Exercise, Mitochondrial DNA, and Brain Fitness
After overcoming a number of obstacles, our study of the effects of cognitive training on fluid intelligence has finally started. We’re enrolling participants from our local Life Long Learning Program, all of whom are 50 years or older. In the study, we are comparing the effects of working memory training …
An article in this weeks’ Journal of Gerontology, provides some interesting information on how cognitive training can actually affect someone’s physical status. The article, titled “Effect of Cognitive Remediation on Gait in Sedentary Seniors,” reports on a small group of elders who completed 8 weeks of computer-based cognitive training. The …
Just last week I had the opportunity to attend the second Cognitive Aging Summit sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. It was an outstanding opportunity to find out what researchers in the field of cognition and aging are doing. One of the most interesting presentations was by Dr. Carl …
For pretty much all of us, developing brain fitness means doing something different. Either we have to do something we don’t do now, such as exercise or eat antioxidant-rich foods, or we have to do less of something we already do, such as eating high fat foods or just eating …
If brain fitness is more than just trying to avoid memory loss as you get older (and I think it is), then understanding how you think is (I think) critical. Sometimes called metacognition, this means not just thinking, but thinking about thinking.
Follow that? Metacognition is the idea that we can understand not only the content of our thinking, but the different processes that go into it. And understanding the ways that the default mode network and focused attention (both ways of thinking) interact are the subject of several interesting article.
The default mode network is a group of brain structures that become more active when someone’s attention is focused inward, thinking about what happened in the past or what might happen in the future. When a person’s attention is focused on the outer world, a different set of brain structures is activated.
A recent article in Neuroimage (click here for link) suggests that people who are less efficient in making the transition between the two sets of structures may be more creative. It’s as though the person’s internal world intrudes on reality. This finding has some appeal, because it helps us understand how creative persons can look at everyday life and see something radically different. It also helps us understand how someone’s unique individual vision can be so compellingly imposed on existing reality.
You don’t have to look very far to find examples. My personal favorites are Stanley Kubrick’s vision of the future in 2001, Fritz Lang’s in Metropolis, and the entire Dr. Who series from the BBC. Take an ordinary telephone call box, the vision of a sexy robot in the future, or a nghtmare of artificial intelligence, and extrapolate.
How do you apply this to your own brain fitness? Research shows that creativity, or at least its close relative, divergent thinking, can be taught, even to kindergarten-aged children. Jonah Lehrer wrote a recent article in the Wall Street Journal and a related blog post about the virtues of distractibility.
For optimal brain fitness, consider training yourself in divergent thinking.