Verbal fluency

The other day someone asked me what ‘verbal fluency’ meant. I wasn’t very convincing. So I did a little searching. Verbal fluency refers to the ability to quickly access your mental vocabulary.. selecting appropriate and discarding less appropriate words ..while speaking or writing. If you've ever struggled searching through synonyms in a thesaurus ..fell short of a witty comeback .. or failed to persuade someone of something you know well ..then you understand the importance of verbal fluency. Boosting or recovering a patients’ verbal fluency is one of the objectives of speech therapy. Verbal fluency eludes me a lot of the time. Oh well oh well..

Neuro news

Neuroscientists have documented the functional neuro-anatomy of the hippocampus and amygdala. They’ve deciphered the role of the hippocampus ..showing how it works to transfer and consolidate information during long-term storage. They have also seen how the amygdala acts to adjust our threshold to threat and assign emotional-value to information transfer. “..what’s unclear however is the way the two regions connect ..and it’s the inter-connectivity that enables complex behavior that occurs so seamlessly.” 

Neuro feedback:  Real-time ‘visual feedback’ showing activity in the brain that’s linked to pain gives patients the ability to adjust and relieve instances of pain. Activity is displayed as a ‘flame’ ..which they can be taught to lower ..thereby reducing the activity and relieving the pain 

Depression :  Anti-depressants have been shown to work by lowering activity in a part of the prefrontal cortex called Broadmann's area 25 [ link ]. According to Neuroscientists “ ..area 25 is a key conduit of neural traffic between the “thinking” frontal cortex and the phylogenetically older limbic region that gives rise to emotion .. area 25 appears overactive in depressed people, like it opens the floodgates and allows negative emotions to overwhelm thinking and mood.” My question is - if they can treat depression in this area with anti-depressants and deep brain stimulation  ....couldn’t they also treat it with neurofeedback training ..?