These findings suggest that we are not at the mercy of passive forgetting; rather, our memories can be shaped by two opposite mechanisms of memory control.

Ever wish you could just forget THAT ever happened? New research suggests that you can, and that your brain has two methods to try and erase that memory.

Published in the journal Neuron, these findings help explain how we process some of the things that we would like to forget, and could lead to the development of treatments to improve disorders of memory control.

“This study is the first demonstration of two distinct mechanisms that cause such forgetting: one by shutting down the remembering system, and the other by facilitating the remembering system to occupy awareness with a substitute memory,” said lead study author Roland Benoit, Ph.D., at the University of Cambridge.

Previous studies have shown that individuals can voluntarily block memories from awareness. Although several neuroimaging studies have examined the brain systems involved in intentional forgetting, they have not revealed the cognitive tactics that people use or the precise neural underpinnings.

Two possible ways to forget unwanted memories are to suppress them or to substitute them with more desirable memories, and these tactics could engage distinct neural pathways.

Investigators tested this possibility by using fMRI, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, to examine the brain activity of volunteers who had learned associations between pairs of words and subsequently attempted to forget these memories by either blocking them out or recalling substitute memories.

Although the strategies were equally effective, they activated distinct neural circuits.

During memory suppression, a brain structure called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex inhibited activity in the hippocampus, a region critical for recalling past events.

On the other hand, memory substitution was supported by the caudal prefrontal cortex and midventrolateral prefrontal cortex — two regions involved in bringing specific memories into awareness in the presence of distracting memories.

“A better understanding of these mechanisms and how they break down may ultimately help understanding disorders that are characterized by a deficient regulation of memories, such as post traumatic stress disorder,” Benoit says.

“Knowing that distinct processes contribute to forgetting may be helpful, because people may naturally be better at one approach or the other.”

These findings suggest that we are not at the mercy of passive forgetting; rather, our memories can be shaped by two opposite mechanisms of mnemonic control.

Source: http://download.cell.com/neuron/pdf/PIIS0896627312007076.pdf?intermediate=true

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Almost everyone knows the feeling: you see a delicious piece of chocolate cake on the table, but as you grab your fork, you think twice. The cake is too fattening and unhealthy, you tell yourself. Maybe you should skip dessert.

But the cake still beckons.

(This article is reprinted from CalTech press release: http://mr.caltech.edu/press_releases/13562)

In order to make the healthy choice, we often have to engage in this kind of internal struggle. Now, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have identified the neural processes at work during such self-regulation — and what determines whether you eat the cake.

“We seem to have independent systems capable of guiding our decisions, and in situations like this one, these systems may compete for control of what we do,” says Cendri Hutcherson, a Caltech postdoctoral scholar who is the lead author on a new paper about these competing brain systems, which is published in the September 26 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

“In many cases, these systems guide behavior in the same direction, so there’s no conflict between them,” she adds. “But in other cases, like the all-too-common inner fight to resist the temptation of eating the chocolate cake, they can guide behavior toward different outcomes. Furthermore, the outcome of the decision seems to depend on which of the two systems takes control of behavior.”

A large body of evidence shows that people make decisions by assigning different values to the various options, says Antonio Rangel, a professor of economics and neuroscience and the senior author of the paper. To make their decisions, people select the choice with the highest value. “An important and controversial open question — which this study was designed to address — is whether there is a single value signal in the brain, or if there are instead multiple value signals with different properties that compete for the control of behavior.”

According to the single-value hypothesis, Rangel explains, the ability to say no to the chocolate cake depends on just one system that compares values like healthiness and taste. But the multiple-value hypothesis suggests that there are different systems that process different values. The ability to turn down the cake therefore depends on whether the brain can activate the appropriate system — the one that evaluates healthiness. If you do not want the cake, it means you place a higher value on health than on taste and your brain acts accordingly.

In the study, the researchers asked 26 volunteers to refrain from eating for four hours prior to being tested. During the experiment, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine was used to measure the brain activity of the hungry participants while they decided how much they were willing to pay for different snacks, which were shown on a computer screen. The items, including foods like chips and vegetables, varied in taste and healthiness. The subjects were explicitly asked to make their choices in one of three conditions: while attempting to suppress their desire to eat the food, while attempting to increase their desire to eat the food, or while acting normally. The volunteers could do whatever they wanted to control themselves — for example, focusing on the taste (say, to increase their desire to eat something delicious but unhealthy) or the healthiness of the item (to reduce that urge).

After a four-second period, the participants placed real bids for the right to buy the items that reflected the value they placed on the food.

The researchers found that activity in two different brain areas correlated with how much the participants said they wanted an item, as indicated by their bids. The two regions were the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), which sits behind the temples, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which is in the middle of the forehead just above the eyes.

Significantly, the two areas played very different roles in the self-regulation process. When volunteers told themselves not to want the food, the dlPFC seemed to take control; there was a stronger correlation between the signals in this area and behavior, while the signals in the vmPFC appeared to have no influence on behavior. When the volunteers encouraged themselves to want the food, however, the role of each brain region flipped. The vmPFC took control while the signals in the dlPFC appeared to have no effect.

The researchers also found that the brain’s ability to switch control between these two areas was not instantaneous. It took a couple of seconds before the brain was able to fully ignore the conflicting region. For example, when a volunteer tried to suppress a craving, the vmPFC initially appeared to drive behavior. Only after a couple of seconds — while the participant tried to rein in his or her appetite — did the correlation between bids and vmPFC activity disappear and the dlPFC seem to take over.

“This research suggests a reason why it feels so difficult to control your behavior,” Hutcherson says. “You’ve got these really fast signals that say, go for the tempting food. But only after you start to go for it are you able to catch yourself and say, no, I don’t want this.”

Previous work in Rangel’s lab showed that when dieters made similar food choices, their decisions were controlled only by the vmPFC. The researchers speculate that because dieters are more accustomed to self-control, their brains do not show the neural struggle seen in the new study. If that is the case, then it may be possible that people can improve their self-control with more practice.

In addition to Hutcherson and Rangel, the other authors on the Journal of Neuroscience paper are Hilke Plassmann from the École Normale Supérieure in France and James Gross of Stanford. The title of the paper is “Cognitive regulation during decision making shifts behavioral control between ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal value systems.” This research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Written by Marcus Woo

But what if you could boost your focus on what is important and ignore those distractions? How much more effective could you become?

Focus is the conscious Thinking capacity you need to concentrate and complete a selected task, while ignoring distracting information. So having a strong capacity to focus is relevant to everything you do. Focus also determines the quality of your Thinking, by allowing you to immerse in the moment.

Learn about the 5 Strategies you can employ to BOOST Your Focus in this video with Dr. Evian Gordon.

Our brain cells communicate with each other through chemical messengers. Medication and talk therapy, among other things, can alter this process.

Prescribing the right medication or therapy for anxiety and depression often consists of a trial and error approach. It is very difficult to tell who is going to respond to a specific treatment because there is no single cause, so no simple remedy or cure. A multitude of factors can play a role. Whether it’s altering the way our brain cells communicate with medication or talk therapy, anxiety and depression are complicated conditions with no easy fix.

An extensive amount of research is being conducted to improve the odds that any given treatment will be effective. A recent Bloomberg News article discusses the progress being made in depression treatment prediction. In his article, Ryan Flinn writes:

“About 15.5 million people reported struggling with bouts of depression in a 2010 U.S. survey, and 11 percent of Americans 12 and older are treated for the disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Depression costs U.S. employers more than $34 billion a year in lost productivity and, in the worst cases, often leads to suicide, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an Arlington, Virginia patient advocacy group.”

Often patients may try three or four different anti-depressant medications before finding the one that works. But now, companies are offering treatment outcome prediction tests ranging from brain scans, to genetic tests, to cognitive assessments. What may prove to be the most accurate is a combination of tests.

Let’s talk specifics. Electrical activity in the brain can be recorded, and if a patient’s “brain waves” match up with the brain waves of subjects who responded well to a specific treatment option, that same treatment is more likely to be effective.

Genetic tests can also give us some insight into what treatment options may be the most effective. From genetic information obtained from a blood test or cheek swab, researchers can determine how efficiently different medications are broken down or metabolized.

Cognitive tests that evaluate thinking, feeling, self-regulation and emotion are also a good measure of who will respond best to what type of depression medication or therapy. Studies are now underway to determine the “cognitive markers” that predict optimal response to various forms of treatment.

A new study by scientists at MIT and their colleagues has demonstrated that functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of subjects with a specific type of anxiety called social anxiety disorder can help predict response to cognitive behavioral therapy.

By looking at images of faces before and after therapy, scientists were able to determine that those subjects who had the greatest difference in brain activity in the visual cortex when looking at angry versus neutral faces, showed the most improvement after 12 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy. Their findings were published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

“Our vision is that some of these measures might direct individuals to treatments that are more likely to work for them,” says John Gabrieli, a professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, in a news release from the university.

The team studied 59 participants with an average age of 84, recruited from local retirement communities in Southern California.  The volunteers were split into two groups:  the first group used a brain fitness program for an average of 73.5 (20 minute) sessions across a six-month period while a second group played it less than 45 times during the same period.  Researchers found that the first group demonstrated significantly higher improvement in memory and language skills, compared to the second group.

IMPACT:
The study’s findings add to the field exploring whether such brain fitness tools may help improve language and memory and may ultimately help protect individuals from the cognitive decline associated with aging and Alzheimer’s disease.

Age-related memory decline affects approximately 40 percent of older adults and is characterized by self-perception of memory loss and decline in memory performance.  Previous studies have shown that engaging in mental activities can help improve memory, but little research has been done to determine whether the numerous brain fitness games and memory training programs on the market are effective in improving memory.  This is one of the first studies to assess the cognitive effects of a computerized memory training program.

UCLA Health news release:

http://www.uclahealth.org/body.cfm?id=403&action=detail&ref=1967

Scientists are continuing to examine the mechanisms underlying emotional memory, and have now determined that emotional memories are far more vivid than non-emotional memories.

“We’ve discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane,” says Rebecca Todd, a postdoctoral fellow in U of T’s Department of Psychology and lead author of the study published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience. “Whether they’re positive – for example, a first kiss, the birth of a child, winning an award – or negative, such as traumatic events, breakups, or a painful and humiliating childhood moment that we all carry with us, the effect is the same.”

“What’s more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on,” says Todd in a press release from the university. “We call this ‘emotionally enhanced vividness’ and it is like the flash of a flashbulb that illuminates an event as it’s captured for memory.”

A small part of the brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for tagging information as emotionally charged or not, is activated more when subjects are looking at images rated as ‘vivid’ versus those that are not.

“The experience of more vivid perception of emotionally important images seems to come from a combination of enhanced seeing and gut feeling driven by amygdala calculations of how emotionally arousing an event is,” says Todd.

The researchers began by measuring the subjective experience of the vividness of perception. Taking pictures of scenes that were emotionally arousing and negative (scenes of violence or mutilation, or sharks and snakes baring their teeth), emotionally arousing and positive (mostly mild erotica), and neutral scenes (such as people on an escalator), they overlaid the images with varying amounts of “visual noise,” which looked like the snow one would see on an old television screen. The pictures were then shown to study participants who were asked to say whether each image had the same, more, or less noise than a standard image with a fixed amount of noise.

“We found that while people were good at rating how much noise was on the picture relative to a standard, they consistently rated pictures that were emotionally arousing as less noisy than neutral pictures regardless of the actual level of noise,” says Todd. “When a picture was rated as less noisy, then they actually saw the picture underneath more clearly, as if there is more signal relative to noise in the emotionally arousing picture. The subjective meaning of a picture actually influenced how clearly the participants saw it.”

The researchers used additional tests to rule out other explanations of their findings, such as how ‘noisy’ a picture seems due to less vibrant colours or a more complex scene. They also used eye-tracking measures to eliminate the possibility that people look at emotionally arousing images differently, causing them to rate some as more vivid.

“We next wanted to see if this finding of emotionally enhanced vividness influenced memory vividness,” says Todd. “So, in two different studies, we measured memory for the images, both right after seeing them in the first place and one week later.”

In the first study, 45 minutes after they did the noise task, participants were asked to write down all the details they could about pictures they remembered seeing. How much detail they remembered was a measure of vividness. In the second study, participants were shown the pictures again one week later and asked if they remembered them and, if so, how vividly they remembered them from very vague to very detailed.

“Both studies found that pictures that were rated higher in emotionally enhanced vividness were remembered more vividly,” says Todd.

Finally, the researchers used brain imaging measures to look at when the brain responded to emotionally enhanced vividness and what regions of the brain responded. Using electrophysiology (EEG) to measure the timing of activity in the cortex to see when the brain is sensitive to vividness, gave them a sense of whether this subjective vividness was more about seeing vividly, or thinking that it was more vivid when you’re considering it after the fact.

“We found that the brain indexes vividness pretty quickly – about a 5th of a second after seeing a picture, which suggests it’s about seeing and not just thinking,” says Todd. “Emotion alters activity in the visual cortex, which in turn influences how we see.”

The investigators also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at what brain regions were more active when people look at things that they perceive as more vivid because they’re emotionally important. Again, they found amygdala, visual cortex, and interoceptive cortex activity went up with increased vividness.

“We know now why people perceive emotional events so vividly – and thus how vividly they will remember them – and what regions of the brain are involved,” says Todd. “Knowing that there are going to be differences among people as to how strongly they show this emotionally enhanced vividness and the strength of the brain activation patterns underlying them, could be useful in predicting an individual’s vulnerability to trauma, including intrusive memories experienced by people with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Material was reprinted from a press release distributed by the University of Toronto: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/uot-ple082012.php

Positive feelings enhance your wellbeing and happiness, yet we naturally tune in more to negative than positive feelings. That’s just the way our brains are wired. We need to stay safe and avoid threat.

Training your associations with positive feelings will help optimize your wellbeing.

In this webinar, Dr. Evian Gordon shares insights on the neuroscience of positivity. Checking and challenging negativity with more realistic positive context allows you to make better decisions and reduce stress.

This webinar is about the power of your positive brain.

Script:

In the next 10 minutes, I will share insights from neuroscience about the impact of positivity and I’ll propose a pathway for you to consider to know and train your positivity. Today’s webinar is about the Power of Your Positive Brain. This is part of a 10 webinar series and each one’s about 10 minutes long. Its goal is to empower you with a more effective brain to reduce stress and feel calm, make clear decisions, nudge positive feelings, have quality personal and work relationships, and master your zone of peak performance.

Know your brain. You can know and train your brain to switch on negative automatic bias to more realistic positive thinking in all situations. There are multiple successful strategies to think positively. They range from a psychological to a spiritual point of view. I’ll just briefly mentioned two. The first Martin Seligman, who highlights the importance of focusing on your natural strengths and in being optimistic in thinking about the future. The second is Barbara Fredrickson. She highlights the importance of continually nudging positive thinking since they have the capacity to spiral and broaden and build your positivity and your openness to grow quality relationships and quality connections with other people.

A common element of these approaches is to challenge your negative thinking and provide it with the more appropriate realistic context. There are five thinking traps that can be overcome with brain training your positivity. First is Catastrophizing – charming. This is when people magnify their problems. Future negative events that are only remotely possible become in their minds certainties and they believe that they will end up in disasters. For example, the plane on which you’re traveling hits turbulence. You think, “We’re going to crash and I’ll never see my family again.” Second, black-and-white thinking. You set high standards for yourself and others in see everything as all or nothing. If you don’t do something really well, you tell yourself that it’s simply not good enough. This thinking trap is really common in people who tend to be perfectionist.

An example is you clear out your garage, which is quite a bit task. But instead of working on one section at a time, you tackle it all at one go and you tell yourself, “I have to get it finished today or I’ll never get it done.”

Third example is jumping to conclusions. You jump to a negative conclusion when there’s insufficient evidence to support it.  An example of this is the mind-reading trap in which you think that you know what someone else is thinking when there is no way that you can really be sure. An example is in official looking letter could arrive in your mail and you think, “This is definitely more hassle. It’s probably a bill.”

Fourth example: Over generalizing. You think that because something unpleasant has happened in the past, it’s almost certain to happen in the future. An example is that you’re running late for work and you think, “I know that I’m going to get caught in traffic or a traffic jam; happens every time especially when I need to get somewhere urgently.

The fifth thinking trap is “should” statements. You set very high standards for yourself and tell yourself that you “should” do this or you “should” have done that. You feel guilty about falling short of your “should” expectations. An example is if you haven’t followed a new business lead because you’re fully focused on the current opportunities and you think to yourself, “I should have followed that new lead because all my current opportunities could fail.”

Checking and challenging negativity with more realistic positive context allows you to make better decisions and reduce stress.

Train. So now that you know about positivity, how can you train to be more positive? Knowing is in the doing. Every strategy to boost your positivity will only become an automatic brain habit with regular training. Just like training and strengthening a muscle delivers physical endurance. You can also train your positivity to override negativity.

So let’s get started with the first game. It is Thought Challenger which we played at the beginning of the Webinar. It draws upon the well-established principles of CBT, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, developed by Aaron Beck from the University of Pennsylvania in the 1980s. But it also incorporates strategies to avoid the five negative Thinking Traps –  Catastrophize, Black and White Thinking, Jumping to Conclusions, Over-Generalizing and “Should” statements – but it also includes the optimism insights, the broaden and build, developing more realistic thoughts, and recent CBT variance that draw upon calm acceptance of negativity. Most of all, the current features of game theory, that’s interactive engagement and reward feedback.

Thought Challenger is a personalized thought habits changer. It’s a negative brain “circuit breaker” if you like, that allows you to more easily tackle the adverse situations that are inevitable to come your way. In essence, it engages you to look at more appropriate options and make changes from being negative to positive – engaging, realistic and fun.

The second brain training that I’d like to share with you is Positive Reflections. This is a positive self-talk, positive statements about yourself that can help to break the cycle – to switch from positive when you have negative intrusive thoughts. So these are positive thoughts such as, “I will focus on what works for me”.  Although positive emotions are transient; the effect can be quite long-lasting. Over the long-term, the effects of positivity can accumulate, they can become a resource that you can draw upon in times of crisis or in need.

People who savor and dwell on the highlights of their life extract more positivity from life. Positive people have been found to replay positive events about their life and to relive those good feelings surrounding them. Add photos to your entries and frame your special photos to put on your wall. Experiences are best remembered if you use these personal visual cues that help you relive and appreciate positive events and positive moments. It’s now over to you

Know Your Brain 1-2-4. There is one organizing principle for all your brain functions and that these two minimize danger and maximize award. There are two modes of processes; Conscious – variable; and non-conscious – intuition. And 4 Key Processes: Thinking, Emotions, Feelings and Self-Regulation, to make you most adaptive and effective in everything that you do.

MRI of the human brain.

Different brain regions are activated and different strategies for learning are used when subjects are stressed, say authors Schwabe and Wolf in an article published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Stressed and non-stressed subjects were asked to perform a “weather prediction task,” in which playing cards with different symbols were presented, indicating the chance for rain. The idea of the game was to predict the weather based on the combination of cards presented. Each combination of cards was associated with a certain probability of good or bad weather.

The “stressor” involved placing the subjects’ hand in ice-cold water for the stressed group and warm water for the non-stressed group. (It may sound tame in terms of stressors, but try it out. It really gets to you after a while). Researchers recorded brain activity with MRI while subjects were playing the game. Both stressed and non-stressed subjects were able to learn how to predict the weather according to the symbols on the cards.

Non-stressed subjects utilized a simple strategy to learn to predict the weather, using individual symbols but not the combination of symbols. Researchers saw activation in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in “declarative” memory.

Stressed subjects applied a more complex strategy, making decisions based on the combination of symbols. But they did this subconsciously and were unable to verbalize their strategy. In the stressed subjects, a region of the brain involved in learning and “procedural” memory, called the striatum was activated.

“Stress interferes with conscious, purposeful learning, which is dependent upon the hippocampus,” concluded Dr. Schwabe. “So that makes the brain use other resources. In the case of stress, the striatum controls behaviour — which saves the learning achievement.”

Non-stressed subjects used a deliberate strategy to learn how to predict the weather based on what cards were presented, while stressed subjects did not.

Staying in your Zone of optimal performance at critical moments requires extreme Self-regulation of your Emotion-Feeling-Thinking.

In this webinar, Dr. Evian Gordon explains “Finding and keeping your Zone of optimal performance.”

Your ‘Zone’ describes the nonconscious, automatic, in-the-moment sense of well-being that enables you to perform optimally. Finding your Zone and maintaining it requires knowing your brain dynamics and training what works for you.

Are you able to find and maintain your Zone on demand?

In the next 10 minutes, Dr. Gordon will outline how to find and maintain your Zone of optimal performance.

Click on the image below to view the webinar:

This 10 part Webinar series is about Self Empowerment.

To Know +Train your brain releases you from the whim of your reactive impulses.

Today’s webinar is all about Knowing and Training your Zone of optimal performance. It’s all about Brain-Body-Performance Timing.

KNOW

Firstly, what is the Zone?

‘Zone’ describes the nonconscious, automatic, in-the-moment sense of Flow that enables you to perform optimally. Finding your zone and maintaining it requires knowing your brain’ dynamics and training ‘What Works for you.’

Every athlete has a personal bias toward Positivity or negativity, a personal capacity for remaining in the moment, and a personal ability to block out negativity and not overcompensate (try too hard) after errors.

Ironically, some athletes who have an intense drive to win are more tuned in to negativity, particularly in high arousal and high pressure moments.

Optimizing your Emotion-Feeling-Thinking-Regulation to maintain your Zone of peak performance, can be a subtle and challenging process.

Evidence from the Brain Resource International Database suggests that you may be naturally in your Zone of peak performance more than you think. However, even the slightest amount of negativity and frustration can knock you out of tour Zone and make your performance sub-optimal.

Staying in your zone of optimal performance at critical moments requires extreme Self-regulation of your Emotion-Feeling-Thinking, to SWITCH Negative to Positive Thinking intrusions and be at your optimal level of arousal.

Intrusive negative thoughts can trigger your brain and body’s ‘Fight or Flight’ reflex.  This reflex is helpful in getting you out of danger. But at critical moments, it disrupts your brain-body coordination, your focus, and your strategic judgment, and it keeps you out of your automatic zone of peak performance.

No one has a monopoly on wisdom about “Zone”, but a few principles are emerging. The first is that ‘Less is More.’ There is growing evidence that zone is associated with predominantly nonconscious processing, when distracting thoughts are blocked and the extraordinary power of the nonconscious brain can optimally implement the play in its simplest automatic mode.

Zone Training:

Immediate: Circuit-break negativity.

Short-term: Immerse in the moment.

Long term: Optimize brain habits.

There are a number of training strategies to replace negative thoughts with positive ones at critical moments.

A simple example is training yourself to continually put positive thoughts to the front of your brain. The specific strategy to rapidly replace intrusive negative thoughts with positive ones may involve using a personalized positive word or symbol as a trigger.

A personalized ‘Positive Affirmation’ word or symbol may also help the brain switch or stay switched into an optimal nonconscious processing and arousal state. One top athlete, for example, found that the word ‘simple’ works for him.

An international marksman uses his personalized breathing rate as his Positive trigger.

I visualize a circle to indicate the aligning of Emotion-Thinking-Feeling-Self-regulation.

One of the greatest ‘mental edge’ athletes I have ever seen is Steve Waugh, the now-retired Australian cricket captain of one of the most successful sport teams in history.  When he was asked about his mental state under pressure, he had the following simple solution: ‘There were always negative and positive thoughts going on in my mind all the time.  All I focused on was pushing the positive thoughts to the front.’

One good way to switch off a disruptive ‘Fight or Flight’ reflex is by breathing at your ‘personalized best breathing rate’ using MyCalmBeat. Training with MyCalmBeat for 10 minutes a day, three days a week, increases your optimal flexibility of low and high frequency heart rate activity, which puts you in your zone of optimal performance.

MyCalmBeat has also been shown to reduce stress and improve benefits of increased heart rate variability, all of which will help you optimize your peak performance.

Visualization

Recent computerized brain imaging research has shown that simply visualizing a task activates brain networks similar to those activated by actually doing the task. Because neurons that fire together, wire together, visualization of the best way to undertake a specific skill or deal with a tricky critical moment consolidates the networks that are called upon in actual play.  Highly targeted visualization training in how to deal with Critical Moments should be an integral part of any peak performance program.

Simulations

Critical moments do not occur that often. That is why pilots are trained in flight simulators. The technology is now available (for example, using

miniaturized video goggles or simply a high resolution REALISTIC Video – training with MyCalmBeat while watching Critical Moments on video) to simulate critical moments in sport.

This accelerates the ‘Gordon 1000 times rule’ to Practice, Visualize, or Simulate to generate a new brain circuit and habit by doing the task 1000 times. It helps you automatically switch on the brain networks that keep you in the moment and allow you to ignore negative disruptive thoughts in high pressure Critical Moments.

TRAIN

Training your ability to access your zone of peak performance

A number of processes that contribute to zone can be trained.  They include both brain and body functions:

A clear brain-body model to get into and stay in zone.

The right amount of focus and automatic implementation (staying in the moment and free of negative thoughts, so that all your brain’s neurons are in automatic unrushed practiced routine implementation mode and activity feels ‘slowed down’).

Seamless flow, as measured by optimal speed/accuracy and consistency of peak performance. Not over-trying or overcompensating in an effort to make up for previous errors.

Optimal arousal that is personalized for you.  Too much or too little arousal (measured via sweat rate or heart rate) is linked with worse performance than optimal arousal, which is linked to peak performance.  Mastery over arousal/anxiety is also linked to being able to ‘stay in the moment’ and not think about outcomes.

A personalized breathing rate that optimizes your maximum heart rate variability.

Using a word or symbol or personalized breathing at critical moments to trigger Positivity and switch out any negative intrusive thoughts.

An optimal balance of right hemisphere relative to left hemisphere activity (measured via EEG electrical activity), which may override conscious Thinking and increase nonconscious automatic ‘In The Moment’ performance.

Starting to exhale (and a longer exhalation than inhalation) just prior to key shot execution (measured via video), which facilitates a more automatic brain function zone state.

Training the above factors until they are nonconscious and automatic at critical moments allows you to avoid the ultimate disruptor of zone, which is ‘Cognitive Dissonance.’  This is when your nonconscious, automatic, in-the-moment flow clashes with your conscious intrusive Thinking about Negative outcomes.

I am always mesmerized by watching the hardiest, most phenomenal peak performers stumble at Critical Moments. Even the world¹s top performers will occasionally change their timing between practice and actual shots or stand fractionally too long over the ball and show inappropriate frustration that changes their rhythm for the rest of their game.

Automatic, trained, routine positive zone implementation in the face of negativity is the key to peak performance.  Zone training removes contradictory thoughts, maximizes relentless Positivity under any circumstance, and increases confidence in winning.

Immerse and Staying in the moment

Training into a long term optimized brain habit

Triggering and maintaining your Zone of optimal peak performance.

Training Self Mastery in the immediate seconds of performance reduces the likelihood of Critical Moments distorting performance and maximizes the likelihood of winning.

Immediate circuit breaking of negativity into positive brain state.

Integrative Adaptive Optimization.

Exceptionally effective at Organizing Principle: mastery of their Fear to achieve the most impacting long term Rewards.

Not distracted by negativity and stay in their ‘Personalized Timing Zone of Peak Performance’.

Master ‘critical moments’ in each game:

Every moment of the game should be dominated by one thought:

‘What can I do now to add value.’ It¹s only that moment that matters.

This will allow you to set up and automatically stay in ‘your zone of peak

Performance’ every moment for full time of the game. ‘Critical moments’ become the same as any other moment.

Know-Train+ MONITOR what works for Your Peak Performance.

If you can¹t measure it ­ you can¹t manage it.

Measurement is essential to select the best personalized brain training tools and to objectively monitor their effectiveness over time (including miniaturized real world brain-body measures on the field of play).

Winning (not marketing hype) is the final arbiter of whether a personalized peak performance training program works or not.

ALIGN.

Know your brain.

Train new brain habits. Its now over to you.

Give me a minute, I'm trying to consolidate.

Next time you fall asleep at your desk, just tell them you are trying to make sure you remember everything from the meeting.

In an article to be published in the journal  Psychological Science, Michaela Dewar and colleagues demonstrate that memory can be enhanced by taking a brief wakeful rest after learning something verbally new, and that memory can last long-term.

“Our findings support the view that the formation of new memories is not completed within seconds,” says Dewar in a press release. “Indeed our work demonstrates that activities that we are engaged in for the first few minutes after learning new information really affect how well we remember this information after a week.”

A total of thirty-three adults between the ages of 61 and 87 were told two short stories and asked to remember as many details as possible. Immediately afterward, they were asked to describe what happened in the story. Then they were given a 10-minute delay that consisted either of wakeful resting or playing a spot-the-difference game on the computer.

During the wakeful resting portion, participants were asked to just rest quietly with their eyes closed in a darkened room for 10 minutes while the experimenter left to “prepare for the next test.”  It didn’t matter what happened while their eyes were closed, only that they were undistracted by anything else and not receiving any new information.

When participants played the spot-the-difference game, they were presented with picture pairs on a screen for 30 seconds each and were instructed to locate two subtle differences in each pair and point to them. The task was chosen because it required attention but, unlike the story, it was nonverbal.

In one study, the participants were asked to recall both stories half an hour later and then a full week later. Participants remembered much more story material when the story presentation had been followed by a period of wakeful resting.

Dewar explains that there is growing evidence to suggest that the point at which we experience new information is “just at a very early stage of memory formation and that further neural processes have to occur after this stage for us to be able to remember this information at a later point in time.”

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and let those memories consolidate.

Excerpts from materials provided by the Association for Psychological Science.

The specific mindfulness meditation technique, called integrative body-mind training (IBMT), involves focus rather than relaxation.

Short-term mindfulness meditation can physically alter the connections in your brain. And according to the authors of a recent study, these results “…could provide a means for intervention to improve or prevent mental disorders.”

Publishing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) scientists Yi-Yuan Tang of Texas Tech University (TTU) and Michael Posner of the University of Oregon (UO) reported improved mood changes and increased brain-signaling connections after a month of mindfulness meditation.

The specific mindfulness meditation technique, called integrative body-mind training (IBMT), involves focus rather than relaxation. This form of mindfulness meditation increased both the density of axons connecting brain cells, and the protective myelin sheaths surrounding those axons. Changes occurred within the anterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain important for attention and self-regulation.

Deficits in activation of the anterior cingulate are found in attention deficit disorder (ADD), depression, and schizophrenia, among other disorders.

Researchers measured key areas of the brain before and after the meditation training using a non-invasive, MRI-based technology known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Pathways connecting areas of the brain can be examined using this technique. With advances in DTI technology, the ability to visualize anatomical connections between different parts of the brain, non-invasively, is a major breakthrough for neuroscience research. They found evidence of measurable changes in the connections associated with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which occurred even after short exposure to focused meditation.

Connective pathways between different areas of the brain are known as “white matter” and consist of the bundles of insulated axons connecting brain structures (appearing white because of the protective, fatty myelin sheath surrounding the axons).

“This study gives us a much more detailed picture of what it is that is actually changing,” Posner said on the TTU News website. “We did confirm the exact locations of the white-matter changes that we had found previously. And now we show that both myelination and axon density are improving. The order of changes we found may be similar to changes found during brain development in early childhood, allowing a new way to reveal how such changes might influence emotional and cognitive development.”

The improved mood changes noted are based on self-ratings of subjects based on a standard six-dimensional mood-state measure. A previous study using the same techniques noted lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue in the experimental group as compared to the relaxation control group.

The meditation training was delivered over a period of four weeks in 30-minute sessions, either as integrative body-mind training or relaxation training with each group receiving a total of about 11 hours of training. Changes in axon density appeared after two weeks of training, and an increase in myelination after a month of training.

Researchers did not observe white matter changes in the group receiving only relaxation-oriented meditation, which emphasizes sequential relaxation of different muscle groups.

“When we got the results, we all got very excited because all of the other training exercises, like working-memory training or computer-based training, only have been shown to change myelination,” Tang said. “We believe these changes may be reflective of the time of training involved in IBMT. We found a different pattern of neural plasticity induced by the training.”

A recent review sums up the excitement of what is happening in the field of brain training: “Apparent from adequately controlled studies, brain training is a groundbreaking approach with potential to transform the panorama of non-pharmacological therapy,” (Rabipour and Raz, 2012).

What makes one face in the crowd stand out from the others? It may be seeing teeth that makes the difference.

What helps you spot a face in the crowd? Research suggests that it’s an angry or emotional face we tend to register first. A recent study takes it even further suggesting that whether smiling or grimacing, visible teeth seem to make the difference.

The “emotional-face-in-the-crowd effect” relates to a search advantage for faces with a particular emotional expression. Previous research suggested that it was only angry faces that were found faster than neutral, or other, facial expressions. The theory was that responding quickly to negative facial expression is hard-wired in the brain to help you recognize danger and protect yourself. This would be evolutionarily beneficial if you needed to determine a potential threat and respond accordingly in order to survive. But further investigation revealed that in some cases it is the happy faces that had an advantage.

“The research concerned with the face-in-the-crowd effect essentially deals with the question of how we detect social signals of friendly or unfriendly intent in the human face,” said author Gernot Horstmann, PhD, of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Department of Psychology at Bielefeld University, Germany. “Our results indicate that, contrary to previous assertions, detection of smiles or frowns is relatively slow in crowds of neutral faces, whereas toothy grins and snarls are quite easily detected.”

Horstmann and his colleagues conducted experiments in an attempt to resolve discrepancies in previous studies that investigated visual search for emotional faces. According to the research team, the inconsistent results with respect to which of the two expressions are found faster — the happy face or the angry face — suggested that the emotional expression category could not be the only important factor determining the face-in- the-crowd effect.

In the experiment, researchers asked subjects to search for a happy or an angry face within a crowd of neutral faces, and measured the search speed. The “search” ended when the subject responded yes or no to the presence of an angry or happy face, depending on the target for that trial. While the search was relatively slow when emotion was signaled with a closed mouth face, the search time was much faster when emotion was signaled with an open mouth and visible teeth. This was the case for both happy and angry faces, and happy faces were found even somewhat faster than angry faces.

The scientists believe this new study may explain the discrepancies found in the literature. “This will probably inspire researchers to clarify whether emotion and, in particular, threat plays an additional, unique role in face detection,” said Horstmann.

Omega-3 fatty acids found in salmon help strengthen the connections between brain cells involved in memory.

What is it about omega-3s in fish oil that is so good for your brain?

We’ve all heard that eating fish is good for our brains and memory. But what is it about DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish, that makes our memory sharper?

Researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered a possible explanation and published their results in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.

Principal investigator Yves Sauve and his team discovered that mice fed a high-DHA diet had 30 percent higher levels of DHA in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory formation, as compared to those on a regular, healthy diet.

“We wanted to find out how fish intake improves memory,” says Sauve in a press release from the University.

“What we discovered is that memory cells in the hippocampus could communicate better with each other and better relay messages when DHA levels in that region of the brain were higher. This could explain why memory improves on a high-DHA diet.”

DHA supplementation facilitates synaptic plasticity, the ability of the neurons in your brain to “learn” from experience and therefore change their response to certain stimuli. They communicate more efficiently.

Supplementing your diet with DHA, such as increasing fish intake or taking supplements, could prevent declining DHA levels in the brain as we age, says Sauve.

In the blog Lifehacker.com.au, Thorin Klosowski talks about 4 essential things for a brain-healthy diet:

• Glucose: The brain draws nearly all its energy from glucose. And it needs a consistent supply to stay sharp.
• Fatty Acids: Fats like omega-3 and omega-6 may help strengthen the synapses in your brain related to memory.
• Amino Acids: Amino acids come from protein-rich foods and help connect the neurotransmitters which are essential for keeping your brain sharp. These neurotransmitters include: dopamine for proper immune and nervous system function. Norepinephrine for alertness and concentration. Serotonin for mood, sleep, memory and learning. Acetylcholine for storage and recall of memory.
• Antioxidants: Antioxidants like you find in tea or vegetables help regulate the oxidative stress that destroys brain cells. The stress is caused when your body is converting glucose to energy and extra oxygen is created called free radicals. Antioxidants block them so your brain doesn’t have to work as hard.

University of Alberta Press release

A short period of inhibition training reduced gambling by ten to fifteen percent.

Research shows that training people to become less impulsive may reduce risk-taking behavior during gambling. These insights could help provide guidance for new addiction treatment programs.

Recently published in Psychological Science, the study assessed whether asking people to stop making simple movements while in a simulated gambling situation affected how risky or cautious they were when betting.

Participants were asked to place their bets in a repeated gambling task. They were presented with safe options (low gain, high probability) and more risky options (high gain, low probability), and were asked to indicate their choice by pressing a key on a computer keyboard. The researchers examined the preference for the safer options.

When participants occasionally had to stop their choice response, they slowed down and became more cautious in the amount of money they bet each time. This suggests that becoming more cautious about simple movements reduces the tendency to make risky monetary decisions.

Researchers then examined whether training people to stop hand responses to arbitrary stimuli presented on a computer screen would also have longer-term effects on gambling. They found that a short period of inhibition training reduced gambling by ten to fifteen per cent, a small but statistically significant reduction, and that this effect lasted at least two hours.

Lead researcher, Dr Frederick Verbruggen of the University of Exeter said in the press release: “Our research shows that by training themselves to stop simple hand movements, people can also learn to control their decision-making processes to avoid placing risky bets.

“This work could have important practical implications for the treatment of behavioral addictions, such as pathological gambling, which have previously been associated with impaired impulse control, and more specifically, deficits in stopping actions. We are now exploring the relevance of our findings to other addictions, such as smoking or overeating, which we did not look at in this study. Addictions are very complex and individual, and our approach would only target one aspect of the problem. However, we are very excited about the potential of helping a proportion of people whose lives are affected by gambling and other addictions.”

Dr Chris Chambers of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology added: “These results suggest that our impulses are controlled by highly connected brain systems, reaching from the most basic motor actions to more complicated risky decisions. Our study shows that inhibition training reduces risk-taking during gambling in healthy volunteers but it does not show that inhibition training reduces gambling addiction. More studies are now needed to discover whether training people to boost a low-level ‘inhibitory muscle’ could help treat addictions, but these initial findings are promising.”

press release

Stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall improve focus by increasing levels of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain.

A recent article in the New York Times describes the “Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill.” Teenagers are taking (and in some cases snorting) Adderall, an amphetamine prescribed for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), to increase their focus and attention in an attempt to do better on exams. Healthy non-ADHD students are taking prescription medications to get good grades.

Attention is the cognitive process of concentrating on one factor at the expense of others. This increase in attention or focus can come in handy when taking an exam, but with high doses amphetamines are addictive and may have long-term consequences on your health. Addiction, rapid heartbeat and insomnia are some of the more well known side-effects.

Stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, used to treat ADHD, improve focus by increasing the levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain. Specifically, stimulants increase levels of norepinephrine and dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that regulates attention and behavior. Increasing activation in this part of the brain improves the ability of these neurons to respond to relevant signals, which translates into better cognition, attention and working memory

Previously it was assumed that stimulants had the paradoxical effect of calming kids with ADHD, allowing them to focus and attend to the task at hand, as opposed to having the stimulating effect seen in adults. But further research on this effect has concluded that a low dose of stimulant has the same effect on ADHD and non-ADHD subjects, focusing attention and improving executive function.

The theory of an attention economy implies that attention is the limiting factor or commodity in how we process and consume information. We have a limited amount of attention to devote to the things happening around us. This suggests that in our now information-filled environment, we have to allocate our limited amount of attention efficiently in order to succeed.

Then we must ask the question: are cognitive enhancing drugs a good thing or a bad thing? If a “brain drug” can help you focus your attention and do well on an exam, it seems like a no-brainer (forgive the pun) to use it to make the right decisions and therefore succeed. But at what cost? How much is too much?

Besides the fact that at high doses cognitive enhancing drugs are addictive and can cause health problems, do we spend too much time consuming information and not enough time digesting? Should we be limiting our information consumption like we limit our food consumption? Author Clay Johnson, in his book The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption, suggests that it’s not just about increasing your ability to focus so you can pay attention to more, or for a longer time, but about choosing to focus on those things that matter.

How does your brain filter this flow of information? It’s like trying to drink through a fire hose, too much all at once. We are in information overload and need to think critically about the type of information we are consuming.

Scientific discovery, for example, is made through the selective observation of relevant features, while attempting to ignore other less important information. The trick is to know what is important and what can be disregarded. You have to be able to interpret what you discover and make sense out of what -at times- can be chaos.

The good news is that you can increase your focus and attention without drugs. All it takes is a little practice. No prescription required! See what a little brain training can do for you.

Researchers found significant changes for students who completed the program in areas such as attention, ADHD symptoms, planning and organization, initiating tasks, and working memory.

“This program really seemed to make a difference for many of the children with ADHD,” said Steven Beck, co-author of the study an associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

“It is not going to replace medication, but it could be a useful complementary therapy.”

Beck conducted the study with Christine Hanson and Synthia Puffenberger, graduate students in psychology at Ohio State.  Their findings are published in the November/December 2010 issue of theJournal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology.

Read more from OSU research news here:

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/workmem.htm

(Information reprinted from CHADD)

One study found that, after just five days of computer-based training, the brains of six-year-olds begin to act like those of adults on one crucial measure of attention. Another study suggested that boosting short-term memory seems to improve children’s ability to stay on task.

We do not yet know how long these gains may last, or the best methods for developing attention. But the demand is clear: Dozens of schools nationwide are already incorporating some kind of attention training into their curricula. And as this new arena of research helps overturn long-standing assumptions about attention and memory, it offers intriguing possibilities. Find out about the specific brain training practices here:

http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/5539.html

Reprinted from NIH

Therapists may teach children social skills, such as how to wait their turn, share toys, ask for help, or respond to teasing. Learning to read facial expressions and the tone of voice in others, and how to respond appropriately can also be part of social skills training.

How can parents help?

Children with ADHD need guidance and understanding from their parents and teachers to reach their full potential and to succeed in school. Before a child is diagnosed, frustration, blame, and anger may have built up within a family. Parents and children may need special help to overcome bad feelings. Mental health professionals can educate parents about ADHD and how it impacts a family. They also will help the child and his or her parents develop new skills, attitudes, and ways of relating to each other.

Parenting skills training helps parents learn how to use a system of rewards and consequences to change a child’s behavior. Parents are taught to give immediate and positive feedback for behaviors they want to encourage, and ignore or redirect behaviors they want to discourage. In some cases, the use of “time-outs” may be used when the child’s behavior gets out of control. In a time-out, the child is removed from the upsetting situation and sits alone for a short time to calm down.

Parents are also encouraged to share a pleasant or relaxing activity with the child, to notice and point out what the child does well, and to praise the child’s strengths and abilities. They may also learn to structure situations in more positive ways. For example, they may restrict the number of playmates to one or two, so that their child does not become overstimulated. Or, if the child has trouble completing tasks, parents can help their child divide large tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. Also, parents may benefit from learning stress-management techniques to increase their own ability to deal with frustration, so that they can respond calmly to their child’s behavior.

Sometimes, the whole family may need therapy. Therapists can help family members find better ways to handle disruptive behaviors and to encourage behavior changes. Finally, support groups help parents and families connect with others who have similar problems and concerns. Groups often meet regularly to share frustrations and successes, to exchange information about recommended specialists and strategies, and to talk with experts.