The Upside of Aging-WSJ

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 19, 2007

Sharon Beg­ley writes anoth­er great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required) “The aging brain is sub­ject to a drea­ry litany of changes. It shrinks, Swiss cheese-like holes grow, con­nec­tions between neu­rons become spars­er, blood flow and oxy­gen sup­ply fall. That leads to trou­ble with short-term mem­o­ry and rapid­ly switch­ing atten­tion, among other…

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Brain Health Newsletter, February Edition, and Brain Awareness Week

By Caroline Latham | February 17, 2007 |

Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chica­go Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.Website and Blog Summary.We hope you enjoy our new Home Page.Cognitive Neu­ro­science­Brain Fit­ness Glos­saryCog­ni­tive Reserve and Lifestyle­Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty as an Index of Reg­u­lat­ed Emo­tion­al Respond­ingNeu­ro­science Inter­view Series: on learn­ing and “brain gyms“EducationCounseling cen­ter offers biofeed­back to help decrease stressLife­long learn­ing, lit­er­al­ly: neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for stu­dents, boomers, seniors…Health & Well­ness­Want to Improve Mem­o­ry?… Do I need any­thing else?Learning Slows Phys­i­cal Pro­gres­sion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease­Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­mentIm­prov­ing Your Brain Tools: Read­ing Emo­tion­al Mes­sages in the FaceEn­hanc­ing the Trader’s Self-Control.Brain Teasers.Exercise Your Brains — Visu­al Log­ic Brain Teaser­Brain Work­out for Your Frontal Lobes­Blog Car­ni­vals: col­lec­tion of best blog arti­cles around par­tic­u­lar topics.We host­ed Encephalon #15: Neu­ro­science and Psy­chol­o­gy Blog Carnival.And launched Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val #1.

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New brain cells in the adult brain

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 15, 2007 |

BBC News reports that Brain cre­ates ‘new’ nerve cells: “Researchers have dis­cov­ered a type of brain cell that con­tin­u­ous­ly regen­er­ates in humans.” “Experts said the find­ings, pub­lished in Sci­ence, opened up the poten­tial for research into repair­ing brains in con­di­tions such as Alzheimer’s dis­ease” “Dr Mark Bax­ter, Well­come Trust senior research fel­low at Oxford University,…

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Are yoga and meditation good for my brain?

By Caroline Latham | February 15, 2007 |

Here is ques­tion 16 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Are yoga and med­i­ta­tion good for my brain?Key Points: Yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion are all excel­lent ways to learn to man­age your stress levels.Reducing stress, and the stress hor­mones, in your sys­tem is crit­i­cal to your brain and over­all fitness.Answer:Yes.… the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.Prolonged expo­sure to the adren­al steroid hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, released dur­ing the stress response, can dam­age the brain and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons in the hip­pocam­pus, which is the key play­er in encod­ing new mem­o­ries in your brain.

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I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp?

By Caroline Latham | February 12, 2007

Ques­tion 15 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp? Pro­vide your brain with reg­u­lar men­tal stim­u­la­tion that is nov­el and challenging.Maintain your social net­work for both stim­u­la­tion and stress reduction.Work out, eat well, stim­u­late your brain, and reduce chron­ic stress.Any good brain fit­ness pro­gram must pro­vide you a vari­ety of new chal­lenges over time. Stress reduc­tion is anoth­er major con­cern. Main­tain­ing your exer­cise rou­tine and social net­works will help a lot in this regard. Make social appoint­ments to go for a walk with a friend or fam­i­ly member.

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Heart Rate Variability as an Index of Regulated Emotional Responding

By Caroline Latham | February 11, 2007 |

Con­tin­u­ing with the theme of a Week of Sci­ence spon­sored by Just Sci­ence, we will high­light some of the key points in: Appel­hans BM, Lueck­en LJ. Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty as an Index of Reg­u­lat­ed Emo­tion­al Respond­ing. Review of Gen­er­al Psy­chol­o­gy. 2006;10:229–240. Effec­tive emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion depends on being able to flex­i­bly adjust your phys­i­o­log­i­cal response to a chang­ing envi­ron­ment moment by moment.Heart rate vari­abil­i­ty (HRV) is a mea­sure of the con­tin­u­ous inter­play between sym­pa­thet­ic and parasym­pa­thet­ic influ­ences on heart rate that yields infor­ma­tion about auto­nom­ic flex­i­bil­i­ty and there­by rep­re­sents the capac­i­ty for reg­u­lat­ed emo­tion­al responding.

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