nap

Take that Nap! It May Boost Your Learning Capacity Among Other Good Things.

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Any­one who knows me knows that my favorite pas­time is nap­ping. In Col­lege, I would come back to my dorm room, and like clock­work, would take a nap. My best friend in Eng­land, who got quite a kick out of my pas­sion for nap­ping, once tried to per­suade me to drink a cup of tea after lunch instead of tak­ing my cus­tom­ary nap. I real­ly tried, but I soon gave in to my nap crav­ings. Some­times I feel like I real­ly need to re-charge my brain batteries.

Well, now sci­ence is on my side. I just love this new study, which was pre­sent­ed by Matthew Walk­er, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at UC Berke­ley, at the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) con­fer­ence in San Diego this past Sun­day (Feb. 2010).

Walk­er and his col­leagues Bryce A. Man­der and Sangeetha San­thanam split up a batch of 39 healthy young adults into two groups. One group napped, the oth­er did not.

At noon, both groups took a learn­ing task thought to recruit the hip­pocam­pus. The hip­pocam­pus is a region of the brain known to play an impor­tant role in the for­ma­tion of new mem­o­ries. Over the past few years, var­i­ous researchers have found that fact-based mem­o­ries are tem­porar­i­ly stored in the hip­pocam­pus before oth­er regions of the brain can oper­ate on the con­tent, espe­cial­ly the regions of the brain respon­si­ble for high­er-order rea­son­ing and think­ing.  At this point in the exper­i­ment, both groups showed sim­i­lar lev­els of performance.

Then, at 2pm, the nap group took a 90-minute nap while the no-nap group stayed awake, pre­sum­ably watch­ing the nap group enjoy­ing their nap. After nap-time both groups then took more learn­ing tests. The nap­pers did bet­ter on the tasks than those who stayed awake, demon­strat­ing their high­er capac­i­ty to learn. [Read more…] about Take that Nap! It May Boost Your Learn­ing Capac­i­ty Among Oth­er Good Things.

Brain Rules: science and practice

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Inter­est­ed a good, non-tech­ni­cal, sum­ma­ry of the impli­ca­tions of recent brain sci­ence in Brain Rules-John Medinaour dai­ly lives? Biol­o­gist John Med­i­na offers that in his arti­cle below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School. Enjoy!

(Note: John will be in the Bay Area on April 8 and 9th, speak­ing at Google and San Jose Rotary).

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Brain Rules

– By John Medina

Go ahead and mul­ti­ply the num­ber 8,388,628 x 2 in your head. Can you do it in a few sec­onds? There is a young man who can dou­ble that num­ber 24 times in the space of a few sec­onds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the exact time of day at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can cor­rect­ly deter­mine the exact dimen­sions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such life­like and pow­er­ful pic­tures, she got her own show at a gallery on Madi­son Avenue. Yet none of these chil­dren could be taught to tie their shoes. Indeed, none of them have an IQ greater than 50.

The brain is an amaz­ing thing.

[Read more…] about Brain Rules: sci­ence and practice

Mild cognitive impairment and Memory Problems: exciting new research

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Very quick post: just want to alert you of 2 news pieces on MCI and Alzheimer’s pre­ven­tion-relat­ed research.

Fre­quent Brain Stim­u­la­tion In Old Age Reduces Risk Of Alzheimer’s Disease

  • “The study found a cog­ni­tive­ly active per­son in old age was 2.6 times less like­ly to devel­op demen­tia and Alzheimer’s dis­ease than a cog­ni­tive­ly inac­tive per­son in old age. This asso­ci­a­tion remained after con­trol­ling for past cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty, life­time socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus, and cur­rent social and phys­i­cal activity.”
  • “Wil­son says the study also found fre­quent cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty dur­ing old age, such as vis­it­ing a library or attend­ing a play, was asso­ci­at­ed with reduced risk of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, a tran­si­tion­al stage between nor­mal aging and demen­tia, and less rapid decline in cog­ni­tive function.”

Stress Linked to Mem­o­ry Decline

  • “If you want your mind to stay healthy into your gold­en years, don’t wor­ry, be hap­py. That could be the mes­sage of new research that shows those prone to wor­ry, anx­i­ety or depres­sion are more like­ly to devel­op mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI), a con­di­tion often con­sid­ered a pre­cur­sor to the more-debil­i­tat­ing Alzheimer’s disease.”
  • “MCI is now rec­og­nized as a very ear­ly sign of incip­i­ent Alzheimer’s dis­ease,” said Robert S. Wil­son, lead author of the study and a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Cen­ter in Chica­go. “We found that among healthy elder­ly peo­ple with­out evi­dence of cog­ni­tive dys­func­tion at the begin­ning of the study, chron­ic dis­tress pre­dict­ed the devel­op­ment of MCI.”
  • “This is con­sis­tent with 20 years of lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject,” added Dr. Sam Gandy, chair­man of the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion’s med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic advi­so­ry coun­cil and direc­tor of the Far­ber Insti­tute for Neu­ro­sciences at Thomas Jef­fer­son Uni­ver­si­ty in Philadelphia.”

What to do? well, you can check out these Easy Steps to Improve Your Brain Health Now. And check this nice arti­cle on New men­tal exer­cis­es, games can keep aging minds fit.