Smarter

The brain waves generated during deep sleep appear to trigger a cleaning system in the brain that protects it against Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

There’s a long-standing debate about how exactly paying attention helps us learn. One theory is that focusing makes the critical piece of information stand out. If you imagine trying to pick out a single instrument in an orchestra, that would be like turning up the volume on the violin to make it easier to hear.

How can we boost brain health? Three types of meditation help to achieve focus with less effort, reduce anxiety and improve sleep. An active social life and the Mediterranean diet are two of a handful of tactics that may help ward off Alzheimer's disease. Some brain-training programs could also prevent dementia. We all know there is nothing like a good night's sleep—sack time enhances mood, memory, immune function and hormonal balance—and yet the scientific underpinnings for sleep continue to be a mystery.

But what if we revisit the definition of soul, abandoning its canonical meaning as the "spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal" for something more modern? What if we consider your soul as the sum total of your neurocognitive essence, your very specific brain signature, the unique neuronal connections, synapses, and flow of neurotransmitters that makes you you?

Many questions remain to be answered before DBS can become a clinically useful treatment. The biggest: Will its effects hold in humans? Promoting the formation of new neurons is probably harder in humans than in rats. To date, there isn’t direct evidence that electrical stimulation of the cerebellum will promote the formation of new neurons in humans, although that remains a possibility and a hope, says Dr. Machado.

In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer's disease to multiple sclerosis.

Publishing in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. Microglila cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they’re able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s. [Sci Transl Med 11 March 2015 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaa2512]

In an interesting short paper just published in Trends in Cognitive Science, Caltech neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs offers his thoughts on The Unsolved Problems of Neuroscience.

In an unanticipated finding, the present study demonstrated how the increased mind wandering behavior produced by external stimulation not only does not harm subjects' ability to succeed at an appointed task, it actually helps. Bar believes that this surprising result might stem from the convergence, within a single brain region, of both the "thought controlling" mechanisms of executive function and the "thought freeing" activity of spontaneous, self-directed daydreams.

When neuroanatomist Jill Bolte-Taylor felt her brain shut down during a stroke, she was more fascinated than panicked. Even though she spent eight years recovering, she's grateful for the stroke.

To do anything sustainably you need to be aware of the risks connected with it.

All of the products I looked at had different marketing language, but the connecting thread between them was the insistence that being smarter and more productive was imminently possible through the purchase of just a few gulps or pills to get you started. Nobody was ever too specific about what intelligence is, or what focus is for, or why clarity is something you constantly need, likely because they don’t need to be.

Smart drugs have become widely popular among entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, top-level executives, and busy college students. A 2012 study published in the Journal of American College Health showed that roughly two-thirds of students had taken prescription nootropics for non-medical purposes by the end of their college careers.

“There seems to be a growing percentage of intellectual workers in Silicon Valley and Wall Street using nootropics. They are akin to intellectual professional athletes where the stakes and competition is high,” says Geoffrey Woo, the CEO and co-founder of nutrition company HVMN, which produces a line of nootropic supplements. Denton agrees. “I think nootropics just make things more and more competitive."

Curious about whether they really worked, I decided to give nootropics a try, committing to taking one a day for a week. Would I zip through my work, making time for some online shopping and Buzzfeed quizzes? Or maybe the nootropic boost would allow me to work better, preventing that dreaded afternoon slump and inspiring me to work long and hard well past sunset. Or maybe the whole thing would be a waste of money.

Nootropics are substances that purport to improve cognition and concentration. In other words, they're supposed to help you think better. But do nootropics actually do that? The answer is a combination of "sometimes" and "maybe" with a side of "well, not by much."

Here’s a cheat sheet of 15 of the most commonly touted cognitive-boosting pills that have also been studied in clinical trials.

Within the nootropics world there are at least 2 - 3 new unique smart drugs released every month. Some are run of the mill and others are more sophisticated. Qualia was launched by the Neurohacker Collective in April 2016 and has grown rapidly since then. This Qualia supplement review provides a solid non-biased overview, but today we’re focusing more on the long-term nature of this brand and product.

In January of this year, the New York State Attorney General sued the makers of Prevagen for false advertising claims, since there’s no evidence its jellyfish-based formula can help improve memory as it claims. “We sent letters to at least five major networks who were airing these ads," says Bonnie Patton, director of the consumer watchdog group Truth in Advertising. "And guess what? Prevagen ads are still airing.”

But while some studies have found short-term benefits, Doraiswamy says there is no evidence that what are commonly known as smart drugs — of any type — improve thinking or productivity over the long run. “There’s a sizable demand, but the hype around efficacy far exceeds available evidence,” notes Doraiswamy, adding that, for healthy young people such as Silicon Valley go-getters, “it’s a zero-sum game. That’s because when you up one circuit in the brain, you’re probably impairing another system.”

These days, varied flavoured teas are produced to suit different mental requirements. You must know that they have shown excellent positive outcomes. You too must try them. Here are the various kinds of tea, each for a different mental requirement.

For years, researchers have observed that alcohol consumption is associated with reduced brain volume and concluded that drinking can literally shrink the brain. But new research turns that theory on its head, suggesting that reduced brain volume may represent a genetically-conferred predispositional risk factor for heavier alcohol consumption.

Your diet, along with a few other lifestyle factors, can shape the way your brain functions and improve cognitive thinking skills, like your ability to learn something new, absorb important details, problem solve, complete complex tasks, and think critically.

[video] Nearly a hundred years ago, the United States solved a major public health crisis, goiter, by iodizing salt. Surprisingly, it also led to a 15-point jump in IQ. What can this tell us today about how we should respond to toxic substances like lead?

“Foods that are high in two plant pigments, lutein and zeaxanthin, have been linked to greater crystallised intelligence,” says Lugavere, “which is the ability to use the knowledge you’ve acquired over a lifetime.”

A study at the University of Texas also found that challenging mental activities and learning stimulates memory and high-level thinking. The 2009 Strangl and Thuret study also demonstrated that diet impacts our neurogenesis. This study focused on the calories we consume, how often we eat, the types of food we eat and their texture (smooth textures are not the best) and the contents of the food we eat. So when we fast a few times a year and we complain about it, or think that it hinders our system, the total opposite is true! Fasting increases the production of new neurons! Development of new neurons reduces the risk of strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and speech impediments.

No one food is magic (except maybe coffee), but if you eat the right balance of nutrients, you might be surprised at how much more alert you'll feel and how much info you can retain. If you want to improve your focus, concentration, and memory, try incorporating these 11 brain-boosting foods into your, and you might see a spike in your productivity.

She is emphatically not anti-internet, but rather anti- the negative side effects of it on our young. “It is battering our children’s brains. They have no times for the goodies in life – kindness, acceptance, conversation, face-to-face, nature, nurture. They need to find a sense of purpose by connecting with other people, not being on the Internet all the time.

The neurobiological effects of flavanols are believed to occur by direct promotion of neurogenesis through the expression of neuroprotective and neuromodulatory proteins which regulate neuronal function and brain connectivity. Flavonols, whose cardiovascular beneficial effects are well-known, may also improve blood flow and angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels) in the brain. Protective effects of long-term flavanol consumption have also been shown in animal models of normal aging, dementia, and stroke. Human studies have provided evidence for a positive effect of cocoa flavonoids on vision, cognition, learning, memory, mood, and reduced cognitive decline in aging and Alzheimer’s disease.

Resveratrol has been widely touted for its potential to prevent heart disease, but Dr. Shetty and a team that includes other researchers from the health science center believe it also has positive effects on the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is critical to functions such as memory, learning, and mood.

Reading and doing the crossword might help - but for real brain-training try one of these great apps. Not only will they help keep your mind sharp, but they’ll tell you where you need help the most, and provide it.

In the same way that we might go to the gym to exercise, a daily mental workout is said to produce physical changes in the brain. All you’ll have to do is set aside a few minutes each day to complete puzzles, memory games and word quizzes. At least, that’s the idea.

A new, large-scale study has found older people can train to prevent the decline of their brain’s executive function, which controls task-switching behaviour, allowing them to keep up mentally with those in their twenties.

... over a century of research suggests that learning and training gains tend to be extremely specific. Transferring gains from one task to another can be a challenge.

“It’s a kind of learning or teaching signal that creates a memory,” said Berridge.... “That research showed that you could enhance the memory of a moment, primarily by activating norepinephrine to the amygdala,” said Berridge, “like creating a flashbulb memory where the world is brighter, where you remember that moment very vividly.”

... does brain training really work and can it preserve your mental faculties? We speak to neuroscientist Dr Liron Jacobson and chartered psychologist Fiona Murden about the science behind keeping your mind in shape.

A 'brain training' game developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge could help improve the memory of patients in the very earliest stages of dementia, suggests a study published today in The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Memorizing Pi to one thousand digits or committing the entire Quran to memory might seem like feats reserved for ultra-nerds or the ultra devout. But a new study of an ancient memory trick called the Memory Palace shows that such feats of mega-retention are within the grasp of ordinary people, and that just trying to become better at memorizing can have lasting impacts on brain function.

Can we really train our brains? The hope that maybe we can is based on the idea of “brain plasticity”: that no matter how old you are, and how set in your ways, your brain is constantly changing to adapt to new experiences. Brain plasticity is based on a decade’s worth of hard science, which is how it came to spawn a billion-dollar brain training industry. But there’s a problem. When scientists look at whether brain training games actually make people smarter, the answer is very clear: no.

To call the findings preliminary barely scrapes the surface. Admittedly, this research could become the first large-scale randomized trial to link brain training with long-term dementia risk — but that should be a signal for caution, not celebration, an encouraging sign but not necessarily a definitive one.

Mindfulness training might enhance cognitive control processes and the ability to overcome distractions, according to new research. The findings, published in the journal Mindfulness, suggest that meditation practices can improve the ability to focus and detect new changes in the environment.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is often a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, thus far no effective method of preventing further mental decline in MCI patients has been developed. However, researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center may have found a safe and non-pharmacological treatment that can help people living with the condition: mindfulness meditation.

New research from UC Davis shows forty volunteers still experiencing cognitive gains seven years after an intensive retreat.

There’s been a lot of discussion about what kinds of mental activities are actually capable of changing the brain. Some promises of bolstered IQ and enhanced brain function via specially-designed "brain games" have fizzled out. Meanwhile, meditation and mindfulness training have accumulated some impressive evidence, suggesting that the practices can change not only the structure and function of the brain, but also our behavior and moment-to-moment experience.

Open Focus is the name of an attention training program created by Dr. Lester Fehmi, a neuroscientist and psychologist from Princeton University. Dr. Fehmi found that once our whole brain activity becomes more synchronous in alpha frequency, our mental and physical health improves. He created a series of mind exercises that help to cultivate this brainwave pattern, and he designed a neurofeedback EEG machine that can detect it.

Mindfulness meditation is associated with all sorts of benefits to mental and physical well-being, but a new study suggests that it may also come with a particular downside for memory. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that participants who engaged in a 15-minute mindfulness meditation session were less able to differentiate items they actually encountered from items they only imagined.

Listening to music is a little bit of magic for the brain, as countless studies have proved. Scientists believe it’s because music activates lots of brain regions at once – attention, memory, verbal, emotion and meaning. One study in Finland among stroke patients who listened to music every day for two months found they had better verbal memory and focused attention after the trial.

The new study “adds a little bit more evidence to the idea that the brain has plasticity, and by practicing certain mental activities, such as meditation, we can see structural changes in the brain as a result,” he said.

When former monk Andy Puddicombe announced his idea to teach mindfulness with an app, his Tibetan Buddhist teacher was horrified. "I felt very unsure as well," says Puddicombe, cofounder of LA-based Headspace. "In the Tibetan tradition, there's an unbroken oral lineage from teacher to student of almost 900 years. There's a risk in scaling something like this, taking it out of its environment, diluting it."

New research suggests muscles respond to simple thoughts of exercise; simply imagining exercise can trick the muscles into delaying atrophy and even getting stronger. It’s further proof that brain and body, which evolved together, are more intwined than separate.

Mindfulness training might enhance cognitive control processes and the ability to overcome distractions, according to new research. The findings, published in the journal Mindfulness, suggest that meditation practices can improve the ability to focus and detect new changes in the environment.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is often a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, thus far no effective method of preventing further mental decline in MCI patients has been developed. However, researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center may have found a safe and non-pharmacological treatment that can help people living with the condition: mindfulness meditation.

New research from UC Davis shows forty volunteers still experiencing cognitive gains seven years after an intensive retreat.

There’s been a lot of discussion about what kinds of mental activities are actually capable of changing the brain. Some promises of bolstered IQ and enhanced brain function via specially-designed "brain games" have fizzled out. Meanwhile, meditation and mindfulness training have accumulated some impressive evidence, suggesting that the practices can change not only the structure and function of the brain, but also our behavior and moment-to-moment experience.

Open Focus is the name of an attention training program created by Dr. Lester Fehmi, a neuroscientist and psychologist from Princeton University. Dr. Fehmi found that once our whole brain activity becomes more synchronous in alpha frequency, our mental and physical health improves. He created a series of mind exercises that help to cultivate this brainwave pattern, and he designed a neurofeedback EEG machine that can detect it.

Mindfulness meditation is associated with all sorts of benefits to mental and physical well-being, but a new study suggests that it may also come with a particular downside for memory. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that participants who engaged in a 15-minute mindfulness meditation session were less able to differentiate items they actually encountered from items they only imagined.

Listening to music is a little bit of magic for the brain, as countless studies have proved. Scientists believe it’s because music activates lots of brain regions at once – attention, memory, verbal, emotion and meaning. One study in Finland among stroke patients who listened to music every day for two months found they had better verbal memory and focused attention after the trial.

The new study “adds a little bit more evidence to the idea that the brain has plasticity, and by practicing certain mental activities, such as meditation, we can see structural changes in the brain as a result,” he said.

When former monk Andy Puddicombe announced his idea to teach mindfulness with an app, his Tibetan Buddhist teacher was horrified. "I felt very unsure as well," says Puddicombe, cofounder of LA-based Headspace. "In the Tibetan tradition, there's an unbroken oral lineage from teacher to student of almost 900 years. There's a risk in scaling something like this, taking it out of its environment, diluting it."

New research suggests muscles respond to simple thoughts of exercise; simply imagining exercise can trick the muscles into delaying atrophy and even getting stronger. It’s further proof that brain and body, which evolved together, are more intwined than separate.

How does it work? The science behind it is quite detailed, but there’s two important things to know. The first is that the increased blood flow brings oxygen to the brain. Workouts that boost your heartrate (aerobic/cardio) are especially useful in this regard. Second, your brain releases all sorts of important chemicals. One of them is called BDNF, which helps brain cell growth, learning, and emotional regulation.

Much has been written about the great mental health benefits that come with regular exercise. Now a new study shows that hitting the treadmill every morning — even for a short period of time — offers another brain benefit: it may make you smarter.

Even light activity such as household chores might help to keep the brain young, researchers say, adding to a growing body of evidence that, when it comes to exercise, every little helps.

“[T]he primary finding… was that aerobic exercise improved perceptual speed/visual attentional control through increases in self-reported feelings of vigor-energy,” the paper concludes.

Aerobic exercise appears to lead to changes in both the structure of the brain and the way it operates, which together bolster learning in kids, give adults an edge on cognitive tasks, and protect against the cognitive declines that often come with age.

“More specifically, it reduces one’s risk of developing chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes (type II), and high cholesterol. These chronic conditions have a negative impact on the brain - likely through compromised blood flow to the brain,” said Liu-Ambrose, a researcher with the Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Before you skip another workout, you might think about your brain. A provocative new study finds that some of the benefits of exercise for brain health may evaporate if we take to the couch and stop being active, even just for a week or so.

“We need far more studies in many different species” to better understand the nuances of how exercise changes the brain and mind, he said. He and his colleagues hope to start such studies soon.

A wave of studies exploring the unexpected links between mental and bodily fitness is emerging from labs. This research might give you the impetus to get more active. It can also help you choose the best ways to prepare physically for mental challenges such as exams, interviews and creative projects.

Physical inactivity is one of the top ten risk factors for poor health, being associated with an increased risk of premature cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Exercise, on the other hand, is known to benefit the brain by promoting angiogenesis (new blood vessel formation), neurogenesis, and synaptic plasticity, thereby improving cerebral blood flow and metabolism and counteracting age-associated cognitive decline and dementia.

Neuroscience might one day also boost our existing mental abilities, such as memory and concentration. Headband-like wearable devices that use transcranial direct current stimulation – in which an electric current is passed across the surface of the brain - are currently commercially available and claim to improve concentration and memory. Devices that allow you to track the electrical patterns in your brain have entered the market and claim to maximise your cognitive potential.

To verify that longer ripples contribute to better performance, the team artificially prolonged ripples in rats performing the M-maze task.The researchers used optogenetics, involving the use of light piped through a fiber-optic cable to activate genetically engineered light-sensitive neurons in the rats’ hippocampi. They recorded collective neural activity in the hippocampus during the task, to enable them to detect spontaneously occurring ripples. Upon detection of a ripple, light pulses were triggered to activate engineered neurons. This “closed-loop” stimulation roughly doubled the duration of ripples, and significantly improved the rats’ performance, compared to control conditions with either no light stimulation, or stimulation applied after short, random delays.

This study is notably different from those before. Rather than indiscriminately zapping the brain, the researchers showed that the brain state at the time of memory encoding determines whether brain stimulation helps or hinders. It’s an invaluable insight for future studies that try to tease apart the effects of brain stimulation on memory.

"Ultimately, a treatment that can slow or halt the damage occurring in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s could offer the best chance of improving the lives of those living with the disease, and this will only be possible with sustained investment in research.”

"You only have one brain. Wait for the research to catch up with all the hype," Krause said.

The protocol Barbey has designed combines tDCS, nutrition, and cognitive and physical exercise in a comprehensive regimen with the potential to enhance everything from math skills to abstract reasoning. Through his work, he is probing the nature and structure of the human mind and, in the process, asking what it really means to be smart.

But whether the most digitally active people are more distracted because their excessive online activity makes them jittery or hyperactive, or whether it is the other way around – that they are more drawn to these activities because they naturally have short “attentional control” – is unclear at this stage, he says. Dr Hadlington does have a theory, however: that it is a mix of the two. In other words, those people already suffering from short attention spans are drawn to the distractions of modern technology, which makes it even harder for them to pay attention to their surroundings. His research has been published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour. He is now working on research to answer this question more comprehensively and to look for ways to solve the problem.

This was my first experience of transcranial direct-current stimulation, or tDCS—a portable, cheap, low-tech procedure that involves sending a low electric current (up to two milliamps) to the brain. Research into tDCS is in its early stages. A number of studies suggest that it may improve learning, vigilance, intelligence, and working memory, as well as relieve chronic pain and the symptoms of depression, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s, and schizophrenia. However, the studies have been so small and heterogeneous that meta-analyses have failed to prove any conclusive effects, and long-term risks have not been established.

A wireless signal from a smartphone app controls the frequency and intensity of the pulses, gradually changing them in five- to 20-minute long programs that Thync calls vibes. The amount of electricity it produces is small—once it’s set up properly, I can barely feel it. Yet Thync says it has a marked impact on key parts of a person’s brain. An energy vibe, the company contends, can make you feel as if you’ve just had a Red Bull or similar energy drink. The calm vibe—the one I just ran—is for “whenever you’re frustrated, anxious, or stressed.”

Can't recall a friend's phone number? Press the speed dial on your mobile. Don't know the way to their house? Use a satnav. Modern technology has taken the strain off our brains with the answers to so many problems available at the click of a button. But is there a dark side to all this convenience? Growing scientific evidence suggests a future where our brains may prematurely fail in later life through under-use, thanks to Mother Nature's rule that we 'use it or lose it'.