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Neal

Effects of physical activity interventions on cognitive and academic performance in chi... - 1 views

shared by Neal on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • it is critical to advance our understanding of opportunities that have the potential to positively influence brain development.
  • less is known about the potential effects of PA on cognitive and academic performance.
  • PA is positively associated with cognition and with structural and functional brain health and a neutral association with academic performance for children. 12 Not all of these reviews were systematic,
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  • Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain posited PA-related effects on cognitive and academic performance. Regular PA alters neurogenesis and angiogenesis and enhances central nervous system metabolism. 20 Furthermore, it
  • has been suggested that regular PA increases the availability of certain growth factors, such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). All these systems and factors are involved with the maintenance and plasticity of the structure and function of the brain, 20 21 and thus with learning and memory
  • The majority of the studies included in the current review assessed the effects of PA in children aged 6–12 years. Seven studies reported children aged 5 years or younger, 44 51 52 64 77 79 80 and 13 studies included youths (ie, older than 12 years) in their studies. 37 39 43
  • The shortest intervention duration was 1 week, 54 62 79 and the longest spanned a period of 9 years.
  • Stratifying the evidence synthesis at the level of outcome for academic performance we conclude that there is strong evidence for beneficial effects of PA on maths performance (beneficial effects on 86% of the outcomes), but inconclusive evidence for language performance (beneficial effect on 27% of the outcomes).
    • Neal
      Neal on 15 Jan 19
       
      Is one more EF and/or WM dependent than the other? Is this evidence for PA and FI but not PA and CI?
  • The majority of the intervention studies implemented PA sessions of at least 30 min (n=41).
  • Many studies applied interventions that were delivered 5 days a week (n=28). The lowest frequency was 1 43 44 and the highest frequency was 6 days per week. 36 65 Most studies (n=34) assessed the effects of PA consisting primarily of aerobic exercise.
  • nine studies implemented more cognitively engaging PA, consisting of either coordinative exercise, 58 71 72 86 skill-based training, 69 motor skills training, 35 gesturing physical exercise, 52 perceptual motor training, 64 and motor-enriched learning activities. 73
  • Six studies assessed the effects of motor demanding or cognitively engaging activities. 31 43 44 53 54 70 Three of these studies implemented PA games specifically tailored to challenge core executive functions in a gross-motor fashion. 43 44 54 The majority of studies implemented separate PA sessions, whereas 14 studies delivered physically active academic lessons. 42 48 51 62 66 77–80 83 85 87
  • The intervention also showed small significant beneficial effects on attentional performance and impulse control after 1and 2 years, which were not sustained into the third year. After 9 years, children in the intervention group had significantly higher qualification scores for upper school
    • Neal
      Neal on 15 Jan 19
       
      A change in trajectory?
  • Most studies reporting intervention effects on cognitive performance, assessed domains of executive functions (in particular inhibition, working memory , updating, attention, task switching, and planning), speed of information processing, fluid and crystallised intelligence.
  • In particular, enhanced performance accuracy and increased P3 amplitude were observed in tasks requiring higher amounts of attention, inhibition and cognitive flexibility . T asks requiring less executive control were unaffected by the FITKids intervention.
    • Neal
      Neal on 15 Jan 19
       
      Perhaps it is the amount of EF involvolved in the outcome measure that determinew whentehr PA is effective>
  • Subramanian et al 65 reported beneficial effects of structured PA versus unstructured physical and creative sedentary activities in 12- to 17-year-olds on tasks measuring attention, concentration, non-verbal fluency , and mental flexibility
  • Although we found no evidence for beneficial effects on cognitive performance or overall academic performance, we found strong evidence for beneficial effects of PA on maths performance.
  • Cognitive/academic performance can theoretically improve through biological or psychosocial pathways, 20 and an interplay between the two is possible and probable.
  • beneficial effects on maths performance assessed intervention programmes with a minimal frequency of three sessions per week and a minimal programme duration of two school years.
  • The study conclusions suggested that their findings provided evidence for a more efficient use of neural resources underlying executive functions after participation in PA interventions, reflected in enhanced neural activity in regions supporting attention and working memory functions. 49
  • PA intervention may result in a more adult-like recruitment of prefrontal brain regions, which is important for many aspects of executive functions.
  • To establish the effect of combining academic content and PA, there should be at least three groups: (a) the intervention group that combines PA with academic content; (b) the non-active control group that only receives the same academic content as the intervention group, but without PA; (c) the active control group that only receives the PA component.
  • One high-quality study 54 suggested larger effects of coordinative or perceptual– motor forms of exercise on cognitive performance, particularly on executive functions, than aerobic exercise.
  • V ariability of practice that is central to coordination and perceptual–motor exercise training, for example, may be an interface between motor and cognitive development promotion. 9
  • Regarding moderators, it is likely that some children may benefit more from additional PA such as children with low PA levels or overweight children.
  • Interrupting and limiting sedentary time with standing desks or short activity bouts may be more feasible in the school setting and, therefore, a promising form of intervention.
  • Based on 11 high-quality intervention studies, we found inconclusive evidence of a beneficial effect of PA interventions on cognitive and overall academic performance in children. However, based on academic outcomes related to mathematics, we found strong evidence for beneficial effects of PA.
Neal

Frontiers | Mediators of Physical Activity on Neurocognitive Function: A Review at Mult... - 1 views

www.frontiersin.org/...full

shared by Neal on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Physical activity (PA) is known to maintain and improve neurocognitive health. However, there is still a poor understanding of the mechanisms by which PA exerts its effects on the brain and cognition in humans.
  • Consistent with the cross-sectional work, RCTs also support the argument that changes in brain structure and function may be mechanisms underlying the relationship between PA and cognitive performance. Specifically, the majority of RCTs have reported changes in brain structure or function, as well as in cognition following the exercise intervention. However, of the 13 RCTs including both cognitive and neuroimaging measures conducted to date, only 1 has used a statistical mediation model. Thus, it has not been possible in the majority of RCTs to rule out the possibility that another, unmeasured factor that covaries with both the treatment and outcome is underlying the intervention effects observed in the brain and/or cognitive performance.
  • Along these lines, if PA is thought to enhance cognition by improving brain structure and function, then eliminating PA should have the opposite effect. Examination of the effects of PA cessation has been comparatively unexplored to date. However, there have been two recent studies on this topic that support this idea (Alfini et al., 2016; Thomas et al., 2016). Alfini et al. (2016), showed that cortical and hippocampal resting brain perfusion decreases following PA cessation after just 10 days in older adult athletes. In addition, Thomas et al. (2016) found that hippocampal volume gains following an exercise intervention in young-middle aged adults, were abolished following 2-weeks of exercise cessation. These results are interesting and important for the field because they support PA as the causal variable in mechanistic models (i.e., removing PA reverses the brain effects attributed to this behavior).
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  • However, Alfini et al. (2016) did not administer a full cognitive battery, thereby limiting an interpretation of their results with regard to cognition. Thomas et al. (2016) administered a brief cognitive battery, but found no change in cognition following their 6-week intervention. It was therefore not possible to thoroughly evaluate whether cognition (our outcome variable of interest) also decreased following PA cessation. Such evidence is needed, as it would further strengthen the causal role Level 2 mediators play in PA-related cognitive effects.
  • However, only one study to date (Wilckens et al., in press) has combined all three variables in a statistical model to test whether sleep can account for the relationship between PA and cognitive performance—the results of this initial study suggest that it can. Similarly, mood is linked both to cognitive performance and PA. While several studies have considered mood along with other behavioral or socioemotional factors in statistical models assessing mechanisms of PA, virtually none have considered the unique or independent contribution of mood to the PA-cognition relationship.
  • Additional studies including both psychological and neurocognitive functioning as outcome variables are needed to enhance our understanding of this level of analysis.
Neal

Brains and Brawn: Complex Motor Activities to Maximize CognitiveEnhancement - 0 views

shared by Neal on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Ultimately, the rationale for an early start to a successful and healthy education goes beyond the classroom—the goal is to educate the next generations about the benefits of sustained motor activities across the lifespan.
  • The recent growth in the number of people affected by cognitive disorders has underlined the central role our brains play in daily life. Once our sophisticated neural machinery is impaired, we come to realize how important normal cognitive functioning really is. Together with growing evidence for the malleable property of the brain, this heightened awareness drives the current trend of research based on behavioral training programs that can remedy or alleviate cognitive disorders
  • Childhood is an ideal period to implement behavioral interventions aimed at cognitive enhancement, because neural plasticity at this age is the norm rather than the exception. This allows larger behaviorally induced cognitive improvement (Green et al. 2012; Steiner et al. 2014), and ultimately the identification and remediation of limitations before they spark off more sizeable difficulties (Franceschini et al. 2013).
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  • To date, one of the most effective way to trigger neurogenesis appears to be physical exercise (van Praag et al. 1999). Importantly, physical exercise is noninvasive and includes numerous beneficial by-products, such as general health improvement and psychological benefits
  • However, it is important to note that if newly formed neurons are not integrated within existing neural networks, they typically die within a couple of weeks
  • Interestingly, one of the most effective ways to integrate these new neurons within the existing network—and therefore to maximize their chance of survival—is to challenge the brain and force neural adaptation (Shors et al. 2012). Learning a new skill and acquiring new knowledge appear to be especially promising in this regard (Gould et al. 1999).
  • Based on the idea that brain function greatly benefits from physical exercise and that challenging cognitive stimulations ensure these benefits are maintained over time, researchers have proposed that coupling physical and cognitive demands could be especially interesting when targeting cognitive enhancement
  • Our findings showed that designed sport, an activity specifically tailored to tax working memory and spatial ability by incorporating complex motor coordination in three-dimensional space, outperformed interventions solely focused on either physical or cognitive demands on measures of working memory capacity, spatial ability, and biomarkers of general health, such as resting heart rate and blood pressure (Moreau et al. 2015). This is particularly promising because the cognitive abilities designed sport targeted are critical in many activities—working memory capacity is thought to be a central component of cognition and correlates highly with fluid intelligence (Engle et al. 1999), whereas spatial ability is a significant predictor of success in many academic and professional domains
  • The field of cognitive training is still in its infancy, and the consequences of combining interventions have yet to be fully understood, but this is undoubtedly a promising venue for research with direct applications to society.
  • combine cognitive challenges with physical motion should also be encouraged, as they allow creating ecological situations that have the potential to trigger important and transferable cognitive improvement.
  • The specific design of this combination— whether it is martial arts (Diamond and Lee 2011), physical activity games (Tomporowski et al. 2008), exergames (Staiano and Calvert 2011), or designed sport (Moreau et al. 2015)—is to be determined based on the objective of the intervention, the suitability of the approach to the educator or the school, and the infrastructures available.
  • In closing, complex motor activities that combine cognitive and physical demands provide a promising direction for the field of cognitive training. Beyond the cognitive benefits, they can induce when designed adequately, the physiological and psychological improvements complex motor activities allow present critical advantages over computerized training regimens, favored thus far. Eventually, the goal is to integrate motor activities durably within the community, so that habits formed in schools can lead to long-term changes in fitness and cognitive health.
Neal

Partly randomised, controlled study in children aged 6-10 years to investigate motor an... - 1 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...PMC5988081

children

shared by Neal on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • The aim of this study is to investigate motor and cognitive effects of a 9-week exercise intervention in children aged 6–10 years.
  • It is hypothesised that all groups gain motor and cognitive effects, but highest benefits are expected for the combination of automatised coordination exercises with mental tasks.
  • Neal on 15 Jan 19
     
    2018
Neal

MAP training: combining meditation and aerobic exercise reduces depression and ruminati... - 1 views

www.nature.com/...tp2015225

shared by Neal on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • These data indicate enhanced neural responses during the detection and resolution of conflicting stimuli. Although previous research has supported the individual beneficial effects of aerobic exercise and meditation for depression, these findings indicate that a combination of the two may be particularly effective in increasing cognitive control processes and decreasing ruminative thought patterns.
  • Neal on 15 Jan 19
     
    2016
Neal

Psychological Flexibility as a Fundamental Aspect of Health - 0 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...PMC2998793

psychological_flexibility mindset executive function

shared by Neal on 17 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Psychological flexibility spans a wide range of human abilities to: recognize and adapt to various situational demands; shift mindsets or behavioral repertoires when these strategies compromise personal or social functioning; maintain balance among important life domains; and be aware, open, and committed to behaviors that are congruent with deeply held values.
  • Psychological Flexibility as a Fundamental Aspect of Health Achieving psychological health is one of the foremost goals of human existence.
  • We are not disputing that positive emotions are important (Fredrickson, 1998), strengths or positive traits are important (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), or that the satisfaction of basic needs for belonging, competence, and autonomy are important (Deci & Ryan, 2000). However, these static approaches fail to capture the dynamic, fluctuating, and contextually-specific behaviors that people deploy when navigating the challenges of daily life.
    • Neal
      Neal on 17 Oct 19
       
      positive emotions positive traits strengths
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  • Indeed, research on psychological flexibility has for the past five decades traveled by a multitude of different names, among them ego-resiliency (Block, 1961), executive control (Posner & Rothbart, 1998), response modulation (Patterson & Newman, 1993), and self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000)
    • Neal
      Neal on 17 Oct 19
       
      Psychological flexibiligy
  • Psychological flexibility actually refers to a number of dynamic processes that unfold over time. This could be reflected by how a person: (1) adapts to fluctuating situational demands, (2) reconfigures mental resources, (3) shifts perspective, and (4) balances competing desires, needs, and life domains.
  • one might question whether any regulatory strategy provides universal benefits, as opposed to contingent benefits that hinge on the situation and the values and goals that we import.
  • These pathological processes span cognitive rigidities such as rumination and worry (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008), patterns of behavioral perseveration, as well as a relative inability to rebound following stressful events, and difficulties planning and working for distant goals.
  • As these skills flourish, people become more versatile and more adept at committing finite attention and energy to meaningful interests and values (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999)
  • At subjective, behavioral, and biological levels of analysis, researchers continue to find that psychopathology is relatively independent from positive experiences
  • Thus, rather than focusing on specific content (within a person), definitions of psychological flexibility have to incorporate repeated transactions between people and their environmental contexts.
  • The work on ego-resiliency is extensive. Briefly, an important prediction is that ego-resilience would be associated with greater progression through the stage of identity development from being young and impulsive to learning social rules and conforming and for the most mature, advanced stages such as being wise and self-determined (Loevinger, 1987)
  • Instead, consider the flexible application of different types of emotional expression as the situation warrants.
  • the ability to modulate behavior as required by the situation contributed to real-world adjustment over and above any particular regulatory strategy.
  • Interestingly, variability in appraisals and coping strategies was positively related to the effectiveness of handling stressors. More importantly, the 30% of people demonstrating coping flexibility were better adjusted on a daily basis and showed less anxiety and depressive symptoms over a 1-week period than people demonstrating more rigid adherence to particular coping strategies, regardless of whether they were problem- or emotion-focused, active- or passive-focused. These findings on the benefits of flexibility compared with any particular configuration of self-regulatory strategies have been replicated in subsequent experimental and prospective studies (e.g., Cheng, 2003; Cheng & Cheung, 2005).
  • By ego-resiliency, we meant…a dynamic ability to temporarily change from modal reaction or perceptual tendencies to reactions and percepts responsive to the immediately pressing situation and, more generally, to the inevitably fluctuating situational demands of life. In particular, the ego-resiliency construct entailed the ability to, within personal limits, situationally reduce behavioral control as well as to situationally increase behavioral control, to expand attention as well as to narrow attention, to regress in the service of the ego as well as to progress in the service of the ego…The relatively unresilient or vulnerable individual displayed little adaptive flexibility, was disquieted by the new and altered, was perseverative or diffuse in responding to the changed or strange, was made anxious before competing demands, and had difficulty in recouping from the traumatic.
  • Rumination involves stereotypical and perseverative thinking about the reasons for and meaning of one’s own sad, dysphoric affect. Not only is a ruminative response style inflexible in that it involves habitual application of circular, looping thoughts, it also represents a passive, inactive mode that displaces more active engagement with the environment; engagement that could potentially relieve depressed mood.
  • For adolescents at age 14 and adults at age 23, ego-resilience was strongly associated with higher stages of identity development.
  • Upon reaching more mature stages of identity development, young adults are visibly more flexible in multiple contexts compared with less mature peers.
  • Besides the development of maturity and wisdom, the most characteristic features of ego-resilient children and adolescents (as rated by teachers, parents, and independent observers) include: vitality, curious and exploratory, self-reliant and confident, creative, an abundance of meaningful experiences, abilities to effectively master challenges, and quick recovery following stressful events (Gjerde, Block, & Block, 1986; Klohnen, 1996).
  • Equally useful to understanding the psychologically flexible person are the least representative features of ego-resilient youth: rigid repetitive strategies to handle stress, socially inappropriate emotional expressiveness, and discomfort in unpredictable and challenging environments.
  • Although causality cannot be determined, flexibility appears to move people from extrinsic motivated actions toward self-determination and the related health benefits
  • In the ACT model, flexibility is about being aware of thoughts and feelings that unfold in the present moment without needless defense, and depending on what the situation affords, persisting or changing behavior to pursue central interests and goals.
  • psychological flexibility was on average correlated .42 with outcomes ranging from job performance and satisfaction over a 1-year interval, daily activity engagement in pain patients, and mental health (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006)
  • Being more open and accepting of emotional experiences, being willing to engage in difficult activities to persist in the direction of important values, allows a person to pursue a rich, meaningful life right away.
  • Emotional preferences should hinge on the goals people are inclined to pursue. We have not given due consideration to the task of identifying which emotions are functional and at what levels of intensity and type of expressiveness. Sometimes negative, unpleasant emotions can be more useful than positive emotions. Taking advantage of this knowledge, teaching people this knowledge, is to explicitly address psychological flexibility.
  • Another perspective on the health benefits of psychological flexibility arrives from work on the ability to switch one’s focus from one life domain to another, one time perspective to another, and ensure that various important elements of a person’s identity are being satisfied in a harmonious manner.
  • If these examples suggest anything, it is that greater satisfaction and meaning in life can be captured by shifting temporal perspectives when the situation requires a particular mode of being (Boniwell & Zimbardo, 2004).
  • Similarly, recent daily-diary and prospective studies show that when time is allocated effectively in important life domains (e.g., work, school, leisure, relationships) to minimize discrepancy between a person’s actual day-to-day activities and their ideal, greater well-being is experienced. This includes life satisfaction, frequent positive emotions, infrequent negative emotions, and the ability to satisfy needs involving belonging, competence, and autonomy (Sheldon, Cummins, & Khamble, in press)
  • As we will highlight below, a signal feature of many disorders is that a person’s fluid transactions with the environment break down and responses become stereotyped and invariable.
  • Ironically, by being flexible and living in service of our deepest values instead of being narrowly focused on achieving happiness, we end up experiencing more frequent joy and meaning in life and less distress; we end up with greater vitality and degrees of freedom for how to live each moment (Hayes et al., 1999, 2004).
  • Recent extensions add important layers of complexity by suggesting that researchers and clinicians should look beyond the stereotypically negative content of attributions as a marker of depression risk to consider (1) the process of fixedly deploying the same attributions across different situations, a construct known as explanatory inflexibility (Moore & Fresco, 2007), and (2) the connections between an inflexible explanatory style and inflexible coping behavior (Fresco, William, & Nugent, 2006).
  • one commonality involves psychological inflexibility with respect to responses involving fear and anxiety.
  • Our premise, shared with the “acceptance-based approaches,” is that a flexible approach to one’s experiences will be associated with health and well-being, even when those experiences are sometimes painful.
  • There is growing evidence that the anxiety disorders are characterized by experiential avoidance for a variety of experiences, whether it is the experience of bodily arousal in panic disorder (Zvolensky & Eifert, 2000), the fear of strong emotional impulses in generalized anxiety disorder (McLaughlin, Mennin, & Farach, 2007), or concerns about openly expressing and exposing intense emotional experiences to other people (Kashdan & Steger, 2006). In turn, avoidance responses, as they become the default behavioral response, maintain the disorder over time.
  • Finally, as with depression, anxiety disorders are associated with inflexibility of physiological responding. Perhaps most notably, researchers have shown repeatedly that individuals with anxiety disorder exhibit reduced flexibility in autonomic responding (e.g., Thayer, Friedman, & Borkovec, 1996)
  • In fact, the pervasive and widespread nature of evidence for inflexibility in so many different response systems in so many different mental disorders is potentially overwhelming. Can these problems be reduced to a smaller core set? If so, what are the most important forms of inflexibility?
  • For example, individuals with higher resting CVC perform better than low CVC individuals on experimental tasks that require executive function. High CVC is associated with good performance on the Stroop task, which requires people to overcome attentional interference, as well as good performance on the n-back task (Johnsen et al., 2003; Hansen, Johnsen, & Thayer, 2003), which is a working memory task that requires people to monitor a continuous sequence of stimuli and remember which stimuli were presented n trials ago.
  • Relative to participants who did not maintain the exercise routine, those who maintained the exercise regimen had higher resting CVC and better functioning on an executive functioning task
  • The Building Blocks of Psychological Flexibility
  • Now that we have demonstrated the benefits of psychological flexibility and the costs of inflexibility, we consider three critical factors that influence the likelihood of being psychologically flexible and gaining access to its benefits:
  • Acceptance and awareness processes, coupled by a curious and receptive attitude toward negative or potentially negative experiences appear to be a precursor to psychological flexibility
  • prioritize and integrate cognitive capacities.
  • Essentially, executive functioning provides critical neuropsychological support for self-regulation
  • In fact, as discussed below, it is hard to imagine psychological flexibility without at least adequate performance in this domain.
  • When someone is described as being psychologically flexible, they are more apt to be versatile, using top-down strategies. That is, they show an awareness of what a situation requires and an ability to organize and prioritize strategies that “fit” the situation rather than relying on dominant, default strategies (Fleeson, 2001).
  • Another related, essential cognitive function is the ability to tolerate distress and develop an open, receptive attitude toward emotions, thoughts, and sensations.
  • executive functioning, default mental states, and personality configurations
  • When a person is unable to accept frustration and unwanted negative experiences, attentional capacity and decision-making capabilities are narrowed.
  • Instead of flexibly responding to a situation in an active manner, a person preoccupied with avoiding experiences is psychologically unavailable to adapt to the cues afforded by an existing situation.
  • This is because negative emotions and obstacles are an inevitable part of being a human that is constantly learning and growing, going through developmental changes in identity and social roles across the lifespan, experiencing daily hassles and stressors, and striving to organize a life built around meaningful goals and values (
  • Other social neuroscience studies provide additional support for the notion that acceptance of and openness to experience, and related emotion regulation processes are bound to executive functioning
  • Finally, executive functioning also typically includes working memory and recall, information processing speed, and the ability to inhibit behavior. These, too, are relevant to psychological flexibility, for similar reasons.
  • A weak danger cue in the environment may be prepotent, shutting down executive control, leading a person to conflate their anxious feelings as evidence of the dangerous potential that was never actualized. In the end, this person will be more worried and avoidant in similar, future situations, constricting their life space by tiny portions; a precedent that interferes with flexibility and the pursuit of a pleasurable, engaging, and meaningful life.
  • Taken together, robust executive functioning is critical for modulating responses to suit the circumstances and achieving desired outcomes—whether it is extracting rewards, reducing behavioral control, or some other situationally-bound strategy.
  • Social situations impose even greater demands upon executive functioning because of the need to simultaneously represent the desired outcomes of both the self and the other parties, without compromising either one
  • If human beings lacked predictive ability and were required to be in conscious control of how to interpret and respond to each gesture in each interaction, social interactions would slow to a crawl, relationships would have to be continually renewed, and it is hard to imagine how social groups and societies would ever form.
  • in enhancing psychological flexibility
  • To be adept at forming and maintaining significant, meaningful social relationships, there is utility in recognizing the limitations of our biased social judgments.
  • end our search for new and potentially useful information about each situation being different (even slightly) from any other (Kashdan, 2009). Although this can be energy consuming, this act prevents misjudgments of people and situations, and increases engagement, creativity, and the type of mindful, compassionate style of communication that is attractive and desirable to other people.
  • The problem is that habitual thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and goals are easily activated automatically, pulling us toward common well-worn directions as opposed to being sensitive to the unique hedonic or utilitarian value of acting differently (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Foa & Kozak, 1986). Essentially, conscious free will and flexible responding is subtly reduced by habits.
  • Unfortunately, the default mindset of most adults is a relatively inactive state where the past unduly influences the presen
  • Regardless of origin, there is evidence that humans commonly fail to detect novel distinctions and opportunities in the immediate environment and this can erode psychological flexibility.
  • Relatively few people can marshal the psychological flexibility to override default mental state in demanding visual tasks.
  • There is other evidence that experts often attempt to adapt old templates to new situations because of inflated confidence in their abilities to the neglect of contextual information.
  • Taken together, this line of research suggests that people are relatively insensitive to context and perspective in the present when there is the potential to rely on prior knowledge and experience.
  • Neal on 17 Oct 19
     
    "The Relationship Between Heart Rate Variability, Psychological Flexibility, and Pain in Neurofibromatosis Type 1"
Neal

Adaptive Capacity Model | Diigo - 0 views

www.diigo.com/...Adaptive%20Capacity%20Model

adaptive_capacity theory

shared by Neal on 05 Feb 19 - No Cached
    • Neal
      Neal on 05 Feb 19
       
      ombining aerobic exercise and cognitive challenges across the lifespan leadstothe maintenance of brain structure and associated function during aging.
Neal

The-Effect-of-Physical-Activity-on-Executive-Function-A-Brief-Commentary-on-Definitions... - 1 views

shared by Neal on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Executive function is a higher order cognitive ability that controls basic, underlying cognitive functions for purposeful, goal-directed behavior and that has been associated with frontal lobe activity
  • Kramer and his colleagues hypothesized that the effects of physical activity would be most evident for frontally dependent tasks such as executive function tasks (Kramer, Humphrey, Larish, Logan, & Strayer, 1994).
  • When statistically summarized, results indicated that chronic physical activity is particularly beneficial for executive function tasks (effect size = 0.68), as compared with controlled tasks (effect size = 0.46), spatial tasks (effect size = 0.42), and speeded tasks (effect size = 0.27).
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  • In addition, Salthouse, Atkinson, and Berish (2003) indicated that some specific executive functions (i.e., inhibition, updating, and time sharing) are potential mediators of age-related cognitive decline in normal adults, supporting the hypothesis that physical activity might serve to delay typical age-related declines in cognition.
  • Executive function, also known as controlled cognition, resource-demanding cognition, or executive control, is generally defined as a “higher level” or “meta-” cognitive function that manages other more basic cognitive functions (Alvarez & Emory, 2006; Baddeley, 1986; Salthouse, 2007) and the regulation of emotions and attention (Bell & Deater-Deckard, 2007; Blair & Diamond, 2008; Lewis et al., 2008) necessary for purposeful and goal-directed behaviors.
  • n the physical activity literature, the focus thus far has been on the cognitive control aspects of executive function
  • executive function in the physical activity literature is now typically described as planning, scheduling, inhibition, and working memory (Colcombe & Kramer, 2003; Hillman et al., 2006; Kramer et al., 1999).
  • Hughes and Graham (2002) used the classic distinction between automatic and controlled action and indicated that executive function involves planning and decision making, error correction, the implementation of a novel series of actions, performance in situations that are dangerous or technically difficult, and performance that requires overcoming a robust habitual response.
  • Similarly, Rabbitt (1997) described executive functions as those dealing with novelty, planning and acting on strategies for performance, and using feedback to alter subsequent responses.
  • Thus, these definitions reflect an emphasis on executive function as critical for performance in novel situations or when the performer is required to inhibit a previously learned response.
  • Salthouse (2005) has called for caution in using executive function as though it represents a construct that is distinct from other cognitive dimensions.
  • Researchers examining the effect of physical activity on executive function are encouraged to consider the complexity of the executive function construct and to give careful consideration to whether to include multiple measures of executive function to identify the effect on the broad construct of executive function or to focus on a specific executive function (e.g., shifting, inhibition, or updating) in their research (Miyake, Emerson, & Friedman, 2000a; Miyake et al., 2000b; Salthouse, 2007) .
  • Miyake et al. (2000a) suggested that because it is impossible to find a “pure” executive function measure, multiple neuropsychological measures should be used to minimize “task impurity” and to assess the broad construct. Another solution is to be clear in understanding the subcomponent(s) that are assessed by a particular behavioral measure (Jurado & Rosselli, 2007) and to use care in not overgeneralizing to the broader construct of executive function
  • the WCST is sensitive to frontal lobe damage and is purported to assess the executive functions of switching, inhibition, updating, and selective attention (Alvarez & Emory, 2006; Greve et al., 2005).
  • To perform the TMT successfully requires a variety of abilities, including number recognition, visual scanning with a motor component, and mental flexibility
  • In addition, performance on the TMT-B has increased requirements (as compared with the TMT-A) in terms of task-set inhibition ability, cognitive flexibility, and the ability to maintain a response set (Arbuthnott & Frank, 2000; Kortte, Horner, & Windhan, 2002). To isolate the executive function requirements of the TMT-B from the general processes of perceiving and responding, the difference between TMT-B and TMT-A or the ratio of TMT-B to TMT-A has typically been used as the measure of executive function (Arbuthnott & Frank, 2000; Salthouse et al., 2003).
  • This is likely to be indicative of the relatively recent interest in executive function in exercise psychology and is illustrative of how little data we actually have available on the effects of physical activity on executive function.
  • Another way of looking at this is that only 10 of the 29 executive function tasks identified as being most commonly used in the neuropsychology literature have been used in studies testing the relationship between physical activity and cognitive performance.
  • a lack of consistency in terms of how executive function has been operationalized in the two fields
Neal

Exploring synergistic effects of aerobic exercise and mindfu... : Medicine - 2 views

journals.lww.com/...ts_of_aerobic_exercise.14.aspx

mindfulness

shared by Neal on 15 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Methods and analysis 2.1 Study design and setting 2.2 Population 2.3 Recruitment 2.4 Screening and consent procedures 2.5 Study interventions 2.6 Safety considerations 2.7 Study assessments 2.7.1 Screening assessments 2.7.2 Primary outcomes 2.7.3 Secondary outcomes 2.7.4 Posited mediators 2.7.5 Covariates and moderators 2.8 Statistical analyses 2.9 Quality control and monitoring 2.10 Ethics and dissemination 3 Discussion 3.1 Strengths and limitations 4 Conclusion Author contributions References
Neal

Get Off the Couch! Exercise Your Way to a Healthy Brain · Frontiers for Young... - 0 views

kids.frontiersin.org/...frym.2017.00020

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  • Glossary Cognitive function: ↑ The way we process and think about the world around us. Cognitive functions include attention, memory, and ability to solve problems. Neuroplasticity: ↑ Changes that happen in the brain as the result of our experiences. Alzheimer’s disease: ↑ A disease that affects the brain in older age. The main characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease is a problem with cognitive functions, especially memory.
Neal

Why is executive function important for teenagers? - 0 views

www.parenttoolkit.com/...e-brain-and-executive-function

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  • There is a set of mental skills that’s one of the best predictors of a successful life in virtually every way you can measure success. Yet most people don’t even know it exists.
  • It’s called executive function. Usually abbreviated EF, executive function plays a big part in mental health, teaching, parenting – even employment - virtually the entire behavioral food chain of human experience.
  • I define executive function as “the ability to get things done - and not punch someone in the nose while doing it.” Executive function is a set of mental skills that help you get things done. It’s located in the frontal lobe of the brain, and can help you manage time, pay attention, multitask, and more. It’s also involved in a teen’s mental health, which we know is critically important to understand,
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  • and responsiveness
  • A kid’s EF score is the only statistic that predicts their future college GPA better than chance. High-EF kids get better-paying jobs when they leave school, enjoy more stable marriages, and work better in teams.
  • Scientists have been looking at behaviors underlying these disorders for decades. They’ve uncovered a stunning finding, which underscores the importance of EF. The vast majority of mental health issues are problems in executive function.
  • blend of demandingness
  • Get your child involved in regular aerobic exercise. Especially if the activity also engages the mind (like an organized sport, as opposed to just running).
  • Make sure your child gets enough sleep. No all-nighters, and no “blue light” exposure on screens in the late evenings, especially before bed. Sleep feeds the brain, and kids certainly need it to build their EF.
  • Help your child eat the right foods. The so-called Mediterranean diet (lots of fruits and vegetables, white meat, and if there’s grease, it needs to be olive oil) can improve working memory, a vital component of EF.
  • Practice mindfulness meditation—and help your child to do the same. But do the right kind. The protocol originally designed by Jon Kabat-Zinn can change EF in as little as 8 weeks.
Neal

Can headphones train you to focus better? - The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...attention-focus-brain-training

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  • Posner, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon who studies memory. Posner has conducted studies showing that even a few days of really good mindfulness meditation can alter the ability of the brain to focus. Physical exercise is also one common intervention that can help, too, especially with elderly people, he says. Meditation is helpful because, unlike “brain games” that train you to pay attention to one thing, its effects can generalize. If you engage in mindfulness meditation, there is evidence that it’ll help you focus better in general, not just be better at playing 2048, according to Giesbrecht.
Neal

How to Improve Your Working Memory and Become More Productive | The Art of Manliness - 0 views

www.artofmanliness.com/...er-feet-improve-working-memory

Working_Memory exercises

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  • Whether you’re answering hard questions, making impromptu remarks, analyzing a situation, or synthesizing a bunch of data points into a cohesive and convincing presentation, the ability to think and process multiple pieces of information quickly and effectively is a vital skill to have. In our fast-paced and fluid world, you’ve got to be able to pull out the right piece of knowledge at the right time.
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