Happy Neuron

Splitwords Puzzle Answer

Laura Fay — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:25:39 +0000

The 15 Fruits & Vegetables from yesterday’s Splitwords puzzle are these:

beetroot – carrot – grape – kiwi – kumquat – lemon – mango – melon – mulberry – parsley – pepper – pumpkin – raspberry – rhubarb – spinach

Did you get them all?

Try this Splitwords Puzzle

Laura Fay — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:38:29 +0000

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!

Alzheimer’s Myths

Laura Fay — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:12:31 +0000

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.

Internet Boost Brain Power!

Laura Fay — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:06:23 +0000

The BBC reports today that a University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning in a more significant way than just reading. Seems that the interaction and inherent decision making that happens as we surf makes a difference. The entire article can be found here….

AOL Poll shows that more people play brian games…

Laura Fay — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:49:16 +0000

I took an AOL poll this week and discovered that when offered a choice of three things that people do to reduce their risk of getting Alzheimer’s Disease, more people were inclined to play brain games than exercise or take supplements. If you consider brain games, check out the benefits of doing with coach guidance from Happy Neuron’s virtual scientist.

AOL Poll Question: What do you do to reduce your risk?

Play brain games                   39%
Take vitamin supplements      36%
Exercise                               25%

Brain Teaser Answer: Alphabetical Disorder

Dr. Bernard Croisile — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:19:18 +0000

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.

Test your Attention Skills

Dr. Bernard Croisile — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:13:15 +0000

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?

Have You Outsourced Your Memory?

Laura Fay — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:30:39 +0000

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…..

Deep Brain Stimulation Inexplicably Restores Vivid Memories

Laura Fay — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:07:00 +0000

Posted in Longevity and Age Management, Brain and Mental Performance on Mon September 08, 2008. What an interesting scientific discovery!

Scientists searching for a way to suppress appetite accidentally discovered a way to trigger vivid memories. The researchers hope to develop the technique into a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in Annals of Neurology.

Researchers at the Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada, were operating on an obese man in an attempt to find a part of the brain that could suppress the appetite when stimulated electrically. When the scientists stimulated the hypothalamus, which has been associated with hunger, the man suddenly experienced a vivid memory from 30 years before.

“He reported the experience of being in a park with friends from when he was around 20 years old and, as the intensity of stimulation increased, the details became more vivid. He recognized his girlfriend [from the time] … The scene was in color. People were wearing identifiable clothes and were talking, but he could not decipher what they were saying,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers implanted a device in his brain that would constantly stimulate that section of the hypothalamus. Similar devices have been implanted in other parts of the brain to control tremor in Parkinson’s disease.

After three weeks of stimulation at a level low enough to avoid triggering the park memory again, the man’s performance on two memory tests improved significantly.

While the hypothalamus has not previously been associated with memory, it borders a part of the brain that is known to influence memory and emotion.

The researchers are now testing the device to see if it can stem the memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

“It is a very effective treatment for the motor problems associated with Parkinson’s disease and it has been used on 40,000 people,” Lozano said. “We are in the early stages of using it with Alzheimer’s patients and we don’t know if it will work. We want to assess if we can reach the memory circuits and drive improvement. It is a novel approach to dealing with this problem.”

RESOURCE/SOURCE: www.naturalnews.com on 9/6/08

New HAPPYneuron Study Shows Great Results

Dr. Bernard Croisile — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:10:54 +0000

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.