Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Brain-anatomy-and-imaging

Brain Fitness Glossary

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Giv­en the grow­ing aware­ness of this emerg­ing field, let’s review some of the most rel­e­vant concepts:

Brain Fit­ness: the gen­er­al state of good, sharp, brain and mind, espe­cial­ly as the result of men­tal and phys­i­cal exer­cise and prop­er nutrition.

Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram: struc­tured set of brain exer­cis­es, usu­al­ly com­put­er-based, designed to train spe­cif­ic brain areas and func­tions in tar­get­ed ways, and mea­sured by brain fit­ness assessments.

Chron­ic Stress: ongo­ing, long-term stress. Con­tin­ued phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal where stres­sors block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons and neg­a­tive­ly impact the immune sys­tem’s defenses.

Cog­ni­tive train­ing (or Brain Train­ing): vari­ety of brain exer­cis­es designed to help work out spe­cif­ic “mental muscles”. The prin­ci­ple under­ly­ing cog­ni­tive train­ing is to help improve “core” abil­i­ties, such as atten­tion, mem­o­ry, prob­lem-solv­ing, which many peo­ple con­sid­er as fixed.

Cog­ni­tive Reserve (or Brain Reserve): the­o­ry that address­es the fact that indi­vid­u­als vary con­sid­er­ably in the sever­i­ty of cog­ni­tive aging and clin­i­cal demen­tia. Men­tal stim­u­la­tion, edu­ca­tion and occu­pa­tion­al lev­el are believed to be major active com­po­nents of build­ing a cog­ni­tive reserve that can help resist the attacks of men­tal disease.

fMRI: func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI) is a non-inva­sive neu­roimag­ing [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Glossary

Dana Alliance’s Brain Awareness Week for Brain Health

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The Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives is keep­ing up its great out­reach initiatives:

1‑ Check their blog with posts such as Resolve to be good to your brain, too. Tip: “Brain change takes time; allow your brain time to get used to new cir­cum­stance” (from the Dana Guide to Brain Health). 

You can read our The Dana Guide to Brain Health book review.

2- The Brain Aware­ness Week 2007, March 12–18th, with many activ­i­ties around the world to “advance pub­lic aware­ness about the progress and ben­e­fits of brain research. The Dana Alliance is joined in the cam­paign by part­ners in the Unit­ed States and around the world, includ­ing med­ical and research orga­ni­za­tions; patient advo­ca­cy groups; the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies; ser­vice groups; hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ties; K‑12 schools; and pro­fes­sion­al organizations.”

Learn how you can participate! 

 

TIME Magazine — A User Guide to the Brain

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We announced last week the CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Mem­o­ry Exer­cis­es. 

Now, Time Mag­a­zine has pub­lished a spec­tac­u­lar spe­cial issue with many good brain-relat­ed arti­cles. Enjoy TIME Mag­a­zine — A User Guide to the Brain.

 

Brain Fitness Blog Carnival #1

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Brain Fitness CarnivalWel­come to the inau­gur­al edi­tion of the Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val. The tim­ing could­n’t be bet­ter  you have prob­a­bly seen the fea­tured CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neuroplasticity.

Thanks to the over 40 peo­ple who sub­mit­ted posts. We have had to select the posts we enjoyed the most to help facil­i­tate an engag­ing and informed conversation.

Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Our expe­ri­ence lit­er­al­ly shapes our brains. And vice ver­sa. The media seems to be focus­ing most­ly on brain fit­ness for seniors, but its impli­ca­tions go beyond that, as you will see in this post by Car­o­line: What is Brain Fit­ness?, and the arti­cles in this carnival.

Sci­ence-based under­stand­ing is evolv­ing from “Use it or Lose It” to “Use It and Improve It.”  As Fast Com­pa­ny’s Alan Deutschman provoca­tive­ly puts it in his last book, Change or Die. We could­n’t agree more with his sum­ma­ry rec­om­men­da­tion: “Relate. Repeat. Reframe.” Alan presents a blog arti­cle announc­ing his book (here is his orig­i­nal arti­cle). [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val #1

CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neuroplasticity and Memory Exercises

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CBS News and TIME mag­a­zine are team­ing up for a five-part series on the “The Com­pli­cat­ed, Mes­mer­iz­ing World of the Brain”. The first report by CBS Evening News con­trib­u­tor Dr. San­jay Gup­ta focused on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty – “the brain’s abil­i­ty to reor­ga­nize itself by cre­at­ing new brain cells through men­tal and phys­i­cal exercises.”

Dr. Gup­ta inter­viewed Arthur Kramer, Ph.D., a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois who stud­ied the effects of exer­cise, diet, and social and men­tal stim­u­la­tion on old­er adults. Accord­ing to Kramer, the break through anti-aging treat­ment is exercise.

We found in our study that walk­ing will increase the vol­ume of the brain, increase the effi­cien­cy of the brain and increase improve­ments in the num­ber of cog­ni­tive func­tions such as mem­o­ry and attention.

Kramer and McAuley’s research showed that aer­o­bic exer­cise led to increased brain vol­ume in the pre­frontal and tem­po­ral cor­tices – areas that show con­sid­er­able age-relat­ed deterioration.

To go beyond phys­i­cal exer­cise and look at men­tal exer­cise, Dr. Gup­ta also inter­viewed Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. of UCSF and Posit Sci­ence. Merzenich said, “The brain is actu­al­ly revis­ing itself. It is actu­al­ly plas­ti­cal­ly chang­ing itself as you devel­op new skills and abil­i­ties, as you learn new things.” Merzenich has been study­ing neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and how the brain changes with expe­ri­ence since the 1980s.

To Catch the Series, Here’s the Schedule:
[Read more…] about CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Mem­o­ry Exercises

Want to Improve Memory? Strengthen Your Synapses.

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News­wise released an arti­cle called “Want to Improve Mem­o­ry? Strength­en Your Synaps­es. Here’s How.” based on find­ings find­ings pub­lished in the Feb­ru­ary issue of Mind, Mood and Mem­o­ry, a newslet­ter from Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, a lead­ing cen­ter of excel­lence in the field of cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Essen­tial­ly, they explain how a decline in the health of neu­ronal synaps­es can lead to a decline in mem­o­ry and gen­er­al men­tal fitness.
Neuronal Synapse
For those you aren’t famil­iar with synaps­es, they are the spaces between neu­rons where the elec­tri­cal sig­nal trav­el­ing down from the tree-like den­drites at the top of the cell through the cell body and down the tubu­lar axon changes into a chem­i­cal sig­nal (neu­ro­trans­mit­ter) to talk to neigh­bor­ing cells. In this pic­ture from the arti­cle, the neu­ro­trans­mit­ter is rep­re­sent­ed by the red dots. We have more than 100 bil­lion neu­rons that can be con­nect­ed to hun­dreds of oth­er cells by as many as 10,000 synapses.

Here are a few good quotes from the arti­cle … [Read more…] about Want to Improve Mem­o­ry? Strength­en Your Synapses.