Image by Getty Images via @daylife Are good looking people also smarter? Would this be prove how fair the world is if on average the best looking people are also smarter? According to this one study that followed 17,419 from childhood through young adulthood did find this exact relationship: ‘Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated withgeneral…
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Want to double your brain’s processing ability?
by Ward Plunet • • 1 Comment
Image via Wikipedia It is simple: become an expert at something. Okay, I know it sounds like a joke, or like I was trying to sell you something, but new neuroscience research indicates that expert chess players (grand masters) literally double their processing power by using both sides of their brain to solve a problem,…
bioinformatics, information, Uncategorized
I am my connectome – aren’t I?
by Ward Plunet • • 1 Comment
The connectome simply put is the wiring diagram of your brain. But this is not so simple to obtain due the incredible complexity of the human brain. I wrote previously in the last couple weeks of new research that indicates that one human brain has more ‘switches’ than all the computers in the world. Work…
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Born to be empathetic / sympathetic: mirror neurons – what is next?
by Ward Plunet • • 1 Comment
During this holiday season we tend to be even more empathetic and compassionate than usual, so I think taking a deeper look at empathy would be interesting as we go through the season. Here is a very good video that provides a narration and engaging hand drawn visuals to explain mirror neurons and how humans…
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Booting up synthetic cell / genome: 2010 Science story of the year
by Ward Plunet • • 0 Comments
Image by AJC1 via Flickr This post will not do much directly for your brain health other than at plopping an interesting idea into it, which is good for it. In early 2009 I wrote a piece predicting that in 2009 Craig Venter would be the first to boot up a synthetic genome. “Rebooting a…
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Weekend’s Brain Health Breakfast # 3
by Ward Plunet • • 1 Comment
Four methods to increase your serotonin without drugs. Serotonin is believed to be important for depression, so these 4 non-drug methods to increase serotonin could help your mood. And the reason you might want to use natural methods to increase serotonin is that some research suggest taking antidepressants might reduce your lifespan. Meditation can improve…
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Weekend’s Brain Health Breakfast # 2
by Ward Plunet • • 1 Comment
Do you want better grades at school, or a way to help your children’s grades? Brainblogger does a very nice jog explaining a new study in college students finding that physical exercise is related to better grades – better performance in school. He goes on to point out the large number of studies that have…
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Weekend’s Better Brain Health Breakfast # 1
by Ward Plunet • • 2 Comments
weekly links to articles about better brain health
bioinformatics, Uncategorized
How many neurons does a human brain have, and more importantly how many connections?
by Ward Plunet • • 1 Comment
According to Wikipedia the human brain has between 50 and 100 billion neurons, and 1000 trillion connections. Now those are huge numbers. Now according to other respectable sights (university sites) the human brain’s estimated number of neurons range quite widely: 10 billion, 100 billion, 200 billion. So maybe we don’t know the exact number but…
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Resveratrol does not extend lifespan
by Ward Plunet • • 0 Comments
Resveratrol, one of the great hopes to increase lifespan, in this new paper was found to have no effect on lifespan. In previous posts I have reported on how while resveratrol did increase lifespan on mice on a high fat diet; however it didn’t in normal chow fed mice. from one of my previous posts:…