New study shows Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion improves brain func­tion­ing in ADHD stu­dents (press release):

- “Prior research shows ADHD chil­dren have slower brain devel­op­ment and a reduced abil­ity to cope with stress,” said Dr. Stixrud. “Vir­tu­ally every­one finds it dif­fi­cult to pay atten­tion, orga­nize them­selves and get things done when they’re under stress,” he explained. “Stress inter­feres with Read the rest of this entry »

Two recent sci­en­tific stud­ies pub­lished by Dr. Arthur Kramer and col­leagues present fas­ci­nat­ing results. The two stud­ies are:

1) Basak C, et al “Can train­ing in a real-time strat­egy video game atten­u­ate cog­ni­tive decline in older adults?” Psy­chol Aging 2008; DOI: 10.1037/a0013494.

2) Boot, W. R., Kramer, A. F., Simons, D. J., Fabi­ani, M. & Grat­ton, G. (2008) The effects of video game play­ing on atten­tion, mem­ory, and exec­u­tive con­trol. Acta Psy­cho­log­ica, 129, 387–398.

Let’s first review the first study, a sig­nif­i­cant exper­i­ment in that it showed wide cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits in adults over 60 years old who played a strat­egy videogame (Rise of Nations) for 23 hours.

Play­ing com­puter games improves brain power of older adults, claim sci­en­tists (Telegraph)

- The team at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois recruited 40 adults over 60 years old, half of whom were asked to play a com­puter game called Rise of Nations, a role-playing game in which you have to build your own empire.

- Game play­ers have to build cities, feed and employ their peo­ple, main­tain an ade­quate mil­i­tary and expand their territory.

- Both groups were assessed before, dur­ing and after the video game train­ing on a vari­ety of tests.

- As a group, the “gamers” became sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter and faster at Read the rest of this entry »

Have you heard of or read John Ratey’s book “Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Exer­cise and The Brain”? Accord­ing to Har­vard Psy­chi­a­try Pro­fes­sor John Ratey noth­ing beats exer­cise for pro­mot­ing brain heath.

I am sure you have also heard that exer­cis­ing your mind pro­motes brain health.

What is the con­nec­tion between phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cises? Do they have addi­tive effects on brain health? Are they redundant?

Read the rest of this entry »

LifeTwo, the web­site focused on all aspects of midlife chal­lenges, from midlife cri­sis to midlife career change, is pre­sent­ing a “How to be Happy” week, based on the work of Har­vard Pro­fes­sor Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar and his book “Hap­pier”. Dr. Ben-Shahar teaches Harvard’s most pop­u­lar class, on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­ogy.

Today is their Day 1: From Happy to Hap­pier.

A num­ber of good blog­gers are col­lab­o­rat­ing: Hap­pi­ness Project, The Brazen Careerist, MenAlive, The Dat­ing God­dess, Boomer Chron­i­cles, Man-o-Pause, Aging­Back­wards. I will be hon­ored to pro­vide a guest col­umn, this Thurs­day, on how to iden­tify and over­come some com­mon brain-based obsta­cles to being happy, and how you apply the lat­est brain sci­ence devel­op­ments in your own quest to be hap­pier. In the mean­while, you may enjoy the post On being pos­i­tive, and check out Day 1: From Happy to Hap­pier.

Enjoy the week!