Casual-Games

Cognitive Health News Round-Up

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Round-up of inter­est­ing recent news on cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness: the field is in motion.

1) Bay­crest cre­ates Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness with $10-mil­lion Invest­ment from Ontario Gov­ern­ment (Cana­da NewsWire)

2) Cog­ni­tive tests are the best way to select med­ical stu­dents (EurekAlert)

3) High blood pres­sure hard on the aging brain (Reuters)

4) Alzheimer’s tests ben­e­fi­cial for seniors (Atlanta-Jour­nal Constitutional)

5) Demen­tia-Dread­ing Baby Boomers Spur Race to Invent Brain Games (Bloomberg)

6) Viv­i­ty Labs launch­es Fit Brains brain-train­ing game site (VentureBeat) 

7) Depres­sion and Alzheimer’s (NHS Choices)

For select­ed quotes and com­ments, [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health News Round-Up

Brain Fitness and Exercise in Japan

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Fun arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post: Aging Japan­ese Keep Their Minds Moving

  • “part of a broad range of men­tal acu­ity prod­ucts that are all the rage in Japan: books, toys, food and oth­er things, sold with the pledge that they can reen­er­gize aging brains.”
  • “Ana­lysts said the cur­rent brain-train­ing trend began in 2004 and 2005 when video games such as Sega Toys Co.‘s Brain Train­er and Nin­ten­do Co.‘s Brain Age became smash hits. Since its launch, Brain Age for Nin­ten­do’s DS con­sole has sold 6.7 mil­lion copies around the world, includ­ing 3.4 mil­lion in Japan.”

We were for­tu­nate to inter­view a Japan­ese expert on this trend a few months ago. In Brain Train­ing and “Brain-ism” in Japan, we can learn a lot, such as

Brain Workout for Your Frontal Lobes

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Your frontal lobes are home to your exec­u­tive func­tions, includ­ing pat­tern recog­ni­tion. Here’s a puz­zle to chal­lenge your abil­i­ty to uncov­er a pattern.

In this puz­zle, three num­bers: 16, 14, and 38, need to be assigned to one of the rows of num­bers below. To which row should each num­ber be assigned — A, B, or C?

A: 0 6 8 9 3
B: 5 13 2 10 16
C: 7 1 47 11 17

Why do we care about pat­tern recog­ni­tion skills? Well, if you’re an ath­lete, then you want to con­stant­ly improve your abil­i­ty to see spa­tial pat­terns on the court or field quick­ly so you can act on them — by pass­ing to open space or attack­ing the goal at the right moment. Stock traders look for pat­terns in the mar­ket behav­ior to guide them on buy­ing and sell­ing deci­sions. Chess mas­ters are experts at rec­og­niz­ing com­pli­cat­ed moves. Read­ing is also pat­tern recognition.

So, you use pat­tern recog­ni­tion all the time whether you know it or not. But remem­ber, using a skill is great, but you have to keep exer­cis­ing it a lit­tle bit hard­er each time to devel­op it further.

Have you solved the puz­zle yet? If not, here’s a hint:
It’s not a math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lem. The numer­i­cal val­ues are irrelevant.

Keep read­ing for the answer…
[Read more…] about Brain Work­out for Your Frontal Lobes

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Games, with a neuroscience angle

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No mat­ter what we are read­ing or doing, there is always the need to take a lit­tle break and chal­lenge our minds (and to learn a bit about how our brains work). Here you have a selec­tion of the 10 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed most in this site.

1. Do you think you know the col­ors?: the Stroop Test

2. Can you count?: Bas­ket­ball atten­tion experiment

3. Plan­ning is not that easy: Tow­ers of Hanoi

4. Inter­ac­tive visu­al illu­sion: the Muller-Lyer Illusion

5. Who is this?: A very impor­tant lit­tle guy

5. How many…: Train your Frontal and Pari­etal lobes

6. What’s the miss­ing num­ber: Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion Brain Teaser

7. Who’s the eldest?: Rea­son­ing Skills Brain Teaser

8. Brain Puz­zle for the Whole Brain: The Blind Beggar

9. Is a cir­cle a cir­cle?: Visu­al Per­cep­tion Brain Teaser

10. How is this possible?
[Read more…] about Top 10 Brain Teasers and Games, with a neu­ro­science angle

Neuroplasticity and Lifelong Learning

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What a month. We promised you with our blog title 7 months ago that we would be your “Win­dow into the Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion”, but we could­n’t have pre­dict­ed that CBS, Time Mag­a­zine, WSJ, NYT and oth­er main­stream media would be such great allies in this neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty effort.

Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­it­ed time, you can receive a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of our Brain Fit­ness 101 e‑Guide: Answers to your Top 25 Ques­tions, writ­ten by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, by sub­scrib­ing to our month­ly newslet­ter. You can sub­scribe Here.

Brain Fit­ness for All

Let’s start with (Wall Street Jour­nal Sci­ence Edi­tor) Sharon Beg­ley’s arti­cle titled How The Brain Rewires Itself, based on her Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain book. She pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing overview, sum­ma­rized as

FOR DECADES, THE PREVAILING DOGMA IN neu­ro­science was that the adult human brain is essen­tial­ly immutable, hard­wired, fixed in form and func­tion, so that by the time we reach adult­hood we are pret­ty much stuck with what we have. Yes, it can cre­ate (and lose) synaps­es, the con­nec­tions between neu­rons that encode mem­o­ries and learn­ing… . The doc­trine of the unchang­ing human brain has had pro­found ram­i­fi­ca­tions. …But research in the past few years has over­thrown the dog­ma. In its place has come the real­iza­tion that the adult brain retains impres­sive pow­ers of “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty” — the abil­i­ty to change its struc­ture and func­tion in response to expe­ri­ence. These aren’t minor tweaks either.

In short, the brain is not that dif­fer­ent from a mus­cle (bet­ter said, a group of mus­cles). It can be trained. At any age. Not with mag­i­cal pills or cures, but with focus and dis­ci­plined training.
[Read more…] about Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Life­long Learning

Is it necessary to train under the supervision of a doctor or other specialist?

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Fitness TrainerHere is ques­tion 11 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. To down­load the com­plete ver­sion, please click here

Ques­tion:
Is it nec­es­sary to train under the super­vi­sion of a doc­tor or oth­er specialist?

Key Points:

  • Recre­ation­al activ­i­ties have always been done for fun either social­ly or independently.
  • Most com­put­er-based soft­ware pro­grams are intend­ed for you to use on your own com­put­er when it suits you. Think exer­cise and fit­ness, not medicine.
  • A few pro­grams used for peo­ple with med­ical con­di­tions may be super­vised or reviewed by the treat­ing neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, physi­cian, or oth­er health­care personnel.

Answer: [Read more…] about Is it nec­es­sary to train under the super­vi­sion of a doc­tor or oth­er specialist?