Hello friends and followers of NFBSupport!
Welcome to October! Which as it were, is looking to be one of our busiest months yet! Due to an upcoming event, we may send out an early and small newsletter in two weeks, or just skip it till next month, depends on how busy those last couple of weeks end up being.
And here's the latest!
ASD and Full-Body Video Games
Narcís Parés, a member of the Cognitive Media Technologies research group of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) from UPF Barcelona has been developing and researching a full-body interactive video game for ASD patients to promote social interaction (https://neurosciencenews.com/full-body-videogames-asd-15009/). Results thus far have been positive in improving social initiations and interaction! This may be usable in the near future with the VR technology becoming more accessible every day.
Mental Health Diagnosis
A collaboration of researchers from Trinity College Dublin, the Department of Psychology at New York University, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Harvard Medical School, the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine are questioning the accuracy of current DSM based diagnoses (https://neurosciencenews.com/mental-health-diagnosis-15051/). In their current study they found that patients met an average of 3.7 concurrent diagnoses, and with many disorders being so heterogeneous that two patients with the same diagnosis could present and respond to treatment in completely different ways. They are aiming for a compulsive dimension of mental health that maps onto various aspects of ‘cognitive flexibility’ more effectively.
Forgetting and Learning During Sleep
We all know that sleep is critical to learning development, but a recent study from UCSF researchers found a little more detail (https://neurosciencenews.com/sleep-learning-forgetting-15023/). They found that delta waves (0.5-4Hz) aid in forgetting while slow oscillations (0.1-0.5 or Epsilon waves) aid in learning. For those of us that practice neurostimulation, delta has always been important in healthy sleep, but epsilon is a range that few of us work with. Possibly some food for thought when assisting those with sleep disorders. Also fascinating, the epsilon waves happen to exist by another name: parasympathetic frequency band. Interesting that the frequency band that reduces stress response might be directly associated to memory and learning.
That's it this week,
Till next time!
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