brain Archives - Mental Wealth

Neuroscientists have identified how exactly a deep breath changes your mind — Quartzy

Breathing is traditionally thought of as an automatic process driven by the brainstem—the part of the brain controlling such life-sustaining functions as heartbeat and sleeping patterns. But new and unique research, involving recordings made directly from within the brains of humans undergoing neurosurgery, shows that breathing can also change your brain.

Simply put, changes in breathing—for example, breathing at different paces or paying careful attention to the breaths—were shown to engage different parts of the brain.

Neuroscientists have identified how exactly a deep breath changes your mind — Quartzy

Concentrate! How to tame a wandering mind

I am about to be zapped in the head with an electromagnet, once a second, for eight minutes. I fidget, trying to get comfortable in a huge black chair with jointed metal arms that stand between me and the door. I feel faintly ridiculous wearing a tight headband with what looks like a coat hook on the top. “All you need to do is relax,” says Mike Esterman, the researcher about to zap me. That’s easy for him to say – he’s holding the magnet.

I’ve come to the Boston Attention and Learning Lab in the US to try and train my brain to focus better. Esterman and fellow cognitive neuroscientist Joe DeGutis have spent nearly seven years working on a training programme to help wandering minds stay “in the zone”.

So far, their methods seem to be particularly promising for enhancing focus in US army veterans with attention problems linked to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and brain injuries, as well as people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But what I want to know is, can the mind-wandering of the average procrastinating person be improved? And if so, can they do it to me? Please?

BBC – Future – Concentrate! How to tame a wandering mind

Nine lifestyle changes can reduce dementia risk, study says – BBC News

One in three cases of dementia could be prevented if more people looked after their brain health throughout life, according to an international study in the Lancet.

It lists nine key risk factors including lack of education, hearing loss, smoking and physical inactivity.

The study is being presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London.
By 2050, 131 million people could be living with dementia globally.

There are estimated to be 47 million people with the condition at the moment.

Nine lifestyle changes can reduce dementia risk, study says – BBC News

New Brain Maps With Unmatched Detail May Change Neuroscience | WIRED

SITTING AT THE desk in his lower-campus office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the neuroscientist Tony Zador turned his computer monitor toward me to show off a complicated matrix-style graph. Imagine something that looks like a spreadsheet but instead of numbers it’s filled with colors of varying hues and gradations. Casually, he said: “When I tell people I figured out the connectivity of tens of thousands of neurons and show them this, they just go ‘huh?’ But when I show this to people …” He clicked a button onscreen and a transparent 3-D model of the brain popped up, spinning on its axis, filled with nodes and lines too numerous to count. “They go ‘What the _____!’”

What Zador showed me was a map of 50,000 neurons in the cerebral cortex of a mouse. It indicated where the cell bodies of every neuron sat and where they sent their long axon branches. A neural map of this size and detail has never been made before. Forgoing the traditional method of brain mapping that involves marking neurons with fluorescence, Zador had taken an unusual approach that drew on the long tradition of molecular biology research at Cold Spring Harbor, on Long Island. He used bits of genomic information to imbue a unique RNA sequence or “bar code” into each individual neuron. He then dissected the brain into cubes like a sheet cake and fed the pieces into a DNA sequencer. The result: a 3-D rendering of 50,000 neurons in the mouse cortex (with as many more to be added soon) mapped with single cell resolution.

New Brain Maps With Unmatched Detail May Change Neuroscience | WIRED

Chew it over: a guide to eating slowly | Life and style | The Guardian

Chew your deep-dish filled-crust pizza slowly. Slurp your thickshake with care. Do not pour cooking oil down your neck to act as a slide for your next Cinnabon.

Eat slowly. Get thin. This is the promise underlined by researchers at Japan’s Kyushu University, who pored over the data of 60,000 Japanese health insurance claimants. Slow eaters were 42% less likely to be overweight or obese than fast eaters. Even normal-speed eaters had a 29% lower risk of being overweight.

“It’s all to do with the signal to the brain,” explains performance nutritionist Elly Rees. “Studies show that it takes up to 20 minutes for us to register that we’re full. So people who overeat tend to eat too quickly.”

That 20-minute gap can be vast. If people eat more slowly they “find that they’re actually full,” Rees says.

Chew it over: a guide to eating slowly | Life and style | The Guardian

11 Shocking Things That Happen To Your Brain When You Suffer From Even Mild Anxiety

If you have an anxiety disorder, then you already know how it can impact your brain, cause you to worry, and totally mess with your day. But did you know even mild cases of anxiety can affect you, in much the same way? Chemically speaking, any type of anxiety can alter your brain, in some pretty surprising ways. But it can also affect you psychologically — perhaps more than you’d think.

But it’s important to note how mild anxiety is different from regular nerves. “Anxiety is a natural human response that serves a purpose: to keep us safe. However, sometimes your brain is more sensitive and perceives danger when it does not exist,” licensed psychologist Crystal I. Lee, PsyD tells Bustle. “Your brain mistakenly floods itself with norepinephrine and cortisol, which triggers anxious thoughts and feelings when they’re not useful.”

That’s why you might be sitting at work, and suddenly boom — you’re filled with worry. And thanks to stress chemicals, like cortisol, going haywire in your brain, you might even struggle to think clearly, or make decisions. It can be intense for some people, which is why therapy is always a good idea, as well as taking care of great yourself — by exercising, eating well, and sleeping at least eight hours — so your symptoms can be less intrusive.

Here are a few shocking ways anxiety can affect you, according to experts.

11 Shocking Things That Happen To Your Brain When You Suffer From Even Mild Anxiety

What sugar does to your brain – Why sugar could be to blame for your bad memory – and can it get you hooked?

To tell the story of what sugar does to your brain, you have to start with the thought that triggers your need for a hit of sweetness.

It often happens in the afternoon when your brain, which runs on sugar, starts to get hungry.

To satiate the craving your brain activates a string of neurons, often referred to as the reward pathway, which pump the chemical dopamine into your brain.

All of a sudden you need a chocolate bar or that sweet pastry you saw at lunchtime.

If you act on that craving, the reward pathway then switches mode, pumping chemicals such as beta-endorphins into your brain, generating feelings of pleasure.

Your brain thanks you for the sugar hit by making the chocolate bar literally taste sweeter, says Dr Zane Andrews, a scientist at Monash University who studies how our brains regulate control of our diets.

But if you respond to the brain’s need for sugar too often, the reward pathway can develop tolerance to the stimulus.

“That means we need to eat more to get the same feeling. That’s a classic feature of addiction,” says Dr Andrews.

What sugar does to your brain – Why sugar could be to blame for your bad memory – and can it get you hooked?

Exercise ‘keeps the mind sharp’ in over-50s, study finds – BBC News

Doing moderate exercise several times a week is the best way to keep the mind sharp if you’re over 50, research suggests.
Thinking and memory skills were most improved when people exercised the heart and muscles on a regular basis, a review of 39 studies found.
This remained true in those who already showed signs of cognitive decline.
Taking up exercise at any age was worthwhile for the mind and body, the Australian researchers said.
Exercises such as T’ai Chi were recommended for people over the age of 50 who couldn’t manage other more challenging forms of exercise, the study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine said.

Exercise ‘keeps the mind sharp’ in over-50s, study finds – BBC News

Playing Tetris can reduce the onset of PTSD after trauma, study shows – CNN.com

After experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, such as a car accident, people are likely to develop anxiety or distress in relation to that event soon after the experience, leading to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

But a new study has shown that playing the computer game Tetris within hours of experiencing trauma can prevent those feelings from taking over your mind.
PTSD occurs when intrusive memories linked to fear from a traumatic event become consolidated in a person’s mind by them visualizing the event in a loop until it becomes locked in their brain.
Competing with the visualization, such as with a game like Tetris, can block that consolidation form happening.

Playing Tetris can reduce the onset of PTSD after trauma, study shows – CNN.com