Month: June 2013

What You Expect is What You Get

Posted on in Brain and memory by TSM Admin

In our previous posts ‘Perception and Expectations’, we discussed some of the ways a person’s self-perception can be conditioned by his or her expectations. A fascinating article on the Science-Based Medicine website has suggested some applications this same principle might have in treating various illnesses and pathologies:

“Much of chronic illness is learned behavior. Would sufferers from chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia recover faster if they could somehow re-map their neurons into healthy patterns?… A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine described the effects of mild traumatic brain injury in soldiers returning from Iraq. These soldiers had a high incidence of associated health problems, but when they controlled for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, there was no longer any significant association with adverse health outcome.”

“They discuss the implications of telling a patient he has a traumatic brain injury versus telling him he has recovered from a concussion and his symptoms are due to treatable, transient depression and/or stress reactions. They say, ‘…the most compelling efficacy data highlight the importance of education to normalize symptoms and provide expectation of rapid recovery.’…

“In psychotherapy, when we delve into childhood traumas, are we reinforcing brain maps for the sick role and the victim label? Wouldn’t it be more effective to concentrate on the current life situation and reinforce what coping skills the patient already has? Instead of ‘Poor you, you can’t get along with your boss because your Mommy didn’t love you’ what if we said, ‘Good for you, you’ve overcome a bad start in life and have finished school, you have a girlfriend, you have become good at making friends, and you coped with the recent death of your dog by playing sports to keep your mind off your grief. You’ve done well, so let’s look at how you can use some of those strengths and coping skills to help you solve this current problem.’ What if we helped consolidate the positive brain maps and helped prevent negative brain maps from wiring together? If nothing else, the concepts of neuroplasticity can contribute to a brain-based understanding of what various psychotherapies can accomplish….”

EPPP Preparation Success and The Power of Imaginative Rehearsal

Posted on in EPPP Preparation Materials by TSM Admin

I ended the last post  by saying that it is crucial what you think of yourself, so that you do not inadvertently become a victim of your own negative expectations.  This is especially important as you continue your EPPP preparation process.

As you begin the journey of psychology licensing prep, expect success and you will be more likely to succeed. Expect failure, and you will be increasing the likelihood that you will actually fail. Continue reading →

EPPP Preparation: Perception and Expectation

Posted on in EPPP Preparation Materials by TSM Admin

During your EPPP preparation, it is not unusual to experience anxiety. In fact, manageable anxiety can be a good thing, because it alerts you to the fact that passing the EPPP is extremely important. (See Dr. Elizabeth Soliday’s comments on anxiety during your EPPP prep.)

Anxiety can be a relatively harmless part of life, as it is our body’s mechanism for telling us that something is wrong. But anxiety can also become pathological and disabling, leading to phobias.

In phobias and anxieties, what often happens is that certain experiences activate neuro-pathways that are actually pathological. To illustrate this, I’d like to share an experience of a friend of mine, whom we will call Jeff, who used to suffer from chronic fatigue.

If Jeff woke up in the morning and the day was cloudy, he would label it a “gloomy day” and this would immediately activate a well-worn network of neuro-pathways associated with gloom, depression and tiredness. On such days, Jeff found it incredibly difficult to have energy or sometimes to even get out of bed. Each time this happened, it strengthened those unhelpful neuro-pathways even more, making it more difficult to overcome these neurological habits the next time there was a gloomy day. Continue reading →

Count the F’s

Posted on in Brain and memory by TSM Admin

I’d like to begin this post with a little exercise. I want you to count how many ‘Fs’ are in the following passage:

Remember what your answer is and we’ll come back to it in the next post. At the moment, I’d like to briefly switch gears and share some interesting facts about the brain.

In the brain neurons don’t communicate directly with each other because they don’t actually touch. Instead they secrete chemical molecules (called neurotransmitters) which travel across the gaps (called synapses). Neurotransmitters can link neurons in an almost infinite amount of ways. Indeed, the average neuron communicates with between 1000 and 10,000 other cells! The patterns that regulate these links are called neuro-pathways and here is a good explanation of how neuro-pathways work, taken from ‘The Brain 101’: Continue reading →

Keeping Mentally Sharp for your EPPP Preparation

Posted on in EPPP Preparation Materials, EPPP Study Tips by TSM Admin

A key concern for those involved in EPPP preparation is staying mentally sharp. That is why we have been running series of articles on brain fitness. Our previous post, ‘Michael Merzenich and Brain Fitness’, introduced the ground-breaking work of neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, a pioneer in the field of brain fitness.

Merzenich was part of the team that received grants to develop Posit Science Corporation. The corporation uses plasticity-based science to research and develop exercises that increase cognitive functioning. Their exercises are available through their website, Posit Science, which is essentially a brain fitness gym that subscribers can access for $10 a month.

I don’t get any money for recommending this resource, but do so out of pure enthusiasm for Merzenich’s work. One of the reasons I’m so enthusiastic about it is because it has been proved to slow down, and sometimes even to reverse, the mental degeneration that often accompanies aging. In an article on the PositScience website titled ‘The Brain: Changing the adult mind through the power of plasticity’, Theresa Boyle explained about this degeneration process:

“Research by Dr. Timothy Salthouse at the University of Virginia shows that by about age 22 our ability to make rapid comparisons, remember unrelated information and detect relationships are at their maximum. Speed of thought and spatial visualization also peak around this age. Reasoning peaks a little later, at about age 28, and then typically declines, as do the other skills.”

What we now know is that this decline is not inevitable and can be averted by treating the brain like a muscle: the more you train it, the stronger it will become.

This has enormous for those studying to sit the EPPP and dovetails with observations we made in our previous post ‘Be Careful How You Train Your Brain.’

Further Reading