much slower than you would if you were running. The rhythmic nature of using the poles and swinging your arms is quite natural and requires little attention from the conscious mind so you are more aware of your surroundings and you walk more upright than you would if you were…well just going for a walk. All of this adds up to the perfect setting for the practice of mindfulness. I have been seeing the cemetery in whole new ways and I have lived beside it, or near it, almost all of my life.
Now I have come across a study that concludes that mindfulness, which the study defines as the ability to be aware and attentive of the present moment without emotional reactivity or volatility, improves working memory as well as mood.
In the next post I will talk more about this study.