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The frontal lobe plays a primary role in motivation and reward-seeking behaviors.
The hypothalamus, located directly below the thalamus, is only the size of a plump grape, but it regulates hormones that control blood pressure, body temperature, growth, and more.
All the glands in your body are under the dominion of chemicals released by the pituitary, which hangs underneath your brain just behind the upper bridge of your nose.
Although popularly characterized as the headquarters of human IQ, the frontal lobe is also where our emotional and social self-control emerges. Damage the frontal lobe, and you become an emotional wreck.
The smartest person in the room, she argues, will never do as well as the one who works the hardest.
Genius, he asserts, is simply the result of years of hard work and deliberate practice.
that a person with ordinary memory can learn to have a super-memory for numbers.
The only talent that improved was the specific skill they practiced.
My view is simple: There are as many paths to success (and failure) as there are human beings. The smarter you are, the better your chances. The more emotionally balanced, the better. The grittier your determination to overcome obstacles and the longer you practice, the better you’ll do.
Wrong. Studying the same material over and over again is far less effective at improving memory than self-testing,
Great advise on effective learning. Self-test!
So test yourself and find the edge of your knowledge: that’s where learning happens. Let’s
Self test
People who learn a second language gain significant benefits in cognitive health that last a lifetime.
The benefit of learning a second language.
Being able to switch between two languages, the researchers concluded, improves a person’s ability to maintain focus and attention.
Second language and focus and attention improvement
The better a person speaks a second language and the earlier it is acquired, the more gray matter has been seen in the left parietal lobe cortex. More white matter has likewise been seen in both children and adults who speak two languages.
Brain development and second language acquiring
PROTECTION AGAINST DEMENTIA. An extraordinary study published in 2007 by researchers in Toronto showed that people who spoke more than one language developed symptoms of dementia about four years later than people who spoke only one.
Less risk of Dementia with the second language
If you have kids and know a second language, using it around them will build their brain power and cognitive reserve.
— extinguishment of emotion and motivation, loss of creativity and self-control — are often confused with major depression or dementia, particularly because they come on so slowly as the tumor grows and squeezes the frontal lobes harder and harder against the unforgiving skull.
Mind wandering is directly linked to enhanced creativity. The more your mind wanders, the greater the connections seen between far-flung areas of the brain on MRI exams. Daydreamers are not only more creative, they’ve even been shown to be smarter on certain tests, according to a recent study by Eric Schumacher
Daydreaming is not that bad.
She encourages parents to allow their children to play with ordinary boxes, pans, even furniture.
That’s why I also don’t buy into the endless tests, and test prep, that many children in elementary schools these days are forced to endure. All that rigor can kill their imaginative spark.
School can kill the imagination
unstructured free play in childhood is a foundation of adult creativity.
Creativity, after all, requires the confidence to know that mistakes happen and are part of the process. Fear of failure keeps too many people from daring to express themselves.
Sleep is not a suppression of brain activity. Quite the opposite. Sleep calls on deep powers of the brain never used during wakefulness.
during sleep is to transform short-term memories stacked
up during the day into memories that can last a lifetime.
After studying for a test, students will actually remember more after a nap or a night’s sleep than if they had stayed awake and kept studying for an extra few hours.
Study, sleep - better acquired knowledge
“One of the essential functions of sleep is to take out the garbage, as it were, erasing and ‘forgetting’ information built up throughout the day that would clutter the synaptic network that defines us.”
but that they are actively erased during sleep.
“This targeted forgetting is necessary for efficient learning, and deficits in this process may underlie various kinds of intellectual disabilities and mental health problems.”
A growing body of research shows that during sleep, the brain literally flushes out cellular detr...
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periods of REM were associated with dreaming, because when they awakened people during REM, they almost always reported being in the middle of a vivid dream. Ever since, a myth has arisen that dreaming happens only during REM.
In fact, dreams occur through much of the night even without REM.
say. More likely, they will die from lack of sleep.
those who averaged less than six hours of sleep per night were 12 percent more likely to die before age sixty-five than those who slept six to eight hours a night.9 However, the same study found that people who slept more than nine hours of sleep per night had a 30 percent increased risk of early death.
women who slept more than nine hours per night had a 38 percent increased risk of heart disease over those who slept eight hours.10
that people who already have metabolic syndrome (increased weight, blood sugar, and blood pressure) will double their risk of death if they sleep less than six hours per night.11
Importance of sleep
weekends do work as an effective way to catch up on sleep, so protect both weekend mornings if you’re sleep-deprived during the week. I do.
Disruption of this biological rhythm is closely linked to a wide range of diseases including obesity, type 2 diabetes, depression, and even cancer.
“We evolved to see bright blue, full-spectrum light during the day and to have complete blackness at night,” Blask says. “Both are really healthy for your circadian system. It’s all about this oscillatory balance under natural conditions between light and dark.”
Circadian system
you avoid bright light at night to the degree possible and get outside for at least twenty minutes per day to enjoy the sunshine.
Whether or not you bleed or have any external signs of head injury has nothing to do with a diagnosis of concussion. In fact, even an MRI or CT scan of your brain usually shows nothing wrong.
concussion requires temporary loss of consciousness. Not true!
The one and only factor in diagnosing a concussion is simple: It must include a change in mental functioning either immediately or in the hours after a blow to the head. The person might feel dizzy, confused, or nauseated; he or she might develop a headache. They might have temporary trouble talking, walking, remembering, thinking straight, making decisions, or doing anything that requires muscle coordination. Their eyes might suddenly be sensitive to light. They might vomit, hear a ringing in their ears, or have visual disturbances.
In reality, the vast majority of concussions leave no lasting effect on a person’s mental functioning. In a matter of days or weeks, the person feels fine and shows no mental or emotional deficits.
Intermittent hunger clears the mind, awakens the senses, and improves brain functioning. Plus it lowers your blood sugar, reduces your insulin levels, and helps you lose weight by reducing total calories.
Going without food for even a day increases your brain’s natural growth factors, which support the survival and growth of neurons.
Metabolic switching between glucose and ketones is when cognition is best and degenerative diseases are kept at bay.
Ketosis
“Metabolic switching impacts multiple signaling pathways that promote neuroplasticity and resistance of th...
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Not by overloading on glucose or ketones, but by altering the cadence of eating and letting the body do what it was designed to do during times of food scarcity.
I’m talking about being intermittently hungry by forcing your body to burn its fat reserves once or twice a week. The exhaust from this, ketones, will not only keep your brain going during those periods of fasting and hunger but will actually improve cognition, grow the connections between neurons, and stave off neurodegeneration.
Intermittent fasting
