Update: To improve sleep, combine general sleep hygiene with mindful and cognitive techniques

———- Had a good night’s sleep?  We hope you did, so you can ful­ly enjoy all the fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cles and brain teasers in the new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ eNewslet­ter…includ­ing excel­lent advice on how to com­bine gen­er­al sleep hygiene with mind­ful and cog­ni­tive tech­niques, and a book give­away.  Hap­py read­ing! New think­ing: For a good night’s rest,…

Read More

How to properly “Use it or Lose it”: Kundalini Yoga vs. Crossword Puzzles

Yoga bet­ter than cross­words for pre­vent­ing pre-Alzheimer’s mem­o­ry loss (The Tele­graph): “His­tor­i­cal­ly and anec­do­tal­ly, yoga has been thought to be ben­e­fi­cial in age­ing well, but this is the sci­en­tif­ic demon­stra­tion of that benefit…We’re con­vert­ing his­tor­i­cal wis­dom into the high lev­el of evi­dence required for doc­tors to rec­om­mend ther­a­py to their patients.

Read More

Do Crossword Puzzles Help to Counteract the Aging Process? If so, Which Ones and How?

Recent­ly there has been an ongo­ing debate as to whether attempt­ing cross­words reg­u­lar­ly can stave off cog­ni­tive decline, which is the hall­mark of healthy aging and demen­tia. As with many areas of psy­chol­o­gy the answer to this ques­tion may not be as clear-cut as one would hope. Before con­sid­er­ing the evi­dence for whether cross­word participation…

Read More

Improve Memory with Sleep, Practice, and Testing

There are whole mar­kets (think cross­words, herbal sup­ple­ments, drugs, brain fit­ness soft­ware) aimed at help­ing us improve our mem­o­ry. Now, what is “mem­o­ry”? how does the process of mem­o­ry work? Dr. Bill Klemm, Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, explains a very impor­tant con­cept below. — Alvaro ——- Get­ting from Here to There: Mak­ing Mem­o­ry Con­sol­i­da­tion Work…

Read More