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June is Alzheimer’s & Brain Aware­ness Month, so let me share these 20 Must-Know Facts to Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty & Improve Brain Health that come from the hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical stud­ies we ana­lyzed  Read the rest of this entry »

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Men­tal rota­tion refers to mov­ing things around in your mind. It is one of the main visu­ospa­tial skills we all have…in dif­fer­ent degrees, yes.

Here’s an exam­ple. Please pic­ture in your mind an arrow point­ing to the right. Now, turn this arrow so it points to the left. Done? You have just per­formed a men­tal rota­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here you have a few fun men­tal exer­cis­es to train your atten­tion and work­ing mem­o­ry (the capac­i­ty to hold mul­ti­ple pieces of infor­ma­tion in the mind, and to use them real-time). Giv­en them a try today and over the weekend…they are not as easy as they may sound!

1. Say the days of the week back­wards, then in alpha­bet­i­cal order. If you speak anoth­er lan­guage, try doing the same in that lan­guage.
2. Say the months of the year in alpha­bet­i­cal order. Then, for extra cog­ni­tive chal­lenge, try doing so back­wards, in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order.
3. Find the sum of your date of birth, mm/dd/yyyy. Want more quick brain teasers? Do the same with friends’ and rel­a­tives’ date of birth.
4. Quick, name two objects for every let­ter in your com­plete name. Work up to five objects, try­ing to use dif­fer­ent items each time.
5. Wher­ev­er you are, look around and with­in two min­utes, try to find 5 green things that will fit in your pock­et, and 5 red objects that are too big to fit.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Time for Sharp­Brains’ July 2014 e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of thought-pro­vok­ing insights, sci­ence reports…and this fun brain teas­er to deter­mine your stress lev­el.

New think­ing:

• Why “dis­or­ders of the brain” deserve at least equal atten­tion as car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases and can­cer
• Pre­lim­i­nary Agen­da of the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th)
• Debunk­ing Myers-Brig­gs per­son­al­i­ty test
• How to remem­ber what you read

New tools:

• Upgrad­ing Edu­ca­tion and Health in light of Neu­ro­science: The Fron­tier of Gam­ing?
• Study: Neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment for ADHD in only 12 ses­sions?
• News: Launch of Brain Start-up Chal­lenge on August 1st
• Brain Resource rais­ing $7m to expand cor­po­rate brain well­ness offer­ings

New sci­ence:

• Under what con­di­tions can mind­ful­ness cours­es help health care work­ers man­age stress and burnout?
• Alzheimer’s dis­ease can be delayed through lifestyle: New, large study joins grow­ing cho­rus
• One more rea­son to improve edu­ca­tion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar health in devel­op­ing coun­tries
• How big data can aug­ment brain health clin­i­cal research

Final­ly, you may also want to try this teas­er to test your cog­ni­tive bias­es.

Enjoy, and have a great month of August!

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Hard Evi­dence We Can Slow Alzheimer’s By Exer­cis­ing The Body And The Mind (Forbes):

“Alzheimer’s dis­ease is one of the most feared diag­noses among patients…once the dis­ease has been diag­nosed, there is noth­ing mod­ern med­i­cine can do to stop it.

But it can be slowed, and a new study pre­sent­ed Read the rest of this entry »