Brain Training Articles & News, Page 164

What do you really know about your own brain? Let’s take a closer look at that gelatinous mass between your ears with five weird-but-true brain facts: Your brain is softer than you probably think. What is the consistency of your brain? Brain tissue has been described as having the same consistency as Jell-O, warm butter ...

If someone makes a grab for that ticklish place above your knee, you double over in laughing protest. When you grab your own knee, nothing happens. You can’t tickle yourself because your brain doesn’t pay as much attention to sensations caused by your own actions. In fact, brain scans show that neurons in the cerebral ...

A recent study proves something you’ve been wishing were true: Chocolate is good for you! You heard right! Chocolate has been scientifically proven to boost blood flow to certain areas of the brain. It’s the flavanols in chocolate that make it so healthy, and the darker the chocolate the better. Flavanols can also be found ...

When my doctor told me I was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, I was devastated. Not wanting to become a burden to my children, I sold my house, moved to an assisted living center, and waited for Alzheimer’s to finish robbing me of whatever quality of life I had left. I’d been talking slower ...

Sometimes David got to the locker room and couldn’t remember the football game he’d just played. In junior high, David had been a straight A student. But after a concussion, he began struggling in school, and additional concussions while playing football in high school only made things worse. Years later, married and with a baby ...

We call breakups “painful” for good reason: When you experience an unwanted breakup, thinking of  your ex-love-interest activates the same parts of your brain that process physical pain. Researchers measured brain activity while showing love-sick men and women photos of their former-sweethearts, and then photos of platonic friends. They also measured brain activity as they ...

Like a lot of kids, David played sports in school. But concussions sustained on the wrestling mat and gridiron hurt his ability to perform well in school and even in his career. After graduating from a police academy, David was rejected by 56 police departments because his test scores were too low. The 32-year-old husband ...

We don’t think much about blinking. For the most part, it’s an involuntary process that keeps our eyes hydrated. But when we blink, we lose information, even if it’s just for a fraction of a second. In fact, during a typical day, blinking means you spend about 44 minutes with your eyes closed. This is ...

Whether you're riding in a one-horse sleigh, sledding, caroling, bakingcookies or chillin' with family and friends, the holidays brim withopportunities for lots of laughter. What's all that joviality doing to your brain? Laughing stimulates a part of your brain called the nucleus accumbens,which then releases the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine. This createsa brain-chemical chain reaction that ...

How can you grow your brain? You can always follow the example of London taxi cab drivers and memorize a labyrinth of 25,000 city streets as well as thousands of tourist attractions and hot spots. While many major cities try to simplify driving by arranging streets in user-friendly grids (or identifying streets by sequenced numbers ...