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Without Brain Health, you do not have Health

February 10, 2023 by Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman 1 Comment

As you go through life, your brain under­goes extra­or­di­nary devel­op­ment. Your brain is the most adapt­able, mod­i­fi­able organ in your body, and it can change both pos­i­tive­ly and neg­a­tive­ly by how you use it each day. Just by read­ing a book such as this one, your brain has been changed.

How has your brain been altered through­out your life? How may it change in years and decades ahead? The good news is that much of the age-relat­ed decline is like­ly avoid­able and even reversible. The fact that you bought and have read this book to the very end tells me you are moti­vat­ed to do some­thing about your brain per­for­mance. Our cog­ni­tive brain health tends to decline over time because we let it, but you can be your own brain health fit­ness coach to max­i­mize brain func­tion. Grow­ing brain research shows that a major­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als can make their brain smarter every sin­gle day. [Read more…] about With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: brain, brain disease, brain health, brain span, Brain-Fitness, brain-injury, brain-performance, Brain-Scientist, cognitive brain health, cognitive potential, cognitive scientist, cognitive-health, health, Innovations, intellectual capital, optimize brain health

Study: Building muscle mass helps delay cognitive decline beyond the value of exercise itself

September 19, 2022 by SharpBrains

A new rea­son to build mus­cle: brain health (The Globe and Mail):

… a recent study from researchers at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished in the jour­nal JAMA Net­work Open, offers a new rea­son for con­tin­u­ing to work on build­ing mus­cle: It’s good for your brain, not just your biceps. Greater mus­cle mass, the results sug­gest, helps ward off cog­ni­tive decline in old­er adults beyond what you’d expect based on their exer­cise lev­els alone. [Read more…] about Study: Build­ing mus­cle mass helps delay cog­ni­tive decline beyond the val­ue of exer­cise itself

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: brain, brain health, building muscle, cognitive, cognitive decline, cognitive-domains, Cognitive-tests, exercise, muscle mass, myokines, older-adults, ward off cognitive decline

Q&A with researcher Robb Rutledge on mental health, expectations, decision-making and, yes, holiday planning!

July 25, 2022 by Greater Good Science Center

Have you ever looked for­ward to a con­cert, beach vaca­tion, or par­ty only to find your­self not enjoy­ing it as much as you thought you would?

You may be suf­fer­ing from over­ly high expec­ta­tions, says psy­chol­o­gist Robb Rut­ledge of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. Rut­ledge and his col­leagues have been using smart­phone-based data col­lec­tion (via a free app called Hap­pi­ness Quest, where any­one can play short games and con­tribute to research) to see how our expec­ta­tions affect our future hap­pi­ness. Some of their find­ings point to nov­el approach­es for increas­ing our enjoy­ment of every­day life. [Read more…] about Q&A with researcher Robb Rut­ledge on men­tal health, expec­ta­tions, deci­sion-mak­ing and, yes, hol­i­day planning!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: brain, cognition, Decision-making, expectations, happiness, Happiness Quest, mental health, perception, Robb Rutledge

Dual decline in gait speed and memory function seen as most predictive of future dementia

June 8, 2022 by SharpBrains

Walk­ing Speed Helps Pre­dict Future Demen­tia (Med­Page Today):

Dual decline in gait speed and cog­ni­tion car­ried a high­er risk of demen­tia than either gait-only decline or cog­ni­tive-only decline, report­ed Taya Col­ly­er, PhD, of Monash Uni­ver­si­ty in Vic­to­ria, Aus­tralia, and co-authors, in JAMA Net­work Open…

[Read more…] about Dual decline in gait speed and mem­o­ry func­tion seen as most pre­dic­tive of future dementia

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: brain, cognition, cognitive decline, cognitive measure, dementia prevention, diagnosis of dementia, failing memory, gait speed, memory-decline, pathology, risk of dementia, slowing gait

How ’sleeping on it’ can help the prefrontal cortex regulate emotional responses, making us feel better in the morning

May 26, 2022 by The Conversation

Instead of lying awake wor­ry­ing, we’re often told to “sleep on it” when mak­ing deci­sions both big and small. And there’s actu­al­ly a sci­en­tif­ic basis for this advice. Sleep can influ­ence our response to emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions, and helps us to man­age our men­tal health.

To under­stand why sleep and emo­tions are so con­nect­ed, it’s impor­tant to first under­stand what hap­pens in the brain when we encounter some­thing emo­tive. [Read more…] about How ’sleep­ing on it’ can help the pre­frontal cor­tex reg­u­late emo­tion­al respons­es, mak­ing us feel bet­ter in the morning

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: anxiety, brain, depression, Limbic-System, mental health, prefrontal-cortex, sleep on it, Stress

The Do’s and Don’ts of Harnessing Technology (and Anxiety) for Good

February 28, 2022 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing impor­tant brain & men­tal health news plus a few fun brain teasers to test your rea­son­ing skills and more…

#1. Chal­lenge ahead: Har­ness­ing tech­nol­o­gy for good men­tal health

“Tech­nol­o­gy can not only help us grow out of unhealthy habits, it is also pos­si­ble to expand human men­tal capac­i­ties … although it will be nec­es­sary to ana­lyze “the how and when” of these uses: they must be eth­i­cal­ly sound and ensure that results are ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety.” — our very own Álvaro Fer­nán­dez, hop­ing you all agree 🙂

If you pre­fer to read the arti­cle in Span­ish: Cómo hac­er de la tec­nología un ali­a­do en el cuida­do de la salud mental

#2. On neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, young brains, and smartphones

“As with any tool, behav­ior, activ­i­ty, or tech­nol­o­gy, smart phones have the poten­tial to be either a use­ful and high­ly con­struc­tive asset or a destruc­tive and harm­ful diver­sion from life … What is the impact on brain devel­op­ment dur­ing the first 25 years of life when a sig­nif­i­cant part of each day is spent look­ing into a smart phone and the result­ing cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al experiences?”

#3. Explor­ing links between hear­ing loss, demen­tia and the ‘cog­ni­tive reserve’ — plus the role of hear­ing aids

“Cer­tain types of demen­tia, par­tic­u­lar­ly vas­cu­lar demen­tia, are caused when there is less blood flow reach­ing the brain. This can dam­age our brain cells. Recent stud­ies have also shown that the parts of our brain that process sounds (our audi­to­ry sys­tem) have many blood ves­sels and are vul­ner­a­ble to dam­age … Anoth­er area of research is look­ing at whether hear­ing loss indi­rect­ly affects demen­tia risk by mak­ing it hard­er for peo­ple to stay con­nect­ed. Social iso­la­tion is anoth­er known risk fac­tor for dementia.”

#4. Com­put­er-assist­ed cog­ni­tive behav­ior ther­a­py (CCBT) may out­per­form Treat­ment as Usu­al (TAU) in help­ing patients reduce depres­sion, improve 6‑month remis­sion rates

“The find­ings of this ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­al sug­gest that CCBT with a mod­est amount of clin­i­cian sup­port has poten­tial for wider-spread imple­men­ta­tion as an effec­tive, accept­able, and effi­cient treat­ment for depres­sion in pri­ma­ry care.”

#6. Wear­able EEG mon­i­tor­ing start-up Epi­tel rais­es $12.5M to mar­ket seizure detec­tion system

“It is time that EEGs for the brain become as acces­si­ble as EKGs for the heart to patients through­out the coun­try. For too long essen­tial neu­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices have been inac­ces­si­ble to large parts of our pop­u­la­tion” — Dr. Chaud­ery, Prin­ci­pal at Genoa Ven­tures (co-lead investor)

#7. Otsu­ka and Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty start-up Jol­ly Good sign $43M deal to pro­mote Social Skills Train­ing (SST) ther­a­pies, help­ing schiz­o­phre­nia patients first

“The com­bi­na­tion of SST and a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal reg­i­men has been proven in stud­ies to reduce the recur­rence of men­tal dis­or­ders, the com­pa­nies said. Their first joint­ly devel­oped pro­gram will be direct­ed toward schiz­o­phre­nia patients, and they’re pre­dict­ing that the immer­sive nature of Jol­ly Good’s VR will make the SST ther­a­py more engag­ing and effec­tive than stan­dard methods.”

#8. Q&A with Dr. Wendy Suzu­ki on the parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem and har­ness­ing anx­i­ety for good

“Most peo­ple have all heard of the fight-or-flight system—that’s the stress sys­tem, it makes your heart rate go up and you can run away real­ly fast. Well, peo­ple don’t real­ize that through evo­lu­tion in par­al­lel with the fight-or-flight sys­tem evolved an equal and oppo­site part of our ner­vous sys­tem that’s nick­named the “rest-and-digest” part of the ner­vous sys­tem, or parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem. It’s basi­cal­ly the de-stress­ing part of our ner­vous sys­tem. That is what we need to acti­vate to bring our­selves back to equi­lib­ri­um when we’re in a stress­ful state.”

 

Final­ly, as promised, a few fun brain teasers to test your rea­son­ing skills–and more. Enjoy!

#9. Test your mem­o­ry and rea­son­ing skills with these proverbs

#10. Brain teas­er: Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

#11. Did you notice the jump? Good rea­son­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing often requires prop­er atten­tion to detail…

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and safe March,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, En Español, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, brain, brain-development, cCBT, cognitive, computer-assisted cognitive behavior therapy, dementia, emotional, Epitel, health, hearing aids, Jolly Good, mental capacities, mental health, neuroplasticity, Otsuka, parasympathetic nervous system, technology, wearable EEG, Wendy Suzuki

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