improve-concentration

Brain training seen as promising non-pharmacological method to enhance attention in healthy young adults

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This brain train­ing app may help you stay focused, says new study (CNN):

“Our dig­i­tal lives make con­cen­tra­tion difficult…A group of Cam­bridge uni­ver­si­ty researchers believes to have devel­oped a “fun” solu­tion to this mod­ern prob­lem. By play­ing a “brain train­ing” game, called Decoder, play­ers can increase their con­cen­tra­tion. [Read more…] about Brain train­ing seen as promis­ing non-phar­ma­co­log­i­cal method to enhance atten­tion in healthy young adults

Brain teaser to test your multi-tasking skills and improve concentration

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How often do you review and com­ment on a doc­u­ment while talk­ing on the phone with a col­league about an unre­lat­ed mat­ter? Or think about your prob­lems at work while help­ing your child with his home­work? [Read more…] about Brain teas­er to test your mul­ti-task­ing skills and improve concentration

Brain fitness tips to improve concentration and memory

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Tips-on-How-to-Improve-Memory

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Concentration–or atten­tion– and mem­o­ry are two cru­cial men­tal skills and are direct­ly relat­ed. In fact, many mem­o­ry com­plaints have noth­ing to do with the actu­al abil­i­ty to remem­ber things: They come from a fail­ure to focus prop­er­ly on the task at hand.

For exam­ple, when you don’t remem­ber where you parked your car [Read more…] about Brain fit­ness tips to improve con­cen­tra­tion and memory

Cognitive Enhancement via Magic Pills? likely not soon

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Excel­lent Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can cov­er story:

Tur­bocharg­ing the Brain–Pills to Make You Smarter?

“Will a pill at break­fast improve con­cen­tra­tion and memory—and will it do so with­out long-term detri­ment to your health?”

Their answer, in short: not real­ly, not any­time soon.

I could­n’t agree more. Let’s pay real atten­tion to non-inva­sive options to aug­ment cog­ni­tion, from exer­cise to cog­ni­tive train­ing and meditation.

For more con­text, you may enjoy my recent arti­cle Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age, pub­lished in Fron­tiers in Neuroscience.

Brain Quiz: Do You Have a Brain?

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Have you already read The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness?

Let’s see…brain health and brain fitness

1. Pick the only part of your body that does not con­tain fat:

a. Arm
b. Thigh
c. Brain
d. None

Answer: d) Fats are also present in the brain: in neu­rons’ mem­branes to keep them flex­i­ble. These fats are the omega 3 and omega 6 fat­ty acids mol­e­cules. (Page 32 of the book)

2. Pick the only food prod­uct that doesn’t con­tain Omega‑3 fat­ty acids

a. Tuna
b. Walnut
c. Kiwi
d. Jel­ly Beans

Answer: d) Fat­ty acids can be found in cold-water fish (such as mack­er­el, her­ring, salmon, and tuna), kiwi, and wal­nuts. (Page 33)

3. Pick the only food prod­uct that doesn’t con­tain antioxidants

a. Olive oil
b. Milk
c. Nuts
d. Berries

Answer: b) Antiox­i­dants can be found in veg­etable oils, nuts, green leafy veg­eta­bles (e.g., spinach), cit­rus fruit, and berries. (Page 33)

4. Chron­ic Stress cannot:

a. Pre­vent you from being creative
b. Kill brain cells
c. Pre­vent you from sleeping
d. Kill liv­er cells

Answer: d) Pro­longed expo­sure to adren­al steroid hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, which is released into the blood stream when we are stressed, can lead to cell death and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons. (Page 35)

5. What type of phys­i­cal exer­cise is the best for your brain health? 

a. Weight lifting
b. Aer­o­bic exercises
c. Flex­i­bil­i­ty exer­cis­es [Read more…] about Brain Quiz: Do You Have a Brain?

Does cognitive training work? (For Whom? For What?)

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The grow­ing field of cog­ni­tive train­ing (one of the tools for brain fit­ness) can appear very con­fus­ing as the media keeps report­ing con­tra­dic­to­ry claims. These claims are often based on press releas­es, with­out a deep­er eval­u­a­tion of the sci­en­tif­ic evidence.

Let’s take a cou­ple of recent exam­ples, in suc­ces­sive days:

“It does­n’t work!” type of headline:
Reuters (Feb. 10, 2009)  For­mal brain exer­cise won’t help healthy seniors: research”
Healthy old­er peo­ple should­n’t both­er spend­ing mon­ey on com­put­er games and web­sites promis­ing to ward off men­tal decline, the author of a review of sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for the ben­e­fits of these “brain exer­cise” pro­grams says.

It works! type of headline:
Sci­enceDai­ly (Feb. 11, 2009)  “Com­put­er Exer­cis­es Improve Mem­o­ry And Atten­tion, Study Suggests”
Accord­ing to the researchers, par­tic­i­pants who used the Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram also scored as well as those ten years younger, on aver­age, on mem­o­ry and atten­tion tests for which they did not train.

So, does struc­tured brain exer­cise / cog­ni­tive train­ing work or not?

The prob­lem may in fact reside in ask­ing this very ques­tion in the first place, as Alvaro point­ed out a while ago in his arti­cle Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: too seri­ous to play with head­lines.

We need a more nuanced set of questions.

Why? Because:
1. Cog­ni­tion is made of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties (work­ing mem­o­ry, atten­tion, exec­u­tive func­tions such as deci­sion-mak­ing, etc)
2. Avail­able train­ing pro­grams do not all train the same abilities
3. Users of train­ing pro­grams do not all have the same needs or goals
4. We need to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between enhanc­ing cog­ni­tive func­tions and delay­ing the onset of cog­ni­tive deficits such as Alzheimer’s.

Let’s illus­trate these points, by [Read more…] about Does cog­ni­tive train­ing work? (For Whom? For What?)