Most people know that amnesiacs cannot remember a daughter’s face or their own name.  Their identity and deepest memories have been wiped clean or rendered irretrievable.  Less well-known is the fact that amnesiacs struggle to project themselves forward and imagine possible future events.  The same is true about very young children.  They recall few details from last month and struggle to imagine what could happen next week.

It turns out that our efforts to remember the past and envision the future spark similar patterns of activity within the same neural memory centers.  We rely on an intricate mosaic of autobiographical memories to move forward.  Vivid recollections from the past allow us to consolidate new memories and create mental storyboards of times yet to come.  We dream of future adventures and imagine the person we may become—and even trigger the brain’s motor centers to physically “act out” our role in imagined situations.  Then, these imagined events lay down memory tracks in the brain that closely resemble those of past experiences.  Our dreams become real to us.

The young American Idol contestants lack the experience to imagine the kind of musical artist he or she could become: they’re too young.  The contest offers valuable experiences that will help them dream of the person they may become.  Those dreams will become more real with each new experience.

Many businesspeople face a similar challenge.  Millions of Americans have lost their jobs.  The career they knew disappeared and the only experiences they possess point in the same direction (i.e., their old career).  The unemployed feel lost because they cannot envision an alternative future (and jobs are hard to find).  Similarly, want-to-be entrepreneurs never take the first step toward starting a business because they lack the experience to envision themselves as business owners.  In both cases the solution involves gaining new experiences.  They have to take first steps to discover the person they may become.

Thomas Cahill

Your brain reaches its peak speeds at about age 18.  It reaches maturity in your mid-twenties after all the major systems are fully integrated and myelinated (i.e., an insulating coating for transmission).  New research now shows that your brain begins to deteriorate at about this same time. 

Senior Moments Begin at 27 »article

Submitted by MedHeadlines on 18 March, 2009 – 23:10

Baby Boomers using the ’senior moments’ excuse to explain away forgetfulness can stop being embarrassed about it.  New research from the University of Virginia says the brain actually begins declining at age 27.  We just might expect it more often in our middle years than in young adulthood.

Professor Timothy Salthouse and his university research team followed 2,000 healthy individuals, aged 18 to 60, for a seven-year study of mental agility.  The team used twelve of the same tests during the study that physicians use to diagnose dementia – puzzles, recalled words and story details, and patterns in symbols and letters.

Some of his findings, published in the current issue of the medical journal, ‘Neurobiology of Aging,’ include:

• In 75% of the tests, peak performance occurred at age 22
• In tests of brain speed, visual puzzle-solving ability, and reasoning, the first signs of mental decline appeared at age 27
• At age 37, memory begins to decline
• Abilities that rely on accumulated knowledge, such as general information and vocabulary, continue to develop until age 60

Of these findings, Rebecca Wood, of the British Alzheimer’s Research Trust, says mental decline begins much earlier than imagined and knowing this could help gain a better understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The words may vary from business to business but the message remains the same.  Your company is not performing as well as desired.  Products are old, customers complain, and rivals beat you in the marketplace.  “We have to do better,” says the boss.  “Our employees have to do better.  They’re unmotivated and don’t seem to grasp the gravity of the situation.  Jobs are at stake.  We’ll fire them up with a rousing speech and, if that doesn’t work, we’ll fire them.”

Too Long at the Party

Back at your desk you sit with a comical look on your face.  “Has the world gone mad,” you wonder.  “This can’t happen to me.  I made responsible choices about my career path and employer.  I worked hard to prove myself, earn opportunities, advance up the hierarchy, and reap the financial rewards.  I honed my skills to become the best account executive, product manager, shift supervisor, software engineer, or market analyst in the company.  Life should unfold as a good story filled with slain dragons, vanquished villains, and castles won.  I’m the hero who lives happily ever after.”  That was the plan.

Which chapter are we in?  One year passes, then two, five, or seven––the scene goes on too long and the storyline drags.  Maybe you became too comfortable, then restless and bored.  You believed the myth of circumstances, “ I am an important, serious person,” and forgot that more of the story lies ahead.  You honed your skills through repetition, while losing breadth in your behavioral repertoire (read options and flexibility).  You forgot to write the script for upcoming adventures, so the next plot twist comes as a surprise.  You know, the scene in which your job goes away to China or India, and the company doesn’t need your good trick anymore.

At some point, most people experience the feeling that they’ve stayed too long at the party; the soup’s gone cold; the joke’s old and no one’s laughing.  They need change.  Some jobs take only six weeks or months to habituate, while others sustain our attention for years.  But what happens after we acclimate?  How many times do we need to flawlessly repeat the same trick before the brain begins to shut down?  The boredom that ensues may be our brain’s warning system, a neuron’s cry, “I’m shrinking, I’m shrinking,” or the dull thick feeling of neurons lost.

You didn’t heed the signals—short fuse, doleful mood, unshakable sensation that life should be more fun—and years pass before you notice the scenery hasn’t changed on the road of life.  You’re stuck, maybe ambushed by the breakneck pace of life––no time to think.  Myths of circumstances con you into believing you are the temporary role you play, static and unchanging.  It’s easy to allow honed skills and feelings of accomplishment to ensnare the mind: “I have arrived.  I am the expert.”  It’s harder to remember that unless life continues to serve up new and stimulating experiences, you’re stuck.

The human brain requires novelty to remain alive.  Without change and new experiences…your brain is dying.  Watch for the warning signs: bad mood, stress, boredom.

Public release date: 21-Apr-2009

Author: Matt Shipman

Thinking your memory will get worse as you get older may actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that senior citizens who think older people should perform poorly on tests of memory actually score much worse than seniors who do not buy in to negative stereotypes about aging and memory loss.

In a study published earlier this month, psychology professor Dr. Tom Hess and a team of researchers from NC State show that older adults’ ability to remember suffers when negative stereotypes are “activated” in a given situation. “For example, older adults will perform more poorly on a memory test if they are told that older folks do poorly on that particular type of memory test,” Hess says. Memory also suffers if senior citizens believe they are being “stigmatized,” meaning that others are looking down on them because of their age.

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Public release date: 18-Mar-2010

Author: Phil Williams

		IMAGE: Now, just-published research from scientists at the University of Georgia is offering new insights into how one kind of memory works. The study, published this week in the online edition…Click here for more information.

Athens, Ga. – Memory loss is love’s great thief. Those who suffer aren’t just the ones who can’t remember—family, friends and loved ones agonize over how to react when the disorder begins its often inexorable progress.

Now, just-published research from scientists at the University of Georgia is offering new insights into how one kind of memory works. The study, published this week in the online edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that laboratory rats have “episodic-like memory” and could open novel ways to study life-robbing loss of memory in humans.

“This research shows that rats remember the time at which they encounter a distinctive event, in addition to what the event was and where it happened,” said Jonathon Crystal, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology’s Neuroscience and Behavior Program in UGA’s Franklin College of Art and Sciences. “These experiments provide insight into the memory system that retains the time of occurrence of earlier events.”

Co-author of the paper was Wenyi Zhou, a doctoral student in Crystal’s laboratory. The work was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

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Public release date: 8-Mar-2010 from EurekAlert!

Author : Jill Maxick

Anthropologist/neuroscientist team propose that religion is ubiquitous and persistent because the human brain needs it

		IMAGE: “God’s Brain ” (ISBN 978-1-61614-164-6) is published by Prometheus Books.Click here for more information.

In the fractious debate on the existence of God and the nature of religion, two distinguished scientists radically alter the discussion. Taking a perspective rooted in evolutionary biology with a focus on brain science, in GOD’S BRAIN (Prometheus Books, $25) renowned anthropologist Lionel Tiger and pioneering neuroscientist Michael McGuire elucidate perennial questions about religion: What is its purpose? How did it arise? What is its source? And why does every known culture have some form of it?

Their answer is deceptively simple, yet at the same time highly complex: The brain creates religion and its varied concepts of God, and in turn feeds on its creation to satisfy innate neurological and associated social needs.

“Tiger and McGuire have concocted an amazing and insightful look—based on sound science—into how the human brain seeks religion,” says R. Curtis Ellison, MD, professor of medicine and public health, Boston University School of Medicine. “Their book beautifully describes how belief, ritual, and socialization within a closed group work together to help humans survive the stresses of everyday life.”

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The Conference Board  reports that ”only 45 percent of American workers say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1 percent in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted.  The youngest cohort of employees (those currently under age 25) expressed the highest level of dissatisfaction ever recorded by the survey for that age group.”

The unhappy state of American workers cannot be explained by recent economic problems.  “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.”

U.S. Job Satisfaction at Lowest Level in Two Decades