Pharmas Health And Medical Blog » Mental Health

Personality May Influence Brain Shrinkage in Aging

Shue — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:53:49 +0000

Psychologists at the Washington University in St. Louis have come accross a very interesting association between aging and the personality. this link seems to be a very strong one. It has been understood that the emotional and social back ground of the person is in direct linkage to the speed at which he or she ages. Since the results are one of a kind and it will take a lot of time to understand the full effect of the personality of the person and the way in which he ages, it may also be the other way round.

Neuroticism seems to be directly linked to lower grey matter while aging and conscientiousness is linked to higher levels of grey matter when the brain ages. this shows that a stressful and eventful life may lead to loss of memory and a lot of the related issues of old age. Now the focus is on studying the subtle changes in the personality as a person ages and link it with the changes of a person’s chances of developing illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.

Brain Games Don’t Enhance IQ, Study Finds

Shue — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:01:23 +0000

A study has found that while brain games may be extremely entertaining, they do precious little to boost your IQ, no matter what their marketing department may say. A study conducted over a period of six weeks found that people who played online games designed to improve their cognitive skills didn’t get any smarter.
More than 8,600 people aged 18 to 60 were asked to play online brain games designed by the researchers to improve their memory, reasoning and other skills for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week.
Researchers said the people who did the brain training didn’t do any better on the test after six weeks than people who had simply been on the Internet.
The study was paid for by the BBC and published online Tuesday by the journal Nature.
“If you’re (playing these games) because they’re fun, that’s absolutely fine,” said Adrian Owen, assistant director of the Cognition and Brain Sciences unit at Britain’s Medical Research Council, the study’s lead author. “But if you’re expecting (these games) to improve your I.Q., our data suggests this isn’t the case,” he said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

Find more info from the main article.

Panic Disorder and Mild Depression Can Be Treated Over Internet

Shue — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:58:27 +0000

A new doctoral thesis claims that Cognitive Behavior Therapy via the internet is just as effective as group based CBT in treating recurring panic attacks, commonly known as Panic Disorder. In fact, it is also just as effective in the treatment of mild and moderate depression.

“Internet-based CBT is also more cost-effective than group therapy,” says Jan Bergström, psychologist and doctoral student at the Center for Psychiatry Research. “The results therefore support the introduction of Internet treatment into regular psychiatry, which is also what the National Board of Health and Welfare recommends in its new guidelines for the treatment of depression and anxiety.”
Jan Bergström works as a clinical psychologist at the Anxiety Disorders Unit of the Psychiatry Northwest division of the Stockholm County Council. This research was also financed by the Stockholm County Council.
“Thanks to our research, Internet treatment is now implemented within regular healthcare in Stockholm, at the unit Internetpsykiatri.se of Psychiatry Southwest, which probably makes the Stockholm County Council the first in the world to offer such treatment in its regular psychiatric services,” says Jan Bergström.
This study will soon be presented at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Understanding and Treating Hoarding Anxiety Disorder

Shue — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:21:37 +0000

Stories of people who hoard so much stuff into their apartment that they pose a fire hazard or a health risk have been a source of amusement for us for some time now. But, it is hardly amusing for people who suffer from hoarding anxiety disorder. What is worse is that there are no proven methods of treating this problem.

Researchers have come to find that hoarding anxiety disorders begins at a young age and gets progressively worse with time and age. It may even begin as early as childhood or early teens. But, more often than not, most people don’t realize that it is problem until much later in life, and usually by other people like neighbors or family and friends.
At the University of California, San Diego Department of Psychiatry, psychologist Catherine Ayers specializes in anxiety disorders and late-life hoarding.
“We’re teaching people how to plan, how to prioritize, how to do basic to-do lists, how to use a calendar, do problem solving,” she says.
Armed with these new organizational skills, Ayers hopes her patients will be better able to tackle treatment for their hoarding disorder, which requires an ability to prioritize, problem solve and, ultimately, make decisions about whether to discard an item.

Read on.

Treatment Offered To Technology Addicts

Shue — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:03:11 +0000

A London hospital has launched a treatment program for people diagnosed with addiction to technology. The program is designed for young people who spend large amounts of time each day playing computer games or using social network websites.
When deprived they become “chronically agitated and irritable” said the treatment’s founder Dr Richard Graham.
Dr Graham’s treatment programme lasts 28 days if done intensely.
However it is not designed to wean people entirely off using technology, he told BBC News.
“It’s not realistic to have an abstinence program,” he said.
“The number of genuine technology addicts is fairly low but it could rise with online gaming where, unlike standalone gaming, the game never stops,” said Mark Griffiths, Professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University.
“Most addictive behaviors peak in youth and you’re more likely to be male – but the internet is gender neutral. Women might be put off going into a real betting shop for example, but you can be whatever you want to be online.”
“The preoccupation with accessing sites and responding to messages is so compelling that it gets prioritized… it can impact on other areas of life and skew young people’s ability to engage in other activities.”

Older Brain Slower, But Surer

Shue — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:45:48 +0000

While recent research has confirm old fears over the effect of ageing on the cognitive powers of the brain and established that they diminish with age, there is good news to be had for those belonging to the Baby Boomers generation.
Brain researcher Gary Small from UCLA points to a continued improvement in complex reasoning skills as we enter middle age. In middle age, our complex reasoning skills improve, and we’re able to anticipate problems and reason things out better than when we were young. According to Small, another advantage gained by the aging mind is empathy as we find it easier to empathize with others as we age.
“An old myth in neuroscience,” says Small, “is that once a brain cell dies off you can’t replace it.” But many studies have now shown, he adds, that there is, in fact, brain cell growth throughout life. So, he says, the brain can continue to learn throughout the middle age years and beyond.
However, recent breakthroughs in neuroscience research have shown that the human brain is always changing, from moment to moment and throughout life. It continues to develop, and even continues to grow new brain cells.

For more visit the source site.

Colors Key To Gauging Moods

Shue — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:28:28 +0000

Researchers have found that colors are more useful in gauging moods than previously believed. According to the research, people with depression or anxiety were more likely to associate their mood with the color gray, while happier people preferred yellow. The results are detailed today in the journal BMC Medical Research Methodology. This research and its results could pave the way to help doctors gauge the moods of children and other patients who have trouble communicating verbally.
“This is a way of measuring anxiety and depression which gets away from the use of language,” study co-author and gastroenterologist Peter Whorwell of University Hospital South Manchester told LiveScience. “What is very interesting is that this might actually be a better way of capturing the patient’s mood than questions.”
Colors are often used as metaphors for moods, but no one had systematically researched color associations, Whorwell said. To investigate, he and his colleagues picked eight colors — red, orange, green, purple, blue, yellow, pink and brown.
Whorwell is now testing the wheel on patients with irritable bowel syndrome. He’s hoping that color choices can reveal patients’ attitudes and predict how well they will respond to treatments like hypnosis.

Non-Smokers Smarter Than Smokers, Reveals Study

Shue — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:17:12 +0000

A study involving over 20,000 Israeli military recruits suggests that cigarette smokers have lower IQs than non-smokers, and the more a person smokes, the lower their IQ is likely to be.
Young men who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day or more had IQ scores 7.5 points lower than non-smokers, Dr. Mark Weiser of Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and his colleagues found.
“Adolescents with poorer IQ scores might be targeted for programs designed to prevent smoking,” they conclude in the journal Addiction.

While there is evidence for a link between smoking and lower IQ, many studies have relied on intelligence tests given in childhood, and have also included people with mental and behavioral problems, who are both more likely to smoke and more likely to have low IQs, Weiser and his team note in their report.
To better understand the smoking-IQ relationship, the researchers looked at 20,211 18-year-old men recruited into the Israeli military.
The smokers had significantly lower intelligence test scores than non-smokers, and this remained true even after the researchers accounted for socioeconomic status as measured by how many years of formal education a recruit’s father had completed.
The average IQ for non-smokers was about 101, while it was 94 for men who had started smoking before entering the military.

The Roots of Bilingualism in Newborn Babies

Shue — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:15:02 +0000

Research has shown that hearing two languages regularly during pregnancy puts infants on the fast road to bilingualism. In a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, infants born to bilingual mothers (who spoke both languages regularly during pregnancy) also exhibit different language preferences than infants born to mothers speaking only one language.
Psychological scientists Krista Byers-Heinlein and Janet F. Werker from the University of British Columbia along with Tracey Burns of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in France investigated language preference and discrimination in newborns. Two groups of newborns- thosewhose mothers spoke only English during pregnancy and those whose mothers spoke both Tagalog, a language spoken in the Philippines, and English regularly during pregnancy- were tested in these experiments.

Results showed that English monolingual infants were more interested in English than Tagalog — they exhibited increased sucking behavior when they heard English than when they heard Tagalog being spoken. However, bilingual infants had an equal preference for both English and Tagalog. These results suggest that prenatal bilingual exposure may affect infants’ language preferences, preparing bilingual infants to listen to and learn about both of their native languages.

Music is Therapy for the Brain

Shue — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:38:54 +0000

Music helps patients with stroke to recover brain function. Even though patients cannot speak, they can form melodies which somehow the brain responds to. Therapists encourage patients to put their words into rhymes which the brain easily recognizes. This is explained by the fact that the part of the brain used for speech is different from that which is used when singing.

The left part of the brain is more developed and is what is used for speech. Although the singing centre which is found on the right side of the brain is not as developed as the speech centre, it adopts over time as patients learn and continue to sing. The connections absent on the right side of the brain begin to form. After a few sessions, they are able to say simple phrases, albeit in melodic form. Therapists encourage patients to combine each syllable with the note of a rhythm. They are also encouraged to tap each syllable as they sing-speak with their hands. The tapping sounds acts as an internal pace-maker and makes the therapy more effective.

Music therapy can also be used to aid in reading and to restore vision. Get more information on music therapy from the source.