I thought that I’d give you a brief update on how little Abby is doing. As you may remember, my daughter’s 4-year-old niece suffered from several minutes of asphyxiation in a playground accident. She emerged from a week-long coma with clear physical and behavioral signs of subcortical brain damage. Abby is now a month out,…
I initiated this blog for two reasons. First, I sought to provide neuroscience-related information to care-givers and to citizens who might benefit from a brain plasticity-informed perspective. There is an ongoing revolution in brain science that bears powerful implications for our understanding of human neurological and psychiatric impairments and disease, and that informs us about…
If you did not read yesterday’s entry, do that first, before reading today’s followup. The situation in a nutshell: An adopted Chinese girl, now 3.5 years of age, has a “reactive attachment disorder” that is commonly expressed by night terrors, parental rejection and an overlay of other cognitive problems. Every standard therapy has been tried,…
About two weeks ago, I received the email letter posted below. I promised the correspondent that I would respond to this heartfelt plea on this blog. As I sit down writing this response, I rue making that promise. The origins of “Reactive Attachment Disorder” are difficult to explain, and strategies to ameliorate it are equally…
We often receive feedback from school administrators, teachers, and therapists like that expressed in the note below. Because they are anecdotal, they usually die in my email Inbox. I thought that I’d post one, just so you get the flavor of what has been a common message: “I have been in the public and private…
I’m in Jacksonville, Florida today, participating in what is a very unusual and special event –– “The Jacksonville Brain Summit”. In an earlier entry, I told you that Jacksonville has adopted a leadership position in their use of the most advanced brain-science-based strategies to improve the academic performance and the mature working skills and performance…
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my grandaughter Leila’s neighborhood public elementary school in Oakland, California is being reconstructed at all deliberate speed — and I emphasize the word ‘deliberate’ — after it was largely destroyed by an arsonist. Because schools and institutions in general have just lost the skill of doing anything FAST,…
One of my favorite former research fellows, David Blake, has chided me for posting multiple blog entries on some days, followed by several entry-less days. “Spread ’em out!”, says Dave. “There should be something new and worthwhile to read EVERY day.” Since David is considerably smarter than me, and because he’s a real engineer who…
The goal of this blog is to educate ourselves (you, and me) about the brain science underlying brain health. We shall have something to say, almost every day, on three grand subjects. First, this shall be a “No Spin Zone” on the subject of brain fitness. We’ll discuss discoveries and claims that inform us about…