Many of us are constantly in need of …

Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant in the world.  We drink it in our coffee, we consume it in our cans of Coke and Pepsi. People take in so much of this drug, they rarely think twice about it.

Caffeine is found naturally in so many of our foods and beverages, we take it for granted. On top of that, it’s often referenced for its positive effects on attention and mental alertness.

Not only is caffeine found abundantly available in natural and supplemented foods and beverages, you’ll also find it in products sold over the counter for fatigue, migraines and colds.

But what are caffeine’s effects on our thinking? Is it helping or hindering our thought processes? Let’s find out…

Students and life-long learners alike: at what time of day do you usually study?

When I was in college, I worked a few days per week as a campus computer lab monitor. (In other words, I got paid a few bucks to sit in a room with 30 computers and make sure that the printer didn’t jam up.)

I usually worked the closing (read: midnight) shift, and thanks to an incredibly competent cohort of classmates, I never had much work to do. If the printer jammed, the student who’d jammed the machine would usually walk right over, pull out the offending accordion-shaped piece of computer paper, and print their work again.

Call this job a study hall for the college set.

And study I did.

“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.” 
~Thich Nhat Hanh

 “You have to make the mind run the body.”
~General George S. Patton Jr.

A recently published article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology by Kearney, McDermott, Malte, Martinez, and Simpson (2012) may have broad implications for veterans suffering with symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 

These researchers demonstrated that engagement in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) showed significant improvements after six months in reducing soldiers’ symptoms of PTSD, depression, behavioral activation (the ability to engage in activities to achieve a goal in spite of aversive symptoms), and self-acceptance. 

I live in a college town.

In fact, I live in the college town in which I used to attend college.

I moved back here a few months ago and I pass my (er, the college’s) library daily. It brings back plenty of academic memories — and, surprisingly, they’re not the stressful ones. In the six years that have passed since my graduation, the memories of stress and panic and due dates and overwhelming projects has faded.

But the positive stuff remains: the nights spent in a library study nook with my Intro to Communication textbook and a highlighter. (I loved that class.)

The satisfaction of applying a concept I learned in my 9 a.m. Intro to Logic class to my 2 p.m. Composition class. (I could point out all the major logical fallacies in our assigned reading.)

The scent of the pages of a brand-new textbook. (Am I the only one who thinks that new books sort of smell like cucumbers on the inside?)

I hit the peak of wistful sentimentality last week and found a way to re-create a portion of the academic college experience (without the stress!): watching actual college lectures on Academic Earth.

There’s interesting research being conducted into ways to modify fear memories. New methods may unlock the potential to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder and other disorders that debilitate many in our society.

Memory re-consolidation occurs when a memory is retrieved and it becomes unstable, thus allowing new information to be incorporated into the memory. When the memory is unstable its re-stabilization process can be blocked or weakened. This process of memory re-consolidation has been shown to help weaken the memory of the negative emotions associated with the fearful memories (Schiller et al., 2010). This does not imply that conscious memory of the event is weakened, rather, it implies that the negative tone of the memory is weakened.

Research in this area has led to using extinction processes that have been shown to weaken fear-associated memories.

When considering how the brain allows focused attention, it’s important to first describe what is referred to as the dual processing model of attention — in other words, how the brain processes information in two ways. 

The model says attention is either automatic or controlled.  In automatic processing cognition occurs with little effort, is automatic given a specific stimulus, and doesn’t interfere with other mental processes. Controlled processing is cognitively expensive, relies mainly on serial processing and is responsible for self-regulation. 

Focusing attention is dependent on top-down processing while automatic attention is more focused on bottom-up processing.  Bottom-up processing is mainly triggered by the presence of environmental stimuli, while top-down processing is dependent on information in memory, including expectation of what might occur while engaging in the task. 

In 1870, British explorer Sir Richard Burton allegedly coined the term “extrasensory perception” or ESP. But it wasn’t until the 1930s that the term became popular thanks to Joseph Banks (J.B.) Rhine (1895-1980).

Rhine was actually a botanist who became interested in parapsychology after listening to a lecture from Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, according to an article in APA’s Monitor on Psychology by Nick Joyce and David B. Baker, Ph.D. Doyle declared that there was scientific evidence to prove that it was possible to talk to the dead.

Rhine wanted to validate parapsychology and began working with his wife Louisa and Professor William McDougall at Duke University in 1927. According to the Rhine Research Center, before Rhine, researchers mostly explored psychic phenomenon by working with mediums to see if an afterlife really existed.

Rhine, however, wanted to know first whether the living had ESP capabilities, so he focused on testing Duke University students instead.

What did he find out?

It’s holiday time, and that means waiting in line: at the grocery store, at the airport, at shops, everywhere. I’m an impatient person, and standing in a slow-moving line is one of those very small, maddening aspects of life that drives me crazy. As often happens, however, when I learned more about the experience, it became more interesting to me.

Fun fact from the Wall Street Journal story on Find the best checkout line: you’re better off waiting in a single-file line than in one of several lines for different cashiers. Although people prefer individual lines, a single-file line moves about three times faster.

Think about the next time you’re at the post office.

One of the most interesting things I learned in co-authoring the Harvard Health book Organize Your Mind, Organize your Life with Harvard psychiatrist Paul Hammerness is that the brain is designed to beautifully handle one focus, one task at a time. It is not designed for multiple, parallel tasks.

When you shine your full attention on a conversation, a meeting, a project, or on driving your car, you access the full spectrum of your brain’s resources. Top, down, right, left, back, front, all together the brain has an immense capacity to be creative, productive, and organized, avoid errors, and connect deeply with others who matter to us.

In today’s world, such a singular focus is a rare — or at least occasional — event. We rapidly move our focus from one task to another, from a meeting to an email to a text to a side conversation. The brain can’t easily move the totality of its resources all together in an instant, and repeatedly. Hence many tasks get only a part of our brain’s resources, often leaving us feeling as though much has not been done well at the end of a day.

This state of disorganization is an epidemic of distracted and divided focus.

Lawmakers and policy makers love to feel like they’re doing something, even when that “something” is passing yet another bad law or writing more paternalistic policies. Well-intentioned though they may be, the government — and in fact, nobody — can stop you from making bad decisions about your life. You can’t legislate good judgment.

This past week, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) urged a complete ban on talking or texting on smartphones while driving — including hands-free devices. While the ruling isn’t law, it’s a strong recommendation from a federal agency that everyone take up the kinds of strict bans that many states already have on the books in one form or another.

The focus on the method of distraction is the same kind of “blame the technology” emphasis I’ve seen elsewhere in our society (most notably when it comes to “Internet addiction“). It’s as if our mobile phones offer a magical, supernatural ability to distract while we’re driving, while the other thousand things that can also distract us aren’t so bad.

While no one — myself included — is arguing that distracted driving is a good thing, some common sense should enter into the picture when talking about new policies and laws. There is little evidence to suggest focusing on banning a single type of distraction while driving is going to result in much change in driver behavior.

It has been suggested that we are often unaware of external factors that influence eating behavior (Wansink, 2006; Vartaninan et al., 2008).  There is a substantial body of research that shows external factors have a robust influence on eating behavior (Epstein et al., 2009; Remick et al., 2009; Rozin et al., 2003). 

These external factors include things such as portion size, labeling, variety of food we eat, and how much attention we pay when we’re eating (or whether we’re distracted by socializing, for instance). Even the plate size can affect how we eat.

Now, some researchers have suggested that external factors may play a larger role in eating behavior than internal factors, such as hunger, satiety, flavor, macro-nutrient content, and so on (Wansink et al., 2007; Levitsky, 2005; Wansink, et al., 2005). 

What’s behind these external or environmental factors and their role in how we eat?