Dreams 'can help with learning'

Dear Yes-brainers,


Thanks to Cindy for passing along this article explaining how our dreaming brains can help us improve our memories.  Or, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart's tag line in the movie "The Maltese Falcon": "Dreams are the stuff that memories are made of," sort of. 


—John Horlivy


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Story from BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/8638551.stm
Published: 2010/04/23 01:57:22 GMT
© BBC MMX

Dreams 'can help with learning'


Napping after learning something new could help you commit it to memory - as long as you dream, scientists say.

They found people who dream about a new task perform it better on waking than those who do not sleep or do not dream.

Volunteers were asked to learn the layout of a 3D computer maze so they could find their way within the virtual space several hours later.

Those allowed to take a nap and who also remembered dreaming of the task, found their way to a landmark quicker.

The researchers think the dreams are a sign that unconscious parts of the brain are working hard to process information about the task.

Dr Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School, one of the authors of the paper, said dreams may be a marker that the brain is working on the same problem at many levels.

He said: "The dreams might reflect the brain's attempt to find associations for the memories that could make them more useful in the future."

Study tips


Co-author Dr Erin Wamsley said the study suggests our non-conscious brain works on the things that it deems are most important.

"Every day we are gathering and encountering tremendous amounts of information and new experiences," she said.

"It would seem that our dreams are asking the question, 'How do I use this information to inform my life?"

The research, published in the academic journal Cell Biology, could have practical implications.

The scientists say there may be ways to take advantage of this phenomenon for improving learning and memory.

For example, students might be better studying hard before bedtime, or taking a nap after a period of afternoon study.

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"In N.F.L. Fight, Women Lead the Way"

From The New York Times, Sports Sunday, April 10, 2010, pages 1 and 9.

In N.F.L. Fight, 
Women Lead the Way

By Alan Schwarz

Those who have followed the debate over the risks of sports concussions nodded knowingly Monday when its most significant legal action to date was brought by a woman.

Eleanor Perfetto’s worker’s compensation claim on behalf of her husband, Ralph Wenzel, asserted that his early-onset dementia was an occupational hazard of his seven seasons as a lineman in the N.F.L.  Having heard league officials say for years that high rates of dementia in former players either did not exist or could not be ascribed to football, Perfetto, who has a Ph.D. in public health, said she wanted to end all doubt in the courts.

Perfetto, who declared herself “one very pushy broad” while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last October, is one of six women from diverse backgrounds who have redirected the discussion of brain trauma. They range from players’ family members to a former team president, from a congresswoman to a leading neuropathologist.

“There is a sense of: ‘What is she doing here? She doesn’t belong,’ ” said Representative Linda T. Sanchez, Democrat of California, whose blunt criticism of the N.F.L.’s concussion policies during last fall’s Congressional hearing led to changes in league protocol. “People underestimate you, and it makes you very powerful.

“That’s something that’s afoot here with these women. The N.F.L. is so male and macho and testosterone-dominated, I don’t think they figured that women were going to be a force to be reckoned with in this thing, and they’re finding out the hard way.” 

The article continues.  

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Jill Mason: "It Couldn't Happen to Me"

Jill C. Mason

Jill Mason, author of Couldn't Happen to Me: A Life Changed by Paralysis and Traumatic Brain Injury, was the featured Speaker at our TBI Group Meeting, March 16, 2010. 


She told the story being hit while cycling by car driven by an intoxicated driver and of surviving the debilitating effects of paralysis and TBI. But she gave more time and emphasis to a second story, the story beyond basic survival, the story of her moving on to write the book, of public speaking to a variety of audiences about about her experiences, and of volunteering to work with people with similar injuries.  


Ms. Mason was well received by the group with many members asking questions which she responded to with aplomb, direct engagement, and insight.


At its conclusion, her presentation was rewarded with a strong round of applause.

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Below is a reflective review of Couldn't Happen to Me by Steve McManus of The Sacramento Bee.

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Book Review 

By Steve McManus, The Sacramento Bee, FEB. 25, 2010

Couldn't Happen to Me: A Life Changed by Paralysis and Traumatic Brain Injury 

By Jill C. Mason, 

November 2, 2009

Paperback

Years after drunken driver paralyzed her, ex-triathlete Jill Mason puts experience into book.

She had been an English major in college, so naturally she wanted someday to write a book.

One problem, though.

"I really didn't have a topic," Jill Mason says.

True, in her mid-20s, Mason felt she hadn't done enough living to tackle a memoir or even fiction. Not that she didn't have a full life. She was a triathlete, had run marathons, worked in marketing for a Silicon Valley firm and had found love with a high-tech engineer and fellow triathlete, Alan Liu.

Life was going swimmingly, to say nothing of the running and cycling.

A training ride along Highway 12 near Santa Rosa on Easter morning 2004 changed all that. Liu and Mason were hit by a drunken driver whose blood-alcohol level measured more than four times the legal limit.

Liu was killed; Mason survived – barely. Her spinal cord was severed, permanently paralyzing her. Injury to her brain limited her motor function – her right arm is numb, essentially useless – and leaves gaping holes in her memory and cognitive ability.

Now 32, living independently in a house she owns in south Sacramento, Mason works closely with Every 15 Minutes, a program that educates students on the perils of drinking and driving. She volunteers to help physical therapy students at California State University, Sacramento. She mounts her specially equipped hand cycle and heads out on the road for solo training rides, albeit much slower ones than in her triathlete days.

And yes, Mason has written that book.

[The article continues.]

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http://www.sacbee.com/2010/02/25/2561989_years-after-drunken-driver-paralyzed.html

Mind over matter: How your mind does your thinking

From New Scientist, 27 March 2010

Mind over matter: How your mind does your thinking

So much for abstract thought — even high-concept thinking may be rooted in our physical selves.

By Anil Ananthaswamy

"I THINK therefore I am," said Descartes.Perhaps he should have added: "I act, therefore I think."

Our ability to think has long been considered central to what makes us human. Now research suggests that our bodies and their relationship with the environment govern even our most abstract thoughts. This includes thinking up random numbers or deciding whether to recount positive or negative experiences.

"Advocates of traditional accounts of cognition would be surprised," says Tobias Loetscher at the University of Melbourne in Parkville, Australia. "They generally consider human reasoning to involve abstract cognitive processes devoid of any connection to body or space."

Until recently, the assumption has been that our bodies contribute only to our most basic interactions with the environment, namely sensory and motor processes. The new results suggest that our bodies are also exploited to produce abstract thought, and that even seemingly inconsequential activities have the power to influence our thinking. 

The article continues. Click here:  Mind over matter: How your body does your thinking

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George Visger Visits the Group

George Visger

George Visger Visits the Group


Former San Francisco 49er George Visger spoke to the group during our February 2010 meeting about his experiences as a multiple concussion survivor.


▶ Below are pictures taken during the event, followed by a list of links about the problem of NFL-related concussions.

Photos by John Horlivy
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Related Links:

▶ "Head knocker: The road to the NFL is paved with countless concussions. Just ask former San Francisco 49er George Visger." By R.V. Scheider,  Nov. 12, 2009

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=1317643

▶ "N.F.L. Issues New Guidelines on Concussions"

By Alan Schwarz,  NewYork Times, December 3, 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/sports/football/03concussion.html

▶ "Before Dementia Assistance: Help With NFL Application"

By Alan Schwarz, New York Times, January 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/sports/football/22eckwood.html?emc=eta1

▶ "Ex-NFL Players feel concussion's long-lasting damage"

By Stephanie Smith, cnnhealth.com, February 5, 2010

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/05/concussions.visger.football/index.html

▶ An open letter from George Visger to the NFL

Dave Pear's Blog: the unofficial blog for independent football veterans, Nov. 15, 2009

http://davepear.com/blog/2009/11/open-letter-from-george-visger/

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Can the Power of Thought Stop Aging?

BBC News Magazine

5 February 2010

A cure to ageing is a holy grail of medicine

Can the power of thought stop you ageing?

By Abigail Williams

In 1979 psychologist Ellen Langer carried out an experiment to find if changing thought patterns could slow ageing. But the full story of the extraordinary experiment had been hidden until now.

How much control do you have over how you will age?

Many people would laugh at the idea that people could influence the state of their health in old age by positive thinking. A way of mitigating ageing is a holy grail for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, but an experiment by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer three decades ago could hold significant clues.

 The article continues.

Ellen Langer in 1979 and today

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Before Dimentia Assistance: Help With NFL Application

New York Times
January 22, 2010

Jerry Eckwood, a former Buccaneers running back, had help filling out paperwork before being evaluated by Dr. Allen Sills.

Before Dementia Assistance, Help With N.F.L. Application

By Alan Schwarz 

FRANKLIN, Tenn. — The meaty right hand that once plowed footballs past oncoming linebackers cradled the pen as it negotiated the form. When it paused in confusion, another hand — all but a stranger’s — hovered in to assist.

“Are you my representative?” Jerry Eckwood asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mitchell Welch replied.

They hoped the worry was ending on Monday, when Welch picked up Eckwood from his personal-care bungalow outside Nashville, drove him to a neurosurgeon and helped him complete an application for the 88 Plan. Since 2007, the 88 Plan — jointly run by the N.F.L. and the players union — has spent about $7 million to reimburse some medical expenses of former players with dementia. But as the industry begins to recognize the cognitive damage in many retired players, concerns linger that scores of eligible veterans are either unaware of the 88 Plan or too impaired to apply.

While vilifying the league’s approach to concussions and overall player safety before the House Judiciary Committee in October, Gay Culverhouse, the former president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, promised to set up an organization to seek out former players in need, arrange their doctors visits and help complete the paperwork. Her vow became vision when the fledgling Gay Culverhouse Player Outreach Program sent Welch to assist Jerry Eckwood.

 The article continues.

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"In Search of Memory: The Neuroscientist Eric Kandel"

 MOVIE REVIEW

 New York Times

January 8, 2010

Total Recall: A Journey From Vienna to Brooklyn and the Center of the Brain

By A. O. SCOTT

nnIt’s not often that you are invited to spend an hour or two in the presence of a Nobel Prize winner, and “In Search of Memory: The Neuroscientist Eric Kandel,” Petra Seeger’s new documentary, offers an especially gratifying opportunity. The film’s subject won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research into the workings of the brain. He is particularly interested in how, at the cellular level, the mind stores and sorts various stimuli and turns them into long- and short-term memory.

nnFor Dr. Kandel, whose laboratory conducts experiments on mice and snails, memory is one of the keys to human identity. Our mental patterns of recollection and learning have been grist for much philosophical and literary speculation, to which Dr. Kandel, a deeply cultured and thoroughly civilized man, pays sincere respect. And though he is preoccupied with physical processes, he is also aware of just how mysterious and complicated their implications and results can be.

Article continues here.

Neuroscientist Eric.R. Kandel mm l

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GRAY MATTER Neurons make

 new connections during learning.

Illustration from istockphoto.com

January 3, 2010  • The New York Times

ADULT LEARNING | NEUROSCIENCE

How to Train the Aging Brain

By BARBARA STRAUCH

   I LOVE reading history, and the shelves in my living room are lined with fat, fact-filled books. There’s “The Hemingses of Monticello,” about the family of Thomas Jefferson's slave mistress; there’s “House of Cards,” about the fall of Bear Stearns; there’s “Titan,” about John D. Rockefeller Sr.

   The problem is, as much as I’ve enjoyed these books, I don’t really remember reading any of them. Certainly I know the main points. But didn’t I, after underlining all those interesting parts, retain anything else? It’s maddening and, sorry to say, not all that unusual for a brain at middle age: I don’t just forget whole books, but movies I just saw, breakfasts I just ate, and the names, oh, the names are awful. Who are you?

   Brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s, also get more easily distracted. Start boiling water for pasta, go answer the doorbell and — whoosh — all thoughts of boiling water disappear.         Indeed, aging brains, even in the middle years, fall into what’s called the default mode, during which the mind wanders off and begin daydreaming.

   Given all this, the question arises, can an old brain learn, and then remember what it learns? Put another way, is this a brain that should be in school?

As it happens, yes. While it’s tempting to focus on the flaws in older brains, that inducement overlooks how capable they’ve become. Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age.

   Many longheld views, including the one that 40 percent of brain cells are lost, have been overturned. What is stuffed into your head may not have vanished but has simply been squirreled away in the folds of your neurons.

To read the entire article, click here.

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Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them

New York Times. December 21, 2009.

Melissa Hitzges, a teacher at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center, working with her students to help them recognize patterns.

BRAIN POWER

Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them

By Benedict Carey

mmBUFFALO — Many 4-year-olds cannot count up to their own age when they arrive at preschool, and those at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center are hardly prodigies. Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve.

mmBut there they were on a recent Wednesday morning, three months into the school year, counting up to seven and higher, even doing some elementary addition and subtraction. At recess, one boy, Joshua, used a pointer to illustrate a math concept known as cardinality, by completing place settings on a whiteboard.

mm“You just put one plate there, and one there, and one here,” he explained, stepping aside as two other students ambled by, one wearing a pair of clown pants as a headscarf. “That’s it. See?”

For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.

mmBut recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts.

mmIn one recent study, for instance, researchers found that most entering preschoolers could perform rudimentary division, by distributing candies among two or three play animals. In another, scientists found that the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed.

mmThe teaching of basic academic skills, until now largely the realm of tradition and guesswork, is giving way to approaches based on cognitive science. In several cities, including Boston, Washington and Nashville, schools have been experimenting with new curriculums to improve math skills in preschoolers. In others, teachers have used techniques developed by brain scientists to help children overcome dyslexia. mmmClick here to read the entire article.

FROM CINDY: MAmazing the things they do with kids in Buffalo. Following Cognitive theory like Montessori with Piaget, and Waldorf with Steiner where quantities, shapes and the senses rule from the mind-heart. One breast =warmth, nourishment, and round comfort. Just a thought...

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TBI Holiday Meeting

Scattered among our group are nine star celebrities. Can you find them?

Jennifer Aniston, Sean Connery, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Brad Pitt, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne.

Happy Holidays!

John

New N.F.L. Guidelines on Concussions

From The New York Times, December 3, 2009

Ben Roethlisberger (7) led the Steelers to last year’s Super Bowl title,
 but missed last week’s game with a concussion.

N.F.L. Issues New Guidelines on Concussions

By Alan Schwarz

Options:

1.) Read the full essay by clicking here.

2.) Read the following selected summative passages. —J.H.

▶The The National Football League on Wednesday announced that it would impose its most stringent rules to date on managing concussions, requiring players who exhibit any significant sign of concussion to be removed from a game or practice and be barred from returning the same day.

▶The league has maintained, despite widespread criticism, that it was safe to allow players to return to the field as soon as their symptoms were gone — even in the same game in which the injury occurred. It has not been uncommon for players to return, either after passing a sideline test or by not revealing their symptoms.

▶The new rule was made in the wake of heightened scrutiny of the league’s approach to head injuries, outlined in a series of articles in The New York Times. At a Congressional hearing in October, the N.F.L. was criticized for its practices and research methods. Last week, the co-chairmen of the league’s committee on concussions resigned under fire, on the same day the league announced that players who sustain concussions could be cleared to return only by independent experts.

▶The culture of playing through brain injuries in the N.F.L. has also influenced younger players, for whom repeat concussions can be serious. Because the governing bodies at the college and high school levels do not have rules regarding concussion management, amateur players routinely return after concussions, even if they are evaluated by a doctor or athletic trainer.

▶Symptoms that require immediate removal include amnesia, poor balance and an abnormal neurological examination, whether or not those symptoms quickly subside. For symptoms like dizziness and headache, however, a player can return to the field unless they are “persistent,” the statement said.

▶Dr. Elliot Pellman, a member of the league’s committee on concussions and the primary author of several published studies that defended the league’s more liberal return-to-play protocol, declined to comment on Wednesday’s rule change.

▶ In September, The New York Times obtained the results of a league-sponsored telephone survey that indicated that N.F.L. retirees were reporting diagnoses of dementia and other memory-related diseases at several times the rate in the national population. The finding corroborated several other studies that the league had disparaged, prompting the House Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing on football brain injuries on Oct. 28 in which [N.F.L. Commissioner Roger] Goodell and the players union were criticized on the issue.

▶Dr. [Joseph] Maroon [the team neurosurgeon for the Steelers and a member of the N.F.L.’s committee on concussions] called the rule,“another progressive step for the league in terms of player safety.” Asked why the league did not adopt the rule three years ago, when outside experts were calling for it, he said: “You can ask a lot of good questions. The important thing is it’s being done now.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/sports/football/03concussion.html

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