Understanding the importance of social interaction in maintaining high-level brain function cannot be overstated. Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment.

“First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­ity and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of social con­nect­ed­ness to late-life cog­ni­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and phys­i­cal health. The inte­gra­tion of these find­ings with our under­stand­ing of indi­vid­u­als’ devel­op­men­tal needs through­out life under­scores the impor­tance of the “social brain.” The pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC) is par­tic­u­larly inte­gral to nav­i­gat­ing com­plex social behav­iors and hier­ar­chies over the life course.”

To con­tinue read­ing this arti­cle by Michelle C. Carl­son, Ph.D., pub­lished in Cere­brum, please click Here.

It has been long proven that music or the application of certain frequencies has a profound affect on the brain when targeted to specific areas. We’ve been using that premise for over 30-years in our personal development programs. Here is a particularly well-written article on the effects of music in the treament of alzheimers. Good reading!

By: Dr. Pascale Michelon

“Music can soothe and trig­ger mem­o­ries. It is as such that music is most often used with Alzheimer’s patients. A new study sug­gests that music may also be used as a booster for learn­ing new things, an abil­ity very impaired in those with Alzheimer’s.

Indi­vid­u­als with Alzheimer’s and matched con­trols were pre­sented with unfa­mil­iar songs lyrics: half of the lyrics were sung and half were merely spo­ken. Par­tic­i­pants were then pre­sented with the lyrics they had heard as well as with new ones, and asked whether they rec­og­nized any lyrics.
Alzheimer’s patients’ mem­ory was much bet­ter for sung lyrics than for spo­ken ones. There was no dif­fer­ence between the two types of lyrics for the healthy older adults.
Why do peo­ple with Alzheimer’s seem to ben­e­fit from musi­cal stim­uli? The authors of the study sug­gest that this is because music is processed more broadly in the brain than non-musical infor­ma­tion. More­over some areas in this net­work are only slowly affected by the disease:

Music pro­cess­ing encom­passes a com­plex neural net­work that recruits from all areas of the brain, includ­ing sub­cor­ti­cal areas such as the basal gan­glia […] and cor­ti­cal areas such as the medial pre­frontal cor­tex  and orbitofrontal cor­tex that are affected at a slower rate in AD com­pared to the areas of the brain typ­i­cally asso­ci­ated with memory.

It is also pos­si­ble that musi­cal infor­ma­tion increases arousal and thus sharp­ens atten­tion, which would ben­e­fit Alzheimer’s patients who have trou­ble focusing.
These results may have many prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions: Musi­cal mnemon­ics may be used by care­givers to teach cru­cial new infor­ma­tion to peo­ple suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer’s, such as a phone num­ber or when to take a pill. Using known songs to present the infor­ma­tion may help indi­vid­u­als reg­is­ter it more eas­ily, which is very encour­ag­ing and easy to do.”

Related posts on music and the brain:

View the original article here

The following article is a great piece about ways to manage your anger. It tells you ways to cope when extremely angry, such as: Taking a time out, put yourself in the other person’s shoes, and look through your beliefs through a different lens, not the angry lens you were taught to look through. This article gives great advice and instruction on stress coping skills, that could be very useful.

Read the full article here:
Anger Management – How to Make the Mind Work Faster Than the Tongue

Seems like a silly question, right? The role of anger is important in the ability to recognize contrast and deal with life. So should our goal be to reduce or eliminate the anger response? See what author Lori Wiest has to say…

“All of us get angry, including Buddhists. Anger is a harmful emotion which can lead to violence, hurt feelings, and damaged relationships.Buddha taught some practical ways to deal with anger: admitting you are angry, realizing that anger arises in the mind, realizing that anger is self-indulgent, exercising patience, not feeding anger, and exercising compassion.”

Eliminate Fear, Guilt and Worry with BrainStream

It seems obvious that fear creates the urge to “move away from” certain circumstances or possibilities. But, is fear a close relative of desire? Desire being a strong urge to move toward something in the future.

There’s a great lesson to be learned in today’s article.

“Desire and fear are emotions predicated upon the future. Desire makes you expect happiness once your need is met, and fear makes you expect unhappiness or pain when something bad happens. However – the expected emotions (happiness/unhappiness or joy/pain) from desire and fear are always more severe than they would be in reality.”

REST THE REST OF THIS IMPORTANT ARTICLE HERE

You can also read more about how to dissolve fear, guilt and worry at BrainStreamCD.com

There is no doubt that anyone who has who has tried and failed to achieve that special goal in life has taken a hit to their self-esteem. The key to success is to be able to “rise from the ashes” and separate the event from our ego-driven need to find value outside of ourselves.

Here’s a great article that explains just how important a resilient self-esteem is!

Read the entire article here…

Also check out BrainStorm Self-Esteem for more information on how you can strengthen your sense of self-worth!

What do you think is your greatest challenge to your own self-esteem? Please leave your comments below!

As the end of the year approaches, it’s always a great idea to inventory the personal assets (talent, time & energy) that you’ll have to help you reach your next level of personal development.

Here’s a very good article by Arto Joensuu that will make that task a snap!

“Ok. You’ve run into this blog post. You’re busy. There’s a deadline for your report around the corner and you’re rushing along to get through your day. Stop. Just stop for 5 minutes and read through this post. Why? Because it might (just barely) fundamentally shift your outlook on life as well as how you plan for the future.”

Read the rest of the article here…

What’s your favorite way of preparing for the coming year? Let us know in the comments section below.