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stress-hormones

What You Can do to Improve Memory (and Why It Deteriorates in Old Age)

August 20, 2008 by Dr. Bill Klemm

After about age 50, most peo­ple begin to expe­ri­ence a decline in mem­o­ry capa­bil­i­ty. Why is that? One obvi­ous answer is that the small arter­ies of the brain begin to clog up, often as a result of a life­time of eat­ing the wrong things and a lack of exer­cise. If that life­time has been stress­ful, many neu­rons may have been killed by stress hor­mones. Giv­en theImprove Memory Bill Klemm most recent sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, reviewed in my book Thank You, Brain, For All You Remem­ber. What You For­got Was My Fault, dead neu­rons can’t be replaced, except in the hip­pocam­pus, which is for­tu­nate for mem­o­ry because the hip­pocam­pus is essen­tial for mak­ing cer­tain kinds of mem­o­ries per­ma­nent. Anoth­er cause is incip­i­ent Alzheimer’s dis­ease; autop­sies show that many peo­ple have the lesions of the dis­ease but have nev­er shown symp­toms, pre­sum­ably because a life­time of excep­tion­al men­tal activ­i­ty has built up a “cog­ni­tive reserve.

So is there any­thing you can do about it besides exer­cise like crazy, eat healthy foods that you don’t like all that much, pop your statin pills, and take up yoga?

Yes. In short: focus, focus, focus.

Chang­ing think­ing styles can help. Research shows that [Read more…] about What You Can do to Improve Mem­o­ry (and Why It Dete­ri­o­rates in Old Age)

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: aging-problem, Alzheimer’s-disease, Attention-Deficit, Bill-Klemm, Cognitive Neuroscience, cognitive-reserve, exercise, exercise-for-the-brain, fMRI, focus, healthy-foods, hippocampus, improve-concentration, improve-memory, lack-of-exercise, memory-after-50, memory-decline, mental-activity, mental-fitness, multi-tasking, Neurons, pay-attention, statin-pills, stress-hormones, stressful, Working-memory, yoga

Stress Management as Key Factor For Cognitive Fitness, and More News

February 4, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Brain Health NewsA roundup of sev­er­al excel­lent arti­cles this week:

Keep­ing Your Brain Fit (US News and World Report)

- “In a study of more than 2,800 peo­ple ages 65 or old­er, Har­vard researchers found that those with at least five social ties—church groups, social groups, reg­u­lar vis­its, or phone calls with fam­i­ly and friends—were less like­ly to suf­fer cog­ni­tive decline than those with no social ties.”

- “The work­ing hypoth­e­sis is that it has some­thing to do with stress man­age­ment,” says Mar­i­lyn Albert, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at Johns Hop­kins and codi­rec­tor of the Alzheimer’s research cen­ter there. In ani­mal stud­ies, a pro­longed ele­va­tion in stress hor­mones dam­ages the hip­pocam­pus. Social engage­ment appears to boost peo­ple’s sense of con­trol, which affects their stress lev­el. Cre­ative arts seem to be a high­ly promis­ing way to increase social engage­ment. George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cohen has found that elder­ly peo­ple who joined choirs also stepped up their oth­er activ­i­ties dur­ing a 12-month peri­od, while a non­sing­ing con­trol group dropped out of some activ­i­ties. The singers also report­ed few­er health prob­lems, while the con­trol group report­ed an increase.”

We Nev­er For­get Any­thing (Any­more) (Pre­ven­tion Magazine)

- “Pro­cess­ing new infor­ma­tion when we’re anx­ious is tough; the stress itself is a dis­trac­tion. Fer­nan­dez taught Lau­rie this relax­ation trick: [Read more…] about Stress Man­age­ment as Key Fac­tor For Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness, and More News

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Alzheimers, Alzheimers-research, Army, brain-concussions, brain-injuries, Brain-Training, cognitive-decline, cognitive-fitness, hippocampus, Marilyn-Albert, meditation, prevention, Processing-information, PTSD, relaxation-trick, social-engagement, stress-hormones, stress-management

Customer Satisfaction Survey/ Tech Museum Awards

April 5, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

We usu­al­ly spend more time in this blog talk­ing about brain fit­ness sci­ence, pro­grams and trends than talk­ing about peo­ple. Today we are going to change that, since we have been receiv­ing great feed­back from a num­ber of sources. While we still need to improve a lot, we can start to see the results of what we do in our “brain fit­ness cen­ter”. And we could­n’t be hap­pi­er about the nom­i­na­tion this week of Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and myself, as Sharp­Brains cofounders, for The Tech Muse­um Awards — Tech­nol­o­gy Ben­e­fit­ing Human­i­ty, in the Health category.

I. Anony­mous Feed­back from an online sur­vey of our online store cus­tomers

  • 58% respon­dents are Very Sat­is­fied, and 42% Sat­is­fied, with the prod­ucts and ser­vices they chose. I promise that there were more options (Dis­sat­is­fied, Very Dissatisfied)
  • “As a trad­er, I real­ly need to sus­tain atten­tion for long peri­ods. Your pro­gram (here) has been eye-open­ing and very helpful.”
  • “I LOVE the pro­gram! It is fun, chal­lenges me and gives me hope for improv­ing in the areas where I have lim­i­ta­tions. Staff sup­port & edu­ca­tion­al infor­ma­tion has been great. It is very impor­tant to be able to talk to some­one about the ques­tions or process prob­lems that we experience…your mem­ber on-line site gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get answers & need­ed sup­port. Thanks for all you are doing. My hus­band and I love get­ting feed­back about our progress…it is a very pos­i­tive experience!”
  • “Keep devel­op­ing pro­grams so when we fin­ish doing the Mind­Fit (here) pro­gram there will be anoth­er one to build upon the first! I am impressed at how well your pro­grams are indi­vid­u­al­ized. Good Job to all involved!”
  • “Good, I enjoy the games (here) and I can tell a dif­fer­ence in my mem­o­ry and over­all awareness.”

II. Feed­back about our Stress Man­age­ment for Peak Per­for­mance work­shop (here)

  • Accen­ture: 46 per­cent of sur­vey respon­dents Strong­ly Agreed that they “gained prac­ti­cal skills and knowl­edge they could start using immediately.” 69 per­cent Strong­ly Agreed [Read more…] about Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion Survey/ Tech Muse­um Awards

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: baba-shiv, brain-fitness-website, brett-steenbarger, Dawkins, development, hippocampus, Journal-of-the-American-Medical-Association, Karlene-Ball, malleable, Martin-Seligman, mental-exercise, Parkinsons, posit-science-pbs, Serious-Games, stress-hormones

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