May Update: Brain Training in Mental Health Toolkits for Prevention and Rehabilitation

The use of a vari­ety of brain train­ing inter­ven­tions is grow­ing in the area of men­tal health. Emerg­ing evi­dence sug­gests that in the near future tar­get­ed brain train­ing may even be used to pre­vent sub­stance abuse. For exam­ple, train­ing work­ing mem­o­ry may reduce sub­stance abusers’ dis­count­ing of long-term rewards and pun­ish­ments — such dis­count­ing is…

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Exercise Improves the Cognition of Overweight Children

Chil­dren who exer­cise vig­or­ous­ly tend to have bet­ter grades. In con­trast, over­weight chil­dren tend to under­achieve. With this in mind, Davis and her col­leagues from Med­ical Col­lege of Geor­gia test­ed whether par­tic­i­pat­ing in an exer­cise pro­gram would help over­weight chil­dren, not only phys­i­cal­ly but also men­tal­ly. Specif­i­cal­ly, they hypoth­e­sized that the chil­dren exec­u­tive func­tions would…

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