Efficacy of Cognitive Training When Translated From the Laboratory to the Real World.

Introduction: Research shows that cognitive performance and emotional well-being can be significantly strengthened. A high-performance brain training protocol, Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Training (SMART), was developed by cognitive neuroscientists at The University of Texas at Dallas Center for BrainHealth based on 25-plus years of scientific study. Randomized controlled trials with various populations have shown that training and use of nine "SMART" strategies for processing information can improve cognitive performance and psychological health.

Amygdala activation as a marker for selective attention toward neutral faces in a chronic traumatic brain injury population.

There has been great interest in characterizing the response of the amygdala to emotional faces, especially in the context of social cognition. Although amygdala activation is most often associated with fearful or angry stimuli, there is considerable evidence that the response of the amygdala to neutral faces is both robust and reliable. This characteristic of amygdala function is of particular interest in the context of assessing populations with executive function deficits, such as traumatic brain injuries, which can be evaluated using fMRI attention modulation tasks that evaluate prefrontal control over representations, notably faces.