Study: Actual, sustained practice–not mere knowledge–is needed to harness neuroplasticity and improve cognition over time

By SharpBrains | September 14, 2020

Lifestyle improve­ments may lessen cog­ni­tive decline (Wiley): ” … 19 indi­vid­u­als old­er than 65 years of age who were expe­ri­enc­ing cog­ni­tive decline were ran­dom­ized to a con­trol group or an inter­ven­tion group for 8 weeks. The con­trol group received online infor­ma­tion relat­ed to demen­tia and lifestyle risk fac­tors, Mediter­ranean diet, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, and cog­ni­tive engagement.…

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BBC brain training study apparently retracts previous overgeneralized claim that “brain training doesn’t work”

By SharpBrains | November 5, 2015

Online brain train­ing ‘helps old­er adults with every­day tasks’ (BBC): “Near­ly 7,000 peo­ple aged 50 and over signed up for the six-month exper­i­ment, launched by BBC TV’s Bang Goes The Theory…Some of the vol­un­teers were encour­aged to play online brain train­ing games for 10 min­utes at a time, as often as they wished. The others —…

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Brain teasers and games: ready for a mental workout?

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 27, 2008

You may have already seen that our Teasers sec­tion con­tains not only our selec­tion of Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games, but also a reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed page with lat­est Games for the Brain. Below you have the brain games and teasers we have added in 2008 so far. Ready?  — Octo­ber 2008: Top Brainy Haikus. Yours?.…

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Brainy Haikus for brain training

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 4, 2008 |

Thank you to every­one who has writ­ten so many fun haikus over the sum­mer (fol­low­ing the post Top 25 Brain and Mind Haikus. Yours?). These are the 10 I have enjoyed the most: (Also, Can you write a haiku describ­ing any­thing cross­ing your mind now? Remem­ber the sim­ple rules: write 3 lines, which don’t need…

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Traveler IQ Brain Teaser

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 16, 2007 |

Just came across this very stim­u­lat­ing and fun Trav­el­er IQ inter­ac­tive game…enjoy! Link: Trav­el­er IQ Chal­lenge Note: at the bot­tom of the page you can select a vari­ety of chal­lenges (flags of the world, UNESCO sites, North Amer­i­ca…) My favourite: Pho­tos of the World.

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Brain Fitness Program: How to Evaluate and Choose One

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 10, 2007 |

The hol­i­days are approach­ing and you can expect many soft­ware and game devel­op­ers to adver­tise their prod­ucts aggres­sive­ly, try­ing to get you buy their “brain train­ing” prod­ucts for you or as a gift for a loved one. The good news is that there are more and more tools we can use to keep men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ed and…

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