Learn How Your Brain Works? Slow Thinking VS Fast Thinking

I came across this video the other day and couldn't resist sharing it. In under 5 minutes, the video gives you a fun, energetic, and engaging overview of the brain’s two thinking systems: the fast, or instinctual system, and the slow, or purposeful system. 

Learn how these two kinds of thinking systems work together and separately to help you navigate the world- and how they can trick you from time to time.

This video is a summary of a book by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Slow, which you can find at  Flipkart.

- Team Shirsa

Games Are Good For Brain : 10 Reasons To Play!!!

Games for the brain sound like a good idea!!!!

train your brain!!!

But are they really or are they just a waste of time?   we hear a lot about the negative impacts of children playing too many video games, so you must be wondering... why would games for the brain can be good..

Everything in moderation of course, but read on to discover 10 reasons to incorporate brain games into your daily workout routine:

1)       Brain exercise – Brain games challenge our language, math and problem-solving skills in ways that we may not otherwise find in our daily routine.
 
2)   Verbal Skills – Language based brain games help keep your vocabulary strong.  Games for the brain that encourage word finding are particularly beneficial. 
 
 3)     Creativity – Some brain games help stimulate right-brain thinking.  Look for games for the brain that include open-ended problem solving activities.  Think outside the box to solve problem.   At Shirsa, one of our favorites is Color Switch – give it a try.
 
4)     Memory Skills – Research shows that short-term memory skills can be improved by playing games for the brain.  Short-term memory skills can fade without stimulation as we age.  Practice holding new information in your mind and recalling it back.  Play games like Memorica, Memorica swing, Word Bubble to give your memory a workout.
 
 5)    Socialization – Not all games for the brain need to be played on the computer.  Find a friend and get out a deck of cards or the Scrabble board.  Enjoy socializing while you play.
 
6)  Change is good for the brain – Exposing your brain to a variety    of                                     cognitive tasks including online games for the brain can help support neuron growth in the brain.  Novel exercises are key, so change up your crossword puzzle and opt for more mathematical, language, novel games with Shirsa for twice or thrice a week.
 
7)    Hand eye coordination – Studies show that surgeons who played games for the brain a few hours a week had improved accuracy and efficiency during surgery.
 
8)    Stress Relief – Taking a short break to tackle a fun challenge can help you relax and provide a brief distraction from your current frustrations.
 
 
 9)  Pure Fun – Breaking away from your daily work to have fun is both good for your brain and offers you something to look forward to.  Use game time as a reward for completing your current task.
 
10)  Not So costly – There are many good  brain games available online or with a simple deck of cards.  Building a brain-healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to buy costly package.  Work to make small changes each day and enjoy some exercises with Shrisa
 

- Team Shirsa

Is It repetition That Makes Strong Connection??

When playing with a child, signing a song, or reading a book together, you might frequently hear, "Do it again!!" We all have probably heard this request. 

Connections in your brain

This repetition is exactly what the developing brain needs. When experiences are repeated, the brain creates strong pathways of connections based on those experiences. The brain then retains those connections. 

If an experience doesn't happen frequently the brain eliminates connections made from those experiences. As explained it in our earlier blog as well the brain adapts to the environment it is exposed to. The "use it or loose it" process explains how this adaptation takes place. The brain adapts skills needed for survival and success for the world in which it lives. 

As a result, for healthy brain development and helping a child thrive, positive environments and experiences are needed.  Shirsa program for kids includes an activity which helps you to develop new connection among your young ones.

- Team Shirsa

Neurobis - Exercises For Your Brain!!!!!!!!!!!

Probably it happened to you to meet certain person and to not know his/her name, or to tell somebody about a nice movie and to forget the name of your favorite actor that is playing the main role. Many people stuck into such situation. Especially if you are a manager and you work with lost of people. The huge amount of information that we accept every day sometimes create problems with the memory. If you want better memory, and perform better at work you have to keep your brain active and in a good condition.

Neurobics

According to James Robert Watson, PhD neurobics (neuron + aerobics) are stretching exercises to increase oxygen and give your brain’s neurons more life by experiencing or participating in some new activity, place, or event. When you stretch your mind, it never returns to its previous shape. Research indicates that taxing the brain (making it ‘sweat’) with unfamiliar exercises can improve learning ability, memory, and problem solving.

Neurobic exercises differ from other brain exercises like logical puzzles, crosswords, sudoku, scrabble, etc.Why? Because they use human senses in a new way in order to stimulate the brain to create new associations between different types of information.

Neurobic can be applied by adults as well as children. It is used on children to increase their concentration in order they easily to gain new knowledge. Adults use it to keep their brain fit, because it you they don’t the brain functions to memorize and to solve problems will deteriorate.

- Team Shirsa

Did You had Your Breakfast Today???

Breakfast a important meal

Skipping breakfast before a day of school significantly reduced students' speed and accuracy on cognitive and memory tests compared with those who ate breakfast, according to a study recently published online in the journal Appetite.

Researchers compared the performance of 1,386 students from 32 schools throughout the U.K. on several Internet-based tests of attention, memory and reaction time. 

Compared with those who ate breakfast, students who skipped the morning meal had 7% slower power of attention, a measure of their ability to focus and avoid distraction. They also detected 7% fewer targets on target-detection tasks and correctly identified 9% fewer pictures on a picture-recognition test at a 9% slower speed than students who ate breakfast. Variability in response time, an indication of focusing consistency, was 10% more erratic in those who missed breakfast. Girls without breakfast were significantly more disrupted in their ability to focus than boys who didn't have breakfast, results showed.

Breakfast like a king

Test-score differences between the two groups were larger in those tested after 11 a.m. than those tested earlier in the morning. 

This theory is not only for kids but  true for all ages.

So It is always said.........

- Team Shirsa

The crucial role of play in childhood - worth watching the video

What has happened to children's play?

Today, childrens are more in school or in classes rather then playing.

let them play for their better future, physical and cognitive development.



- Team Shirsa

It's Never Too Early To Read Or Talk To Your Baby!!

So getting ready to have a baby. It must be a most exciting and joyous experience that will forever change your life for the better, people like me can't imagine without experiencing it. 

The purpose of this blog is to raise a question -   "what you do prior to the birth that can have significant implications on the baby’s life? 

Cognitive development is not only possible, but it is crucial as a fetus. So what can you do to enhance their overall brain development?

While some may view talking to the baby prior to the birth as foolish, it can have outstanding affects on the baby. The question many have is when can the fetus begin to hear sounds and how should the mother and father talk to the incoming baby.

Fetuses actually hear sounds quite similar to the way we hear a next-door stereo. The key thing to remember is that they are capable of hearing voices that are filtered through tissues, bones and fluid. By this they can recognize mother’s voice and be calmed by it. 

So..... Keep On Doing Lot Of Mistakes!!!!

Learning From Mistakes

Recently i came across the excellent blog The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer offers his take on a couple of recent studies about how a person’s reaction to mistakes, and subsequent feedback about the mistakes, affect the learning process. The findings might interest you, especially if you are a parent with school-aged children.

The researchers found that the reaction to the mistakes is what makes the difference. Using EEG technology to measure brain waves, they identified two opposing reactions to mistakes.

They noted that people who showed brain activity that meant they were paying attention to the mistake were more likely to learn from it and correct it in the future, whereas those who ignored the mistake and moved on were more likely to continue making mistakes.

Another researcher had incorporated the seminal mindset research ofCarol Dweck, which divides people into two groups:

those who believe your intelligence level is innate and can’t be greatly changed (“fixed mindset”), and those who believe that with time and energy, people can get better at almost anything (“growth mindset”). As you might expect, people with a fixed mindset were less likely to learn from mistakes (since they viewed them as failure), while people with a growth mindset viewed mistakes as part of the learning process.

In earlier studies that dovetail nicely with these findings, Dweck found that after students completed a task, she could manipulate their future choices–in telling ways–simply by varying the type of praise she gave them. 

Telling students that they were really smart had a markedly different effect than telling students they must have worked hard on the task. Indeed, those who were told they were smart chose easier subsequent tests, while those praised for effort chose more challenging tests. Dweck surmised that the kids who were told they were smart didn’t want to take the risk of making a mistake, lest they be seen as not so smart. Ironically, telling a student he or she was “smart” inhibited the learning process.

- Team Shirsa

"Puzzles for you brain!"

Children love to play. It’s how they learn.  Creating block towers teaches spatial reasoning and motor skills.  Playing Crazy Eights and Monopoly help develop logical reasoning abilities.  Adults need to play too but don’t seem to get enough of it.  Our brains are stimulated by the unique challenges and problems that games and brain teasers offer.

Research is finally demonstrating that our brains do better in the long term if they are exposed to novel activities including brain teasers, brain games and logic puzzles.  Publishers seem to get that point too, that it’s always a good time for a puzzle.

So what are the benefits of brain teasers? 

•    Boosts brain activity
•    Provides emotional satisfaction and sense of accomplishment
•    Enhances memory and processing speed
•    Helps slow the decline and reduce the risk for dementia
•    Improves concentration
•    Reduces boredom

Remember that variety is important to maximize the benefit you get from working logic puzzles. Just don't focus on crosswords or Sudoku.  Instead change up your brain workout by trying a variety of brain teasers.  Even if you can’t solve a puzzle your brain will still receive an excellent and much-needed workout.

- Team Shirsa

Do you have a photographic memory?

Eidetic imagery, more commonly known as  photographic memory, has long been the subject of curiosity and debate among us and especially for scientist.

People with photographic memories explain that they can still “see” a picture even after it is removed from sight. They often use present tense when answering questions about the missing picture and can recall in extraordinary detail what it contained because they are actually still viewing the picture on a blank canvas in their mind.

The majority of people identified as possessing a photographic memory are children. Scientists estimate the ability occurs in 2 percent to 10 percent of young children. Boys and girls are equally likely to have a photographic memory. With very few exceptions, however, researchers have shown that almost no adults seem to have the ability to form photographic images.

So why don’t adults demonstrate photographic memory? Experts believe that talking (either out loud or in your mind) while viewing an original image interferes with the mind’s ability to photograph the image. Because adults are much more likely to try and encode the picture, both visually and verbally the image is not stored as a photographic image.

Stephen Wiltshire is one of a rare few documented adults with photographic memory capabilities.  He is capable of drawing the entire skyline of a city after a helicopter ride. Stephen is autistic and communicates through his art. 

So friends tell me, whether you have photoggraphic memory?  

- Team Shirsa

Why You Need It So Badly - Sleep!!!

I came across recent studies and articles about the importance of sleep, so I thought it is very good topic to share with you guys! After writing this, I think I’ll definitely be getting a good night’s sleep tonight–if I can stop worrying about all the sleep I’ve lost to date!

Sleep affects your ability to do a good job at work. A study published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that people with insomnia or insufficient sleep showed worse productivity and performance on the job. Lack of sleep can have serious consequences on and off the job

A study published in JAMA found that surgeons who worked a night shift and got less than 6 hours of sleep had more complications in the surgeries they performed, compared to others. Another study showed that sleep-deprived medical residents were more likely to crash their cars and make more mistakes on the job.

Poor sleep in kids and teens leads to poor performance in school. studies have shown that kids and teens who get up during the night or don’t get enough sleep do worse in school than their sleep-sound schoolmates. They have problems paying attention and equals more depression and suicidal thoughts in teens. A study on parent-mandated bedtimes found that adolescents who went to bed at 10 PM had significantly lower rates of depression and suicidal thoughts versus those who went to bed at midnight.

Sleep-deprived people don’t realize how impaired they are. Harvard sleep expert Charles Czeisler has been quoted as saying “Like a drunk, a person who is sleep deprived has no idea how functionally impaired he or she truly is. Most of us have forgotten what it really feels like to be awake.”

Lack of sleep combined with alcohol is far more dangerous than you think. Says Cornell expert James Maas, “One drink on six hours of sleep, in terms of your ability to drive a car, is the equivalent of six drinks on eight hours a sleep.

Poor sleep can make you fat and also leads to higher blood pressure. People who sleep less are hungrier and consume more calories–perhaps because they’re looking for food to perk them up. This leads to hormonal changes that make you crave more carbohydrates and make you feel less like exercising.

Beauty and  sleep is not a myth. people were considered to be less attractive and less healthy after sleep deprivation than when they had gotten a full night’s sleep. Lack of sleep can’t be repaired in just one night. Many people believe that one good night’s sleep is sufficient to make up for previous poor sleep, but research has found that chronic sleep loss has residual negative effects, particularly when sleep is lost during the Circadian “night.”

Lack of sleep can literally kill you. People who sleep fewer than six hours a night are 12% more likely to die prematurely than people who sleep between six and eight hours. Another study showed that an average of 7 hours a night for older women was correlated with the best chance of longevity.

- Team Shirsa

Good news for Music lovers!!!

New research published in Neuropsychology shows that kids who take music lessons get a brain boost that lasts even into old age.

Researchers looked at a group of older adults between ages 60 and 83, and compared them based on how much experience they had playing music. Those who knew music or had practiced an instrument performed better on a variety of cognitive tests.
The head researcher Dr. Brenda Hanna-Pladdy mentioned that because music practice can be “a challenging cognitive exercise” it may help in “making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging.” She added, “Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older.”
So thanks  mom-dad,  now I know that, all that torturous practice might help me keep my marbles as I age!

- Team Shirsa

Kids & Meditation?

Using meditation with children?

That's something which never never crossed my mind, but an article in the most recent issue of Scientific American Mind revealed that there are classrooms in Canada and the U.S. that have incorporated it into their curriculum. 

A program called Mindup, conceived by Goldie Hawn, has had great success in Vancouver area elementary schools and is catching on in other countries as well.

One of the main benefits that educators, administrators and researchers are finding is that this type of curriculum can help strengthen executive control function in children. Executive function includes cognitive skills like working memory, reasoning, self-regulation and attention, this all are crucial for classroom teaching.

Many teachers say that self-regulation and attention are two of the biggest areas in which young students struggle. Meditative style exercises can help them gain awareness of the conflict that arises in them when many things are competing for their attention. The ability to monitor this conflict and prioritize where their attention should go “has been linked to better math achievement, higher IQ and less antisocial behavior, it can also reduce anxiety levels in children.

 All children may not be able to sit still for very long, but even a few minutes can be beneficial.  Exercises can be as simple as paying attention to your breath or guided imagery. Children can visualize the waves on the ocean or a lake or balloons floating up that lift thoughts connected to negative feelings away. The exercises typically last 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

Parents can also use these techniques and exercise at home as well. If your child struggles with frustration, or anxiety or, paying attention and sleep related difficulties. 

- Team Shirsa

KIDS - TV, Video Games, and Attention:

A recent study in the journal Pediatrics extended the concern over the impact of the amount of time kids spend on video games in addition to television. Many studies had shown a link between time spent on television and difficulty focusing and paying attention in class.  This newer study tracked over 1,300 kids in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades for over a year and extended the association between time spent not just on television but also on video games and difficulty paying attention.  


The report’s conclusion is:
“Viewing television and playing video games each are associated with increased subsequent attention problems in childhood. It seems that a similar association among television, video games, and attention problems exists in late adolescence and early adulthood.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendation is that children spend no more than 2 hours per day with television and video games combined.  The study found that the median exposure of these children was almost four hours and that there was as much of an impact on reported attention problems for television viewing as for video game playing.  

And the report went on to say:

“Those who exceeded the AAP-recommended amount of daily television and video game exposure were more likely to be above average in attention problems …”
Why might this be the case?  The brain becomes trained to expect the level of engagement and activity based on exposure to its environment.  Spending significant amounts of time interacting with content that moves at a pace faster than what a child would have in the classroom will make the class experience less interesting.

- Team Shirsa