Category: brain

behavior · brain · disease · health · learning · Mental · neuroscience · technology

Sensor Glove Could Help Stroke Patients Recover Mobility Through Gaming | Ecouterre

Beth Kelley1 Comment

The brain is such an amazing thing, and has such amazing capabilities to recover, it just needs the right tool; in this case, using video games as a type of mental and physical therapy for stroke victims. Using computer games is also useful because it is more engaging for the brain, rather than traditional physical exercises like “pick up the cup” since framing it as a game often makes it seem less consequential for players (this is a new exercise whereas they used to know how to pick up a cup) and therefore less pressure and more fun:

Four mechanical-engineering students at McGill University in Canada have developed an inexpensive sensor glove that allows patients to exercise in a game-like fashion at home with minimal supervision. Self-therapy? Well, yes and no. Using the accompanying software, doctors will be able to monitor their charges’ progress off-site, cutting down on hospital visits and costs.

The added benefit of remote monitoring for doctors is also good for the patient, as the doctor can respond right away if they see something wrong or can provide immediate feedback, rather than having to schedule an appointment, travel to the doctor’s office, and have all of your questions answered, all of this being extra hard after you’ve had a stroke and need others to help transport you.

Check out the original story at  Sensor Glove Could Help Stroke Patients Recover Mobility Through Gaming | Ecouterre.

behavior · brain · happiness · health · neuroscience · play · psychology

Want To Live To 100? Try To Bounce Back From Stress : NPR

Beth Kelley
Hint from featured profile Helen Reichert, who's 109? A sense of humor helps.

More and more research is finding that the ability to cope with stress and bounce back better correlates with long life. Just a reminder to take it easy…

Gerontologist and commentator Mark Lachs says one of the keys to a long, healthy old age is the ability to keep moving forward after life’s inevitable setbacks.

listen via Want To Live To 100? Try To Bounce Back From Stress : NPR.

One study found that 50 year olds with a negative outlook on life lived seven years shorter than those with a positive outlook.

What’s interesting is that more than avoiding stress it seems more important to have the ability to bounce back from it. So healthy coping mechanisms for handling stress, as well as a good attitude about life, seems to be more important than nutrition and exercise.

architecture · behavior · brain · design · emotion · environment · happiness · health · mental health · Nature · psychology

Using Nature Therapy in Prisons and Hospitals

Beth Kelley

I’m seeing lots of different examples of people using nature to help heal, from the physically injured to those with aggression issues cut off from the rest of the world.

For example, I was just listening to a program this weekend on the local NPR station about a biologist at Evergreen State College who is greenifying a local prison, as well as working with inmates to grow new prairie grass and frogs (I can’t find the original story but here’s some similar coverage):

The frog rearing program here pairs inmates with scientists from the Evergreen State College as part of the Sustainable Prisons Project. So far, the frogs grown at Cedar Creek Correctional Center are doing better than those grown by professional zoologists.

LIESL PLOMSKI, graduate student, The Evergreen State College says, “They have a lot more time here to care for the frogs that a zoo wouldn’t have. I mean they’re here all day with them, so they change the water frequently. They feed them more frequently than a zoo could ever do.”

And then this morning stumbled upon this story:

Henning Larsen Architects recently won an international design competition with their plans for the new Odense University Hospital in Denmark. Situated close to the city center amidst a scenic old-growth forest, the OUH will use the surrounding landscape as a way to heal its patients. The holistic facility features a light footprint that incorporates nature at every turn to create an environment replete with peace and serenity. Daylight floods in through the glass-lined buildings, and rainwater will be collected to feed the many ponds and surrounding landscape.

more via Denmark’s New Odense Hospital is a Healing City of Glass Amid the Forest | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.

I am blown away by all the different applications of nature into therapy and recovery practices.

anthropology · brain · emotion · happiness · health · mental health · psychology

Jobs, including losing one, can kill you

Beth Kelley
Dos albañiles desempleados esperan ofertas de ...
Losing your job can have a profound effect on your physical health. Image via Wikipedia

My new year’s resolution this year was to start taking better care of myself; more sleep, healthier food (no more sneaking chocolate out of the secretary’s candy dish!) and getting regular exercise if for nothing else just to move and remember what it feels like to use your muscles.
But up until recently I had never acknowledged some of the things that had caused me the most stress. One of them was changing jobs after seven years and becoming a freelance writer/editor, while also moving away from a city I’d lived in for that long as well. That loss of identity, of sense of self and how you fit into the world, can have a profound effect on mental and physical health, as one New York Times article recently discussed, focused more on job loss, but very similar emotionally and the physical repercussions:

The first to have a heart attack was George Kull Jr., 56, a millwright who worked for three decades at the steel mills in Lackawanna, N.Y. Three weeks after learning that his plant was closing, he suddenly collapsed at home… Less than a month later, Don Turner, 55, a crane operator who had started at the mills as a teenager, was found by his wife, Darlene, slumped on a love seat, stricken by a fatal heart attack.

It is impossible to say exactly why these men, all in relatively good health, had heart attacks within weeks of one another. But interviews with friends and relatives of Mr. Kull and Mr. Turner, and with Mr. Smith, suggest that the trauma of losing their jobs might have played a role.

A growing body of research suggests that layoffs can have profound health consequences. One 2006 study by a group of epidemiologists at Yale found that layoffs more than doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke among older workers. Another paper, published last year by Kate W. Strully, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany, found that a person who lost a job had an 83 percent greater chance of developing a stress-related health problem, like diabetes, arthritis or psychiatric issues. In perhaps the most sobering finding, a study published last year found that layoffs can affect life expectancy…

Continue reading at the New York Times.

It was hard to explain to people why I wasn’t thrilled and exhilarated to be living with my husband again, out of a seemingly dead end job and taking my life into my own hands. I wasn’t thrilled or exhilarated. And I wasn’t even scared in that good kind of way; I was just scared and isolated. At least now I know I wasn’t as weird as I was made to feel.

Articles related to jobs and heart attacks:
autism · behavior · brain · children · emotion · learning · Mental · psychology · robotics · Social

AP News: Kaspar the friendly robot helps autistic kids

Beth Kelley

I have heard of this kind of therapy before, how autistic kids tend to respond better to robots teaching them emotions and proper social responses; the robot acts as a sort of bridge, or neutral third party for the kid:

STEVENAGE, England (AP) – Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. This year, the 4-year-old autistic girl began playing with a robot that teaches about emotions and physical contact – and now she hugs everyone.

“She’s a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace,” said Claire Sawczenko, Eden’s mother.

The girl attends a pre-school for autistic children in Stevenage, north of London, where researchers bring in a human-looking, child-sized robot once a week for a supervised session. The children, whose autism ranges from mild to severe, play with the robot for up to 10 minutes alongside a scientist who controls the robot with a remote control.

The robot, named Kaspar, is programmed to do things like smile, frown, laugh, blink and wave his arms. He has shaggy black hair, a baseball cap, a few wires protruding from his neck, and striped red socks. He was built by scientists at the University of Hertfordshire at a cost of about 1,300 pounds (US$2,118).

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_6418/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=X0CCVnY5

It’s also nice to hear a story about robots helping people, rather than the usual scenarios we hear and see like from Matrix and Terminator.

Related Articles
behavior · brain · happiness · health · Uncategorized

Note to self: the universe says go easier on yourself

Beth Kelley

After going, going, going, I need a break, and research agrees; from the New York Times’ Well Blog:

Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family?

That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising.

The research suggests that giving ourselves a break and accepting our imperfections may be the first step toward better health. People who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic. Preliminary data suggest that self-compassion can even influence how much we eat and may help some people lose weight.

This idea does seem at odds with the advice dispensed by many doctors and self-help books, which suggest that willpower and self-discipline are the keys to better health…

More at NYT’s Well Blog.

Now I’m off to go breath, eat a banana, and get a good night’s sleep.

brain · community · creativity · happiness · mental health · play · psychology

Grandma the superhero

Beth Kelley

Mental health is important throughout the entire human lifespan, from infancy (see previous post) to old age.

Courtesy of Boing Boing, I ran across this great story about actively pursuing good mental health, helping out a fellow human being, and using creativity and silliness to accomplish it.

“Sacha Goldberger found his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika, a WWII survivor, feeling lonely and depressed. To cheer her up, he photographed her dressed up as a fictional superhero. To his surprise, she loved it. The photos are a bit comical, but there’s an underlying sense of hope, strength and courage in them.”

View Grandma’s Superhero Therapy (18 photos). From the blog: 

Frederika was born in Budapest 20 years before World War II. During the war, at the peril of her own life, she courageously saved the lives of ten people. When asked how, he tells us “she hid the Jewish people she knew, moving them around to different places everyday.” As a survivor of Nazism and Communism, she then immigrated away from Hungary to France, forced by the Communist regime to leave her homeland illegally or face death.

Aside from great strength, Frederika has an incredible sense of humor, one that defies time and misfortune. She is funny and cynical, always mocking people that she loves.

With the unexpected success of this series, titled “Mamika,” Goldberger created a MySpace page for his grandmother. She now has over 2,200 friends and receives messages like: “You’re the grandmother that I have dreamed of, would you adopt me?” and ” You made my day, I hope to be like you at your age.”

People often forget just how much fun, funny, and spunky people can be after living on this Earth for a few decades. My grandmas were and are unstoppable forces of nature.

There have been a few photographic projects with older folks, in retirement homes or elsewhere, but the artist in me definitely feels like this demographic is an important part of humanity to explore that has been relatively neglected.

Related Articles
behavior · brain

We are music-powered beings

Beth Kelley1 Comment

It is amazing the power that music has on us. It can make us happy, cry, soothe depression, calm, enliven, and make us dance like idiots.

Babies are not immune to this, in fact there are some very famous dancing babies. Who can forget the kiddo dancing to Beyonce from a year ago?

Turns out this inclination to move and wiggle to music starts at an incredibly early age. NPR’s Science Friday showcased a study where babies where set up with headphones piping in very danceable beats. Infants would spontaneously start dancing to the beat. Sure, they weren’t all that great at it, but as the scientists point out, they’ve only been using their muscles for a few months here, so cut them some slack!

Click here to see the video

But I have never seen such a good demonstration of the power of music as with this little guy. Watch what happens right around 30 seconds and then again at 2:10.

anthropology · brain · creativity · Mental · neuroscience · psychology

The Evolving Minds Of Humans : NPR

Beth Kelley

 

 

Where do we get artistic ideas and inclinations? What is it about the brain that makes us like art? Neurologist Antonio Damasio writes about his ideas why in his new book, Self Comes to Mind.

In his new book, Self Comes To Mind, neurologist Antonio Damasio argues that consciousness gave humans an evolutionary advantage. Damasio describes the differences between self and mind, and traces the evolutionary path of the human brain.

Where do we get the ability to create works of art, to be moved by a piece of beautiful music or to feel bad when someone says something hurtful?

via The Evolving Minds Of Humans : NPR.

His main focus is on consciousness, but touches on the idea of creativity, new thinking, and artistic desires as part of our evolution as humans.

brain · creativity · design · music

10 Ways to Boost Creativity

Beth Kelley2 Comments

This list was compiled by the very talented Lori McNee (@lorimcneeartist) for The Top 10 Blog.

Lori is an internationally recognized professional artist who specializes in still life and landscape oil paintings. She shares valuable fine art tips, art business tips and social media advice on her superb blog FineArtTips.com.

Lori writes: Artists, writers, musicians and even bloggers have a common need to create. But, sometimes we hit a mind block and often find ourselves stressed, overwhelmed and unable to produce original ideas. This happens to me from time to time, so I decided share my top ten ways to boost your creativity.

1. Set aside a time and place.
2. Give yourself a break from technology. (um, but continue reading this blog for more ideas before you take a break!)
3. Try something new.

Read all of her ten tips and why here: http://www.thetop10blog.com/top-10-ways-to-boost-your-creativity/