NEURO KNOWLEDGE. FEEDBACK PLASTICITY
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November marks Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia (PANDA) Week. PANDA, now in it’s 18th year, is all about supporting the mental and emotional wellbeing of expecting and new parents.
Earlier this month was OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and Anxiety Awareness week in Victoria. However, with nearly 240,000 people in Western Australia experiencing anxiety this year it seems really important to talk about anxiety disorders here as well.
The best way to learn about someone is to take the time to listen to their story, the best way to understand someone is to step into their shoes. It is important for all of us to feel understood, this way we break down barriers and we find solutions. August brings a time to build our awareness of anxiety disorders, so, first, we went looking for real people’s descriptions of what anxiety feels like:
In one article from The Independent a woman explained the constant feeling of being anxious ‘as if she tripped and the moment where you don't know if you are going to catch yourself or not is how she felt all day long', and someone else describes ‘[It’s like] when you tap your pocket to get your wallet, and it is not there (and like the woman above said), it’s like that all the time.’
For some, particularly those living right now with a chronic pain experience, this may be a painful question to read…it may be one that has been posed by a health professional sitting across a desk in front of you…it may have felt, and still feel, unfathomable that they could have said that to you…they may not have known the truth in their statement, but we are going to explain it to you now. We feel pretty confident you will feel better informed, and hopefully, even a bit better after you have thought about it…
I have just returned from The 2018 International Neurorehabilitation Conference in Boston run by Harvard Medical School. I was one of hundreds of delegates from all over the world attending to get the latest updates on cutting-edge treatments to help people with brain problems. We had experts presenting on a large range of topics ranging from neuroplasticity to proven and state-of-the-art brain therapies.
Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich looks at one of the secrets of the brain's incredible power: its ability to actively re-wire itself. He's researching ways to harness the brain's plasticity to enhance our skills and recover lost function.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Wouldn't it is amazing to be able to “look inside” your brain and see how it’s working ? Well, thanks to brain research is now possible to do just this with special brain imaging known as QEEG. Scientists have been able to measure the activity from our brain since the 1930s, and this is known as EEG (or brainwaves), which is still used today to help diagnose conditions such as epilepsy.
Two thirds of the population believes a myth that has been propagated for over a century: that we use only 10% of our brains. Hardly! Our neuron-dense brains have evolved to use the least amount of energy while carrying the most information possible -- a feat that requires the entire brain. Richard E. Cytowic debunks this neurological myth (and explains why we aren’t so good at multitasking).
This amazing video from The Allen Institute for Brain Research (<link to https://www.alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/ > takes us a visually stunning view of the brain, all the way from the outside to the the tiniest cells (and smaller still) on the inside: https://youtu.be/Zj3RxtJ_Ljc