How can I give my brain a good workout?

May 1, 2012 by Anne Austin Leave a Comment

Answer: Do Richard Wiseman’s 101 puzzles:

from Richard Wiseman’s website:

101 Friday puzzles!

Every Friday on my blog I present a puzzle, challenge people to try to solve it over the weekend, and then post the answer on the following Monday. I avoid cryptic crosswords and number grids, and instead focus on the type of quirky puzzles that are likely to produce that rare but satisfying ‘a-ha’ moment.

The Friday Puzzle has attracted a large and loyal following, with people frequently arguing about the best way to tackle the various problems, and often coming up with new and ingenious answers.

Here are 101 of my favourite Friday Puzzles. If you are stumped, or want to check your answers, I have produced an ebook containing 101 of the previous Friday Puzzles! It is called PUZZLED and is available for the Kindle (UK here and USA here) and on the iBookstore (UK here in the USA here).

Filed Under: cognitive, cognitive performance, doing brain-training exercises, growing the brain intentionally, Richar Wiseman's 101 puzzles Tagged With: cognitive health workshop, creative thinking puzzles, logic puzzles, Richard Wiseman

How can I sharpen my brain?

December 21, 2011 by Anne Austin Leave a Comment

Answer: Do these simple brain-training activities. Work out which ones you feel weak in; practice those again and again until you get good.

Write neatly but quickly.
Work out how to tell an interesting anecdote in under two minutes.
“Do consequences”— predicting possible positive and negative consequences arising from various actions.
Spot logical inconsistencies in a statement or someone’s behavior.
Follow long, complicated sentences.
Make accurate, complicated decisions that involve weighing up several options in your head.
Remember complicated instructions.
Follow a complicated movie story line.
Block out distractions when you’re trying to do something hard.
Remember something when distracting new information arrives straight after you receive it.
Follow a conversation with lots of background noise.
Follow a conversation with someone with a difficult-to-understand accent or poor English.
Express complicated ideas that you’ve just read into your own words.
Think and talk at the same time.
Listen and think at the same time.
Eat and listen at the same time.
Recognize situations that call for tact before you respond.
Silently pronounce hard-to-pronounce words as you read e.g. proprioceptive, neurotrophins, neurobics.
Pronounce hard-to-pronounce words out loud.
Think up effective strategies for solving problems.
See through a plan to completion.
Reflect what you’ve said and done and spotting better ways of doing things next time.
Set plans and goals.
Spot the main point--the central thesis– of what someone has said or what’s happening.
Consider all the relevant information and not getting swayed by just a few bits of information.
Deep-learn the meaning of new words.
“See” by touching–practicing doing simple activities with your eyes shut.
Brain Exercise-which ones are neurobic?
Recognize objects by feel.
Play “what’s that sound?” games.
Identify ambiguous pictures.
Identify familiar faces when hair and other non-facial cues are removed.
Say tongue-twisters.When even just reading tongue-twisters silently, the brain has to work extra-hard and extra bits of the brain light up, as shown in this research:
Brain imaging of tongue-twister sentence comprehension: Twisting the tongue and the brain

Visit this site that lists over 400 English tongue twisters to compile your own list of especially tricky ones. It turns out I have trouble saying “cricket critics” and “bed-bugs’ black blood” and “sniff sesh!” and ” “click, clap, pluck” and lots of others! But I can say them better now!
Articulate the words quickly and clearly when singing.
Read a map.
Flip shapes in your head.
Identify a shape when it’s been flipped.
Visualize a couple of moves ahead in strategy games like chess and checkers.
Sort items into categories. (I should sort these 50 items into categories!)
Anticipate where the ball will go in ball games such as tennis.
Vividly imagine different sounds and images and tastes and smells.
Do complicated imagery such as rearranging the room furniture in your head.
Vividly imagine all the different emotions e.g. feeling determined, ecstatic, discouraged, alert, etc.
Reproduce/recognizing complicated geometrical figures from memory.
Coordinate a complicated cooking task involving preparing several dishes at once.
Do challenging sums in your head.
Process your listener’s non-verbal behavior.
Accurately identify other people’s non-verbal behavior.
Accurately read other people’s facial expressions.
Accurately pick up other people’s feelings (i.e. showing accurate felt empathy).
Use your non-dominant hand to do simple tasks.

Wow! That’s a lot of basic brain skills to master! But, apparently it’s do-able, so it’s worth exploring!

We wouldn’t be weak in all these things — just on a few of them. We need to find out what we’re weak at, and to find exercises to strengthen those weaknesses. I am hopeless at spatial stuff and recognising faces and thinking while talking!

Free, fun,challenging skill-building materials for most of these activities already exist. I’ll add in the links later.

Filed Under: cognitive, cognitive performance, doing brain-training exercises, growing the brain intentionally Tagged With: Barbara Arrowsmith Young, identifying brain weaknesses, training brain weaknesses.

How can I grow my aging hippocampus?

December 9, 2011 by Anne Austin Leave a Comment

Answer. Exercise!

Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory

Kirk I. Erickson, et al

Abstract

The hippocampus shrinks in late adulthood, leading to impaired memory and increased risk for dementia. Hippocampal and medial temporal lobe volumes are larger in higher-fit adults, and physical activity training increases hippocampal perfusion, but the extent to which aerobic exercise training can modify hippocampal volume in late adulthood remains unknown. Here we show, in a randomized controlled trial with 120 older adults, that aerobic exercise training increases the size of the anterior hippocampus, leading to improvements in spatial memory. Exercise training increased hippocampal volume by 2%, effectively reversing age-related loss in volume by 1 to 2 y. We also demonstrate that increased hippocampal volume is associated with greater serum levels of BDNF, a mediator of neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus. Hippocampal volume declined in the control group, but higher preintervention fitness partially attenuated the decline, suggesting that fitness protects against volume loss. Caudate nucleus and thalamus volumes were unaffected by the intervention. These theoretically important findings indicate that aerobic exercise training is effective at reversing hippocampal volume loss in late adulthood, which is accompanied by improved memory function.

This article explains the results in more detail:

Train your Muscles, Embiggen your Hippocampus

Filed Under: cognitive, cognitive performance, growing the brain intentionally, how can I grow my hippocampus? Tagged With: benefits of exercise, benefits of walking, elderly, growing the hippocampus, improving cognitive function in elederly

What are some fun ways to grow my brain?

November 3, 2011 by Anne Austin Leave a Comment

Answer 1: Learn how to juggle.

Learning to juggle boosts brain connections by making structural changes in the white matter of the brain.

This plain English article gives all the details: Juggling Boosts Brain Connections

Or click here to read the original scientific paper.

How can I learn to juggle?

Watch this 2-minute video:

Filed Under: cognitive, cognitive performance, growing the brain intentionally, learning new skills that are fun Tagged With: fun skills to learn, fun ways to grow the brain, how to juggle, juggling

What is the latest scientific evidence on the positive aspects of meditation on the brain?

August 9, 2011 by Anne Austin Leave a Comment

Answer: Follow Richard Davidson’s work. His research group is the leader in the this research, which is called Contemplative Neuroscience.

Here are some recent presentations where Richard Davidson summarizes his group’s latest findings:

1. Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain

Richard Davidson”Google Tech Talk on September 28 , 2009 ( 65 minutes)

2. Richard Davidson’s presentation at the 2011 UW-Madison Big Learning Event.
Video last 20 minutes. Richard Davidson describes the history of his meditation research.

3. Richard Davidson summarizes the results of four recent studies at the 2010 Mind and Life XII conference.

(watch from 3.00 minutes in through to 29.00 minutes

Filed Under: cognitive, cognitive performance, growing the brain intentionally Tagged With: brain plasticity, compassion, improving concentration, meditation, Richard Davidson

What are some fun skills to learn?

July 7, 2011 by Anne Austin Leave a Comment

Answer: Learn how to teach your dog things–from simple commands to amazing tricks.

Zac George shows you how.

Zak George is the most watched dog trainer on You Tube and has his own You Tube channel.

Here are some of his most watched videos: (Warning: Watching these videos may make you go and buy a dog!)

Every Dog Must Know This: How To Train Your Dog To Stay

Teach your dog to come to you!

How to teach your dog: Roll Over and Play Dead

How To Teach Your Dog to Listen (leave it alone)

How to get your dog interested in Frisbee

Filed Under: cognitive, growing the brain intentionally, learning new skills that are fun

What brain exercise is proven to improve my fluid intelligence?

November 28, 2009 by Anne Austin Leave a Comment

Answer: The Jaeggi-Buschkuehl dual n-back task.

The dual n-back task is is a working memory task that has been proven to increase fluid intelligence.

Fluid intelligence assesses our ability to problem-solve and reason, and it predicts educational and occupational success.

How to play the n-back game

The Jaeggi- Buschkuehl dual n-back task presents a visual and auditory stimulus at the same time. The player indicates whether the auditory or visual stimulus they have just seen is the same visual or auditory as the one presented on the previous nth occasion, so that n = 1 corresponds to the previous occasion, n=2 corresponds to the second last occasion and so on , all the way up to n = 9, corresponding to the ninth previous occasion.

It’s a hard game, trying to remember what you saw and heard several stimuli before! The game starts at 2-back. This one-minute video shows someone playing the 3-back game. The faint green circle that occasionally appears on the left indicates the last visual stimulus was correct as it previously appeared in the same location on the third previous occasion; the green circle on the right indicates the last auditory stimulus was the same as the previous third occasion.

The game is self-pacing. If you get a high enough score at one level, you automatically get promoted to the next level. But if you score poorly, you get demoted!

It’s a very hard game that requires unwavering concentration. You do get better with practice.

Where can I find the n-back game?

Click here to play the n-back game at the Cognitive Fun site. It’s free, and if you register, you get to track your progress.

What is the scientific evidence that the n-back game grows fluid intelligence?

The n-back game is the first evidence that a working memory task can improve fluid intelligence, an unrelated skill to working memory.

Click here for a summary of the 2008 study results.

Reference: Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving Fluid Intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(19), 6829-6833

Click hereto read an interview with Martin Buschkuehl, one of the researchers who developed the n-back task.

Some excerpts from the interview:

Interviewer:Tell me more about the Jaeggi-Buschkuehl dual n-back task:

Martin Buschkuehl:“The students sat through about twenty-five minutes of training per day for either 8, 12, 17 or 19 days, and were tested on their fluid intelligence before and after the regimen using the Bochumer-Matrizen Test (this is a problem-solving task)”

“Participants in the experimental group did significantly better on the fluid intelligence test (which was not directly trained) than participants in the control group. Those in the control group hadn’t gone through any training. The control group did improve slightly, but real “trainees” outperformed them. Furthermore, we found that the improvement was dose-dependent: the more they trained, the larger the gain on fluid intelligence.”

Interviewer: What are the particular aspects of the University of Michigan study that surprised you the most?

Martin Buschkuehl: First, the clear transfer into fluid intelligence, that many researchers and psychologists take as fixed.

Second, I was surprised to see that the more training the better the outcome. The improvements did not seem to peak early.

Third, that all trained groups improved, no matter their respective starting points. In fact, students with lowest fluid intelligence seemed to improve the most. But that was not the main focus of our study, so we can not say much more about it.

Click on the link below for a good write-up of the n-back task study from Science Daily :

Plastic Brain Outsmarts Experts: Training Can Increase Fluid Intelligence, Once Thought To Be Fixed At Birth
ScienceDaily (2008-06-06) — Can human beings rev up their intelligence quotients, or are they stuck with IQs set by their genes at birth? Until recently, nature seemed to be the clear winner over nurture. But new research suggests that at least one aspect of a person’s IQ can be improved by training a certain type of memory. … > read full article

Filed Under: cognitive, cognitive performance, growing the brain intentionally