Pierre Balthazard, an associate professor at the Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, also says he can use neuroscientific techniques to help people improve the skills that play a part in leadership.

Balthazard uses electroencephalography (EEG) to produce a “brain map” of his subjects. By attaching electrodes to their heads, he says he can measure electrical activity generated by neurons in their brain.

Much of his work has focused on calibrating the EEG data with standard psychometric tests, and now Balthazard says that just by looking at someone’s brain map he can predict their capacity for certain traits linked to leadership.

“From someone’s brain map I can tell if someone would rank high, medium or low on a psychometric assessment of their transformational leadership, and just that is an earth-shattering finding,” he told CNN.

He has been working with the U.S. military to produce a model that will allow them to scan soldiers’ brains for complexity. The idea is that more complex brains produce better situational awareness and adaptive thinking — essential skills for the modern soldier, who must be able to transition from front-line combat to nation building.

He refers to traits like complexity and transformational leadership as antecedents to leadership itself. But for Balthazard, the ability to assess these skills is only half the story. What really excites him is the possibility of brain training and improving leadership skills.

“If you could only assess and not develop then it’s only an exercise in social engineering, and that’s of no interest to me,” he said.

Balthazard explained that brains can be trained using positive and negative reinforcement, in the same way that disorders like ADD are treated.

A subject is wired to software programmed to recognize “correct” functioning of a specific part of the brain. If the brain isn’t performing correctly, there is a negative reinforcement, such as a noise emitted from a speaker at an unpleasant frequency. “The brain is amazing at adjusting so it doesn’t get the negative feedback,” he told CNN.

But others think it may prove difficult to develop something as intangible as leadership. Dr Bob Kentridge, a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit at Durham University, in England, told CNN, “Even if you find differences in the brains of people with different leadership abilities, it’s very difficult to say if that difference is just related to leadership.

“It could be due to all sorts of things that might be fairly tangentially related to leadership.”

“Leadership is such a fuzzy quality that it’s hard to say conclusively what you are changing,” Kentridge added. “You might change things that contribute to leadership, for example people might learn to stay calmer in conflict situations, but is that the same as saying you’re improving the leadership center of your brain?”

So, what’s inside the brain of a born leader? Interestingly, intelligence is not a requirement. “There’s zero correlation between IQ and leadership,” Balthazard told CNN.

“Emotion control has a lot to do with leadership. People who lead very well tend to have a much more coherent brain on the emotional, right side, and more differentiated brain on the more rational, left side, that can assess more different options.”

Balthazard says that although he has identified brain profiles for antecedents to leadership, he stresses that before he can produce a set of exercises designed to improve leadership itself, he must develop a “leadership norm” — a standard for what makes a good leader.

He has currently analyzed the brains of between 200 and 225 subjects, including bankers and military leaders, and says he must test twice that amount before he has his “norm.”

But he said plenty of people are already going to neurotherapists to train their brain for skills linked to leadership, such as decision-making, cognition, and memory retrieval, and Balthazard says he’ll soon be able to use neurotherapy techniques to develop leadership itself.

“At some point in the next 18 months we’ll have a seminal paper out that says we’ve done this. We’re not there yet but I’ve seen it in the lab.”

If that happens, budding CEOs might be queuing up at neurotherapists to plug themselves in and turn themselves into the business brains of the future.

CNN article

Key Concepts

• When passing on DNA to their offspring, mothers silence certain genes, and fathers silence others. These imprinted genes usually result in a balanced, healthy brain, but when the process goes awry, neurological disorders can result.
• Imprinting errors are responsible for rare disorders such as Angelman and Prader-Willi syndromes, and some scientists are beginning to think imprinting might be implicated in more common illnesses such as autism and schizophrenia.
• Even typical brains are the result of asymmetric contributions from Mom and Dad. Higher cognitive function seems to be disproportionately controlled by Mom’s genes, whereas the drive to eat and mate is influenced by Dad’s.

Your memories of high school biology class may be a bit hazy nowadays, but there are probably a few things you haven’t forgotten. Like the fact that you are a composite of your parents—your mother and father each provided you with half your genes, and each parent’s contribution was equal. Gregor Mendel, often called the father of modern genetics, came up with this concept in the late 19th century, and it has been the basis for our understanding of genetics ever since.

But in the past couple of decades, scientists have learned that Mendel’s understanding was incomplete. It is true that children inherit 23 chromosomes from their mother and 23 complementary chromosomes from their father. But it turns out that genes from Mom and Dad do not always exert the same level of influence on the developing fetus. Sometimes it matters which parent you inherit a gene from—the genes in these cases, called imprinted genes because they carry an extra molecule like a stamp, add a whole new level of complexity to Mendelian inheritance. These molecular imprints silence genes; certain imprinted genes are silenced by the mother, whereas others are silenced by the father, and the result is the delicate balance of gene activation that usually produces a healthy baby.

When that balance is upset, however, big problems can arise. Because most of these stamped genes influence the brain, major imprinting errors can manifest themselves as rare developmental disorders, such as Prader-Willi syndrome, which is characterized by mild mental retardation and hormonal imbalances that lead to obesity. And recently scientists have started to suspect that more subtle imprinting errors could lead to common mental illnesses such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. A better understanding of how imprinting goes awry could provide doctors with new ways to treat or perhaps even prevent some of these disorders.

Through the study of imprinted genes, researchers are also uncovering clues about how our parents’ genes influence our brain—it seems that maternal genes play a more important role in the formation of some brain areas, such as those for language and complex thought, and paternal genes have more influence in regions involved in growing, eating and mating. “You need both Mom and Dad in order to get a normal brain,” says Janine LaSalle, a medical microbiologist at the University of California, Davis, whose lab focuses on imprinting. “We’re really at the beginning of understanding what that means.”

View the rest of the article here

Landmark results from neuroscience research are debunking yet another myth about aging – that the brain continually loses cells and naturally dims with age.

On the contrary, recent studies show that if we continue to challenge our minds and stimulate our creativity, we not only feel better, we also cause our brains to sprout new branches, or dendrites. These new branches actually improve brain function and help compensate for the small loss of brain cells that comes with age.

In effect, the aging brain responds to mental exercise in much the same way that muscle responds to physical exercise.

In his new book, The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life, world-renowned psychiatrist and gerontologist Gene Cohen shares the latest findings in brain and aging research, and offers a plan for leading a creative and fulfilling life well beyond retirement.

For those who don’t think they have creative potential, Dr. Cohen emphasizes that creativity is not just for geniuses. One does not have to be born with inherited talent or raised in a special environment to be creative. It is universal. He calls it “an equal opportunity attribute.”

Dr. Cohen makes a distinction between creativity with a “big C” and creativity with a “little c.” He defines “big C” creativity as extraordinary accomplishments of unusual people, such as renowned artists, scientists and inventors. Creativity with a “little c” refers to personal creativity, grounded in the various and sundry realities of life. It is something one has brought into being and which has enhanced one’s life and given satisfaction. It could be a new recipe, a floral arrangement, a letter or poem that you wrote, or a new trick you taught your dog. Both dimensions of creativity are valuable, and both continue throughout the human life cycle, independent of age.

Read the rest of this article to learn how to keep your brain young: Think Young! Get Creative!

A research team from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla has identified a protein in the brain of mice that protects neurons from excessive inflammation, which can lead to neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Their study, which identifies the protective function of a protein called Nurr1 and defines the pathway by which it works, will be published in the April 3 edition of the journal Cell.

Nurr1 is a transcription factor that has been known for some time to play an essential role in the generation and maintenance of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. Rare mutations in Nurr1 are associated with familial Parkinson’s disease, and the loss of dopaminergic neurons — which are the main source of dopamine in the central nervous system — is associated with the disease. Dopamine helps control multiple brain functions such as movement, attention, pleasure, emotion and motivation. The new findings have uncovered a second and previously unexpected role of the Nurr1 protein in two other cell types in the brain — microglia and astrocytes. The brain’s microglia are macrophage-like cells that are active components of the immune defense in the central nervous system, while astrocytes are large star-shaped cells that normally play important support functions in the brain.
Read the rest of this article at: Protein Protection

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Declining mental function is often seen as a problem of old age, but certain aspects of brain function actually begin their decline in young adulthood, a new study suggests.

The study, which followed more than 2,000 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 60, found that certain mental functions — including measures of abstract reasoning, mental speed and puzzle-solving — started to dull as early as age 27.

Dips in memory, meanwhile, generally became apparent around age 37.
Click the following link to read the rest of this article: Mental Decline

Do you misplace your keys or regularly miss appointments? Do you often forget the names of people you know well?  Do you feel like your memory is slowly getting worse? If so, then you may find yourself considering those brain games advertised everywhere. Sales pitches such as “where the sweat is figurative, but results are real” and “your brain will thank you” are amusingly alluring. But you may find yourself wondering whether they are really worth the time and expense. You shell out the money, play a few rounds and your brain will start spitting out names, dates and pin numbers like you’re 18 again—right?

Yes, those computerized brain-training games seem like a cool idea. They are based in large part on clear evidence that living in an enriched environment with lots of mental stimulation produces positive brain changes. And we agree there’s huge potential for tapping into your own neuroplasticity (that is, the brain’s ability to change itself by remodeling nerve cell connections after experience) to enhance mental fitness and prevent age-related memory decline. The well-established benefits of early life education on reducing later risk for dementia has also given much credence to the theory that building a greater cognitive reserve capacity can help the brain compensate for injury—analagous to the concept that more cell phone towers equals fewer dropped calls. Furthermore, several brilliant neuroscientists have, in recent years, served as the designers of the best brain games on the market.

But there’s a crucial catch: most of these early studies were done on rodents. So lost in the brain game buzz is the obvious question: Are these claims true when it comes to human brain performance and aging? Can they really make your brain faster and stronger? Are there really better than the tried-and-true approach: remaining healthy, active, and engaged in the world around you? In other words, are they worth the money?
Interested in learning more about brain games? Read the rest of this article at: Brain Games

The benefits of exercise:

• In children, college students and young adults, exercise or physical activity improves learning and intelligence scores.

• Exercise in childhood increases the resilience of the brain in later life resulting in a cognitive reserve.

• The decline of memory, cortex and hippocampus atrophy in aging humans can be attenuated by exercise.

• Physical activity improves memory and cognition.

• Exercise protects against brain damage caused by stroke.

• Exercise promotes recovery after brain injury.

• Exercise can be an antidepressant.

The brain needs certain ingredients to flourish or to life up to the expectations of every day problems. The brain has priority when it comes to certain ingredients. A variety of foods can be beneficial for learning. Positive effects on brain function have been reported for fish oil, teas, fruits, folate, spices, cocoa, chocolate and vitamins.

To read more about exercise and the brain,visit the following link: Exercise and the Brain