Big party today. Car­ni­vals everywhere. 

Car­o­line and I admit we are quite biased. We see the world through our own lenses. Which, these days, means a lot of pas­sion for the science-based Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion. We have been try­ing hard to com­bine fun brain teasers with seri­ous posts on how brain research is start­ing to influ­ence Edu­ca­tion, Health and Train­ing, and are thank­ful that these efforts are start­ing to pay off-Mission Accomplishing!

The week­end started very well. Kevin from IQ Cor­ner and Tick­Tock­BrainTalk had brought great early aus­pices by intro­duc­ing a Sharp­Brains feed box into his blog. A num­ber of trad­ing blogs, includ­ing Brett Steenbarger’s and Trader Mike’s, enjoyed our posts on trader per­for­mance and biofeedback.

Today has been the full Car­ni­val day. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: Is “pla­centa brain” real? I am 6 months preg­nant and can’t remem­ber any­thing ever since I got pregnant!

A: Yes, in the third trimester.
Read the rest of this entry »

Mind­Fit, Intel­li­Gym, RoboMemo, Freeze-Framer? Is this a puz­zle? As you may have noticed, we just started to offer through the web­site some of the Brain Fit­ness pro­grams we have been talk­ing about. For over a year we have been search­ing for best pro­grams world­wide, and here you have some of the pro­grams we have found. We have inter­viewed in this blog the key sci­en­tists behind two of them, and will inter­view the rest over the next weeks. You will be hear­ing more about these pro­grams in the gen­eral media in the next months, as the field of science-based Brain Fit­ness and pro­grams like this mature. If you want a quick overview of these pro­grams, Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like the most com­mon com­plaint today is not hav­ing enough time. “I don’t have time to go to the gym”, “I don’t have time to cook”, “I don’t have time to read” .… You get the pic­ture. We’ve all been there, and maybe even for good rea­son. But, if you don’t take care of your­self now, every­thing else starts to unravel as well.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ques­tion: I enjoyed your last post on good stress vs. bad stress.  I’m a mother of 2, with a career. Are there any quick ways to reduce stress?

Brain Coach: First of all, con­grats on man­ag­ing two full time jobs — moth­er­hood and a career! While the time man­age­ment can be stress­ful, it is essen­tial that you find a moment to just catch your breath from time to time. Even just 10 min­utes a day should help.

The Cen­ter for Mind­ful­ness in Med­i­cine, Health Care, and Soci­ety at the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts Med­ical School suggests:

Mind­ful­ness is a way of learn­ing to relate directly to what­ever is hap­pen­ing in your life, a way of tak­ing charge of your life, a way of doing some­thing for your­self that no one else can do for you  con­sciously and sys­tem­at­i­cally work­ing with your own stress, pain, ill­ness, and the chal­lenges and demands of every­day life.

In con­trast, you’ve prob­a­bly encoun­tered moments of “mind­less­ness” a loss of aware­ness result­ing in for­get­ful­ness, sep­a­ra­tion from self, and a sense of liv­ing mechan­i­cally. Restor­ing within your­self a bal­anced sense of health and well being requires increased aware­ness of all aspects of self, includ­ing body and mind, heart and soul. Mindfulness-based stress reduc­tion is intended to ignite this inner capac­ity and infuse your life with awareness.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Hous­ton Chron­i­cle ran an inter­est­ing story the other day that addresses a num­ber of com­mon per­cep­tions about menopause. The one that caught our atten­tion is:

The hor­monal changes of menopause turn your brain to mush.
Unproven. There is some evi­dence that women with low estro­gen lev­els expe­ri­ence faster cog­ni­tive decline, and women who take estro­gen sup­ple­ments some­times do bet­ter on cer­tain mem­ory tests. But the evi­dence is incon­sis­tent. Accord­ing to the Women’s Health Ini­tia­tive, women older than 65 who took Prem­pro had a higher risk of get­ting Alzheimer’s dis­ease and other forms of demen­tia than women tak­ing dummy pills. Other stud­ies, how­ever, have sug­gested that estro­gen use pro­tects against Alzheimer’s if it’s started near the onset of menopause. Some experts now believe estro­gen can pro­tect both the brain and the heart if it’s started early, before age-related dete­ri­o­ra­tion sets in, but not after that win­dow of oppor­tu­nity closes.

Read the rest of this entry »