Train your brain to be happy – really
By Susan Wilson
The economic crisis that has dogged the world economy for the last few years has left many people feeling depressed and just downright unhappy. Peak Achievement Training has released a new neurofeedback product called Peak BrainHappiness Trainer. The program is supposed to help you train your brain to be happier.
The Peak Brain Happiness Trainer will be launched at the the First World Congress on Positive Psychology. The Conference is hosted by the International Positive Psychology Association. The new program will be demonstrated this week on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights during the conference.
The Peak Brain Happiness Trainer is supposed “to enhance the effects of the pleasurable brain chemical, dopamine, by modifying the brain’s electrical activity at the prime spot–the Prefrontal Pleasure Center.” The training is supposed to result in more positive feelings such as happiness, gratitude and peace by helping you find your “Neureka” brainwaves.
The equipment consists of a sensor headband, a wireless transmitter and receiver and computer software. The computer package that comes with this gear “includes special proprietary biofeedback protocols (screens and sounds that respond to your brainwaves) for the Neureka! brainwaves in addition to the Focus and Alertness measurements from the basic Peak Achievement Trainer.” Of course, in order to use the computer portion of the program you better have Windows XP or Vista. MAC and Linux users need not attempt to become happy with this program.
The basic technique is actually neurofeedback which gives real time feedback to the patient or user. Special sensors are attached to the scalp in select areas to record brain activity. Specific computer programs are used to “train the brain” to achieve whatever the desired effect may be. Neurofeedback is frequently used by psychologists to help with such issues as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder better know as ADHD, sleep disorders and migraine headaches.
There are scientific studies that prove that neurofeedback when properly administered can achieve the desired results. At home biofeedback/neurofeedback is discouraged unless administered under the close supervision of a clinician. Sometimes adjustments need to be made in the program and only a trained psychologist knows when and how to do the modifications.
A number of studies are listed on the company’s Web site that support using programs like these to improve mood and attention. As with all programs that purport to be able to change your thinking, you have to be willing to follow the program to the letter. The company provides “an hour’s consultation” in how to use the system along with a manual and lesson plans.
If you don’t like reading, don’t even think about trying this system. As with all programs, just like diet and exercise, it requires dedication and effort. You can’t quit if it seems too hard or the results are not showing up fast enough. That’s why neurofeedback works better with a clinician to oversee sessions. Clinicians can modify the program so it works better and can cheer you on when it seems to be taking a long time.
These systems aren’t cheap so before you go looking for happiness training, be sure you’ve got the money to spend. Oh right. That’s how we got here in the first place.
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June 21st, 2009
screen, you screen, we all screen
By Alex Beam
Globe Staff / June 19, 2009
Email| Print| Reprints| Yahoo! Buzz| Text size – + Do we read differently on the computer screen from how we read on the printed page? It’s an interesting question.
Before hearing from the experts, let’s review what we think we know. Even the best computer screens are harder on the eyes than the paper page is. Jakob Nielsen, a Web usability researcher, reports that we generally read 25 percent more slowly on the screen. I read more quickly on the screen and edit out about 40 percent of what appears before my eyes. If you haven’t told me what you want by line four of your e-mail, trust me, I didn’t get the message.
A Norwegian researcher, Anne Mangen, recently weighed in with an interesting paper in the Journal of Research in Reading, asserting that screen reading and page reading are radically different. “The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’ Mangen writes.
Her conclusion: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.’’
When writing about digital reading – blogger Danny Bloom is pushing the neologism “screening,’’ for reading on the screen – Mangen, Nielsen, and others focus on the issue of distractibility. How can schoolchildren really read at computer terminals, scholars argue, knowing that more interesting Web pages are just a few clicks away? But don’t dedicated reading devices like the Sony Reader or the Amazon Kindle change this equation?
Nielsen agrees that Kindle is trying to out-book the book. He argues that Kindle reading can be even more immersive than book reading: “All you are aware of is the next page, you don’t get this feeling that you are coming to the end of the book. It’s like being plunged directly into the author’s content.’’
I asked Mangen via e-mail if she thought there might be a future convergence of Kindle reading and Gutenberg reading. “Reading digital text will always differ from reading text that is not digital (i.e., that has a physical, tangible materiality), no matter how reader-friendly and ‘paper-like’ the digital reading device (e.g., Kindle etc.),’’ she answered. “The fact that we do not have a direct physical, tangible access to the totality of the text when reading on Kindle affects the reading experience. When reading a book we can always see, and feel with our fingers and hands, our progress through the book as the pile of pages on the left side grows and the pile of pages on the right side gets smaller. At the same time, we can be absolutely certain that the technology [the book] will always work – there are no problems with downloading, missing text due to technical or infrastructure problems, etc.’’
She says the e-reader experience introduces “a degree of unpredictability and instability’’ that influences reading, even if we are not aware of it.
Two years ago, media critic William Powers wrote a romantic defense of the ancient medium I publish in. His essay, “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal,’’ was widely quoted by journalists, of course. Mr. Paper – he not dead, Powers wrote: “There are cognitive, cultural, and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-It note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve, or store information.’’
Paper will never die, Powers concluded: “It becomes a still point, an anchor for the consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered – not yet.’’
Two years ago, I might have agreed. If I had a daughter, yes, I would send out her wedding invitations on paper, not on Evite. (America has many daughters, hence a future for mail carriers.) But for books, magazines, and newspapers, “eternity’’ is a long time. When Kindle-like readers cost less than $50 and the e-Ink technology is not just very good, but excellent, there may be more “screening,’’ and less reading, in our future.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
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