But today, being more settled, my focus came back and the benefits of the combined dual n-back and “nines” training resumed with a new high score of 10.45 at “nines.” My previous best was 9.7, set a couple of weeks ago.

"Nines" Session 60 - Avg. n=10.45

And here is the chart showing progress since I started the combined daily training:

Combined Brain Training Dual n-back / Nines

Parallel studies show that intensive working memory training  stimulates neurogenesis. Further, my own experience and the anecdotal experiences of Mind Sparke customers indicates that the training helps improve impulse control, self esteem, and elevate mood.

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the UT team’s work is the first research to directly link addiction with neurogenesis in the hippocampus.

“More research will be needed to test this hypothesis, but treatments that increase adult neurogenesis may prevent addiction before it starts, which would be especially important for patients treated with potentially addictive medications,” said Dr. Amelia Eisch, senior study author and associate professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern. “Additionally, treatments that increase adult neurogenesis during abstinence might prevent relapse.”

Dr. Eisch and her team radiated rats’ brains to stop neurogenesis in the hippocampus. In one experiment, rats accessed cocaine by pressing a lever. The rats with radiated brains took more cocaine than rats that did not receive radiation.

In a second experiment, after becoming accustomed to taking cocaine the team radiated the rats, stopping neurogenesis while drugs were removed. Rats with reduced neurogenesis took more time to realize that the lever would no longer dispense cocaine.

“The nonirradiated rats didn’t like the cocaine as much and learned faster to not press the formerly drug-associated lever,” Dr. Eisch said. “In the context of this experiment, decreased neurogenesis fueled the process of addiction, instead of the cocaine changing the brain.”

Dr. Eisch plans to study other drugs of abuse, using imaging technology to study addiction and hippocampal neurogenesis in humans.

“If we can create and implement therapies that prevent addiction from happening in the first place, we can improve the length and quality of life for millions of drug abusers, and all those affected by an abuser’s behavior,” she said.

“Learning nouns activates the left fusiform gyrus, while learning verbs switches on other regions (the left inferior frontal gyrus and part of the left posterior medial temporal gyrus)”, says Catalan researcher Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells, co-author of the study from the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit of the University of Barcelona.

He and neurologist Thomas F. Münte from the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, in Germany, reported their findings of neural differences in acquiring new nouns and verbs in the journal Neuroimage.

By studying real time scans showing brain activation during a language learning exercise the researchers confirmed prior observations that our brains handle nouns and verbs in different ways.

The scientists inserted nonsense words into otherwise meaningful sentences, and then asked the study participants to derive the meaning of the inserted word – “Joe bought his mom a grimo of flowers for Mother’s day…” for instance, indicates that the word “grimo” means “bunch.”

“This task simulates, at an experimental level, how we acquire part of our vocabulary over the course of our lives, by discovering the meaning of new words in written contexts”, explains Rodríguez-Fornells. “This kind of vocabulary acquisition based on verbal contexts is one of the most important mechanisms for learning new words during childhood and later as adults, because we are constantly learning new terms”.

They measured responses to 80 new nouns and 80 new verbs.

“[The] results suggest that the same regions previously associated with the representation of the meaning of nouns and verbs are also associated with establishing correspondences between these meanings and new words, a process that is necessary for learning a second language”, says Rodríguez-Fornells.

Brain Training - Double Dose 18 Days

What’s more I can feel the change as I go from one exercise to the other. On some days my mind grasps and remembers the letters much better than it grasps and remembers the numbers, and vice versa. A very curious phenomenon. (It also doesn’t matter which exercise I work on first — I’ve been switching back and forth from one day to the next.)

Has this double dose training resulted in cognitive benefits? It feels as though it has. I feel more alert and “quicker.” (In November I took the Get Gamma test. Maybe I’ll retake at some point soon to see whether there has been a measurable change.)

Aerobic Exercise Increases Hippocampal Volume

In a study that focused specifically on patients suffering from schizophrenia, but also observing changes in non-schizophrenics, scientists have found that aerobic exercise increases the volume of the hippocampus by as much as 16%.

The volume increased by 12% in those with schizophrenia and by 16% in those without and was associated with improvements in short-term memory test scores.
“These results indicate that in [these patients], hippocampal volume is plastic in response to aerobic exercise,” write Frank-Gerald Pajonk, MD, Dr. K. Fontheim’s Hospital for Mental Health, Liedenburg, Germany, and colleagues.

“To provide a context, the magnitude of these changes in volume was similar to that observed for other subcortical structures when patients were switched from typical to atypical antipsychotic drug therapy,” they add.

“To be honest, we’ve been surprised that we found these results,” Dr. Pajonk told Medscape Psychiatry. “We double and tripled checked it, but the results were always confirmed. To our knowledge, this is the first time that it has been shown that the hippocampus is growing in patients with schizophrenia with a suitable method.

“As the hippocampus is one of the core structures in schizophrenia, we were thinking that if there was an increase in volume, it could give some improvement in cognition. And that’s what we found, at least to a small extent,” he added.

“We’ve done this same study in other brain structures and did not find any volume increases,” said Dr. Pajonk. “So this really seems to be a result that is specific to the hippocampus. That means it’s not just a question of blood flow or unspecific factors, but maybe it’s really specific for development of neurons in terms of increase in synapses or even neurogenesis.”

He added that it may be too soon to draw any clinical conclusions.

The investigators hope to continue to follow up these patients and are awaiting funding for a new study comparing the effects of exercise with cognitive training.

“Although I can’t prove it right now, I’m positive that exercise is doing good in the treatment of schizophrenia,” said Dr. Pajonk. “Many of the schizophrenia patients from the sporting groups were able to go on and develop a life of their own, moving to a new apartment, taking up a job again, etc. It’s a bit early and we just had a small sample size, but with this small number of patients, we were really surprised and amazed at what has happened to them.”

From Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010;67:133-143.

Also see:

Schizophrenia Improved By Mental And Physical Exercise

Effects of Physical Exercise & Schizophrenia

How A Stroke Affects The Brain

Scientists at the University of Iowa have published results of a fascinating study showing that antidepressants can improve the cognitive functioning of stroke victims.

Prior studies had indicated that antidepressants provided cognitive benefits for depressed stroke victims. The authors of this study set out to find whether the same would be true for those not suffering from depression.

“We knew that a patient with depression had poorer outcomes. We knew also that antidepressants improved outcomes among depressed patients,” professor Ricardo Jorge explained. “But we really didn’t have (although we had a hint) evidence that antidepressants given in small doses — relatively small doses — would be able to modify the outcome of these patients, particularly the cognitive outcome.”

The team compared the benefits of antidepressant treatment to the improvements on cognitive tests in two control groups, who received training in problem-solving skills or a placebo.

“The change in memory scores in this neuropsychological test for those patients who received the escitalopram was 11.3 points, against 2.5 points of positive change in patients who did not receive escitalopram,” says Dr. Jorge.

While pointing out that increased neurogenesis isn’t the only possible explanation for the cognitive benefits of antidepressants to the stroke patients he indicated that it was a distinct possibility:

“This is a complex issue, because there are several alternatives,” he explains. “One, and probably one that is quite appealing because this is related to the mechanism of antidepressants for treatment of depression, is that antidepressants have an effect called a neurotrophic effect. In a sense, that increases the expression of neurotrophic factors.”

“There is evidence that it will increase the neurogenesis and the proliferation of primordial neurons in the hippocampus,” Dr. Jorge theorized. “There are several trophic effects that help the brain reorganize itself. This is also important because the period immediately after a stroke is a period of greater plasticity in the brain, where the brain tries to compensate for its deficits. In not only a functional way but also in a structural way, there are changes in structure and changes in function that try to override the deficits brought by the stroke.”

See original report.