The Tenures of Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention

The Tenures of Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention

During his “Mindfulness, Meditation, Drug, and Alcohol Use” lecture, Dr. Lyons of Loyola University Chicago offered many great insights into the world of addiction, and of the concept of mindfulness based relapse prevention. The key concept here is linking the link between stress and addiction, and how stress can raise the likelihood that matters such as alcohol, drug, gambling abuse, etc. come into play in an individual’s life. With regards to mindfulness based relapse prevention, a practice that finds its origins in the Buddhist teachings of Vipassana meditation, got showcased by Dr. Lyons as a tool of personality inventories that can be used to measure personality traits and dispositions over a given period of time.  Lyons was quick to cite much research that supported mindfulness based relapse prevention by showing how these techniques introduced to prisoners yielded significant results with regards to lowering depression and anxiety levels. Other studies referenced showed how this technique better managed individuals’ gambling habits, or diabetes treatment, or drinking issues.

Up to this point, you’re reading this and might still have the spiritual guidance of Vipassana in mind, and while that can be valid to ones’ beliefs, there is measured evidence in this as well. Such practices/meditations have been found by other research to be significant with regards to brain imagine. Significant amounts of activity or changes in the dynamics of activity were noticed in areas of the right hippo-campus, the insulae (specifically the right anterior insulae), and the frontal cortex. Such studies include one done by Zgierska and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, whom notices brain activity in these areas when composing, “Mindfulness Meditation for Substance Use Disorders: A Systematic Review”, that focused on multiple therapies and clinical studies in which mindfulness mediation was used in severe addiction cases with successful results. Another study by Dr. Bowen and her team focused on mindfulness based relapse prevention with regards to 168 adults that were drug abusers, that used this therapy over a four-month period and saw significant declines in drug usage among the adults, with noticed alternated activity in the brain regions mentioned prior. Another more interesting study by Dr. Brewer and his colleagues, compared the effectiveness of mindfulness based relapse prevention with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and in laboratory comparisons, saw that that the mindfulness based relapse prevention was ominously more effective with a large group with stress-related indices. It’s clear with this evidence and the much more that exists in academia that mindfulness based relapse prevention is a highly effective method with aiding with addiction and stress-related issues of many kind; especially ones that are costing public health services millions each years and are yielding poor results. It’s time mindfulness based relapse prevention gets a second chance, not only as a Buddhist mindset, but also as an effective therapeutic method backed by empirical evidence.

Works Referenced:

1.       Brewer JA, Sinha R, Chen JA, Michalsen RN, Babuscio TA, Nich C, Grier A, Bergquist KL, Reis DL, Potenza MN, Carroll KM, Rounsaville BJ. Mindfulness training and stress reactivity in substance abuse: Results from a randomized, controlled stage 1 pilot study. Subst Abus. 2009;30(4):306–317.

2.      Zgierska, A., Rabago, D., Chawla, N., Kushner, K., Kohler, R., Marlatt, A. (2009). Mindfulness Meditation for Substance Use Disorders: A Systematic Review.Journal of Substance Abuse, 30, 266-294.

3.      Sarah Bowen, PhD; Katie Witkiewitz, PhD; Seema L. Clifasefi, PhD. Mindfulness Training and Stress Reactivity in Substance Abuse: Results from a Randomized, Controlled Stage 1 Pilot Study. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online March 19, 2014.

Potato, Patata The Advantages of Crossing the Language Barrier

‘Ciao bella!’ is one of the few phrases I remember from my study abroad experience last semester. Touring different European countries opens your eyes to the vast amount of cultures, languages and immense history throughout the world. One of my most striking revelations was the ease with which most Europeans spoke multiple languages. While walking through markets the vendors would try to guess your nationality by yelling different greetings in various languages. Being blonde with blue eyes I most often greeted with English, however on the rare occasion they thought I was Russian or German I would swell with pride because I was finally not sticking out as an obvious tourist! This experience left me with the overwhelming desire to work on my ability to speak Italian and the regret that I hadn’t begun learning a language from a younger age. In the recent neuroscience lecture given by Valerie Flores, a doctoral candidate at Loyola University Chicago, I realized that having the ability to speak multiple languages has advantages beyond cultural emersion.

Ms. Flores’ research investigated the cognitive functions and abilities of people who were language “brokers”. She defined this as people whom continuously and effectively switch or translate between two languages. Language brokers are found to have better performance on tasks associated with metalinguistic awareness, or the ability to contemplate and manipulate the meaning and configuration of language. Furthermore, there was an increase in their executive functioning ability, which includes skills such as multi-tasking, sustained attention, and inhibitory control. Through tests such as the Color-Word Stroop Task, where participants were asked to identify the color of the word not the word presented and then measured response times, she was able to show that language brokers had a quicker response time and were able to shift attention to accurately respond to the questions asked.

In the New York Times article titled “Why Bilinguals are Smarter”, author Yudhijit Bhattachargee discussed this phenomenon further. The article began by explaining that the previously held hypothesis that bilingualism “was an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development” was incorrect (Bhattachargee, pg. 1). The article went on to highlight many of the same advantages of being bilingual touched upon during Ms. Flores’ speech. One of the most intriguing advantages is that, on average, bilingual people were more resistant to symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and the degree to which a person is bilingual was correlated to later onset of symptoms. Bilingual people not only showed an increased ability to perform tasks associated with effective functioning but they did this with lower activation in parts of the brain associated with these tasks. So not only do they have higher ability but also a greater efficiency. The article explained that bilinguals might have these higher cognitive abilities because they have a “heighted ability to monitor the environment” (Bhattachargee, pg. 1). Switching from language to language requires a person to monitor slight changes in their environment and with practice would result in an increased ability to focus and other executive function abilities.

Language is an invaluable human ability as it is a means of communication that allows people to forge friendships, fall in love, insight great change and revolutions. Bilingualism allows people to do these things across cultures and bridge gaps to ease understanding of others. I like to believe that I’m well aware of the powers of language however; I had no idea that languages were as profoundly advantageous as actually shaping and increasing brain functioning!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html??version=meter+at+5&region=FixedCenter&pgtype=Article&priority=true&module=RegiWall-Regi&action=click

Long-term effects of bullying on psychological health

Millions of children experience bullying at some point in their life, a significant problem faced here in the U.S.  But just how harmful is bullying on psychological health?  In other words, just how long-term are its negative effects?           

New research from the American Journal of Psychology suggests that by the time the bullied child reaches middle-age, the effects are still present.  The longitudinal study began in 1958 and followed 18,000 children between the ages of 7 and 11 from England, Scotland and Wales for 40 years.  At the beginning of the study, parents provided information on whether or not their child was ever bullied and if so, how often.  The 61% of participants that remained in the study after 40 years were assessed for anxiety and depression and given a questionnaire on their psychological distress.

They found that those children whose parents had reported them as being bullied more often were more likely to grow up to be depressed, assess their health as poor, develop anxiety disorders, have problems with cognitive functioning and commit suicide.  Additionally, the victims of bullying tended to stay in school for fewer years and to earn less money or be unemployed.  Most disturbingly, victims were less likely to have a spouse, spend time with friends or feel that they had someone to rely on and overall, reported worse quality of life and lessened optimism for the future.

In his visit to Loyola University Chicago, Dr. Ned H. Kalin  weighed in how high levels of anxiety in childhood can predict mental health in adolescence and adulthood in his seminar on the developmental risk for anxiety and depression.  He reported that roughly 50% of children with high anxiety will develop anxiety and depression later in life; specifically, high levels of anxiety in early life are correlated with a 50% development of social anxiety disorder, 20% development of another anxiety disorder and 10% development of a mood disorder without anxiety.  

Supported by the reports from the study, Dr. Kalin also provided data suggesting that these changes in mental functioning can be caused by physiological damage to the brain caused by stress at an early age.  Children who experienced stress early on had smaller hippocampuses and more active amygdalae and altered interactions between prefrontal cortices and amygdalae.  This brain pathology could be the reason why the harmful effects of bullying stay with victims for decades or even for their entire lives.  Regardless of the mechanism behind it, this troubling data provides more reason why bullying needs to be actively combated to make school and childhood safe for everyone.   

Weiss, Dyanne. "Scars From Childhood Bullying Can Last." Guardian Liberty Voice. N.p., 19 Apr. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.

A new look on Neurodegenerative processes

            The idea of glaucoma having a neurodegenerative component (similar to other neurodegenerative disorders) as one of its causes is a fairly new one. It’s also an idea that gives a large population to be able to take a look at in terms of experimentation with new drugs and potential mechanisms of action. In his talk and paper, Dr. Calkins regarded glaucoma as “a neurodegenerative disease” which could introduce “neuroprotective strategies …to be an efficacious means to slow or even stop degenerative progression entirely.” Since glaucoma shares many of the common neurodegenerative elements seen in other neurodegenerative disorder like Parkinsons or Alzheimers, if the targets for neuroprotection that Dr. Calkins is researching are found to be effective, then his research will open doors for the possible cure or slowing down of very harmful neurodegenerative diseases.  This is what I found to be the most intriguing of Dr. Calkins talk! The idea that glaucoma’s neurodegeneration process could be similar to other neurodegenerative diseases could help us create links between certain frequent neurodegenerative diseases and lead to research on that topic as well.  I’d like to connect Dr. Calkins talk to an article by one of our LUC professors, Dr. Jessica Brann. Dr. Brann explores the potential for “neuronal replacement-associated proliferation” to continue in the aged population of mice and has found that it indeed does in one of her published articles (cited below). Although Dr. Brann’s research is not very similar to Dr. Calkins’ research in that it’s not really looking into effects of drugs on the neural pathways, it does show that there is potential for neurodegenerative repair within the nervous system which is also what Dr. Calkins pointed out in his talk that I find rather fascinating because there could be even more similarities between different neural pathways than we think! This could lead to a new method of combating disease and studying neuroscience!

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23419702

Sincerely,

Nida Ahmad

 

Media Violence: The killer of youths

Media Violence: The killer of youths

            According to Professor Stockdale, there are mainly three types of aggression. The first one is physical aggression in which, people intent to harm others physically. The second type of aggression is relational aggression in which, people attempt to harm others through focusing relationship. Relational aggression is also called social aggression. Professor Stockdale believes, media is saturated with such aggression affecting youth generation the most. According to Professor Stockdale, there are 8000 acts of murders due to television. Interestingly, teen novels contain 30 acts of aggression per hour.

            Professor Stockdale talks about physical aggression in detail. Acts of physical aggression in television is correlated with actual acts of physical aggression. According to Professor Stockdale, physical aggression on television changes one’s mentality such that, that person would believe that it’s okay to hit other people. Medial violence changes the way one views the world. Medial violence also affects empathy or pro-social behavior of a person. For example, People, who are exposed to media violence, would take more time to open the door for an injured person than any normal individual. According to professor Stockdale, video games affect more than a movie or a television.

            An article media violence damaging kids, talks about impact of media violence on kids. According to that article, real life shooting event is correlated with violent games. According to that article, the shooter of Sandy Hook Elementary School was a freak of violent Call of Duty game.

Understanding the concerns of most of the parents, they prefer not introducing their kids with toys such as guns that represent violence as well as show them movies, which portray brutality. The movies with “good guys” and the “bad guys” and the very concept explained in the article threads into the young minds of the children who tend to pick things up at a very early age.  This could determine their mind set and behaviors in the years to come.

CNN. Sasha Emmons, 21 Feb. 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/21/living/parenting-kids-violence-media/>.

Mindfulness Enhancing the Executive Work Environment

We have long envied the meditation and lack of anxiety that monks have practiced for thousands of years. This has pushed people for the longest time to try and practice meditating in hopes of relieving our stress. Scientists, with the help of medical imaging and technology, have also pursued the effects of meditation and mindfulness in hopes of applying what seemed to be a psychological phenomena in a an actual neurological manner for treating drug addictions, cancer, anxiety, and depression, just to name a few. While these are outstanding physical and psychological benefits, meditation and mindfulness can even be taken into the context of trying to enhance creativity and productivity in executive work environments.

Dr. Lyons’ research at Chicago State University is based off this exact science. He introduced mindfulness as a practice that can be brought about through yoga, meditation, or just simple reflection for five minutes. In addition, he grounds the idea of mindfulness and meditation to a physiological and neurological basis that many people are unaware exists. Dr. Lyons research cites the brain structures affected by meditation as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, and many functional networks. For those out there that don’t really know what those do, in laymen terms, they are essentially the parts of your brain in control of emotion, learning, memory, and decision-making. His study focused on the practice of mindfulness to drug addictions in prisoners of the state. Five times more incarcerations are due to drugs, and his research in mindfulness has helped in the rehabilitation process, in addition to promoting engagement in the community post-incarceration since many drug inmates are repeat offenders.

Realizing that mindfulness and meditation have been found to be linked to underlying neurological factors creates an advantage for employees under stress in executive positions. It goes without being said that working in a position with many deadlines and goals is stressful, which many individuals would perceive as effective or productive. On the contrary, stress cognitively limits an individual and then can lead to “bad decision making.” Ongoing research to try to increase productivity in a work environment has lead to studies to look at ways to help employees maximize their potential and promote a healthy work setting. A current study at Harvard Medical School by Srini Pillay, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School and founder of NeuroBusiness Group, “suggests that companies help employees reduce stress and access the creative parts of the brain even when they're under pressure” This can be achieved through meditation and mindfulness as mentioned at Dr. Lyon’s lecture. Dr. Lyons mentioned how mindfulness affects parts of the brain; in this circumstance, focusing on the prefrontal cortex is important because it is responsible for creativity, abstract ability, and social skills , and so “in that mental state, the creative part of the brain tends to be active” (Blackman).

As demonstrated through Dr. Lyon’s lecture, meditation and mindfulness can be utilized for treating serious psychological disorders such as depression and stress disorders. It can be used to help with cancer and treating drug addictions, impacting physiological as well as even societal influences. Who knew meditation could be used to enhance office environments? It is quite apparent that meditation can be applied to broader contexts. This ultimately shows that neuroscience research looking at meditation and mindfulness is greatly expanding and aiding very diverse areas in society.

Citations:

Blackman, Andrew. "The Inner Workings of the Executive Brain." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 27 Apr. 2014. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303725404579461722158151180?KEYWORDS=meditation+and+neuroscience&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303725404579461722158151180.html%3FKEYWORDS%3Dmeditation%2Band%2Bneuroscience>.

Lyons, Thomas . "Mindfulness, Meditation, and Drug and Alcohol Use." Loyola Neuroscience

Seminar. Loyola University Chicago. , . 18 Mar. 2014. Lecture.

Being Bilingual as an Infant

I really enjoyed the talk on Bilingualism by Ellen Bialystok. The main topic of the talk was the idea of executive control and how it leads to the ability to speak another language fluently. She touched on the fact that executive control is needed for a person to direct their attention to the target language. Speaking another language is similar to switching tasks, and this involves inhibiting a previous task in order for a person to update information in their working memory. The most interesting aspects of her talk and paper were the experiments she described. In a particular experiment, children are given the task to detect grammatical errors in certain sentences. The result was the fact that although all the children were able to find the error in a logical sentence, such as "apples growed on trees," mostly children who were bilingual were able to distinguish the difference between grammatical accuracy and logic for a sentence that is somewhat illogical: "apples grew on noses." The bilingual children were able to realize that although the apples cannot grow on noses, the sentence is grammatically correct. This proves their ability to temporarily inhibit the attention on logical meaning that would cause distraction from a somewhat unfamiliar concept. Also, the speaker concluded the ability for bilingual children to switch from one task in order to make a decision, to another task.

This talk correlates with the article "It's never too early for children to learn a second language." In this article, Sieh states that contrary to the belief that teaching an infant more than one language at a time causes difficulties for him or her, it actually leads to stronger literary and reading skills. Speaking "parentese" to a child in one language allows babies to map out the sounds they hear in their brains. However, with the use of magneto-encephalography, researchers found that that the neurons of the infants who were hearing more than one language in "parentese" were activated more than those neurons of infants who were only hearing one language. This shows their ability to distinguish sounds and, as Ellen Bialystok states in her talk, switch between the tasks of comprehending one language from another. What I found interesting is the extent of the impact that vocals and facial expressions have on the baby's "mapping" of the sounds. Each language has a different pitch, and "parentese" allows that pitch to be amplified, making it easier for babies to distinguish between languages. This proves the capability of a bilingual infant's brain to be cognitively flexible.

Works Cited

Sieh, Mabel. "It's Never Too Early for Children to Learn a Second Language, Say Experts." South China Morning Post. N.p., 29 Apr. 2014. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

How Much Influence Does Media Have On Violence?

            New research on video games and violence has made a link between shooting games, such as Halo and Call of Duty and an individuals ability "to inhibit impulsive control." Shooting games like Halo and Call of Duty increase an individual's decision making ability but in turn "reduce the person's ability to inhibit impulsive behavior.” This behavior leads the person to "proactive executive control" which means video games that require shooting and violence "increase aggressive behavior." Craig Anderson, who is the Director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University had this to say, "We believe that any game that requires the same type of rapid responding as in most first-person shooters may produce similar effects on proactive executive control, regardless of violent content." Anderson and his colleagues have found that "playing action video games is associated with better visuospatial attention skills, but also reduced proactive cognitive control." In one particular study Anderson and colleague Edward Swing "assessed the TV and video game habits of 422 people to examine the links between screen time and aggression." What they found was that "violent media exposure had a direct association with greater aggression and anger/hostility.”
         

            According to a study published in the Journal Pediatrics, researchers Lindsey A. Robertson, Helena A. McAnally and Robert J. Hancox showed that "watching excessive amounts of TV as a child or adolescent, in which most of the content contains violence was causally associated with antisocial behavior in early adulthood.” Evidence that is missing from these results is a correlation showing that watching violent media leads to violent crimes being committed. However, a study conducted by The Lancet revealed that "exposure to media violence leads to aggression, desensitization toward violence and lack of sympathy for victims of violence, particularly in children." In addition, "the surgeon general, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association all consider media violence exposure a risk factor for actual violence."

            Dr. Laura Stockdale from the Department of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago explained to us in her lecture that males generally watch more TV and play video games more than females and thus they are more likely to show more aggressive tendencies. Dr. Stockdale also made the correlation between the amounts of time a child is exposed to media is directly related to the parent's education level. More educated parents have kids that do not have as much access to media as kids of parent's that are less educated. Dr. Stockdale said that "exposure to media violence affects emotional processing and influences aggression in adults and children alike." Dr. Stockdale's research showed that the more exposure one has to violent media, it is more likely that the individual will show more aggression. Dr. Stockdale's results like other researchers conclude that the more exposure one has to violent media, the more likely one will show increased aggressive behavioral tendencies. There are still many questions that need to be answered as to how much of an influence violent media plays on the youth and if in fact that there is validity to the statement that "one is driven to commit acts of violence just by observing violence in the media." 

Sources:

Pozios, Vasilis K., Praveen R. Kambam, and H. Eric Bender. "Does Media Violence Lead to the Real Thing?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Aug. 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

Stockdale, Laura. "Media Violence and Your Brain: Can Exposure to Violence Really Lead You to See the World through Blood-tinted Glasses?" Lecture.

Society for Personality and Social Psychology. "Video games boost visual attention but reduce impulse control." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 August 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130804081115.htm>.