A healthy brain and nervous system regulate your body functions so you can have full command over your senses, muscles, and intelligence. Despite the amazing capacities of the human brain and nerves, they are vulnerable to damage just like every other part of our bodies. 
Strokes, concussions, Alzheimers and many other brain problems affect about 50 million Americans. The multitude of brain injuries and illnesses strike different people based on the risk factors of their genetics, age and lifestyle. The severity of impairment and the availability of treatment vary widely.
Knowledge of brain and nerve health has advanced rapidly in recent decades. Many new treatments and medicines are available to treat various disorders. Still, the best thing for your brain is to keep it physically and mentally active while eating nutritious food and getting plenty of social interaction.

Brain and Nervous System

Parts of the Nervous System

Prevent Your Brain From Shrinking, Plus 4 Other Brain Facts

Get the Facts!

Keep Your Brain and Heart Young

You Can Do for Your Brain

At every moment of every day, your brain heavily influences how you think, feel, act and interact with others. By avoiding&nbsp;bad brain habits&nbsp;and adopting as many good brain habits as possible, you can improve your brain function. In turn, you may see improvements in your memory, mood and other areas of your life.

Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. New learning makes new connections in your brain, making you sharper and making your brain more efficient. To keep your brain active, you need to give it a constant stream of new and different challenges. Acquiring new knowledge and new skills encourages brain health.

Physical exercise is like a natural wonder drug for your brain and body. It helps your heart pump life-giving blood into your brain, supplying more oxygen, glucose and other nutrients your brain needs to function at its best.

The journey to being smarter, happier and thinner starts with learning which foods are good and bad for your brain.

Feed Your Brain

Eat Right to Think Right

Diana Meeks

Sigma Nursing

Cerebrospinal fluid flows in and around the hollow spaces of the brain and spinal cord, and between two of the meninges (the thin layers of tissue that cover and protect the brain and spinal cord). Cerebrospinal fluid is made by tissue called the choroid plexus in the ventricles (hollow spaces) in the brain.This answer is based on source information from the National Cancer Institute.

What is cerebrospinal fluid?

The cerebrum is the largest part of the brain. It is divided into two hemispheres, or halves, called the cerebral hemispheres. Areas within the cerebrum control muscle functions and also control speech, thought, emotions, reading, writing, and learning.

What is the cerebrum?

Dr. Jeanne Morrison, PhD

Lateral View of Brain

The cerebellum is a portion of the brain in the back of the head between the cerebrum and the brain stem. The cerebellum controls balance for walking and standing, and other complex motor functions.

What is the cerebellum?

Normally, the healthy brain is enclosed inside of a skull, which serves as a protective shield for the fragile brain. The brain is composed of nerve cells or neurons that form tracts that route all over the brain. The neurons transport vital messages to parts of the brain. The brain then uses this information to execute important functions such as breathing, heart rate, body temperature, body movements, personality and the senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch).

How is a healthy brain different from an injured brain?

Mrs. Marjorie Nolan Cohn

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

The average brain weighs about 3 pounds, and has approximately 100 billion neurons. There are about 100,000 billion miles of blood vessels in the brain. The brain uses about 20 percent of the total oxygen at rest. While awake your brain generates 10 to 23 watts of power- or enough energy to power a light bulb. The brain is 75&nbsp;percent water.

JUMO ADMIN

Jumo Health

The brain is one of the body&#39;s most powerful organs. It helps people talk, move, feel, see, hear and even smell. The brain controls almost everything the body does, including things that people don&rsquo;t even have to think about, like growing and breathing.

What are interesting facts about the human brain?

Specialists work to treat acquired brain injury (ABI) in the following ways:

<ul>
	<li>A psychologist can help with memory problems by helping people keep written or electronic reminders.</li>
	<li>Physiotherapists help with walking and balance problems.</li>
	<li>Occupational therapists help with everyday things that may be difficult, like helping people make their own breakfast or dress themselves. They also help with cognitive problems, like how to be better organized.</li>
	<li>A speech and language therapist helps with problems with speech, reading or writing.</li>
</ul>

How do specialists work to treat acquired brain injury (ABI)?

Acquired brain injury (ABI) can cause behavioral problems such as being really irritable, getting angry easily and having temper outbursts. People with ABI might also do things they shouldn&#39;t or wouldn&#39;t normally do. Sometimes ABI can make people lose interest in things, so they might sit around a lot.

What kinds of behavioral problems does acquired brain injury (ABI) cause?

Daniel R. Spogen, MD

Univ. of Nev. School of Medicine, Family Medicine

A brain hemorrhage, which is bleeding in the brain, can be caused by many different things such as trauma, high blood pressure or malformations of blood vessels. A brain hemorrhage is a life-threatening emergency that requires prompt medical attention.

What causes a brain hemorrhage?

Dr. Robin Miller, MD

Are men and women wired differently?

Men&#39;s and women&#39;s brains are wired differently. Watch this video with Robin Miller, MD, as she explains the different brain activity in men and women. 
 
&nbsp;

Acquired brain injury (ABI) can cause emotional problems such as feeling really fed up and worrying about things too much. ABI can make it hard to control emotions, and remembering when the ABI happened can be upsetting.

What kinds of emotional problems does acquired brain injury (ABI) cause?

Acquired brain injury (ABI) is different for everyone, but there are usually five different kinds of problems it can cause:

<ul>
	<li>cognitive</li>
	<li>behavioral</li>
	<li>emotional</li>
	<li>physical</li>
	<li>language</li>
</ul>

What kinds of problems does acquired brain injury (ABI) cause?

Living with an acquired brain injury (ABI) can be difficult because when people see a person with an ABI there is often nothing to see, which makes it difficult for those around to understand what&#39;s going on. When a person breaks a leg, the plaster cast lets everyone know what&#39;s wrong. It&#39;s different with an ABI. Also it can be hard for people with an ABI to make sense of how they&#39;re feeling or why they&#39;re behaving in a certain way.

Why can living with an acquired brain injury (ABI) be so difficult?

The different lobes in the brain do the following:

<ul>
	<li>The brain&#39;s frontal lobe is like a computer&#39;s desktop. It organizes thoughts, decisions and memory. It also manages emotions, as well as all incoming information, so that the body runs smoothly. This is called cognitive function, and it&#39;s how the brain manages things like thinking, learning and remembering.</li>
	<li>The temporal lobe lets the ears know what they&#39;re listening to, and also helps people speak.</li>
	<li>The parietal lobe tells the body what the skin feels.</li>
	<li>The occipital lobe tells people what their eyes are looking at.</li>
</ul>

What are the different parts of the brain?

The areas of the brain that influence symptoms of anxiety include the amygdala and the hippocampus, both part of the limbic system. The amygdala plays an important role in controlling fears and the hippocampus has a role in controlling memories.

What areas of the brain influence anxiety?

Dr. Mehmet Oz, MD

Neuropsychologist Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of&nbsp;The Female Brain, says that in the womb, every fetus starts with a female brain. "In fetal life, at eight weeks of gestation, the tiny testicles in the male start to pump out huge amounts of testosterone that then marinate the brain, changing it into the male brain," she says. "By the time we're all born, we either have a male brain or a female brain." In a mature woman's brain, Dr. Brizendine says the hippocampus, or memory center, is larger than in the male brain. This area helps people remember emotional event details. "For example, women may remember all kinds of fights they had with their husband that he may not even remember happened at all," she says. The anterior cingulate cortex is also larger in the female brain. Dr. Brizendine calls this part of the brain the "worrywart" center. "This may be one reason that men don't worry as much as women do," she says. This content originally appeared on <a href="http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/gender-questions" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">doctoroz.com</a>

How do women's brains differ from men's?

A woman&rsquo;s high brain activity indicates she is always processing information and multitasking. Women want to talk things out more and tend to review things over and over. They take a circuitous route to get to the point. Their speech is more fluent; they have more to say and use more words to say it. They also zoom in on problems. They tend to remember every detail, both good and bad. They have a greater biological need to have order and to solve problems.&nbsp;&nbsp;

How does a woman’s brain affect the way she functions?

The brain is divided into the right and left hemispheres and is comprised of lobes, regions, neurons, and glands. The left hemisphere is the logical, detail-oriented side of the brain in charge of analyzing, conceiving, and executing plans. The right hemisphere sees the big picture and specializes in detecting and responding to unexpected stimuli and how objects interrelate in space.&nbsp; This content originally appeared on <a href="http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/battle-sexes" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">doctoroz.com</a>

What does the human brain look like?

DHA and Brain Development

More than half the dry weight of a human brain is fat.&nbsp; A primary fat in the developing brain is docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. Watch the animation to learn about DHA and brain development.

Does the brain contain fat?

There are two types of acquired brain injury (ABI). The first is traumatic, which can happen after an accident. The second type is called non-traumatic, which can happen as a result of infections and brain tumors.

What are the different types of acquired brain injury (ABI)?

Physical problems caused by acquired brain injury (ABI) include difficulty with the following:

<ul>
	<li>hearing</li>
	<li>balance</li>
	<li>walking</li>
	<li>seeing</li>
	<li>fatigue</li>
</ul>

What kinds of physical problems does acquired brain injury (ABI) cause?

There isn&#39;t a cure for acquired brain injury (ABI), but there are treatments that can help, and there are lots of different specialists who can help, like doctors, nurses, psychologists and physiotherapists. There are also occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. They all work as a team to make an individual treatment plan depending on what problems the person has.

Is there a cure for acquired brain injury (ABI)?

Columbia Admin

Columbia University Department of Surgery

Brain death means the cessation of all brain function -- void of the ability to breathe, think, or feel. It can occur as a result of a stroke, massive brain trauma from accidents and/or gunshots, overwhelming infections of the brain destroying all neurons, or loss of oxygen to nerve cells. The person is not in a coma; there are no reflexes like blinking or tracking.

What is brain death?

DSCVRY ADMN

Discovery Health

Gray matter exists throughout the living, pulsing brain, but it also contains white matter, black matter and red matter, too.

What color is our brain?

Until relatively recently, scientists believed that a human being's brain growth was complete and the structure was essentially fixed by age 3. Of course, connections between neurons were rewired as children acquired information, but for the most part, the blueprint for the brain was set.With the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), however, scientists have been able to see inside the brain and to learn that the brain apparently undergoes a growth spurt during the teenage years.This may help explain why teens seem to turn into an army of emotional loose cannons.

When does the human brain stop growing?

Indeed, men do have bigger brain women-with the difference between about 100 g,, after accounting for differences in total body weight. On average, the human brain weighs about 2.7 pounds, or 1,200 grams.One study analyzed the SAT scores of 100,000 17-and 18-year-olds to a corresponding IQ score and found that male test-takers scored an average of 3.63 IQ points higher than the female test-takers.The study, however, included about 10,000 more females than males, which may have skewed the results. The study's authors, however, believe that a greater amount of brain tissue, the greater the capability for cognitive processing.

Do men have bigger brains than women?

Brain function can be improved by adopting good brain habits and avoiding bad ones. By keeping your brain mentally fit and eating brain-healthy foods, you can keep your brain functioning at the highest levels.

Brain Health

English

Hi, I'm Dr. Miller. Want the secret to better brain health as you age? Have a sense of purpose. In one study, older adults who had a strong sense of purpose in their lives were less likely to develop Alzheimer disease or cognitive impairment. Why? For one, having purpose means your actions and choices are guided by specific goals and desires. 

For another, it helps you look for meanings in personal event and experiences. Researchers think this can help to positively alter your immune system in a way that helps your heart and blood vessel. Your goals can be career related or personal, like trying to be a better parent, spouse or friend. You can aim to be more present in the moment, whatever you decide, your mind and body will thank you for setting strong personal goals or philosophy. 

Want more ways to live younger? Check out all our health tips right here.

Want the secret to better brain health as you age? Have a sense of purpose. In one study, older adults with a strong sense of purpose were less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, explains Robin Miller, MD.

Find Your Purpose to Strengthen Your Mind

I think one of the things I'd love to see come out of brain research in general, is a better understanding for why the brain is vulnerable. It's not just Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, there were genetic forms of these diseases. They are rare, but they run in families, and they're strictly genetically inherited. 

Now it turns out the genes that are mutated in those forms of the disease are mostly found in every cell of the body. Yet, when they're mutated, the only cells that are affected are a subset of cells in the central nervous system. To a biochemist that makes very little sense. We don't understand what it is about nerve cells, and the brain, and the spinal cord, and places where they're affected in these diseases that makes them uniquely vulnerable to all kind of things. If we could understand that, we'd be a long way closer to figuring out how to prevent as well as treat some of these disorders. I would love to understand what it is about the brain and its cells contained in the brain that makes it so susceptible to things that other parts of the body seems to be able to mostly cope with just fine.

Neurologist Dr. Greg Petsko says scientists have yet to figure out why cells in the brain react differently than cells in other parts of the body. Find out why answering that question is important by watching this video.

What Should the Future of Brain Research Be?

The answer is a lot more than we used to and a lot less than we need to. There are about as many cells in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. That's a colossal number, and the fact that we even know that is progress, but as to how they are connected up, how they function, some of it is almost more grisp for philosophers than it is for scientists. What's the difference between the mind and the brain? 

What is thought, is it a set of electrical impulses or is there something deeper than that? The more you work on the brain and things connected with functions of the brain, and the way it expresses itself at normal living and in disease, the more you realise and you blur the line between science and literature, science and philosophy. I think the answer is, we respect the brain a lot more than we used to, we really understand what an immensely complicated, remarkable organ it is, but we also know we're awfully ignorant. 

Socrates said, the one thing I know for sure is that I know nothing, I feel like that.

The brain is an incredibly complex organ. In this video, neurologist Dr. Greg Petsko discusses what we know—and don't know—about the brain and how it works.

What Do Scientists Know About the Brain?

Hi, I'm Dr. Oz here with a safety tip if your family likes to bike together. Make sure everyone has a good fitting bike helmet, and that includes you too mom and dad. Too many riders of all ages skip the helmet and pay the price. Every year 140, 000 kids under the age 14 end up in a hospital for traumatic brain injury because of a bicycle crash, and 91% of all bicyclist killed in 2009 weren't wearing helmets. 

Here's what you need be sure your family's helmets meet the US Consumer Product Safety Commission standards. Choose brighter colored helmets for better visibility, and look for models with good air vents. They are more comfortable the helmets are, the more likely kids and adults are going to wear them every time they ride. 

They come with thick secure straps that are easy to adjust. The inside padding of most helmets is made from crushable extended polystyrene. This absorbs impact really well especially once it meets the pavement or tree trunk, so if you've had an accident it's usually time for a new helmet. And that's a good investment. 

I'm Dr. Oz. For more ways to protect your family's health, check out all of our smart tips.

Hopping on your bike? Don't forget your bike helmet. In this Health Smarts video, Dr. Oz says helmets save lives and shares tips for what to look for in a good bike helmet.

Protect Your Noggin With a Bike Helmet

Hi, Dr. Oz here with a healthy tip, that's music to your ears. Music is a universal language. It expresses complex emotions and brings people together, but it also has big benefits for your health too. Music boosts your brain function, relieves your stress, and can make you happier. Research shows, infants who play interactive music games with their parents are easier to soothe and more expressive. 

If you have just 1-5 years of music lessons as a kid, and never touch an instrument again, you will still be better at learning and listening throughout your life. Music lights up many parts of the brain that grooves to rhythms and melodies. It stimulates the brain centers that control emotions, motion, and creativity. 

Music also increases your visual and verbal skills, not just your auditory skills. So, encourage your child's inner creativity with music lessons, and it's not too late for you either. Taking up an instrument as an adult can help bite off stress and dementia. I'm Dr. Oz, for more ways to keep your family's health grooving, check out our smart tips, right here.

Did you take music lessons as a kid? You might want to take up that instrument again. In this Health Smarts video, Dr. Oz reveals the powerful benefits of music boost brain function, reduce stress, and even prevent dementia.

Music Builds Brain Power

We know for example from a number of different studies that are coming out. Some of them published, many of them not yet. That your presence, your willing to be within awareness, and be present for what is increases the enzyme that maintains the ends of your chromosomes ends of your chromosomes are called telomeres and the enzymes is called telomeles. 

And we demonstrating as a human species are now demonstrating research studies that when people are present for what it is, actually have higher telomerase, their telemus are maintained and they have more longevity. So what you do with your mind which includes your awareness shapes enzymes that maintain chromosomal tips, shapes the immune system, shakes your cardiovascular system. 

And so certainly stress related conditions will be affected by what you do with the mind. Not all disease by any means is created by stress or even worsened by stress. But stress can worsen certain diseases that aren't even caused by stress, like inflammatory bowel disease may not be cause by stress, but stress makes it worse, some illnesses are caused by stress. 

So whichever it is without laying blame what we can say is finding way to empower your mind to create integration in sight of itself, the body itself and between you and other people, it's always both, will help reduce stress and will bring health into a person's life.

Stress and disease can have a big impact on the mind. In this video, HealthMaker Daniel Siegel, MD, executive director of the Mindsight Institute, discusses the connection between the body and the mind.

How Is the Mind Affected by the Health of the Body?

When you look across all cultures and you ask, what makes for a healthy mind to develop? Not just in western cultures,to everyone. There is a commonality across all cultures and that's the experience whereby a child feels inside of herself that her inner life is filled by another person. 

All relationships. What we're really looking for is that our inner life is experienced, is felt by another human being. How is the brain related to the mind? To our awareness and unawareness? Our subjected experience, feelings, thoughts, images, hopes, dreams, attitudes and intentions, all of that as the world of the mind. 

Is it just brain activity? Well for me this question became vitally important when I was addressing the question, how does a healthy mind developed?So what do we know? We know the brain is composed of neurons up in the skull in support of glial cells. We know these hundred billion neurons in the skull part of the nervous connect extensively to neuro processing through out the body, to hormonal processing, to immune processing, to the cardinal vascular system so we can call this the embodied brain it's never just what is in the skull. 

But even so its physiological process. Okay fine, what's the mind? A psychologist might say, well, it's thoughts and feelings. Of course they can study those and a biologist might say, well, it's the activity of the brain. Well when you see the numbers 100 billion neurons with an average connections of 10, 000 connection to other neurons then you have trillions of connections and a number of firing patterns, on off firing patterns just in the head part of the nerves system. 

It is virtually infinite, it's about ten times ten, a million times. When you add to that number the finding from the study of neuroplasticity how the brain changes in response to experience and the fact that we now know the brain is continually changing its inter connective structure through out the life span, then you realize literally the number of firing patterns that the nervous system is capable of coming up with is infinite because the brain is always changing. 

Now that reality means that we can empower people to use the focus of attention, to change the structure of the brain and in particular from an interpersonal Neurol biology point of view, we say this way, we want to empower poeple to create integrative changes in the brain which will allow for more complex and sophisticated and compassionate ways of being in the world promoting linkages weather it in a relationship or even in your own nervous system promoting integration promotes well being and ultimately, when integration is made visible, its kindness, and compassion and so health and well being and kindness and compassion really are part of the same process of integration. 

The way the brain processes things is profoundly influenced by the context of the relationships in which that individual is existing in that moment. So the mind seen in context is both relational and embodied. It's embodied meaning it's just not in the skull but it's influenced by energy information patterns through out the whole body and it's embedded in a social world that even involves in relationships not just with people you know but with our whole species and even the whole planet..

We know a lot about the brain, but not a lot about how a healthy mind develops. In this video, HealthMaker Daniel Siegel, MD, executive director of the Mindsight Institute, digs into our understanding of the processes that underpin the mind.

How Is the Brain Related to the Mind?

Well, Mindsight is a term that I made up years ago when I dropped out of medical school because a lot of my professors treated the patients that I was learning to take care of as if they had no internal center of subjective experience. They treated them as objects, they even treated us like objects, the students. 

And I dropped out of school not wanting to be socialized in that way and thinking I'd find another profession. When I came back to medical school I had to have a way of defending myself from what continued to be poor role modeling let's just say it that way. And do I invented this word Mindsight meaning how you see the mind. 

The subjective inner life, the core self. What my friend John O'Donahue might call the soul, the essence of a person, the internal narrative center of gravity, what has meaning, feelings, the whole sense of history you have. These professors, many of them sadly were really caring, bright people really smart very respected in their fields, but somehow I came to learn later on were using only a circuit of the brain that saw the physical nature of reality, not the mental side of reality, two very different parts of the brain. 

So for me the word started as a life preserver, so when I went back to school I could say this person doesn't have much mindsight, do not learn from them about how to treat people, learn from them like you would a bad play. You go to see a bad play, you don't just leave necessarily you say, wow! I'm going to appreciate the good place.So mindsight became a term that helped me to see how people see the world.

Mindsight is a term created by HealthMaker Daniel Siegel, MD, executive director of the Mindsight Institute. In this video, he explains that the term means how you see the mind and why its an important concept in medicine.

What Is Mindsight?

The mind can be defined as an embodied and a relational process that is self organizing and emergent. And what it means is that arising from energy information flow is a self organizing process. So self organizing emerging process that's both embodied and relational that regulates the flow of energy and information. 

So, the simplest way of saying it is, one part of the mind can be defined as an embodied in-relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information.

The mind can be defined as an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information, says HealthMaker Daniel Siegel, MD, executive director of the Mindsight Institute.

How Do You Define the Mind?

Sometimes people will hear me say the mind isn't embodied in relational and say, Oh you feel like the mind doesn't need a body. Well, the mind needs a body, well the mind needs a body but also in these relationships. And it's really saying it's both, it's not either or it's both. 

And this is hard for people to grasp. So when you think of an illness like obesity or situations of eating disorders or any kind of medical challenge, absolutely. The way energy and information flows through the nervous system will be shaped by the state of the health of your body absolutely, but it's also the state of health of your relationships. 

It's not one or the other. And In so many ways I think what we need to do for moving towards health is empower people to embrace both. We are profoundly connected to each other.

Your health is determined not only by the flow of energy and information, but also the state of relationships. In this video HealthMaker Daniel Siegel, MD, executive director of the Mindsight Institute, explains what the mind needs to be healthy.

What Does the Mind Need to Thrive?

What I see into the future, of course they'll have better scanners and they won't have the radiations but is a nuclear [xx] so you got a little bit of radiation, they'll have better scanners and we will be routinely looking at the brain function of children. In fact we may actually be doing it inside mother's womb. 

We're also, epigenetics is going to explode and so we're going to be looking at her health even before she is pregnant. That's exciting cause if you really want to prevent Alzheimer's disease, you can't wait till somebody is 70 to start, you need to start even before she's pregnant.

HealthMaker Daniel Amen, MD, psychiatrist and brain imaging expert, expects doctors to begin looking at brain health when they are children and possibly when they are in the womb. In this video, he peeks into the future of brain health.

What Is the Future of Brain Health?

How do you standardly measure these things called attention, concentration and memory and what's the level of reliability of the measurement and for what duration was the testing done or the exercise performed, and in what populations? Most clinical studies are still patient group of 50, a patient group of 25. 

A 100 person study is a large study, so we need aggregated numbers, we've done studies now with 2, 000 patients, with 1500 patients those are the kind of numbers we need and the databases have to provide the profiles the standardize the ability to mine the data and get out the outcome, so as the field emerges scientifically, we get more standardization around those protocols and those measurements, I think we're going to see more reliable replaceable results and that will open the door to really the therapeutics and the FTA's submissions.

The size of study groups, as well as results that can be replicated, are important to study success. HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD talks in this video about how appropriate research can benefit issues related to attention, concentration and memory.

How Can Research Benefit Issues Related to Attention, Concentration and Memory?

I think the scientific community is viewing the brain health area as an emerging area, so there is, you know health skepticism but there is very good research coming now that is showing outcomes and effectiveness. We're still looking at at, what's the right dose for brain health training, how much of these exercise you need to really get some moved needle and then another thing is how long does it last? Is it all exercise dependent? Like physical exercise? Do you have to maintain it? And at what regime do you have to..

Brain health training is emerging on the scientific scene, and still requires a lot of research and analysis to perfect. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD talks about the current opinion of brain health training and how it's evolving.

How Does the Scientific Community View Brain Fitness Games?

Always you have to be concerned about false positives whenever you're doing any type of scientific investigations and statistical analysis, and I think only through careful statistical analysis, and frankly replication of studies across multiple research sites and multiple researchers do you really get to what might be considered the truth of the matter.

Scientists are strict about research studies and how they're conducted to maintain a high standard of valid results. HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD explains why and how this is accomplished in this video.

Is There a Fear of a False Positive with a Brain Test?

I think that if we think about this standard let's think about a normal curve so there's a normal distribution of brains just like there is a normal distribution of IQ rather fast we are more commonly familiar with, so I look at it more in terms of again where I'm I at, relative to people in my gender, where I'm at relative to people in my age and my education level? and then where I'm at in that population helps me to understand, am I an average that population, in my superior certain ways or limited in certain ways in my own age group and gender group.

No two brains are completely alike, and many factors play a role in why they operate differently. HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD describes in this video how characteristics like age, gender and education affect the human brain.

Is There a Standard for Brain Health?

A lot of times folks who are struggling with personality disorder have a dysregulation of social relations and they also have a dysregulation with regard to their control of their own emotions, certain triggering events and things of this nature. In fact one of the things the we do on our exercises is we actually train several things which are important to personal regulation, also social regulation, a simple one being just the recognition of emotions and others through an understanding of facial expression, and non verbal body posture, so you can actually train better recognition and better acuity of those signs, recognition accuracy of those signs, and that can be very, very helpful to somebody who's struggling with personality disorder to understand their social environment more accurately, and also to work on self regulation in terms of their own emotional experience.

People with personality disorders often struggle with social experiences and understanding their emotions. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD describes exercises that can help this population cope.

What Brain Exercises Can Help People with Personality Disorders?

We actually think the target audience is much larger than that. Our target audience is really age 25-75 because in the 25-65 year old range you're thinking about peak performance or how to maybe address an issue that you have in the work place. I'll give you an example that's coming from our own corporate wellness opportunities. 

We've got people who work in cubicle environments now where there is typically noise and distraction of activities going on around you, and maintaining attention if you're working on a spreadsheet or working on a proposal or something of that nature, it's very important in being able to tune out those distractions. 

So people are using exercises is to really promote their ability to, again, sustain attention over a longer period of time, to focus on the important things and not the distracting things. So that's one application for maybe the 25-65 year-old. Certainly between 55 and 65 memory is also important, to augment the memory skills, and beyond that it's to maintain 65-75, is to maintain vitality. 

Everybody wants to enjoy the retirement years as much or more than they did their working years, and so we think brain vitality, brain health is important for those as well.

Brain health is an issue for people of all ages, from those in a busy work environment to seniors concerned about maintaining vitality. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD describes the various target audiences for brain training programs.

What Is the Target Audience for Brain Fitness Games?

Really brain-drain we think can be applicable from ages seven on ups. So we have an international database of normative reference with regard to all the brain train that we do in addition to a number of other brain measures, and that reference group is aged seven to 99. So we have actually had 30 years of studies with various academic partners to look at all the different brain functions. 

So the importance of that is that you're never too young to really begin looking at your brain and to know your brain and train your brain. So if you're a child for example and you're seven or eight years old, and you are having difficulty in school, attending to classroom activities, attending to instructions there may be a learning difference there, there may be an issue with the tension deficit disorder. 

Those things can be picked up rather early and therapeutic regimes and educational regimes apply to remediate that. Similarly you asked about Alzheimer's in that brain training in advanced stages of Alzheimer's is not shown to be effective but it has been shown to be a good therapeutic if you will,educational exercise, for those who are in the 55-75 year old range, we are actually show some decline in brain capability to maintain the capacity it has so it's very much for people who are still working in ages of 55 to 65, very important for them to be doing brain exercises in addition to other types of fitness activities.

Brain training has been studied with people of all ages, issues and occupations. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory  Bayer, PhD talks about each audience and how brain training can help them thrive.

What Age Ranges Are Appropriate for Brain Fitness Games?

So some examples of game, we have one that we featured here at the CS Show, e-think on target, it's a game where you have a bulls eye and a bow and arrow, and you're visually are challenged to hit the target, and what's changing in the landscape is the wind, we have a windsock in the game, and we also have a distance to target. 

So you have to think about calculating for the wind, variance, and you also have to think about the distance, and then you launch the arrow, and the actual bow is moving up and down, and left or right, and you can do that with your mouse, and then you launch you arrow and it scores you based on the accuracy of the air or the play. 

That's just one example of sustained attention because you have to maintain attention on the wind, the distance, and the angle of the bow.

Brain training games to improve things like memory or attention are often actually very fun, as well as effective. HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD describes one example in this video.

What Is an Example of a Brain Training Game?

We think that there are four key domains in the brain. So it's thinking, emotion, feeling and self-regulation, and it's your ability in the thinking area to tend, for example, to concentrate or to use memory functions, and so when we think about the capacity, what's your ability to attend to a certain object under a task and for how long can you attend to that and we can use that information with regards to your working memory, to problem solve or make executive decisions, things of these nature.

The brain has many functions and uses, but training exercises focus on four of the most important areas. HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD talks in this video about what these are and why they're important to brain health.

What Is Brain Capacity?

All of the 28 exercises are based on scientific studies that have been peer reviewed and published in respected journals, so we don't put a game out there if you will, until we've seen it in the literature and published by a major academic health center in peer reference journal. 

So each one of the games has one or more scientific publications, all the references, all those scientific references for the brain exercises or games are available on the website, and you can look those up, go to the hyperlink to the actual article, and read the article, or articles that support the game.

Brain exercises and games are developed by experts dedicated to improving function. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD talks about the process by which these games are vetted.

How Are Brain Training Games Vetted?

The company's been at it for 20 years and we've been in the US for the last four years and we just published the study with 2000 of our users looking at the database and the outcomes associated with it and published that in the journal of technology and innovation, and what it's showing is that if you play on average the games 20 times, you actually start to improve the underlying co-capacity, the brain capacity, the neural circuit that's responsible for, in one instance maybe thinking in terms of executive planning, your ability to plan and anticipate choices and decide which is the best outcome for you.

Extensive research has been done and published about the effectiveness of brain training games and how they affect learning and other abilities. HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD talks in this video about specific findings.

What are Some of the Results of Brain Training Games?

It's really to promote brain health. We define that brain health as, really knowing your brain first and foremost. So we have a neuropsychological assessment on our website. Take it. It goes through a series of standard neuropsychological tests and then we compare your results to others of similar age, gender and education, and give you back a profile of your brain capacities and then recommend certain ones of our brain exercises. 

We have 20 different exercises on our site 'mybrainsolutions.com' and those exercises are rank ordered with regard to what we recommend for you to train in order to get to peak performance.

The goals of one website are to assess individual brain health and provide effective games to help people strengthen brain capacities. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD describes the purpose of Brain Resource in greater detail.

What Is Your Main Mission at Brain Resources?

We are marketing to the corporate wellness market. And it's not atypical for us to enter a major corporation for example, where we will have over 30% of the employees sign up, and engage with our assessments and our brain exercises. When you compare that to other wellness programs, it's sometimes a 3 to 10x improvement over their engagements rates.

One audience in particular is signing up in droves to participate in brain exercises and assessments. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD talks about who this group is made up of, and why they're so interested.

What Audiences Are Engaging the Most in Brain Health Applications?

Just thinking about some of the things that we've learnt about, one, the brain itself. Not too long ago we thought the brain was pretty stable and it wasn't able to be trained, so if you had an insult or an injury, you lost that function. Part of the brain control, now we're finding that frankly the brain is pretty plastic and they can recover through insult or injury and also that they can be mutated through training. 

So you can actually use their plasticity to your advantage.

Traditionally, little information about the brain and its capabilities was confirmable. In this video, HealthMaker Gregory Bayer, PhD explains how recent research has changed the way scientists view the brain and its ability to heal and be trained.

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