Brain Health Blog

Intelligence and your perfect sense of pace

April 19, 2008

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:dancing_nerd.jpg

“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?

By Michael Scanlon | Posted in Brain Health, Cognitive Performance | Comments (17)

Brain activity across languages

April 16, 2008

By Lumos Labs Science Associate, Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.

Different languages are represented differently across the brain. This is especially true for languages that are very dissimilar, such as English and Chinese. English is learned from pronouncing its 26-letter alphabet, whereas to learn the Chinese language, one needs to memorize thousands of characters in order to understand a string of pictographs.

Dyslexia, a learning disability that causes difficulty in reading and writing, affects the brain in different ways according to language. Professor Li-Hai Tan, along with his research team from the University of Hong Kong, discovered that Chinese-speaking dyslexics have a different pattern of brain activity than English-speaking dyslexics. Professor Tan told Lumos Labs that “the left middle frontal gyrus, rather than the posterior brain regions, is a perpetrator of reading disorders in Chinese, suggesting the possibility that a person who is dyslexic in Chinese reading would not be in alphabetic language reading, and vice versa.” One implication is that different interventions may be more or less suitable depending on language. 

By Paul Li | Posted in Brain Research, Cognitive Psychology | Comments (2)

Keeping Your Brain Fit

April 12, 2008

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.

By Paul Li | Posted in Brain Games, Brain Health | Comments (1)

Memory impairment in those over 70

April 8, 2008

A study released recently by Duke Medical Center declares a depressing prognosis for those of us reaching the golden years. The study found that more than 1 out 3 people over the age of 70 have some degree of memory loss. While some of this group had Alzheimer’s, the majority had a degree of memory loss that was disruptive but not clinical.

The article does offer some hope:

“…notes Richard Suzman, Ph.D., director of the NIA’s Behavioral and Social Research Program. ‘Research is now beginning to suggest that interventions – such as controlling hypertension and diabetes or perhaps cognitive training – might help maintain or improve mental abilities with age. As such interventions are tested and widely applied, we should be able to track their impact through this type of research.’”

By Michael Scanlon | Posted in Aging, Alzheimers, Memory | Comments (1)

Berkeley’s Mind Reader

April 5, 2008

By Lumos Labs Science Associate, Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.

Movies like Being John Malkovich are based on the idea that one might be able to experience what another human’s mind is visualizing. Most would think that such movies are pure fantasy and science fiction, but researchers at U.C. Berkeley are one step closer to making this a reality.

Using a computational model calibrated to each individual subject, Professor Jack Gallant and his research team were able to use brain activity (measured with fMRI) to identify which of a large set of images was seen by a subject. Importantly, none of the images in the set had been previously seen by the subject, demonstrating the ability to generalize to novel situations. Though performance isn’t yet perfect, it’s impressive. Accuracy ranges from 80% when viewing 1,000 images, to 90% accuracy when viewing 120 images.

Dr. Gallant said, “there may theoretically be sufficient information available to decode memory, imagery and dreams some day, but it will likely be many decades before this is really possible.”

By Paul Li | Posted in Brain Research, Neuroscience | Comments (2)

Our new brain health blog

April 3, 2008

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.

By Michael Scanlon | Posted in Brain Health | Comments (0)

Brain Food - Fruit for Thought

March 27, 2008

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.

By Michael Scanlon | Posted in Alzheimers, Brain Health | Comments (1)

Brain performance enhancer: Caffeine

March 17, 2008

Coffee_beans 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.

By Michael Scanlon | Posted in Brain Health, Cognitive Performance | Comments (2)

Brain training in the news

March 6, 2008

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

News_healthsmart_2 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 ScientistNews_newscientist

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.

By Michael Scanlon | Posted in Brain Games, Brain Health, Lumos Labs | Comments (0)

Brain activity during video gaming

February 27, 2008

By Lumos Labs Science Associate Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.

Males are bigger consumers than females when it comes to mainstream video games. A possible reason males enjoy playing (and end up addicted to) video games might be attributed to how the male brain is wired when compared to the female brain, particularly in the reward and addiction system.

Dr. Fumiko Hoeft and colleagues had subjects play a video game that involves acquiring territory while being scanned in an fMRI machine. Brain areas that showed activation were in the mesocorticolimbic center, along with the nucleus accumbens, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex. In these areas, male brains had more activation - correlating with how much territory they gained - than female subjects. Since the study showed that males are territorial specimens, a follow-up approach might involve an fMRI study and a game that appeals more to females.

Dr. Fumiko Hoeft told me that, “We only examined one kind of game (one that is based on space infringement). Hence, when other types of games are examined, there may be a totally different response and perhaps females may show bigger physiological responses.” At least in the territorial game, though, female subjects actually “‘turn off certain regions during game play.” A game such as Lumosity’s Word Bubbles has been more popular among females than males and females also had greater improvement in their Brain Performance Index (BPI). We’d be interested in observing how the female and male brain activity compare when the women are more engaged with the game.

By Paul Li | Posted in Brain Games, Stanford Neuroscience | Comments (1)