relaxation

Brain Training vs Facebook/ Social Media: 1 — 0

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Does Reg­u­lar Brain Train­ing Keep Sele­na Gomez at the Peak of Her Career? (YCB):

“Sele­na Gomez hit the head­lines this week when she revealed to ELLE Mag­a­zine that, despite being one of the world’s most influ­en­tial celebri­ties online with 142 mil­lion fol­low­ers on Insta­gram alone, she actu­al­ly has no social media or pho­to edit­ing apps on her smartphone.

In fact, the only app she does have is Peak, a pop­u­lar brain-train­ing app.

The Peak app has already reached 40 mil­lion down­loads world­wide, and Sele­na Gomez is just part of a grow­ing trend of 20-some­things who are now using apps and games like this for fun, self-improve­ment and relax­ation, rather than just pas­sive­ly brows­ing online content.”

News in Context:

Mind-Controlled Videogames Become Reality

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Mind-Con­trolled Videogames Become Real­i­ty (The Wall Street Journal):

- Pic­ture this: You put on a head­set and relax your mind. Soon you begin con­trol­ling an object with your thoughts.

- Among the offer­ings avail­able in the com­pa­ny’s app store are desk­top games like “Mind­Hunter,” [Read more…] about Mind-Con­trolled Videogames Become Reality

Top 10 Quotes on Lifelong Neuroplasticity and Neurogenesis (and a Call to eBook Readers)

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You may have  noticed that Amazon.com is shar­ing aggre­gat­ed data on how ebook read­ers inter­act with the books they are read­ing. For exam­ple, the “Pop­u­lar High­lights” sec­tion (towards the bot­tom of our Kin­dle book page) ranks the Top 10 sen­tences that Kin­dle read­ers have high­light­ed and shared while read­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp (April 2009; 182 pages; ranked #1 in Kin­dle Store’s Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine section).

This infor­ma­tion is invalu­able to authors and pub­lish­ers — as you can imag­ine, we’ll make sure to not only main­tain but to elab­o­rate on these top­ics as we pre­pare future edi­tions of the book.

So, what are so far the Top Ten Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, [Read more…] about Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (and a Call to eBook Readers)

Transcript: Paul Nussbaum on Meditation, Neuropsychology and Thanksgiving

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: [Read more…] about Tran­script: Paul Nuss­baum on Med­i­ta­tion, Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and Thanksgiving

Transcript: Dr. Gary Small on Enhancing Memory and the Brain

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today on mem­ory, mem­ory tech­niques and brain-healthy lifestyles with Dr. Gary  Small, Direc­tor of UCLA’s Mem­ory Clin­ic and Cen­ter on Aging, and author of The Mem­ory Bible. You can learn more about his book  Here, and learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Per­haps one of the best ques­tions and answers was:

2:55
Ques­tion: Gary, you’ve worked many years in this field. Let us in on the secret. What do YOU do you, per­son­al­ly, to pro­mote your own brain fitness?
2:57
Answer: I try to get at least 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing each day; try to min­i­mize my stress by stay­ing con­nect­ed with fam­i­ly and friends; gen­er­al­ly eat a brain healthy diet (fish, fruits, veg­eta­bles), and try to bal­ance my online time with my offline time. Which reminds me, I think it is almost time for me to sign off line. [Read more…] about Tran­script: Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­o­ry and the Brain

Meditation: Different Techniques, Different Effects on the Brain

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In a post last month we dis­cussed medi­a­tion as a tool to train your brain. Now you may be won­der­ing whether the dif­fer­ent types of medi­a­tion dif­fer in their tech­niques and their effects. This arti­cle from The Huff­in­g­ton Post explores How Med­i­ta­tion Tech­niques Com­pare — Zen, Mind­ful­ness, Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion and more.

The old “sci­en­tif­ic” myth that med­i­ta­tion prac­tices all induce the same, gen­er­al state of phys­i­o­log­i­cal rest — called the “relax­ation response” — has been over­turned. […] Researchers iden­ti­fy three major cat­e­gories of techniques.

Brain research, along with find­ings on psy­cho­log­i­cal and behav­ioral effects, gives a more objec­tive frame­work for health pro­fes­sion­als or any­one to deter­mine which med­i­ta­tion tech­nique might be most ben­e­fi­cial for a giv­en purpose.

A great research-based resource!