Here you are have the bi-monthly update with our 10 most Pop­u­lar blog posts. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our RSS feed, or to our newslet­ter, at the top of this page, if you want to receive this digest by email).

The Neu­ron, The Brain, and Think­ing Smarter

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Quick update: 2 very inter­est­ing news, 2 excel­lent blog carnivals.

1) For­get Brain Age: Researchers Develop Soft­ware That Makes You Smarter (Wired). Thanks Senia!

- “In a lim­ited trial, he and his team were able to make 34 test sub­jects sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter at answer­ing IQ test ques­tions after train­ing them on a com­pletely sep­a­rate mem­ory task”

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John Med­ina, Direc­tor of the Brain Cen­ter for Applied Learn­ing Research at Seat­tle Pacific Uni­ver­sity, and author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School, wrote a great arti­cle for us on Brain Rules: sci­ence and prac­tice, bring­ing brain research to daily life.

We enjoyed the book very much since it pro­vides an excel­lent and engag­ing overview of recent brain research, so we are glad to see it reach­ing new cor­ners. You may enjoy these 2 new resources:

1) A 52-minute video based on his Google talk on April 8th: click Here. Great dis­cus­sion of the brain ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress management.

2) An inter­view at Har­vard Busi­ness Review, titled The Sci­ence of Think­ing Smarter. I enjoyed some of the exchanges, such as this one (though I find the ques­tion a bit mys­ti­fy­ing, are we assum­ing it is genes all that mat­ter for leadership?):

Ques­tion: In the absence of genetic test­ing, do you see any merit in the sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing some busi­nesses use, such as the Myers-Briggs test?

Over the last year we have gladly seen an avalanche of news on adult neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons in adult brains), fol­low­ing recent research reports. Fur­ther, we have seen how the news that phys­i­cal exer­cise can enhance neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis is becom­ing com­mon knowl­edge among many health sys­tems we work with.

Now, the obvi­ous ques­tion that doesn’t always get asked is, “What good are new neu­rons if they don’t sur­vive?”. And that’s where learn­ing, enrich­ment, men­tal exer­cise, are critical.

We are glad to intro­duce a new Expert Con­trib­u­tor, Dr. Bill Klemm, a pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity, who sum­ma­rizes much research on how new neu­rons are born-and what they need to live long happy lives.

- Alvaro

New Neu­rons: Good News, Bad News

– By Dr. Bill Klemm

In the last few years, researchers have dis­cov­ered that new nerve cells (neu­rons) are born, pre­sum­ably from resid­ual stem cells that exist even in adults. That should be good news for all of us as we get older and fear men­tal decline. The bad news is that these new neu­rons die, unless our minds are active enough.

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We con­cluded our Top 50 Brain Teasers post with the challenge:

We are work­ing on improv­ing sev­eral sec­tions of our web­site, espe­cially our Resources sec­tion. It will look much bet­ter in a few days. Our first step has been to re-organize our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series, and below you have how it looks today.

A very promis­ing cog­ni­tive train­ing study was pre­sented last week by Helena West­er­berg at the annual meet­ing of the CNS: Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Soci­ety held in San Fran­cisco, and Dr. David Rabiner brings us the highlights.

- Alvaro

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The study was con­ducted with a gen­eral adult pop­u­la­tion, rather than adults diag­nosed with ADHD, as was the case in pre­vi­ous pub­lished work­ing mem­ory train­ing studies,

The study was a ran­dom­ized, con­trolled trial of work­ing mem­ory train­ing con­ducted with 55 younger (20–30 years old) and 45 older (60–70 years old) adults. Par­tic­i­pants were ran­domly assigned to receive 5 weeks of active Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing or a placebo train­ing inter­ven­tion. In the active train­ing group, the dif­fi­culty of the work­ing mem­ory train­ing tasks con­tin­u­ally adjusted to match the individual’s per­for­mance. As a result, indi­vid­u­als were con­sis­tently chal­lenged to per­form at their high­est pos­si­ble level. In the placebo train­ing group, the dif­fi­culty level remained con­stant across the train­ing period such that improve­ments in work­ing mem­ory were not expected to occur.

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Great arti­cle in the UK’s Sun­day Times yes­ter­day: Pump up those lit­tle grey cells, list­ing a vari­ety of free or inex­pen­sive brain health-related resources.

We are hon­ored (even hon­oured, I’d dare say) that they started the list with our com­pli­men­tary Brain Fit­ness 101 e-Guide:

- “The sci­ence behind some of the more out­landish claims for com­puter games that are sup­posed to improve your cog­ni­tive pow­ers, is a mat­ter of debate. How­ever, you don’t need to pay £20 to give a game a try. The inter­net fea­tures a host of web­sites that can stretch your imag­i­na­tion and improve your men­tal prowess in a range of skills. Some are expen­sive rip-offs, but many are free, as our guide to the best of them shows.”

- “Begin by Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago we pub­lished the first and sec­ond install­ments of this Peace Among Pri­mates series, by neu­ro­sci­en­tist Robert Sapol­sky. Today we pub­lish the third and final one.

Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 3)

Any­one who says peace is not part of human nature knows too lit­tle about pri­mates, includ­ing ourselves.

–By Robert M. Sapolsky

Nat­ural born killers?

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Inter­est­ing recent news:

For more on these news, and com­men­tary: Read the rest of this entry »