By Simon J. Evans, PhD

If you talked to a person from the 1950s about all the modern marvels we have today they’d likely drool at the mouth. What? You don’t have to get up to change the TV channel? You can reheat leftovers in 1 minute? You can access any information at any time without leaving your house? No way!

Be Careful What You Ask For

But are our lives really getting any easier? Do all these time saving devices allow us to work less? Well, sort of. It certainly takes less work to do any specific task. When I was in graduate school writing my thesis, I thought of the poor slobs who had to do that without the aid of a computer or the internet. It must have taken people an entire day to go to the library to find references that I can now get in 10 minutes (God bless Google). The trade-off is that we are expected to do a lot more tasks as part of our normal day.

I was reading an interesting paper by Kelly Lambert recently that put some of this into perspective as it may relate to rates of depression in our modern society. Even with all our modern conveniences, high-end medical care and plethora of designer drugs, we have a huge mental health crisis. In fact, today mental health accounts for about 15% of disease burden worldwide. So why are we so unhappy?

The Thrill is in the Chase

Dr. Lambert argues that one factor in our overall societal unhappiness is the fact that we have it too easy, especially when it comes to feeding ourselves. Years gone by, dinner was more than a phone-call away. We actually had to track our food across the tundra and risk death by saber-toothed tigers or violent weather, in order to feed ourselves. Even if we were successful, we had to do it again the next day. As time drew on, we learned it was much easier to plant food in the ground. But this still required intensive labor and patience to bring our sowing efforts to the fruition of harvest.

All of this effort made the reward that much more enjoyable. The magnitude of the reward may actually depend on the magnitude of the effort required to achieve it. Meaning the harder we have to work for something, the more we enjoy it when we are successful. Since successfully finding food is a major factor in our survival, and we used to work very hard to stay fed, we had ample opportunity for regular high intensity rewards.

Appreciate What You Have

Today, however, we take for granted this major facet of our lives. Finding food does not require much effort at all, at least for most of the lucky people living in our society. Because we don’t need to put out effort, we don’t activate reward centers in our brains that our ancestors activated on a regular basis. We are essentially robbing ourselves of a major ‘happiness factor’, and this, argues Dr. Lambert, may be a problem. It may be that today’s lack of regular reward, due to lack of necessary effort, may be a factor in high rates of depression.

Whether or not she is right, I don’t know. She provides many examples and scientific studies to back up her argument and I thought it was a very interesting point worthy of a post. In fact, I have two cats that seem to agree with her. They are not content just eating their chow out of a dish. Instead, they enjoy scooping out one nugget at a time, batting it across the kitchen floor and then pouncing on their prey before eating it.

There’s not really much we can do about this unless you want to pull a Grizzly Adams and drop out of society, move to the hills and live off the land. Alternatively, you could do all your grocery shopping in full camouflage, crawling around on your belly through the frozen food aisle, stalking fish sticks. Or, maybe we can be more appreciative of what we have and not take all our modern conveniences for granted.

Reference: Lambert, K.G. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30 (2006) 497–510

By Paul R. Burghardt, PhD

A couple of recent articles in the journal Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, reported exercise as an effective adjunctive treatment for individuals suffering from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).

An Italian research group [Pilu et al, 2007] reported that individuals receiving antidepressant drugs along with cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise for eight months had decreased severity of depression compared to individuals receiving drugs but not exercise. A follow up analyses of the study determined that these individuals’ perception of their quality of life was also improved [Carta et al, 2008].

One of the interesting things about this study is that the researchers specifically chose women who were not responding to drug treatment. But when drug treatment was coupled with exercise they felt better! Pretty cool.

Lack of response to antidepressant drug treatment is a pretty sizeable problem. Many times individuals will be placed on different drugs, sometimes combinations of drugs, or varying doses of drug, until something seems to work. This can be unpleasant due to the side effects of antidepressant drugs, and relative amount of time it may take to find the appropriate drug and dose.

So the potential for exercise to increase the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs is an important finding that will hopefully be incorporated at the clinical level.

There are a couple of limitations to the study that the authors acknowledge. First, only a small number of participants were included. Generally, results from studies with larger numbers of participants have more statistical power. That means that researchers can more confidently attribute the results to the treatment, and not just random chance.

Second, the study only included women within in a specific age range (40-60 years old). The problem here is that the findings might not apply to a different demographic, say 18-25 year old males. On the positive side, it does suggest a benefit in that age group of women which is of interest since the rates of depression our about twice as high in women compared to men.

Third, they didn’t have the full set of control groups. Since the exercise sessions were conducted as a group, it may be that the social interaction among the participants during the exercise period is what caused the improvements in depressive symptoms. However, several prior studies also suggest anti-depressive effects of exercise. Still, the authors can’t say for sure that these effects were due to exercise, and not the social aspects of coming together to exercise in a group.

But if we step back and look at the big picture, it doesn’t really matter if it is “just” the exercise that reduces depressive symptoms. These women felt less depressed and that they had a better life! So if we feel the need to be scientifically cautious about these findings….. for now, get together with some other people to exercise.

Again, this was a small study that didn’t have the full array of scientific comparison groups, but this is another option for people suffering from depression who are not responsive to their medications. You may be wondering, did these women even need the drugs? Great question! We’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.

By Simon J. Evans, PhD

A recent article in the New York Times highlighted new studies directed at figuring out how long-time married couples can keep their romance alive. The answer was very simple. Do something different.

In one ten-week study, researchers worked with 53 couples. They instructed one third of them to spend 90 minutes per week doing familiar but enjoyable activities, like going to dinner or a movie. Researchers instructed another third to spend 90 minutes doing something exciting that they both enjoyed. This group spent time doing new things or things they didn’t do very often. The final group received no specific instructions.

After the study was over, researchers interviewed the couples to rate the quality of their relationships. The couples that spent time doing new things scored higher than the other two groups.

This may all be common sense. The more exciting stuff you do together, the stronger your relationship can get. But it’s interesting to look at the underlying brain science, because it has implications for your overall brain fitness as well.

The brain enjoys new things. New experiences crank up the brain’s reward system, driven largely by the ‘pleasure’ signal, dopamine. This same circuit is very active early in the intensely romantic part of a relationship. So, the theory goes that doing new, exciting stuff together, may literally help rekindle the brain circuits that drive romance.

We have been promoting interjecting variety into your daily routines, as good for your brain fitness, for some time now. Beyond variety improving your relationships, it also helps you make new brain connections that are good for all kinds of brain functions.

Your brain is a web of about 100 trillion connections between 100 billion neurons. When we do new things and learn new stuff, the level of connectivity increases, and not just in your pleasure circuits but in other parts of your brain as well.

Increasing the connectivity between neurons in parts of the brain responsible for memory, decision making and creative thinking, is very beneficial to your long-term brain fitness. The more connectivity you create, the more defenses you have against cognitive decline as you age.

Think of an old tree with many branches. This is sort of what neurons look like. The more you learn by experiencing new things, the bushier the neuron gets and the more connections it can make. In fact, neuroscientists use the term ‘arborization’, meaning a tree-like appearance, to define the amount of branches a neuron has.

The degree of arborization is an indicator of a neurons health, especially in brain regions associated with learning and memory. Although we can’t directly measure arborization in people, studies in rodents show that those exposed to new environments on a regular basis have more arborization in neurons involved in memory.

What we can do in people is use new brain scanning technology to determine the level of activity in brain regions, which has some correlation with the level of connectivity and neuronal arborization in animal studies.

These brain-scanning technologies show that people in long-term, high quality relationships have greater brain activity in their pleasure centers when shown a picture of their spouse. Researchers believe that interjecting new experiences into marriage is one thing that helps maintain these connections.

So this Valentine’s Day, instead of visiting your favorite restaurant, try a new one. Or get out and do something you both enjoy but don’t get the opportunity to do very often. It will be good for parts of your brain that will help keep your mind and your relationship young.

Written by Simon J. Evans, PhD

This is a short post on the incredible efforts of a local elementary school principal in my hometown. Nancy Tetens is the principal at my 5^th grader’s school (Symon’s Elementary) who is putting herself on the national stage in order to be a good example for her students.

Ms. Tetens, admittedly struggles with her weight, and felt like she wanted to show her students that adults can step up and take responsibility to improve their health. For the past couple of years Ms. Tetens has been doing just that. She is actively involved in promoting healthy behavior in her school and, more importantly, practicing what she preaches.

Recently, Ms. Tetens joined a national contest called, Clean Start Challenge, sponsored by Lifetime (the TV channel). And guess what…she was chosen as a finalist. Now she is ‘competing’ as one of only ten contestants over the next three months, to transform her life. You can check out Ms. Tetens story and cast your vote for her by clicking here.

More important than winning the prize is the chance to show hundreds of students how to turn their health around. It’s no surprise that kids today are not as healthy as they were decades ago. In fact, child obesity rates have risen dramatically over the past 30 years. In the 1970s the percentage of overweight kids was only a couple of percent. Today, nearly 1 in 5 fit into that category. On top of that, the center for disease control expects about one third of today’s kids to become diabetic.

There are all kinds of reasons for this, mostly boiling down to poor nutrition and less (way less) physical activity. One issue that has received serious national attention is the disappearance of daily P.E. in our schools.

Forced by current political policy and budget crunches, schools have reduced physical education programs in favor of more classroom instruction in order to meet the imposed national standards (some call it ‘no child left without a big behind’). Ironically, the more we learn about how the brain works the more we realize these kids would do better in school if they received more PE, not less.

Study after study has shown that kids boost their math, science and language performance with regular physical activity. But it goes way beyond grades. Physically active kids also have greater self-esteem and lower incidence of mood problems. Given that about 2 million American kids are on anti-depressants or anti-psychotics, this alone should be a strong reason to reintroduce more PE.

This is why Ms. Tetens’ story is such an inspiration. She is swimming against the tide to promote good health in kids. And the kids are taking notice. They are getting behind her and cheering her on all the way. This effort has the real potential to change lives. I strongly encourage you to take 30 seconds right now to cast your vote for Nancy to help promote this movement.

Written by Paul R. Burghardt, PhD

A recent article in the New York Times by Tara Parker-Pope delves into the potential health risks of clutter. I was skeptical at first, but sadly as I read on, I started to recognize some of those traits…..in myself!

How did it come to this?

Well one thing is for sure, it is partially due to genetics. If my parents are reading, I’m sure they won’t protest too much, since they were put at a genetic disadvantage as well. As for my grandparents, I knew my great-grandmother on my mother’s side, and well, my grandparents were pretty screwed too. Now I want to be clear, this is clutter, not filth. Things are moved, dusted and vacuumed, but there is a lot of stuff. Hopefully my family won’t hold this against me.

That being said, science has shown us again and again that much of behavior (as well as disease) is also due to environment. This is a pretty complex aspect and may be related to the people that are around you and how they handle clutter.

Current social issues probably play a large role too, from my interactions with people that lived through the great depression I’ve noticed that they tend to be very thrifty and don’t like to throw things away.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is a lot of people tend to “fill the space.” You move to a bigger house or apartment and something has to go into the corner, and your current couch and recliner just won’t do the trick.

How does this tie into health and brain fitness?

Well, the article mentioned “hoarding,” and it got me to thinking… ‘hey, I know animals do this and most of them don’t use coffee mugs all that much.’ But they do eat food. One of the behaviors that animals will exhibit if there is a potential lack of food, or if it is something particularly tasty, is (drum-roll)….hoarding!

In fact, the brain appears to default towards hording for food and energy stores (i.e. fat). The general consensus is that the wiring of our brains, particularly the hypothalamus which is one of the main areas where energy management is controlled, is weighted toward storing energy versus expending it. So it makes sense that other things that we view as resources or that have emotional value to us would also be potential candidates for hoarding.

Why would we do this to ourselves?

Although this is problematic for us now, it helps to step back and view this from a historic reference….even a recent perspective sheds light on the issue.

Currently, we live in a time of relative bounty (at least in the US and other industrialized nations) where we don’t have to work as hard to obtain our food. I would also argue that for the average Joe (or Josephine) we don’t have to work as hard to obtain the money to buy our food. I always try to imagine what people had to do 50-60 years ago on a daily basis. Now, a greater proportion of the population is sitting behind a computer at a desk, as opposed to smelting iron, digging ditches or whatever else went on in the early to mid 1900’s. Technology has reduced the effort required for a lot of manual labor.

A few decades ago even meal preparation required significantly more time and energy. Use of the microwave oven wasn’t widespread until the 1970’s, a pretty recent social development.

So historically things like food were (comparatively) more difficult to come by, but in general energy expenditure was a part of daily life for most people. It’s probably fair to say that in the past a lot of other things were not readily available (tools, books, hairbrushes, etc), and so people tended to hang on to them, but things have changed. Today these things are easy to come by, but we still don’t want to throw them away when they are no longer of use to us.

Unclutter your environment, unclutter your mind!

The NYT article mentions compulsive hoarders, which is an extreme behavior. But is moderate clutter a result of a bigger health problem? I don’t think there are any data to support that claim, so we don’t really know and I wouldn’t get too worried.

Could control of clutter and better organization help improve our health? I would bet yes. Actually the article hinted at this point when it mentioned “How are you going to shoot a couple of hoops with your son if you can’t even find the basketball?” This is a great point.

Organization would also help reduce stress. Ever had to quickly find a receipt that you set down somewhere only to spend an hour and a half (and expend lot of patience) searching for it? Not so good for the stress level, and it takes up a lot of time that could be spent relaxing, exercising, or learning something new.

So there isn’t a lot of advice on this post, but I thought the NYT article was interesting. Plus this is a worthwhile personal aspect to consider working on. Just remember that you may be battling against some inherited tendencies, but you can ultimately turn something that requires effort and thought into habit. For me this will be a priority for the new-year (a sort of resolution if you will), to organize and simplify… for clarity and my health.

Paul Burghardt, PhD
Brain Fit For Life

How BrainFit is the man in the big red suit? Does old St. Nick adhere to the four cornerstones of brain fitness to take good care of his egg’s noggin? All in all he seems to do a fairly good job, but let’s take a closer look.

First off is Nutrition. I’d guess that the diet up in the north pole has to be similar to the Eskimos. Even though they eat a lot of fat from whale blubber, they get huge doses of omega-3s from all the fish. I’ve heard that Santa enjoys a lot of ice fishing during his downtime. So even though he goes on a once a year milk and cookies binge (or bourbon and cookies in some places), he probably does fairly well the rest of the year.

Second is Physical Activity. Cleaning out reindeer stalls and chasing elves around to make sure they get their jobs done must be physically exerting. Plus, just maintaining a huge workshop operation has to have a fair amount of physical activity on a day-to-day basis. So I’d have to give Santa a good score on the physical activity cornerstone as well.

Third is Mental Activity. This is where Santa really shines. Remembering all the kids’ names and associating all the different requests with everyone one of them is quite a feat and indicative of a strong memory. Not only that, but his sense of direction to remember where they all live shows incredible spatial abilities. Finally, some of the toy designs he comes up with these days are very creative. I have to give him top marks on this cornerstone.

Fourth is Sleep, Rest and Relaxation. Santa probably doesn’t do quite as well here. Even though he only pulls an all-nighter once a year, he strikes me as a type-A personality and is on the go all the time. I bet he’s up to the wee hours working hard most of the year. In fact, lack of sleep has a known correlation with obesity and I’ll bet this contributes to his portly mid-section.

Overall, however, Santa does fairly well in three out of the four cornerstones so let’s see how that translates into his EPIC performance (Emotional, Physical and Intellectual Cognition).

Emotionally, he seems to be in good shape. He’s always laughing (HO, HO, HO) and shows a lot of patience with all those kids constantly climbing on him. I’ve never heard anyone call Santa a jerk, so you have to figure that he does a good job managing his stress levels.

Physically, he could lose a little weight but still seems to function very well. It must be tough getting up and down all those chimneys but he gets it done. I don’t know how his blood pressure or immune function are doing but he’s probably OK.

Intellectually, he’s a star. As I discussed above, memory, creativity and problem solving skills are all sharp. Although he did seem to forget about that Lava Lamp that I requested for about 10 years in a row, but he finally came through.

So is Santa doing what is necessary to stay BrainFit? I’d have to say yes.