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.

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.

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.

Are you faster then Bush?

See how exactly fast are you with our Bush Shoe Incident brain teaser.

Too Much Information

According to research, driving in many respects poses the biggest everyday challenge to cognition. Driving skills and responsive reflex require more cognitive load than virtually any other activity—even flying a plane.

Cognitive Overload

Cognitively speaking, the response required of the brain while driving overland is overwhelming: the driver must respond to instant estimates of speed and distance, as well as what is taking place in front of and around the vehicle, internally as well as externally.

The Speed of Man

The driver is also often pressed into deciding which way to go while speeding by signs amid multiple sensory inputs of sight and sound, forcing the brain to react at a speed that science says it simply has not evolved for. The brain is made to react at best to the speed at which a human being runs, not the speed of a car.

The Mechanics

Among the multiple cognitive abilities required for driving, research lists attention, perceptuomotor skills, memory, and decision-making. These partially segregated neural systems are required to interact seamlessly in the virtual blink of an eye in automobile operation.

The Solution

Driver testing programs and simulators are highly popular items right now for groups with vested interests in improving driving skills, such as insurance companies and brain injury transition centers.

Product Optimization

Tests are being conducted with the first test samples being elderly drivers to determine the most effective form and characteristics of driving simulators. The goal of program design is to predict and develop necessary individual cognitive skills on a user-by-user basis. Schools, computer software, and on-line tests will make simulation programs available on a widescale basis in the very near future.

Added Benefits

In addition to getting safely from Point A to Point B, sharpening cognition skills for driving can potentially lower fuel costs: specific driving behavior impacts fuel economy, such as removing one’s foot from the gas to stop instead of driving fast and slamming on the breaks.

Building Memory: A Pro-Active Task

The best thing that can be done to offset the cognitive effects of aging is to pro-actively take steps to improve one’s memory. Exercises are presented herein as techniques for sharpening memory.

Life Begins Anew

Techniques for improving memory are particularly relevant to the many baby boomers currently reaching what used to be retirement age. Today, retirement means new beginnings. Developing one’s memory strength can yield a new level of cognition that enhances the lifestyle not only of baby boomers entering retirement but anyone else at any age.

Techniques

The following is a short list of practical ways to improve memory.

1) Grouping

Rearrangement of large numbers of items into smaller units of logical or artificial (organized) groups.

For example:
332245638 becomes 332-245-638

OR

Items can be rearranged according to organized categories or types: for example, a movie list can be divided into comedies, dramas, and romances, etc.

OR

Spelling is another good variation on grouping, such as taking the first letters or syllables of things one must remember to form new words that spell out the information.

For example:

H.O.M.E.S.: (The 5 Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.)
PEWSAGL.: The 7 deadly sins: pride, envy, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust.
ROY G. BIV: The 7 colors of the visual spectrum:
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet

2) Attention

Drive out all distractions, especially in the first eleven seconds of learning something new. Minimize environmental interference from music or televison. Block it all out, and create the environment most conducive to paying attention. Your DVD player and stereo will be waiting for you when you are done.

3) Interest

When you learn something new or important, ask questions to stimulate interest. Take part or sides in problems, issues and subjects you are learning about. Form an opinion, find a personal connection, become as impassioned as possible to help remember new facts.

4) Believe in Yourself

In the age of computers, cell phones, and PDA’s, many in our society have become accustomed to assuming that they can no longer remember anything. Well, this is not true. Trust and believe in your ability to remember. The more confident you are in your memory, the better you will remember.

5) Start Right

When you first learn something, concentrate on managing input to ensure accurate retention. Speed of memorization is not as important as accuracy.

6) Effective Selection

When learning something new, concentrate on the most significant elements. If there is a lot of information, instructions, or data being presented, just focus on the information that seems the most important.

If you only feel you can only remember part of what you are learning, focus on the data or details that seem hardest to remember.

7) Background

Questions also serve to build background. The best way to remember something is to find out more about it. Look for associations in the form of common patterns or relationships between the old and the new.

Hold the Course

It may not be easy to apply these techniques, but an honest effort will rapidly turn seemingly undetectable progress into visible results.

Tired of trying to remember where you left your keys? Tired of running behind schedule because you couldn’t find your wallet? Well, the time has come to react fast again, to shake your brain up and use it the way you’re used to. The time has come to play games that will exercise your brain the fun way.

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