Brain Health Blog

Category Archives: Cognitive Performance

Tell Us Your Story and Be Entered to Win a Lumosity Lifetime Membership

We love hearing stories about how Lumosity has improved our users’ cognitive abilities and changed their lives. If you have a Lumosity story to share, submit it here: http://www.lumosity.com/testimonials.
Here’s an example of a touching testimonial that we recently received from Dr. David Darbro. Dr. Darbro suffered from a stroke in 2005, and he now uses Lumosity to [...]

Working memory training changes the brain

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and science writer for Lumos Labs .
It seems that working memory training may work by physically altering the brain. Stockholm Brain Institute researchers put healthy people through working memory exercises for 35 minutes per day over a period of 5 weeks. Changes in dopamine receptor density [...]

Improving Memory with Magnets?

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and UCSF, and science writer for Lumos Labs.
Scientists at the university of Sydney in Australia have recently claimed to be able to make people’s memory more accurate by reducing the occurrence of false memories… via magnets.
Although it is often possible to increase [...]

Staying Sharp by Keeping Fit

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and science writer for Lumos Labs.
It turns out there may be a link between cardiovascular fitness and the size of one’s hippocampus, a portion of the brain important for the formation of new memories.
Researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Pittsburgh, [...]

Trying too hard to focus

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and science writer for Lumos Labs .
A new study indicates that focusing too much might actually diminish your ability to pay attention. The researchers, based out of Carnegie Mellon University, used a phenomenon called the attentional blink as the center of their investigation.
An attentional [...]

Lumosity for your future offspring?

Could the brain training you do today help the memory of your children – even before conception? Research published today suggests that – surprisingly – this might actually be possible.
A study of brain function in mice reveals that a stimulating environment improves the memory of their offspring. If this improvement also occurs in humans, a [...]

Your Nervous System at Work

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and UCSF, and science writer for Lumos Labs.
Ever wonder about the workings of your nervous system?  As mentioned in our previous post on cognition, the nervous system is responsible for integrating and processing information about your surroundings while directing action towards the achievement of goals; whether [...]

Musicians, Creativity and Balanced Brain Use

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and UCSF, and science writer for Lumos Labs.
Research just published in the journal Brain and Cognition suggests that musical training can lead to more creative thinking and more symmetrical brain activity. The investigators, based out of Vanderbilt University in Nashville Tennessee, ran two experiments both comparing [...]