Brain Fitness Update: Use It and Improve It

Here you are have the bi-month­ly update with our 10 most Pop­u­lar blog posts. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our RSS feed, or to our newslet­ter, at the top of this page, if you want to receive this digest by email).

The Neu­ron, The Brain, and Think­ing Smarter

New Neu­rons: Good News, Bad News: Dr. Bill Klemm, a pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, sum­ma­rizes the research on how new neu­rons are born and what they need to live long hap­py lives.

Inter­views with 16 Lead­ing Sci­en­tists: Com­pi­la­tion of inter­views with promi­nent neu­ro­sci­en­tists and psy­chol­o­gists con­duct­ed by Sharp­Brains over the past year. “Use It and Improve It” not only applies to the neu­ron unit, but also to a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al skills, as you will dis­cov­er in these interviews.

The Sci­ence of Think­ing Smarter: Har­vard Busi­ness Review pub­lish­es a great inter­view with biol­o­gist John Med­i­na, author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home and School.

Brain and Research News

Cog­ni­tive News RoundUp: arti­cles cov­er­ing epi­ge­net­ics (how our envi­ron­ments and expe­ri­ences can con­tribute to turn­ing genes on or off, there­by putting in bet­ter con­text genet­ic influ­ences), men­tal prob­lems among return­ing vet­er­ans, and the cog­ni­tive effects of med­ica­tions and aging.

Mem­o­ry Train­ing and Flu­id Intel­li­gence: accord­ing to a new paper pub­lished in Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences (PNAS), the “researchers did not find the upper-lim­it for improve­ment, sug­gest­ing that more train­ing could yield even bet­ter men­tal per­for­mance gains.” Which shows how well-direct­ed brain exer­cise can work, and not only for peo­ple with aging or dis­ease-spe­cif­ic problems.

Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing for Adults: Dr. David Rabin­er dis­cuss­es the ini­tial results, pre­sent­ed in the April 2008 Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Soci­ety meet­ing, of a con­trolled tri­al of work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing con­duct­ed with 55 younger (20–30 years old) and 45 old­er (60–70 years old) adults. Sim­i­lar results to the ones report­ed above, and more durable. We are look­ing for­ward to see­ing when and where the study will be published.

Pump up those lit­tle grey cells: great arti­cle in the UK’s Sun­day Times list­ing a vari­ety of free or inex­pen­sive brain health-relat­ed resources.

Reflec­tions

Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 3): “Any­one who says peace is not part of human nature knows too lit­tle about pri­mates, includ­ing our­selves”, con­cludes neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr. Robert Sapol­sky in his third and final install­ment in this series.

Brain Teasers

Chal­lenge Your Atten­tion: count the TOTAL num­ber of times that the bas­ket­balls change hands? If you haven’t done this exper­i­ment before, please try it…you’ll be amazed.

Your Haiku, Please?: feel free to share your research sug­ges­tions, in haiku form.

Stim­u­lat­ing times. Have a great day!