Study: Playing board games like Chess, Mahjong, Go, helps slow cognitive decline as we age (but with clear differences in neurobiology and improved function)

Play­ing Board Games May Slow Cog­ni­tive Decline, Improve QoL (Med­scape): Play­ing chess or oth­er board games slows cog­ni­tive decline and improves qual­i­ty of life in old­er patients, results of a new sys­tem­at­ic review sug­gest. … After search­ing the pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, Pozzi and his col­leagues select­ed 15 stud­ies for the review. The stud­ies assessed the impact…

Read More

Q&A with Rick Hanson on Neurodharma, brain science, personal practice and well-being

Psy­chol­o­gist and neu­ro­science expert Rick Han­son stud­ies the men­tal resources that pro­mote resilience, from calm and grat­i­tude to con­fi­dence and courage. Accord­ing to Han­son, the coro­n­avirus cri­sis is expos­ing some of our psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, and remind­ing us how impor­tant it is to nur­ture our social and emo­tion­al strengths. In his new book, Neu­rod­har­ma, Han­son writes about how we can…

Read More

On World Health Day 2020, let’s discuss the stress response and the General Adaptation Syndrome (2/3)

_______ [Editor’s note: Con­tin­ued from yes­ter­day’s Explor­ing the human brain and how it responds to stress (1/3)] Stress was put on the map, so to speak, by a Hun­gar­i­an — born Cana­di­an endocri­nol­o­gist named Hans Hugo Bruno Selye (ZEL — yeh) in 1950, when he pre­sent­ed his research on rats at the annu­al con­ven­tion of…

Read More

Study: Why Super Mario 3D World may train your brain better than Angry Birds

Play­ing 3‑D video games can boost mem­o­ry for­ma­tion, UCI study finds (UCI News): “…Craig Stark and Dane Clemen­son of UCI’s Cen­ter for the Neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of Learn­ing & Mem­o­ry recruit­ed non-gamer col­lege stu­dents to play either a video game with a pas­sive, two-dimen­­sion­al envi­ron­ment (“Angry Birds”) or one with an intri­cate, 3‑D set­ting (“Super Mario 3D World”)…

Read More

Update: How Stress and Emotions Impact Brain Performance

Spon­sored Ad (How to Adver­tise on SharpBrains.com) Time for the Octo­ber edi­tion of the month­ly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing this time sev­er­al arti­cles on the impact of stress, emo­tions, and self-reg­u­la­­tion, on our brain’s struc­ture and per­for­mance. We are pleased to bring to Sharp­Brains read­ers a new 6‑part series on the Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy of Stress, based on a…

Read More