Exercise is as good for your brain as it is for your body, and researchers are just beginning to discover why
Opinion | There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate
Just as we changed our thinking around physical fitness, we need to change our attitude toward cognitive fitness.
AI Use at Work Is Causing “Brain Fry,” Researchers Find, Especially Among High Performers
The increased speed and multitasking that AI allows at work is leading to many workers experiencing "brain fry," a new study found.
What the Studies Say About How AI Affects Your Brain: A (Very Big) Compilation
The entire literature clearly points to a single surprising finding
The Cognitive Debt of Digging Through Preprints
Your Brain on MIT Media Lab
Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime
Research on naps, meditation, nature walks and the habits of exceptional artists and athletes reveals how mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories and encourage creativity
Dance training is superior to repetitive physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity in the elderly
Animal research indicates that a combination of physical activity and sensory enrichment has the largest and the only sustaining effect on adult neuroplasticity. Dancing has been suggested as a human homologue to this combined intervention as it poses demands on both physical and cognitive functions. For the present exploratory study, we designed an especially challenging dance program in which our elderly participants constantly had to learn novel and increasingly difficult choreographies. This six-month-long program was compared to conventional fitness training matched for intensity. An extensive pre/post-assessment was performed on the 38 participants (63–80 y), covering general cognition, attention, memory, postural and cardio-respiratory performance, neurotrophic factors and–most crucially–structural MRI using an exploratory analysis. For analysis of MRI data, a new method of voxel-based morphometry (VBM) designed specifically for pairwise longitudinal group comparisons was employed. Both interventions increased physical fitness to the same extent. Pronounced differences were seen in the effects on brain volumes: Dancing compared to conventional fitness activity led to larger volume increases in more brain areas, including the cingulate cortex, insula, corpus callosum and sensorimotor cortex. Only dancing was associated with an increase in plasma BDNF levels. Regarding cognition, both groups improved in attention and spatial memory, but no significant group differences emerged. The latter finding may indicate that cognitive benefits may develop later and after structural brain changes have taken place. The present results recommend our challenging dance program as an effective measure to counteract detrimental effects of aging on the brain.
This Is Your Brain on Podcasts (Published 2016)
Different people’s brains absorb a compelling story in the roughly the same complicated pattern, using many parts of the brain, researchers found.
A running list of ATproto ideas - Tynan's Leaflets
Updated when the brain has more
AI overuse could spark "brain fry," new research finds
The mental strain associated with AI carries "significant costs," researchers find.
The brain in the machine: How AI could help explain how we think | IBM
Scientists are using large AI models to predict patterns of brain activity at scale, a development that researchers say is pushing neuroscience toward a new kind of digital imaging.
Why you shouldn’t exercise to lose weight, explained with 60+ studies
Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money, health and everything else that matters. Our goal is to ensure that everyone, regardless of income or status, can access accurate information that empowers them.
There's no point at which turning your brain off will work
Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong--and How to Fix It
Two years in, a $1-billion-plus effort to simulate the human brain is in disarray. Was it poor management, or is something fundamentally wrong with Big Science?
Experts warn AI is making your brain work less
Generative AI tools have become hugely popular but some experts worry about the effect they have on the brain.
