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Watching TV With Your Child Can Help Cognitive Development

Watching TV With Your Child Can Help Cognitive Development

by | 2022 Sep 23 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

This is another study to show that there is no quick and easy answer to the question of screen time and children. In fact, a group of researchers have come to the conclusion that quality is the most important factor rather than quantity of screen time.

You may ask what quality is in terms of screen time with the number of programmes targeted at young children and particularly those under three-years old on the rise. Screen time, probably no surprise to many, has more than doubled over the last 30 years.

These researchers from the University of Portsmouth, UK, and Paris Nanterre University, France, analysed 478 studies over the last two decades in a paper just out.

They note that “Weak narrative, fast pace editing, and complex stimuli can make it difficult for a child to extract or generalise information. But when screen content is appropriate for a child’s age, it’s likely to have a positive effect, particularly when it’s designed to encourage interaction.”

So, the first thing is that the content should be suitable. Interestingly I noticed when my children were small that they became fascinated with the TV programme Caillou – Caillou is a cartoon done very simplistically about a small kid who experienced very simple daily problems. None of the crazy stuff that some cartoons have – but the story was so simple and relatable that they loved it.

The next surprise is that watching with parents (or others) seems to be positive – especially when this supports and enables interactions and clarifications – this seems to have positive effect and help with interpretation but also on development of words and language.

This suggest that watching age suitable content with your kids and enabling clarification and interaction but also shared enjoyment, not to forget, is positive and supports development of children.

So as with many things in life – screen time is more nuanced but the simple rule is make it age appropriate, share in the experience, and still allow social interaction. It’s also probably the same with adults!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Bahia Guellai, Eszter Somogyi, Rana Esseily, Adrien Chopin. 
Effects of screen exposure on young children’s cognitive development: A review. 
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022; 13
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.923370

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How Fear Gets Stuck in (Some) Brains

How Fear Gets Stuck in (Some) Brains

by | 2022 Sep 22 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

fear brainFear is an important human emotion and essential to survival so not to be underestimated. It allows us to avoid life-threatening situations and avoid them again in the future – so fundamentally a good thing. However, we also know that fear can be debilitating, cause inaction, anxiety, and be involved in multiple psychiatric disorders such as PTSD.

We know that fear and threat is primarily, initially at least, processed in a part of the brain called the amygdala. This also controls attention (and also other emotions). This then connects to the frontal regions of the brain. These frontal regions are involved in attention, but also cognition and what we can consider higher, or executive, functions, such as decision making and also controlling our impulses.

This has been known for a long time, but this does not help us understand the precise mechanisms of fear and how in some people it becomes entrenched and leads to severe anxiety disorders.

A group of researchers around Barchiesi of the Linköping University in Sweden have now given us a deeper insight into this and how this happens in a paper just published.

This is where it gets technical – as if the above wasn’t. But let me guide you through this.

Previous research has shown that there is an epigenetic enzyme called PRDM2 that supresses the expression of many genes. Your genes are in constant cycles of activation and deactivation to perform their duties and different enzymes up or down regulate these.

PRDM2 has previously been seen to be lower in those with alcohol dependence and exaggerated stress responses are common in those people. Hence why the researchers zoomed in on this enzyme.

The researchers found that indeed downregulation of PRDM2 increases the consolidation of fear memories in rats by increasing the activity between the frontal lobes and the amygdala. They have also, in addition been able to identify the genes that are downregulated.

This may sound like a bit of technical description, but this is significant step forward in understanding the mechanisms of fear getting stuck in the brain and leading to anxiety disorders.

Unfortunately, there is no know way to upregulate PRDM2 – that I imagine will be the focus of future research.

But for now, let’s at least be grateful for the step forward in understanding the neurobiology of fear.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Barchiesi Riccardo, Chanthongdee Kanat, Petrella Michele, Xu Li, Söderholm Simon, Domi Esi, Augier Gaelle, Coppola Andrea, Joost Wiskerke, Ilona Szczot, Domi Ana, Adermark Louise, Augier Eric, Cantù Claudio, Heilig Markus, Barbier Estelle. 
An epigenetic mechanism for over-consolidation of fear memories. 
Molecular Psychiatry, 2022
DOI: 10.1038/s41380-022-01758-6

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Your Brain Switches Between Remembering and Learning

Your Brain Switches Between Remembering and Learning

by | 2022 Sep 21 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

brain blackboard learning

Learning and memory are key functions of the brain and ones that attract a lot of attention and research – and interest from normal folk like us. After all who wouldn’t like to know how to use one’s brain to learn and remember things better.

These two functions are, however, closely related. Memorising things is a part of learning – so are they part of the same process or part of separate processes in the brain? And does this happen in parallel or sequentially?

Most of us would probably assume that they happen in parallel – lots does in the brain – it is pretty complex. Similarly disentangling these processes is difficult – when we go about things in daily life we are drawing on our memories as we encounter familiar things and do familiar processes but when we encounter novel things we then need to learn and this seems to happen seamlessly

Researchers around Ruy Gómez-Ocádiz of the Insitut Pasteur in France have now given insight into this with some pretty innovative research.

For this they transported mice to a virtual world – yup, you read that correctly – researchers are now using virtual reality with mice! I will let you imagination run with that thought. This allows researchers to guide what the mice see and experience with more accuracy and therefore draw firmer conclusions. In this research it allows them to manipulate and distinguish between learning and remembering by transporting them to a whole new world so they can see learning in action.

What did they find?

Yes, they found that there is separate circuit in the brain’s hippocampus that switches between learning or remembering – the hippocampus is a well-researched area deep in the brain that is critical for memory formation but also memory recall and for navigation.

This shows that your brain therefore switches, sometimes rapidly between modes. When you encounter novelty it switches to learning mode and when in familiar territory you are in remembering mode.

And going through this article it probably switched a few times – but hopefully the learning mode also so that you remember this for later!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Ruy Gómez-Ocádiz, Massimiliano Trippa, Chun-Lei Zhang, Lorenzo Posani, Simona Cocco, Rémi Monasson, Christoph Schmidt-Hieber. 
A synaptic signal for novelty processing in the hippocampus. 
Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31775-6

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How Daily Rhythms Help Your Brain Grow After Injury

How Daily Rhythms Help Your Brain Grow After Injury

by | 2022 Sep 20 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

brain cell neuron growth

Always nice to know that you brain can grow – and it is still met with surprise when I explain how this can happen to audiences when speaking in public. But this recent research gives some fascinating insights into a new mechanism of growth in the brain.

Researchers around Terry Dean of the Children’s National Hospital in the USA have found a mechanism that is controlled by daily rhythms and this could lead to new insight and more effective methods to help recovery after brain injury.

Your brain cells, neurons are pretty fixed with new generation of cells only in very limited areas in the brain. However, they can rebuild and strengthen connections. There are also group of cells called micro glia or glial cells and these are considered the brains “helping” cells – they are also essential to healthy brain functioning performing many critical functions.

One of these goes under the technical name of NG2-glia, or “oligodendrocyte precursor”, sorry I know that won’t help you (in short, it’s one of the brain’s helping cells). Anyhow these are one of the few cells in the brain that can continuously regenerate. And what the researchers found is that these follow daily rhythms with proliferation of these cells coinciding with the highest levels of a factor known as Bmal-1RNA. This is a protein that helps the body clock stay in rhythm and is highest when we should be most active – during the day.

What is interesting is that this can help us guide recovery better by taking into account times of day during treatment – we also know that traumatic brain injury (TBI) can disrupt daily rhythms which could explain some of the negative effects.

Also, of interest is that we would probably assume that much healing would take place as night – but this shows not so in this particular case.

This highlights once more the importance of daily rhythms in just about everything!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Terry Dean, Aissia Victoria Koffi, Evan Goldstein, Javid Ghaemmaghami, Vittorio Gallo. 
Endogenous circadian clock machinery in cortical NG2-glia regulates cellular proliferation. 
eneuro, 2022
DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0110-22.2022

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The Seven Habits to Reduce Dementia

The Seven Habits to Reduce Dementia

by | 2022 Sep 19 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

ageing aging brain health

We would all like to age well remaining cognitively active into older and old age. I have reported multiple times on activities that are correlated with better, or worse cognition, and risk of neurodegeneration in older age but this group of researchers analysed those with Type 2 diabetes and also those without.

What conclusions did they come to?

Well, the researchers around Bin Wang for the American Academy of Neurology analysed data from 167,946 people 60 or older from a UK-based database with, and without diabetes, and who did not have dementia at the start of the study. They were followed for 12 years and 4’351 developed dementia

Based on the data and results of questionnaires and blood tests they managed to identify seven (healthy) habits that seem to dramatically reduce chances of developing dementia and can put figures to the increased or reduced risk.

The seven healthy habits are:

    1. No smoking
    2. Moderate alcohol consumption (up to one drink a day for women and up to two a day for men)
    3. Regular weekly physical activity (at least 2.5 hours of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise)
    4. Seven to nine hours sleep daily
    5. Healthy diet including more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish and with fewer refined grains, processed and unprocessed meats
    6. Being less sedentary (defined as watching television less than four hours a day)
    7. Frequent social contact (defined as living with others, gathering with friends or family at least once a month and participating in social activities at least once a week or more often)

A total of 4% of those in the study followed two or fewer of the healthy habits, whereas 11% followed three, 22% followed four, 30% followed five, 24% followed six, and 9% followed all seven.

And the results showed that those who followed all seven habits were four times less likely to develop dementia than those who followed two or less! That’s a big difference! Also they note that each habit added progressivley reduces chances of developing dementia – so if you follow five you will be much better off than if you follow only two.

However, the researchers also noted that those with diabetes were still 74% more likely to develop dementia than those without (when compared to those who do the same amounts of healthy habits).

This shows us once again that basic lifestyle factors have dramatic impacts on neurodegenerative conditions. The study didn’t measure this but other research has shown that the earlier we start the better it is – but we also know it’s never too late to start.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Bin Wang, Ying Sun, Xiao Tan, Jihui Zhang, Ningjian Wang, Yingli Lu. 
Association of Combined Healthy Lifestyle Factors With Incident Dementia in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes. 
Neurology, 2022
DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000201231

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