"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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The world looks different if you're depressed

Source: 30 November 2009

Not so easy to spot the finer details.

(Image: Jason Todd/Getty)

The world looks different if you're depressed

by Jessica Hamzelou

"Depression is not just a mood disorder: now we know it can affect the way a person sees the world."

DEPRESSION really does change the way you see the world. People with the condition find it easy to interpret large images or scenes, but struggle to "spot the difference" in fine detail. The finding hints at visual training as a possible treatment.

Depressed people have a shortage of a neurotransmitter called GABA; this has also been linked to a visual skill called spatial suppression, which helps us suppress details surrounding the object our eyes are focused on - enabling us to pick out a snake in fallen leaves, for instance.

Now Julie Golomb and colleagues at Yale University are trying to link this ability with major depressive disorder (MDD).

Article continues.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427365.000-the-world-looks-different-if-youre-depressed.html

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George Visger, Former SF 49er / "Head Knocker"

FROM

Head knocker

The road to the NFL is paved

with countless concussions.

Just ask former San Francisco

49er George Visger.

By R.V. Scheide

George Visger is losing his mind. He has no short-term memory. Say something to the former San Francisco 49er defensive lineman and immediately ask him what was just said, and he’ll repeat it back verbatim. Ask him five minutes later, and chances are he won’t have the foggiest notion, as if the words were a dimly struck bell that failed to register before its tone faded.

To cope, Visger jots down anything of importance with a pen he keeps behind his ear and the notebook he always has at hand. The notebook is his memory, and after dealing with his condition for the past 20 years, he has boxes and boxes filled with them.

He remembers the past well, at least the part before the nine brain surgeries. He first had his “bell rung” in the ninth grade, playing football for the West Stockton Bears in 1972. The practice drill was called Bull in the Ring; the players formed a circle 30 yards in diameter, with a football placed at the center. The coach then called out two numbers, and the two players rushed to see who could get to the ball first.

Visger faced off against the junior high school team’s fullback; they collided helmet to helmet at full speed. Visger came to and found himself staring facedown at the turf. He struggled to his feet, took one step and fell on his face again. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with his first concussion. There would be countless others during a playing career that spanned championship-winning teams at the high school, college and professional levels. The repeated blows to the head took their toll, and now Visger is paying dearly.

While head trauma has always been a concern in contact sports, during the past decade, researchers have discovered that repeated blows to the head while playing football can cause depression, loss of memory and, in extreme cases, dementia that mimics Alzheimer’s disease. The condition now has a name—chronic traumatic encephalopathy—and Visger, along with scores of other players, has many of its symptoms.

For its part, the NFL has yet to acknowledge CTE as legitimate syndrome, and many players have not been compensated fully for its debilitating effects.

Article continues.

Sacramento News & Review

Nov. 12, 2009

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

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