Wel­come to Encephalon 50th edi­tion, where you will find another superb col­lec­tion of blog posts on all things Brain and Mind.

Enjoy these contributions:

Sci­ence & Technology

Mind Hacks reports that Face­book ate my psy­chi­a­trist. We can learn about the ben­e­fits of social net­work­ing sites like Face­book, bring­ing great per­spec­tive to recent and mis­guided media spec­u­la­tion (fuelled by a recent talk at the Royal Col­lege of Psy­chi­a­trists). Vaughan, will you please report on the ben­e­fits of par­tic­i­pat­ing (and, bet­ter, host­ing) Encephalon?.

Dun­geons And Drag­ons — Or Mazes And Mon­sters?: Pod­Black Cat offers a thought-provoking review of the ther­apy (includ­ing self-therapy) appli­ca­tions of role-playing games such as the clas­sic Dun­geons And Drag­ons and the more recent mas­sively mul­ti­player online games.

Cog­ni­tive Daily cov­ers another type of game. Read the rest of this entry »

Sev­eral recent NYT arti­cles focus on sev­eral fas­ci­nat­ing fron­tiers of brain sci­ence. We know much more about brain and mind than only 20 years ago, yet expo­nen­tially less than 20 years from now.

A few wor­thy explo­rations on mind­ful­ness, per­cep­tual capac­i­ties, and the power of placebo: Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers at Yale Uni­ver­sity have just released a good paper show­ing the impor­tance of both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise to main­tain good mem­ory (full text of research paper Sin­gle Enrich­ment Vari­ables Reduce Aged-related Mem­ory Decline in Female Mice).

Some quotes from the Sci­ence Daily release Exer­cise And Men­tal Stim­u­la­tion Both Boost Mouse Mem­ory Late In Life:

• “The results sug­gest that as we get old and maybe less able to exer­cise, cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion can help to com­pen­sate. If the trend holds, write the authors, “These data may sug­gest that enrich­ment ini­ti­ated at any age can sig­nif­i­cantly improve mem­ory func­tion. And exer­cise plus men­tal chal­lenge in mid­dle age — when many peo­ple start to notice sub­tle mem­ory changes — may offer the strongest, most wide­spread ben­e­fits for mem­ory function.”
• The authors note that exer­cise was cen­tral to mem­ory rein­force­ment in all age groups. Says lead author Karyn Frick, PhD, “It is impor­tant for peo­ple of all ages to do 20 to 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic exer­cise sev­eral times a week. Keep­ing a healthy and active brain may pre­vent mem­ory decline in old age, but only a lon­gi­tu­di­nal study that fol­lows mice over time could con­firm this possibility.”

We dis­cussed this topic in more depth in my inter­view on Build­ing Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve with Dr. Yaakov Stern and in the dia­logue with Dr. Michael Merzenich that included fea­tur­ing the pio­neer­ing work of Dr. Mar­ian Dia­mond.

In short, if you want to pro­tect and improve your mem­ory, get ready to exer­cise both body and brain!