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EBT News on Mon, 03/15/2010 - 6:58pm
In researching the upcoming Wired for Joy (released June 15, 2010) I became convinced that Eudaimonia, "the goal of a good life is excellence in the pursuit of fulfillment of personal potentials in ways that further an individual’s purposes in living. The brain science is fascinating in that with sufficient activation of the left prefrontal cortex associated with positive emotions from eudonic reward, the activation of the right prefrontal cortex associated with negative emotions ceases. What's more, Davidson, 2007 is associated with an insufficient joy response, not enough of that left prefrontal activation. Read more »
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EBT News on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 10:47am
The anti-depressant boom may well be about to change, as word has it that depression is related to stress, not genetic
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EBT News on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 9:19am
During the last two days, I had the opportunity to be in meetings with Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center at Yale. Kelly has devoted himself to obesity treatment research for decades, and the talk he presented was all about how people don't change their behavior, that over time intake of fruits and vegetables and exercise/week have stayed stable. He is interesting in changing the defaults so that people are not tempted. They don't have to decide not to eat something. It's just not available to them or at such an expense that they decide against it. There is no question in my mind that the industry advantage, that they have addictive foods to sell and set it in front of people every chance they get, poses a public health risk, and I'm hopeful that some kind of flat playing field for whole foods will begin to appear. Read more »
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Laurel on Wed, 12/30/2009 - 2:43pm
New York University's Emotional Brain Institute continues to publish exciting research. Most recently
Elizabeth Phelps has spoken about the latest study,
Preventing return of fear using reconsolidation update. In NIH's review of the study highlights it as evidence that noninvasive techniques can block a conditional fear in humans:
Scientists have for the first time selectively blocked a conditioned fear memory in humans with a behavioral manipulation. Participants remained free of the fear memory for at least a year. The research builds on emerging evidence from animal studies that reactivating an emotional memory opens a 6-hour window of opportunity in which a training procedure can alter it.
"Our results suggest a non-pharmacological, naturalistic approach to more effectively manage emotional memories," said Elizabeth Phelps, Ph.D., of New York University, a grantee of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
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Laurel on Tue, 12/29/2009 - 3:14am
Yesterday and today, three UCSF colleagues and I have been participating in a meeting for the seven teams that have been funded by NIH to translate basic behavioral and social science discoveries into interventions to reduce obesity. EBT is the intervention of one of them. This work is in response to a U-01 which is a kind of award that is based on collaboration, allowing more creativity and five years of bringing together researchers with different projects to respond to a particularly challenging problem. The program director is Susan Czajkowski,Ph.D., Clinical Applications and Prevention Branch, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences. It took her 2.5 years of hard work to bring this project together, and she is so enthusiastic and there is hope for a new paradigm in obesity treatment. I have been really struck by the concentration of expertise in one room -- about 40 people are participating -- and a tremendous enthusiasm. People are curious, focused, creative, responsive, and . . . cooperative. I'm very grateful to Elissa Epel. Barbara Lariara and Nancy Adler for taking the initiative and put their efforts behind asking the National Institutes of Health to study EBT. We'll be sharing the updates from all the projects in coming posts! Read more »
Submitted by
Laurel on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 9:02am
