Planet Psych - A World of Mental Health Information. Motivation and Self Improvement. Brain-training games stop depression before it starts - health - 01 November 2011. It may be possible to stave off depression before it even appears using brain-training software so simplistic in its design that even the psychologist testing it once bet it wouldn't work. Ian Gotlib's group at Stanford University, California, studies girls aged 10 to 14 years whose mothers suffer from depression. Such girls are thought to be at higher-than-normal risk of developing the condition themselves, in part because they may inherit their mothers' tendency to "amplify" unpleasant information.
Although none of the girls has yet experienced a depressive episode, Gotlib has found that their brains already overreact to negative emotional stimuli – a pattern they share with their mothers and other depressed people. Gotlib is studying whether these young subjects can use interactive software and brain-imaging hardware to "rewire" their brains by unlearning this negative bias. Accentuate the positive More From New Scientist Billiard table chaos wins $1 million maths prize (New Scientist) New View of Depression: An Ailment of the Entire Body. Personality Test Site. Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist. Brain Not Required For Antidepressant To Act.