Mind360 Blog

Check out this week’s leading cognitive science news item:

According to the Los Angeles Times, “researchers have long noted that most depressives have a wide range of other cognitive problems: They often have trouble concentrating, they frequently fail to pick up on social cues - such as facial expressions - that don’t conform with their negative thoughts, and their memories sometimes seem full of holes.”

Read the entire LA Times article 

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

With so many brain training game providers out there claiming to help improve your cognitive abilities, it’s hard to know which ones actually work, and if so, to what degree. But if there’s one thing most experts agree on, it is that challenging your brain to virtually any ‘workout’ is always a worthwhile exercise, and certainly can’t hurt.

Simply put, it all comes down to “using it or losing it.” But for brain training to be truly effective, especially over the long term, each person requires a personal training program designed to meet his or her individual needs. In other words, one size does not fit all.

Brain Games vs. Brain Training Games

What’s more, once a personal training program has been selected, it is imperative that the games prescribed are not merely brain games, or teasers, as the overwhelming majority on today’s market are, but rather scientifically designed brain ‘training’ games that deliver actual results.

Moreover, just as a professional athlete focuses on training particular physical skills and muscles individually, (i.e. a tennis player’s serve, forehand and backhand strokes, running etc.), another key to successful brain training requires focusing on a single cognitive area at a time, and within certain time limits.

Staying in Touch Requires Staying in Touch

Whether it’s training your memory, attention, executive functions, or other key cognitive abilities, new evidence is surfacing virtually everyday with respect to what works… and what doesn’t. Stay tuned to Mind360.com as we provide further ‘How to’ information on ways to effectively train your brain and improve your overall mental fitness for healthier day-to-day living.

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

Get this, according to a study completed by University of Virginia Professor, Timothy Salthouse, our reasoning, thinking speed and spatial visualization all begin taking a turn for the worse as early as when we’re in our late twenties. In other words, old is the new young.

The study, conducted over a 7-year period and published in Rochester New York’s Neurobiology of Aging journal, involved 2,000 healthy people ranging in age between 18 and 60. Participants in the mental agility tests were asked to solve puzzles, recall certain words and story details, as well as identify patterns in letters and various symbols. The same tests, incidentally, are already conducted by doctors in order to identify signs of dementia.

Go Figure… While You Still Can

In nine out of twelve tests the average age at which the highest results were achieved was 22. In tests focused on brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability, 27 was the age at which any decline was first noticeable.

The results from the study also indicate that skills based on accumulated knowledge, such as vocabulary and general information, continue to increase until age 60.

What to do? What to do?

So what action can you take now to prevent senility from setting in before you’re 30 and over the hill? Well, there are increasingly more studies also claiming that you can not only slow down the onset of cognitive decline, but quite possibly even reverse the ageing process. (Naturally Mind360’s brain training games come to mind.)

What’s clear is that whatever course of action you choose in order to combat cognitve decline and ensure you remain ‘young at mind’ longer, it’s important that you begin asap. In other words, get a head start. Literally.

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

Having difficulty paying attention? Forgetting where you put things? Wondering whether or not you may be ‘losing it’ mentally?

Relax; everybody experiences lapses in their various cognitive skills due to one reason or another, and often without any serious cause for concern.

But then again, what harm is there in having yourself checked out mentally from time to time, especially when there are a number of simple tests easily available to you?

Get a Head Start

Next time you visit your doctor, ask him or her to arrange for you to undergo any of the following tests to assess your current brain health. After all, a healthy body requires a healthy mind.

SIMPLE BRAIN HEALTH TESTS

Test of Variable Attention (T.O.V.A.)
Measures responses to visual stimulus. Includes scores for consistency, impulsivity, inattention, and response speed.

Weschler Memory Scale (WMS)
Tests brain recall abilities in four areas: working memory, verbal memory, immediate memory, and visual memory.

Millon IQ
Assesses four types of intelligence: abstract, emotional, creative, and perceptual.

Type and Temperament
Assesses behavioral temperament and personality.

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

Face recognition, aka face perception, is the cognitive ability enabling your brain to recognize faces. Furthermore, it relates to the relationship between recognizing faces and other face-processing aspects.

The many facets of face recognition

Following are five things you probably didn’t know about face recognition:

1. A specific part of the brain, known as the Fusiform Face Area (FFA), is believed to process face stimuli more than other visual objects. Evidence also suggests that, as part of the human visual system, the Fusiform Face Area also processes categorical data of objects other than faces.

2. Scientists have established that faces are processed as wholes, as opposed to their individual features. Indeed face recognition research has revealed that people recognize pictures of full faces more than facial parts. For example, it’s easier to identify and remember eyes when presented with a face, than eyes presented without a face. When identifying other objects, however, it matters not whether certain features are presented in isolation.

3. A particular brain disorder can cause Prosopagnosia, that is, face blindness - a face recognition disorder preventing people from identifying faces. Prosopagnosia refers to faces only, as all other visual stimuli undergo normal processing. An estimated two percent of all people suffer from face blindness. Also, because it is usually easier to recognize faces of races familiar to you, you may have already experienced some face blindness. For instance, if your environment comprises mainly Caucasian faces, you may have difficulty identifying Asian faces. This is known as the “Other-Race Effect.”

4. Another face recognition effect is known as the “Inversion Effect.” Faces are unique in that when they are presented upside down, they are very difficult to recognize. The “Margaret Thatcher Effect” is another phenomenon which illustrates how difficult it is to identify distorted features on an inverted face, while these distortions can be easily identified on upright faces. Click here for a closer look at “The Margaret Thatcher Effect.”

5. Although we know much more than we did about face recognition processes, advanced computerized face recognition still has a long way to go before it can identify faces accurately. For example, before September 11, 2001 computers could identify many suspects’ faces, but not enough to deem the process reliable. Though computer systems have since improved, they are still not entirely reliable.

To sum up, faces are particularly unique visual stimuli and undergo different processing than all other visual objects. To test your face recognition skills, click here.

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

Baby boomers are people too. And like millions of people today, those of us born between 1946 and 1964 also spend too many hours surfing the net searching for things we never manage to find. Let’s face it; generally speaking, we’re not nearly as adept at navigating the Web as those younger than us. Indeed many of us just aren’t getting the attention we’d like or need? Life, it’s fair to say, is still so unfair.

Everything you always wanted to know about memory loss but forgot to ask

There are an estimated 78 million baby boomers in the US and the number of those using the internet is, well, booming! Hence, it’s no wonder increasingly more websites, blogs and portals etc. are popping up regularly online, offering everything from mental fitness to dating. The problem now is being able to quickly decipher which sites truly serve this demographic best.

Sure, you can always Google your way to the best sites, but who’s got time? And besides, why waste more unnecessary time when your Mind360 research team has already done the heavy sifting for you?

And so, without any further ado, allow us to present what we believe to currently be the best websites catering exclusively to the baby boomer population. Stay tuned as we’ll be updating this list on a regular basis.

Top Websites for Boomers

www.eons.com 
www.rl.tv
www.aarp.org 
www.myboomerplace.com 
www.growingbolder.com 
www.boomer411.com 
www.boomj.com
www.tbd.com
www.c-boom.com
www.babyboomercaretaker.com 
 
 
 

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

Surprise! According to a recent study in the UK, mental health problems among youngsters are on the rise as they consume increasingly more junk food.

University of London researchers studied 14,000 children and determined that a large number of youngsters who ate snacks such as potato chips, lollipops and take-out food at age three lagged behind the rest of their classmates in elementary school.

Chew on this

The study also found about 25% of the children who consumed an above average amount of junk food at age three were 10% less inclined to keep up with their fellow students during their initial four years of elementary school.

Fed up with junk food

As more baby boomers attempt to combat the prospects of mental decline, the question arising in more aging adults’ minds is whether or not certain foods in general, and of course junk food in particular, also adversely affects their ‘cognitive’ abilities like memory and reasoning etc.?

We welcome your comments/studies/theories… 
 
 

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

The question on increasingly more people’s minds is: Do brain training games actually work?

According to a group of leading scientists recently organized by consumer watchdog Which? [the company name actually includes the '?'], Nintendo’s massively popular Brain Training game is “useless at helping players improve their memories.”

“If people enjoy using these games, then they should continue to do so – that’s a no-brainer,” says Which? editor Martyn Hocking. “But if people are under the illusion that these devices are scientifically proven to keep their minds in shape, they need to think again.”

There are brain games, and then there are…

Indeed the jury is still out regarding a number of claims made by regular brain game developers. But as more innovators like Mind360 attempt to meet the rapidly growing demand for brain games that actually train your cognitive skills, such as memory and executive functions, just to name a few, what’s important to keep in mind is that, at the end of the day, users will have the final say as to which games work and which are merely fun to play. 
 
 

With the emerging brain fitness industry already growing at what can best be described as a mind boggling pace, so too is the amount of information, and subsequent confusion, surrounding this vitally important field. This is especially true as increasingly more software and online developers get into the brain fitness game with the hopes of appealing to the huge baby boomer market unwilling to lose their marbles just yet.

Enter SharpBrains.com, a leading online site providing comprehensive news, information and resources about the mental fitness biz. Self-declared “the Brain Fitness Authority,” given the site’s impressive list of endorsements by a host of major media outlets, indeed, a few well-spent minutes checking out their site is convincing enough of SharpBrains market status. Considering all the positive press and endorsements this organization has enjoyed since its inception in 2005, this is a good place to start (and bookmark) as a reliable source of brain fitness information.

SharpBrains CEO Alvaro Fernandez

Boomers bent on maintaining their wits

According to SharpBrains co-founder and CEO, Alvaro Fernandez, “by 2015, the industry should reach $2 billion in annual sales,” adding that “ the growth will come from computer-savvy boomers and seniors eager to stay not just physically fit, but also mentally alert as they age.”

Mr. Fernandez, a Stanford University graduate (MBA, MA) served formerly as Director and GM of Edusoft’s Assess2know in addition to a number of other impressive corporate posts. He’s been quoted repeatedly by leading media outlets including CNN, The New York Times, the Associated Press, and Reuters, just to name a few. Alvaro Fernandez is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s “Global Agenda Councils” initiative, has published numerous acclaimed articles, as well as enjoys teaching The Science of Brain Health and Brain Fitness at both SFSU and UC-Berkeley.

Out of the fog blog

As would any on-the-ball website, SharpBrains too provides its viewers with a blog covering the wide spectrum of mental fitness issues including what’s in store for the brain fitness biz in the not-too-distant-future. “We can observe a number of trends that executives, consumers, public policy makers, and the media should watch closely in the coming years, as brain fitness and training becomes mainstream, new tools appear, and an ecosystem grows around it.”

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com – a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.

Women’s health issues, particularly among aging baby boomers, are receiving increasingly more attention, especially in the area of mental health. With diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other age-related illnesses claiming more sufferers - of whom a majority are women - this special focus is garnering growing support from both private and governmental sources.

Indeed a fundraising campaign devoted to women’s health was recently launched by the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care located in Toronto, Canada. Baycrest ranks among the world’s leading academic health sciences centers focused on aging. Having recently visited a relative of mine at Baycrest diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, I can personally attest to the fact that the folks at the centre are clearly compassionate and committed to pioneering new breakthroughs with respect to women’s health.

Alzheimer’s Disease vs. Women

“Women are the CEOs when it comes to running the family. They are typically the primary caregivers for their kids, partners and aging relatives,” note Baycrest officials. “New statistics released by the Alzheimer Society of Canada show they are at much greater risk than men for developing Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Recent data on women’s health released by the ASC reveal that 70%, more two-thirds of the 500,000 people in Canada currently diagnosed with having Alzheimer’s disease, are female. Last April the provincial government of Ontario announced a $10 million contribution to help fund the creation of The Centre for Brain Fitness at Baycrest.

Co-chairing The “Women of Baycrest” Campaign is Lynn Posluns, a local fashion entrepreneur and philanthropist. “Collectively we are more powerful than any generation of women before us,” declares Posluns. “We want to know why we are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s and what we can do to maintain our physical and mental wellness as we get older.”

Female Boomers Taking Control

Baycrest’s goal is to raise $3 million to fund a new Research Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging at Baycrest. Clinician scientist, Dr. Tiffany Chow, it was announced, will be the first female neuroscientist to be supported as a result of the campaign.

“Our partners, our aging parents and our kids depend on us to stay healthy and be there for them,” adds Posluns. “We want to remain healthy and active in life as long as we can - not just for our loved ones but for ourselves as well!”

Posluns believes that the campaign focus on women’s mental health will encourage other women to join and support Baycrest’s initiatives to manage female mental fitness and aging. Women are invited to support the campaign with the purchase of a $1,800 membership.

Stay tuned to Mind360.com as we devote further attention to women’s mental health issues and developments around the world.

 
 
 
Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com – a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.