Researchers have long suspected that some form of downtime is crucial for memory consolidation – it’s one theory of why we have to sleep. Other research suggests that even time spent on alternative activities can facilitate creating new memories.

If you think about, it makes sense that your brain needs periods of rest, just like other parts of your body. Although all the details haven’t been found, sustained attention to new material (reading a textbook, learning a new skill like tennis, or learning how to edit photographs on the computer) probably evokes change in brain chemistry, and certainly involves changes in how your brain uses energy molecules like glucose.

How long can you go without a recharge. You can probably figure that your for yourself – if you pay attention to the warning signs of fatigue. But if you’re constantly distracted by your smart phone or computer, you may neglect those warning signs.

The solution to keeping your productivity at its maximum may be to routinely change your attentional focus throughout the day. Shifting modalities may be helpful – if you have focuses on writing something, for example, do something visual such as working on a spatial outline of the next steps in a project, or reviewing a diagram. Taking time to let your mind wander may help you restore your concentration. Physical exercise may be the single most helpful thing for you to do if you want to mentally shift gears and help restore your attention.

Article:

New York Times, “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime,” August 24, 2010.

The intervention focused on improving healthy older adults’ ability to perform a task while subjected to audio and video distractors.The key goal was to improve participants’ ability to screen out irrelevant information while paying attention to what was important. The training worked. Participants got better at screening out distracting information. Another group completed an educational intervention; they didn’t show improvements in their ability to ignore distractors.

Functional MRI data were collected on some of the participants. They showed that participants had increased blood flow to an area in the right inferior prefrontal cortex than did control participants.This area of the cortex has been associated with the ability to sustain attention and complete several tasks simultaneously.

The significance of these findings is in showing once again that cognitive training can have a substantial impact on biological parameters in areas of the brain known to be important for cognitive function. Issues remaining include determining the best ways to train, how much and how often to train, and how much training will translate into real-world behaviors.

Reference:

Mozolic JL et al. (2010). A cognitive training intervention increases resting cerebral blood flow in health older adults. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, March 2010, volume 4, article 16. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.016.2010 Link to article here.

This study showed a relation between “strenuous” physical activity as reported by participants and cognition two years later. Strenuous activities walking, bicycling, swimming, gardening, “or other exercise,” so the types of physical activity were diverse. The inclusion of walking and gardening in the definition of physical activity suggests that even moderate activity may be useful in helping older adults avoid cognitive decline. Persons who said they did some form of activity three times a week were classified as “moderately active” while those who were active more frequently were classified in a “high activity” group.

The bottom line: Another study shows that even moderate activity may help prevent cognitive decline as people age.

Reference:

Etgen T et al. (2010). Physical activity and incident cognitive impairment in elderly persons: The INVADE study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 170, 186-193. Free full text is available at the journal website.

The study is part of ongoing research on British civil servants and is usually called Whitehall II.The researchers are following more than 6,000 men and women who were first evaluated in the early 90’s. Eleven years later whether they had died from a heart attack, had a heart attack but survived, or had significant pain from their hearts (angina). People who regularly worked an extra 3 to 4 hours had 1.6 times the risk of having coronary heart disease than were those who did not.

I’ve written in the this blog and said in my talks that more and more evidence shows that the things that are heart healthy are probably also brain healthy. If you think about how many blood vessels are in your brain, it makes sense that the same things that can have a bad effect on the blood vessels of the heart can also hurt the ones in your brain.

I would say the message is clear: maintain a balance between work and the rest of your life. If you do have to work more than may be good for you, be sure to have a clear strategy for stress management. Close your eyes once or twice a day and just breathe. Maybe you can picture yourself on a beach or sitting by a mountain lake. Doing this regularly can have a surprisingly big impact on your stress levels, even if you are working until 10:00 a night.

Reference:

Virtanen M et al. (2010) Overtime work and incidence coronary heart disease: the Whitehall II prospective cohort study. European Heart Journal advance access, published online May 11, 2010.doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehq124

Researchers at Wake Forest University studied whether just four days of training (at just 20 minutes a day) could make a difference in participants’ mood, energy, and cognition. Undergraduate students (average age 22 years) either participated in the meditation sessions or spent a similar amount of time sitting quietly and listening to an audio book.

Participants in the meditation condition showed decreases in anxiety and improvements in several mental processing tasks compared to those in the audio book group. The meditators’ performance on one aspect of a working memory task (how many answers they got correct in a row) suggested that they may have improved their attention.

This is a small and very preliminary study that extends others’ work on meditation and the brain.It shows that even brief meditation practice can make a difference. you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to learn to still your mind and pay better attention. Paying attention may be one of the most important things you can do to improve your brain’s functioning.

Reference:

Zeidan F et al.(in press) Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training. Consciousness and Cognition, doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014