reaction-time

Large neuroimaging study finds social isolation to be an early indicator of increased dementia risk

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Why do we get a buzz from being in large groups at fes­ti­vals, jubilees and oth­er pub­lic events? Accord­ing to the social brain hypoth­e­sis, it’s because the human brain specif­i­cal­ly evolved to sup­port social inter­ac­tions. Stud­ies have shown that belong­ing to a group can lead to improved well­be­ing and increased sat­is­fac­tion with life.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly though, many peo­ple are lone­ly or social­ly iso­lat­ed. [Read more…] about Large neu­roimag­ing study finds social iso­la­tion to be an ear­ly indi­ca­tor of increased demen­tia risk

Five thoughts to think about when thinking about the speed of thought

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As inquis­i­tive beings, we are con­stant­ly ques­tion­ing and quan­ti­fy­ing the speed of var­i­ous things. With a fair degree of accu­ra­cy, sci­en­tists have quan­ti­fied the speed of light, the speed of sound, the speed at which the earth revolves around the sun, the speed at which hum­ming­birds beat their wings, the aver­age speed of con­ti­nen­tal drift….

These val­ues are all well-char­ac­ter­ized. But what about the speed of thought? It’s a chal­leng­ing ques­tion that’s not eas­i­ly answer­able – but we can give it a shot. [Read more…] about Five thoughts to think about when think­ing about the speed of thought

On the perceived memory, cognitive benefits of playing casual video games

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Bejeweled BlitzPsy­chol­o­gists Find the Per­ceived Ben­e­fits of Casu­al Video Games Among Adults (press release):

“New research from psy­chol­o­gists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Amherst finds that while a major­i­ty of adults cite the abil­i­ty to com­pete with friends as their pri­ma­ry rea­son for play­ing online casu­al video games, they report dif­fer­ing per­ceived ben­e­fits from play­ing [Read more…] about On the per­ceived mem­o­ry, cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of play­ing casu­al video games

Test your Reaction Time

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Reac­tion time is the time it takes to react to some­thing. It can be con­sid­ered as an index of your speed of pro­cess­ing: It shows how fast you can exe­cute the men­tal oper­a­tions need­ed by the task at hand.

Reac­tion Time is a basic mea­sure used in many psy­chol­o­gy stud­ies. Par­tic­i­pant are most often asked to push a but­ton when done with the task, which can be as var­ied as detect­ing an object, mem­o­riz­ing a word, or iden­ti­fy­ing an emo­tion. As brain pro­cess­ing is quite fast, reac­tion times are usu­al­ly mea­sured in mil­lisec­onds (a thou­sandth (1/1000) of a second).

What is your aver­age Reac­tion Time? Ready to try? Click here to start. Fun twist: Try before and after your Christ­mas dinner!

Mer­ry Christ­mas from the Sharp­Brains Team

Physical and mental exercise to prevent cognitive decline

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We offered some Brain Fit­ness Pre­dic­tions in our Mar­ket Report , including…

“7. Doc­tors and phar­ma­cists will help patients nav­i­gate through the over­whelm­ing range of avail­able prod­ucts and inter­pret the results of cog­ni­tive assess­ments. This will require sig­nif­i­cant pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment efforts, giv­en that most doc­tors today were trained under a very dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of the brain than the one we have today.”

The Amer­i­can Med­ical News, a week­ly news­pa­per for physi­cians pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, just pub­lished an excel­lent arti­cle along those lines:

Steps to a nim­ble mind: Phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise help keep the brain fit
— Neu­ro­science is uncov­er­ing tech­niques to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline.

A few quotes:

- It’s an exam­ple that high­lights a wave of new think­ing about the impor­tance of brain fitness.

- Until recent­ly, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom held that our brains were intractable, hard-wired com­put­ers. What we were born with was all we got. Age wore down mem­o­ry and the abil­i­ty to under­stand, and few inter­ven­tions could reverse this process. But increas­ing­ly, evi­dence sug­gests that phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise can alter spe­cif­ic brain regions, mak­ing rad­i­cal improve­ments in cog­ni­tive function.

- With near­ly 72 mil­lion Amer­i­cans turn­ing 65 over the next two decades, physi­cians need the tools to han­dle grow­ing patient con­cerns about how to best main­tain brain health. Armed with this new brand of sci­ence, front­line physi­cians will be bet­ter equipped to address the needs of aging baby boomers, already in the throes of the brain fit­ness revolution.

- “Encour­age them to exer­cise the brain in nov­el and com­plex ways,” he says.

Full arti­cle: here

One of the physi­cians quot­ed in the arti­cle is Gary J. Kennedy, MD, Direc­tor of the Divi­sion of Geri­atric Psy­chi­a­try at Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter in NYC and a pro­fes­sor in the Dept. of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine.

To put the AMA arti­cle in bet­ter per­spec­tive for Sharp­Brains read­ers, we asked Dr. Kennedy a few fol­low-up ques­tions. Below you have his questions.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (AF): Can you sum­ma­rize how cog­ni­tive func­tions tend to evolve as we age?

Gary Kennedy (GK): As we age cog­ni­tive func­tions that rely on [Read more…] about Phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline