Encephalon neuroscience carnival 32 posted

The 32 edition of the Encephalon neuroscience blog carnival is now available.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, brain, Encephalon, intelligence, IQ, cognition

Neurotechnology industry NASDAQ tracking index

Thanks to Brain Waves for the FYI re: the new NASDAQ NeuroInsights Neurotech Index.....an index intended to track the performance of the neurotechnology industry.


Technorati Tags: neuropsychology, neuroscience, neurotechnology, NeuroInsights, NASDAQ, brain fitness

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Random tidbits from the mind blogosphere 9-19-07

• Thanks to Happy Neuron for the FYI re: an article in the International Journal of Neuroscience on the effects on mobile phone use on the brain.
• The LD blog has more on the Dore cerebellum-based treatment program (click here for prior background posts)
• Thanks to Mind Hacks for the link to an annotated guide to widely praised books on the brain.
• Positive Technology Journal has an interesting post on the use of virtual reality technology to help MS patients improve their walking skills.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, school psychology, cell phones, brain, Dore, multiple sclerosis, MS, virutal reality, neurotechnology

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Neuroscience book reviews

Thanks to the Neuroetchics and Law Blog for the post with links to a number of reviews of books dealing with various topics in the neurosciences.

Technorati Tags: pscyhology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, books, book reviews

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Second Chance to Live Blog

I received a personal email from Craig J. Phillips, a person with a personal TBI story. He shares his experiences and thoughts at his blog---Second Chance to Live. Check it out.

Technorati Tags: psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, TBI, brain injury, Second Chance to Live

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Refocus on Sharp Brains

Although I provide an online feed of all Sharp Brain blog posts at this blog (as well as IQ's Corner), which allows readers to monitor this important brain fitness blog every time they check my blogs, I thought I'd remind readers of the importance of this blog via this reminder post.

Sharp Brains recently had a nice post (Feed your brain with fun neuroscience) where they summarize their favorite top-10 quotes from their Neuroscience Interview Series. Check it out....and remember to keep an eye on the topic feed I provide to their site.

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Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, brain fitness, Sharp Brains

Brain Blogging 15th edition

The 15th edition of the Brain Blogging brain blog carnival is now available.

Neuromatrix video game teaches about the brain

Thanks to Mind Hacks for the FYI regarding the soon to be released action-adventure video game (Neuromatrix) that is intended to teach kids about the function of the brain. Very cool !


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, education, intelligence, cognition, neuroscience, neuromatrix, video games, instructional technology, neuroscince, neuropsychology

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More on the controversial Dore Dyslexia treamtent program

Check out the LD Blog for new information regarding the controversial Dore treatment program for dyslexia


Technorati Tags: psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, Dore, dyslexia, educational psychology, education, school psychology

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Brain fitness training can deter age related cognitive decline

Thanks to Happy Neuron for bringing to our attention a recent study in Neurology that indicates that elderly adults who engage in brain fitness activities are 2.6 times less likely to Alzheimer's.


Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, brain fitness, Alzheimers

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Brain injury conferences

Thanks to the Brain Injury blog for providing a list of upcoming brain injury conferences


Technorati Tags: psychology, neuropsychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuroscience, brain injury, conferences, workshops

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Encephalon brain carnival #28 is up

The Encephalon # 28 brain carnival is now available.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, brain, Encephalon, brain carnival, blog carnival, cognition, cognitive, intelligence

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Vacation - why I've been neglecting my blogs

I should have made this post a few weeks ago.

Regular readers will have noted that I have been MIA from blog posting. Why? Well......I've been busy the past month (and esp. the past two weeks) helping my lovely fiance pack and move out of her house of twenty years, finally get my house sold (just yesterday), and deal with CONSTANT decisions/frustrations/stress that comes with building a new house the Diane and I will move into next Tuesday. On top of that my father and his lovely wife moved to this area and I've needed to help him with some computer set-up issues. Finally, there has been the small matter of planning a "small" wedding on August 18.

With all that has been going on I've found zero time for my hobby....posting to my two blogs. I simply should have notified all readers that I was on vacation....but it really is not a vacation.....I'm physically and mentally drained.

Regardless, I hope to return to nurturing my two blogs sometime soon. I may make some easy FYI posts....but don't expect any creative new stuff (unless some of IQs Corners Virtual Community of Guest Scholars provide some material).

When I shall return to regular posting is not yet known. I'm living the "one day at a time" mantra at this point in time.

Rest assured...once settled into my lovely new house and life I will be back as a regular blogmaster.

Thanks

Stroke patients and metronome training

I just ran across an article (actually based on an email tip via the mental timing grapevine) for a 2002 article by Thaut et al. in Neuropsychologia that supports the use of synchronized metronome tapping (SMT) methods to improve motor coordination in patients with strokes.

In the article, the authors goal was to "investigate the effect of rhythm on the control of paretic arm movements in stroke patients." The basis for this intervention was prior research that had suggested that:

• "a rhythmic model of rehabilitative motor training, has shown significant improvements in gait function of stroke patients. In this model, rhythm functions as a sensory cue to induce temporal stability and enhance the temporal organization of motor control in the nervous system by translating the temporal structure of movement patterns into temporally isomorphic auditory rhythmic patterns to entrain the movement in question. Similar models have been successfully used in high-performance motor skill learning in sports and music."

In a sample of 21 hemispheric stroke patients, the researchers found that:

• "the observed changes in timing and trajectory control strongly suggest that the structured time information in auditory rhythm added significant kinematic stability to the patient’s paretic arm reaching motions. These changes were not present during the non-rhythmic condition...Our data suggest, therefore, that auditory rhythm may offer an essential component of enhanced sensorimotor control to make hemiparetic arm training more effective."

The results of this study provide indirect support for the use of the Interactive Metronome SMT-based program in stroke patients with motor control impairment. (click here for other IM-related prior posts on this blog). Of course, all of this makes sense in the context of the extant research literature on temporal processing and the IQ Brain Clock (click here to enter the wonderful world of the IQ Brain Clock EWOK)

Click here for IM-related conflict of interest statement.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, rehabilitation, strokes, motor function, metronome, Interactive Metronome, rhythmicity, neuroscience, neuropsychology, stroke rehab, speech and language

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"Time Doc "presents on "IQ Brain Clock" in Chicago

Warning. This is self-serving plug :)

I, the IQ Brain Clock blogmaster, just agreed to provide the keynote presentation at the Interactive Metronome Professional 2007 Conference in Chicago (Sept 28-30; click here for registration link).The title of the presentation is:


The Brain Clock: An Overview of Contemporary Research & Theory Regarding the Neuroscience of Brain-based Interval Timing and Its Relevance to Learning and Rehabilitation. (click here for overview of complete program flyer)

[click here for conflict of interest disclosure]

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, school psychology, brain clock, mental timing, interval timing, learning, temporal processing, time perception, brain

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Research bytes - Wearden mental timing scholar pubs again, and again, and...

John Weardon, one of the listed "mental timing scholars" at the IQ Brain Clock (see right hand column of blog), together with some of his colleagues, has been busy pumping out more theoretical mental timing research. Be forewarned, these are not-so-easy to read research articles. Check out the following recent "in press" pubs. Emphasis and/or any links below provided by blogmaster.

• "In press" Journal of Experimental Child Psychology article that concludes that "judgments of the similarity of two successive durations separated by a retention interval, the retention of the first duration in short-term memory reduces temporal accuracy."
• "In press" Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP) that supports the major characteristics/assumptions of Scalar Expectancy Timing Theory (SET), which is the primary theoretical foundation of the pacemaker-accumulator model of mental timing.
• Another "in press" article in QJEP that demonstrates that it is possible to experimentally "slow down" the internal brain clock. Why would one want to slow down the clock, when speeding up the mental brain clock is associated with better cognitive functioning? According to the authors, demonstrating that it is possible to slow down the internal clock can help with our understanding how people maintain time via their internal clock. That is...it can help us better understand the phenomena of mental timing.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, mental timing, time perception, scalar theory, pacemaker accumulator, brain clock, temporal processing, temporal awareness, brain clock

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Brain drugs - free on-line text book

Kudos to Mind Hacks for locating the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology free on-line text book on Neuropsychopharmacology.


Technorati Tags: psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, neuropsychopharmacology, brain, drugs, book, medications

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Best of the brain

Thanks to Mind Hacks for the FYI tip regarding the recent publication - Best of the Brain from Scientific American


Technorati Tags: psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, educaitonal psychology, school psychology, Scientific American, brain

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Random tidbits from mind blogosphere 7-3-07

• Thanks to the Brain Injury blog for the tip re: the availability (on-line) of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center video - Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury
  

• The 12th Edition of the Brain Blogging brain carnival is now available for review. Speaking of brain carnivals, the 26th issue of Encephalon is also now ready for viewing
• Interesting post over on Positive Technology Journal on journal article dealing with virtual reality as a leisure activity for individuals with disabilities.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, intelligence, cognition, brain injury, TBI, virutal reality, brain carnivals

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Brain fitness movement gets star face

Thanks to Mind Hacks for the FYI/link to a post announcing that a media star (Nicole Kidman) is now a spokesperson for one of Ninetendo's brain fitness products. Clearly the "tipping point" on brain fitness going mainstream has occurred (or has been recently passed).

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, neurotechnology, brain fitness, intelligence, IQ, cognition

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Wearable technology

Thanks to the Intelligent Machines blog for the FYI post re: "ten wearable technologies that can help a human resemble a cyborg machine." Interesting stuff

Technorati Tags: psychology, neuroscience, neurotechnology, cyborgs

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More on ADHD and poor internal mental clock

Another research study (Rommelse et al., 2007) suggesting a deficit in the internal brain clock may be associated with (diagnostic marker?) ADHD in children (click here for prior post). In particular, the ability to reproduce time intervals (time reproduction tasks) was found to be related to a potential diagnosis of ADHD in young children.

Once again...another study linking various mental functions and clinical disorders and the functioning of the internal brain clock...tick, tock, tick, tock......

• Objective: Time reproduction is deficient in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Whether this deficit is familial and could therefore serve as a candidate endophenotype has not been previously investigated. It is unknown whether timing deficits are also measurable in adolescent children with ADHD and nonaffected siblings. Method: These issues were investigated in 226 children with ADHD, 188 nonaffected siblings, and 162 normal controls ages 5 to 19. Children participated in a visual and auditory time reproduction task. They reproduced interval lengths of 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 seconds. Results: Children with ADHD and their nonaffected siblings were less precise than controls, particularly when task difficulty was systematically increased. Time reproduction skills were familial. Time reproduction deficits were more pronounced in younger children with ADHD than in older children. Children with ADHD could be clearly dissociated from control children until the age of 9. After this age, group differences were somewhat attenuated, but were still present. Differences between nonaffected siblings and controls were constant across the age range studied. Deficits were unaffected by modality. Conclusions: Time reproduction may serve as a candidate endophenotype for ADHD, predominantly in younger children with (a genetic risk for) ADHD.
  
  

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, special education.learning disabilities, neuropsychology, neuroscience, ADHD, ADD, Barkley, interval timing, mental clock, master time clock, brain clock, reading disability, cognitive, cognition, intelligence, IQ, temporal processing, time judgements, time perception


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Rhythm and reading research- I've got rhthym....I've got....

Another study suggesting a link between an aspect of mental-time keeping (rhythm perception and production; also click here for related bibliography) and reading achievement. Although a small study (n=53), longitudinal research by David et al. (2007), reported in the Journal of Research in Reading, continues to suggest a link between reading ability and the cognitive abilities governed by an underlying brain clock.

Abstract

• Rhythm production in 53 children in grade 1 was investigated as a predictor of reading ability in the same children in grades 1–5. This paper reports the results of correlations and hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for shared variance between phonological awareness and naming speed. Rhythm was correlated significantly with both phonological awareness and naming speed. Rhythm predicted significant variance in reading ability at each grade level. Once phonological awareness was controlled, however, rhythm was a significant predictor only in grade 5. When naming speed was controlled, rhythm predicted unique variance in reading ability in grades 2, 3 and 5. Implications for the relationship between rhythm and the development of reading skills are discussed.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, education, neuropsychology, reading, rhythm, IQ brain clock, temporal processing, mental time keeping, school psychology, music

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Encephalon # 25 brain carnival

Encephalon #25 has been posted.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, cognition, brain, Encephalon, brain carnival

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Brain Blogging # 11brain carnival

The 11th edition of the Brain Blogging brain carnival is now available.

Auditory timing/processing malleability

It is no secret that I love skimming the brief contemporary research synthesis articles published in Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Today I ran across an interesting review (Kraus and Banai, 2007) touching on the malleability/training of auditory processing (Ga) abilities, and, of particular interest to this blog, research touching on auditory timing (mediated by the brainstem) was covered. The article reinforces my belief that brain-based auditory temporal processing timing training interventions may hold promise in education.

Check it out.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, auditory, auditory processing, training, interventions, malleability, temporal processing, mental timing, intelligence, brain clock

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Musican vs non-musician beat tapping research study

More empirical research by Repp (2007) on rhythm perception and production (check out currently posted information on this branch at IQ Brain Clock EWOK) in another musician vs non-musician beat tapping article (this time to a slow beat). Check it out.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, music, rhythm, mental time keeping, interval timing, brain clock


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Random tidbits from the mind blogosphere 6-8-07

• Check out the DI blog's "blogging on the brain" post for a number of interesting links to posts regarding (a) fun brain training games, (b) tonal similarities between music and language, (c) genetic differences between speakers of tonal and non-tonal languages, (d) the role of Bayesian networks in motor control, (e) new genetic risk factor for Alzheimers, (f) the potential educational implications of neuroscience, (g) the role of executive function and math.....plus many more interesting tidbits. The DI blog rocks!
• Thanks to Mind Hacks for the "know blood; know the brain" post - a post directing readers some of the key scientific papers on brain scanning and blood flow.
• Learn about "multiple cognitive maps" via a Mouse Trap post
• Though provoking post at Neuroethics and Law Blog re: "the seductive allure of Neuroscience"
• Intelligent Machines has a post re: the maturation of speech recognition technology
  

Technorati Tags: psychology, neuropsychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuroscience, genetics, music, language, brain, speech, neurotechnology


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New motor learning research from MIT

I just stumbled across a new blog (Perusing Psychology) that had an interesting post re: a new MIT study that presents a new way at looking at motor learning.





Technorati Tags: psychology, MIT, motor learning, educational psychology, neuropsychology

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Dyslexia and temporal processing - IQ Brain Clock EWOK updated

Finally something more significant and substantive to report. Part of the reason for my sporadic posting has been my efforts to update the Tick Tock Talk: IQ Brain Clock EWOK (Evolving Web of Knowledge).

I've been very intrigued with the research literature suggesting a link between temporal processing and severe reading disorders (dyslexia). As I dug around, I found a relatively large body of contemporary research that has suggested, and has investigated, a possible causal link between auditory temporal processing mental timing mechanisms and dyslexia. I pulled this literature together and have added it as a new branch on the IQ Brain Clock EWOK. Below are links to the new stuff :

• Visit the complete clickable map. The new material is under the "Group differences and clinical disorders" main branch" - first click on the Dyslexia notes icon for a brief intro. The click on the "References, abstracts and articles" notes icon for the gold mine of material.

• Use the following links if you want to go directly the the introductory Dyslexia introductory notes, followed by the References, abstracts and articles notes.

The meat of the new material is in the References, abstract and articles branch. When you open the this branches notes you will find a listing of key research references. For most of the articles I was able to locate a copy of the article abstract, which I also included. And, for the frosting on the cake, for most articles I was able to locate pdf copies of the actual articles. You can view and read these articles by clicking on the "(click here)" hyperlink included directly after the reference citation.

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscince, special education, learning disabilities, dyslexia, temporal processing, mental time keeping, IQ Brain Clock EWOK, reading, Grw

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