sympathetic

New book shares science and techniques to breathe better and promote calmness not anxiety

by

Scrolling social media, amid fran­tic elec­tion-relat­ed posts and news of esca­lat­ing COVID-19 cas­es, you may have come across a friend remind­ing every­one to just breathe.

But can just-breath­ing real­ly make a difference?

In his new book Breath: The New Sci­ence of a Lost Art, jour­nal­ist James Nestor argues that mod­ern humans have become pret­ty bad at this most basic act of liv­ing. We breathe through our mouths and into our chests, and we do it way too fast. There’s even a phe­nom­e­non called “email apnea,” where mul­ti­task­ing office work­ers breathe irreg­u­lar­ly and shal­low­ly, or even hold their breath, for half a minute or more while glued to their devices.

Besides all the wor­ri­some health prob­lems this may cause—detailed point­ed­ly in Nestor’s book—our inep­ti­tude at breath­ing may have anoth­er big con­se­quence: con­tribut­ing to our anx­i­ety and oth­er men­tal health prob­lems. [Read more…] about New book shares sci­ence and tech­niques to breathe bet­ter and pro­mote calm­ness not anxiety

Relaxing for your Brain’s Sake

by

What stress­es you out ?Meditation School Students

What­ev­er it is, how you respond to it may have more con­se­quences than you think. Let me show you how.

Recap­ping from last months arti­cle (see Stress and Neur­al Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Puz­zle)…our bod­ies are a com­plex bal­anc­ing act between sys­tems work­ing full time to keep us alive and well. Any change which threat­ens this bal­ance can be referred to as stress. Cor­ti­sol, a key com­po­nent of the stress response, does an excel­lent job of allow­ing us to adapt to most stres­sors which last more than a cou­ple of min­utes. How­ev­er, hav­ing to endure a high stres­sor for longer than about 30 min­utes to an hour neg­a­tive­ly impacts the brain in var­i­ous ways.

[Read more…] about Relax­ing for your Brain’s Sake

Cognitive Fitness as a New Frontier of Fitness

by

emWave for Stress ManagementVery good arti­cle in the LA Times today. Like a Stair­Mas­ter for the brain: Can men­tal work­outs improve the mind’s agili­ty? Baby boomer con­cerns stim­u­late an indus­try expan­sion.

The reporter, Melis­sa Healy, reviews the healthy aging seg­ment in the Brain Fit­ness field. A few select­ed quotes:

- “There is plau­si­bil­i­ty, both bio­log­i­cal and behav­ioral, to the claim that these may work,” says Mol­ly Wag­ster, chief of the Nation­al Insti­tute on Aging’s neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy branch. “But it is still a sit­u­a­tion of ‘buy­er beware.’ ”

- “I see this as a new fron­tier of fit­ness over­all,” says Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, founder and chief exec­u­tive of the web­site Sharp­Brains .com, which tracks the busi­ness and sci­ence of brain-train­ing. Amer­i­cans already under­stand the val­ue of phys­i­cal fit­ness as a means of pre­serv­ing the body’s prop­er func­tion and pre­vent­ing age-relat­ed dis­eases, says Fer­nan­dez. He pre­dicts that cog­ni­tive fit­ness will become a goal to which Amer­i­cans equal­ly aspire as we learn more about aging and the brain.
— (Dr. Elkhonon) Gold­berg, who pro­vides sci­en­tif­ic advice on the web­site https://sharpbrains.com/, says that as neu­ro­sci­en­tists use imag­ing tech­nolo­gies to “see” the cel­lu­lar changes that come with learn­ing, he grows more con­fi­dent that well-designed train­ing pro­grams can have dis­cernible every­day effects in pre­serv­ing or repair­ing the intel­lec­tu­al func­tion of old­er adults. “This is shared hard­ware” that’s being changed in the brain, “and to the extent you some­how enhance it, that will have wide-rang­ing effects,” Gold­berg says. “It pro­vides a much more com­pelling raison­tre for this whole business.”

The arti­cle adds that “Amer­i­cans this year are expect­ed to invest $225 mil­lion in these pro­grams — up from just $70 mil­lion in 2003 — in an effort to tune up the brain, strength­en the mem­o­ry and fore­stall or reverse the cog­ni­tive slip­page that often comes with age, psy­chi­atric dis­ease, stroke or med­ical treatments.”

Our break­down for those 2007 US pre­dic­tions are as fol­lows: $80m for the Con­sumer seg­ment, $60m in K12 Edu­ca­tion, $50m in Clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, and $35m in the Cor­po­rate seg­ment. The Con­sumer seg­ment, with a healthy aging val­ue propo­si­tion, is the most recent one but the most rapid­ly growing.

Read the full arti­cle: Like a Stair­Mas­ter for the brain.

PS: the arti­cle also says “In the last three years, these brain­pow­er-boost­ing pro­grams have pro­lif­er­at­ed, with names like Mind­Fit, Hap­py Neu­ron, Brain Fit­ness and Lumos­i­ty.”.. if there are reporters read­ing this, please avoid future con­fu­sion by nam­ing Posit Sci­ence’s pro­gram “Posit Sci­ence Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram 2.0”. Brain Fit­ness refers to the full category.

MindFit by CogniFit, and Baroness Susan Greenfield

by

We are glad to see that Mind­Fit is final­ly mak­ing it into the pop­u­lar press, at least in the UK. The pro­gram is mak­ing big news in the UK (BBC, Times, Dai­ly Telegragh, Guardian…) because Baroness Susan Green­field, direc­tor of the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion and a well-respect­ed neu­ro­sci­en­tist, is endors­ing it. We eval­u­at­ed it last year andTwo In One Task liked what we saw, based on our 10-Ques­tion Check­list. Now, remem­ber that no pro­gram is “best”, but that dif­fer­ent pro­grams can be more appro­pri­ate for spe­cif­ic peo­ple and spe­cif­ic goals, so read the check­list first and take a lot at oth­er pro­grams too if you are in the mar­ket for “brain training”.

Mind­Fit is a soft­ware-based assess­ment and train­ing pro­gram for 14 cog­ni­tive skills impor­tant for healthy aging. We typ­i­cal­ly rec­om­mend it for peo­ple over 50 (up to any age, you sim­ply need to know how to use a com­put­er and a mouse) who want a nov­el and var­ied men­tal workout.

The pro­gram has [Read more…] about Mind­Fit by Cog­niFit, and Baroness Susan Greenfield

Cognitive training research: MindFit, Lumosity, Posit Science, Cogmed

by

The field of com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing (part of what we call “Brain Fit­ness”) is start­ing to get trac­tion in the media and becom­ing an emerg­ing indus­try, and we are hap­py to see how a grow­ing num­ber of researchers and sci­ence-based com­pa­nies are lead­ing stud­ies that will allow to bet­ter mea­sure results and refine the brain exer­cise soft­ware available.

Pub­lished new research

  • Com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing after stroke‑A pilot study. A pub­lished study on how Cogmed work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing may help stroke patients. See the ref­er­ence at Cogmed Research page (and full arti­cle here)
  • The Jour­nals of Geron­tol­ogy pub­lished a series of relat­ed papers in their June issue, includ­ing this by Kar­lene Ball, Jer­ri D. Edwards, and Les­ley A. Ross on The Impact of Speed of Pro­cess­ing Train­ing on Cog­ni­tive and Every­day Func­tions, J Geron­tol B Psy­chol Sci Soc Sci 2007 62: 19–31.  Abstract: “We com­bined data from six stud­ies, all using the same speed of pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram, to exam­ine the mech­a­nisms of train­ing gain and the impact of train­ing on cog­ni­tive and every­day abil­i­ties of old­er adults. Results indi­cat­ed that train­ing pro­duces imme­di­ate improve­ments across all sub­tests of the Use­ful Field of View test, par­tic­u­lar­ly for old­er adults with ini­tial speed of pro­cess­ing deficits. Age and edu­ca­tion had lit­tle to no impact on train­ing gain. Par­tic­i­pants main­tained ben­e­fits of train­ing for at least 2 years, which trans­lat­ed to improve­ments in every­day abil­i­ties, includ­ing effi­cient per­for­mance of instru­men­tal activ­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing and safer dri­ving per­for­mance.”

Ongoing/ start­ing research

Brain Exercise and Brain Fitness July Monthly Digest

by

We are often told we share too much con­tent, but it is tough for us to share less giv­en all the news around cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al training!

To make things eas­i­er we will offer a Month­ly Digest. Today, August 1st, we will list the most pop­u­lar July posts. Con­sid­er it your month­ly Brain Exer­cise Mag­a­zine 🙂

 

News you can use

Trad­ing per­for­mance psy­chol­o­gy and self-talk

Stress Man­age­ment for Lawyers

Men­tal Train­ing for Grat­i­tude and Altruism

 

Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Mar­ket News

Mar­ket­Watch on Beat­ing for­get­ful­ness and boost­ing the brain

Nin­ten­do BrainAge, Lumos­i­ty, Hap­py Neu­ron, MyBrainTrainer…

Brain Health through Seri­ous Games and Brain Exercise

Brain Fit­ness Workshops

Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute Brain Fit­ness class at UC Berkeley

 

Healthy Aging

Inter­view with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Yaakov Stern: Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve

Jud­son Laip­ply’s Danc­ing Brain

Jack and Elaine LaLanne and Brain Health

Exer­cise Your Brain! Enjoy Learning!

 

Atten­tion Deficits 

Inter­view with a pedi­a­tri­cian on work­ing mem­o­ry training

Atten­tion deficits: drugs, ther­a­py, cog­ni­tive training

 

Some sharp brains

A very sharp brain: Prof. Hans Rosling

Psy­chol­o­gist Jer­ry Yang and pok­er Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty = Life­long Learning

 

Biol­o­gy and Learning 

Apes are Speedy Learners

Pink Dol­phin Sheds Light on Human Evolution

 

Enjoy! and please feel free to sug­gest ideas and top­ics we can cov­er in the future.