Good book about brain science
What I like:
- good structure
- science point of view
- many examples and investigations
- it has practice useful
Top Quotes:
- "A consequence of the brain’s plasticity is that it may change with every experience, thought and emotion, from which it follows that you yourself have the potential power to change your brain with everything that"
- "you do, think, and feel. So brain fitness and optimization are about much more than crossword puzzles and blueberries; they are about cultivating a new mindset and mastering a new toolkit that allow us to appreciate and take full advantage of our brains’ incredible properties."
- "Since human attention is limited, trying to divide it between too many tasks necessarily results in performance errors. Emotional self-regulation: You"
- "This is because emotion and cognition are tightly interconnected. Controlling and managing emotion (including stress and anger) is crucial for performing successfully in anything."
- "Emotion is the system that tells us how important something is. Attention focuses us on the important and away from the unimportant things. Cognition tells us what to do about it. Cognitive skills are whatever it takes to do those things."
- "The central concept in this new approach is neuroplasticity, the brain’s lifelong capacity to change and rewire itself in response to the stimulation of learning and experience. This includes both the lifelong ability to create new neurons – neurogenesis – and to create new connections between neurons – synaptogenesis."
- "More specifically, neuroplasticity gives us the power to resist the effects of decline or disease by supporting our ability to accumulate knowledge and experiences, i.e., to learn. Learning helps to increase the so-called brain reserve"
- "By practicing a skill, one can repeatedly stimulate the same area of the brain, which strengthens existing neural connections and creates new ones. Over time, the brain can become more efficient, requiring less effort to do the same job."
- "Emotion is the system that tells us how important something is. Attention focuses us on the important and away from the unimportant things. Cognition tells us what to do about it. Cognitive skills are whatever it takes to do those things."
- "THE VIRTUOUS LEARNING CYCLE. There are 4 stages in the “Learning Cycle:” Stage One: We have a concrete experience. Stage Two: We develop reflective observations and connections. Stage Three: We generate abstract hypotheses Stage Four: Then we actively test those hypotheses. "
- "I propose that there are four pillars of learning: gathering, analyzing, creating, and acting. This is how we learn."
- "In other words, the “art of the learner” may be the art of finding connections between the new information or challenges and what we already know and care about."
- "Second, learning and changing are not that easy. Both require effort, and also, by definition, getting out of our comfort zones. We need to try new things, and to fail. The active testing phase is a critical one. Sometimes our hypothesis will be right, and sometimes it will be wrong. The fear of failing, the fear of looking not smart, is a key obstacle to learning that I see too often, especially with people who want to protect perceived reputations to such an extent that they do not let themselves try new learning cycles."
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- "There is not one single “attention,” but three separate functions of attention: alerting, orienting, and executive attention."
- "Recently, we uncovered an important mechanism by which a month of mindfulness meditation (about 11 hours of practice, 0.5 per day, 5 days a week) improves attention and self-regulation (Tang et al 2010; 2012). This mechanism is a change in the white matter that conducts"
- "What are my priorities? 1) the ability to manage stressful situations, 2) the concentration power to avoid distractions, and 3) being able to recognize and manage one’s emotions"
- "How important do you believe the following brain functions are for thriving personally and professionally in the 21st Century? Ranked from very important to less: Ability to manage stressful situations Concentration power to avoid distractions Being able to recognize and manage one’s emotions Processing new information quickly Defining and pursuing personally meaningful goals Being able to monitor and manage one’s thought processes Ability to deal with new, uncertain situations Planning ahead and solving problems in systematic ways Ability to multi-task Remembering faces and names"
- "Meditation is one of the techniques to change both brain activity and structures, and may give us unique control over attention by promoting broadening and focus."
- "How do we change behavior? There is such as thing as the science of behavior change. Prochaska, a major researcher in this domain, proposes that there are a several stages of change. It starts with precontemplation (before people start thinking about a change), then moves to contemplation (when people really think about it), to action (when people are actually trying something to change) and maintenance (at least 6 months), and ends with termination (when a new behavior is in place)."
- "SELF-MONITORING To change, one needs to know what to change to start with, which implies being able to self-monitor somehow, to evaluate strengths and weaknesses and then act on this knowledge."
- "Finally having a healthy brain helps promote overall health. Indeed, our brain not only makes us capable of interacting with the outside world but also monitors our internal world which impacts our health overall. The same way a healthy body is important for a healthy brain, a healthy brain is important for a healthy body."
- "we can intervene on our neuroplasticity."
- "The key is to keep learning."
- "Every thought, emotion, experience, perception and action that our brain does can modify our brain. It doesn’t change all at once of course but it does progressively. It thus becomes important to monitor our emotions and experiences because ultimately they can change our brain."
- "Social stress is bad for the brain."
- "HOW DOES PHYSICAL EXERCISE AFFECT THE BRAIN? Finally, physical exercise triggers the formation of new blood vessels (angiogenesis) in the brain."
- "STAYING FIT IMPROVES COGNITION. These studies suggest that physical fitness in children is associated with a) better cognitive performance and b) larger brain structures (usually the ones responsible for the performance difference). The results do not show a causal"
- "Aerobic exercise, at least thirty to sixty minutes per day, three days a week, has been shown to have an impact in a variety of experiments. And We typically say that good “brain exercise” requires novelty, variety and challenge."
- "Can what we eat impact how well we function in the short-run? The answer seems to be yes."
- "CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS The brain constitutes only 2% of total body weight but accounts for 25% of the total body glucose utilization. Its energy needs are great, which is part of the reason why what we ingest can affect how well we function cognitively. The effects of nutrition can be short-term (such as a surge of energy and a resulting brain boost) but also long-term. For instance, high adherence to the Mediterranean Diet (high intakes of vegetables, fruits, cereals, moderate intake of fish and alcohol and low intakes of dairy products, meat) helps reduce risks of cognitive decline and dementia. Of note, no nutritional supplement has been shown to effectively and safely improve cognition in healthy individuals: overall diet is what matters."
- "HIGHLIGHTS: Brain health requires a holistic approach involving appropriate nutrition, stimulating brain activities, physical activities, and stress reduction. No matter one’s brain status or age, there is much that can be done to improve brain functions."
- "The most important take home message about brain health is that we now know that no matter what your brain status or age, there is much you can do to significantly improve brain functions and slow brain aging. Based on emerging information, what is especially nice is the fact that unlike many things in life our brain health is largely under own control."
- "Learning and mastering new skills is what builds and strengthens neural connections, and we can stimulate learning by exposing ourselves to activities that challenge the routine and the familiar."
- "“Use It or Lose It” is not about doing one more crossword puzzle, it is about “stretching” our mental capacity often and in new, varied, and challenging ways. Maintaining functionality longer in healthy individuals is as important as preventing Alzheimer’s pathology. Lifelong participation in cognitively engaging activities results in delayed cognitive decline in healthy individuals and in spending less time living with dementia in people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease."
- "There is not one general intelligence but many different cognitive abilities."
- "The effect of social engagement can be observed directly in the brain."
- "A social interaction that creates a cognitive boost is one in which the person is engaged and motivated, that is, uses executive functions (by engaging in perspective taking, mind reading, monitoring, and inhibition skills)."
- "Positive Thinking: Thinking positively about stressors can help moderate stress."
- "Thinking about positive events in general may also help enhance your mood and happiness and lower your levels of stress."
- "MEDITATION: A CAPACITY-BUILDING TECHNIQUE TO MANAGE STRESS AND BUILD RESILIENCE"
- "Some stress is good (it can increase alertness), some is bad (high and sustained levels of stress can alter several physical functions and cause the death of brain cells). The key for good mental functioning is to regulate your stress. Stress management can be achieved by using lifestyle solutions (such as positive thinking and physical exercise) and targeted, capacity-building techniques and products (such as meditation and biofeedback systems)."
- "one of the most profound ways to improve brain functioning is to change the way we speak and listen to others."
- "Knowing how to regulate one’s breathing can then become a learned skill, and can in turn help in optimizing brain"
- "CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS Physical exercise, balanced nutrition, stress management, and social and cognitive engagement provide a foundation for maximizing brain health and functions. Cross-training your brain builds on and goes beyond that foundation by enhancing targeted capacities."
- "Each of us face different cognitive demands and have different starting points, so there is no general brain training solution for everyone and everything. Meditation, biofeedback, cognitive therapy and cognitive training are four types of brain training backed by scientific evidence, and emerging “conditions of use” facilitate the transfer from training to real life benefits. Technology-enabled options can make brain training more effective and accessible, if used with knowledge and with care"
- "neuroplasticity: the awareness that we can improve our lives by refining or “training” our brains, and the growing research behind a number of tools such as cognitive therapy."
- "HIGHLIGHTS: Fluid intelligence, which may be defined as the ability to deal with new problems, can be improved with training on a working memory task. Transfer of working memory training benefits can be observed from one task to another."
- "Overload, multi-tasking, and fears about the future make her sometimes slip into a depressed mood. Physical exercise helps her relieve some stress but it may not be enough. Practicing meditation could make a significant difference. She could also start using a biofeedback device to be better equipped when confronted with stressful situations and to build resilience in general."
- "Your health starts and ends with your brain’s health. Your brain is the most vital organ and supports everyday things you do, including your ability to think, learn, reason, create, problem solve, imagine, decide, or plan. You should start and end every day thinking about how well you have tended to the health of your brain, whatever life stage you are in. It is just as essential to measure, monitor and maximize your brain fitness as it is to measure, monitor and maximize your physical fitness. In fact, more can be done to keep your brain healthy than any other part of your body. As a start to your new commitment to brain health, take seriously the recommendations and ideas generated from reading The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness. I invite you to impact, imagine, innovate, and inspire. Impact. We always want something easy to do, like a certain number of puzzles to complete each day or a magic pill to take, to make us think smarter and keep our brain healthy. But simplistic formulas do not have a substantial and lasting impact on such a complex organ as our brain. Imagine. We know more about the universe than we do about the human brain, but brain science".
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