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

Brain Facts That Every One Should Know!!!!!

Brain facts

The brain is perhaps the most fascinating organ in the human body. It controls everything from breathing to emotions to learning. If you work with children, here are some facts that you might find helpful, from how the brain affects learning to facts about memory to interesting facts about the brain that you can share with your students.

Brain Development and Learning

Read on to learn interesting facts about how the brain develops, what can affect that development, and how learning is impacted.

1. Read aloud. Parents and teachers who read aloud and talk often to young children are promoting brain development.
2. Bilingual brains. Children who learn two languages before the age of five have a different brain structure than children who learn only one language.
3. Child abuse and the brain. Studies have shown that child abuse can change the way the brain develops and can negatively affect learning.
4. New neurons. Throughout life, mental activity promotes the production of new neurons in the brain.
5. Handedness. Those who are left-handed or ambidextrous have a corpus collosum that is about 11% larger than those who are right-handed.
6. Brain growth. The human brain continues to grow until about age 18.
7. Stimulating environment. If a child is in a stimulating environment, she has a 25% greater ability to learn . Conversely, if she is in an environment with low stimulation, she has 25% less ability to learn.
8. Creative vs. methodical. Scientists have shown that creative thinkers’ brains work in different ways from the brains of those who think more methodically.
9. Food and intelligence. One study looked at students in New York and showed that those who ate lunches that did not include artificial flavors, preservatives, and dyes did 14% better on IQ tests than the students who ate lunches with these additives
10. Boredom. Humans have an innate curiosity, but when they have a lack of stimulation, boredom sets in.
11. Learning new things. A study shows that when people are learning new things, their brains change very quickly. Those learning to juggle showed change in the brain in as little as seven days.
12. Music. Children who take music lessons show a considerable increase in the ability to learn.
13. Reading faces. The area of the brain called the amygdala is responsible for the ability to read someone’s face for clues to how they are feeling.

- 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

Want To Get Rid of Memories Of Your Embarrassing Moments??

E arsing Memories

If you want to forget or wants to get rid of  any embarrassing actions which you may have done, than you're in luck: a new discovery reveals two ways that our minds can erase memories.

According to the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge, the brain erases traumatic and otherwise undesirable memories via two opposite mechanisms. The findings are published in the October 17 copy of Neuron.

In one method researchers have termed "direct suppression," the brain inhibits the processing of the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical for the formation of conscious memories. This interference prevents the memory from ever being recorded in the first place.

The other method, called "thought substitution," doesn't halt the memory from being recorded; instead, the brain alters its own wiring to replace the memory with something else.

"This study is the first demonstration of two distinct mechanisms that cause such forgetting: one by shutting down the remembering system, and the other by facilitating the remembering system to occupy awareness with a substitute memory," said Roland Benoit, the study's lead author, in a press release.

Researchers conducted the study with 36 volunteers instructed to remember and forget specific pairings of words. According to Business Insider, half the individuals were instructed to replace one word with a different word, while the other half were instructed to forget the word entirely. Researchers watched participants' brain activity while they repeatedly committed words to memory, then attempted to forget them.

The findings could have implications for a whole host of populations including veterans suffering from PTSD, or victims of traumatic crime.

- Team Shirsa

Did you know that your brain has no pain? - Facts About Brain

Brain Facts

This is a fact that your brain doesn't have nerves to register pain within itself. It is obvious that there is no need to describe how important your brain is to your survival.

However what's not so clear is the many interesting facts there are about the brain. I have put together a list of the most fascinating facts that are associated with the brain.

Interesting Brain Facts

1. Every minute about 750ml of blood Pumps through your brain.

2. Your brain makes up about 2% of your body weight. 
3. A human brain is about 75% water. 
4. A human brain is made up of 100 billion neurons.
5. A human brain weighs about 1350g. 
6. Your brain stops growing at 18 years old. 
7. The Brain is pink because of the blood that flows through it.

8. The brain has 2 sides. The left side controls the right side of your body, while the right side controls the left side of your body.
9. A newborn baby's brain grows about 3 times in their first year. 
10. While you are awake your brain generates about 25 watts of power. 

- Team Shirsa

What Are Night People And Morning People??

Day & night

I recently saw a research finding from 2009 that was pretty interesting. Canadian scientists studied people who self-identified as “morning people” or “night people” and found striking differences in brain activity patterns between the two groups. They noticed that neuronal excitability started high and decreased throughout the day for morning people, and started low and increased for night people.

They also measured spinal cord response, which they found increased throughout the day in everyone. They posited that this might mean that night people are able to increase strength to its maximum potential better than morning people, because their brain and spinal cord activity are in sync, whereas the brain and spinal cord activity of morning people are off-kilter with one going up while the other goes down.

The researchers are hoping these findings could help find ways to help shift workers or others who have to adjust their schedules contrary to their natural inclinations. You can learn more about the study here.

- Team Shirsa

10 Ways To Rewire your Brain!!

Form many years we have a belief  that the human brain remained unchanging once it hit adulthood.

Healthy Habits

But in the early 1980s, neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, now a professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of California San Francisco, showed through his research that the brain is plastic. In other words, the brain can alter itself depending on environmental input.

Below is Dr. Merzenich's list of everyday things you can do to keep your brain fit.

Exercise Your Peripheral Vision

Actively challenging your peripheral vision improves brain performance and helps you navigate the world safely.

Recent studies shows that drivers stay on the road longer and have fewer accidents after actively training their useful field of view.

Memorize A Song

Developing better habits of careful listening will help your ability to understand, think and remember, you release brain chemicals like the neurotransmitter acetylcholine that enable plasticity and vivifies memory.

Reconstructing the song requires close attentional focus and an active memory.

Learn To Play A New Instrument
Playing an instrument helps you exercise many interrelated dimensions of brain function, including listening, control of refined movements and translation of written notes (sight) to music (movement and sound).

Do you hate it when people complain?

Listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain in multiple ways. The brain works more like a muscle than we thought, So if you're pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you're more likely to behave that way as well.

Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity, including viewing such material on TV actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. "That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving," he says. "Basically, it turns your brain to mush."

But if you're running a company, don't you need to hear about anything that may have gone wrong? "There's a big difference between bringing your attention to something that's awry and a complaint.
Typically, people who are complaining don't want a solution; they just want you to join in the indignity of the whole thing. You can almost hear brains clink when six people get together and start saying, 'Isn't it terrible?' This will damage your brain even if you're just passively listening. And if you try to change their behavior, you'll become the target of the complaint."

So, how do you defend yourself and your brain from negativity? 

Get some distance

You should look at complaining the same way, he says. "The approach I've always taken with complaining is to think of it as the same as passive smoking." Your brain will thank you if you get yourself away from the complainer, if you can.

Ask the complainer to fix the problem

Try to get the person who's complaining to take responsibility for a solution.  Respond to a complaint with, 'What are you going to do about it?'" Many complainers walk away huffily at that point.


Imagine Your Favorite Spot!

A strategy is to mentally retreat to your favorite holiday spot, someplace you'd go if you could wave a magic wand. take yourself to your private retreat while people were ranting and raving and keep smiling at them and nod in all the right places and meanwhile take a peaceful walk on your "private beach."

- Team Shirsa