Posts Tagged ‘Alzheimer’s disease’
Stress reorganizes brain circuits and can leave you even deeper in a rut. Worse, it may change how your brain is wired, and in a bad way. An article published in Science shows that stressed animals tend to make decisions based on habit rather than by taking outcomes into account.
How old you feel makes a difference in how you think your brain is working, especially for women. And once again, mood and self-efficacy make a difference for everyone in what they think is going on with their brains.
When I look back at the number of visitors to this site, I can see a big spike in visitors around the time I wrote a post on free brain training software. It appears that a lot of people are looking around the Internet for free opportunities to keep their brains sharp.
Anxiety makes your memory worse, and worrying about your memory can make your anxiety even worse.
One of the most important ways to maintain brain fitness is by getting enough sleep.
Most of us know how we feel when we don’t get enough sleep. Research shows that lack of sleep can affect your memory, raise your blood pressure, and increase your risk of stroke.
But how do you get a good night’s sleep?
Latest
- Brain Fitness and The Mind of a Monk
- Brain Fitness Tip: Training Without a Computer
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. (more…)
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.