It makes sense… keeping blood sugar steady and your gastrointestinal (GI) tract running smoothly will certainly help you feel great and full of energy.

Blood sugar that’s hitting highs and lows makes you more likely to feel bad… out of sorts… grumpy and uncomfortable.

When your digestive system is stressed, either because you’re withholding food by following a fad diet, or not getting enough water and fiber to keep things running smoothly, you can’t be at your best.

Making changes to support your body are the best things you can do to improve your mood.

Starting with a heart healthy diet, one that’s loaded with fiber but low in saturated fat is a totally natural way to boost mood according to Diane M. Becker, MPH, ScD of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Not so sure?

Think about how you feel after eating a high fat, high glycemic load meal… you’re bloated and uncomfortable, and all you really want to do is sleep.

Here are suggestions for foods that are known to help your mood:

1. Eat foods rich in B12 and folic acid - as these two vitamins appear to help prevent problems with the central nervous system, mood disorders and dementia according to Edward Reynolds from King’s College, London. Folic acid is in beans and greens; B12 comes in meats, fish, poultry and dairy.

2. Enjoy lots of fruits and veggies - one study found that eating two added servings of these foods a day was linked to an 11% higher likelihood of good health. Those who ate the highest amount of fruits and veggies felt better about their health. Both are packed with nutrients and antioxidant phytochemicals that have been linked time and time again with health and quality of life.

3. Eat selenium rich foods - in whole grains like oatmeal, whole grain bread and brown rice, this mineral acts like an antioxidant inside the body, and research suggests that the presence of oxidative stress in the brain is linked to some cases of depression in the elderly. One study found that in the elderly, taking selenium supplements brought significant decreases in depression. Do what you can to get the recommended daily allowance of this nutrient, 55 micrograms a day for adults.

4. Eat fish – there have been several recent studies that find adults have a lower risk of depression if they eat fish, especially fatty kinds like salmon, also known to be full of omega-3 fatty acids. Fish seems to have positive effects on clinically defined mood disorders (postpartum depression is an example) according to Jay Whelan, PhD the head of the department of nutrition at the University of Tennessee. Try herring, rainbow trout, salmon, sardines or tuna.

5. Get your daily vitamin D – very few foods naturally contain vitamin D (salmon, tuna and mackerel, beef liver, cheese, egg yolks), but there are fortified foods like breakfast cereals, breads, juice and milk. You can get vitamin D naturally from a few minutes of exposure to sunlight during off-peak hours or with supplements. Four recent studies showed a link between low serum levels of vitamin D and higher incidences of PMS, seasonal affective disorder, nonspecific mood disorder and major depressive disorder. You’ll want to get at least 1,000 to 2,000 IUs of vitamin D each day.

6. Enjoy 1 ounce of chocolate - a small amount can give you a lift as it has an effect on the levels of brain endorphins, and it has also been shown to have an anti-clogging effect on blood vessels. A study in the Netherlands found those who ate 1/3 of a chocolate bar per day had lower blood pressure and rates of heart disease, and had a higher sense of well being.

Just as eating the right things can help you feel better, taking in too many of the wrong things are well known to cause you problems. Try to avoid the following items…

Foods high in saturated fat - they’re yummy, but new research shows this might play a role in depression, a recent study found that a cut in saturated fat over 6 weeks was linked to a decrease in feelings of depression.

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Six Foods To Help You Feel Better… Continued…

Too much alcohol – though at first you feel good, alcohol is actually a depressant that works on the human brain and has an effect on all nerve cells. Depending on how much you drink, you can go from feeling great to experiencing exaggerated feelings an impaired coordination. It’s also no coincidence that depression often happens along with substance abuse.

Too much caffeine - as it can up your irritability in a few ways; by disrupting your sleep or because of that spiral into fatigue that comes after the burst of energy. Some are more sensitive to this than others, so you’ll want to cut down for a bit to see if this helps you.

Once your body has adjusted to being given good foods you’ll start feeling better… feeling healthy and good moods are just more likely.

Experts know that nutrients that come in some foods can influence the level of hormones like serotonin, while others can help with inflammation so that your blood circulates freely to all your organs.

So if you’re struggling to manage your feelings… try adjusting what you’re eating and drinking to include some of the feel good foods that help depression and see what happens. You just might be surprised at the changes!

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The opposite is also true – Spending time with those who don’t have much in the way of self-control encourages you in negative behaviors.

“Before, we knew people tended to hang out with other people who were like themselves,” explains Michelle vanDellen, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, who led the research. “But in these studies, we actually show there is a direct effect of our friends’ behavior on our own behavior,” and that the findings apply, she concludes, “not only to the people we [choose to] hang out with, but those we are forced to hang out with.” Think your co-workers, fellow students and the like.

The conclusions are based on five different studies conducted over two years by vanDellen and co-author Rick Hoyle of Duke University.

Even though the studies were conducted in a lab setting this is important news for anyone trying to stop a bad habit, or start up some good ones.

The amount of influence might be the difference between eating an extra cookie or keeping your promise to workout more. At least this is a nudge in the right direction.

Of the five projects, the study the authors had the most fun with involved 71 subjects and two plates of food. One was loaded with carrot sticks, the other with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.

The participants saw someone show self-control by eating the healthy snack and leaving the cookies, or someone enjoying the cookies and ignoring the healthier alternative.

After this, the subjects took self-control tests and those who had watched someone eat cookies didn’t do as well as those who watched someone eat the carrots.

In another of the five studies, the team found that 36 participants who’d been randomly assigned to think of a friend with good self control held out longer on a test of handgrip used to measure self control than did the subjects who thought of a friend with less than stellar self control.

Still another bit of work on the same theme involved asking 42 people to list the names of friends who had both good and bad self-control. The participants then took a test (designed to measure their self-control) and a name was flashed very briefly on a computer screen.

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Self Control Is Contagious Continued…

Again, those who saw the name of a friend with good self-control did better on the test than the subjects who saw the name of a friend with poor self-control.

The fourth of the studies involved the assignment supplied to 122 subjects – write about a friend with good self-control, bad self-control or an outgoing friend. Those who wrote about the friend with good self-control did better on a test of self-control, those who wrote about a friend with poor self-control did worst, and those who wrote about an outgoing friend scored in the middle of the two groups.

In the final study, 117 subjects were randomly assigned to write about friends with good or bad self-control. Those who wrote about the friend with good self control performed better on word identification tests related to self-control.

This is the first research to show that self-control is contagious across behaviors.

“The take-home message of this study is that picking social influences that are positive can improve your self-control,” says vanDellen. “And by exhibiting self-control, you’re helping others around you do the same.”

Surrounding yourself with healthy, motivated people gives you the best odds of controlling your behavior and achieving your goals. This is one reason why a training buddy can be so useful, as long as they are motivated too.

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If you want to change your eating habits, relationships with others, work situation or something else as the new year begins, experts have ten common sense suggestions that will help you set goals that are realistic, specific and measurable.

Here’s how you can boost your chances for success in achieving those resolutions.

1) Small goals in small steps – this is what motivates people toward making larger changes according to Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, author of the new book The Power of Women and a professor of psychology at Yale University. Take diet for example, rather than making a stark, radical change, make changes to small things in your eating pattern… a salad for lunch… and do that for a week. Once you achieve this, go on to the next small, sustainable change.

2) Focus on the positive – rather than thinking of a habit in the negative, keep your attention on the positive things that come from making the change… saving money if you quit smoking, feeling and looking better for losing weight or feeling more upbeat and positive after making a change in attitude.

3) Look at the pros and cons – a written list of the benefits and costs of a behavior can be very helpful according to Dr. Nadine Kaslow, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University. Really write them down and be clear about what you want to change… and why.

4) Get a buddy – knowing that someone else is with you… working toward similar goals or offering regular support for your efforts, helps to keep you motivated. Keeping track of each other’s progress can hold you accountable for what you’re doing, and give you someone to celebrate with as well.

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10 Ways To To Make Changes In 2010 Continued…

5) Be specific – figure out exactly what’s not working for you and then come up with a strategy for solving that individual problem and this will help you keep those goals specific. Attack them one at a time. You might want to use a diary that helps you keep track of what’s happening… then come up with one thing each week that you can do to make things better. Success with small actions takes pressure off and encourages you toward bigger goals.

6) Know yourself – take the time to think about who you are, what’s important to you, and how you want your life to be. Remember real changes happen because you want it… not because others in your life want it for you.

7) Look at deeper issues – sometimes we have problems that need to be addressed before changes can be made. Some of us fear failing so much that we sabotage ourselves unknowingly. Others are held back by lack of self-esteem. If you’ve come to recognize deeper issues that prevent you from moving forward, now’s the time to talk with a mental health professional.

Don’t be too aggressive – a long list of impressive resolutions can bring lots of anxiety with it. By limiting resolutions (or goals, if you like) to three, four or five per year you’ll give yourself a challenge you can meet.

9) Be flexible – sometimes it helps to broaden your vision, have a wider idea of what makes for success. For example, rather than replace a lost financial sector job with another of the same, broaden your goal for a new job in another field or profession.

10) Keep your eye on the prize – if you’re under stress, or being encouraged to keep up your bad habits by those around you, making changes to behaviors is especially difficult. Remind yourself every day why your making this change, and how great it will feel when you do.

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But a new study by researchers out of the University of Texas at Austin looked for ways to help us to resist temptation and suggests the key to doing so is to exaggerate the threat.

So if you’re on a diet, focus on the threat of that cookie or piece of delicious chocolate to your weight loss goals. Exaggerating the negative may in fact help you resist just about any temptation.

For this study, researchers focused on two self-regulatory areas – dieting and academic goals.

“Four experiments show that when consumers encounter temptations that conflict with their long-term goals, one self-control mechanism is to exaggerate the negativity of the temptation as a way to resist, a process we call counteractive construal,” the study authors point out.

For one of the experiments, female participants were asked to estimate the calorie count of a cookie, half being offered the cookie as a complimentary gift for their participation, the other half were not offered any reward.

Those with a strong dieting goal saw the delectable treat as having more calories than it actually did… and being more threatening to their long term weight loss goals.

Another test found that environmental factors, in this case posters of fit models (vs. those with nature scenes) helped women stay focused on their diet goals. They too were more likely to exaggerate the calories in a tempting drink that they planned to enjoy later, and drank less when offered the drink.

When self-control conflicts arise, another of the experiments looked at the so-called counteractive construal to see if it would be helpful. This experiment involved 93 college students, finding that those with higher grade point averages were more likely to overestimate the length of time an upcoming party would last (taking time away from studying), and were less likely plan on attending the event when reminded of their academic goals.

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Resist Temptation: Exaggerate The Threat Continued…

So, tricking yourself into seeing that tasty treat (or another indulgence) as a bigger threat to your weight loss goals than it actually is could be a smart strategy to help you resist temptation. Or at the very least, limit how much you indulge.

Besides exaggerating the down side of what tempts you… here are a few more suggestions to help you resist temptation.

- Remember the Law of Attraction (also known as The Secret) where what you think about comes to be. Shift your focus from what you’re trying to resist, to what you want to do.

- Focus on good behaviors like the taste of fresh fruits and veggies, or the sense of accomplishment you’ll have after that workout.

- Reward yourself with healthy, fun treats… going to the beach or watching a favorite program… to celebrate your success.

- Plan ahead to resist temptation, especially in situations where you know you’ll be especially tempted. Give yourself something else to do (or eat) instead of indulging in something less healthy.

- Don’t beat yourself up for not succeeding all the time. Be accepting and compassionate, and keep at it.

These findings are set to appear in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

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But that’s not all they do. A single sneeze brings the flu to conscious awareness, while also raising fears such as dying as the result of a early heart attack, an accident, or being the victim of a fatal crime according to research appearing in the November 2009 issue of Psychological Science.

Subjects who had just been around a sneezing/coughing actor were three times more likely to agree to spend $1.3 billion on developing a flu vaccine instead of spending the money on creating jobs in “green” industries.

“Finding that a simple sneeze can shift feelings on an important decision – how to spend a billion dollars – should really lead people to be careful and think, ‘Is my current feeling going to lead me astray?’” says study author Spike W.S. Lee, a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Michigan. “We often make judgments without thinking about how we’re feeling.”

Lee and a team out of the University of Michigan created two different field tests to see how a sneeze might affect a subject’s feelings and perceptions.

In the first test, 50 college students completed a single page questionnaire on their risk of certain health outcomes and their general feelings on the U.S. healthcare system. Just before being given the questionnaire, an actor passed by 26 of the study volunteers, sneezing and coughing as he did so.

Those who were exposed to the sneezing/coughing actor responded very differently when asked how likely it was that the average American would contract a serious illness (41.2% vs. 26.7% of the controls), die of a heart attack before 50 (45.4% vs. 32.1% of the controls) or dying because of a crime or accident (41.2% vs. 27.9% of the controls).

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Sneezing Worrisome In Many Ways Continued…

The sneeze-exposed group also were more likely to feel that the U.S. health care system was in need of work.

In the second test the University of Michigan researcher recruited 47 people at a Michigan area shopping mall who agreed to be part of a one-minute survey.

In this case, 23 subjects were exposed to a sneeze and cough just before taking the survey; the remaining 24 were not. When asked whether they’d prefer $1.3 billion be spent on health care or “green” job creation, only 16.7% of the controls wanted money to go flu vaccines, compared to 47.8% of the sneeze/cough exposed volunteers.

“When someone sneezes, you get a little worry response that makes all kinds of things seem more dangerous. Usually, this worry response serves us well. We want to be alerted to risk, and we’re usually less concerned with false positives than with possibly missing a real risk,” points out study co-author Norbert Schwarz, a research professor of psychology and business at the University off Michigan. “We also found that people were unaware that exposure to public symptoms of the flu had influenced their judgments of risk, their views about government spending on flu research or their opinion of the U.S. health care system.”

It’s true that fear spreads faster than any illness, and these two experiments bear this out quite clearly.

If someone (like the media) gets you all worked up and worried, this is sure to set off concerns about all the other things that might kill you. While you might not be able to control this reaction at first, being aware will help you understand what’s going on, and perhaps react more appropriately.

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Now new research appearing in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism suggests that there is more than a bit of truth to this time honored wisdom

Wolfing down your food makes you far more likely to eat more (and take in added calories) because doing so appears to block gut hormones the body uses to help you feel full.

“Most of us have heard that eating fast can lead to food overconsumption and obesity, and in fact some observational studies have supported this notion,” says Alexander Kokkinos, MD, PhD. “Our study provides a possible explanation for the relationship between speed eating and overeating by showing that the rate at which someone eats may impact the release of gut hormones that signal the brain to stop eating.”

Earlier work has shown that the release of hormones in the gut after a meal is what acts on the brain and gives you those feeling of fullness and satisfaction.

Until this study, concentrations of appetite regulating hormones haven’t been assessed in terms of how fast (or slow) you eat. The latest study tried to see if eating the same meal at varying speeds would cause different gut hormone responses.

For the research 17 healthy male volunteers at the same test meal – 300 milliliters (10 ounces or about 675 calories) of ice cream at different rates. There were two separate sessions – one meal was 5 minutes long, the other was 30 minutes.

The team then took blood samples and measured the levels of glucose, insulin, plasma lipids and gut hormones before the meal and at half hour intervals after the meal began until the session ended, 210 minutes later.

Although the feelings of hunger didn’t seem different between eating ice cream quickly or slowly, there were other differences.

The team found that when the subjects took the full 30 minutes to finish the meal, they had higher concentrations of fullness signaling hormones peptide YY (PYY) and glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1). These levels lingered for almost three hours after the meal. The slow eaters also reported a higher fullness rating.

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Slow Eating And Lose Weight Continued…

The scientists conclude that, “eating at a physiologically moderate pace leads to a more pronounced anorexigenic gut peptide [appetite reduction] response than eating very fast.”

By eating more slowly, taking time to enjoy the aroma and presentation of your food (as well as the company and conversation), to chew well and savor the taste you’ll find that you’re eating less, taking in fewer calories per meal and controlling your weight.

These findings are particularly important in a time when many of us rely on fast food or eating on the go. Being busy and famished makes it hard to slow down, but doing this can make a difference.

Remember that it takes about 20 minutes from the time you begin eating for your brain start sending out feelings of fullness. If you eat more slowly you’ll give your body the time to send out those signals, and you’ll eat less.

To do this, take small bits and savor each one. Eat regular meals, no more than 4 hours apart, so that you don’t get famished and be sure to drink enough water.

Eating slowly may not only might help with your weight and curb overeating, you’ll also find that you enjoy eating more, so turn off the TV, put on some music, light a candle and focus on the meal in front of you.

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Cognitive behavioral therapy emphasizes the key role our thoughts play in how we feel and what we do – our thoughts (not things outside ourselves such as people, situations and events) cause our feelings and behaviors.

With CBT you learn how to change the way you think – so you feel better even if the outside situation doesn’t change. This makes the therapy well suited to helping patients dealing with a chronic (unchanging) condition like osteoarthritis.

The study involved 23 older volunteers, mostly females ages 66-69, diagnosed with osteoarthritis and dealing with insomnia symptoms that had persisted for at least six months being assigned cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at helping them sleep better.

Twenty-eight control subjects, of the same age range and also with osteoarthritis, were assigned to a stress management and wellness program. In home polysomnographic assessment was done to exclude potential subjects with sleep apnea. Neither of the treatment options directly addressed pain management.

The CBT treatment involved weekly two-hour sessions with four to eight participants that met for eight weeks in a row. At the start, and again at the end, the participants reported on their sleep and pain levels. The CBT group did one additional report on their sleeping patterns and pain levels after one year.

The subjects who got the CBT reported immediate improvements in their sleep and pain after treatment, and a year later. The control subjects, who participated in the other program saw no improvements in the quality of sleep or amount of pain.

The team believes that insomnia isn’t just a symptom of osteoarthritis, but should be considered a coexisting condition.

Improvements in sleep can begin improvements in other conditions, particularly important for older adults who often deal with sleepless nights as well as another health problem for which lack of sleep doesn’t help.

“The particular strength of [cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at insomnia] is that once an individual learns how to improve their sleep, study after study has shown that the improvement persists for a year or more,” points out Michael V. Vitiello, PhD, professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

An estimated 60% of those with osteoarthritis report pain during the night, and experts know that chronic pain is certainly involved in disturbed sleep.

The findings of this work suggest that successful treatment of sleep disturbances can dramatically improve the quality of life and that CBT therapies might be quite useful.

Sleep is when your body detoxifies and the immune system recharges. Lack of sleep causes big problems for the body, and the mind.

Insomnia has been linked to diabetes, heart disease and cancer, as well as being known to bring on depression and thinking troubles. It may even shorten your life – this according to a 2002 study that found people who slept less than 4 hours a night had higher mortality rates compared to those who slept 6-7 hours.

Better sleep can bring a variety of benefits, to both body and mind, improving coexisting illnesses. “Sleep quality is a major concern of people with osteoarthritis, with 60 percent of people with the disease reporting pain during the night… Whether sleep disturbance preceded or follows pain onset is unclear, but reciprocal effects are likely,” write the team of researchers.

If you’re coping with insomnia now, don’t let it get ahead of you. Do something today and maybe talk your doctor and ask about cognitive behavioral techniques as a more natural, prescription free alternative to getting the rest you need.

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New research appearing in the August 14, 2009 issue of Science suggests that the way to get others to like you is to mimic their behavior.

Imitation appears to unconsciously break down barriers that encourage those who don’t know each other to become friends – the foundation of social groups according to the study authors.

The unique set of experiments involved observing the behavior of Capuchin monkeys playing with wiffle balls.

This breed of monkeys was used because they’re a highly social species that forms close social bonds. The monkeys did one of three things when they were given the balls, either probed it with their fingers, pounded it on a surface or put it in their mouths.

Paired with two researchers (both also with wiffle balls) each monkey played with the ball – one researcher did the exact same motions with his ball as the monkey, the other researcher did something completely different.

After the test, the monkeys consistently chose to spend time with the researcher who had imitated them than with the one who had done a different motion.

Even when it came to doing a simple task, taking a small trinket from the investigator’s hand and then returning it for a food reward, the subject monkeys continued to prefer the researcher who’d imitated them – consistently choosing them to execute the task over the researcher who hadn’t mimicked them.

This was interpreted by the research team to be a sign that the monkeys felt a sense of affiliation toward the imitator.

“Researchers have known that human beings prefer the behavior of other people who subtly imitate their gestures and other affects,” explains Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “Observing how imitation promotes bonding in primates may lead to insights in disorders in which imitation and bonding is impaired, such as certain forms of autism.”

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This work is the joint effort of a team of scientists out of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and two Italian research institutions.

The study authors point out that humans are known to imitate the postures, mannerisms and gestures of those they come in contact with, though the behavior is believed to be largely unconscious on both sides.

Neither side realizing that the mimicking is taking place, and finding themselves feeling affection (or empathy) for those who mimic their behavior.

Earlier research has shown that people are more likely to help their imitators, and under the right circumstances leave them a more generous tip.

“It has been argued that the link between behavior matching and increases in affiliation might have played an important role in human evolution by helping to maintain harmonious relationships between individuals,” write the study authors. “We propose that the same principle also holds for other group-living primates.”

This is of course interesting social interaction psychology, and seeing that primates are pre-disposed to bond with those who imitate them, may put proof to the saying that imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.

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This is the first research to try and link light exposure and cognition, though earlier studies have shown that our mood can depend on the amount of sun we see (Seasonal Affective Disorder SAD)

The work involved a team of American researchers led by Shia Kent of the University of Alabama at Birmingham who used cross-sectional data for 14,474 people over 45 years old participating in a project investigating stroke incidence and risk factors, to look for links between depression, cognitive function and sunlight.

The team employed NASA weather data for the United States to check for match-ups between the days of bright sunlight and levels of cognitive functioning in those with, and without, depression.

The cognitive function of the subjects was measured using a validated questionnaire; an accepted depression scale assessed depression. Once the data was collected, advanced statistics were used to assess any link between average sun exposure and cognitive function.

Kent summarized the findings of the team, “We found that among participants with depression, low exposure to sunlight was associated with a significantly higher predicted probability of cognitive impairment. This relationship remained significant after adjustment for season. This new finding that weather may not only affect mood, but also cognition, has significant implications for the treatment of depression, particularly seasonal affective disorder”.

Seasonal affective disorder, SAD, is a relative newcomer to the scene, first referenced in print back in 1985, and is known to bring depressive symptoms as the days grow shorter in the fall and winter, with symptom improvement as spring returns.

At higher latitudes more people are diagnosed with as they are exposed to less sunlight and colder and harsher winters.

Women are more often diagnosed with this form of depression than men. For symptoms to receive an official diagnosis of SAD, they must repeat for two years in a row, without depression at other times of the year.

The researchers speculate that cognitive impairment brought on by depression and lack of sunlight might improve using the same light therapy as with SAD.

Earlier work has shown a strong link between SAD and other lingering forms of depression. It’s also accepted that depression often becomes more pronounced during the darker months of the year.

The study also confirmed melatonin and serotonin, both already implicated in depression, as being involved in cognitive function issues.

These two brain chemicals have been named as factors in serious brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as sleeping disorders. Cerebral blood flow has also been implicated in cognitive functioning; earlier work confirming that such blood flow is affected by light.

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Depressed? Dark, Gloomy Weather Slows Brain Continued…

Also of note, the relationship between sunlight and cognitive function didn’t hold true for those who weren’t depressed, according to the research. This suggests that it may be that the same mechanisms involved in depression might also be involved in cognitive functions.

If you are depressed, or deal with SAD, trying to spend some time in the sun (safely, of course) is a simple way to put the findings of this intriguing research to the test for yourself. You might also consider learning more about light therapy, which would have you sitting comfortably under a full spectrum light for a few hours a day all through the winter months.

Also good is a walk outdoors, even in the cold, as it can be a refreshing, invigorating source of natural sunlight and keep Seasonal Affective Disorder SAD at bay.

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Research on monkeys out of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that neurons of the brain involved in learning might process things more effectively after a success, leading to improved behavior.

The work, appearing in the July 30, 2009 issue of the journal looked at neural changes in the monkeys’ brains as they learned.

The monkeys were shown pictures on a computer screen every few seconds and had to look to the left or to the right, depending on the image. With trial-and-error the monkeys learned which image was associated with looking in one direction or the other.

They were rewarded for correct choices instead of being punished for incorrect answers, this being a more effective way to encourage learning.

The team monitored the neurons in the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia, both areas in the brain believed to be linked to learning.

Earlier work has shown that there’s some fleeting activity in this area when we learn, perhaps lasting a few milliseconds.

Not only did the Picower research confirm that these are key learning areas, serving to keep track of successes and failures. The work also found that neural signals associated with learning last longer than anyone suspected – perhaps several seconds.

What’s more, after getting a right answer, the researchers saw that the neurons in these learning areas of the monkeys’ brains became more “finely tuned”, processing information more effectively and better able to tell the difference between the two different associations being learned.

If the monkey failed at the task, the cells of the brain showed virtually no change. It was only after successes that the monkey’s brain processing and behavior improved.

The intriguing work offers us a snapshot of the learning process, showing how single cells change responses in real time based on information that tells them the right choice to make.

It’s a fascinating look into how our brains might use feedback from the environment to learn. “We have shown that brain cells keep track of whether recent behaviors were successful or not,” explains research leader Earl K. Miller, a neuroscientist and professor of neuroscience at Picower.

So does learning from our successes instead of our failures explain why we so often repeat mistakes? Perhaps. This study seems to dispute the results of earlier work that had supported the idea that we learn from our mistakes.

“In our study, the situation was a reward versus no reward, success versus the absence of success, but there’s some cases where mistakes can actually lead to very bad negative consequences, like a loss of money, or loss of a scholarship.

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New Research Finds We Learn More From What We Get Right Continued…

When the failure actually leads to a negative consequence rather than just the absence of a positive, that might engage learning mechanisms that rely on feedback from that negative consequence, so maybe it’s a different situation,” Miller explains.

More work will need to be done to understand the mechanisms for learning and what can be done to enhance learning. This may also lead to improvements in our understanding of learning disabilities and how to best treat them.

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