Will personalized meditation apps be able to replicate the experience of working with a coach?

__________ ‘Men­tal fit­ness’ start­up Ele­vate Labs launch­es a per­son­al­ized med­i­ta­tion app called Bal­ance (TechCrunch): “While investors are already writ­ing big checks for med­i­ta­tion star­tups, Ele­vate Labs founder and CEO Jesse Pickard said that none of the exist­ing med­i­ta­tion apps can replace the expe­ri­ence of work­ing with a human coach.

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Can trained older brains outperform untrained younger ones at demanding cognitive tasks? Quick answer: YES

__________ Online brain games can extend in-game ‘cog­ni­tive youth’ into old age (Sci­ence News): “A Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine-led study has found that online brain game exer­cis­es can enable peo­ple in their 70s and even 80s to mul­ti­task cog­ni­tive­ly as well as indi­vid­u­als 50 years their junior. This is an increas­ing­ly valu­able skill, giv­en today’s daily…

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Why we need to extend our mental lifespans to match our physical ones

_________ ‘Beep!’ This is one of the most mad­den­ing com­put­er games I’ve ever played. I’m track­ing a flock of birds, and when I hit the right one, it explodes with a sat­is­fy­ing ‘phutt’. But as I get bet­ter at spot­ting them, the birds scat­ter ever more wild­ly across the screen, and I hear that unforgiving…

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Study finds promise in smell training to harness neuroplasticity and improve brain health in older adults

___ An impaired sense of smell can sig­nal cog­ni­tive decline, but ‘smell train­ing’ could help (The Con­ver­sa­tion): “As we age, we often have prob­lems with our abil­i­ty to smell (called olfac­to­ry dys­func­tion). Old­er peo­ple might not be able to iden­ti­fy an odour or dif­fer­en­ti­ate one odour from anoth­er. In some cas­es they might not be able…

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Edutainment meets brain development…for good and for bad

___ “In 1954, Walt Dis­ney was the first to envi­sion a new form of enter­tain­ment that meld­ed tra­di­tion­al fun and education—a form that he dubbed “edu­tain­ment.” By the lat­ter part of the 20th cen­tu­ry, this form had mor­phed into edu­ca­tion­al toys and games, a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar indus­try that is pro­ject­ed to cap­ture a full 36 percent…

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