Why Memory and Maths Don't Mix?????????

Can you compute your taxes while simultaneously remembering what you had for lunch yesterday? Neither can I. But doing two things at once isn’t always hard – in fact, it can be as easy as listening to music while driving, or talking or while cooking food.

Maths & Memory

 Stanford neuroscientist  Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD, and his colleagues have shown in a study that recalling your own experiences and performing externally oriented tasks such as arithmetical reasoning are mutually exclusive. That’s because the same brain circuitry that must be activated for the former to proceed must be actively suppressed during the latter activity. 

The researchers showed that groups of nerve cells in a structure called the posterior medial cortex, or PMC, are strongly activated during a recall task such as trying to remember whether you had coffee yesterday, but just as strongly suppressed when you’re engaged in solving a math problem.

The PMC sits roughly where the brain’s two hemispheres meet, making it one tough place to visit, technically speaking. Yet neuroscientists would love to learn much more about the PMC, because it’s known to be a key player in introspective activities such as remembering past experiences, imagining the future, and just plain daydreaming.

Many more research about this field is still on its way, we will keep updating it in our Shirsa blogs.  

- Team Shirsa

Shirsa : A Complete Health package.

Shirsa has your brain covered......

Our comprehensive training program enhances brain health and performance using clinically validated tools designed by neuroscientists.  Through Shirsa users can experience benefits that include:

Shirsa Package

• Clearer and quicker thinking
• Faster problem-solving skills
• Increased alertness and awareness
• Better concentration at work or while driving
• Sharper memory for names, numbers, and directions

No matter who you are, your brain needs care. 

Invest a few minutes today, and you could reap the rewards for years to come.

Your brain will thank you.

- Sukhada Desai

You Have The Power To Improve Your Brain!!!!!!!!

Improve your brain

Scientists once believed that mental ability was fixed after childhood. But over the last few decades, neuroscientists have discovered that adults’ brains are constantly changing – growing new neurons and connections – in a process known as neuroplasticity. Shirsa takes advantage of the brain’s innate neuroplasticity to help shape it into a more effective, powerful organ.







Instead of teaching specific skills that may only be useful in specific areas, Shirsa targets core cognitive processes that underlie performance in many different areas. These processes include memory, attention and other abilities that are critical in the real world.

Experimentally tested & clinically proven

The results of training with Shirsa are measured experimentally in randomized controlled trials. A typical experiment begins by measuring each person’s baseline abilities with tests of brain performance. After several weeks of training, each person is tested again to determine how much the Shirsa training has improved cognitive function.

Human Cognition Project – Uncovering the secrets of the brain

 The Human Cognition Project combines the database of human cognition – Pivot run Shirsa members who have collectively trained  – with a network of scientists and top neuroscience programs in the world – all to better understand human cognition so that we do more to improve brain performance.

Personalized for you

Each brain is unique, and everyone has different goals. We at Shirsa understands this and uses a patent-pending technology to combine the powerful database of the Human Cognition Project with sophisticated adaptive training algorithms to create a training program that’s right for each individual.

Personalized training programs are designed to help you achieve your goals. Additionally, each exercise adapts to your skill level, driving the maximum amount of benefit for each day of training. The more you tell us about your priorities, the more we can customize the training for you.


- Team Shirsa

Why Do We Have Brain?

With all of the complex brain science findings out there, I really enjoyed this TED talk from neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert that goes back to one of the most fundamental questions about brains: 

why do we have them at all? Wolpert argues that the only reason we evolved our brains is because we had to move, not because we had to think or feel. 

This is a fun and thought-provoking talk that may get you thinking about your brain in a markedly different way! 

Incidentally, Wolpert is a compelling and humorous speaker, too

- 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).

Optical illusion

optical illusion

What did you see in this picture?

Interesting secrets of brain!!!

While doing research for Shirsa, i came across to an interesting article from Glamour Magazine’s February 2008 issue talks about 5 secrets of your brain.  The article was based on the content written by neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt, Ph.D., coauthor of Welcome to Your Brain, speaks about in her book.

While I question whether any of them are really a ‘secret’, I do find Secrets #2 and #3 interesting and relevant for those interested in Brain Fitness.

Secret #2: Because of sex hormone’s in a woman’s brain, women tend to be able to recall objects’ locations better than men – such as where you parked your car or left your glasses.  The ability to recall locations relies on what is often referred to as Visual Working Memory.  One of our products, actually focuses on improving visual working memory.

Secret #3: Human brains do have a memory peak in their thirties.  And unfortunately, as we age, our memories do get weaker.  Dr. Aamodt suggests physical exercise as the best way to stay sharp as exercise increases blood flow to the brain.  However, we also have proven that brain fitness exercises like those in The Brain Fitness Program can also keep your memory sharp well into your later years.

- Team Shirsa

Use it or lose it!!

You want your retired life should be like this as shown in the picture? , think again! A recent paper with the title “Mental Retirement” is currently suggesting that early retirement may lead to quicker memory decline.
According to study conducted by  Laura L. Carstensen from Stanford University, suggests that work actually provides an important component of the environment that keeps people functioning optimally.” The analysis of the data which was collected for the study suggested people may have to engage in stimulating activities to preserve memory and reasoning skills after their retirement.

The study which was published by economists Susann Rohwedder and Robert J. Willis in The Journal of Economic Perspectives supports the “use it or lose it” theory, further they also supports the idea that cognitively stimulating activities may delay cognitive aging. 

It was started about 20 years ago by the National Institute on Aging on a sample of 22,000 Americans who were submitted to memory tests every two years. Several European then started their own national studies and are being followed by countries such as Japan and Corea, using similar proceedings in order to obtain comparable data. It was found that “the longer people in a country keep working, the better, as a group and also lives healthy, think healthy!!!

- Team Shirsa

Want to burn calories? Think hard!

Are you aware that  thinking burns calories? I wasn’t knowing about  that till now, and today while doing some research for Shirsa,  I came across a Q&A article in New Scientist on this topic. According to behavorial neuroscientist Ewan McNay, who has conducted research in some particular area,

“A rough calculation suggests that thinking hard about a task for 30 minutes might burn about 1/30th of a gram of fat. Thinking is not likely to turn an intellectual couch potato into a lean machine.”

Some other neuroscientist  ‘Roger Hicks said it in a simpler way :

“It appears that the thinking part of brain function,  consumes a relatively small amount of extra energy and is therefore of little use in weight loss-unless, of course, some of that thinking is aimed at producing exercise.”

My  suggestion is, better sign off your computer and hit the gym. As there’s lots of evidences  shows  that  physical exercise is good for your brain too, instead thinking hard!!!!

-  Team Shirsa