Exercise your brain in the Cognitive Age

In the past two days, The New York Times has pub­lished two excel­lent arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Despite appear­ing in sep­a­rate sec­tions (tech­nol­o­gy and editorial), the two have more in com­mon than imme­di­ate­ly meets the eye. Both raise key ques­tions that politi­cians, health pol­i­cy mak­ers, busi­ness leaders, educators and consumers should pay atten­tion to. 1) First, Exer­cise Your Brain, or Else You’ll … Uh …, by Katie…

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Cognitive Development and Brain Research: Articles, Books, Papers (ASA)

We had a very fun ses­sion titled Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health pro­fes­sion­als a cou­ple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 atten­dants and very good par­tic­i­pa­tion, show­ing great inter­est in the top­ic. I can’t wait to see the eval­u­a­tions. These are some…

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Stress and Short Term Memory

We all know chron­ic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our memory?Interestingly, acute stress can help you focus and remem­ber things more vividly.Chronic stress, on the oth­er hand, reduces your abil­i­ty to focus and can specif­i­cal­ly dam­age cells in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain struc­ture crit­i­cal to encod­ing short term memory.When is stress chron­ic? When you feel out of con­trol of your life. You may feel irri­ta­ble or anx­ious. While every indi­vid­ual varies in their response the type and quan­ti­ty of stress, there are some things you can do to feel more in con­trol of your envi­ron­ment. This sense of empow­er­ment can low­er your stress, and as a result, help your memory.

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Are yoga and meditation good for my brain?

Here is ques­tion 16 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Are yoga and med­i­ta­tion good for my brain?Key Points: Yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion are all excel­lent ways to learn to man­age your stress levels.Reducing stress, and the stress hor­mones, in your sys­tem is crit­i­cal to your brain and over­all fitness.Answer:Yes.… the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.Prolonged expo­sure to the adren­al steroid hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, released dur­ing the stress response, can dam­age the brain and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons in the hip­pocam­pus, which is the key play­er in encod­ing new mem­o­ries in your brain.

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Neurogenesis and How Learning Saves Your Neurons

Jon Bar­ron’s blog high­light­ed this recent press release from The Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science. For decades, it was believed that the adult brain did not pro­duce new neu­rons after birth. But that notion has been dis­pelled by research in the last ten years. It became clear by the mid- to late-1990’s that the brain does, in…

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