Nice week­end read­ing mate­r­ial — recent news reiforc­ing emerg­ing trends on phys­i­cal, cog­ni­tive and emo­tional fit­ness, but with new twists.

Fit teens could be smarter teens

“Researchers from Swe­den and USC exam­ined data on 1.2 mil­lion Swedish men born between 1950 and 1976 who also enlisted for the country’s manda­tory mil­i­tary ser­vice. They looked at the par­tic­i­pants’ global intel­li­gence scores as well as log­i­cal, visu­ospa­tial, ver­bal and tech­ni­cal scores. The greater the car­dio­vas­cu­lar fit­ness, the higher the cog­ni­tive scores at age 18. The asso­ci­a­tion between mus­cle strength and global intel­li­gence, in con­trast, was weak.”

UPMC Health Plan Offers Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware to Improve Health

“UPMC Health Plan announced today that it has signed an agree­ment to offer award-winning brain fit­ness soft­ware from Posit Sci­ence®, at no cost, to all UPMC for Life Medicare Advan­tage mem­bers. This brain train­ing pro­gram is a new part of the UPMC Health Plan well­ness ser­vices, which focus on both mind and body fitness.

The brain fit­ness soft­ware, known as the Insight™ Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram, is a suite of five game-like com­puter exer­cises that make brain train­ing chal­leng­ing and effec­tive. The pro­gram engages the brain’s nat­ural plas­tic­ity (the brain’s abil­ity to rewire itself) to improve basic brain function.”

Brain-fitness indus­try grows as baby-boomers work to stay sharp.

“When we’re younger we’re learn­ing quite inten­sively,” she said. “By mid­dle age, we’re not learn­ing inten­sively any­more and just using skills we’ve already mas­tered. That’s why it’s impor­tant to stretch your brain.”

Brain fit­ness games also have the poten­tial to improve one’s emo­tional health, said Mark Bald­win, a psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor at McGill Uni­ver­sity in Montreal.

Bald­win has devel­oped a num­ber of com­puter games based on keep­ing a brain active phys­i­o­log­i­cally, to improve it psychologically.

“It’s about prac­tis­ing or using games to train ben­e­fi­cial habits of thought, ” he said.