brain-fitness-research

Minding the Aging Brain

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Cog­ni­tive train­ing (the basis for what we call “brain fit­ness” these days) has a wide array of appli­ca­tions. The most recentneurons one, which is cap­tur­ing pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, monop­o­liz­ing media cov­er­age, and cre­at­ing cer­tain con­fu­sion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are for­tu­nate to have Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, offer today his great voice to this con­ver­sa­tion. Enjoy!

- Alvaro
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Mind­ing the Aging Brain

– By Joshua R. Stein­er­man, M.D.

Sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, artists, and experts from all fields of human endeav­or lament: it ain’t easy get­ting old­er. It? Do they refer to frailty and dis­abil­i­ty? To bod­i­ly dis­ease? To life at its essence?

It’s all in your head

The mind is not set in stone, but it is encased by bone. It’s real­ly all about the brain, the hyphen in the mind-body conun­drum. That squishy gray neu­ronal jun­gle is the inter­face between inter­nal life and envi­ron­men­tal sen­sa­tions and stim­u­la­tion. As expect­ed, the brain shows signs of aging just as a wrin­kled brow, a stooped pos­ture, or an arthrit­ic fin­ger might. The most com­mon brain changes observed in aging and in age-asso­ci­at­ed neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­ease include:

[Read more…] about Mind­ing the Aging Brain

Math Brain Teaser: Concentric Shapes or The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

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If you missed Part 1, also writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll, you can start there and then come back here to Part 2.

Con­cen­tric Shapes:
The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

Dif­fi­cul­ty: HARDER
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)
Vitruvian Man

Ques­tion:
Imag­ine a square with­in a cir­cle with­in a square. The cir­cle just grazes each square at exact­ly four points. Find the ratio of the area of the larg­er square to the smaller.

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out many of the same skills as in Part I: spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­o­ry (tem­po­ral lobes), log­ic (frontal lobes), plan­ning (frontal lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Solu­tion:
Two to one.

Expla­na­tion:
Draw the small­er square’s diag­o­nal to see that the the small­er square’s diag­o­nal is the diam­e­ter of the cir­cle. Divide the larg­er square into two equal rec­tan­gu­lar halves to see that the larg­er square’s side is also the diam­e­ter of the cir­cle. This means that the small­er square’s diag­o­nal equals the larg­er square’s side. (Or, if you pre­fer, sim­ply rotate the inner square by 45 degrees.) As we’ve seen in the ear­li­er puz­zle “The Unkind­est Cut Of All,” the area of the small­er square is half that of the larg­er, mak­ing the ratio two to one.

 

More brain teas­er games:

Math Brain Teaser: The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 1 of 2

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In hon­or of Math­e­mat­ics Aware­ness Month, here is anoth­er math­e­mat­i­cal brain ben­der from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Carroll.

The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 1 of 2

Dif­fi­cul­ty: HARD
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)
Square

Ques­tion:
The area of a square is equal to the square of the length of one side. So, for exam­ple, a square with side length 3 has area (32), or 9. What is the area of a square whose diag­o­nal is length 5?

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out your spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­o­ry (tem­po­ral lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Solu­tion:
12.5

Expla­na­tion:
I am espe­cial­ly fond of these two ways to solve this problem:

1. Draw the right tri­an­gle whose hypotenuse is the square’s diag­o­nal, and whose two legs are two sides of the square. Then use the Pythagore­an The­o­rem (a^2 + b^2 = c^2) to solve for the length of each side. Since two sides are equal, we get (a^2 + a^2 = c^2), or (2(a^2) = c^2) ). Since c is 5, 2(a^2) = 25, mak­ing a^2 equal to 25/2, or 12.5. Since the area of the square is a^2, we’re done: it’s 12.5.

2. Tilt the square 45 degrees and draw a square around it such the the cor­ners of the orig­i­nal square just touch the mid­dles of the sides of the new, larg­er square. The new square has sides each 5 units long (the diag­o­nal of the small­er square), and it there­fore has area 25. How­ev­er, a clos­er inspec­tion reveals that the area of the larg­er square must be exact­ly twice that of the small­er. There­fore the small­er square has area 25/2, or 12.5.

You can now go on to Con­cen­tric Shapes: The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

 

More brain teas­er games: