Eating fatty food appears to take an almost immediate toll on both short-term memory and exercise performance, according to new research on rats and people.

It’s already known that long-term consumption of a high-fat diet is associated with weight gain, heart disease and declines in cognitive function. But the new research shows how indulging in fatty foods over the course of a few days can affect the brain and body long before the extra pounds show up.

To determine the effect of a fatty diet on memory and muscle performance, researchers studied 32 rats that were fed low-fat rat chow and trained for two months to complete a challenging maze. The maze included eight different paths that ended with a treat of sweetened condensed milk. The goal was for the rat to find each treat without doubling back into a corridor where it had already been. The maze was wiped down with alcohol, so the rat had to rely on memory rather than sense of smell.

All of the rats studied had mastered the maze, finding at least six or seven of the eight treats before making a mistake. Some rats even found all eight on the first try.

Then half the rats were switched to high-fat rat chow (comprised of 55 percent fat), while the remaining rats stayed on their regular chow (which had 7.5 percent fat). After four days, the rats eating the fatty chow began to falter on the maze test — all of them did worse than when they were on their regular chow. On average, the rats on the fatty diet found only five treats before making a mistake. The rats who stayed with their regular food continued the same high level of performance on the maze, finding six or more treats before making a mistake.

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Over the past decades, videogames have undoubtedly come under fire from a multitude of sources, whether it’s a bill claiming games incite violence, a musician damning Guitar Hero or agenda-driven researchers coming to questionable conclusions.

Just like prescription drugs or food, gaming outside the bounds of moderation can lead to serious drawbacks. But most reasonable experts in fields such as psychology, education and research acknowledge that interactive entertainment has important benefits that have the potential to shape the world’s future.

An important idea to keep in mind: Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile said at the 2008 American Psychologist Association convention, “The big picture is that there are several dimensions on which games have effects. [Dimensions include] the amount they are played, the content of each game, what you have to pay attention to on the screen, and how you control the motions.

“This means that games are not ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but are powerful educational tools and have many effects we might not have expected they could.”

Edge spoke with Chicago-based psychologist Dr. Kourosh Dini, Sharp Brains CEO and education expert Alvaro Fernandez and XEODesign president Nicole Lazzaro, in addition to compiling other authoritative opinions on 15 of gaming’s most prominent benefits.

Are you interested in reading about the 15 benefits of gaming? If so, click the following link: 15 Benefits

Scientists are finding that the adult human brain is far more malleable than they once thought. Your behavior and environment can cause substantial rewiring of your brain or a reorganization of its functions.

Studies have shown that exercise can improve the brain’s executive skills, which include planning, organizing and multitasking. What you eat can also influence how effectively your brain operates.

Activities such as listening to music, playing video games and meditating may boost cognitive performance as well.
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Amputees sometimes experience phantom limb sensations, feeling pain, itching or other impulses coming from limbs that no longer exist. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran worked with patients who had so-called phantom limbs, including Tom, a man who had lost one of his arms.

Ramachandran discovered that if he stroked Tom’s face, Tom felt like his missing fingers were also being touched. Each part of the body is represented by a different region of the somatosensory cortex, and, as it happens, the region for the hand is adjacent to the region for the face. The neuroscientist deduced that a remarkable change had taken place in Tom’s somatosensory cortex.

Ramachandran concluded that because Tom’s cortex was no longer getting input from his missing hand, the region processing sensation from his face had slowly taken over the hand’s territory. So touching Tom’s face produced sensation in his nonexistent fingers.

Continue reading this article at: Six Ways

Many people have constantly asked this question; how does dancing affect the mind? Dancing is extremely useful when it comes to maintaining people’s age because it slows down aging processes. Dancing, like any other means of working out, is a useful way of exercising and without doubt better than running. Dancing offers advantages in people’s minds, health statuses and bodies. These benefits include improved cardiovascular health systems, lung capacity, flexibility, coordination and strength. Reduced tension and stress levels are also part of the benefits of dancing.

In the issue of how dancing affects the mind, dancing helps in the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis that is a main issue in females particularly when they are in their post-menopause periods. In fact, there are major drops in the level of estrogen that take place at menopause. Minimal levels of estrogen are the determining factors that bar bones from absorbing calcium.  Aside from that, dace keeps joints lubricated as well, preventing arthritis.

Dancing is also part of aerobics because muscle movement use oxygen in a competent way. This offers you with an amazing opportunity of exercising and comes in handy in burning large calorie-numbers as well. Aerobic workouts are in turn vital in restoring good cardiovascular health.

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The choices that you make now can affect how you’ll age later. There are some things you can do to keep that “fountain of youth” flowing for yourself and it goes much further than just having good genes. Remember, genes only account for a third of healthy aging — the rest is up to you. Body+Soul magazine offers smart, simple tips to help you age gracefully–

Interested in these ten tips? Read the rest of this article by following the link: Healthy Aging

Getting older is unavoidable, but falling apart mentally or physically is not. The biological mind-body connection becomes more important as you age. After all, a sound mind won’t do you much good if your body fails.

Loss of memory or cognitive decline shows up in the little things first. You have a harder time calling to mind the names of people and places, you have something at the tip of your tongue but just can’t remember what it is, you go into a room to get something and can’t remember what it was. The prefrontal cortex, which is your search engine for your memory, can’t call it up. Everyone has this happen at some point in their life. When this happens, the hippocampus kicks in to provide other associations to try to jog your memory, but those names and places which used to come easily become more difficult.

Brain-function research shows that as you age the cells throughout your body gradually lose their ability to adapt to stress. In the brain, when neurons get worn down from cellular stress, synapses erode, which eventually severs connections. Dendrites physically wither, and you start losing a signal here or there. Losing a signal here or there isn’t such a big deal at first, because the brain is designed to compensate by rerouting information around dead patches in the network and recruiting other areas to help with trafficking. The good news is your brain is a social network; it thrives on making new connections and is constantly rewiring itself and adapting – provided there’s enough stimulation to spur the growth of new neurons.

Memory is possible because of your neurons. Neurons are electrically excitable cells in the nervous system that process and transmit information. Neurons never actually touch each other. They reach toward each other across a gap (synapse) with their axons and dendrites (tiny hair-like filaments that project out).

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Jim Hanekamp of Glenview creates health-based gaming site
By: Jessica Cantarelli/Triblocal.com staff reporter

For Glenview resident Jim Hanekamp, a sharp memory is priceless. However, with his newest endeavor, he hopes to help people improve brain function at no cost to them at all.

Jim Hanekamp Founder of Myfitbrain

Hanekamp is the founder and CEO of MyFitBrain.com, a newly-launched Web site that uses cognitive games to improve brain function and memory.

Hanekamp grew up in Northbrook, and graduated from Glenbrook North High School. He attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1977 with a Bachelor’s Degree in biology.  He started out working with his father, who owned Hanekamp Funeral Home in Northbrook, and also as a paramedic, before moving into the technology-world.

He began working for companies like Montgomery Ward, Kraft Foods and Allstate Insurance. While CIO at Schawk Incorporated in Des Plaines, he also served as president of a small software division. The father of five lives in Glenview with his new wife Pat.

“My jobs have always been tech-related, I’ve always thought of myself as an entrepreneur,” he said. “I’ve always changed what I’ve done. To me, this is the ultimate change—this is my first time running and starting up a company to make a difference in people’s lives.”

The idea for MyFitBrain.com came to Hanekamp when one of his close family members began showing signs of Alzheimer’s. After researching, the idea for Web-based cognitive games sparked his interest.

But, it wasn’t until last summer when he was watching a television special about similar games that cost users up to $400, that he figured out what he was going to do.  Hanekamp said he thought that was too much money to pay and a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford it.

“I wanted to be able to offer a free way for people to play cognitive games and improve their brains and push out the natural effects of aging,” he said. “MyFitBrain.com is a game portal that has challenging games in seven categories. Players can push their brains in different directions and build new neurons and receptors so it uses a bigger mass of the brain cells and the effects of aging are delayed.”

Hanekamp began outsourcing the development to different countries like India. Robin Alter, CTO and CoFounder of Kreeda Games India served as the Web developer for the site. Alter said the games have been intentionally simplified to be more accessible to an older audience.

“The real magic in the MyFitBrain.com solution is in the ability to dynamically adjust the difficulty levels of the games as they adapt to each individual’s abilities and to track their progress,” Alter said. “During development, we focused more on the learning qualities of the games and the positive effects they can have.”

The site launched on April 1, and featured four of the eventual seven games. Each of the current six games have general rules of play. There are time limits for each game because this is dependent on the complexity of the level and the game. There are up to 30 levels of difficulty for each game.

Each of the games serves a different purpose to challenge a player’s brain. Pair ‘Em Up is a traditional memory game; Spot ‘N Shop is a visualization game; Matching Chirps is an audible game; Calorie Challenge is a mathematical game; Code Breaker is a logic game; and Beat the Gates is a reflex game.

“As people go through life they fall into habits, like doing Sudoku or crossword puzzles every day, or going to work the same way every day,” Hanekamp said. “Your brain becomes trained to these things and stops maximizing its growth.  It is important to continuously push your brain in new ways.  When you do this, your brain will actually build up a cognitive reserve of more brain cells.  Then, if something negatively impacts your brain, like an injury or simple effects of aging, you are less likely to show the effects.  For a normal person, the goal is to improve all of their cognitive skills and delay the natural effects of aging.”

Though MyFitBrain.com has been up and running since April 1, Hanekamp said that is half the battle. He still has much work to do. He hopes to expand the site’s use and gear it toward school children as well as incorporate advertiser’s products into the games.

“In order to make sure the site is free to use, I have put my advertising infrastructure into the interactive part of the game play,” he said. “It’s a very unique ad model and what it does is incorporates products from companies into the game. By integrating products it’s gets away from normal banner ads, which are becoming less effective over time. What I really want to do is integrate the products so players will be saying the product names — that’s better for the advertisers.”

As far as challenges from starting up a Web company, he said the hard part hasn’t been developing and funding his start-up site, it’s been getting the word out.

“It’s a unique time in history to start a company and draw resources from around the world,” he said. “There are financial and economic struggles I’m dealing with. But this has helped me to do a lot of networking and find out there are people willing to help. Everything always takes longer than you hoped and planned.”

Hanekamp said he hopes the site will speak for itself to potential users and advertisers.

“Cognitive health or natural effects of aging can degrade slowly and you can come to accept it as just part of one’s personality,” he said. “If we wait too long before we begin working our brains in many areas, it can be too late and drugs are then required. If you begin building your cognitive reserve early, then you can push out when these effects become noticeable.”

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