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BDNF

Promote brain plasticity and keep your mind at ease by taking your daily “exercise pill”

July 14, 2021 by The Conversation

As with many oth­er physi­cians, rec­om­mend­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to patients was just a doc­tor chore for me – until a few years ago. That was because I myself was not very active. Over the years, as I picked up box­ing and became more active, I got first­hand expe­ri­ence of pos­i­tive impacts on my mind. I also start­ed research­ing the effects of dance and move­ment ther­a­pies on trau­ma and anx­i­ety in refugee chil­dren, and I learned a lot more about the neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of exer­cise. [Read more…] about Pro­mote brain plas­tic­i­ty and keep your mind at ease by tak­ing your dai­ly “exer­cise pill”

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anxiety, BDNF, brain-cells, Brain-Plasticity, cognitive-performance, exercise, exercise pill, hippocampus, memory function, neurobiology, Neurons, neuroplasticity, neuroscientist, neurotransmitters, neurotrophic factor, Physical-activity, psychiatrist

Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters

November 4, 2015 by Dr. Majid Fotuhi

hippocampus_brain.

A pair of thumb-sized struc­tures deep in the cen­ter of the human brain are crit­i­cal for our abil­i­ty to learn and remem­ber. Thanks to their shape, each of them is called hip­pocam­pus — which means sea­horse in Greek. These brain areas have the unique capac­i­ty to gen­er­ate new neu­rons every day. In fact, recent human stud­ies have shown that [Read more…] about Can you grow your hip­pocam­pus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: aging, Alzheimers-disease, BDNF, brain, Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor, Brain-Fitness-Center, exercise, hippocampus, lifestyle, Neurogenesis, Neurons, neuroscience

Why Scientific Literacy and Learning Enhance Brain Function and Neural Health

January 29, 2013 by Hemal Pathak, PhD

Often in dis­cussing health relat­ed find­ings with non-sci­en­tists, I’ve found that sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion tends to be inad­e­quate for eval­u­at­ing sci­en­tif­ic claims. A sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple are reluc­tant to study sci­ence despite the poten­tial to ben­e­fit from the vast amount of use­ful knowl­edge being accu­mu­lat­ed by sci­en­tists. Neil DeGrasse Tyson dis­cussed a sim­i­lar issue with the New York Dai­ly News sev­er­al years ago (A Cry to Pass the Sci­ence Test, 2006). In a time when sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion is con­stant­ly reshap­ing our under­stand­ing [Read more…] about Why Sci­en­tif­ic Lit­er­a­cy and Learn­ing Enhance Brain Func­tion and Neur­al Health

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: BDNF, health-literacy, Learning, memory, mental ability, mental-activity, neural-health, neurotrophic, scientific literacy

Research: How Exercise Benefits the Brain

December 5, 2011 by SharpBrains

How Exer­cise Ben­e­fits the Brain (NewYork Times):

“To learn more about how exer­cise affects the brain, sci­en­tists in Ire­land recent­ly asked a group of seden­tary male col­lege stu­dents to take part in a mem­o­ry test fol­lowed by stren­u­ous exercise.

First, the young men watched a rapid-fire line­up of pho­tos with the faces and names of strangers. After a break, they tried to recall the names they had just seen as the pho­tos again zipped across a com­put­er screen. [Read more…] about Research: How Exer­cise Ben­e­fits the Brain

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: aerobic-training, BDNF, brain teaser test, brain-exercise, Brain-health, cognitive-function, concentration, hippocampus, improve-memory, memory-test, neurotrophic factor, physical training, Physical-activity, stroop word color taks, Stroop-Test

5 Tips on Lifelong Learning and Neuroplasticity for the Adult Brain

December 19, 2008 by Laurie Bartels

productivity_brain.

Learn­ing & the Brain is a con­fer­ence that gets marked on my cal­en­dar annu­al­ly because I always return home hav­ing either been exposed to new infor­ma­tion, or with a new per­spec­tive on an old top­ic. Last mon­th’s con­fer­ence in Cam­bridge, MA, themed Using Emo­tions Research to Enhance Learn­ing & Achieve­ment, was no excep­tion. As with pre­vi­ous con­fer­ences, in addi­tion to the many keynote ses­sions, I focused on the adult learn­ing strand, since so much of my time is spent pro­vid­ing pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment for, and col­lab­o­rat­ing with adults. Here are five con­fer­ence cues as they relate to education.

1. CHALLENGE YOURSELF WITH NEW LEARNING

Aaron Nel­son stat­ed that our mem­o­ry starts to decline between ages twen­ty-five and thir­ty, or to phrase it a bit more pos­i­tive­ly, Sam Wang says our mem­o­ry peaks around age thir­ty. On the oth­er end of the age spec­trum, accord­ing to Ken Kosik, there is unequiv­o­cal evi­dence that edu­ca­tion pro­tects against Alzheimer’s. Both Nel­son and Kosik men­tioned the the­o­ry of cog­ni­tive reserve, which trans­lates rough­ly to the more we learn, the more con­nec­tions we cre­ate, and there­fore the greater the neu­ronal buffer we have to draw upon as we age.

Elkhonon Gold­berg of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness stat­ed at last April’s con­fer­ence that “as one ages, the domain of the nov­el shrinks, and the domain of what is known grows”. He cau­tioned the audi­ence to beware of being on men­tal autopi­lot. Thus, the goal is not to sim­ply get bet­ter at doing more of the same. The type of learn­ing that makes a dif­fer­ence con­sists specif­i­cal­ly of new, nov­el chal­lenges. The result of such engage­ment is that [Read more…] about 5 Tips on Life­long Learn­ing and Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for the Adult Brain

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Aaron-Nelson, adult-brain, adult-learning, Alzheimers, Alzheimers-disease, BDNF, brain, Brain-Plasticity, challenge, cognitive-reserve, dementia, Elkhonon-Goldberg, Emotions, emotions-research, enhance-achievement, enhance-learning, exercise, improve-memory, John-Medina, John-Ratey, Ken-Kosik, Learning, Learning-&-The-Brain, Learning-&-the-Brain-Conference, Lifelong-learning, misconceptions, Neurogenesis, neuronal-buffer, neuroplasticity, Norman-Doidge, Sam-Wang, schools

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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

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