Posts filed under 'Be Mentally Active'
Going Green as Brain Exercise?
This week marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, a worldwide effort to raise environmental awareness. Everyone is encouraged to participate by making changes to their lifestyle, changes like recycling household trash, saving energy and water, changing habits that can negatively impact the natural world around us.
What’s this got to do with brain exercise? (more…)
Add comment April 23, 2010
Meditation for Mind Improvement: It Only Takes A Little!
Ever wanted to try meditation, but thought you wouldn’t be able to stick with it for long enough to make a difference? Good news! Even a few short meditation sessions turn out to have measurable effects.
Quite a few studies have documented that that meditation seems to have a positive impact on the brains of long-term practitioners, but it’s usually been assumed that the length and intensity of their practice was necessary to see the benefits.
That made meditation an unlikely tool for your average Jane or Joe, who has neither the time nor the discipline for a 3 hour daily meditation practice.
But a new study (published this week in Consciousness and Cognition) suggests that even brief flirtations with meditation may have measurable brain benefits. Over a period of four days, the study participants were instructed in 20 minute mindfulness meditation sessions. Surprisingly, their cognitive skills improved significantly after the training.
Why is this important?
Add comment April 20, 2010
How Spring Cleaning Can Exercise Your Brain
One of the simple (and perhaps slightly wacky) pleasures of my life is trying to figure out how even the most mundane of tasks can be done so that they help stimulate the brain, trigger new neural growth, and maintain old memories and skills.
This week’s focus? That odd urge so many of us get this time of year, to clean out the corners and cubby holes of our homes. So in between my own dust-triggered sneezes, I’ve been pondering how spring cleaning could be used to exercise our brains. Here’s what I’ve come up with:
1. Refresh Old Memories
Digging through closets, project boxes, and even dresser drawers always seems to trigger old memories. Whether it’s a box of old family photos, a blouse you wore for a special date many years ago, or scraps of wood that came from the birdhouse you built with your father many years ago, don’t just skip over these items. Let the memories flow, and see just how much you do remember about each item. The very process of remembering strengthens the memories, and makes it more likely you’ll hold onto them in the future.
2. Change Your Environment (more…)
Add comment April 9, 2010
Remembering Who You Are: Genealogy For Your Brain Health
By now, you probably know that exercising your brain is an important part of maintaining the health of your mind and memory. You may also know that specially targeted brain fitness programs (like Dakim) and intellectually challenging hobbies can be part of that exercise, helping to keep your brain fit and healthy. This week, I thought we’d look at a popular hobby that offers a unique set of challenges to our minds and memories – tracing the family tree.
Why is it so unique? Building your personal family history starts with your own memories. Recording what you know about your family strengthens those memories, and every time you go back over that information, the neural network that supports it becomes stronger.
At the same time that you’re reinforcing old memories, you’re laying down new memories – new information that you’ll discover about family members, history, geography.
1 comment March 30, 2010
"I Remember Better When I Paint": A DVD about the Arts and Alzheimer’s
I have a passion for creative expression and the arts, so when a reader (Hi Donald!) pointed me towards this trailer, I clapped my little hands with glee. It’s narrated by the marvelous Olivia de Havilland, whose voice lends an extra layer of depth and beauty to the project.
The idea behind the film? Creative workshops, museum trips, and classes that allow hands on artistic expression are being effectively used as therapies for patients with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The artistic process taps into parts of the brain largely untouched by Alzheimer’s, not only allowing the patients a means of expression, but also forming a bridge of communication with loved ones and caregivers.
1 comment March 16, 2010
Still Alice: A Touching Alzheimer’s Story
This week, while wandering the aisles of the local big-box store, I ran across something unexpected. Tucked in among the true-crime and romance paperbacks was a blue and white cover that caught my eye.
The title, “Still Alice,” made me pick it up, and review quote from USA Today made me buy it. “ A poignant portrait of Alzheimer’s… Not a book you will forget.”
Originally published in 2007, “Still Alice” is author Lisa Genova’s fictional story of a brilliant woman with a bright career, three grown children, and a strong marriage.
And then she gets Early Onset Alzheimer’s.
In her fifties.
Add comment March 11, 2010
The Soundtrack Of Your Memory
Music.
It has the power to move us emotionally, and get us moving physically. Its rhythms can affect our brainwaves. It stimulates multiple, diverse areas of the brain, improving connectivity. And when we associate a particular piece of music with our experiences and emotions, it becomes a trigger that can help us to recall those experiences — who hasn’t had heard a familiar song, only to have a long-lost memory come flooding back in full detail?
And now, a group of researchers at the University of California believe that they can use the power of music to help Alzheimer’s patients hold onto their memories of their life just a little bit longer.
How does it work?
1 comment March 9, 2010
Out Of Autopilot, Into First Gear
Routines, ruts, and habits: they’re comfortable, easy, maybe even a bit lazy. When your life is filled with familiar routines, your brain doesn’t have to work very hard as you move through your day… and therein lays the problem.
For your brain to be healthy, it needs exercise, and it needs exposure to “new”: new things, new thoughts, new ways of doing ordinary tasks and actions.
Add comment January 21, 2010
Knit Yourself A Better Brain!
Knitting: it’s been a traditional activity for older women for as long as I can remember. In fact, the first three or four decades of my life were punctuated with slippers, scarves, potholders and afghans crafted out of from yarn by the eldest generations of my and my husband’s families. A couple of times a year, I’d dutifully open a package containing yet anther set of curiously colored pom-pom’d slipper-socks that I’d never wear, nod and smile, and offer a kiss on the cheek.
The gifts were quirky curiosities of an older age, accepted with the same love they’d been made with – even if I never wore the things.
But you know what? Every one of those needle-working women had a sharp mind into their 80′s and 90′s. Back then, I would have never connected the dots between knitting and a healthy brain. Now, I wonder if a bit of yarn doesn’t run between them, and if the resurgence in popularity of knitting and crocheting might hold promise for a sharp-witted older generation of women.
Add comment January 12, 2010
Serving Your Community: Another Path To Brain Fitness?
Seniors are frequent beneficiaries of volunteer organizations, from groups like Meals on Wheels, to home visitation programs.
But new research suggests new ways that older adults can benefit from the other side of volunteer efforts: offering their help to others through volunteer programs may help preserve and improve their cognitive function, and ward off mental declines.
So what’s this research?
Add comment December 29, 2009
