Brain

Submitted by Tommy Crosson While addressing doctors and other healthcare professionals at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles, about relieving patients of Chronic Pain, David Rubenstein, was asked, Will it cure this? Will it cure that? Soft spoken and pensive, Rubenstein responded, “I don’t know for sure.” What he does know is, the therapeutic process he has created, does work and works well. In study after study Chronic pain has either been eliminated entirely or significantly reduced.

Since I wrote the column about the transcendental meditation program (“To a mind that is still,” Dec. 13), I have learned so many exciting things about how the technique is now being used both in schools and the criminal justice system. For example, there is a K-12 school in Fairfield, Iowa, that has incorporated meditation into the regular schedule every day for students, teachers and staff. Everyone swears by the program, and the results support their enthusiasm. The Maharishi School Pioneers, which has only 300 students, requires its students, teachers and staff each morning and afternoon to meditate for 15 to 20 minutes.

Submitted by Laura Gelgand The soccer ball flies toward the goal with all the force a 4-foot, 6-inch, 70-pound third-grader can muster. The goalie dives for it, but too late. Goal! “Is that five or six?” one of the parents asks. It’s five. Five to zero, and the Harbor View Vikings are losing for the third day in a row. But you’d never know it by the pure glee on those Viking faces. “We’ve got spirit! Yeah, yeah, we’ve got SPIRIT…” the Harbor View girls cheer as they jog back into position for the kick-off after the other team’s goal for the 16th time in three days.

When Newport Heights Elementary School Principal Kurt Suhr called out Julia Barney’s name for a math award Friday morning, it was met with the collective sigh of hundreds of unsurprised students. Julia Barney winning a math award? Duh. Just a year earlier, the 12-year-old was reciting the Pi sequence out to 100 places for the school talent show. When asked if they’d seen Julia receive a student award before, nearly everyone raised his or her hand. Hate to tell her fellow students, but they’ll probably just have to get used to it. “We have a designated math time in class, and a lot of times my friends will come up to me and ask me ‘How do I do this?

Clutching a stuffed dog, 5-year-old Newport Beach resident Julian Dunn sat in the audience for part of a concert at Newport Mesa Church on Saturday as a parade of grade-school pianists, singers and guitar players took the stage to raise money to pay his medical bills. “We’re here today to celebrate Julian’s fire,” Julian’s father, Richard Dunn said, pausing for a second as he choked back the tears. “He’s the sweetest human being on the face of the earth.

Newport Beach resident Samantha Smith, 16, has been busy the past few weeks teaching grade-schoolers at Newport Elementary School the words to “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” The former Newport Elementary student, who also writes and performs her own folk songs, has volunteered to start a choir for kids in second through sixth grade at the school. “I chose ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ because it’s me teaching the kids to sing and how great music is,” Samantha said.

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but a daily bowl of blueberries may actually make you a smarter gardener, reduce your risk of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and even help fight obesity. The health benefits of blueberries have been well known for nearly a decade. But new research, discussed in the March edition of Scientific American, adds even more reasons that at least two or three blueberry plants should be in every gardener’s plot. Does growing blueberries actually trigger the growth of new brain cells?

The Newport Beach Public Library had its inaugural video game tournament for teenagers Tuesday night, and it’s unlikely to be its last. Although a library seems like a strange venue for promoting what some parents consider brain-decaying activities that distract kids from other more rewarding pursuits like, say, reading, the library administration sees them as a valuable way to build a community and improve technological literacy. A small collection of video games available to be checked out free-of-charge was unveiled quietly as a pilot program late last month at the library.

The National Institutes of Health have awarded two UCI neuroscientists a $2-million grant to study an area of the brain associated with language, university officials announced Tuesday. Cognitive sciences professors Gregory Hickock and Kourish Saberi will use the five-year grant to study the overall function of the planum temporale, a part of the brain in the left and right hemispheres in the auditory cortex. The scientists hope their study could lead to clinical research and treatment of developmental and psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

The 5-year-olds at Lil’ Lighthouse Preschool at Lighthouse Coastal Community Church in Costa Mesa bow their heads each afternoon to recite a simple prayer. “Thank you for our healthy bodies,” one line in the prayer goes. The children recite in unison, sitting on the carpet of the church chapel with red and blue book bags still strapped to their backs. The children ask daily about their absent classmate, Julian Dunn— a happy-go-lucky 5-year-old with an infectious smile who is interested in cars and loves to play with his friends, said Lil’ Lighthouse teacher Michelle Rieke.