Study: Danc­ing may off­set some effects of aging in the brain (CSU release):

“A new study led by a Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty researcher shows that kick­ing up your heels can actu­al­ly be good for your nog­gin.

The research team demon­strat­ed for the first time that decline in the brain’s “white mat­ter” can be detect­ed over a peri­od of only six months in healthy aging adults Read the rest of this entry »

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Last year I got very inter­est­ed in the func­tion­ing of the human brain and the sci­ence behind mind­ful­ness and learn­ing [1], so was quite excit­ed  to attend the Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit [2] in Decem­ber, indulging in the lat­est trends in applied neu­ro­science and dig­i­tal inno­va­tion.

The Sum­mit focused on the theme of rein­vent­ing brain health in the dig­i­tal age, and brought togeth­er lead­ing researchers, entre­pre­neurs, financiers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers pas­sion­ate with the mis­sion of mov­ing neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive research from sci­ence labs towards appli­ca­tions in Health, Well­ness and Edu­ca­tion. Here’s a sum­ma­ry of the many things I dis­cov­ered. Read the rest of this entry »

Tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs are cre­at­ing enor­mous poten­tial for the future of neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and trig­ger­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate nov­el strate­gies for both assess­ment and inter­ven­tion. Cog­ni­tive fit­ness is grow­ing into a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar indus­try. Tar­gets have shift­ed from diag­no­sis and treat­ment of estab­lished dis­eases to ear­ly inter­ven­tion, pre­ven­tion, and cog­ni­tive enhance­ment. Ubiq­ui­tous mobile devices enable both active and pas­sive sens­ing of our cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al states, and “the Inter­net of things” promis­es to Read the rest of this entry »

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Don’t Like Their Faces? Train Your Brain to Feel More Pos­i­tive (IEEE Spec­trum):

“Like it or not, we often have pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive feel­ings about a total stranger based sole­ly on the looks of his or her face…Last week, researchers described, in the jour­nal PLOS Biol­o­gy, a brain train­ing sys­tem that Read the rest of this entry »

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Being Super Busy May* Be Good For Your Brain (Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine):

“There hasn’t been much sci­en­tif­ic research on busy­ness itself, although it’s some­thing that we talk about so often,” explains Sara Fes­ti­ni, a cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las Cen­ter for Vital Longevi­ty, a co-author of the new research pub­lished this week Read the rest of this entry »