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Brain Fitness: Skip the Sudoku, Be a Volunteer

22. December 2009

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Brain Fitness: Skip the Sudoku, Be a Volunteer

Just-published research in the Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences shows that volunteering and similar social activities are helpful in staving off mental decline in later years, and can actually improve cognition.

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Sugar as Brain Food

29. October 2009

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Sugar as Brain Food

This isn’t great news for dieters, but sometimes sugar can be a good thing. Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University, had subjects perform a mentally taxing task – watching a video while being careful to ignore random words scrolling across the bottom of the screen. (Apparently, it takes quite a bit [...]

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Talking Back Makes Kids Smart

23. October 2009

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Talking Back Makes Kids Smart

Once again, I’m going to depart from marketing for one post for another neuroparenting topic. This time, it’s about kids “talking back” to their parents and how that interaction can actually enhance cognitive development.

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Sit Straight, Build Confidence

12. October 2009

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Sit Straight, Build Confidence

We know that making ourselves smile or frown can actually influence our mood, and now it seems that the posture we assume can affect our confidence in our own thoughts. A study by Richard Petty, who apparently is not the NASCAR driver but rather a professor at Ohio State University, demostrated the effects of sitting [...]

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How To Praise Your Child

11. September 2009

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I don’t often get into neuro-parenting here, but I thought this particular research finding was interesting enough to single out. (I mentioned it in my Managing by Mistakes post last week, too.)
The short story is that a lot of what parents and teachers think about praising children and building self-esteem is dead wrong. [...]

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Training Your Brain to Multitask

24. August 2009

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It’s Monday, your inbox is full of unanswered emails, you desk is piled high with paper, and you’ve got a couple of important project deadlines looming. There’s one bright spot: although past research has indicated that people’s ability to multitask, i.e., perform several tasks at once, is very limited, a new study shows one [...]

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