Update: To improve sleep, combine general sleep hygiene with mindful and cognitive techniques

———- Had a good night’s sleep?  We hope you did, so you can ful­ly enjoy all the fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cles and brain teasers in the new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ eNewslet­ter…includ­ing excel­lent advice on how to com­bine gen­er­al sleep hygiene with mind­ful and cog­ni­tive tech­niques, and a book give­away.  Hap­py read­ing! New think­ing: For a good night’s rest,…

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How to properly “Use it or Lose it”: Kundalini Yoga vs. Crossword Puzzles

Yoga bet­ter than cross­words for pre­vent­ing pre-Alzheimer’s mem­o­ry loss (The Tele­graph): “His­tor­i­cal­ly and anec­do­tal­ly, yoga has been thought to be ben­e­fi­cial in age­ing well, but this is the sci­en­tif­ic demon­stra­tion of that benefit…We’re con­vert­ing his­tor­i­cal wis­dom into the high lev­el of evi­dence required for doc­tors to rec­om­mend ther­a­py to their patients.

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Harnessing virtual reality to practice meditation?

. Med­i­tat­ing in vir­tu­al real­i­ty (Penin­su­la Press): “Imag­ine you are on a beach in Bali prac­tic­ing yoga at dawn, watch­ing the sun rise beyond the lagoon. The image is so vivid that you almost for­get you are actu­al­ly sit­ting in an office in San Fran­cis­co, wear­ing a vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) headset.

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The “Holy Grail”: How to drive behavior change by harnessing neuroplasticity and emotions

— CWRU nurs­ing school award­ed $2.35 mil­lion to study the link between the brain and health behav­ior change (press release): “A five-year, $2.35 mil­lion grant from the Nation­al Insti­tute of Nurs­ing Research will allow researchers from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nurs­ing, Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences and the School of Med­i­cine at Case…

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