To get the most from your brain performance as you take physical exercise,  follow this simple advice:

Exercise within the boundaries of your fitness level. Work out a training program that suits you and never over-do it. From week to week gradually increase the length of your exercise sessions and along with improving your physical fitness, you will also begin to feel the benefits mentally.

Stay aerobic. Unless you are a serious athlete training for a specific race, there is little need to move outside your aerobic threshold when you exercise. Exercise at a comfortable pace and keep your breathing regular. While running or cycling you should be able to hold a conversation without feeling out of breath or panting. If you do feel out of breath, slow down.

Warm up and cool down. If you do need to do some high-intensity exercise make sure you warm up and cool down with some easy aerobic exercise before and after to get your brain back in gear.

Stay hydrated. Dehydration will stop your brain and body from functioning normally. If you don’t drink plenty of water during and after exercising, you may not feel any of the rewards, either physically or mentally. If anything, it will slow you down. Don’t risk it and always have water close at hand.

Keep goals. It is difficult to imagine running a marathon if you’ve never walked a mile. Stay focused and keep manageable goals that will take you just outside your comfort zone. When you reach one goal then make another. The mental strength needed to run a marathon will then develop naturally along with your physical fitness.

Have you ever experienced the benefits of physical exercise on your brain performance?

Source: www.healthfitness.com.au

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.

If you are interested in learning how late-life working can help your mental vitality, read the Dana Institute article on the topic. Quite enlightening.

I blogged about this issue last year, but was remind of it again as I was in contact with my alma mater - Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The study finding are a wake-up call for brain exercising in all forms, even if some seem ‘trivial’. It showed that the under-30 generation was less likely to memorize pieces of information than over-50s, who have tended to use PDA technologies less than the younger generation. Read the study findings here…..

We are very excited to share that the findings of a recently conducted scientific study of 271 HAPPYneuron members showing performance improvement of 8.5% on average after just 150 games played.

Upon analysis it was found that in those users that played consistently 3+ times per week for 20+ minutes, there is an average score improvement of over 8.5% after just 150 games. The 150 games were played within a period of 3 months. What’s important to note here is that the first 75 games played by each user were not factored in the study to ensure that the (un)familiarization effect was accounted for. The resulting score improvement increase would have been even higher if these initial 75 games were included.

This demonstrates that significant improvement is realized after just 150 games played. This is a refinement of previous studies conducted with 85 HAPPYneuron users that correlated improvement of an average of 16% after 500 games played.

I look forward to publishing this most recent study in collaboration of the HAPPYneuron scientific team very soon. In the mean time, continue your brain training…it DOES make a difference.

Do women remember better then men do? Research shows that females may have an advantage over men when it comes to episodic memory, the type of long term memory based in personal experiences. A Swedish team of psychologists showed, for example, that women are better on average than men at remembering faces.

Previous studies have shown that women also have a superior memory for verbal information, which they may use to detect a person’s underlying motives or intentions - a skill that, “seems to elude many men”.

I thought to share with you a recent interview with Founder Dr. Bernard Croisile, Neurologist, Neuropsychologist and Happy Neuron’s Chief Scientist, about age related brain decline and what can be done.

As we age, what issues do people most complain about?

When we age, certain cognitive difficulties are usually more annoying than really hindering. These difficulties are usually due to a greater sensitivity to interferences (noise, conversations with several persons), a lesser attention and greater amount of time to simultaneously analyze several pieces of informations (cooking and understanding a slightly technical conversation at the same time). Information processing is often more superficial, organizing and sorting data to be memorized occurs more slowly and producing mental images becomes more difficult. Hence, it can become more difficult to remember information and it takes more time to recall memories (names) or recent events (e.g. the reason why you actually went into a room).

Why should cognitive abilities be trained?

By training cognitive abilities, the difficulties we sometimes painfully experience in everyday life can be corrected. Studies have also shown that rich and varied cognitive stimulation can delay onsets of age related decline and Alzheimer’s Disease by a number years. Cognitive training consists of reinforcing brain plasticity which forms new connections between brain neurons, strengthens neural networks and, as scientists have recently discovered, regenerate new neural pathways.

How can cognitive functions be trained?

For a start, simple things such as having a rich social life, reading, doing crosswords or playing cards, cooking or gardening, already constitute natural and effective stimulation situations. Most important are variety, enthusiasm and motivation. However, one should be aware that cognitive functions cannot be trained like leg muscles. Even if playing bridge stimulates long-term memory for game rules and crosswords train word memory (spelling, definitions), playing cards will not help anyone find their keys or their car! It is therefore necessary to train all aspects of cognitive functions, especially those neglected by the routine of hobbies we are accustomed to. It should also added that training can only relevant when the lessons learned are applied to everyday life.

How often should one perform focused brain exercises?

We advise two to three training sessions a week, of about 45 minutes each, in order to maintain interest and alertness. Variety and frequency are most important.

When should one start worrying and see a doctor?

Memory difficulties occur at any age and under any circumstances: remembering a surname or a recipe, finding one’s glasses… These difficulties are just ordinary consequences of normal aging or of a fragile emotional state. Difficulties to concentrate are often due to anxiety, depression and stress. However, when aging, cultural knowledge and automatic movements (riding a bike, playing tennis, driving a car…) are not forgotten. Many of our actions are also often automatic, which explains the fact that one cannot always remember properly whether they have locked their door or not.

One should start worrying , as soon as these difficulties become a real handicap in daily life and occur repeatedly, such as people who cannot manage their schedule or budget any more, who always get lost and systematically forget what they have been told. In such a situation, one should seek medical advice to decide whether the person needs to see a neurologist or a geriatrician.

Thank you Dr. Croisile.

For people in their 60s, regular walking appears to lower the risk of dementia.

The finding, published this week in the medical journal Neurology, is the latest study to show that exercise helps delay some of the age related decline of body AND mind.

The recent research tracked the exercise habits of 749 men and women in Italy who were over age 65 and were in good health, with no indication of memory problems at the beginning of the study. After four years, they found that the most-frequent walkers had a 27 percent lower risk for developing vascular dementia than those people who walked the least.

What’s important about the study is that it again shows exercise doesn’t have to be excruciating to reap the benefits. “It’s important to note that an easy-to-perform moderate activity like walking provided the same cognitive benefits as other, more demanding activities,” said study author Dr. Giovanni Ravaglia of University Hospital S. Orsola Malpighi, in Bologna, Italy.

Last year, the Annals of Internal Medicine reported on a study of more than 1,700 adults over 65 that also showed regular walkers have lower dementia risk. In that study, walkers who exercised three or more times a week showed a dementia risk of 13 per 1,000 person years, but the adults who walked less often had a risk of 19.7 per 1,000 person years. That translates to a nearly 40 percent reduction in risk.

Walking may help stave off dementia because it improves cerebral blood flow and lowers the risk of vascular disease. So get out there for a good walk. Your brain, as well as your body, will thank you.

Late last week, I read an interesting article posted by Mobile Crunch, a blog site focused on trends in the mobile wireless world. They reported on a study by the International Journal of Neuroscience that shares it’s recent finding on a study of 300 mobile phone users and the effects on the brain. Read their summary of that report here….

.

Take the informative Brain Food Quiz at WebMD