Archive for October, 2008
I recently had the opportunity to teach a brain fitness class for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami. As part of the class, we focused a great deal on memory since that is one of the things people were most interested in.
I had anticipated strong interest in the class, but not as much as we actually had. I had thought perhaps 15-20 people would come to the class the first day, but 60 persons came the first day. As part of their participation, I asked students to complete several questionnaires about how they felt about their memory abilities as well as administered a short memory test. We did the same measures at the end of the class.
A striking finding in previous research is that memory self-efficacy is strongly related to actually memory abilities. This term refers to the extent to which you believe you have control over how your memory works and can cope with challenges. Sure enough, in our Osher class, we found that students’ memory self-efficacy was related to how well they performed on a memory class. That leaves two possibilities: people who have good memories have high levels of memory self-efficacy, or that people with high levels of self-efficacy have good memories.
Which is it? Other studies have shown that people with higher levels of self-efficacy respond better to memory training. I think the chances are that the answer to the question is one or the other, but both. Having memory problems may make you feel less well able to control your memory, but feeling as though you understand and control your memory may make you better able to cope with challenges to your memory.
How can you improve your memory self-efficacy? The short answer is to learn more about how your memory works and develop realistic expectations for yourself about how your memory should work. I like a book called The Memory Workbook by DJ Mason, ML Kohn, and KA Clark (New Harbinger, 2001). The participants in our memory class really liked it, and it includes a number of exercises that you can work through on your own.
One of the most important things I do for patients with memory problems isn’t giving them medicines. It’s actually taking them away.
Some common medications, even those that you can buy without a prescription, can have a negative effect on your memory and alertness. And some medicines that are completely safe in younger people have bad effects in older persons. One of the best things you can do for your memory is go over your medications with someone who knows about medicines and how they affect older persons.
Medications that may have a negative effect on memory are those that have anticholinergic effects. They act to decrease the effectiveness of a brain chemical called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a brain chemical that is essential in memory. The part of the brain with the most nerve cells that use this chemical is one of the first affected when someone has Alzheimer’s disease.
Probably the most commonly used medication used by older persons that has anticholinergic effects is the antihistamine Benadryl,® It’s a perfectly good medicine, but in its generic form diphenhydramine it’s in many over-the-counter sleep medicines. If you have memory problems and take this medicine regularly, you might want to try stopping it and see how your memory functions without it.
Another group of medications that can affect memory are the benzodiazepines. These are commonly-used medicines for anxiety and sleep such as Xanax,® Ativan,® Klonopin,® and many others. They can affect memory in a different way from diphenhydramine. If you’re taking one of these medicines regularly, it usually isn’t a good idea to stop taking it suddenly. You might want to talk to your doctor about alternative medicines for anxiety and sleep.
“Useful field of view” is a concept that on the surface may not immediately make sense. It means how much of what you see can be acted on. If the focus of our attention becomes more narrow as we age, then our useful field of view may get smaller, too. Useful field of view, or UFOV, is related to driving skills in older persons, and some people believe that it can be trained. Dr. Karlene Ball and her colleagues at the University of Alabama have developed a computer program for training UFOV and shown that it is effective in helping older persons develop better attention skills. Some research suggests that the training can improve driving skills, too.
Now the insurance company Allstate has weighed in on the subject. According to a press release on the Posit Science website, Allstate and Posit are partnering to provide UFOV training to some of the people Allstate insures. Allstate may be giving people a break on their insurance rates, so they are taking the issue seriously.
The UFOV task is part of a software package available as part of the Miami Brain Fitness program. Interested persons can arrange for a consultation with me by calling 305-243-4082. We’ll be happy to show you the software and give you an individually-tailored set of recommendations for improving your brain fitness.
Latest
- Brain Fitness and The Mind of a Monk
- Brain Fitness Tip: Training Without a Computer
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. (more…)
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.