• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

Brain Teaser: how are Memory, Stress, Exercise, Brain Games, Stanford and Harvard connected?

March 14, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Very inter­est­ing week for brain fit­ness-we have dif­fi­cul­ty in select­ing and adding val­ue to the superb arti­cles that fol­low, so let us sim­ply link to them and high­light 1–2 quotes for each:

Get Fit, Improve Memory?

  • Three months of exer­cise was all it took for peo­ple with low lev­els of aer­o­bic fit­ness to increase blood flow to that part of their brain and improve their scores on mem­o­ry tests, the study shows. Addi­tion­al tests on mice show new brain cells growing …

Stress ‘kills’ brain cells

  • “If we can keep these new nerve cells alive, we might be able to fore­stall or pre­vent the types of depres­sive symp­toms that might nor­mal­ly occur,” he said in com­ments report­ed by the Reuters news agency.

BRAIN GAMES: Men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties help seniors keep their minds sharp, in the Asbury Park Press, NJ

  • (quot­ing me) “We believe that the keys to suc­cess are pro­vid­ing nov­el­ty, vari­ety and and con­stant chal­lenge. It’s a fit­ness cen­ter for the brain. You can do Sudoku and cross­word puz­zles, of course. That’s help­ful. It’s like tak­ing a walk around the block. But a chal­leng­ing set of “brain exer­cis­es’ is like a work­out at a gym with a per­son­al trainer.”
  • “Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg is the oth­er co-founder of Sharp­Brains. Elkhonon knows that Thomas Edi­son was fond of say­ing that most peo­ple will do any­thing to avoid the hard work of think­ing. He hopes to change that, he says.”

STANFORD Mag­a­zine: The Effort Effect. Accord­ing to Car­ol Dweck, a Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occa­sion­al tumble.

  • “The mas­tery-ori­ent­ed chil­dren are real­ly hell-bent on learn­ing something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a dif­fer­ent chain of thoughts and behav­iors than “performance goals.”
  • “Peo­ple with per­for­mance goals, she rea­soned, think intel­li­gence is fixed from birth. Peo­ple with learn­ing goals have a growth mind-set about intel­li­gence, believ­ing it can be devel­oped. (Among them­selves, psy­chol­o­gists call the growth mind-set an “incremental theory,” and use the term “entity theory” for the fixed mind-set.) The mod­el was near­ly com­plete (see dia­gram).”

FT: Har­vard revamps curriculum

  • “We’re not try­ing to say that an edu­cat­ed man or woman needs to know this, that and the other.
  • “What we’re say­ing is that an edu­cat­ed per­son should have a cer­tain set of capac­i­ties: inter-pre­tive capac­i­ties, prob­lem-solv­ing capac­i­ties, reflec­tive capac­i­ties and crit­i­cal capac­i­ties to help them through the world,” she said.

In short: there is much that each of us can do to improve our brain fit­ness, no mat­ter our age, occu­pa­tion or start­ing point. There are some fun­da­men­tal capac­i­ties that we can train. And we have to care for good phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress man­age­ment on top of men­tal exercise. 

Excit­ing times.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Brain Teasers, Brain-Fitness, Brain-games, brett-steenbarger, concept-map, genes, Stress

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Nick says

    January 9, 2008 at 1:48

    So inter­est­ing! The mind is real­ly amaz­ing and nev­er ceas­es to amaze. With stress there are a lot of fresh ideas and new under­stand­ings on how it effects the mind and body. We just ran an issue-of-the-day on this so I thought I would leave the link for those inter­est­ed in “The Sci­ence of Stress,” could be help­ful! Thanks
    http://theissue.com/issue/4127.html

    Cheers, Nick
    TheIssue.com

  2. Susan says

    January 13, 2008 at 2:08

    Nice post. Per­son­al­ly I love brain teasers

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 12,516 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2023 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy