Category: Boost Brain Power

Our brains get smaller with age, but this diet can help (and it can make you happier!).

Following the Mediterranean diet more closely helps people to retain brain volume, new research finds.

For the research, the brains of 967 Scottish people around 70-years-of-age were scanned.

Three years later 401 returned for a second scan.

They were also asked how closely they had followed the Mediterranean diet.

The results showed that following the Mediterranean diet was linked to a lower loss in brain volume.

Dr Michelle Luciano, the study’s first author, explained:

“As we age, the brain shrinks and we lose brain cells which can affect learning and memory.

This study adds to the body of evidence that suggests the Mediterranean diet has a positive impact on brain health.”

Unlike previous studies, though, there were no links seen for eating either fish or meat.

Other studies have suggested that higher fish consumption and lower meat consumption are better for brain health.

Dr Luciano said:

“It’s possible that other components of the Mediterranean diet are responsible for this relationship, or that it’s due to all of the components in combination.

In our study, eating habits were measured before brain volume was, which suggests that the diet may be able to provide long-term protection to the brain.

Still, larger studies are needed to confirm these results.”

The Mediterranean diet

Here are ten typical ingredients of the MedDiet:

• Green leafy vegetables,
• other vegetables,
• nuts,
• berries,
• beans,
• whole grains,
• fish,
• poultry,
• olive oil
• and wine.

The MedDiet also has relatively little red meat, little dairy and uses olive oil as the largest source of fat.


The MedDiet has also repeatedly been linked to a protective effect against depression.

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Luciano et al., 2016).

Improve memory and your brain’s ability to plan, schedule and deal with ambiguity.

As little as 40 minutes walking three times a week boosts brain connectivity and function, research finds.

The study involved “professional coach potatoes”, as one scientist described them.

The 65 individuals, who were aged between 59 and 80, did very little exercise.

None had done more than 30 minutes exercise in the last six months on more than two occasions.

All of them joined one of two groups:

• Walking at their own pace for 40 minutes three times a week.
• Stretching and toning for the same period.

The researchers used brain scans to look at how the whole brain worked together.

Professor Art Kramer, who led the study, explained the reasoning:

“Almost nothing in the brain gets done by one area — it’s more of a circuit.

These networks can become more or less connected.

In general, as we get older, they become less connected, so we were interested in the effects of fitness on connectivity of brain networks that show the most dysfunction with age.”

The researchers found that connectivity increased significantly among those who had been walking, but not in the stretching and toning group.

Cognitive tests also showed their brains were performing better.

Professor Kramer said:

“The higher the connectivity, the better the performance on some of these cognitive tasks, especially the ones we call executive control tasks — things like planning, scheduling, dealing with ambiguity, working memory and multitasking.”

With age people’s so-called default mode network becomes less coordinated with the rest of the brain.

The default mode network kicks in when we aren’t concentrating on much and our minds start to wander.

When there’s something to pay attention to, though, the default mode network is supposed to power down.

This switch tends to work less well with age and dementia, said Michelle Voss, the study’s first author:

“For example, people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have less activity in the default mode network and they tend to have less connectivity.”

This study shows that even a relatively modest amount of exercise can help enhance the connectivity of vital brain structures.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (Voss et al., 2010).

Brain image from Shutterstock

How you should spend your lunch break.

Taking just a 30-minute break from work can boost energy, new research finds.

The recovery techniques that work best are active: ones in which you do something for yourself that fits your own goals.

Without it, the work suffers and workers are more likely to suffer burnout.

The conclusions come from a study of 38 early-career physicians (residents) at a US teaching hospital.

Dr Nicole Cranley, the study’s lead author, said:

“Residents are a very unique population, the stressors that they engage with throughout the day are a lot more significant than those of the average American.

Therefore, these moments of replenishment are that much more important.”

The study found that the residents didn’t take time off for lunch.

Dr Cranley explained:

“They grab things and go, or they are eating while they are in conference or listening to a lecture.

There really isn’t that time when they are not doing something related to work.”

One of the biggest problems the doctors faced was psychologically detaching from work.

They tended to do this passively — for example, by watching TV.

While this can be a useful distraction, it doesn’t replenish energy levels.

Dr Cranley said:

“Burnout is a serious issue.

It’s usually related to the fact that you’re not taking enough time for self-care or engaging in activities that help you gain back some of those resources.

You can only effectively care for someone if you are in a good state of mind.

You have to be in a good place to be able to give your all to someone else.”

Active recovery strategies mean taking the time to do something for yourself that fits your own goals.

Dr Cranley said:

“It doesn’t matter if you only have 45 minutes to go to the gym — you take those 45 minutes for yourself.”

Dr Cranley continued:

“It’s a very unique situation that residents are in because they are expected to have all of the answers, when oftentimes they don’t.

I think where we are missing the mark is in medical education — it is a culture issue and we need to reassure our health professionals that it’s okay to need self-care.

Everybody’s valuable, everybody needs to take care of themselves sometimes.

We can’t all be 100 percent all the time.”

That’s a valuable lesson for people working in many different sectors.

The study was published in Psychology, Health & Medicine Journal (Cranley et al., 2016).

Burnout image from Shutterstock

…causes people to speak faster and improves their memory.

Your mother kept telling you to sit up straight and she was right!

People sitting up straight rather than in a hunched position report a better mood, higher self-esteem and a host of other benefits.

Sitting up straight has even been shown to improve memory.

For the research, people answered mock job-interview questions.

Some sat slouched, while others were upright.

The study’s authors explain the results:

“The upright participants reported feeling more enthusiastic, excited, and strong, while the slumped participants reported feeling more fearful, hostile, nervous, quiet, still, passive, dull, sleepy, and sluggish.

The upright participants also reported higher self-esteem and reduced fear compared to slumped participants.”

The authors think the simple act of sitting up straight may help build people’s ability to withstand stress:

“Adopting an upright seated posture in the face of stress can maintain self-esteem, reduce negative mood, and increase positive mood compared to a slumped posture.

Furthermore, sitting upright increases rate of speech and reduces self-focus.

Sitting upright may be a simple behavioral strategy to help build resilience to stress.

The research is consistent with embodied cognition theories that muscular and autonomic states influence emotional responding.”

The study was published in the journal Health Psychology (Nair et al., 2015).

The right type of exercise can triple the number of neurons in the brain’s memory zone.

Sustained aerobic exercise (running) grows new brain cell, but lifting weights does not, a new study concludes.

The research on rats compared three different groups:

• Sustained aerobic exercise
• High-intensity interval training
• Lifting weights

It found that rats who did sustained aerobic exercise for six weeks had developed new brain cells in their hippocampus — the area of the brain vital for memory.

Compared with a control group, they had 2-3 times as many neurons in the hippocampus.

Interval training only had a small effect and lifting weights had no effect on growing new brain cells.

Neurogenesis: How To Grow New Brain Cells

The study’s authors conclude:

“Our results suggest physical exercise promotes AHN [adult hippocampal neurogenesis] most if it is aerobic and sustained, and especially when accompanied by a heightened genetic predisposition for response to physical exercise.”

While this study was carried out in rats, there is plenty of evidence for the positive effects of exercise on neurogenesis (growing new brain cells).

Exercise is certainly beneficial for memory:

Exercise Can Improve Long-Term Memory

For older people, any type of exercise can be beneficial:

The Type of Exercise That Most Benefits Memory, Reasoning and Mental Flexibility

This is one of the first studies, though, to look at the type of exercise that is effective.

The study was published in the Journal of Physiology: London (Nokia et al., 2016).

Image credit: marcovdz

Exercise promotes brain health in all sorts of ways.

Exercise early in life improves gut bacteria which, in turn, promotes a healthier brain, a new study finds.

During early human development there is a window of opportunity for better lifelong brain health.

Professor Monika Fleshner, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Exercise affects many aspects of health, both metabolic and mental, and people are only now starting to look at the plasticity of these gut microbes.

That is one of the novel aspects of this research.”

The research on rats found that those who exercised adequately early in life had more probiotic bacterial species in their guts.

Professor Fleshner said:

“A robust, healthy community of gut microbes also appears to promote healthy brain function and provide anti-depressant effects.

Previous research has shown that the human brain responds to microbial signals from the gut, though the exact communication methods are still under investigation.”

Recent research on the so-called ‘gut-brain axis’ has started to uncover the mental importance of gut bacteria.

For example, a recent study found:

“Bacteria in the intestine can play an important role in causing anxiety and depression, new research concludes.

It helps explain recent research suggesting probiotics can stop sad moods getting worse.

Probiotics may work to help stabilise the bacteria in the gut.

Another recent study also found probiotics may reduce anxiety.”

Even autism has been linked to gut bacteria:

“One of the many curious things about autism is that it is often accompanied by gastrointestinal issues, despite it being primarily thought of as a brain disorder.

For example, many people with autism also have inflammatory bowel disease and other gastrointestinal problems like constipation and abdominal cramps.

This has led scientists to wonder how much the gut might have to do with the brain.”

As you can see, the answer is: quite a lot.

The study was published in the journal Immunology and Cell Biology (Mika et al., 2015).

Walking image from Shutterstock

PsyBlog explores the psychological benefits of alcohol in the first of a series of articles.

Moderate consumption of wine is linked to higher performance on cognitive tests, research has found.

The study followed 5,033 people in Norway who were tracked for over 7 years.

Moderate consumptions was defined as drinking wine at least four times over a two-week period.

There was no link between drinking wines and spirits and improved cognitive function.

Women who did not drink wine actually had significantly lower scores on the tests.

This study could not control for all the possible explanations, as the authors explain:

“A positive effect of wine . . . could also be due to confounders such as socio-economic status and more favourable dietary and other lifestyle habits.”

In other words: wine drinkers tend to be from higher social classes.

Being from a higher social class is linked to being healthier.

That said, though, 68 studies covering 145,308 people over 30 years have found that moderate alcohol intake is linked to better cognitive function.

Most show the link at low or moderate levels of alcohol use.

The potentially beneficial effects of wine are thought to come from antioxidants.

It could also be the alcohol itself which is saving cognitive function by maintaining blood flow.

The study was published in the journal Acta Neurologica Scandinavica (Arntzen et al., 2010).

Image credit: Dave Dugdale

Hey, it’s worth a try!

Positive distractions can increase your mental performance compared with negative distractions, a new study finds.

Negative distractions — like, say, the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard — are well-known to degrade our performance.

Positive distractions, though, do not have such a negative impact.

Mr Alexandru Iordan, the study’s first author explained:

“…positive distractions do not interfere with working memory performance, in fact, they actually help compared to the negative distractions, even though they may produce equally intense emotional responses.”

The reason that positive distractions are better than negative is down to a quirk in the way our brains work

Dr Florin Dolcos, the study’s other author, said:

“Positive stimuli are less imperative than the negative ones, because the immediate costs of not paying attention to them are typically smaller.

For instance, evolutionarily, not paying attention to a potential food source is usually less dramatic than not paying attention to something dangerous, like a predator.”

Iordan and Dolcos also found key differences in the way brain regions related to attention and memory reacted.

Mr Iordan said:

“These areas stay in tune with each other when we try to keep information active in our mind.

Negative distractions strongly reduced activity in these regions.

However, positive distractions had less impact on activity in these regions and increased activity in the ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex, an area associated with emotion control.

This may explain why we perform better under positive distraction — because those distractions have less detrimental effects in brain areas involved in the ability to stay focused on the tasks at hand, and they increase activity in areas that are helping us to cope with distraction.”

The study was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex (Iordan & Dolcos, 2015).

Cute cats image from Shutterstock

Multitasking is equally difficult for men and women — but can be improved.

Physical fitness increases multitasking skills by increasing the size of crucial areas of the brain, a new study finds.

Neuroscientists found larger gray matter volume in several brain areas of those who had higher cardiorespiratory fitness.

These brain areas help boost both reasoning and problem-solving.

The study gave 128 older adults a so-called ‘dual-task’ test.

This is similar to testing people’s ability to ‘multitask’ — something men and women both find difficult.

Ms Chelsea Wong, the study’s first author, explained:

“The reason we looked at dual-task specifically is because it’s a measure of executive function, which is required for multiple cognitive processes, such as working memory, task management, coordination, and inhibition.

We know that as people age, executive function declines, so we found that with higher cardiorespiratory fitness, you can enhance executive function performance behaviorally as well as executive function-related brain activation.”

Brain scans revealed that fitter people had larger volumes in the anterior cingulate cortex and the supplementary motor area (ACC/SMA).

Ms Wong explained its significance:

“It’s an important area for higher level functions, such as conflict monitoring, multitasking, and dual-task processing itself.”

Professor Art Kramer, an expert on brain aging and neuroplasticity who led the study, said:

“This research adds to our growing understanding of the relationship among physical activity and cognitive and brain function–and suggests that we can improve our brain health by changing our lifestyle even as we age.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (Wong et al., 2015).

Brain image from Shutterstock

Bilinguals have more gray matter in critical brain region, supporting their cognitive advantage.

People who speak two languages have more gray matter in vital brain regions, a new study finds.

The executive control areas of the brain were larger in those who spoke two languages, researchers found.

Executive control refers to the management of memory, reasoning, planning and problem solving.

The study helps to show how building and using skills — in this case language — can enhance the brain.

The study is the latest in a debate about whether there is a real advantage to being billingual.

Professor Guinevere Eden, director for the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC), who led the study, said:

“…[we] compared gray matter volume between adult bilinguals and monolinguals.

We reasoned that the experience with two languages and the increased need for cognitive control to use them appropriately would result in brain changes in Spanish-English bilinguals when compared with English-speaking monolinguals.

And in fact greater gray matter for bilinguals was observed in frontal and parietal brain regions that are involved in executive control.”

Speaking both the languages is key to the differences, though.

The researchers also looked at people who were bilingual in English as well as sign-language — which is obviously not spoken.

Dr Olumide Olulade, the study’s lead author, said:

“Unlike the findings for the Spanish-English bilinguals, we found no evidence for greater gray matter in the ASL-English bilinguals.

Thus we conclude that the management of two spoken languages in the same modality, rather than simply a larger vocabulary, leads to the differences we observed in the Spanish-English bilinguals.”

The study was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex (Olulade et al., 2015).

• Read on: 10 Superb Psychological Advantages of Learning Another Language

CT scans image from Shutterstock