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Tero Toivanen

Use It or Lose It: The Principles of Brain Plasticity - 3 views

articles.mercola.com/...brain-plasticity.aspx

brain plasticity research learning neurons memory Use It or Lose It Brain Gym nutrition

shared by Tero Toivanen on 09 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • You probably haven't realizd it, but as you acquire an ability – for example, the ability to read – you have actually created a system in the brain that does not exist, that's not in place, in the non-reader. It [the ability; the brain system that controls the ability] actually evolves in you as it has been acquired through experience or learning.
  • "There are some very useful exercises at www.BrainHQ.com that are free, and using them can give a person a better understanding of how exercising your brain can drive it in a rejuvenating direction. Using exercises at BrainHQ, most people, of any age, can drive sharp improvements in brain speed and accuracy, and thereby rewire the brain so that it again represents information in detail," he says.
  • Children operating in the 10th to 20th percentile of academic performance are commonly able to improve their scores to the middle or average level with 20-30 hours of intensive computer-based training. "That's a big difference for the child," he says. "It carries most children who are near the bottom of the class, on the average, to be somewhere in the middle or above average in the class. And that gives struggling children a chance to really succeed and in many cases excel in school."
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  • Careful controlled studies in seniors have also been reported in scientific journals. After 40 hours of computer-based training, the average improvement in cognitive performance across the board was 14 years. On average, if you were 70 years old when you underwent the training after 40 hours of brain training, your cognitive abilities operated like that of a 56-year old. Equally strong or even greater effects were seen in 40 to 50 year olds using the program. Individuals who worked on the BrainHQ exercises at home did just as well as those who completed training in a clinic or research center.
  • Ideally, it would be wise to invest at least 20 minutes a day. But no more than five to seven minutes is to be spent on a specific task. When you spend longer amounts of time on a task, the benefits weaken. According to Dr. Merzenich, the primary benefits occur in the first five or six minutes of the task.
  • Find ways to engage yourself in new learning
  • "When it matters to you, you are going to drive changes in your brain," he explains. "That's something always to keep in mind. If what you're doing seems senseless, meaningless, if it does not matter to you, then you're gaining less from it."
  • Get 15-30 minutes of physical exercise each day,
  • Spend about five minutes every day working on the refinement of a specific, small domain of your physical body.
  • You can typically improve yourself to the highest practical or possible level in anywhere between five to a dozen brief sessions of seven or eight minutes each. Again, having a sense of purpose is crucial.
  • Stay socially engaged.
  • Practice "mindfulness,"
  • Foods have an immense impact on your brain, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental and physical health.
  • The medical literature is also showing that coconut oil can be of particular benefit for brain health, and anecdotal evidence suggests it could be very beneficial in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
  • Optimize your vitamin D levels
  • Take a high-quality animal-based omega-3 fat.
  • Avoid processed foods and sugars, especially fructose
  • Avoid grains
  • Avoid artificial sweeteners
  • Avoid soy
  • Men who ate tofu at least twice weekly had more cognitive impairment, compared with those who rarely or never ate the soybean curd, and their cognitive test results were about equivalent to what they would have been if they were five years older than their current age.
  • Tero Toivanen on 09 Dec 12
     
    "It was once thought that any brain function lost was irretrievable. Today, research into what's referred to as "brain plasticity" has proven that this is not the case. On the contrary, your brain continues to make new neurons throughout life in response to mental activity."
Tero Toivanen

» Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain   « Brain Fitness Revolut... - 0 views

www.sharpbrains.com/...ow-learning-changes-your-brain

brain neuroplasticity learning

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
  • The brain compensates for damage by reorganizing and forming new connections between intact neurons. In order to reconnect, the neurons need to be stimulated through activity.
  • Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops changing through learning. Plasticity IS the capacity of the brain to change with learning. Changes associated with learning occur mostly at the level of the connections between neurons. New connections can form and the internal structure of the existing synapses can change.
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  • It looks like learning a second language is possible through functional changes in the brain: the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in bilingual brains than in monolingual brains.
  • For instance, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus (in the posterior region) than London bus drivers (Maguire, Woollett, & Spiers, 2006)…. Why is that? It is because this region of the hippocampus is specialized in acquiring and using complex spatial information in order to navigate efficiently. Taxi drivers have to navigate around London whereas bus drivers follow a limited set of routes.
  • Did you know that when you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill will grow?
  • Plastic changes also occur in musicians brains compared to non-musicians.
  • They found that gray matter (cortex) volume was highest in professional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in non-musicians in several brain areas involved in playing music: motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas and inferior temporal areas.
  • Medical students’ brains showed learning-induced changes in regions of the parietal cortex as well as in the posterior hippocampus. These regions of the brains are known to be involved in memory retrieval and learning.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
Tero Toivanen

Investing in the Developing Brain : The Frontal Cortex - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...sting_in_the_developing_br.php

brain developing brain neuroscience research

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • But there has been one major payoff from our investigations of the brain: an increasing emphasis on educating young children, before they reach kindergarten. Decades of research have demonstrated that the cortex is astonishingly plastic at a young age and that many important traits and habits seem to solidify before the age of 4.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    But there has been one major payoff from our investigations of the brain: an increasing emphasis on educating young children, before they reach kindergarten. Decades of research have demonstrated that the cortex is astonishingly plastic at a young age and that many important traits and habits seem to solidify before the age of 4.
Tero Toivanen

Growing evidence of the brain's plasticity could benefit stroke victims or those suffer... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...neuroscience-stroke-depression

brain plasticity

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits.
  • Therapies that exploit the brain's power to adapt have helped people overcome damage caused by strokes, depression, anxiety and learning disabilities, and may one day replace drugs for some of these conditions.
  • Children with language difficulties have been shown to make significant progress using computer training tools that are the equivalent of cerebral cross-training.
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  • Neuroplasticity does not see the different regions of the brain as completely versatile and certainly not interchangeable. But it recognises that if part of the brain is damaged, it can be possible to train other areas to take on, at least to some extent, the job of the lost brain matter.
  • Doidge says he is not anti-medication, but wonders if therapies that tap into neuro-plasticity will soon replace drug treatments for certain conditions. "We can change our brains by sensing, imagining and acting in the world. It's economical and mostly low-tech, and I'm very, very hopeful"
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits.
Tero Toivanen

YouTube - Brain Plasticity - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

brain brain plasticity plasticity youtube

shared by Tero Toivanen on 01 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 01 Jul 09
     
    Incredible video about a girl with half of her brain operated and now she is quite well.
Tero Toivanen

Scientists capture the first image of memories being made - 0 views

www.eurekalert.org/...mu-sct061809.php

brain memory protein translation long-term memory proteins synapse synaptic connection learning synaptic plasticity post-synaptic cell neurons

shared by Tero Toivanen on 21 Jun 09 - Cached
  • A new study by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro), McGill University and University of California, Los Angeles has captured an image for the first time of a mechanism, specifically protein translation, which underlies long-term memory formation. The finding provides the first visual evidence that when a new memory is formed new proteins are made locally at the synapse - the connection between nerve cells - increasing the strength of the synaptic connection and reinforcing the memory. The study published in Science, is important for understanding how memory traces are created and the ability to monitor it in real time will allow a detailed understanding of how memories are formed.
  • research has focused on synapses which are the main site of exchange and storage in the brain.
  • They form a vast but also constantly fluctuating network of connections whose ability to change and adapt, called synaptic plasticity, may be the fundamental basis of learning and memory.
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  • Using a translational reporter, a fluorescent protein that can be easily detected and tracked, we directly visualized the increased local translation, or protein synthesis, during memory formation.
  • Importantly, this translation was synapse-specific and it required activation of the post-synaptic cell, showing that this step required cooperation between the pre and post-synaptic compartments, the parts of the two neurons that meet at the synapse.
  • This study provides evidence that a mechanism that mediates this gene expression during neuronal plasticity involves regulated translation of localized mRNA at stimulated synapses.
  • Tero Toivanen on 21 Jun 09
     
    A new study by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro), McGill University and University of California, Los Angeles has captured an image for the first time of a mechanism, specifically protein translation, which underlies long-term memory formation.
Tero Toivanen

YouTube - Posit Science: The Science with Dr. Merzenich - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

brain plasticity neuropsychology Michael Merzenich change abilities learning neuroplasticity practice language youtube

shared by Tero Toivanen on 05 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 05 Oct 09
     
    Dr Michael Merzenich talks about brain plasticity in YouTube video.
Tero Toivanen

Nouns and verbs are learned in different parts of the brain - 0 views

www.physorg.com/news186315338.html

brain nouns verbs inferior frontal gyrus left posterior medial temporal gyrus learning

shared by Tero Toivanen on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 25 Feb 10
     
    "Learning nouns activates the left fusiform gyrus, while learning verbs switches on other regions (the left inferior frontal gyrus and part of the left posterior medial temporal gyrus)", Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells, co-author of the study and an ICREA researcher at the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit of the University of Barcelona, tells SINC
Tero Toivanen

The Teaching Company Free Lectures - 0 views

www.teach12.com/...brainlecture.aspx

brain learning synapse Hippocampus video plasticity memory Jeanette Norden Vanderbit University

shared by Tero Toivanen on 13 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 13 Dec 09
     
    Excellent video lecture about learning, memory and brain by Jeanette Norden Ph.D. from Vanderbit University.
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