balanced-diet

Can weight loss boost memory?

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In the past few days you may have come across head­lines claim­ing that weight loss can improve mem­o­ry. If so, you may be won­der­ing what to make of this.

Let’s take a brief look at the study at the ori­gin of these arti­cles. Par­tic­i­pants were 109 bariatric surgery patients and 41 obese peo­ple (con­trols) who had not under­gone surgery. Bariatric surgery refers most­ly to gas­tric bypass surgery, which cre­ates a small­er stom­ach and bypass­es part of the small intes­tine. The bariatric patients were enrolled in the Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Assess­ment of Bariatric Surgery project con­duct­ed, among oth­ers, by researchers at Kent State uni­ver­si­ty and Colum­bia University.

The mem­o­ry of the 150 par­tic­i­pants was assessed before the surgery as well as 12 weeks after. Results showed that the mem­o­ry of the surgery patients had improved where­as the mem­o­ry of the obese con­trols had declined. [Read more…] about Can weight loss boost memory?

Brain Fitness at New York Public Library

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A few weeks ago I had the plea­sure to give a talk to one hun­dred or so staff mem­bers at New York Pub­lic Library. As you would expect, it was a very stim­u­lat­ing group, and one of the par­tic­i­pants, Brigid Caha­lan, just wrote a fun blog post on her impres­sions from the event:

Brain Fit­ness at New York Pub­lic Library:

- “After attend­ing a recent staff train­ing ses­sion offered by the library’s Office of Staff Devel­op­ment, I decid­ed to return to a habit of my childhood–eating sardines.”
— key pil­lars for brain health …are… “1) A bal­anced diet; 2) Car­dio­vas­cu­lar phys­i­cal exer­cise; 3) Stress man­age­ment; and 4) Brain exer­cise: Nov­el­ty, Vari­ety, Chal­lenge (as long as it does­n’t stress us out).”

Read full arti­cle: here.

Com­ment: A very inter­est­ing trend of observe — the grow­ing role of pub­lic libraries in pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty brain health infor­ma­tion and even, why not, becom­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based brain fit­ness des­ti­na­tions. After all, is it not men­tal stim­u­la­tion of all sorts, incor­po­rat­ing Nov­el­ty, Vari­ety, and Chal­lenge, what they tru­ly offer?

It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Maintenance: Brain Care 101

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Car mechanicLast week, the US Car Care Coun­cil released a list of tips on how to take care of your car and “save big mon­ey at the pump in 2008.”

You may not have paid much atten­tion to this announce­ment. Yes, it’s impor­tant to save gas these days; but, it’s not big news that good main­te­nance habits will improve the per­for­mance of a car, and extend its life.

If we can all agree on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing our cars that get us around town, what about main­tain­ing our brains sit­ting behind the wheel?

A spate of recent news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and “brain training” has missed an impor­tant con­stituen­cy: younger peo­ple. Recent advance­ments in brain sci­ence have as tremen­dous impli­ca­tions for teenagers and adults of all ages as they do for seniors.

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Yaakov Stern of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, he relat­ed how sur­prised he was when, years ago, a reporter from Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine request­ed an inter­view. The reporter told Dr. Stern that he want­ed to write an arti­cle to moti­vate kids to stay in school and not to drop out, in order to start build­ing their Cog­ni­tive Reserve ear­ly and age more gracefully.

What is the Cog­ni­tive Reserve? [Read more…] about It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101

‘Brain gyms’ tone minds and reduce stress

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Fun arti­cle in the San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er today on how High-tech ‘brain gyms’ tone minds, reduce stress. Quotes:

  • “Sharp­Brains and Posit Sci­ence are just two of a grow­ing num­ber of start-up com­pa­nies lead­ing the way in the area of pack­ag­ing and devel­op­ing suites of soft­ware they call “brain gyms.”
  • “Sharp­Brains offers a suite of prod­ucts that eval­u­ate buyers’ needs and tar­get their weak­ness, gen­tly push­ing for improve­ment, Fer­nan­dez said. One pro­gram helps improve mem­o­ry using a num­ber game (here); anoth­er pro­vides instant biofeed­back to users so they can prac­tice breath­ing and pos­i­tive think­ing to reduce stress (here), Fer­nan­dez said.”
  • “I can start see­ing the changes in my stress lev­el take place right in front of my eyes,” said Baba Shiv (pro­file here), a neu­ro­sci­en­tist and pro­fes­sor at Stanford’s Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, who uses Freeze-Framer 2.0 (here), one of the pro­grams licensed by Sharp­Brains. By mon­i­tor­ing his stress lev­el through heart mon­i­tors hooked to his per­son­al com­put­er at work, he dis­cov­ered that con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing his e‑mail inbox raised his stress lev­el, Shiv said. Now he lim­its him­self to check­ing e‑mail every two hours, Shiv said.

The reporter did a great job in under­stand­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing a new and some­times com­plex top­ic. Read the arti­cle: High-tech ‘brain gyms’ tone minds, reduce stress.

You can learn more about the research on self-con­trol of our advi­sor Baba Shiv in The Frontal Cor­tex blog’s arti­cle Self-Con­trol is a Mus­cle and in Mind Hacks: (un)emotional invest­ment.