High Fructose Corn Syrup and the Brain

Did you know that what you eat affects how you think? Studies at UCLA, reported in the Journal of Physiology, reported that a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup disrupted the ability of lab rats to think clearly and to recall how to run a learned maze route. Some of the rats also developed signs of insulin resistance; insulin is a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates brain function. (According to the US Department of Agriculture, the average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, it being found commonly in soda, applesauce, baby food, condiments, and other processed snacks.) Researchers reported that the study “shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."

PTSD and Sleep

Did you know that about twenty 20 percent of people exposed to a severe traumatic event, such as a car or work accident, terrorist attack or war, cannot carry on their lives normally for a period of time? They often retain the memory of the event for many years, which can cause considerable difficulties in daily life. A new rat study done at Tel Aviv University and published in the international scientific journal, Neuropsychopharmacology, showed that sleep deprivation of approximately six hours immediately after exposure to a traumatic event reduced the development of post trauma-like behavioral responses. This means that sleep deprivation the first hours after stress exposure could represent a simple, yet effective, intervention for PTSD. Researcher Hagit Cohen is currently planning a pilot study in humans.

Accuracy and Flashbulb Memories

Do you know how accurate your flashbulb  memories are? Flashbulb memories are usually extremely vivid and have some personal significance for the individual. For the person recalling these vivid memories, they often seem to be more accurate than everyday less vivid memories. This may not actually be the case, however. For example, in one study, both flashbulb memories of 9/11 and everyday memories were found to deteriorate over time. For the individual having the flashbulb memories, however, the reported vividness, recollection, and personal belief in the accuracy of the memories remained high.

Babysitting by Electronics

Did you know that an American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation is that babies under the age of two watch no television? A study, reported in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, suppported that recommendation, concluding: watching television not only isn't educational but it seems to stunt babies' development. Nancy Shute reported on this in her article entitled TV Watching Is Bad for Babies' Brains. The study reported that babies who watched 60 minutes of television daily had developmental scores one-third lower at age 14 months than babies who weren not watching that much. Television offers us, as older individuals, the option of receiving information that we could not otherwise get in real time. For example, I watched TV broadcasts of the summer olympics every chance I got! Ordinarily, however, I babysit my brain by reading . . . 

Pain and Empathy

Empathy activates some, but not all, of the brain’s pain-processing regions. If you grab a hot spoon handle, pain shoots into temperature receptors on your skin, through nerves, up your spine and into your brain. Some brain regions process where the pain comes from and how hot the spoon really was. Other regions process how unpleasant you felt the pain to be. Thus, how much the burn hurts and how bothersome this pain is differs for each situation and depends partly on what else is going on in your head and the environment. On the other hand, knowing that a loved one is in pain automatically activates the subjective pain-processing regions of your brain, which leads to empathy. But the areas involved in processing the exact location of the pain in your body as well as the objective intensity of the pain are involved only when you experience pain in yourself.

Stay Young as You Grow Old

Many of you wrote to ask for the link to my article entitled "Do You LIKE Growing Older?" Here it is: http://www.arlenetaylor.org/taylors-articles/1870-like-growing-older   The bottom line is that the alternative is unattractive. There is a growing body of research that strongly suggests you can stay younger while growing older. That doesn't mean you'll live forever on this planet as you know it. It does mean that by developing and implementing a high-level-wellness living life style, it appears possible (all things being equal) to retard the onset of symptoms of aging, perhaps by up to 25 or 30 years. My brain's opinion? "It's worth it!" Remember that there are many brain aerobic exercises available free of charge on the Realizations Inc website: www.arlenetaylor.org The recommendation is to obtain at least thirty minutes of challenging mental stimulation every day. Plus ten minutes of reading aloud. Get busy. Everyone who knows you will be glad you took care of your brain!

Mentalizing

For the past several decades, research in developmental psychology, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience has focused on the human ability to have a “theory of mind” or to “mentalize.” This involves the ability to make attributions about the mental states (desires, beliefs, intentions) of others. This ability is absent in monkeys and only exists in a rudimentary form in apes. It develops by about age five and is impaired in autism. (The lack of a theory of mind in most autistic children could explain their observed failures in communication and social interaction.) Normal adults are capable of both mentalizing and empathizing. These abilities are useful for making self-interested choices because they enable people to predict others’ actions more accurately.