What stress­es you out ?

What­ev­er it is, how you respond to it may have more con­se­quences than you think. Let me show you how.

Recap­ping from last months arti­cle (see Stress and Neur­al Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Puz­zle)…our bod­ies are a com­plex bal­anc­ing act between sys­tems work­ing full time to keep us alive and well. Any change which threat­ens this bal­ance can be referred to as stress. Cor­ti­sol, a key com­po­nent of the stress response, does an excel­lent job of allow­ing us to adapt to most stres­sors which last more than a cou­ple of min­utes. How­ev­er, hav­ing to endure a high stres­sor for longer than about 30 min­utes to an hour neg­a­tive­ly impacts the brain in var­i­ous ways.

Read the rest of this entry »

Start­ing this week, you will start see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors writ­ing in our blog and web­site, so that we can col­lec­tive­ly dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al train­ing, brain fit­ness and health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­er­al for our every­day lives. All of it, spiced up by stim­u­lat­ing brain teasers.

So, if you haven’t already, make sure to sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).

Let me intro­duce, In alpha­bet­i­cal order, the Expert Con­trib­u­tors who will share their knowl­edge with us in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary.

- Wes Car­roll, SB in Com­put­er Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing from MIT, and Puz­zle Mas­ter for Ask a Sci­en­tist lec­ture series.

- Simon Evans, PhD., and Paul Burghardt, PhD., who col­lab­o­rate in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michigan’s Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try and the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science Insti­tute, to study the effects of nutri­tion and exer­cise on brain func­tion.

- Greater Good Mag­a­zine, a quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine pub­lished by a UC-Berke­ley cen­ter to “high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altruism.“ 

- Gre­go­ry Kel­lett, a recent grad­u­ate from the Cog­ni­tive Neurology/Research Psychology Masters pro­gram at SFSU.

- Eric Jensen, author of Enrich­ing the Brain: How to Max­i­mize Every Learner’s Poten­tial, and well-known syn­the­siz­er of brain research infor­ma­tion with impli­ca­tions for K12 edu­ca­tion.

- Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., an Adjunct Fac­ul­ty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in Saint Louis, Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment.

- Tom O’Brien, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion, South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, and author of prize-win­ning games.

- Joshua Stein­er­man, M.D., Post­doc­tor­al Clin­i­cal Fel­low in the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter.

- David Rabin­er, Ph.D., Senior Research Sci­en­tist and Direc­tor of Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Dr. Rabin­er main­tains the high­ly-regard­ed Atten­tion Research Update.

Please Note: if you would like to become an Expert Con­trib­u­tor, Read the rest of this entry »

Anoth­er great week full of inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant arti­cles. We will start a new tra­di­tion: we will end up the week (either on Fri­day or dur­ing the week­end) with a round-up of the arti­cles we haven’t been able to com­ment on dur­ing the week. Please feel free to send us your sug­ges­tions too!

(You can join our month­ly newslet­ter by sub­scrib­ing at the top of this page).

Brave Heart: does will pow­er reside in heart?

• “A recent study has looked into the issue of whether cog­ni­tive self -reg­u­la­tion (will pow­er / moti­va­tion) is also asso­ci­at­ed with HRV. The study report­ed that high­er base­line HRV was asso­ci­at­ed with more will-pow­er and abil­i­ty to resist temp­ta­tion.”

Book review: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Beg­ley

• “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain is as enter­tain­ing as it is edi­fy­ing. This unlike­ly page turn­er fas­ci­nates, and sug­gests opti­mism about your brain’s capac­i­ties.
  Con­sid­er­ing the aging baby boom gen­er­a­tion and the demands this group has cre­at­ed in every phase of life, if a cul­ture of men­tal fit­ness devel­ops, it won’t sur­prise me. Being a boomer myself, I’m all for it. I just hope I don’t have to become a bod­hisatt­va to reap the ben­e­fits.”

Newsweek: Clear link between exer­cise and improved cog­ni­tion

• “Last week, in a land­mark paper, researchers announced that Read the rest of this entry »