Trend: Going on a brain health vacation

_____ A Look at Lux­u­ry Resorts That Now Offer Brain Health Pro­grams (Next Avenue): “Like any self-dis­­re­spec­t­ing woman, I’ve spent a life­time of mir­ror scruti­ny (and cash) on my thighs, hips, heart, back, post-baby bel­ly, even my eye­brows. For all this invest­ment, I’ve paid scant atten­tion to the one irre­place­able body part that keeps everything…

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Study: Long-term meditation can help slow down aging-related brain volume decline

. Long-term med­i­ta­tion tied to less brain loss (Reuters): “Peo­ple who report­ed med­i­tat­ing for an aver­age of 20 years had high­er brain vol­umes than the aver­age per­son, researchers report in Fron­tiers in Psy­chol­o­gy. Kurth and his col­leagues write that they can’t say med­i­ta­tion caused its prac­ti­tion­ers to lose less brain vol­ume, how­ev­er. Oth­er habits of…

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Q: What do people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety have in common? A: A brain with similar gray-matter loss

. Dif­fer­ent men­tal dis­or­ders cause same brain-mat­ter loss, study finds (press release): “A meta-ana­ly­­sis of 193 brain-imag­ing stud­ies shows sim­i­lar gray-mat­ter loss in the brains of peo­ple with diag­noses as dif­fer­ent as schiz­o­phre­nia, depres­sion and addiction…The find­ings call into ques­tion a long­stand­ing ten­den­cy to dis­tin­guish psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders chiefly by their symp­toms rather than their underlying…

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Top 10 Quotes on Lifelong Neuroplasticity and Neurogenesis (and a Call to eBook Readers)

You may have  noticed that Amazon.com is shar­ing aggre­gat­ed data on how ebook read­ers inter­act with the books they are read­ing. For exam­ple, the “Pop­u­lar High­lights” sec­tion (towards the bot­tom of our Kin­dle book page) ranks the Top 10 sen­tences that Kin­dle read­ers have high­light­ed and shared while read­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18…

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Walking increases brain volume and reduces risks of decline

In the lat­est issue of Neu­rol­o­gy a study by Erick­son et al. (2010) sug­gests that walk­ing reg­u­lar­ly can increase brain vol­ume and reduce the risks of devel­op­ing cog­ni­tive impair­ment. The researchers stared with 2 mains facts: Gray mat­ter vol­ume shrinks with age, often lead­ing to cog­ni­tive decline. Phys­i­cal exer­cise seems to be neu­ro-pro­tec­­tor (see our previous…

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