The younger you feel, the healthier your brain

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on July 23, 2012 at 10:10 am

How do you feel about your age? Positively, or rather negatively? As a new study shows, this question seems to have far greater consequences than you might think! Researchers conducted a study to examine the impact of autosuggestion and positive thinking on cognition. A part of the almost 70 subjects (age of 60 and 70) was made believe that they were old by being told they had been assigned to the 60-90 age group while the other part was told they were young as they had been assigned to the 40-70 age group. During the second stage all participants took part in a test to diagnose dementia. It came out that 70% of people who had been driven into feeling old were diagnosed with a dementia related disorder, while this only applied to 14% of people from the second group.

Source: www.newsmaxhealth.com

Posted in Aging Well, Alzheimers, brain, Brain Decline, dementia | Comments (0)

Music exercises increase gray matter in the brain

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on June 29, 2012 at 7:24 am

Last week, on June 21, France celebrated World Music Day, a day that has been important for the past 30 years and has also been adopted by several other countries and states in the United States… Street performers, free concerts and all sorts of music related events! So why are we talking about music now? Isn’t HAPPYneuron all about the brain? Yes but…
A study by researchers of the University Hospital San Raffaele found that only two weeks of piano lessons or music exercises increase gray matter in the brain. After the training stage the researchers detected better coordination and more balanced action between both brain hemispheres. The subjects also had improved motor skills, with a greater dexterity of their “weak hand”, being the left for right handers, and the right for left handers. As a conclusion, music exercises could thus be used to improve certain brain skills.

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com

Posted in Attention Skills, brain, Brain exercises, Health & Wellness, Mental Health, Mind Fitness, neural connections, plasticity, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Purpose in life against Alzheimer’s Disease

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on June 28, 2012 at 9:08 am

It is commonly known that physical exercise helps keep the brain fit and protects from dementia. However, it is not your only option! Get ready for a challenge!…
A recent study from the Rush University Medical Center has now shown that seniors could also prevent Alzheimer’s Disease by setting themselves greater goals, even late in life. The researchers found that greater purpose in life led to being happier and more active, which, again, helped the brain in being more effective and compensating for pathological processes. In other words, while setting yourself goals could not fully prevent the age-related development of plaques and tangles in the brain, it could nonetheless protect against their harmful effects on memory and other thinking abilities.

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com

Posted in Aging Well, Alzheimers, brain, Brain Decline, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Nutrition: How sugar affects your memory

By Sandrine Belier Ph.D., posted on May 31, 2012 at 5:02 am

Most people are aware of how high sugar intake can affect your body. But what about your brain? A recent study published in the Journal of Physiology has shown the negative effect of a long-term high-fructose diet has on the brain. The study was conducted on rats and indicated that drinking soft drinks or eating sweets on a regular basis affects our learning and memory skills. Indeed, the study dealt with high-fructose corn syrup, not with naturally occurring fructose, as found in fruit. This artificially produced syrup is frequently added to manufactured food such as soft drinks or sweets but can also be found in baby food. However not everything is lost: One group of rats which, as well as the fructose solution, was also given omega-3 fatty acids showed better results, which indicates that these fatty acids may be able to fight against the harmful effects of fructose.

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com

Posted in brain, brain food, Brain health, Health & Wellness, Memory, Nutrition, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

New hope for the fight against Alzheimer’s disease

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on February 3, 2012 at 3:31 am

Dementia type tauopathies, including Alzheimer’s disease are accompanied by an accumulation of abnormal form of tau protein in the brain. By interacting with the filaments called microtubules, this protein plays an important role in non-pathological conditions as it helps the neurons to function correctly. The French team of Etienne-Emile Baulieu recently demonstrated that another protein may be involved in cellular degeneration related to dementias. This protein, commonly named FKBP52, interacts with the tau protein and it seems that its quantity is inversely correlated with tau’s. Simply said, the lower the protein FKBP52 is present, the higher the tau protein is present. This discovery offers crucial elements to understand this kind of disease as well as new clues for detecting and above all healing the disease.

Source: postnoon.com

Posted in Alzheimers, brain, Brain Decline, dementia, Memory Screening, Neurons | Comments (0)

When does cognitive decline really begin?

By Sandrine Belier Ph.D., posted on January 19, 2012 at 11:29 am

Brain decline may begin at age 45We have known for a long time that cognitive decline occurs with aging, however we may have been incorrect about the age it starts. A recent analysis brings new details about it. The study, led by Dr. Singh-Manoux and published in the British Medical Journal was conducted on 7390 persons among them 5198 men and 2192 women. The objective was to estimate the decline in cognitive functions over a 10 year period. Participants were tested on their memory, reasoning skills, vocabulary and phonemic and semantic fluency three times over this period.

In everyone of the five age categories (45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64 and 65-70), the results showed a decline in all skills except in vocabulary.

The results of the sudy suggest that the decline in cognitive functions begins around the age of 45, however it does not specify if the outcome is linked to dementia. Still, more studies are necessary to confirm those results.

Source:
or British Medical Journal

Posted in brain, Brain Decline, Cognitive Impairment, dementia, Memory | Comments (0)

Are HAPPYneuron’s games too difficult?

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on December 20, 2011 at 10:41 am

Brain training games HAPPYneuronAfter reading some comments sent to us from our customers regarding the levels of difficulty with some of our games, we would like to share with you the rationale that led us to set up the levels.

To achieve an effective brain training, the brain must be challenged with the right degree of difficulty.

- if the level is too easy, there will be no brain modification and playing the games becomes a routine activity, not a brain exercise. If you experience immediate success, there is no victory to achieve, no challenge to overcome.

- if the level is too difficult, your motivation will be negatively impacted because it takes a lot of dedication to persevere at a high degree of difficulty.

The ideal is to work above what we call “the comfort zone”: try and try again and you will be successful.

At Happy Neuron we chose to setup rather challenging levels of difficulty.  If the easy levels seems too hard at first, it is often due to a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the instructions. Do take your time to do the examples of the games, as many times as you need, before really starting to play the game.  Besides it is normal to experience difficulties at the beginning of your brain training.  In our view, the satisfaction is greater when the effort needed to achieve a goal was important.

This is what differentiates our philosophy with a number of our competitors.

The best goals are the ones you set for yourself.

Do not forget that brain training, just like physical training, is a process which takes time and must be maintained. While it is useful to do an intensive program for 3 months, it is really doing the program regularly for several years that will give you the best results.  To maintain interest, you not only need a wide range of activities but also continued challenges.  HAPPYneuron has the most exercises on the market and will keep challenging you.

Posted in Brain exercises, Brain Fitness Online, Brain games, Brain Training, Mental Health | Comments (0)

A New Game for your neurons and your ears too!

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on December 19, 2011 at 10:48 am

The HAPPYneuron’s team is delighted to announce that a new game is already available on www.happy-neuron.com.

This game, named “Sound check” is an auditive game to train your attention and short-term memory. You just have to sit comfortably in front of your computer and listen to series of instrument sounds, then to determine which sound is the highest or the lowest, the loudest or the softest, the longest or the shortest.

By being focused on every particularities of each sound you hear, playing this game will train your ability to differentiate between sounds. This skill is very helpful to interact with the environment in a more efficient way. For example to detect an alarm at a distance or to recognize someone calling you in a crowd.

Posted in Brain exercises, Brain Fitness Online, Brain games, Brain Training, Cognitive Training, Concentration, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Abnormalities found in the brain of psychopaths

By Sandrine Belier Ph.D., posted on December 6, 2011 at 11:09 am

Impulsive, anti-social, lack of empathy and remorse, or eccentric personality; all these characteristics could describe someone who suffers from psychopathy. This mental disease is underlined by brain impairments and it seems that a recent research is helping to understand this disorder.

Brains of psychopaths seem to show differences in their structure and function compared to healthy brains. This is shown by a study led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and published in The Journal of Neuroscience. A mobile functional magnetic resonance images scanner was brought to a prison where 40 inmates participated in the experimentation; 20 of them had psychopathy and 20 did not. Images showed reduced reliability in the connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, the two brain areas respectively involved in empathy and guilt, and fear and anxiety. In addition, the activity between these two regions were also affected and showed a lack of coordination. According to Joseph Newman, a psychology professor and one of the researchers who worked on the research, the combination of structural and functional abnormalities in this specific brain circuitry is a constant in psychopaths prisoners.

This study provides good elements to help understand the neuronal basis of psychopath behavior and learn how to treat this type of disorder. Moreover, it could facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of inmates.

Sources:  or Newswise

Posted in brain, Brain anatomy and imaging, Brain Research, Cognitive Impairment, Cognitive Neuroscience | Comments (0)

New tip to understand how attention skills work

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on November 10, 2011 at 10:57 am

Stimulate your attention with HAPPYneuronAs surprising as it could be, some of our brain cells have to be deactivated in order to become concentrated in a more efficient way! This observation was made by a team of French neuroscientists who studied different neuron networks. This study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, demonstrated that the default-mode network seems to be permanently active. However, when we need to focus, this network has to stop its current activity in order to leave the attention network work. If this default-network was not deactivated properly, it could create attention deficit and we would be less efficient. For example, it would take us longer to find an object.

Source: www.news-medical.net

Posted in Attention Skills, brain, Brain Research, Cognitive Neuroscience, Concentration, neural connections, Neurons | Comments (0)