Our Amazing, changing Brains

Source: “Brain Plasticity:  How learning changes your brain” by Dr. Pascale Michelon 

The human brain has the amazing ability to reorganize itself (plasticity) by forming new connections between brain cells (neurons). This ability is called neuroplasticity.

Some examples of when neuroplasticity occurs in the brain include the following:

• At the beginning of life, when the immature brain organizes itself
• When brain injury occurs, to compensate for lost functions or to maximize remaining functions
• Throughout adulthood whenever something new is learned and memorized

Factors affecting our brain’s plasticity include genetic factors, the environment we live in and our actions. Neuroplasticity allows brain activity associated with a function to move to a different location as the result of normal experience, brain damage or recovery. Our brains compensate for damage by reorganizing and forming new connections between intact neurons. In order to reconnect, the neurons need to be stimulated through activity.

Research shows that the brain never stops changing through learning. When you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill grow. For example, the left inferior parietal cortex of the brain is larger in people who are bilingual than in people who only speak one language. Gray matter volume is also higher in musicians than in non-musicians, etc.

If you are interested in growing your brain, Optiminds can help you improve your cognitive skills—the underlying brain skills that make it possible for us to think, remember and learn.

Optiminds is a tutoring company service in Southfield Michigan. Working with students of all ages in Metro Detroit, West Bloomfield, Bingham Farms, Redford, Huntington Woods and more.  We are a professional tutoring service featuring Reading Tutoring, Summer Tutoring, ACT Review Classes, Academic Tutoring and Dementia Help.

Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping to improve the study, reading and cognitive skills of clients of all ages. Find out more about Optiminds brain fitness programs and cognitive skills training by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

Be a Seeker of New Things

One way to continue to improve your cognitive skills is to seek out novelty. It’s no accident that geniuses have a tendency to constantly seek out novel activities and learn new domains. Einstein, for example, was skilled in multiple areas.

When you seek novelty, several things are going on. First of all, you are creating new synaptic connections with every new activity you engage in. These connections build on each other, increasing your neural activity, creating more connections to build on other connections—learning is taking place.

Novelty also triggers dopamine, which not only kicks motivation into high gear, but it stimulates neurogenesis—the creation of new neurons—and prepares your brain for learning. All you need to do is feed the hunger.

Researchers in Sweden found that after 14 hours of training working memory over 5 weeks’ time, study participants showed an increase in the dopamine receptor associated with neural growth and development. This increase in plasticity, allowing greater binding of this receptor, is a very good thing for maximizing cognitive functioning.

So it pays to continually seek new activities to engage your mind and expand your cognitive horizons. Learn an instrument. Take an art class. Go to a museum. Read about a new area of science. Be a knowledge junkie. 

If you are interested in growing your brain, Optiminds can help you improve your cognitive skills—the underlying brain skills that make it possible for us to think, remember and learn.

Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping to improve the study, reading and cognitive skills of clients of all ages. Find out more about Optiminds brain fitness programs and cognitive skills training by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

About the “Mature” Brain

While some of our capabilities naturally decrease as we age, research seems to support the notion that our ability to learn doesn’t necessarily decrease as we get older. Some people are much better than their peers at delaying age-related declines in areas such as memory and calculating speed. And researchers continue to look for answers to why this is so.

In 1995, an enormous national study of Americans was initiated to determine the role behavioral, psychological, and social factors play when it comes to how people age. The study is called “Midlife in the United States” or Midus. When it began, more than 7,000 people 25 to 74 years old were drafted to participate so that middle-agers could be compared with those younger and older. Midus is still going on today. Through Midus and other studies, researchers continue to uncover new information about our brains as we age.

For example, one of the brain’s most powerful tools is its ability to quickly scan a vast storehouse of templates for relevant information and past experience to come up with a novel solution to a problem. The older we are, the more information we have stored, which is probably why we associate wisdom with age—and why mental capabilities that depend most heavily on accumulated knowledge and experience—such as settling disputes and enlarging one’s vocabulary, get better over time.

Richard E. Nisbett, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Michigan, has long argued that when it comes to intelligence, experience can outrun biology. According to Nisbett: “Older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge.” Most important, they discovered that despite a decline in fluid intelligence, complicated reasoning that relates to people, moral issues or political institutions improved with age.

Another finding, according to Margie E. Lachman, a psychologist at Brandeis University and one of the principal investigators for Midus: “Education seems to be an elixir that can bring us a healthy body and mind throughout adulthood and even a longer life.” For those in midlife and beyond, a college degree appears to slow the brain’s aging process by up to a decade.

All other things being equal, the more years of school a subject had, the better he or she performed on every mental test. Up to age 75, the studies showed, “people with college degrees performed on complex tasks like less-educated individuals who were 10 years younger.” Education was also associated with a longer life and decreased risk of dementia. “The effects of education are dramatic and long term,” Dr. Lachman says.

Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping to improve the study, reading and cognitive skills of clients of all ages. Find out more about Optiminds brain fitness programs and cognitive skills training by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

Tips for Improving Your Vocabulary–Part 2

In our January 16 blog post, we posted the first part of some great tips for improving your vocabulary. Here we present five more great tips to help you strengthen and polish your vocabulary. Most importantly, you should pick the methods that YOU enjoy the most, and use them regularly as you take your vocabulary to new levels of success. 

Five More Tips for a Better Vocabulary

•  Circle or highlight words in your dictionary. The next time you happen to visit that page, you’ll be unconsciously reviewing the word you learned last time.
•  Subscribe to a word of the day service. Be sure to use your new word the same day. Share it with a friend whenever you can.
•  Try out new word games, and find friends to play them with regularly.
• Be goal-oriented; have specific targets to hit as you build your vocabulary, and be sure to reward yourself when you achieve them.
• Use your imagination when you learn a new word; play with it and bring it to life in your mind. This is how children learn and you can do the same. It will help you remember your new words almost effortlessly.

Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping to improve the study, reading and cognitive skills of clients of all ages. Find out more about Optiminds brain fitness programs and cognitive skills training by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

Tips for Improving Your Vocabulary–Part 1

Have you ever been in a conversation with a peer or boss and didn’t understand what they said due to a deficiency in vocabulary? For most of us, it can be a bit embarrassing to have to ask what a word means in every day conversation. A good vocabulary can serve you well throughout life—whether writing a paper for school or dealing with your boss or coworkers.  

We now know that the brain continues to grow and regenerate throughout adulthood, so there is nothing stopping any of us creating a killer vocabulary at any age. And there are a number of easy things you can do without resorting to trying to memorize the dictionary! Whether you’re a student taking graduation exams or just an ordinary person trying to improve your vocabulary, you can slowly build the necessary skills and increase your word usage during everyday conversations.  

When you start to work on building your vocabulary, it’s really important to have fun. Having a great vocabulary, and constantly building it, is something that can be a very beneficial habit rather than a chore.  

Following are the first five of the top ten suggestions for ways to build your vocabulary enjoyably. The remaining five suggestions will be posted in our January 26 blog post. 

Five Suggestions for Improving Your Vocabulary

 Find things you enjoy reading. Read widely, perhaps trying out reading material that is in a different style than you would normally pick. But don’t force yourself to read material that genuinely bores you. 

• Look out for new words as you read. Make a game of guessing at their meaning, then looking them up to see if you were right. You can learn a lot about a word from the context in which it is used, but it’s important to make sure you get the correct definition as well. 
• Listen for new words when people speak. Remember them and look them up later. Or better still, ask when you don’t know what they mean. Most people will love to share their knowledge and will think better of you for wanting to learn than if you just pretend to understand. 
• Use one of the powerful software products available today to train yourself in important vocabulary power words in a fraction of the time it would take you by more old-fashioned means.
• When you learn a new word, find an opportunity to practice it as soon as possible. If you don’t find a conversation to use it in, how about using it in an email to a friend? Or you could even just use it when you talk to yourself!

 Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping to improve the study, reading and cognitive skills of clients of all ages. Find out more about Optiminds brain fitness programs and cognitive skills training by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

About Our Attention and Multitasking

Have you ever wondered why you feel the urge to turn down the car radio when you are lost or looking for an address? The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited. When attention is deployed to one modality—talking on a cell phone, for example—it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality, such as the visual task of driving. 

We’re talking about divided attention, or the ability to multitask and pay attention to two things at once. It’s generally much harder than selective, or focused, attention. The factors that come into play are your attentional capacity and the processing requirements—essentially how much of which areas of your brain are needed to process the input. 

Your attentional capacity can be taken up by inhibiting (tuning out) distractions, dividing your attention across multiple things, or even sustaining your attention on one thing (vigilance). Fatigue takes a big toll on attention. If you’re tired, it’s harder to concentrate. Depression has a similar effect. In fact, many memory complaints may actually be depression- or fatigue-related reduced attentional capacity. And guess what? Getting older both reduces your attentional capacity and increases your processing requirements. Basically, it takes more and more inhibition skill to tune out distractions and stay focused. But all is not lost; there are steps you can take to multitask better! 

Tips on How to Divide Your Attention More Effectively 

• Do very different tasks. It’s much harder to do two very similar tasks (read and talk) at the same time than it is to do two very different tasks (run and talk). If you can use separate areas of the brain, that will help, but warning: the brain doesn’t always segregate perceptual information as clearly as you might think.
• Practice. If you’re better at each task independently, you’ll be better at doing them at the same time (even if you don’t do them as well simultaneously as when you do each one separately).
• Keep it simple. If you have to multitask, multitasking simple tasks will be more successful than trying to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem in your head while simultaneously writing a novel.
• Train your brain. Researchers have shown that working memory can be improved by training and that such training helps people with attention deficits and it also improves reasoning ability overall.

 Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping people of all ages improve their cognitive, reading and memory skills. Find out more about Optiminds programs by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

 

Optiminds Programs Make Great Gifts

When you are making up your Christmas list, why not consider giving an Optiminds program to a friend or loved one? We offer cognitive training programs for all ages—from Math Strategies for kindergarteners to Brain Fitness for seniors.

So if you know someone who needs a little help with test taking, memory improvement, reading or math, we can create a customized Optiminds program to get their year off to a great start. Here are just some of the targeted areas for which we can create a customized Optiminds program:

• Boomers Brain Fitness
• Study Skills
• Test Prep
• Problem Solving
• ACT and SAT test help
• Speed Reading
• Time Management
• Critical Thinking
• Tutoring
• Home School
• Initiation
• Abstract Reasoning
• Improve Cognitive Skills
• Faster & Easier Information Processing

We’ll identify problem issues and design a variety of tasks that incorporate Mental Exercises, Visualization Techniques and Computerized Drills—plus recommendations on diet and physical exercise. We also develop Life Strategies programs for individuals of all ages.

Give us a call today for more information! Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping people of all ages improve their cognitive and memory skills. Find out more about Optiminds programs by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

Holiday Tips for Alzheimer’s Families

For families living with Alzheimer’s, a little planning and some adjusted expectations can help make the holidays more enjoyable–for those with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers alike. Following are some suggestions that might prove helpful this holiday season:

Suggestions for families and caregivers:

• Give yourself permission to do only what you can reasonably manage
• Choose holiday activities and traditions that are most important to you
• Host a small family dinner instead of a throwing a big holiday party
• Consider serving a catered or takeout holiday meal. Many grocery stores and restaurants offer meals to go.
• Start a new tradition. Have a potluck dinner where family or friends each bring a dish

Activities you can do with the person with Alzheimer’s:

• Wrap gifts
• Bake favorite holiday recipes together. The person can stir batter or decorate cookies.
• Set the table. Avoid centerpieces with candles and artificial fruits and berries that could be mistaken for edible snacks.
• Talk about events to include in a holiday letter
• Prepare simple foods such as appetizers
• Read cards you receive together
• Look through photo albums or scrapbooks. Reminisce about people in the pictures and past events.
• Watch a favorite holiday movie
• Sing favorite carols or read biblical passages

When the person lives in a care facility:

• Consider joining your loved one in any facility-planned holiday activities
• Bring a favorite holiday food to share
• Sing holiday songs. Ask if other residents can join in.
• Read a favorite holiday story or poem out loud

Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping people of all ages improve their cognitive and memory skills. Find out more about Optiminds programs by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

Heart-Healthy Diet Also Best for Your Brain

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the same conditions that damage the heart or blood vessels—high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and high cholesterol—also appear to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia. Researchers speculate that dietary patterns that have demonstrated cardiovascular benefits may also help prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Two examples are the so-called “Mediterranean diet” (relatively little red meat, with an emphasis on whole grains, fruits and vegetables, fish and shellfish, nuts, olive oil and other healthy fats) and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) eating plan.

And some studies have found that the heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids found in fish could also have benefits for your brain.

In addition, foods rich in vitamin E may help stave off mental decline with aging. In results from one study tracing 5,395 people ages 55 and up for nearly a decade, researchers reported that those with the highest dietary intake of vitamin E from food were less likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s than those consuming the least. The polyunsaturated fats found in liquid vegetable oils and some spreads (not those containing partially hydrogenated fats) are one healthy way to get dietary vitamin E.

Another study found a link between blood levels of vitamin D in 858 older Italian adults and risk of cognitive decline. Vitamin D may help prevent the degeneration of brain tissue, researchers speculated.

Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping to improve the cognitive skills of clients of all ages. Find out more about Optiminds brain fitness programs and cognitive skills training by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.

Short-term Versus Long-term Memory

Experts believe that there are three ways we store memories once they are created—the sensory stage; short-term memory; and long-term memory. These different stages of human memory function as a sort of filter to protect us from the flood of information we are bombarded with every day.

Sensory Stage—When we perceive something, the information is registered in a brief sensory stage lasting only a fraction of a second. This sensory memory allows a perception such as a visual pattern, a sound, or a touch to linger for a brief moment after the stimulation is over.

Short-term Storage–After that first flicker, the sensation is stored in short-term memory. Short-term memory has a fairly limited capacity—it can hold about seven items for no more than 20 or 30 seconds at a time. You may be able to increase this capacity somewhat by using various memory strategies. For example, a ten-digit number such as 8005840392 may be too much for your short-term memory to hold. But divided into chunks, as in a telephone number, 800-584-0392 may actually stay in your short-term memory long enough for you to dial the telephone. Likewise, by repeating the number to yourself, you can keep resetting the short-term memory clock.

Long-term Memory–Important information is gradually transferred from short-term memory into long-term memory. The more the information is repeated or used, the more likely it is to eventually end up in long-term memory, or to be “retained.” (That’s why studying helps people to perform better on tests.) Unlike sensory and short-term memory, which are limited and decay rapidly, long-term memory can store unlimited amounts of information indefinitely.

Dr. Jane Stewart at Optiminds has been helping to improve the cognitive skills of clients of all ages. Find out more about Optiminds customized brain fitness programs and cognitive skills training by calling us today at (248) 496-0150 or email us at: jstewart@optimindsct.com. And be sure to visit our website at www.optimindsct.com.