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Cognitive Training in Psychological Wellbeing

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This post was contributed by Jessica Swainston, a PhD researcher under the supervision of Professor Nazanin Derakshan, investigating the effects of adaptive cognitive training on building resilience in breast cancer survivors. Jessica attended Professor Derakshan’s Birkbeck Science Week event on Thursday 14 April, titled ‘How can adaptive cognitive training improve resilience and mental well-being?’

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A Crisis in Psychological Health

Emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression are of increasing prevalence. The world health organisation has recently estimated that 50 million years of work, an annual global loss of £651bn, will be lost to anxious and depressive disorders between now and 2030. This figure is not only critical for the state of the economy, but more importantly is concerning for the future psychological wellbeing of individuals, their families, and the society we live in.

As it stands, current pharmacological and therapeutic treatments have been shown to be only modestly effective in both the treatment and prevention of such disorders. It is imperative then that more research is carried out in order to better understand the underlying mechanisms involved in these conditions. By achieving this, there is hope that we can develop effective interventions to not only treat psychopathology, but further to build resilience against its onset and recurrence.

Building Resilience

So, how do we become more resilient? How do we continue to cope with the ever demanding stresses that society and life place upon us?

Professor Nazanin Derakshan and her team are currently attempting to address this very issue, and was discussed in her captivating talk during the Birkbeck Science week.

Derakshan is of the mind that our ability to flexibly direct where we place our attention, is the key mechanism in regulating our emotions and boosting our psychological resilience. In other words, the better we are at paying attention to our current goal (e.g. Writing this blog post), the less cognitive resources we have available to attend to irrelevant intruding and ruminative thoughts (e.g. ‘What if I fail my PhD?!’). Accordingly, there has been a wealth of research to support this claim.

A multitude of behavioural studies have indicated that individuals with high levels of Anxiety and Depression have inefficient levels of attentional control, which is a critical component of our working memory, a system that monitors the incoming and temporary storage of information. In addition, anxious individuals have been shown to require recruitment of additional cognitive resources, in a compensatory manner, to reach the same performance levels as non-anxious individuals, thus indicating poor processing efficiency and filtering of irrelevant information. That is, anxious individuals must invest more effort in reaching required goals than non-anxious individuals, a factor that will more quickly lead to cognitive and emotional fatigue.

Of further importance, neuroimaging studies have indicated that anxiety and depression are associated with irregular connections between the limbic (emotional) and prefrontal (cognitive) systems of control in the brain. More explicitly, increased activity in the limbic areas have been linked to decreased activity in the prefrontal areas of the cortex, further highlighting the association between inefficient pre-frontal cognition and increased emotional activity.

How can we improve our Attentional Control?

If then attentional control is the key mechanism by which emotional vulnerability can be moderated, how then can this process be targeted?

In a new and exciting line of research, it transpires that there is potential to improve our levels of attentional control through adaptive cognitive techniques that train working memory. For example, a series of studies have shown that improvements in working memory on an adaptive n-back task, in which participants are required to remember the position of a visual or auditory target n-trials back, have been shown at both the behavioural and neural levels. Importantly, gains in working memory abilities have been shown to transfer to other tasks requiring attentional processes, indicating that the training may help to improve cognitive control across varying tasks, not just on the task itself.

Benefits of Cognitive Training in Psychological Health and Sports Performance

So, considering that the well documented link between emotion and cognitive function, can attentional control training decrease anxious and depressive symptomatology? Further, is the training applicable to other circumstances, such as improving anxious states that can interrupt sports performance? Professor Derakshan presented some preliminary findings that show great promise.

As yet, compared to control groups, a course of adaptive attentional control training has shown to result in:

  • Reduced levels of state anxiety
  • Reduced levels of depressive and ruminative symptomatology ( at behavioural and neural levels)
  • A decrease in cancer related thoughts in Breast Cancer survivors
  • Improved tennis performance in a high pressure environment

Cognitive Training as an aid to current therapies

Professor Nazanin Derakhshan

Professor Nazanin Derakhshan

Professor Derakshan raised an interesting point in relation to the future directions and clinical relevance of cognitive training in psychological health. A number of current psychological therapies such as mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy are of varied success. This may in part be due to the lack of attentional resources that severely depressed and anxious individuals possess. If one’s attention is poor, how can one easily engage in a 10 week course of psychological therapy which requires focus and concentration?

It can often be problematic. Thus if, as a complimentary treatment, attentional control processes are improved through training, patients will be better enabled to pay attention and gain the most value from their psychological therapy. In fact, one recent study by Course-Choi et al., (2016) showed just this. Results indicated that a combined course of mindfulness and attentional control training showed greater reductions in trait worry, compared to a course of mindfulness by itself.

In sum, Professor Derakshan presented a compelling theoretical framework for improving our cognitive flexibility as a means to build resilience and protect against emotional vulnerability. With this in mind, there is promise for improving psychological health in the coming years. As poignantly remarked by Derakshan,

‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change’. – Charles Darwin, 1809.

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The Speech/Song Illusion

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This post was contributed by Rosy Edey, PhD student and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Rosy attended a Birkbeck Science Week 2016 event on Thursday 14  April – ‘Talk: The Speech/Song Illusion’ – (led by Dr Adam Tierney)

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Sadly all good things must come to an end, and the finale of Birkbeck’s 2016 Science Week was a compelling musical one, by one of Birkbeck’s newest members of the Psychology Department, Dr Adam Tierney. In a humorous and engaging way Adam took the audience through the scientific story of the “evolution of music”. Music seems almost completely purposeless, and let’s face it a little bit strange, so why do we love it so much?

What is music?

Adam placed the first known musical instrument (an intricate bone flute) back 40,000 years, which was way before the first record of written word (5000 years ago), but much later than (a good estimate of) when we first evolved to make vocalisations (400,000 years ago). The absolute origin of music is obviously very difficult to pinpoint – as it is possible (and probable) that way before we built tools – like the bone flute – to make music, we were signing our hearts out in the moonlight.

This questionable timing of the birth of music raises the question: what came first, speech or music? Whichever one came first, if one evolved from the other we would expect music and language to share similar characteristics. Indeed, Adam presented evidence that both the huge varieties of globally spoken languages and music from around the world share common universalities (which at first seemed very unlikely based on the diversity of music that was perfectly demonstrated through a bizarre example of washing machine “music” and also a collection of songs from the playlist from the Voyager I and II spacecraft gold plates).

These shared acoustic qualities included alternating beat patterns, descending melodic contours, and increases in final phrase duration. Using the very complicated sounding “Normalised Pairwise Variability Index” (i.e. jargon for a measure of rhythmic alteration, or a measure of paired stress in phrases) Adam showed there were also commonalities between languages and music within and between specific countries (basically English music sounds English, and French sounds French, but English music/ language does not sound like French music/language). All of these beautiful subtleties hidden in the acoustics of spoken word and music provide vast amounts of data, which signal meaning to the listener. These underlying similarities do hint that music and speech are distant cousins.

Music as Speech with added extras

Playing music with speech can change it into a song; The Jazzy Sarah Palin Interview was a good example of this:

 

And it seems even without music our brains can transform speech into music. Diana Deutsch discovered this phenomenon in 1995, while looping some spoken data.

After several iterations the phrase “sometimes behave so strangely” no longer sounded like speech, and had converted into song (I now cannot even read this phrase without hearing the tune). All the phrases in Adam’s Corpus of Illusion Stimuli turned into singing, but interestingly, the “control” sentences didn’t have the same effect. This illusion appears to be a useful tool to test further the idea of music evolution and ask more detailed questions, such as: “what is required for speech to become song?” and “what mechanisms are going on in our brains when we change speech into song?”

Testing the Science

Dr Adam Tierney

Dr Adam Tierney

Adam has pulled out the acoustic elements that predict what speech phrases are heard as song. He suggests there are two main factors which induce the illusion; increased beat variability and increased pitch intervals. Remarkably, there is large variability between people’s experience, and being a trained musician doesn’t improve your ability to detect the illusion.

So what is going on in the brain? Adam’s hunch was that these ‘musical’ phrases are processed in the same way as when listening to speech, but with a little added extra. And this does in fact seem to be the case, we activate a similar network to when we hear normal speech, but extra activation in regions that are highly pitch sensitive (e.g. Heschl’s Gyrus – a very early part of the auditory system), and also motor regions (e.g. precentral gyrus – which hosts a map of the body, but specifically the mouth region) when we listen to the ‘song’. Interestingly, there were no regions that were more active for just speech over the song phrases. Adam suggested participants were imagining singing and tapping along to the beat, and processing the pitch more deeply in these ‘song’ phrases. This evidence neatly fits the behavioural data, showing that phrases that have a strong rhythm and more of a melody are processed differently by the brain, which results in them being distorted from speech into song.

Although it is virtually impossible to know the true origin of music, Adam managed to make quite a convincing case that song is just speech with some ribbons on, and quite possibly did evolve from speech.

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Camberwell man reaches milestone in legal dream

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A Camberwell resident celebrated an important step in his legal education this week when he graduated from Birkbeck.

Chukwunwikezarramu (Zarra) Okumephuna on his graduation day

Chukwunwikezarramu (Zarra) Okumephuna on his graduation day

On Wednesday (20 April), Chukwunwikezarramu (Zarra) Okumephuna received his Master of Law degree at the college’s formal ceremony in Senate House, Bloomsbury.

The 39-year-old Bethwin Road

resident enrolled at Birkbeck following his completion of a Bachelor’s Law degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), however he had concerns about the expense of a further degree.

“Getting a Master’s degree in Law was very important to me as I want to progress on to a PhD, but the cost nearly deterred me,” Zarra said.

“Fortunately, Birkbeck’s payment flexibility and study pattern ensured that I finished within one year. I successfully finished the programme via payment by installment without getting in any debt.”

Since moving to London 10 years ago from his home town of Nteje, Nigeria, Zarra has held a strong in interest in Law.

He said: “The reason I chose to concentrate on Constitutional Law – focusing on Islamisation of the Political Process in Pakistan – and Criminology during my LLM is because of my ambition to eventually work in either the educational, charity or political sector, as an academic, policy adviser or a parliamentary aide.

“It is this all-encompassing and ecumenical nature of Law as a discipline that attracted me towards it and I have no regret in doing that, even though it might take a while to fulfill my ambition.”

Chukwunwikezarramu (Zarra) Okumephuna

Chukwunwikezarramu (Zarra) Okumephuna

During his studies at Birkbeck, Zarra volunteered with the British Refugee Council on the Development Desk, which involved engaging with refugees and other stakeholders in the sector including donors. At the college, he also served as the student representative for his course, and held down a job in retail. Juggling these numerous commitments was hard, but worthwhile, he explained.

He said: “The fact that I balanced both my work and study is the reason I succeeded in the programme. I was able to translate my work experiences into my studies and that was very rewarding.”

This week, Zarra joined nearly 200 fellow postgraduate students from the college’s School of Law at a morning graduation ceremony held in Senate House’s Beveridge Hall.

He said: “I’m delighted to have made this achievement. It was my dream as a young man to do this and I am pleased that today my dream is a reality.”

Looking ahead, Zarra plans to undertake an MPhil/PhD researching the relationship between law and religion in Pakistan.

Hear Zarra talk about his experience at Birkbeck:

https://youtu.be/2D7vC_FvP9A

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Graduation Spring 2016: Teacher becomes student (Part 1)

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This post was contributed by Professor Patrick Tissington, Head of the Department of Organizational Psychology. This week, Professor Tissington attended the School of Business, Economics and Informatics’ graduation ceremony – a special occasion of course, but extra special given he was able to witness his former boss (and latterly his student) Frank Watt claim his PhD. Here, Professor Tissington gives some background to his professional relationship with Frank, and what it means to have seen him cross the graduation stage.

Professor Patrick Tissington

There is no such thing as an ordinary PhD because they make extraordinary, superhuman demands on the student and a really complicated relationship with the supervisor. I think some things about my latest PhD student illustrates quite how complicated that relationship can be. Let me explain because I think it is a story worth telling.

And as such, needs to start at the beginning:

Frank Watt was brought up in a remote part of Scotland with absolutely no ambition to go to university. He did have a sense of adventure and public service and so a career in the fire brigade was a great fit. And he did well. As he studied for his professional qualifications first as a Fire Fighter and then to lead other Fire Fighters, he discovered an aptitude for study that surprised him. Never shy of a challenge, he discovered that more qualifications would be available if he studied hard and wanted it enough.

So, with no first degree, he managed to get himself onto the MBA Programme at the University of Strathclyde and sponsorship from the fire service. This was a major challenge but he worked hard and graduated. This helped bring him into an informal fast track for promotion and he soon found himself seconded to the UK Fire Service’s central leadership training facility – the Fire Service College and Moreton in Marsh – to lead programmes on leadership for Fire Officers. Out of the blue, one day in 1996 he was introduced to a civilian who had been hired to research the psychology of incident command. He was told abruptly (in the way of uniformed services) that he was now the lead for the project.

That civilian person was me.

And so for three years, Frank was my boss. We worked on several projects together – all of them intricate, challenging and problematic. This meant we became close and so it was natural for me to invite him and his partner Lorraine to my wedding. And later I attended his. As my funding ran out, my PhD wasn’t quite finished (OK – it was quite some way off!) so I left to earn a crust as a consultant. Somehow I managed to complete my doctorate and land a job as an academic at Aston University. Frank also moved on and was promoted to become Assistant Chief Officer at Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service. To be honest, our contact was sporadic at best from this point as we threw ourselves into our careers and he with had considerable operational responsibilities in Derbyshire.

I was still lecturing and researching with the fire service so plugged in to the grapevine. This is how I heard that Frank was due to retire so I got back in touch. It turned out he was looking for new challenges. We met at my office in Aston to enlist his services to lecture on health and safety. During our conversation I reminded him that he had always said that he really wanted to do some research. I was looking to expand the research centre in crisis management I had co-founded so it seemed obvious that he should start a PhD. And so it was. Frank discovered that a well understood individual level personality concept – self-efficacy – could be applied to groups.

(L-R) Dr Frank Watt and Professor Patrick Tissington

(L-R) Dr Frank Watt and Professor Patrick Tissington

Little was known about the way in which this might happen save for considerable evidence that it varied by context. Frank had led the emergency service response to major flooding for years and had noticed that some communities bounced back more easily than others. He wanted to know if there was a way of measuring this and whether there might be a variant of the construct of self-efficacy that held at the community level. And so after many challenges including the birth of a child, promotions and change of job (for me) and for him numerous challenges at home and a break in studies so he could taken on an interim executive post, he has finally made it and graduates today.

To be honest, at the time it didn’t really occur to me how odd this all was. The person who had been my boss and as important in my life as my PhD supervisor, now became my student. I still asked his advice from time to time which of course required a complete turnaround from the normal PhD supervisor/student relationship. As a supervisor, it is always hard to have to say to your student that their work isn’t at the level required. With Frank, I found it even more difficult and the gear shifting in our relationship has been sometimes uncomfortable when giving honest, necessary feedback on drafts.

All of this means that, although he started out at a different university, the nature of the twists and turns in his studies, the adult-adult relationship between supervisor and student and of course the many and various personal challenges that Frank has overcome: pure Birkbeck.

I hope he doesn’t mind that I say that his studies over ran. The plan was to graduate and then head off on a Grand Tour of Europe with Lorraine. But as always, life doesn’t turn out so easily and a combination of finalising his thesis fell at a time when the house sale went through unexpectedly quickly. This means that his PhD was completed in a motor home on a camp site in Derbyshire. I dare say this is a first in the 200 year history of Birkbeck!

All of this can be summarised by saying that it is completely fitting that today he graduates amongst a peer group consisting overwhelmingly of mature students. All of whom have had massive challenges to overcome. And I can say, hand on heart, I empathise. For I too was a mature student. I studied for my PhD part time. I worked all the way through my first degree and my A levels…. well I’d prefer to forget what they were.

So the reason for this blog is to show what an amazing journey this has been for Frank but also for me. Frank is writing about the challenges from his own point of view to give a realistic preview of what it is like to set yourself such a high bar of academic achievement later in life. As for me: I am something of a British mongrel. The English in me would prefer not to talk about this too much but the Welsh in me will be in tears on the platform as he graduates. And as for the Scots part of me? Suffice it to say I may sample a wee dram after the ceremony. The English will then kick in again and I won’t mention this again.

As for Frank? He will be flying in from a climbing holiday in Tenerife for the degree ceremony. And shortly after it, heading off in the motorhome for warm places, stiff breezes to sail and mountains to climb. But this time, the mountains will be literal and he will be climbing them with Lorraine. And Lorraine for once will have no complaints about being unable to sit anywhere for research papers being strewn on all of the seats.

(Read part two of this story)

Watch below to see Prof Tissington and Dr Watt speaking after the spring graduation ceremony

https://youtu.be/G6zqhpEVZ-0

 

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