Mental Rest and Reflection Boost Learning, Study Suggests

What do you think of this article supported by the NIH and published by University of Texas at Austin?: "The patterns of brain activity recorded in this fMRI scanner revealed how mental rest and reflection on past learning activities can boost future learning. Photo credit: Jeff Luci. AUSTIN, Texas — A new study, which may have implications for approaches to education, finds that brain mechanisms engaged when people allow their minds to rest and reflect on things they've learned before may boost later learning. Scientists have already established that resting the mind, as in daydreaming, helps strengthen memories of events and retention of information. In a new twist, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have shown that the right kind of mental rest, which strengthens and consolidates memories from recent learning tasks, helps boost future learning. The results appear online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Margaret Schlichting, a graduate student researcher, and Alison Preston, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, gave participants in the study two learning tasks in which participants were asked to memorize different series of associated photo pairs. Between the tasks, participants rested and could think about anything they chose, but brain scans found that the ones who used that time to reflect on what they had learned earlier in the day fared better on tests pertaining to what they learned later, especially where small threads of information between the two tasks overlapped. Participants seemed to be making connections that helped them absorb information later on, even if it was only loosely related to something they learned before. "We've shown for the first time that how the brain processes information during rest can improve future learning," says Preston. "We think replaying memories during rest makes those earlier memories stronger, not just impacting the original content, but impacting the memories to come. Until now, many scientists assumed that prior memories are more likely to interfere with new learning. This new study shows that at least in some situations, the opposite is true. "Nothing happens in isolation," says Preston. "When you are learning something new, you bring to mind all of the things you know that are related to that new information. In doing so, you embed the new information into your existing knowledge." Preston described how this new understanding might help teachers design more effective ways of teaching. Imagine a college professor is teaching students about how neurons communicate in the human brain, a process that shares some common features with an electric power grid. The professor might first cue the students to remember things they learned in a high school physics class about how electricity is conducted by wires. "A professor might first get them thinking about the properties of electricity," says Preston. "Not necessarily in lecture form, but by asking questions to get students to recall what they already know. Then, the professor might begin the lecture on neuronal communication. By prompting them beforehand, the professor might help them reactivate relevant knowledge and make the new material more digestible for them." This research was conducted with adult participants. The researchers will next study whether a similar dynamic is at work with children. This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the NSF CAREER Award and the Department of Defense through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program." For more information on mental health topics, please visit CEUs for Counselors

Mental stress + heart disease: Stronger presence in women under 50

Patients with recent heart attack tested with public speaking task Researchers have found that women younger than 50 with a recent heart attack are more likely to experience restricted blood flow to the heart (myocardial ischemia) in response to psychological stress. The finding may partly explain why younger women who are hospitalized after a heart attack face a greater risk of complications and dying, compared to men of the same age. The results are scheduled to be presented Wednesday, Nov. 20 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions meeting in Dallas. Researchers at Emory University have been studying the responses of patients who recently had a heart attack to exercise stress and mental stress, in the form of public speaking on an emotional topic. They have found that women age 50 and below are more likely to experience mental stress-induced ischemia, compared to men of the same age (52 percent compared to 25 percent). The MIMS (Myocardial Infarction and Mental Stress) study included 49 men and 49 women, age-matched pairs who all had a heart attack in the last six months. Their ages ranged from 38 to 59. Among study participants older than 50, there were no significant sex differences in mental stress-induced ischemia;, however, men older than 50 had a rate of exercise-induced ischemia that was twice as high as women of a similar age. "This is the first study to examine the cardiovascular effects of psychological stress as a possible mechanism for the greater mortality after myocardial infarction among younger women," says study leader Viola Vaccarino, MD, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health. "We saw a dramatic difference in mental stress-induced ischemia specifically in younger women. In addition, when ischemia was graded in a continuous way, we saw that it was twice as severe among the younger women." Women who experience a heart attack before age 50 are relatively rare, suggesting that perhaps those who do simply have more severe heart disease. However, even when investigators adjusted for different rates of traditional heart disease risk factors such as smoking and diabetes, the disparity remained. In fact, women tended to have less severe coronary artery disease, measured by examining the degree of blockage in their coronary arteries. One possible explanation the Emory investigators considered was a higher burden of psychosocial stress, Vaccarino says. In the study, the younger women were more often poor, of minority race, with a history of sexual abuse and with higher levels of depressive symptoms. "Yet if we look at the statistics, factors such as poverty, race and depression do not explain the difference," she says. "Yes, women have more stressors. But our data show that women also may be more vulnerable to the effects of mental stress on the heart." "This could be an added stimulus to the medical community to pay more attention to the emotional factors in cardiac patients. We are now taking a closer look at potential physiological factors that account for the additional susceptibility in younger women." Emory researchers working with Vaccarino have identified two areas where there are specific differences in younger women who had a recent heart attack: inflammation and heart rate variability, a measure of the responsiveness of the autonomic nervous system. Low heart rate variability has been previously linked to greater heart disease risk. The inflammation data is being presented in a poster by postdoctoral researcher Cherie Rooks, PhD on Sunday, Nov. 17 and the heart rate variability data in a poster by assistant professor Amit Shah, MD on Tuesday, Nov. 19. Interleukin-6 is a marker of inflammation that goes up and down quickly depending on someone's environmental exposures including mental stress, even in healthy individuals. In the MIMS study, women age 50 and below had much higher levels of IL-6 in their blood, compared to age-matched men, both before the mental stress test and afterwards. Women and men older than 50 had similar levels of IL-6. Heart rate goes up in response to physical or psychological stress, but the beats also become more evenly spaced. Heart rate variability is a measure of how much moment-to-moment fluctuation is present; higher heart rate variability is a marker of a more flexible, and thus healthier, autonomic system. In the MIMS study, younger women had their heart rate variability dip more in response to stress, compared to men the same age. This is additional evidence that young women after a heart attack may be more vulnerable to the adverse effects of psychological stress on the heart. Vaccarino and her colleagues are continuing to investigate mental stress-induced ischemia, including how it affects mortality and complication rates, in a second phase of the MIMS study at Emory, which will include a larger sample with patient follow-up Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors Continuing Education ### How the study was conducted The mental stress test part of the study was a public speaking task involving an emotional topic. Participants were asked to imagine a real-life stressful situation, such as a close relative been mistreated in a nursing home. They had to quickly prepare a speech and deliver it in front of a video camera and an audience wearing white coats, while their blood pressure and other vital signs were monitored. Immediately afterwards, cardiac imaging was performed to assess blood flow within the heart via SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography). On a separate day, study participants performed a standard exercise test on a treadmill; a few were unable to exercise at a high heart rate and had to have a "pharmacological" stress test with a drug that dilates coronary arteries. The research was supported by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute for Mental Health (R21HL093665, R21HL093665-01A1S1, R01 HL109413, K24HL077506, and K24 MH076955).

Survey Finds More Evidence That Mental Disorders Often Begin in Youth

About 8 percent of U.S. teens meet current criteria for having a serious emotional disturbance, according to two NIMH-funded studies published in the April 2012 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. Background A September 2010 study using data from the NIMH-funded National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A) found that about 20 percent of youth are affected by a mental disorder sometime in their lifetime. The NCS-A is a nationally representative, face-to-face survey of more than 10,000 teens ages 13 to 18. Parents or caregivers were also asked to complete a corroborating questionnaire after teens were interviewed. The NCS-A used criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) to assess for a wide range of mental disorders including mood and anxiety disorders, behavior disorders like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), eating disorders, and substance use disorders. In this most recent analysis, Kathleen Merikangas, Ph.D., of NIMH, Ron Kessler, Ph.D., of Harvard University, and colleagues examined the prevalence of mental disorders, as well as the severity of the disorders, within a 12-month period to estimate the rate of serious emotional disturbances (SED) in youth. SED was defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) as a “mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder … that resulted in functional impairment which substantially interferes with or limits the child’s role or functioning in family, school, or community activities.” Results of the Study The researchers found that about 8 percent of all respondents had SED. Those with behavior disorders were most likely to be considered to have a severe disorder. Those with three or more coexisting disorders were also more likely to be severely affected. Similar to adults, anxiety disorders were the most common conditions in adolescents. Echoing many other studies, girls were more likely to have a mood or anxiety disorder or eating disorder, while boys were more likely to have a behavior disorder like ADHD or substance use disorder. Contrary to regional studies, this report showed a lower rate of depression among Hispanics compared to whites. Significance The findings in this study reflect the widely held belief that most psychiatric disorders first manifest in childhood or adolescence and tend to persist or recur throughout a person’s life. The researchers conclude that the high prevalence rate of mental disorders in U.S. adolescents underscores the need for more research focused on changing the trajectory of mental disorders in youth. What’s Next More research is needed to better understand the differences in prevalence rates among cultural and ethnic groups in different regions of the country ceus for nurses Citations Kessler R, Avenevoli S, Costello J, Georgiades K, Green JG, Gruber M, He J, Koretz D, McLaughlin K, Petukhova M, Sampson N, Zaslavsky A, Merikangas K. Prevalence, persistence and Sociodemographic correlates of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement. Archives of General Psychiatry. April 2012; 69(4):372-380. Kessler R, Avenevoli S, Costello J, Green JG, Gruber M, McLaughlin K, Petukhova M, Sampson N, Zaslavsky A, Merikangas K. Severity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement. Archives of General Psychiatry. April 2012; 69(4):381-389.

A walk in the park gives mental boost to people with depression

Study suggests nature walks improve cognitive abilities for people with clinical depression Toronto, CANADA – A walk in the park may have psychological benefits for people suffering from depression. In one of the first studies to examine the effect of nature walks on cognition and mood in people with major depression, researchers in Canada and the U.S. have found promising evidence that a walk in the park may provide some cognitive benefits. The study was led by Marc Berman, a post-doctoral fellow at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, with partners from the University of Michigan and Stanford University. It is published online this week, ahead of print publication, in the Journal of Affective Disorders. "Our study showed that participants with clinical depression demonstrated improved memory performance after a walk in nature, compared to a walk in a busy urban environment," said Dr. Berman, who cautioned that such walks are not a replacement for existing and well-validated treatments for clinical depression, such as psychotherapy and drug treatment. "Walking in nature may act to supplement or enhance existing treatments for clinical depression, but more research is needed to understand just how effective nature walks can be to help improve psychological functioning," he said. Dr. Berman's research is part of a cognitive science field known as Attention Restoration Theory (ART) which proposes that people concentrate better after spending time in nature or looking at scenes of nature. The reason, according to ART, is that people interacting with peaceful nature settings aren't bombarded with external distractions that relentlessly tax their working memory and attention systems. In nature settings, the brain can relax and enter a state of contemplativeness that helps to restore or refresh those cognitive capacities. In a research paper he published in 2008 in Psychological Science, Dr. Berman showed that adults who were not diagnosed with any illness received a mental boost after an hour-long walk in a woodland park – improving their performance on memory and attention tests by 20 percent – compared to an hour-long stroll in a noisy urban environment. The findings were reported by The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and in the Pulitzer Prize finalist book by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains. In this latest study, Dr. Berman and his research team explored whether a nature walk would provide similar cognitive benefits, and also improve mood for people with clinical depression. Given that individuals with depression are characterized by high levels of rumination and negative thinking, the researchers were skeptical at the outset of the study that a solitary walk in the park would provide any benefit at all and may end up worsening memory and exacerbating depressed mood. For the study, 20 individuals were recruited from the University of Michigan and surrounding Ann Arbor area; all had a diagnosis of clinical depression. The 12 females and eight males (average age 26) participated in a two-part experiment that involved walking in a quiet nature setting and in a noisy urban setting. Prior to the walks, participants completed baseline testing to determine their cognitive and mood status. Before beginning a walk, the participants were asked to think about an unresolved, painful autobiographical experience. They were then randomly assigned to go for an hour-long walk in the Ann Arbor Arboretum (woodland park) or traffic heavy portions of downtown Ann Arbor. They followed a prescribed route and wore a GPS watch to ensure compliance. After completing their walk, they completed a series of mental tests to measure their attention and short-term/working memory and were re-asssessed for mood. A week later the participants repeated the entire procedure, walking in the location that was not visited in the first session. Participants exhibited a 16 percent increase in attention and working memory after the nature walk relative to the urban walk. Interestingly, interacting with nature did not alleviate depressive mood to any noticeable degree over urban walks, as negative mood decreased and positive mood increased after both walks to a significant and equal extent. Dr. Berman says this suggests that separate brain mechanisms may underlie the cognitive and mood changes of interacting with nature CADC I & II Continuing Education ### The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and a private grant from the TKF Foundation. At Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute, Marc Berman's research explores the brain mechanisms involved in controlling thoughts, feeling and behaviors, and how to improve those abilities. Prior to joining Baycrest in 2011, Dr. Berman received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience and Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan.

LA BioMed researchers remain at the forefront of mental health initiatives

The month of May recognized as Mental Health Awareness Month LOS ANGELES (April 30, 2012) – With the month of May recognized nationally as Mental Health Awareness Month, the physician-researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed) continue to be at the forefront of mental health initiatives, engaging in clinical trials to help find therapies and treatments for individuals who suffer from mood and anxiety disorders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), mental health concerns affect 1 in 10 Americans today, but fewer than 25 percent of people with a diagnosable mental disorder seek treatment. Ira Lesser, M.D., is a principal investigator at LA BioMed and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, at Harbor-UCLA. At LA BioMed, he has led a number of clinical trials on mood and anxiety disorders, including the largest ever conducted on depression – Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) – a study funded by the NIMH. LA BioMed was one of 41 clinical sites participating, enrolling the greatest number of individuals and was the highest primary care enrolling site in the country. "With a growing number of individuals being diagnosed with a mental health disorder, it's imperative that we educate these individuals as to the options available to them, and also encourage them to seek treatment," said Dr. Lesser. "At LA BioMed, we are working to develop treatments and therapies that will not only help to cure but also help individuals cope with their existing conditions in the long term." In addition to STAR*D, Dr. Lesser and his staff (Karl Burgoyne, M.D., Benjamin Furst, M.D., Deborah Flores, M.D.) are working on other clinical trials including Biomarkers for Rapid Identification of Treatment Effectiveness in Major Depression (BRITE) and Biomarkers for Outcomes in Late-Life Depression (BOLD). Working alongside Dr. Lesser is LA BioMed investigator Michele Berk, Ph.D., who is directing a multi-site, randomized clinical trial that tests the effects of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) on teenagers who have attempted suicide or engaged in self-harm behaviors, such as cutting. Suicide now ranks as the third leading cause of death in the U.S. among youth ages 10-19. DBT has been shown to be effective in reducing suicidal behavior in adults with depression and personality disorders. Sponsored by the NIMH, this study is the first such clinical trial in the U.S. to test the effectiveness of DBT in adolescents. John W. Tsuang, M.D., in conjunction with Steven J. Shoptaw, Ph.D., from the UCLA Department of Family Medicine, is spearheading a Phase I clinical safety trial that for the first time examines the effects of Ibudilast when administered with metamphetamine (MA), an addictive stimulant that is closely related to amphetamine. Funded by the National Institutes of Health National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), this study will help to determine the effects of Ibudilast - combined with relevant doses of MA - on heart rate and blood pressure, and whether or not Ibudilast alters the way in which the body absorbs, distributes, and metabolizes MA. The development of one or more medications to reduce MA abuse, when implemented with evidence-based behavioral and counseling interventions, would have obvious public health significance. Dr. Tsuang is hoping that following the initial safety trial, physicians will be able to utilize Ibudilast in treating patients with MA dependence to help them improve memory and reduce the damage done to their central nervous system due to MA abuse social worker continuing education About LA BioMed Founded in 1952, LA BioMed is one of the country's leading nonprofit independent biomedical research institutes. It has approximately 100 principal researchers conducting studies into improved treatments and cures for cancer, inherited diseases, infectious diseases, illnesses caused by environmental factors and more. It also educates young scientists and provides community services, including prenatal counseling and childhood nutrition programs. LA BioMed is academically affiliated with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and located on the campus of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. For more information, please visit www.LABioMed.org