Boost your Attention with Meditation

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | October 11, 2010 |

Brain train­ing does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean com­put­er­ized games. For instance, medi­a­tion may be a great tool to train your brain. Dif­fer­ent parts of the brain sup­port dif­fer­ent func­tions. One func­tion, cen­tral to many of our actions, is “atten­tion”. Atten­tion can be defined as the abil­i­ty to sus­tain con­cen­tra­tion on a par­tic­u­lar object, action, or thought. It…

Read More

Tracking decline in the brain from the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | September 16, 2010

Inter­est­ing arti­cle on The Dana Foun­da­tion web­site on how to mon­i­tor cog­ni­tive decline in the brain in the very ear­ly stages of Alzheimer’s: Func­tion­al MRI May Be Use­ful for Mon­i­tor­ing Cog­ni­tive Decline in the Elder­ly (Dana Foun­da­tion) Alzheimer’s researchers have long want­ed to find bet­ter ways not only to diag­nose the dis­ease but also to…

Read More

Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning — Learning & The Brain Conference

By Caroline Latham | February 26, 2007

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing.… Some top­ics were meant to be applied imme­di­ate­ly, but many were food for thought — dis­cus­sions on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed.Using dra­mat­ic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies. Dis­cov­er how new adven­tures could change edu­ca­tion, learn­ing dis­or­der inter­ven­tions, and even soci­ety itself in the future.

Read More

Brain Fitness Blog Carnival #2

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 19, 2007 |

Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary 19, 2007 edi­tion of brain fit­ness. Today we want to high­light an excel­lent Inter­view with Aaron Beck on the His­to­ry of Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py sub­mit­ted by the Beck Insti­tute. Dr. Beck was 83 when he gave this inter­view. To the ques­tion “Do you have a view about age­ing?”, he responds “I can…

Read More

Cognitive Reserve and Lifestyle

By Caroline Latham | February 6, 2007 |

In hon­or of the Week of Sci­ence pre­sent­ed at Just Sci­ence we will be writ­ing about “just science”.Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Scarmeas, Niko­laos and Stern, Yaakov. Cog­ni­tive reserve and lifestyle. Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal and Exper­i­men­tal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. 2003;25:625–33.The con­cept of cog­ni­tive reserve has been defined as the abil­i­ty of an indi­vid­ual to tol­er­ate pro­gres­sive brain pathol­o­gy with­out demon­strat­ing clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive symp­toms. Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sug­gests that indi­vid­u­als with high­er IQ, edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion­al achieve­ment, or par­tic­i­pa­tion in intel­lec­tu­al­ly and social­ly active lifestyles may result in both quan­ti­ta­tive­ly more cog­ni­tive net­works and qual­i­ta­tive­ly more func­tion­al­ly effi­cient net­works result­ing in more reserve.

Read More