Ready to see how well you can remem­ber ran­dom words or, more dif­fi­cult, names?

Click here to test your brain.

You will also be able to check your men­tal speed with a reac­tion time test. All 3 exer­cises will give you an idea of where you are at com­pared to other peo­ple of the same age.

To improve your per­for­mance, you may want to read this post before try­ing the games: How can I improve con­cen­tra­tion and memory?

Enjoy. Hope your brain sur­prises you!

Who will Ben­e­fit From Train­ing?  New research shows that mea­sur­ing brain activ­ity pat­terns can pre­dict who may ben­e­fit most from tran­ing inter­ven­tions –and who may not. Please note that the Kramer lab involved in this research is now offer­ing a post­doc­toral fellowship.

A Quick Test to Detect Ath­letes’ Con­cus­sions:  This new test can be per­formed at the side­line of sport­ing events to help detect con­cus­sions by look­ing at dif­fer­ent types of eye movements.

The Best Way to Learn: Tak­ing a test in which you recall what you have read seems to be a much bet­ter strat­egy than either study­ing the mate­r­ial repeat­edly or draw­ing detailed dia­grams of what you are learning.

Inter­ven­tions

Brain Train­ing Games for Seniors: Donal O’Brien, from Queens Uni­ver­sity at Belfast, tells us about what moti­vates seniors to use a brain train­ing app.

Vit­a­min D and Cog­ni­tive Decline: This study sup­ports that patients with vit­a­min D defi­ciency show an increased risk of cog­ni­tive decline.

Baby Sleeps and Brain Devel­op­ment: How much sleep a 12 month old baby gets can influ­ence the devel­op­ment of his/her exec­u­tive functions.

PTSD: Can we Dis­rupt the Recon­sol­i­da­tion of Trau­matic Mem­o­ries? A dis­cus­sion of the dif­fer­ent tech­niques used/ under research that can help PTSD patients.

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Books and Sum­mit Updates

Visual Illu­sions in Art and Sci­ence: These sur­pris­ing clas­sic illu­sions illus­trate how art and magic can help sci­ence in under­tans­ing how we per­ceive the world around us.

2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Agenda: You can now view the lat­est Agenda for the whole Sum­mit and a 3-minute clip to learn how the Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st) will work.

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Brain Teaser

Here is a fun and inter­ac­tive ver­sion of the famous Stroop test. This test is used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure men­tal speed and flex­i­bil­ity, the hall­marks of exec­u­tive func­tions. Per­form­ing well on the test requires strong atten­tion and self-regulation.

Your job is to name the col­ors of the words. Do NOT read the words but the color of the ink used to write the words. For exam­ple, if the word “GREEN” is printed in a red color, you should say “RED” (and refrain from say­ing “GREEN”!)

Speed mat­ters so try to say the col­ors as fast as you can. A nice fea­ture here: You will be able to record your reac­tion times.

Ready to have fun? GO

This arti­cle reports on a series of focus group stud­ies car­ried out at the Sonic Arts Research Cen­tre, Queen’s Uni­ver­sity Belfast, North­ern Ire­land. The aim was to iden­tify the key moti­va­tional fac­tors influ­enc­ing seniors’ engage­ment with mobile brain train­ing tech­nol­ogy in order to inform the design of a brain train­ing tool which is accept­able / enjoy­able to tar­get users.

The result is an iPhone appli­ca­tion named ‘Brain Jog’ which can be down­loaded from here for free. The appli­ca­tion is being used for a fur­ther study to bet­ter under­stand what con­sti­tutes an enjoy­able brain train­ing game expe­ri­ence for seniors and is the first step in a larger study which will inves­ti­gate how effec­tive ‘brain train­ing’ apps can be in pre­vent­ing cog­ni­tive decline / demen­tia. Users over the age of 50 are encour­aged to down­load the free app and take part.

Now more about the present study. Thirty-four par­tic­i­pants aged 50+ took part in four focus groups last­ing approx­i­mately 2 hours each. Read the rest of this entry »

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!

Here is a news digest on brain train­ing to start your stim­u­lat­ing New Year:

Brain train­ing games: Do they work? This piece explores the world of com­put­er­ized brain train­ing soft­ware: Who uses them? Are they worth the expense? You can also check out Sharp­brains Pro­gram Eval­u­a­tion check­list to learn about the 10 ques­tions to ask when choos­ing a brain fit­ness program.

Pro­tect your brain: The new issue for ath­letes. Learn more about ImPACT (Imme­di­ate Post-Concussion Assess­ment and Cog­ni­tive Test­ing), the com­put­er­ized clin­i­cal report which is quickly becom­ing the norm for high schools and col­leges Read the rest of this entry »

Think we all have dif­fer­ent tastes where beauty is con­cerned? Well, cog­ni­tive psy­chol­ogy shows us that an aver­age face (made from sev­eral other faces) is almost always judged as more attrac­tive than its con­stituent faces… Why? It may be for the sim­ple rea­son that an aver­age face is closer to the men­tal idea we have of a pro­to­typ­i­cal face and thus eas­ier for the brain to process.

Want to expe­ri­ence it? Fol­low this link to the the Face Research Lab and cre­ate your own aver­age faces. Enjoy.

Happy stim­u­lat­ing New Year to you!

Reac­tion time is the time it takes to react to some­thing. It can be con­sid­ered as an index of your speed of pro­cess­ing: It shows how fast you can exe­cute the men­tal oper­a­tions needed by the task at hand.

Reac­tion Time is a basic mea­sure used in many psy­chol­ogy stud­ies. Par­tic­i­pant are most often asked to push a but­ton when done with the task, which can be as var­ied as detect­ing an object, mem­o­riz­ing a word, or iden­ti­fy­ing an emo­tion. As brain pro­cess­ing is quite fast, reac­tion times are usu­ally mea­sured in mil­lisec­onds (a thou­sandth (1/1000) of a second).

What is your aver­age Reac­tion Time? Ready to try? Click here to start. Fun twist: Try before and after your Christ­mas dinner!

Merry Christ­mas from the Sharp­Brains Team

The frontal lobes of the brain (in gray here) have been com­pared to an orches­tra con­duc­tor, ­influ­enc­ing, direct­ing, and mod­er­at­ing many other brain func­tions. Indeed, the frontal lobes sup­port the so-called exec­u­tive func­tions: decision-making, problem-solving, plan­ning, inhibit­ing, as well as other high-level func­tions (social behav­ior, emo­tional con­trol, work­ing mem­ory, etc.). Ready for an exec­u­tive work­out? Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last four years we have posted over 100 puz­zles, teasers, rid­dles, illu­sions, and every form of men­tal exer­cise that both chal­lenges and enlight­ens our minds.

Below you have a selec­tion of the ten most pop­u­lar ones among Sharp­Brains read­ers. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »