Well, the idea that you can just pop a pill to improve your mem­ory and atten­tion lost some ground today.

The Asso­ci­ated Press released an arti­cle on DHEA, a steroid pre­cur­sor to testos­terone and estro­gen used to improve ath­letic per­for­mance, increase sex drive, and reduce fat as well as fight dia­betes and heart dis­ease. The con­clu­sion of a two-year study at the Mayo Clinic in Min­nesota and Uni­ver­sity of Padua in Italy was that it did not improve strength, phys­i­cal per­for­mance, or other mea­sures of health. The pos­i­tive news was: Read the rest of this entry »

Good inter­view with Posit Science’s Dr. Michael Merzenich. (Thanks, Steve!)

Includes the quote “Peo­ple can be active learn­ers by learn­ing in new forms and in new domains. It’s not just being active and get­ting up every day. The brain is a learn­ing machine, and it needs to be engaged in new learn­ing of dif­fer­ent dimen­sions. The best kinds of exer­cise are those that chal­lenge. For exam­ple, to mas­ter a musi­cal instru­ment at an older age is a won­der­ful thing. Or, seri­ously under­tak­ing the mas­tery of a sec­ond lan­guage is a won­der­ful thing to do. One of the prob­lems with such exer­cises is that it’s very hard to main­tain the skills and abil­i­ties nec­es­sary to main­tain a men­tal fit­ness program.”

You can read our pre­vi­ous Brain Coach Answers post on why cross­words and sudoku aren’t suf­fi­cient brain exer­cise.