Protect your brain with daily caffeine

It seems there’s no end to new reasons to drink coffee. From PhysOrg:

“A daily dose of caffeine blocks the disruptive effects of high cholesterol that scientists have linked to Alzheimer’s disease. A study in the open access publication, Journal of Neuroinflammation revealed that caffeine equivalent to just one cup of coffee a day could protect the blood-brain barrier (BBB) from damage that occurred with a high-fat diet.”

We’re all equipped with a blood-brain barrier, which acts as a filter to isolate the brain from chemicals found in your body that shouldn’t be in your brain. One reason high cholesterol is bad for your brain is that it damages the blood-brain barrier to the point that it’s not as good at keeping harmful chemicals out.

Though this study found that daily caffeine helps protect the blood-brain barrier in rabbits, it’s still (sadly) too early for coffee drinkers to cast away fears of fat intake. Even if the results translate to humans, a high-fat diet is bad for your body and brain in a number of other ways. Still, this is one more reason to appreciate your morning java.

Brain Training for Kids

Children can learn and re-shape their brains faster than anyone else. Not surprisingly, we’ve found that teenagers who train with the Lumosity brain games improve dramatically. There is also increasing support for the idea that training can help address the cognitive symptoms of ADHD.

Dr. Robert Myers describes some activities that can help a child deal with ADHD in his article,5 Simple Concentration Building Techniques for Kids with ADHD:

“As a child psychologist and the father of a son with ADHD, I developed a host of exercises that help ADHD kids improve their concentration. The key is presenting them as games that are actually fun for parents and children to do together.

…For older children and adolescents, check out the cognitive exercises provided by Lumosity.”

One of his recommendations is to practice relaxation and positive imagery. For example,

“ADHD kids can “imagine” that they’re paying attention in class or able to handle teasing, and this can in turn change their behavior at school.”

I believe that regular physical exercise can also help children (or adults) control ADHD. Instead of rushing into stimulant prescriptions, perhaps it’s worth trying some of these fun and harmless behavioral interventions.

Intelligence and your perfect sense of pace

Think you’ve got rhythm? Well, now there’s a reason beyond musicianship and dance-floor bravado to claim an accurate sense of the beat:

Good rhythm is correlated with general intelligence.

Fredrik Ullen and a team of researchers in Sweden found that people who most accurately tap out a beat also do the best on intelligence tests. They suggest that the brain’s sense of timing might underlie higher intellectual functions. The paper was published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience.

From the press release on physorg:

“It’s interesting as the task didn’t involve any kind of problem solving,” says Fredrik Ullén at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study with Guy Madison at Umeå University. “Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity.”

According to Fredrik Ullén, the results suggest that the rhythmic accuracy in brain activity observable when the person just maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacity that is measured with intelligence tests.

“We know that accuracy at millisecond level in neuronal activity is critical to information processing and learning processes,” he says.

They also found differences in the anatomy of the prefrontal cortex – a part of your brain involved in many complex cognitive tasks. The subjects with good rhythmic accuracy and intelligence had more white matter volume in the prefrontal cortex.

As is common with an interesting result, this study prompts many new questions:

Does this correlation arise out of a difference in noisiness at the neuronal level, as the release suggests? Or do keeping time and intelligence both arise from higher level cognitive processes, like attention and working memory?

Can intelligence be altered by improving rhythm? Is Ringo Starr actually the smartest in the band?

More white matter in the prefrontal cortex implies more myelin, which aids in fast and reliable communication between neurons. Does the additional myelination improve communication between neurons to the point that rhythm and intelligence are both enhanced?

Keeping Your Brain Fit

By Lumos Labs Science Associate Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.

Recently, U.S. News did their cover story on Keeping Your Brain Fit. As you the readers might already know, there are ways to thwart the cognitive decline that often comes with aging, but there is no silver bullet that works every time for each person. It is possible to slow down the progression by eating the right foods, exercising regularly, and playing brain training games – all of which are beneficial in keeping your brain fit and healthy. Although the article highlights its share of critics who prefers one activity over the other, your brain lasts longest with a healthy combination of brain healthy activity. Research has also shown that mental decline begins as early as in the third decade of life, so it would be wise for even young adults to work towards a healthy brain early to help avoid ‘losing it’ later.

Our new brain health blog

As you can see, we’ve got a new and improved design for the Brain Health blog (thanks Josh and Dave). Let us know if you find changes you do or do not like, or if there’s anything that doesn’t seem to be working properly.

Brain Food – Fruit for Thought

More evidence that you should eat fruit. Cornell’s Chang Y. Lee found that the antioxidants in fruit prevented neurons from dying when exposed to oxidative stress.

“Our results suggest that fresh apples, banana and orange in our daily diet along with other fruits may protect neuron cells against oxidative stress-induced neurotoxicity and may play an important role in reducing the risk of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease,” Lee concluded.

Brain performance enhancer: Caffeine

Chris Chatham at Developing Intelligence published a great guide to getting the most cognitive benefit out of caffeine. We’ve mentioned before that caffeine can improve memory and reaction time and that coffee might be protective against dementia. But we haven’t yet gotten into the implementation – what’s the best way to consume caffeine for sustained cognitive performance? Chris outlines the approach indicated by empirical research in Caffeine: A User’s Guide to Getting Optimally Wired.

One of his stronger points is the value of small and frequent doses of caffeine rather than a venti chug to start the day. Caffeine reaches the brain quickly, and then your system begins to gradually remove it, so you may be best off having about a quarter-cup each hour over the course of the time you want to be alert.

Keep in mind that there are cardiovascular risks to too much caffeine use, and that it is an addictive drug. That said, Lumos Labs averages about 3 cups/day – close to the US average of 3.1/day – and we show no signs of slowing down.

Brain training in the news

Brain fitness and cognitive training articles appearing in the past few weeks have prominently featured Lumos Labs. Here are a few of our favorite:

Reader’s Digest: HealthSmart

Dominic Cadden writes about his experience completing the Lumosity training program.

Fox News: Website of the Day

Check out Doug Delony’s broadcast of Lumosity: “Games for a happy Friday”

New Scientist

Graham Lawton did an excellent assessment of the current state of the science behind brain training products.

Women’s Health Mag

Tips to avoid forgetting and losing stuff – Lumosity helps you avoid losing memory itself.