Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

cognitive-tasks

Does music facilitate or impair cognitive task performance? It depends…

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Does Music Boost Your Cog­ni­tive Per­for­mance? (Sci­en­tif­ic American):

“Music makes life bet­ter in so many ways. It ele­vates mood, reduces stress and eas­es pain. Music is heart-healthy, because it can low­er blood pres­sure, reduce heart rate and decrease stress hor­mones in the blood. It also con­nects us with oth­ers and enhances social bonds. Music can even improve work­out endurance and increase our enjoy­ment of chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties [Read more…] about Does music facil­i­tate or impair cog­ni­tive task per­for­mance? It depends…

Will self-driving vehicles lead to a surge of brain training?

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Brain train­ing may be required for occu­pants of dri­ver­less vehi­cles (Traf­fic Technology):

“A much-tout­ed per­ceived ben­e­fit of autonomous vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy is that work­ing and a vari­ety of leisure activ­i­ties could be per­formed dur­ing the time freed up from being behind the wheel.

How­ev­er, [Read more…] about Will self-dri­ving vehi­cles lead to a surge of brain training?

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

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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 to detect an odour at all.

Odour iden­ti­fi­ca­tion dif­fi­cul­ties are com­mon in peo­ple with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, includ­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease [Read more…] about Study finds promise in smell train­ing to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and improve brain health in old­er adults

Addressing aging-related cognitive decline via targeted training using visual sweeps: Key neurotech patent by Posit Science

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visual sweeps
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 8,215,961

Today we are fea­tur­ing a 2012 patent by Posit Sci­ence Cor­po­ra­tion, the devel­op­er of Brain­HQ cog­ni­tive train­ing system.

U.S. Patent No. 8,215,961: Cog­ni­tive train­ing using visu­al sweeps

  • Assignee(s): Posit Sci­ence Corporation
  • Inventor(s): Michael M. Merzenich, Peter B. Delahunt, Joseph L. Hardy, Stephen G. Lis­berg­er, Hen­ry W. Mahncke
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neu­rocog­ni­tive training
  • Issue Date: July 10, 2012

SharpBrains’ Take:

The back­ground of the ‘961 patent describes the decline in cog­ni­tive func­tion asso­ci­at­ed with aging, such as the reduced abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend and respond to stim­u­lus. [Read more…] about Address­ing aging-relat­ed cog­ni­tive decline via tar­get­ed train­ing using visu­al sweeps: Key neu­rotech patent by Posit Science

Study: Why do (some) college students misuse ADHD medication?

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stimulant-drug-abuse.

The use of ADHD meds with­out a pre­scrip­tion, i.e., non­med­ical use, is a large and per­haps grow­ing prob­lem on col­lege cam­pus­es nation­wide. Although the per­cent of stu­dents who engage in non­med­ical use of ADHD meds varies wide­ly across dif­fer­ent schools, rates exceed­ing 30% have been report­ed at some cam­pus­es. [Read more…] about Study: Why do (some) col­lege stu­dents mis­use ADHD medication?

Social Connections for Cognitive Fitness

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We human beings are social ani­mals. It seems intu­itive (even for intro­verts!) that social con­tact has ben­e­fits. Obvi­ous­ly we need oth­er peo­ple to ful­fill basic needs such mak­ing sure that our genes out­live. Maybe less obvi­ous­ly we seem to need oth­er peo­ple to main­tain pic_pascalepost.jpgade­quate lev­els of men­tal well being and motivation.

Even less obvi­ous­ly, social con­tact may help us improve our brain functions…

Men­tal fit­ness seems to depend on a large part on being con­nect­ed with oth­er peo­ple. For instance peo­ple with low social sup­port seem to be more prone to men­tal ill­ness (McGuire & Raleigh, 1986). In 2007, Glad­stone and col­leagues stud­ied 218 patients with major depres­sion and found out that low social sup­port, espe­cial­ly com­ing from the fam­i­ly, was asso­ci­at­ed with chron­ic depression.

Mere­ly imag­in­ing lone­li­ness can neg­a­tive­ly affect our behavior…

[Read more…] about Social Con­nec­tions for Cog­ni­tive Fitness