Any­one who knows me knows that my favorite pas­time is nap­ping. In Col­lege, I would come back to my dorm room, and like clock­work, would take a nap. My best friend in Eng­land, who got quite a kick out of my pas­sion for nap­ping, once tried to per­suade me to drink a cup of tea after lunch instead of tak­ing my cus­tom­ary nap. I really tried, but I soon gave in to my nap crav­ings. Some­times I feel like I really need to re-charge my brain batteries.

Well, now sci­ence is on my side. I just love this new study, which was pre­sented by Matthew Walker, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at UC Berke­ley, at the annual meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) con­fer­ence in San Diego this past Sun­day (Feb. 2010).

Walker and his col­leagues Bryce A. Man­der and Sangeetha San­thanam split up a batch of 39 healthy young adults into two groups. One group napped, the other did not.

At noon, both groups took a learn­ing task thought to recruit the hip­pocam­pus. The hip­pocam­pus is a region of the brain known to play an impor­tant role in the for­ma­tion of new mem­o­ries. Over the past few years, var­i­ous researchers have found that fact-based mem­o­ries are tem­porar­ily stored in the hip­pocam­pus before other regions of the brain can oper­ate on the con­tent, espe­cially the regions of the brain respon­si­ble for higher-order rea­son­ing and think­ing.  At this point in the exper­i­ment, both groups showed sim­i­lar lev­els of performance.

Then, at 2pm, the nap group took a 90-minute nap while the no-nap group stayed awake, pre­sum­ably watch­ing the nap group enjoy­ing their nap. After nap-time both groups then took more learn­ing tests. The nap­pers did bet­ter on the tasks than those who stayed awake, demon­strat­ing their higher capac­ity to learn. Read the rest of this entry »

Inter­ested a good, non-technical, sum­mary of the impli­ca­tions of recent brain sci­ence in our daily lives? Biol­o­gist John Med­ina offers that in his arti­cle below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School. Enjoy!

(Note: John will be in the Bay Area on April 8 and 9th, speak­ing at Google and San Jose Rotary).

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Brain Rules

– By John Medina

Go ahead and mul­ti­ply the num­ber 8,388,628 x 2 in your head. Can you do it in a few sec­onds? There is a young man who can dou­ble that num­ber 24 times in the space of a few sec­onds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the exact time of day at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can cor­rectly deter­mine the exact dimen­sions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such life­like and pow­er­ful pic­tures, she got her own show at a gallery on Madi­son Avenue. Yet none of these chil­dren could be taught to tie their shoes. Indeed, none of them have an IQ greater than 50.

The brain is an amaz­ing thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very quick post: just want to alert you of 2 news pieces on MCI and Alzheimer’s prevention-related research.

Fre­quent Brain Stim­u­la­tion In Old Age Reduces Risk Of Alzheimer’s Disease

• “The study found a cog­ni­tively active per­son in old age was 2.6 times less likely to develop demen­tia and Alzheimer’s dis­ease than a cog­ni­tively inac­tive per­son in old age. This asso­ci­a­tion remained after con­trol­ling for past cog­ni­tive activ­ity, life­time socioe­co­nomic sta­tus, and cur­rent social and phys­i­cal activity.”
• “Wil­son says the study also found fre­quent cog­ni­tive activ­ity dur­ing old age, such as vis­it­ing a library or attend­ing a play, was asso­ci­ated with reduced risk of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, a tran­si­tional stage between nor­mal aging and demen­tia, and less rapid decline in cog­ni­tive function.”

Stress Linked to Mem­ory Decline

• “If you want your mind to stay healthy into your golden years, don’t worry, be happy. That could be the mes­sage of new research that shows those prone to worry, anx­i­ety or depres­sion are more likely to develop mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI), a con­di­tion often con­sid­ered a pre­cur­sor to the more-debilitating Alzheimer’s disease.”
• “MCI is now rec­og­nized as a very early sign of incip­i­ent Alzheimer’s dis­ease,” said Robert S. Wil­son, lead author of the study and a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Cen­ter in Chicago. “We found that among healthy elderly peo­ple with­out evi­dence of cog­ni­tive dys­func­tion at the begin­ning of the study, chronic dis­tress pre­dicted the devel­op­ment of MCI.”
• “This is con­sis­tent with 20 years of lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject,” added Dr. Sam Gandy, chair­man of the Alzheimer’s Association’s med­ical and sci­en­tific advi­sory coun­cil and direc­tor of the Far­ber Insti­tute for Neu­ro­sciences at Thomas Jef­fer­son Uni­ver­sity in Philadelphia.”

What to do? well, you can check out these Easy Steps to Improve Your Brain Health Now. And check this nice arti­cle on New men­tal exer­cises, games can keep aging minds fit.