Pump up those little grey cells

Great arti­cle in the UK’s Sun­day Times yes­ter­day: Pump up those lit­tle grey cells, list­ing a vari­ety of free or inex­pen­sive brain health-relat­ed resources. We are hon­ored (even hon­oured, I’d dare say) that they start­ed the list with our com­pli­men­ta­ry Brain Fit­ness 101 e‑Guide: — “The sci­ence behind some of the more out­landish claims for…

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Cognitive Development and Brain Research: Articles, Books, Papers (ASA)

We had a very fun ses­sion titled Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health pro­fes­sion­als a cou­ple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 atten­dants and very good par­tic­i­pa­tion, show­ing great inter­est in the top­ic. I can’t wait to see the eval­u­a­tions. These are some…

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On The Brain

Very intense week, and very fun. I will be writ­ing more about this week’s 3 speak­ing events, but let me say now that our key mes­sages 1) our brains remain flex­i­ble dur­ing our life­times, 2) we can refine our brains with tar­get­ed prac­tice, 3) good brain exer­cise, or “men­tal cross-training”, requires nov­el­ty, vari­ety, and increas­ing level…

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Neuroplasticity 101 and Brain Health Glossary

Giv­en the grow­ing num­ber of arti­cles in the pop­u­lar press men­tion­ing words such as “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty”, “fMRI” and “cog­ni­tive reserve”, let’s review some key find­ings, con­cepts and terms. First, a pre­scient quote by Span­ish neu­ro­sci­en­tist San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934): “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”. Thanks to new neuroimaging…

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Stress and Short Term Memory

We all know chron­ic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our memory?Interestingly, acute stress can help you focus and remem­ber things more vividly.Chronic stress, on the oth­er hand, reduces your abil­i­ty to focus and can specif­i­cal­ly dam­age cells in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain struc­ture crit­i­cal to encod­ing short term memory.When is stress chron­ic? When you feel out of con­trol of your life. You may feel irri­ta­ble or anx­ious. While every indi­vid­ual varies in their response the type and quan­ti­ty of stress, there are some things you can do to feel more in con­trol of your envi­ron­ment. This sense of empow­er­ment can low­er your stress, and as a result, help your memory.

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Yoga and stress management

Steven Edwards at Wired Blog writes a post titled Yoga Boosts Brain’s GABA Lev­els, say­ing that “Par­tic­i­pants in the yoga group had a 27% increase in GABA lev­els, while those in the read­ing group remained unchanged. Co-authors Chris Streeter from BUSM and Domenic Ciraulo point­ed out that this research shows a method of treat­ing low…

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