Time for Sharp­Brains’ Jan­u­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple thought-provoking per­spec­tives on how emerg­ing neu­ro­science can and should make us rethink pre­vail­ing prac­tices in edu­ca­tion, healthy aging and pre­ven­tive medicine.

Fea­tured Perspectives:

• The Future of Pre­ven­tive Brain Med­i­cine: Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup, by Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa
• When 1 + 1 = 5: Dyscal­cu­lia and Work­ing Mem­ory, by Dr. Tracy Alloway
• New Review of Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD — Cur­rent State of the Sci­ence, by Dr. David Rabiner
• The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom, by Alvaro Fernandez
• (How to con­tribute arti­cles like these to SharpBrains.com)

New Research: 

• Brain func­tion can start declin­ing as early as age 45
• Edu­ca­tion for Men­tal Fit­ness: “A Sharper Mind, Mid­dle Age and Beyond”
• Life­long cog­ni­tive exer­cise may ward off Alzheimer’s pro­tein beta amyloid
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing & Brain Teasers Can Increase Open­ness Among Older Adults
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing in Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI)
• Does Nin­tendo Brain Age work as a brain train­ing game?
• Brain Injury Care: Treat­ment and Reim­burse­ment Challenges

Resources:

• The Ten Habits of a Sharp Brain
• Brain Teasers and Games, for Kids and Adults
• Upcom­ing Talk & Book Sign­ing in Wash­ing­ton, DC

Have a great month of February.

In case you missed them, here you have a few recent brain teasers and games. t is always good to stim­u­late our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work.

• Novem­ber 2011: Math Brain Teaser: Unfin­ished Thesis
• Octo­ber 2011: Archimedes Grave
• Octo­ber 2011: Opti­cal Illu­sions @ National Geographic
• Sep­tem­ber 2011: A Brain Teaser for each Cog­ni­tive Ability
• August 2011: Test your atten­tional focus: is multi-tasking good

You can find many more brain teasers and games, for kids and adults, by vis­it­ing the Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games that our read­ers have enjoyed the most. Enjoy!

Spon­sored Ad (How to Adver­tise on SharpBrains.com)

Time for the Octo­ber edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing this time sev­eral arti­cles on the impact of stress, emo­tions, and self-regulation, on our brain’s struc­ture and performance.

We are pleased to bring to Sharp­Brains read­ers a new 6-part series on the Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy of Stress, based on a recent book by Sharp­Brains con­trib­u­tor Dr. Jerome Schultz. The first two parts are already avail­able: Part 1 — The Human Brain and How It Responds to Stress and Part 2 — Gray Mat­ters.

Brain Study Links Emo­tional Self-Regulation and Math Per­for­mance: A new study strongly sug­gests the need to “help stu­dents reap­praise the sit­u­a­tion and con­trol emo­tions before they even get into a task”. While the study focused on math anx­i­ety and per­for­mance, the impli­ca­tions are rel­e­vant out­side the class­room too.

Reminder: Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions in Novem­ber: As we announced a few weeks ago, we are hon­ored to present an upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series. The first ses­sion, fea­tur­ing Dr. Gary Small, will take place Novem­ber 1st, 2011, 2-3pm US Eeast­ern Time. Please mark your cal­en­dar and join us at sharpbrains.com then! (no need to do any­thing prior to the session).

Music Train­ing Can Enhance Ver­bal Intel­li­gence and Exec­u­tive Func­tion: Very inter­est­ing new study pub­lished in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence on the value of music train­ing (vs. sim­ply lis­ten­ing to music).

Gam­ing and Neu­ro­science: Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Chal­lenges: A sum­mary of impres­sions by researcher  Aki Niko­laidis based on his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the recent con­fer­ence Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Con­fer­ence (ESCoNS) at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia San Francisco.

Fam­i­lies’ Per­spec­tives on ADHD and its Treat­ment: Dr. David Rabiner presents new data on fam­i­lies’ expe­ri­ence with ADHD and its treatment.

Brain Games and Opti­cal Illu­sions @ National Geo­graphic: Sev­eral Sharp­Brains friends rec­om­mend this recent 3-part National Geo­graphic TV mini-series.

Math Brain Teaser for Kids and Adults: Archimedes Grave: A fun puz­zle to exer­cise our brains a bit, sub­mit­ted by new con­trib­u­tor Maria Lando. Enjoy!

Sev­eral Sharp­Brains friends rec­om­mend the recent 3-part National Geo­graphic TV mini-series Brain Games focused on Per­cep­tion, Atten­tion and Mem­ory. You can learn about the series and exper­i­ment a good num­ber of visual illu­sions Here.

You may also enjoy this arti­cle on Visual Illu­sions in Art and Sci­ence, and these clas­sic illu­sions from our own brain teaser library:
- The Muller-Lyer Illu­sion.
– Don’t try this with your part­ner, or you may fight.
– How many col­ors do you see in The Her­mann Grid?
– This is less obvi­ous than it may appear.
– Is this a cir­cle or what?
– Are these 2 rows par­al­lel?
– What do you see?

Laugh­ing feels good. Laugh­ing is indeed good in most cases. A good belly laugh amounts to an aer­o­bic exer­cise as your blood pres­sure and heart rate increase, your breath­ing changes and your diaphragm con­tracts. Laugh­ing has also been shown to boost the immune sys­tem and reduce stress.

Laugh­ing is thus good for your brain! Here are two fun ways to take a fur­ther look at laugh­ter and the brain :

• Lis­ten to these laughs and decide whether it is a human or a com­puter laughing.
• Try this to find out how much you are stressed. You may be surprised…

Enjoy!

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!

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 »

When I give a pre­sen­ta­tion about brain health and fit­ness, there are always a few peo­ple who come tell me after­ward that they do cross­word puz­zles every­day. They heard that men­tal exer­cise is good for the brain so they are pleased and proud to report that they do the best they can to main­tain their brain func­tions. But are they really? What if I was a gym instruc­tor? Would the same peo­ple tell me proudly that to keep their whole body in shape they do biceps move­ments every­day, and that’s all they do? I DO feel like I was this gym instruc­tor when I hear the cross­word puz­zles claim! Solv­ing cross­word puz­zles repet­i­tively is not the best habit for two rea­sons. Read the rest of this entry »

Visual illu­sions are fun and inter­est­ing: They can tell us a lot about our brain.

The brain has two hemi­spheres, each divided into four lobes. Each lobe is respon­si­ble for dif­fer­ent func­tions. For instance the frontal cor­tex (in blue here) is respon­si­ble for deci­sion mak­ing and plan­ning; the tem­po­ral lobe (in green) for lan­guage and mem­ory; and the pari­etal lobe (in yel­low) for atten­tion and spa­tial skills. The occip­i­tal lobe (in red) is entirely devoted to vision: It is thus the place where visual illu­sions happen.

The frontal lobe rep­re­sents 41% of total cere­bral cor­tex vol­ume; the tem­po­ral lobe 22%; the pari­etal lobe 19%; and the occip­i­tal lobe 18%.

There is thus a huge part of our brain devoted to pro­cess­ing visual infor­ma­tion. How the visual sys­tem processes shapes, col­ors, sizes, etc. has been researched for decades. One way to under­stand more about this sys­tem is to look at how we can trick it, that is to look at how the brain reacts to visual illusions.

.

Here are 10 visual illu­sions to com­bine fun and learn­ing about the visual sys­tem. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you famil­iar with men­tal rota­tion? As the name indi­cates it refers to mov­ing things around in your head. It is one of the numer­ous visu­ospa­tial skills that humans have.

Let’s take an exam­ple. Can you pic­ture in your head an arrow point­ing to the right? Now, turn this arrow so it points to the left. Done? You have just per­formed a men­tal rota­tion. Although it is rare to con­sciously imag­ine objects mov­ing, peo­ple auto­mat­i­cally use this abil­ity when they read maps, use tools, play chess, arrange fur­ni­ture, drive in traf­fic, etc.

Men­tal rota­tion relies mostly on the pari­etal areas of your brain (yel­low sec­tion in the brain image above).

Here is a brain exer­cise to stim­u­late your men­tal rota­tion skills.

• The top shape is your model.
• Among the 3 shapes below the model, only one matches the model. To fig­ure out which one does you will prob­a­bly have to move the shapes around in your head.
• Move the shapes from left to right or right to left but DO NOT FLIP them around.

First set

Sec­ond set

Third Set

To see the cor­rect answers click here: Read the rest of this entry »