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Study: Playing board games like Chess, Mahjong, Go, helps slow cognitive decline as we age (but with clear differences in neurobiology and improved function)

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Play­ing Board Games May Slow Cog­ni­tive Decline, Improve QoL (Med­scape):

Play­ing chess or oth­er board games slows cog­ni­tive decline and improves qual­i­ty of life in old­er patients, results of a new sys­tem­at­ic review suggest.

… After search­ing the pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, Pozzi and his col­leagues select­ed 15 stud­ies for the review. The stud­ies assessed the impact of board games on old­er indi­vid­u­als at risk of, or with cog­ni­tive impair­ment, or those with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) at any age. [Read more…] about Study: Play­ing board games like Chess, Mahjong, Go, helps slow cog­ni­tive decline as we age (but with clear dif­fer­ences in neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy and improved function)

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

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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”

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

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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

Why Scientific Literacy and Learning Enhance Brain Function and Neural Health

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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

Research: How Exercise Benefits the Brain

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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

5 Tips on Lifelong Learning and Neuroplasticity for the Adult Brain

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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