2008 June

Brain Hacks: A Final Update on Learning Breakthrough

June 9, 2008 By Steve Borsch 3 Comments

A final update on our experience with Learning Breakthrough (LB) since many people are following along and interested.

No question we received benefit from LB…it just wasn’t effective enough. Unfortunately, it became a burden and my son was pulling back from it and goofing around, so we ended up not moving forward after the first five months. We’d read that there was a plateau period and we moved past that, but the benefits we were receiving from LB just wasn’t enough of a payoff for the effort we put into it.

Learning Breakthrough (or Dore, in my opinion) is probably as good as having an ADD/ADHD person performing daily aerobic exercise and eating a good diet…and we all know how few of us do the things we know we should, and trying to get a kid to stick to something like LB is quite a challenge.

Then a Doc (Dr. Chuck Parker) who writes CorePsychBlog sent me an email since I’d written about brain SPECT imaging on this blog. Having the SPECT analysis helped us identify the subtype of ADHD my son was experiencing. Parker and I went back and forth, I helped him with his blog, and he ended up offering to work with my son (though a local Doc has to prescribe). Parker’s belief is looking at the whole person, the “core” of the psychology, vs. just treating or focusing on one area like the cerebellum (which is the area of the brain positively affected by Learning Breakthrough or Dore).

Here was the big “Aha!” for us: Parker recommended that my son take a genetic test for gluten intolerance and we discovered that he’s genetically gluten and casein intolerant (the former is the wheat protein and the latter the one in dairy products). We modified his diet, got him off his current ADHD medication and switched to Vyvanse, and the results were immediate and impressive.

His grades are mostly A’s & B’s, he’s much happier and seemingly more socially adjusted, and a delight to be around vs. the struggles with this exceptionally bright kid that couldn’t focus.

Nailing down the specific turning point is tough since we modified his diet, my son had a growth spurt, and he ended up on Vyvanse. While it would be nice to know precisely or to find a complete, holistic solution instead of yet-another-med or diet modification, it’s hard to argue with the results!

By the way, this gluten intolerance is fascinating and is something worth considering if you or your child is gifted with ADHD. Celiac disease, an intestinal malady which is the worst-case scenario of gluten intolerance, mostly affects people of European (especially Northern European) descent, but studies show that it also affects Hispanic, Black and Asian populations as well. Though we went through withdrawal from those two proteins (e.g., fatigue for two weeks) both my wife and I feel much better being off gluten and dairy.

Filed Under: Brain/Mind

What’s the point of social networking?

June 4, 2008 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

Often I’m asked, "Why do I want to sign up for a social network? Twitter? Or write a blog?" and for many the answer is, "Perhaps you shouldn’t. It might be too early for you."

For many of us, participating in social networks and using social media comes naturally. We have the gadgets and computers, fast Internet access and, most importantly, are connected with other people discovering and using these technologies. For many other people, there’s little or no point to participating since their real-world social networks aren’t yet leveraging these technologies or, like some people I know, they and their friends only use computers at work and a cell phone for talking.

I recall my now deceased grandmother, born in the early 1900′s, tell me about the introduction of the telephone to the farm she grew up on in rural South Dakota. At first there were party lines only and eventually they got a private line, but it was years before people accepted this device into their homes and became comfortable with the behavior changes required to use it. Even today, people that could truly use a free telephony service like Skype — and with someone around like me that could teach and handhold them all the way through the learning curve — are remarkably slow to adopt it even though they could see and talk to their loved ones on the other side of the world for free.

Social networking and social media are but baby steps along the way to significantly powerful, ubiquitous and pervasive Internet-centric human-to-human connections. They’re still messy and chaotic, but as more and more of us use them and point out where they fall down, the better they’ll become and the more of them that will be introduced.

This is one reason why this video tickled me as it humorously illustrates the sometimes bogus and false connections that social networking fosters and how many of us participating have only thin threads tying us together:

Filed Under: Social Media

See into the Future

June 2, 2008 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

I knew it. I can see into the future and so can you. Here’s how and why this phenomena explains why optical illusions trick us.

Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York says it starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world.

Changizi now says it’s our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd.

When you really dig into why optical illusions work, it’s your brain compensating for that lag and anticipating, assuming and predicting what happens (or should happen) next.

This has more meaning for me than most though.

As someone gifted with an Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD which I do view as a gift) and the father of an ADD daughter and a 13 year old son with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD and more gifted than I), I’ve come to learn that one reason for this ‘syndrome’ is a lag in the cerebellum caused by reduced blood flow in the prefrontal cortex.

One thing the three of us share is the ability to see things that other people don’t see and other advantageous attributes: associations between seemingly non-associated things (i.e., connecting the dots); an inability to block input thus causing us to take everything in to our brains; and a frustration with linear and serial anything, compelling us to find ways around obstacles and barriers and cut-to-the-chase.

The trick for non-ADD/ADHD people is to place yourself in positions to take it all in and not turn it off. Let yourself be inundated with information, frustrated with process and procedure, and you’ll find yourself seeking those spaces and solutions that connect dots. It’s worked for many people I know and they’ve then felt the benefits of the gift I feel ADD and ADHD is for my kids and I.

Just for grins, take a look at probably the best compilation of optical illusions on the ‘net and you’ll find your brain hurting after just a few!

Filed Under: Brain/Mind