The Upside of Aging-WSJ

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 19, 2007

Sharon Beg­ley writes anoth­er great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required) “The aging brain is sub­ject to a drea­ry litany of changes. It shrinks, Swiss cheese-like holes grow, con­nec­tions between neu­rons become spars­er, blood flow and oxy­gen sup­ply fall. That leads to trou­ble with short-term mem­o­ry and rapid­ly switch­ing atten­tion, among other…

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Brain Health Newsletter, February Edition, and Brain Awareness Week

By Caroline Latham | February 17, 2007 |

Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chica­go Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.Website and Blog Summary.We hope you enjoy our new Home Page.Cognitive Neu­ro­science­Brain Fit­ness Glos­saryCog­ni­tive Reserve and Lifestyle­Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty as an Index of Reg­u­lat­ed Emo­tion­al Respond­ingNeu­ro­science Inter­view Series: on learn­ing and “brain gyms“EducationCounseling cen­ter offers biofeed­back to help decrease stressLife­long learn­ing, lit­er­al­ly: neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for stu­dents, boomers, seniors…Health & Well­ness­Want to Improve Mem­o­ry?… Do I need any­thing else?Learning Slows Phys­i­cal Pro­gres­sion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease­Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­mentIm­prov­ing Your Brain Tools: Read­ing Emo­tion­al Mes­sages in the FaceEn­hanc­ing the Trader’s Self-Control.Brain Teasers.Exercise Your Brains — Visu­al Log­ic Brain Teaser­Brain Work­out for Your Frontal Lobes­Blog Car­ni­vals: col­lec­tion of best blog arti­cles around par­tic­u­lar topics.We host­ed Encephalon #15: Neu­ro­science and Psy­chol­o­gy Blog Carnival.And launched Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val #1.

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Are yoga and meditation good for my brain?

By Caroline Latham | February 15, 2007 |

Here is ques­tion 16 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Are yoga and med­i­ta­tion good for my brain?Key Points: Yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion are all excel­lent ways to learn to man­age your stress levels.Reducing stress, and the stress hor­mones, in your sys­tem is crit­i­cal to your brain and over­all fitness.Answer:Yes.… the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.Prolonged expo­sure to the adren­al steroid hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, released dur­ing the stress response, can dam­age the brain and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons in the hip­pocam­pus, which is the key play­er in encod­ing new mem­o­ries in your brain.

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I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp?

By Caroline Latham | February 12, 2007

Ques­tion 15 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp? Pro­vide your brain with reg­u­lar men­tal stim­u­la­tion that is nov­el and challenging.Maintain your social net­work for both stim­u­la­tion and stress reduction.Work out, eat well, stim­u­late your brain, and reduce chron­ic stress.Any good brain fit­ness pro­gram must pro­vide you a vari­ety of new chal­lenges over time. Stress reduc­tion is anoth­er major con­cern. Main­tain­ing your exer­cise rou­tine and social net­works will help a lot in this regard. Make social appoint­ments to go for a walk with a friend or fam­i­ly member.

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Brain Workout for Your Frontal Lobes

By Caroline Latham | February 9, 2007 |

Your frontal lobes are home to your exec­u­tive func­tions, includ­ing pat­tern recog­ni­tion. Here’s a puz­zle to chal­lenge your abil­i­ty to uncov­er a pat­tern. In this puz­zle, three num­bers: 16, 14, and 38, need to be assigned to one of the rows of num­bers below. To which row should each num­ber be assigned — A, B,…

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Learning & The Brain Conference, February 15–17th in San Francisco

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 7, 2007 |

For infor­ma­tion on the 2008 Con­fer­ence, and the dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers, vis­it: Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers. The post below refers to the 2007 Con­fer­ence: ————————- The orga­niz­ers of this amaz­ing con­fer­ence, whose reg­is­tra­tion is about to expire, just extend­ed their very kind offer to Sharp­Brains read­ers: you can register…

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