Giving Your Brain a Boost

According to an article in the Big News Network, this endless year of campaigning could have a silver lining. Election-year politics could give your brain a boost: "the fever pitch of the season can," says Neuro-pharmacologist John D. Roache of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio inspire us in many ways. "The brain has hard-wired systems that control attention and learning in processes that motivate us, including hunger, sex drive and social involvement." An interest in politics can perhaps stimulate these systems in the brain!

We should be so lucky!

"As we listen to the candidates and think about what is being said, the brain processes the information, which grows neural connections and increases the neurochemical signaling that is associated with learning and memory," says Roache. Actively participating in the election campaigns may be even more beneficial than merely following them.

"If we become emotionally engaged and even become politically active by going to a rally or actively campaigning for a candidate, then the greater levels of emotion or commitment further enhance the brain processes and connect them all the more with the emotion and physical activity involved," he said. ...Here's hoping!

Processing New Info at any Age

Matthew Blakeslee writing for Discover says, "If old dogs haven’t been able to learn new tricks, maybe that’s because no one has known how to teach them properly. Until quite recently orthodox neuroscience held that only the brains of young children are resilient, malleable, and morphable—in a word, plastic."

"This neuroplasticity, as it is called, seems to fade steadily as the brain congeals into its fixed adult configuration. Infants can sustain massive brain damage, up to the loss of an entire cerebral hemisphere, and still develop into nearly normal adults; any adult who loses half the brain, by contrast, is a goner. Adults can’t learn to speak new languages without an accent, can’t take up piano in their fifties then go on to play Carnegie Hall, and often suffer strokes that lead to permanent paralysis or cognitive deficiencies. The mature brain, scientists concluded, can only decline."

"It turns out this theory is not just wrong, it is spectacularly wrong. Two new books, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Ballantine Books, $24.95) by science journalist Sharon Begley and The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psychiatrist Norman Doidge, offer masterfully guided tours through the burgeoning field of neuroplasticity research. Each has its own style and emphasis; both are excellent.".

The High Cost of Noise

“The high noise of modern life may affect speech and language development in the very young, according to a study that found the auditory parts of the brains of young mice are slower to organize properly in the presence of continuous sounds. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, reared a group of rats in an environment of continuous background noise and found that their brain circuits that receive and interpret sound did not develop at the same rate as animals that were raised in a quieter environment.

Edward F. Chang and Michael Merzenich, co-authors of the study appearing in the journal Science, said that the continuous noise delayed the organization of auditory neurons during a critical two- to three-week period after the rat pups were born. Although the rat is not a perfect model for what happens in humans, the authors note, the study does suggest that high levels of noise might possibly affect some language learning in infants.

"These findings suggest that environmental noise, which is commonly present in contemporary child-rearing environments, can potentially contribute to auditory and language-related development delays," the authors write in Science. The authors noted that although the brain development was delayed in rats exposed to the noise, “their brains did eventually mature normally.”

Sexy Images and Decision-making

Valerie Iancovich, writing for the DiscoveryChannel in Canada says “It's not shocking news that a bikini-clad woman will affect many men's judgment. But now, a recent study suggests that a man with high testosterone levels is more easily-influenced by a scantly-clad lady than guys with lower levels of the hormone.”

“Once the men with high testosterone were exposed to the photos of the women, they were more willing to settle for a poorer deal. As a matter of fact, just touching a bra prior to playing the game seemed to squander the resolve of the testosterone-heavy men.”

So, macho guys, be careful what type of information (photos, graphics) you’re exposed to. It might render your contort your decision-making capacity.