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cognitive-skills

Ten resources, brain teasers and illusions to celebrate Brain Awareness Week 2023

March 15, 2023 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

We invite you to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week (March 13–19th, 2023) by learn­ing more about that key yet often-over­looked organ and by putting it to good use via some fun brain teasers and illusions 🙂

  1. Can you con­nect these pairs of words?
  2. Try these quick teasers to chal­lenge your work­ing memory
  3. Three clas­sic opti­cal illu­sions, explained
  4. Test your cog­ni­tive skills with these proverbs
  5. Math teas­er: Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?
  6. What do you see? And, can you unsee it?
  7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es such as this one and ways to mit­i­gate them

About Brain Awareness Week:

Every March, Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) unites the efforts of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Activ­i­ties are lim­it­ed only by the orga­niz­ers’ imag­i­na­tions and include open days at neu­ro­science labs; exhi­bi­tions about the brain; lec­tures on brain-relat­ed top­ics; social media cam­paigns; dis­plays at libraries and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters; class­room work­shops; and more. This year BAW takes place March 13–19th, 2023.

  1. Vis­it the Cal­en­dar of Events Here
  2. Try many games, rid­dles, and puz­zles Here
  3. Explore use­ful fact­sheets Here

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Brain Teasers, brain-awareness-week, cognitive biases, cognitive-skills, fun brain teasers, optical-illusions, quick teasers, Working-memory

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

February 20, 2023 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alto Neuroscience, Alzheimer’s Disease, brain stimulation, Brain Teasers, brain-teaser, BrainHealth Week, cerebral, cognitive-skills, dancing, mental health, mental-fitness, personalized, salud, salud cerebral, Sonde, tDCS, TMS, vocal biomarker

Combined tDCS neurostimulation and cognitive training found to improve working memory among older adults–especially those with lower starting capacity

October 25, 2022 by SharpBrains

Giv­ing mem­o­ry a lift: Can games and brain stim­u­la­tion do it? (Med­ical­New­sTo­day):

A person’s work­ing mem­o­ry may decline with age or if they have demen­tia, Parkinson’s dis­ease, or have had a stroke. When this occurs, the loss can affect their day-to-day qual­i­ty of life, turn­ing even sim­ple tasks into often-demor­al­iz­ing chal­lenges. [Read more…] about Com­bined tDCS neu­rostim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing found to improve work­ing mem­o­ry among old­er adults–especially those with low­er start­ing capacity

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging, brain stimulation, Brain-Plasticity, COGNISANT, cognitive needs, cognitive-functioning, cognitive-skills, Cognitive-Training, dementia, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, neuroplasticity, Parkinsons-disease, prefrontal-cortex, strengthen working memory, tDCS, Transcranial-direct-current-stimulation, Working-memory, working-memory-training

Helping young brains fight off anxiety by training and raising cognitive control

July 23, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

Anx­i­ety is one of the most com­mon child­hood men­tal dis­or­ders. About 7% of chil­dren suf­fer from it at any giv­en time, with near­ly 1 in 3 ado­les­cents expe­ri­enc­ing it some­time dur­ing their teen years.

For an anx­ious child, seem­ing­ly nor­mal activ­i­ties can be hard. Wor­ried kids have trou­ble adjust­ing to school, mak­ing friends, and learn­ing. They can feel inhib­it­ed, avoid­ing chal­lenges by run­ning away or retreat­ing into them­selves. While par­ents may feel des­per­ate to help, their approach­es can back­fire. For exam­ple, try­ing to talk kids out of their feel­ings or keep them away from anx­i­ety-pro­duc­ing sit­u­a­tions may inad­ver­tent­ly make the anx­i­ety worse. [Read more…] about Help­ing young brains fight off anx­i­ety by train­ing and rais­ing cog­ni­tive control

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anxiety, brain markers, brain training, childhood, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, cognitive-capacities, cognitive-control, cognitive-skills, Cognitive-Training, frontal-lobes, Kate Fitzgerald, Kid Power program, Learning, mental-disorders, National-Institutes-of-Health, neurochemicals, neuroscience, Working-memory

Becoming better mind-wanderers to boost problem-solving and mood

July 12, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

I’m a big believ­er in day­dream­ing now and then—especially when I’m out hik­ing. There’s some­thing about being in nature that helps me let go of dai­ly cares and allows my mind to wan­der where it will, which feels great and often jump­starts my cre­ativ­i­ty as a writer and musician.

I admit, though, I’ve been trou­bled by research show­ing how mind-wan­der­ing could make me less pro­duc­tive or depressed—the last thing I need! But it turns out this gap between per­son­al expe­ri­ence and sci­ence may best be explained by how researchers have lumped togeth­er dif­fer­ent kinds of mind-wan­der­ing. Not all research has dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed between depres­sive rumi­na­tion (like replay­ing an ongo­ing dis­agree­ment with our spouse in our minds) and pleas­ant day­dream­ing (let­ting our minds wan­der freely). [Read more…] about Becom­ing bet­ter mind-wan­der­ers to boost prob­lem-solv­ing and mood

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: brain-activity, cognitive, cognitive-abilities, cognitive-skills, creativity, daydreaming, electroencephalogram, mind-wandering, nature, neural marker, problem-solving, productivity

The neuroscience behind why our brains will need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’

July 6, 2021 by The Conversation

With COVID-19 vac­cines work­ing and restric­tions lift­ing across the coun­try, it’s final­ly time for those now vac­ci­nat­ed who’ve been hun­kered down at home to ditch the sweat­pants and reemerge from their Net­flix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your for­mer social life. [Read more…] about The neu­ro­science behind why our brains will need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anxiety, brain-teaser, cognitive-function, cognitive-skills, COVID-19, hippocampus, mental health, neuroscience, social distancing, social homeostasis, social memory, Stress

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Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

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  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

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