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Five ways to clear foggy brains and improve cognitive well-being

April 14, 2022 by Greater Good Science Center Leave a Comment

The oth­er day, my friend Kristi­na told me that one evening she unin­ten­tion­al­ly locked her hus­band in a down­stairs part of their house. She had known he was down there, but while dis­tract­ed­ly lock­ing the door for the night, for­got com­plete­ly. She didn’t real­ize what she’d done until she saw a text from her hus­band the next morn­ing ask­ing her to please let him out.

“I couldn’t believe I did that to him,” she says. “I was stunned and alarmed that I had no aware­ness, in the moment or after­ward, of what I had done.” [Read more…] about Five ways to clear fog­gy brains and improve cog­ni­tive well-being

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: cognition, cognitive challenge, cognitive well being, cognitive-functioning, exercise, foggy brains

On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

October 29, 2021 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers.

#1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­el­ing):

“Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than 90 min­utes on screens were not neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by it. But at high­er amounts of screen time, their life sat­is­fac­tion dropped significantly—they were less hap­py with their lives, and it got worse the more time they spent … (the) study also found that teens who got more reg­u­lar exer­cise had greater life sat­is­fac­tion and few­er phys­i­cal com­plaints for both gen­ders. Not only that, the effects were large­ly unre­lat­ed to how much time a teen spent on screens, so that if teens exer­cised more, it could poten­tial­ly undo the dam­age to their well-being that went along with even six or eight hours of screen time.”

#2. Stud­ies find grow­ing evi­dence link­ing weight, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and depres­sion:

‘Obe­si­ty and depres­sion are both major glob­al health chal­lenges, and our study pro­vides the most robust evi­dence to date that high­er BMI caus­es depres­sion,’ said lead author Jess O’Loughlin. ‘Under­stand­ing whether phys­i­cal or social fac­tors are respon­si­ble for this rela­tion­ship can help inform effec­tive strate­gies to improve men­tal health and wellbeing.’

#3. Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psy­chother­a­py:

Let’s hope! — “I think Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT) will con­tin­ue to be adapt­ed for more prob­lems, diag­noses, and con­di­tions. We will train many kinds of care­givers, teach­ers, front-line work­ers, police, and even politicians.”

#4. Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities:

“We dis­cov­ered that the most pre­dic­tive mod­el – rep­re­sent­ing the most com­mon mode of city nav­i­ga­tion – was not the quick­est path, but instead one that tried to min­i­mize the angle between the direc­tion a per­son is mov­ing and the line from the per­son to their des­ti­na­tion … Evo­lu­tion is a sto­ry of trade-offs, not opti­miza­tions, and the cog­ni­tive load of cal­cu­lat­ing a per­fect path rather than rely­ing on the sim­pler point­ing method might not be worth a few saved min­utes. After all, ear­ly humans had to pre­serve brain pow­er for dodg­ing stam­ped­ing ele­phants, just like peo­ple today might need to focus on avoid­ing aggres­sive SUVs.”

#5. Trend: Har­ness­ing dig­i­tal tech to improve men­tal health and well­ness:

“Designed with the help of Dutch aca­d­e­m­ic Isabela Granic … the game is cen­tred around an avatar who stays in bed for the day and aims to relax play­ers by using sooth­ing music, mut­ed colours and self-care prac­tices. Think med­i­ta­tive tasks such as word games and guid­ed breath­ing exer­cis­es. There’s no way to win, com­pete or binge – in fact, it delib­er­ate­ly starts to feel bor­ing after a few min­utes of play, which dis­in­cen­tivizes mind­less scrolling. #Self­Care was an instant hit, gar­ner­ing half a mil­lion down­loads in its first six weeks with­out any advertising…”

#6. Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”:

“What made this proof-of-prin­ci­ple tri­al suc­cess­ful was the dis­cov­ery of a neur­al bio­mark­er – a spe­cif­ic pat­tern of brain activ­i­ty that indi­cates the onset of symp­toms – and the team’s abil­i­ty to cus­tomize a new DBS device to respond only when it rec­og­nizes that pat­tern. The device then stim­u­lates a dif­fer­ent area of the brain cir­cuit, cre­at­ing on-demand, imme­di­ate ther­a­py that is unique to both the patient’s brain and the neur­al cir­cuit caus­ing her illness.”

#7. Six guide­lines to nav­i­gate the Aduhelm con­tro­ver­sy and (hope­ful­ly) help patients with Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s Dis­ease:

“After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that the pre­scrip­tion drug be giv­en to indi­vid­u­als with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s, the groups in which the med­ica­tion was studied.
Yet this nar­row­er rec­om­men­da­tion rais­es ques­tions. What does a diag­no­sis of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment mean? Is Aduhelm appro­pri­ate for all peo­ple with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, or only some? And who should decide which patients qual­i­fy for treat­ment: demen­tia spe­cial­ists or pri­ma­ry care physicians?”

#8. The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) hard­ens data secu­ri­ty rules for health apps and devices:

“With data breach­es on the rise, the FTC is look­ing to make health apps more account­able for telling patients when their data has been exposed.”
And here are a few of our favorite brain teasers, in case you missed them…
  • Cel­e­brate Hal­loween with nine great riddles
  • Test your stress lev­el with this quick brain teaser
  • Where’s the baby?
  • Learn about cog­ni­tion and men­tal self-rotation

 

Wish­ing you and yours a sweet Hal­loween and a healthy month of November,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Aduhelm, Brain Teasers, CBT, cognitive load, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, cognitive-therapy, depression, digital health, digital tech, early-stage Alzheimer’s, exercise, FTC, mild-cognitive-impairment, neural biomarker, neural circuit, neuromodulation, neuroplasticity, obesity, pacemaker for the brain, Physical-activity, Psychotherapy, screen time, weight

Study finds ultimate hack to protect teen brains from harmful screen time: Exercise (and good role-modeling)

October 27, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

Recent­ly, the Wall Street Jour­nal ran an arti­cle about how Insta­gram was affect­ing teen men­tal health. In par­tic­u­lar, some inter­nal stud­ies at Face­book (which owns Insta­gram) appeared to con­firm that when teen girls used the site, they suf­fered poor­er body image and were at increased risk for depres­sion and eat­ing disorders.

But is social media use itself at fault for mak­ing teen men­tal health worse? While some stud­ies sug­gest it is, oth­ers paint a more nuanced pic­ture, find­ing it dif­fi­cult to pin­point prob­lems with screen time itself ver­sus oth­er fac­tors some­times asso­ci­at­ed with social media use that may reduce teen well-being—like cyber­bul­ly­ing or social iso­la­tion. Plus, cur­rent con­clu­sions are often based on data from a sin­gle point in time, which makes it hard to prove that extend­ed screen time actu­al­ly caus­es poor­er men­tal health.

Now, find­ings from an inter­na­tion­al study on teens (details below) add more to this debate and point toward poten­tial guide­lines for screen use. Focus­ing on over 577,000 ado­les­cents from 42 coun­tries across Europe and North Amer­i­ca, the study’s results sug­gest that we might not have to wor­ry about screen time in small­er dos­es, until it reach­es a cer­tain harm­ful lev­el, and that exer­cise can play a pro­tec­tive role no mat­ter how much time a teen spends on screens. [Read more…] about Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-modeling)

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: adolescents, exercise, Facebook, Instagram, mental health, mental wellbeing, Physical-activity, psychosomatic, role-modeling, screen time, teen, teen mental health

Promote brain plasticity and keep your mind at ease by taking your daily “exercise pill”

July 14, 2021 by The Conversation

As with many oth­er physi­cians, rec­om­mend­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to patients was just a doc­tor chore for me – until a few years ago. That was because I myself was not very active. Over the years, as I picked up box­ing and became more active, I got first­hand expe­ri­ence of pos­i­tive impacts on my mind. I also start­ed research­ing the effects of dance and move­ment ther­a­pies on trau­ma and anx­i­ety in refugee chil­dren, and I learned a lot more about the neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of exer­cise. [Read more…] about Pro­mote brain plas­tic­i­ty and keep your mind at ease by tak­ing your dai­ly “exer­cise pill”

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anxiety, BDNF, brain-cells, Brain-Plasticity, cognitive-performance, exercise, exercise pill, hippocampus, memory function, neurobiology, Neurons, neuroplasticity, neuroscientist, neurotransmitters, neurotrophic factor, Physical-activity, psychiatrist

New book outlines the five lifestyle pillars to “build a better brain at any age”

May 14, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

Like many peo­ple over 60, I some­times lose my keys or for­get the names of favorite films. When I do, it makes me won­der: Is this the begin­ning of cog­ni­tive decline? Or, worse, am I fat­ed to fol­low in the foot­steps of my moth­er, who died of Lewy-body demen­tia in her 70s?

Accord­ing to neu­ro­sur­geon San­jay Gup­ta, CNN med­ical cor­re­spon­dent and author of the new book Keep Sharp: Build­ing a Bet­ter Brain at Any Age, the answer is no. For­get­ful­ness is nor­mal at all ages, and your genes don’t doom you to demen­tia. What’s impor­tant is tak­ing care of your brain in the best way pos­si­ble, he argues.

“You can affect your brain’s think­ing and mem­o­ry far more than you real­ize or appre­ci­ate, and the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple haven’t even begun to try,” he writes.

Gup­ta dis­tills results from hun­dreds of research stud­ies to help read­ers under­stand what’s known (and not known) [Read more…] about New book out­lines the five lifestyle pil­lars to “build a bet­ter brain at any age”

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: brain health, brain resiliency, Brain-Fitness, cognitive decline, cognitive strengths, cognitive-abilities, cognitive-capacities, cognitive-reserve, dementia, exercise, forgetfulness, keep sharp, Lifelong-learning, lifestyle, Mediterranean-like diet, memory lapses, Sanjay Gupta, sleep

Growing research supports Heart Rate Variability (HRV) biofeedback training to lower stress and anxiety, increase sports performance

March 29, 2021 by SharpBrains

What’s HRV? An impor­tant health met­ric every golfer should pay atten­tion to (Golf.com):

As ama­teur golfers, we’d love to play like the pros. There’s no doubt that you would trade your banana slice for Dustin Johnson’s pen­e­trat­ing 300-yard dri­ve down the mid­dle of the fair­way or Collin Morikawa’s impec­ca­ble ball strik­ing in a heartbeat.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have lim­it­ing fac­tors — be they phys­i­cal abil­i­ty, mon­ey, time or some­thing else. But that doesn’t mean we can’t adopt a few things the Tour pros do to stay in shape in our own lives. [Read more…] about Grow­ing research sup­ports Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty (HRV) biofeed­back train­ing to low­er stress and anx­i­ety, increase sports performance

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: ambulatory monitoring, anxiety, athletic performance, athletic training, biofeedback, biofeedback training, exercise, heart-rate-variability, HRV, lower anxiety, lower stress, meta-analysis, mobile health technologies, prognosis, Stress, wearable devices

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