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.”

The study conducted by researchers at Columbia University also determined that on average, people with a family history of depression appear to have brains that are 28 percent thinner in the right cortex (the brain’s outermost layer) than those individuals with no known family history of the disease. That cortical thinning, claim the researchers, was on a scale similar to that seen in Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia patients.

“These are really impressive anatomical differences,” says Dr. Bradley Peterson, study’s lead author. However, he added that the greater the anatomical differences among patients, on average, the more severe were their symptoms of cognitive impairment.

Helping people improve their cognitive abilities in fun and pleasurable ways is what Mind360.com is all about. Enjoy Mind360’s free brain training games by clicking here.

Read the entire LA Times article.

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.

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.

New brain facts

Cognitive science is the study of the brain. It has given us new insight into how the brain works. It has also revealed countless new and interesting facts about the physical composition of the brain as well, interesting facts that you probably didn’t know.

Our information superhighway

For instance, did you know the weight of the brain is about 3 lbs? Or that the brain is made up of about 75% water? You have heard of neurons, and probably know that they are the circuit stations of the brain, but did you know that the brain has about 100 million of them? And of those 100 million, each is linked to 1,000 to 10,000 synapses to convey information around the brain.

No hard feelings

And remember the “brain” scene in the movie Hannibal? Well, that was physically possible, because there are no pain receptors in the brain, so the brain can feel no pain. Yikes!

Why we are smarter

Further, the brain has physical characteristics that make us smarter as humans. At 2% of body weight, the human brain comprises the largest percentage of body weight of any organism.

High maintenance

It takes a lot of blood to keep that brain going: there are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain. It also takes a lot of oxygen: up to 20% of the total oxygen in your body (remember, the brain only weighs three pounds).

Protective padding

Ever wonder why we can hit our heads without damaging our brains? Well, there is a lot of padding: the human brain is the fattest organ in the body, with up to 60% fat composition.

The changing brain

A newborn baby’s brain grows to about three times its size at birth in its first year. The brain stops growing at age 18.

Whole brains

And you know that myth that we only use 10% of our brains? Well that is far from true: every part of our brain has a known function.

Memory lag

Did you ever think that traveling could affect your memory? Well, science has learned that frequent jet lag can impair memory due to stress hormones.

The champ

Did you know there is a recognized global memory champion? His name is Ben Pridemore, and his claim to fame is memorizing 96 historical events in 5 minutes and memorizing a single, shuffled deck of cards in 26.28 seconds. Sound strange? Well, everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame somehow. Do you remember who said that? Good, your brain is still working!

More fun and interesting facts

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Want to learn more fun facts about the brain? Here are 100 fascinating facts you never knew about the human brain.

The mellow elderly

Many elderly people seem sweet and happy, don’t they? Well, it is not your imagination. Science confirms that they are for a very specific reason.

Negative memory reduction

A research project between members of Alberta and Duke Universities reveals that brain activity in older people specifically causes them to remember fewer negative events than younger people. Further, the events they do remember do not seem so bad, or strike as much of a negative emotional reaction as in younger people.

Changes in brain activity

This is because seniors actually use their brains differently than younger people in storing memory, according to the scientist heading the study. Age related changes were discovered in elderly brain activity when participants of an average age of 70 years old were shown images of either neutral or strongly negative events.

Changes in interaction within the brain

The study, just published this month in the December edition of Psychological Science, clarified that there was no structural change in the emotional center of the brain among the different age groups. The emotional reaction in the elderly is altered as a result of changes in how those emotional centers interact with other parts of the brain such as memory.

Less stress

Another related effect is that when elderly people do remember negative events they are clinically proven to tend to view them as less stressful than younger people do. As far as negative images and memories are concerned, research observed a generally lower response in older people.

The older the memory, the better

In other words, it’s true: we don’t just mellow with age, we get happier.

Feeling sluggish even though you been conserving your energy? That’s your brain talking. We all know how important it is to get a good sleep, but new studies continue to show more and more cognitive benefits from regular sleep patterns.

Recent studies have identified sleep as essential for learning a diverse set of new complex tasks, ranging from spatial and visual memory skill acquisition to learning motor sequences.

Studies also indicate that not only is it important to get good sleep before performing a task, but it is essential to get good sleep after learning a task as well. In fact, empirical observations have demonstrated that among test groups of people learning new tasks, those who slept after learning the new task performed the task much better than those who stayed awake over the same time period before performing the task.

In effect, we need to break up our tasks with sleep.

Learning a new task, or preparing for a new task, each requires sleep afterwards. Sleep allows the brain to rest and absorb the new lessons or challenges that have been put before it.

So don’t just wait until you are tired. Nourish your brain with strategically-timed sleep, such as sleeping through the night to let a lesson sink in, or taking a quick nap after task set-ups. Incorporate well-timed sleep into your schedule for optimal brain performance when you are awake.

Reaction time

Reaction time has always been important in daily life. Today it is more than a trendy expression. Science is identifying the specific ways in which brain training can contribute to acceleration of reaction speed, which can help us with daily functioning activities such as driving.

Improve performance

Whatever our cognitive needs and whatever cognitive stage we are in, research reveals that processing speed enables us to perform the daily activities that our lives demand of us more effectively. And the higher the level at which an individual functions, the more success and fulfillment that individual experiences, no matter what age.

Lasting results for all

New research has confirmed that cognitive training of processing speed has a visible positive impact on daily activities of older adults, with reaction speed one of the key benefits. Further, the positive results of training cognitive speed were observed to have at least a two year impact and proved adaptable to all ages and education levels.

The daily grind

Think about all the challenges that come your way during the day, from your workplace to your home to your driving environment: imagine how much more fulfilling these tasks would be if you performed them at maximum efficiency.

Increase happiness

Science has verified that older adults can benefit as much as the general adult population from having their brains trained. Better results give all of us an increased sense of gratification from our individual tasks. And the satisfaction a job well done brings can make us all a whole lot happier.

The Brain Diet

Ok let’s get right to your brain diet. Spices such as turmeric and sage or minor munchies such as walnuts have been proven to be effective brain food. But don’t worry, there are more substantial (and tasty!) forms of brain nutrition.

Entree

First there’s wild salmon (sushi anybody?). Wild salmon is one of the healthiest forms of nutrition across the board for anybody to eat. It is an essential source of Omega 3 fatty acids, as well as a source of non-animal protein, which the brain loves. Salmon improves your brain matter, and reduces your risk of stroke and Alzheimer’s among other things.

Complements

As for drinks and dessert, the cacao bean is loaded with high concentrations of cognitive enhancers. Yes, that means that chocolate is brain food! But before you run out and buy yourself a Snicker’s bar, remember that popular brands of chocolate have all kinds of additives and preservatives which are actually bad for your brain.

Organic chocolate is the good stuff your brain likes, especially minimally processed and fully organic non-alkalized cocoa powder, which you can add to a high protein drink such as soy milk (or just regular low-fat milk for those of you who aren’t so hardcore).

Munchies

If you have the munchies, high cacao percentage chocolate bars of at least 75% cacao content will feed your brain well.

Tea

Your brain also fancies a nice cup of tea, but only tea with stone ground Gyokuru green tea powder.

Berries

The well known akai berry is another source of Omega 3’s.

Blueberries are an even more amazing berry. They have been found by the FDA in a Tufts University study to actually reverse age-related decline, improve short term memory loss, and help reverse age-related loss of balance.

Cup of Joe

Finally, a cup of coffee can also do the trick, but not just any coffee: it’s all in the beans. Fresh ground gently roasted coffee bean powder is great for the brain—even the caffeine! In fact, science has demonstrated that regular coffee consumption will reduce the risk of mental decline and associated diseases such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s.

So there’s your first official brain diet: your brain is now ready to chow down!