test-your-memory

January Newsletter: Let’s Talk Brain Fitness, Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Reserve

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Let us first announce an upcom­ing Vir­tu­al Book Club Dis­cus­sion focused on Brain Fit­ness, to take place on Mon­day March 14th in hon­or of Brain Aware­ness Week 2011 (March 14–20th). Let’s dis­cuss burn­ing issues togeth­er: Why care about neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and the pos­si­bil­i­ties it offers to enrich our qual­i­ty of life? What does cog­ni­tive reserve research mean to the way we learn, work, play, live? What is Brain Train­ing — and what is not? All the con­ver­sa­tion be vir­tu­al, via social media tools. You can learn more here.

This edi­tion of Sharp­Brains month­ly eNewslet­ter brings many arti­cles on those top­ics. Enjoy! [Read more…] about Jan­u­ary Newslet­ter: Let’s Talk Brain Fit­ness, Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Cog­ni­tive Reserve

Test your Short-Term Memory: How many letters can you memorize?

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Mem­o­ry is more com­plex that we usu­al­ly think. Cog­ni­tive sci­ences have iden­ti­fied dif­fer­ent mem­o­ry sys­tems, each sup­port­ed by dif­fer­ent brain regions. One major dif­fer­ence is between long-term and short-term mem­o­ry (also called work­ing memory).

Long-term mem­o­ry is an unlim­it­ed stor­age of mem­o­ries dat­ing as far back as you can remem­ber to a few min­utes ago. For instance, when you remem­ber your first day in high-school or what you said to your col­league two min­utes ago, you are using your long-term mem­o­ry sys­tem. This sys­tem depends most­ly on parts of the tem­po­ral (in blue here) and frontal (in green) regions of the brain.

Short-term or work­ing mem­o­ry is a lim­it­ed stor­age used to briefly keep the infor­ma­tion need­ed for the task at hand. For instance, when you keep in mind a phone num­ber while you are dial­ing it or when you do some men­tal cal­cu­la­tion you are using your work­ing mem­o­ry sys­tem. This sys­tem depends most­ly on parts of the frontal (in green) and pari­etal (in yel­low) regions of the brain.

Work­ing mem­o­ry is cru­cial for most of the tasks we per­form dai­ly. It is also quite vul­ner­a­ble to the aging process. Two good rea­sons to try to main­tain this func­tion! Ready to test and sharp­en your short-term memory?

Fol­low this link to mem­o­rize series of let­ters. The first 2 tri­als are very easy but the test gets quite chal­leng­ing after that!