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Eating some kinds of berries can help your brain stay healthy by helping to clean out toxic material linked to mental decline, including age-related memory loss, a new study shows.

Experts have long known that as the body ages it suffers “oxidative damage” and is less likely to be able to protect itself against cancer, heart disease and age-related mental decline.

But Poulose and his colleague found that strawberries, blueberries and acai berries activate brain cells called microglia. These cells, according to the ACS, act as the brain’s “housekeeper.” In a process called autophagy, they clean out “biochemical debris that would otherwise interfere with brain function.”

According to the American Psychological Association, a whopping 75 percent of people in the United States feel stressed out. Almost half of us eat unhealthy because of it; 47 percent of us can't sleep because of it; it makes one in three of us depressed; and for 42 percent of us, it has gotten worse in the last year. There is so much making us anxious these days -- from big-picture problems like uncontrollable oil spills and a still-soft economy to garden-variety job, relationship, money, you-name-it woes -- that it's easy to think of chronic stress as the new normal.

the latest research reveals that revving up your body with exercise may be the most effective antidote. In lab studies, when scientists at Princeton put animals on a six-week aerobic conditioning program, then compared their brain cells with those of a group that remained sedentary, they found that the "brains on exercise" morphed over time into a biochemically calm state that remained steady even when the subjects were under stress. The nonexercising group's brain cells continued to react strongly to anxiety-inducing situations. This breakthrough discovery has scientists now saying that cardio workouts may actually remodel the brain to make it more resistant to stress hormones.

Regular exercise could help prevent brain damage associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, according to research published this month in Elsevier's journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. "Exercise allows the brain to rapidly produce chemicals that prevent damaging inflammation", said Professor Jean Harry, who led the study at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the United States. "This could help us develop a therapeutic approach for early intervention in preventing damage to the brain."

exercise before the onset of damage modifies the brain environment in such a way that the neurons are protected from severe insults.

exercise could be used to affect the path of many human conditions, such as neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, as a chemical model of neuronal damage was used, it also raises the possibility that exercise could offer protection against the potentially harmful effects of environmental toxins.

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

A study of German college students suggests that urbanite brains are more susceptible to stress, particularly social stress, than those of country dwellers.

Meyer-Lindenberg’s findings, published June 23 in Nature, are a neurological investigation into the underpinnings of a disturbing social trend: As a rule, city life seems to generate mental illness. Compared to their rural counterparts, city dwellers have higher levels of anxiety and mood disorders. The schizophrenia risk of people raised in cities is almost double. Literature on the effect is so thorough that researchers say it’s not just correlation, as might be expected if anxious people preferred to live in cities. Neither is it a result of heredity. It’s a cause-and-effect relationship between environment and mind.

cities are hyper-social places, in which residents must be constantly on guard, and have mathematically more opportunity to experience stressful interaction. Too much stress may ultimately alter the brain, leaving it ill-equipped to handle further stress and prone to mental illness.

Rhythms in the brain that are associated with learning become stronger as the body moves faster, UCLA neurophysicists report in a new study.

electrical signal known as the gamma rhythm in the brains of mice. This signal is typically produced in a brain region called the hippocampus, which is critical for learning and memory, during periods of concentration and learning.

The hippocampus is thought to rapidly and temporarily record facts and events as they are experienced,

The human brain never stops adapting to its environment in a quest to formulate what the mind perceives based on what the eyes see, according to a new study. The research adds credence to the notion that adult brains can be retrained following trauma or surgery or even from the effects of aging or eye misalignment, says Jan Brascamp, a research associate working with Randolph Blake, Centennial Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. Details appear in the July 29 issue of Current Biology.

Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University scanned the brains of nine healthy, normal-weight  subjects in the minutes after each got an infusion of equal volumes of glucose, of fructose and of saline. The brain scans aimed to capture activity in a relatively small swath of the human brain in and around the hypothalamus, which plays a key but complex role in setting appetite levels and directing production of metabolic hormones. The researchers, led by Dr. John Purnell, found that "cortical control areas"--broad swaths of gray matter that surrounded the hypothalamus -- responded quite differently to the infusion of fructose than they did to glucose. Across the limited regions of the brain they scanned, Purnell and his colleagues saw that glucose significantly raised the level of neural activity for about 20 minutes following the infusion. Fructose had the opposite effect, causing activity in the same areas to drop and stay low for 20 minutes after the infusion. Saline--the control condition in this trial--had no effect either way.

According to a recent study, regular exercise improves the ability of inactive, overweight children to do better in math. Researchers at Georgia Health Sciences University studied 171 sedentary and overweight 7- to 11-year-olds in an effort to identify what happens to children's brains with regular, vigorous exercise.

After allowing the kids to engage in fun, playful exercises, such as running games, hula hooping and jump roping, which raised their heart rates to 79 percent of their maximum, scientists used the Cognitive Assessment System and Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement III, tests that measure abilities such as planning and academic skills, to identify brain activity before and after the bouts of physical activity. Students showed an increase in complex thinking and decision making -- the areas of the brain that are used in math. In fact, the more the children exercised, the more their brains responded. Intelligence scores increased an average 3.8 points in those exercising 40 minutes per day for three months. Those who exercised just 20 minutes a day also benefited, just in a smaller dose. Researchers noted that the improved math skills were "remarkable," since no math lessons were given as part of the study. This suggests longer, more sustained periods of vigorous physical activity throughout the entire school year could produce even higher results. And researchers believe all children -- not just those who are overweight -- could benefit with improved reasoning and complex thinking skills.

In a country where one-third of our children are overweight, it is increasingly important to motivate schools and parents to encourage daily physical activity. The Center for Disease Control recommends at least 60 minutes of exercise a day for children, yet there is no federal mandate for minimum standards in schools. Each state is responsible for setting their own requirements, and unfortunately, with increasing budget cuts, not all schools comply or engage the children in quality-rich physical education.

Children of depressed parents are two to three times as likely to have major depression. Maternal depression in particular has been shown to have serious effects on development, primarily through an absence of responsiveness — the parent’s conscious and consistent mirroring and reciprocity of an infant’s gaze, babble and actions. “Depressed mothers often respond to their babies from the beginning in ways that dampen their enthusiasm and joy,” says Alicia Lieberman, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. This is problematic, as 10 to 20 percent of mothers go through depression at some point, and 1 in 11 infants experiences his mother’s depression in the first year.

Many researchers, particularly those with medical training, are eager to identify some kind of a “biologic marker” to make diagnosis scientifically conclusive. Recent studies have looked at the activity of cortisol, a hormone the body produces in response to stress. In preschoolers who have had a diagnosis of depression, as in depressed adults, cortisol levels escalate under stressful circumstances and then fail to recover with the same buoyancy as in typical children.

But in adults, cortisol reactivity can be an indication of anxiety. Other research has found that in young children, anxiety and depression are likewise intertwined. At Duke, Egger found that children who were depressed as preschoolers were more than four times as likely to have an anxiety disorder at school age. “Are these two distinct but strongly related syndromes?” asks Daniel Pine of the N.I.M.H. “Are they just slightly different-appearing clinical manifestations of the same underlying problem? Do the relationships vary at different ages? There are no definitive answers.”

People at risk for type 2 diabetes are also more likely to have brain abnormalities associated with Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study from Japan. The study is the latest evidence of a diabetes-dementia link.

The researchers found that men and women in their 60s with higher-than-average levels of blood sugar (glucose) or insulin -- two signs of type 2 diabetes -- are between three and six times more likely to have certain protein deposits in their brains a decade or more later, according to the study, which appears in the journal Neurology.

Alzheimer's disease affects as many as 5 million people in the U.S., and the cause is largely unknown (although genes play a role). About 24 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and about 90 percent of those have type 2.

Studies are finding that more lean muscle mass may allow kidney dialysis patients to live longer, give older people better cognitive function, reduce depression, boost good cholesterol, lessen the swelling and discomfort of lymphedema after breast cancer and help lower the risk of diabetes.

During a strength workout, the heart's muscle tissue contracts forcefully to push the blood out. Like all muscles, stress causes small tears in the muscle fibers. When the body repairs those tears, muscles grow. The result is a stronger heart, not just one that's more efficient at pumping. Another big advantage of working out with weights is improving glucose metabolism, which can reduce the risk of diabetes. Strength training boosts the number of proteins that take glucose out of the blood and transport it into the skeletal muscle, giving the muscles more energy and lowering overall blood-glucose levels.

A 2010 study in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology suggested that people on dialysis can benefit from building muscle. Researchers found that kidney dialysis patients who had the most lean muscle mass — a measurement derived from the circumference of the mid-arm muscle — were 37% less likely to die than the patients who had the least.

A growing body of research shows that working out with weights has health benefits beyond simply bulking up one's muscles and strengthening bones. Studies are finding that more lean muscle mass may allow kidney dialysis patients to live longer, give older people better cognitive function, reduce depression, boost good cholesterol, lessen the swelling and discomfort of lymphedema after breast cancer and help lower the risk of diabetes. "Muscle is our largest metabolically active organ, and that's the backdrop that people usually forget," said Kent Adams, director of the exercise physiology lab at Cal State Monterey Bay. Strengthening the muscles "has a ripple effect throughout the body on things like metabolic syndrome and obesity."

Strength training often takes a back seat to cardiovascular training, but it can benefit the heart in ways that its more popular cousin can't. During cardio exercise, the heart loads up with blood and pumps it out to the rest of the body: As a result, Potteiger said, "the heart gets better and more efficient at pumping." But during resistance training, muscles generate more force than they do during endurance exercises, and the heart is no exception, Potteiger said. During a strength workout, the heart's muscle tissue contracts forcefully to push the blood out. Like all muscles, stress causes small tears in the muscle fibers. When the body repairs those tears, muscles grow. The result is a stronger heart, not just one that's more efficient at pumping. Another big advantage of working out with weights is improving glucose metabolism, which can reduce the risk of diabetes. Strength training boosts the number of proteins that take glucose out of the blood and transport it into the skeletal muscle, giving the muscles more energy and lowering overall blood-glucose levels. "If you have uncontrolled glucose levels," Potteiger said, "that can lead to kidney damage, damage to the circulatory system and loss of eyesight."

The brain may get a boost from the body's extra muscle as well. A 2010 study in Archives of Internal Medicine found that women ages 65 to 75 who did resistance training sessions once or twice a week over the course of a year improved their cognitive performance, while those who focused on balance and tone training declined slightly. One reason for the improvement, researchers believe, may be that strength training triggers the production of a protein beneficial for brain growth.

A memory center in the brain called the hippocampus shrinks a little bit each year with age, but older adults who walked routinely for a year actually gained hippocampus volume, researchers report in a study to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, 60 adults aged 55 to 80 scaled up gradually until they walked for 40 minutes three times a week, enough to get their heart rates up. Sixty other participants did toning workouts that included weight training, yoga sessions and stretching for the same amount of time. After a year of toning, a part of these subjects’ brains called the anterior hippocampus lost a little over 1 percent of its volume. In contrast, a year of aerobic exercise led to about a 2 percent increase in anterior hippocampus volume. Study participants who got their heart rates up performed slightly better on a memory test and had higher levels of a brain-aiding molecule called BDNF, the researchers found.

It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.

"Research shows it's possible to cushion yourself against stress, and the tactics we're using with soldiers also apply to real folks and more common types of anxiety." Key to the recent breakthroughs is a much clearer picture of how destructive stress can be. Persistent anxiety can kill neurons in brain structures concerned with memory and decisionmaking, and such damage is even visible on brain scans.

Fortunately, experts are learning that all along the continuum—from severe anxiety disorders to garden-variety worry—coping and even prevention tactics are highly effective. Here's what new PTSD science can teach all of us about outsmarting stress. If these solutions work for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, they can certainly help the rest of us on the home front.

Researchers are learning that exercise doesn't just soothe stress, it also fortifies brain cells so they're less vulnerable to anxiety in the future.

Nerve cell communication gets better with use. A neuron’s electrical activity triggers other cells to come and slather on a protective coating that makes messages travel faster, a study published online August 4 in Science shows.Like rubber insulation around electrical wires, myelin wraps around message-sending axons, protecting and speeding electrical impulses. Specialized brain cells called oligodendrocytes wrap up to 150 layers of this insulation around a single axon.

When the team activated normal axons, boosting their glutamate production, oligodendrocytes produced more of the fatty proteins that make up the myelin coating.The results suggest one way that the brain quickly adapts and improves when a person practices new tasks such as playing the violin or juggling.

45% of the decisions we make are actually habits. They’re not really decisions and from that, we know that every habit happens at a kind of border: It’s a decision we made at some point but then stopped making and continued acting on.

the best way to develop an exercise habit is during the first week or two, give yourself a piece of chocolate or some other treat that you really enjoy right afterwards because you have to teach your brain to enjoy exercise for exercise’s sake.

Children whose mothers were exposed to certain types of pesticides while pregnant were more likely to have attention problems as they grew up, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday. The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, adds to evidence that organophosphate pesticides can affect the human brain.

A tenfold increase in pesticide metabolites in the mother's urine correlated to a 500 percent increase in the chances of ADHD symptoms by age 5, with the trend stronger in boys.

The average person today consumes almost three times as much information as what the typical person consumed in 1960, according to research at the University of California, San Diego. And The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times an hour.

"Just as food nourishes us and we need it for life, so too — in the 21st century and the modern age — we need technology. You cannot survive without the communication tools; the productivity tools are essential," he says. "And yet, food has pros and cons to it. We know that some food is Twinkies and some food is Brussels sprouts. And we know that if we overeat, it causes problems. Similarly, after 20 years of glorifying technology as if all computers were good and all use of it was good, science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies and some technology is Brussels sprouts."