They say that human beings are social animals. It seems intuitive (even for introverts!) that social contact has benefits. Obviously we need other people to fulfill basic needs such making sure that our genes outlive us. Maybe less obviously, we seem to need other people to maintain adequate levels of mental well-being and motivation. Even less obviously still, social contact may help us improve our brain functions…

Mental fitness seems to depend on a large part on being connected with other people. A study published in 2008 by Ybarra and his colleagues showed that socializing and mental exercises have very similar effects in terms of improving brain functions! Ybarra hypothesized that social interaction could facilitate cognitive functioning.

First, they collected data from 3600 people aged 24 to 96. They assessed how often these people talked on the phone with friends, neighbors and relatives and how often they got together with the same parties. They also assessed mental functioning of their sample using the mini-mental exam. It was found that the more socially engaged people were, the higher their cognitive performance. Great news, right? Stay connected and your neurons will stay healthy!

One limitation of this type of study is that is shows a CORRELATION. The result shows that people who are socially engaged are also doing well in terms of brain function. This does not mean that being socially engaged results or CAUSES good brain functioning.
This correlation can be interpreted in several ways:

1. being socially engaged results in good brain functioning
2. Good brain functioning results in being socially engaged
3. being wealthy (for instance) may result both in being socially engaged and good brain functioning

As a consequence, Ybarra and colleagues proceeded to conduct another study to show that social interaction indeed CAUSES better cognitive performance.
They randomly assigned participants (aged 18-21) to three groups:

1. a social group, in which the participants engaged in a discussion of a social issue for 10mn
2. an intellectual activities group, in which the participants solved stimulating tasks (crossword puzzles and the likes) for 10mn
3. a control group, in which the participants watched a 10mn clip of Seinfeld

After they participated in the discussion or watched the clip or solved the puzzles, the cognitive functioning of all the participants was assessed. Two tasks were used (for those you are interested: these were a speed of processing task and a working memory task). Here is what Ybarra et al. found:

• People in the intellectual activities group did better in the cognitive tasks than people who merely watched a movie. This shows one more time that stimulating your neurons is a great way to boost your performance

• People who were in the social group did better in the cognitive tasks than people who merely watched a movie. This is the first time that social interaction is shown to directly CAUSE better cognitive functioning. This is a very exciting result. Remember that participants engaged in discussion for only 10m!

The benefit from social interaction was as great as the benefit from intellectual activities.

Why would social interaction boost brain function?
Ybarra and colleagues offer the following reasoning. Social interaction involves many behaviors that require memory, attention and control. These mental processes are also involved in many cognitive tasks. Thus social interaction would act as a prime, it would “oil” these processes so that they are ready to be used when a cognitive task is to be solved. This is a tentative explanation that may require some refinement but the results are here! Social interaction seems to benefit the brain.

Read the original article:

Ybarra, O., Burnstein, E., Winkielman, P., Keller, M. C., Manis, M., Chan, E., & Rodriguez, J. (2008). Functioning Mental Exercising Through Simple Socializing: Social Interaction Promotes General Cognitive. Pers Soc Psychol Bull., 34, 248.

Woman’s Day Radio Host Barbara Brody, Health Editor at Woman’s Day Magazine, interviews Dr. Coleman of the Alzheimer’s Association and Dr. Robert Bender of the Johnny Orr Memory Center and HAPPYneuron Scientific Contributor, on the topic of keeping our brain’s young. The program is about 30 minutes long. Definitely worth a listen! Click here to go to WD Radio and hear the show.

Why not start the New Year with a resolution to sharpen your brain.  HAPPYneuron’s balanced workout formula ensures that you are getting the optimal stimulation to maximize the brain’s neural network strength.

Also, we have been hard at work to bring you new features and functions. In the coming weeks you can look forward to more intuitive coaching sessions and a cognitive performance dashboard that will make receiving feedback and measuring your cognitive performance improvement more interactive and meaningful. During 2009, we also look forward to introducing many more fun training exercises across all cognitive functions.

Happy New Year and good luck with the New Year Resolutions.

You’re searching for the name of a flower. It’s on the tip of your tongue. You know it starts with “am…” What is it?

The brain area exercised in this Splitwords game is the left temporal lobe, which gets activated when information retrieval is called upon. Splitwords helps you practice to quickly retrieve words from your language repertoire. Each syllable can be seen as a phonetic cue that facilitates word retrieval. So, think in syllables!

So as quickly as possible, form 15 complete words by combining syllables from the game table.  Watch out, each syllable can only be used once!  All words belong to the category Fruit & Vegetable.

nach         gra        go         beet        rhu

berry         spi        ca          rrot        pump

me             pe        per         ki          kum

quat          mul      berry       lon        kin

man          wi         pars       le           pep

rasp          barb      mon      ley         root

Check back tomorrow to confirm the answer!

November is almost here and it’s Alzheimer’s awareness month! It is definitely worth a visit to the Alzheimer Association’s website to get educated, dispel myths and to sign government action petitions to help combat this deadly disease and to provide adequate support for those that have it.

Many of the myths surrounding Alzheimer’s Disease include the following:

• Myth 1: Memory loss is a natural part of aging
• Myth 2: Alzheimer’s disease is not fatal
• Myth 3: Only older people can get Alzheimer’s
• Myth 4: Drinking out of aluminum cans or cooking in aluminum pots and pans can lead to Alzheimer’s disease
• Myth 5: Aspartame causes memory loss
• Myth 6: Flu shots increase risk of Alzheimer’s disease
• Myth 7: Silver dental fillings increase risk of Alzheimer’s disease
• Myth 8: There are treatments available to stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease

Dr. Croisile discusses how to increase your brain reserve and defer the onset of brain decline here.

You can read the full article busting the Alzheimer’s Myths at the Alzheimer’s Association website.

Solution: Here’s the solution to Alphabetical Disorder teaser posted on 21 Sep. The characters that can be found only on the right are #2, #3 and #7.

What’s the Benefit of Strong Attention Skills in Daily Life? Whenever we are presented with a new set of symbols, such as when learning to navigate traffic signs for the first time or when learning a language with a unique alphabet, we use visual memory and attention skills. As humans, we are unique in how we use symbols and characters to represent our world. It is part of our innate ability to learn and create languages, for example.

In terms of attention, consider everything that is stimulating your senses as you read this sentence. Perhaps there are background noises or a conversation nearby, the aromas of food or pangs of hunger, distractions in your peripheral vision, thoughts of things to do, recent conversations or events still fresh in your mind. Paying attention is resisting distractions and focusing on the task at hand. It’s a critical skill to master during the learning and development stages of life and can be the thing that makes the difference in success in a job or career.

For more concentration exaercises of this type try the HAPPYneuron game Ancient Writing or any of the other Attention Exercises for potentially hours of attention training.

Brain Teaser of the Day: Today’s brain teaser is called Alphabetical Disorder. Your task is to compare the different writing characters from each other in the image below. Take no more than 30 seconds to find out which ones are present in the right group and not in the left group.

What’s the point? In addition to your visual memory, this exercise primarily stimulates your attention, which is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Further, this task will stimulate your concentration and your visual analysis of the shapes of characters. Visual scanning skills and your ability to attend to detail is put to the test.

What’s the Answer? Can you figure it out?

AMERICANS may worry about heart disease, stroke and diabetes, but they downright dread Alzheimer’s disease, a recent survey found. For good reason. One in eight adults over 65 is affected by the disease.

Those who are spared know they may end up with the burden of caring for a parent or a spouse who is affected. Even though the number of older adults with dementias is rising rapidly, only a few drugs that have been approved to treat symptoms are on the market, and they slow down the disease but do not cure it. Researchers, however, are more optimistic than ever about the potential of the aging brain, because recent evidence has challenged long-held beliefs by demonstrating that the brain can grow new nerve cells and that Brain Training can be a big help. Read the informative New York Times article here…..

Here’s an article in the New York Times that suggests ways to improve our thinking. Learning new material, yoga, aerobic exercise and caffeine are all mentioned as ways to stay sharp and in tune. In addition, there’s a link to another article that explains what mental status tests are, how they are performed and what the results mean. Click here for more….

Adding to the two books on the market (Dental Floss for the Mind and Get your Brain in the Fast Lane), Happy Neuron’s CEO, Michel Noir and Chief Scientist, Dr. Bernard Croisile, have brought another book to the market. This one is entitled Brocolli for the Brain. It’s published by McGrawHill and available at Borders, Barnes&Nobles and Amazon. So when you are off the internet-grid, you can still ensure you get your brain fitness workout. Enjoy!