Knowledge of Brain Research will Separate Successful Operations from Others
Research about the brain is leading to amazing results. New discoveries can help us understand ways that the brain may restrict shift workers from maximizing their potential – and – give us more ideas about what can be done about it. Topics ranging from how training provides our brains with greater processing speed and an enhanced ability to multi-task to how our brains control our reaction to invasion of our personal space are covered in this post. Whether its figuring out how people from different cultures can get along better to why getting more stage four sleep is important to learning from training, each of these new brain related studies are important for human resources, safety, and health professionals in any shift work environment to be aware of. And, they are critical for shift workers themselves to understand, as well.
Stage Four Sleep Leads to Better Learning and Long-Term Memories
A research team from Rutgers University, Newark and Collége de France, Paris has, for the first time, identified the mechanism that causes learning and memory formation to occur during sleep. The researchers determined that short transient brain events, that they call “sharp wave ripples,” are responsible for consolidating memory and transferring the information from the hippocampus to the neocortex, where long-term memories are stored. The study found that the wave ripples were the most intense during stage four sleep. The rats in the study were trained in a spatial navigation task and then allowed to sleep after each session. A selected group of the rats had all ripple events eliminated by electrical stimulation. As a result, testing during the research showed that they were impeded in their ability to learn from the training.
Our Brains Can let us Off the Hook by Helping us to Ignore Our Effort to Losing Weight
Findings from a new UT Southwestern Medical Center study indicated that fat from certain foods we eat makes its way to the brain. Then, once in our brains, the fat molecules cause the brain to send messages to the body’s cells, warning them to ignore the appetite-suppressing signals from leptin and insulin, hormones involved in weight regulation. According to the researchers, one particular type of fat – palmitic acid – is extremely effective at allowing us to ignore signals reducing our appetites. When your brain doesn’t say, stop – you’ve had enough – you are more likely to overeat. The researchers said that this mechanism is triggered in the brain long before there are any signs of obesity anywhere else in the body, so it is even more difficult to notice what’s going on so we can cut back the bad fat and move towards a more healthy diet. According to the doctors performing the research, the effect of the fat in our brains lasts about three days, explaining why people who splurge on weekends are even more hungry at the beginning of the week.
Our Brain Controls our Comfort – and Discomfort with Invasion of our Personal Space
Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology have identified the brain structure responsible for our sense of personal space. Most people become acutely aware when their personal space is violated. The discovery described in the August 30 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, offers insight into autism and other disorders where social distance is an issue. The amygdala, located in the medial temporal lobes, is responsible for processing strong negative emotions, such as anger and fear, and is considered the center point of emotion in the brain. But, it has never been linked to real-life human social interaction until this study. Across cultures, accepted interpersonal distances are significantly variable – people who live in cultures where space is at a premium (say, in China or Japan) appear to be more tolerant of closer distances than individuals in the United States.
Brain Vitality Strengthened by Cerebral Exercise
According to a study published in the August 4, 2009, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, people who engage in activities that exercise the brain, such as reading, writing, and playing card games, may delay the rapid memory decline that occurs if they later develop dementia. The researchers said that the activities may be responsible for maintaining brain vitality.
Our Brain Processes Information before we Even know the Information Exists
Scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the University of California, Los Angeles have developed a way to look into the brain to uncover a person’s mental state and what sort of information is being processed before the person is aware of the information. The study, reported in a forthcoming (Oct. 2009) issue of Psychological Science, showed that scientists can determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness. It also showed that specific mental functions do not correspond directly with certain brain areas. Instead a unique pattern of neural connections provides a more accurate mapping of the effective connectivity of the brain.
Training Increases Brain Processing Speed and Improves Multi-tasking
New research from Vanderbilt University published in the June 15 issue of Neuron indicates that training increases brain processing speed and improves our ability to multitask. The study concluded that although participants were trained in multiple tasks, brain scans indicated that they were not actually performing multiple tasks at the same time. Training allowed them to be more efficient at completing each task independently, so all tasks were done more quickly as a whole.
Neural brain circuits Govern our Capacity to Sense what others are Thinking
A study, reported in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal Child Development, showed that the capacity to figure out what others are thinking and what they mean is something that may be there as early as the preschool years. Specialized neural circuits in the brain govern how people and groups think and interact with each other. These continue to grow and develop from childhood into adulthood.
All of these studies provide valuable insight into how much headway is being made with brain research during recent years. And, these studies are just a small portion of the work that’s being done to help us understand brain function, development, and capacity. Knowing and understanding how the brain operates is going to be a necessity for human resource professionals and managers in the future. It will be a core driver of organizational effectiveness and management. This focus is going to separate successful operations from those achieveing less success.
©2009 Circadian Age, Inc. ‘Working Nights’
Tags: diversity, health care prevention, Human Capital, mental health, Productivity, shift work, training
