Mind-Fitness

Update: Let’s transform brain health from “suffer-in-silence” to “let-me-take-control”

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Summit Interviews

Time for our Sep­tem­ber 2014 e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of insights  and inno­va­tions reports…including four thought-pro­vok­ing inter­views with Spon­sors of the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th). Enjoy!

New per­spec­tives at the fron­tier of Brain, Health & Innovation:

New trends:

New stud­ies:

2014_SharpBrains_Virtual_Summit_Shaping the Practice and the Future of Brain FitnessFinal­ly, you may want to try this brain teas­er to test your mul­ti-task­ing abil­i­ties…and, if you are inter­est­ed in all these top­ics for pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons, please con­sid­er join­ing us at the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th) — you can reg­is­ter with a 10% dis­count using pro­mo­tion­al code: sharp2014

Have a great month of October!

When early retirement equals mental retirement and memory decline

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The New-York Times reports on the study pub­lished a few days ago in the Jour­nal of Eco­nom­ic Per­spec­tives, “Men­tal retirement”:

… Data from the Unit­ed States, Eng­land and 11 oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries sug­gest that the ear­li­er peo­ple retire, the more quick­ly their mem­o­ries decline.

… what aspect of work is doing that, Dr. Suz­man said. “Is it the social engage­ment and inter­ac­tion or the cog­ni­tive com­po­nent of work, or is it the aer­o­bic com­po­nent of work?” he asked. “Or is it the absence of what hap­pens when you retire, which could be increased TV watching?”

Com­ments: This new study is anoth­er piece of evi­dence accu­mu­lat­ing with more and more oth­ers sug­gest­ing that a brain healthy life-style requires con­stant cog­ni­tive chal­lenge to help main­tain high-lev­el cog­ni­tive func­tions. Whether it is speak­ing mul­ti­ple lan­guages, phys­i­cal­ly exer­cis­ing or stay­ing men­tal­ly active, our every­day life can pos­i­tive­ly impact our brain health.  Some­thing to keep in mind after retirement…and to even retire the word “retire­ment”!

The results are also intrigu­ing because work­ing com­bines mul­ti­ple aspects of a brain-healthy lifestyle (social engage­ment, men­tal stim­u­la­tion) with aspects not so good for the brain (stress, absence of phys­i­cal exer­cise in some cas­es). How­ev­er, it seems that, over­all, the good aspects of work­ing take over the bad ones as far as mem­o­ry func­tions are concerned.

What is Brain Fitness, anyway?

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Vijay, one of our read­ers, wrote yes­ter­day a very thought­ful comment :

“What is brain fit­ness and how it is mea­sured? Is it the same as mind fit­ness which seeks to achieve bal­ance in life?”

I am curi­ous to learn how you would answer that ques­tion. I will add my per­spec­tive over the week­end, since I don’t want to bias your thoughts now.

What is brain fit­ness and how it is measured?

Lifelong Learning and New Neurons in Adults

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Very inter­est­ing new study, Crit­i­cal Peri­od Plas­tic­i­ty of Adult-Born Neu­rons, pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­ron by a team of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine researchers. The press release New Adult Brain Cells May Be Cen­tral To Life­long Learn­ing con­tains a good sum­ma­ry (the bold for­mat is mine):

  • “The steady for­ma­tion of new brain cells in adults may rep­re­sent more than mere­ly a patch­ing up of aging brains, a new study has shown.”
  • “The new adult brain cells may serve to give the adult brain the same kind of learn­ing abil­i­ty that young brains have while still allow­ing the exist­ing, mature cir­cuit­ry to main­tain stability.”
  • “The researchers found that the new adult neu­rons showed a pat­tern of chang­ing plas­tic­i­ty very sim­i­lar to that seen in brain cells in new­born ani­mals. That is, the new adult brain cells showed a “crit­i­cal peri­od” in which they were high­ly plas­tic before they set­tled into the less plas­tic prop­er­ties of mature brain cells. In new­born ani­mals, such a crit­i­cal peri­od enables an impor­tant, ear­ly burst of wiring of new brain cir­cuit­ry with expe­ri­ence.”
  • “The researchers also observed in the new adult neu­rons anatom­i­cal evi­dence of the same kind of for­ma­tion of new con­nec­tions that take place in the brains of new­borns as they wire new path­ways in response to expe­ri­ence.”
  • “They con­clud­ed that “adult neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis may rep­re­sent not mere­ly a replace­ment mech­a­nism for lost neu­rons, but instead an ongo­ing devel­op­men­tal process that con­tin­u­ous­ly reju­ve­nates the mature ner­vous sys­tem by offer­ing expand­ed capac­i­ty of plas­tic­i­ty in response to expe­ri­ence through­out life.”

In short: not only do we know today that the adult brain is capa­ble of cre­at­ing new neu­rons, but this shows that our expe­ri­ence influ­ences what hap­pens to those neu­rons once cre­at­ed. Pret­ty rev­o­lu­tion­ary under­stand­ing, that still needs to per­me­ate through soci­ety and influ­ence our lifestyles and habits.

Some relat­ed posts:

Yoga and stress management

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GABA Receptor
Steven Edwards at Wired Blog writes a post titled Yoga Boosts Brain’s GABA Lev­els, say­ing that “Par­tic­i­pants in the yoga group had a 27% increase in GABA lev­els, while those in the read­ing group remained unchanged. Co-authors Chris Streeter from BUSM and Domenic Ciraulo point­ed out that this research shows a method of treat­ing low GABA states. Fair­ly obvi­ous — yes — but this shows a non­phar­ma­co­log­i­cal method for increas­ing GABA lev­els that peo­ple can act on now, with­out wait­ing for a drug to go through FDA approval.”

Hav­ing attend­ed last week a con­fer­ence where neu­rophar­ma exec­u­tives pre­sent­ed all their future drugs against obe­si­ty, anx­i­ety, depression…I could­n’t agree more. The rates of seri­ous side effects of these drugs are astound­ing, yet as a soci­ety we seem to pre­fer to rely on tak­ing drugs when are sick rather than proac­tive­ly tak­ing charge of our health and lifestyles and do our best (which not always is enough) to pro­tect our fit­ness and wellness.

The press release Steven talks about: Yoga and Ele­vat­ed Brain GABA Lev­els [PhysOrg]. Quotes: [Read more…] about Yoga and stress management

I have to exercise my brain, too

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I was exposed to a fun brain exer­cise on Mon­day: attend my first-ever live TV pro­gram, be ready for 3 very pre­cise questions…and then be asked others.

The anchors were fun. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to observe, behind the scenes, the mak­ing of a news pro­gram: con­stant last-minute appar­ent chaos, the lawyer in the “ask the lawyer” seg­ment nowhere to be found…but every­one seem to had a fun time. And good men­tal stim­u­la­tion-as long as they man­age stress well.

Here you have the 3‑minute clip from the local CBS’ Good Day Sacra­men­to pro­gram, with a brief Q&A and a cou­ple of brain teasers (Count the Fs and Stroop Test).

The 3 ques­tions I was expect­ing were:

- What is Brain Aware­ness Week? see Dana’s and part­ners’ out­reach events world­wide.

- What is Sharp­Brains? see Our Vision for Brain and Mind Fitness.

- What is the involve­ment of Sharp­Brains dur­ing Brain Aware­ness Week? check Brain Aware­ness Week.

Next time I will give more clear direc­tions and maybe improve my Eng­lish a bit too if I can…

If you want more teasers, here you have Top 10 Brain Teasers.