The New-York Times reports on the study pub­lished a few days ago in the Jour­nal of Eco­nomic Per­spec­tives, “Men­tal retirement”:

… Data from the United States, Eng­land and 11 other Euro­pean coun­tries sug­gest that the ear­lier peo­ple retire, the more quickly their mem­o­ries decline.

… what aspect of work is doing that, Dr. Suz­man said. “Is it the social engage­ment and inter­ac­tion or the cog­ni­tive com­po­nent of work, or is it the aer­o­bic com­po­nent of work?” he asked. “Or is it the absence of what hap­pens when you retire, which could be increased TV watching?”

Com­ments: This new study is another piece of evi­dence accu­mu­lat­ing with more and more oth­ers sug­gest­ing that a brain healthy life-style requires con­stant cog­ni­tive chal­lenge to help main­tain high-level cog­ni­tive func­tions. Whether it is speak­ing mul­ti­ple lan­guages, phys­i­cally exer­cis­ing or stay­ing men­tally active, our every­day life can pos­i­tively impact our brain health.  Some­thing to keep in mind after retirement…and to even retire the word “retirement”!

The results are also intrigu­ing because work­ing com­bines mul­ti­ple aspects of a brain-healthy lifestyle (social engage­ment, men­tal stim­u­la­tion) with aspects not so good for the brain (stress, absence of phys­i­cal exer­cise in some cases). How­ever, it seems that, over­all, the good aspects of work­ing take over the bad ones as far as mem­ory func­tions are concerned.

Vijay, one of our read­ers, wrote yes­ter­day a very thought­ful comment :

“What is brain fit­ness and how it is mea­sured? Is it the same as mind fit­ness which seeks to achieve bal­ance in life?”

I am curi­ous to learn how you would answer that ques­tion. I will add my per­spec­tive over the week­end, since I don’t want to bias your thoughts now.

What is brain fit­ness and how it is measured?

Very inter­est­ing new study, Crit­i­cal Period Plas­tic­ity of Adult-Born Neu­rons, pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­ron by a team of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine researchers. The press release New Adult Brain Cells May Be Cen­tral To Life­long Learn­ing con­tains a good sum­mary (the bold for­mat is mine):

• “The steady for­ma­tion of new brain cells in adults may rep­re­sent more than merely a patch­ing up of aging brains, a new study has shown.”
• “The new adult brain cells may serve to give the adult brain the same kind of learn­ing abil­ity that young brains have while still allow­ing the exist­ing, mature cir­cuitry to main­tain stability.”
• “The researchers found that the new adult neu­rons showed a pat­tern of chang­ing plas­tic­ity very sim­i­lar to that seen in brain cells in new­born ani­mals. That is, the new adult brain cells showed a “crit­i­cal period” in which they were highly plas­tic before they set­tled into the less plas­tic prop­er­ties of mature brain cells. In new­born ani­mals, such a crit­i­cal period enables an impor­tant, early burst of wiring of new brain cir­cuitry with expe­ri­ence.”
• “The researchers also observed in the new adult neu­rons anatom­i­cal evi­dence of the same kind of for­ma­tion of new con­nec­tions that take place in the brains of new­borns as they wire new path­ways in response to expe­ri­ence.”
• “They con­cluded that “adult neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis may rep­re­sent not merely a replace­ment mech­a­nism for lost neu­rons, but instead an ongo­ing devel­op­men­tal process that con­tin­u­ously reju­ve­nates the mature ner­vous sys­tem by offer­ing expanded capac­ity of plas­tic­ity in response to expe­ri­ence through­out life.”

In short: not only do we know today that the adult brain is capa­ble of cre­at­ing new neu­rons, but this shows that our expe­ri­ence influ­ences what hap­pens to those neu­rons once cre­ated. Pretty rev­o­lu­tion­ary under­stand­ing, that still needs to per­me­ate through soci­ety and influ­ence our lifestyles and habits.

Some related posts:

• Brain Fit­ness Glossary
• Want to Improve Mem­ory? Strengthen Your Synapses.
• Brain Exer­cise FAQs
• Easy Steps to Improve Your Brain Health Now

Steven Edwards at Wired Blog writes a post titled Yoga Boosts Brain’s GABA Lev­els, say­ing that “Par­tic­i­pants in the yoga group had a 27% increase in GABA lev­els, while those in the read­ing group remained unchanged. Co-authors Chris Streeter from BUSM and Domenic Ciraulo pointed out that this research shows a method of treat­ing low GABA states. Fairly obvi­ous — yes — but this shows a non­phar­ma­co­log­i­cal method for increas­ing GABA lev­els that peo­ple can act on now, with­out wait­ing for a drug to go through FDA approval.”

Hav­ing attended last week a con­fer­ence where neu­ropharma exec­u­tives pre­sented all their future drugs against obe­sity, anx­i­ety, depression…I couldn’t agree more. The rates of seri­ous side effects of these drugs are astound­ing, yet as a soci­ety we seem to pre­fer to rely on tak­ing drugs when are sick rather than proac­tively tak­ing charge of our health and lifestyles and do our best (which not always is enough) to pro­tect our fit­ness and wellness.

The press release Steven talks about: Yoga and Ele­vated Brain GABA Lev­els [PhysOrg]. Quotes: Read the rest of this entry »

I was exposed to a fun brain exer­cise on Mon­day: attend my first-ever live TV pro­gram, be ready for 3 very pre­cise questions…and then be asked others.

The anchors were fun. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to observe, behind the scenes, the mak­ing of a news pro­gram: con­stant last-minute appar­ent chaos, the lawyer in the “ask the lawyer” seg­ment nowhere to be found…but every­one seem to had a fun time. And good men­tal stimulation-as long as they man­age stress well.

Here you have the 3-minute clip from the local CBS’ Good Day Sacra­mento pro­gram, with a brief Q&A and a cou­ple of brain teasers (Count the Fs and Stroop Test).

The 3 ques­tions I was expect­ing were:

- What is Brain Aware­ness Week? see Dana’s and part­ners’ out­reach events world­wide.

- What is Sharp­Brains? see Our Vision for Brain and Mind Fitness.

- What is the involve­ment of Sharp­Brains dur­ing Brain Aware­ness Week? check Brain Aware­ness Week.

Next time I will give more clear direc­tions and maybe improve my Eng­lish a bit too if I can…

If you want more teasers, here you have Top 10 Brain Teasers.

You prob­a­bly have seen the news about Bob Woodruff’s own recov­ery and his arti­cles now to raise aware­ness about the plight of Iraq veterans.

In the arti­cle “A First­hand Report on the Wounds of War”, we learn how

• “Woodruff, 45, is launch­ing a mul­ti­me­dia cam­paign that includes appear­ances Tues­day with Oprah Win­frey and on “Good Morn­ing Amer­ica,” and the release of a book (In an Instant) writ­ten with his wife, Lee, about their ordeal.”
• “Woodruff’s report­ing packs an emo­tional punch because he is, quite sim­ply, a man who cheated death. Never before had an anchor for an Amer­i­can broad­cast net­work been injured in war. Woodruff instantly became a sym­bol of the dan­gers that jour­nal­ists face in Iraq, and is try­ing to use his higher pro­file to illu­mi­nate the plight of sol­diers who strug­gle with these injuries far from the spotlight.”

This is not an iso­lated exam­ple but part of a larger, and grow­ing, prob­lem. The Dis­cover Mag­a­zine arti­cle Read the rest of this entry »

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing. It was a fas­ci­nat­ing mix of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors talk­ing with and lis­ten­ing to each other. Some top­ics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought — insight on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed and how they influ­ence each other.

Using dra­matic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies.… The Con­fer­ence cre­ates an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary forum — a meet­ing place for neu­ro­sci­en­tists, edu­ca­tors, psy­chol­o­gists, clin­i­cians, and par­ents — to exam­ine these new research find­ings with respect to their applic­a­bil­ity in the class­room and clin­i­cal practice.

Take-aways

• Humans are a mix­ture of cog­ni­tion and emo­tion, and both ele­ments are essen­tial to func­tion and learn properly
• Edu­ca­tors and pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers need to learn more about the brain, how it grows, and how to cul­ti­vate it
• Stu­dents of all ages need to be both chal­lenged and nur­tured in order to succeed
• Peo­ple learn dif­fer­ently — try to teach and learn through as many dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties as pos­si­ble (engage lan­guage, motor skills, artis­tic cre­ation, social inter­ac­tion, sen­sory input, etc.)
• While short-term stress can heighten your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, long term stress kills you — you need to find bal­ance and release
• Test anx­i­ety and sub­se­quent poor test results can be improved with behav­ioral train­ing with feed­back based on heart rate variability
• Dr. Robert Sapol­sky is a very very enlight­en­ing and fun speaker
• Allow time for rest and con­sol­i­da­tion of learned material
• Emo­tional mem­o­ries are eas­ier to remember
• Con­fer­ences like these per­form a real ser­vice in fos­ter­ing dia­logues between sci­en­tists and educators

Read the rest of this entry »