Researchers at Cardiff University have mapped out how we store long-term spatial memory, shedding light on how our brains remember where things are within our surroundings. Professor Frank Sengpiel, from Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences, said: “Until now, how the brain stores information about our environment over long periods of time has been a mystery....
Category: <span>Brain Training</span>
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How to activate your brain’s ability to learn
A new study looks at the power of practicing well beyond mastery. In music, you have scales. In Jiu Jitsu, it’s drilling. Most of us just call it practice. Whatever you label it, many believe that greatness, heck even mere competency, requires training a skill well past proficiency. It’s continuing to practice your free throw even after you’ve nailed every...
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Human drug addiction behaviors tied to specific impairments in six brain networks
Specific impairments within six large-scale brain networks during drug cue exposure, decision-making, inhibitory control, and social-emotional processing are associated with drug addiction behaviors, according to a systematic review of more than 100 published neuroimaging studies by experts at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published Wednesday, June 6 in the journal Neuron. Drug addiction is...
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Waves move across the human brain to support memory
The coordination of neural activity across widespread brain networks is essential for human cognition. Researchers have long assumed that oscillations in the brain, commonly measured for research purposes, brain-computer interfacing, and clinical tests, were stationary signals that occurred independently at separate brain regions. Biomedical engineers at Columbia Engineering have discovered a new fundamental feature of...
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Repeated stimulation enlarges dendritic spines
Even in adult brains, new neurons are generated throughout a lifetime. In a publication in the scientific journal PNAS, a research group led by Goethe University describes plastic changes of adult-born neurons in the hippocampus, a critical region for learning: frequent nerve signals enlarge the spines on neuronal dendrites, which in turn enables contact with the...
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World first use of cognitive training reduces gait freezing in Parkinson’s patients
Research led by the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre, published today npj Parkinson’s Disease — Nature UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY The researchers report significant reduction in the severity and duration of freezing of gait, improved cognitive processing speed and reduced daytime sleepiness. Freezing of gait (FoG) is a disabling symptom of Parkinson’s Disease, characterized by patients becoming...
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What if you could know that your mild cognitive impairment wouldn’t progress
Researchers from the Lisbon School of Medicine, University of Lisbon found that, in some mild cognitive impairment patients, real neuropsychological stability over a decade is possible and that long-term stability could be predicted based on neuropsychological tests measuring memory and non-verbal abstract reasoning. In their work, with 10 years of follow-up, independently of the association of...
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We can change our brain and its ability to cope with disease with simple lifestyle choices
Lifestyle factors such as meditation can change our brain for the better. Our life expectancy has increased dramatically over the past several decades, with advances in medical research, nutrition and health care seeing us live well into our 80s. But this longer life expectancy has also come at a cost, as the longer we live,...
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Study shows creativity is state of mind that can be trained
As an undergraduate student at York University, Joel Lopata was studying film production and jazz performance when a discrepancy became apparent. “I noticed students in the jazz program were really developing a language of creative engagement, whereas, in the film program, we weren’t having the same education. It was a lot more theoretical than practical,...
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Pathways to spatial recognition
Specialized nerve cells of the mammalian brain, called pyramidal cells, are involved in memory-guided navigation. Here, the axons of three individual pyramidal cells (red, green, and magenta) are traced from their target regions. When you are lost or disoriented, your brain uses cues from your surroundings—landmarks both near and far—to sort out where you are....