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Find out everything you've wanted to know and more about CogniFit brain fitness programs from our team of scientists. Or fill out the form and send us your own questions, comments and compliments.

08/27/2009 - 3:00am

Children, Bilingualism and Brain Plasticity

Studies have found that the best age to learn a language is between birth and 7. This leaves most of the population out of learning a second language well enough to be considered a native speaker. Scientists have been looking into why children are able to learn languages so quickly and whether there is any way to apply the ability to adult language learning.

08/27/2009 - 2:55am

Obesity and the Brain

It is known that obesity and overweight take their toll on our bodies- increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer. Now there is scientific evidence that obesity and even overweight have a detrimental effect on our brains as well. Recent research has shown that obese people have 8% less brain tissue than people who are of normal weight and overweight people 4%. The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of people who were lean, and overweight people’s brains looked 8 years older.

08/27/2009 - 2:09am

Multitasking and Multitaskers- More Means Less

Today it seems to be the norm to be multi tasking- doing more than one thing at a time. We get more and more information from different sources, which we are expected to process and handle.

Multitasking- no matter what form it takes- means that our brains must use their “executive control function” which is associated with the brain’s prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex.

08/24/2009 - 3:13am

Fitness and Ageing…Get off the couch!

A recent study carried out at Uppsala University by Liisa Byberg,Ph. D., has shown that no matter what age you start, it pays to get off the couch and start exercising.

08/20/2009 - 8:01am

Texting and Driving Don’t Mix

We’ve written about how dangerous it is to talk on a cell phone while driving. Driving demands a great deal of cognitive investment from every single driver, no matter how old or young they are, no matter how experienced they are. Driving is a very complicated task and any activity that takes our attention away from the task on hand, reduces our driving ability and makes driving more dangerous.

08/18/2009 - 8:26am

Stress and our Brains

It is widely recognized that stress is bad for us and scientists are becoming more aware of just how bad stress is for different systems in or bodies. Stress can raise blood pressure, can make our arteries stiffer; it can suppress our immune system; it has been show to raise the risk of diabetes, depression and Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists have found that chronic stress rewires our brains in such a way that it makes us repeat the behaviors that are stressing us out to begin with.

08/17/2009 - 8:13am

Cognitive Skills and Left Turns: Senior drivers have asked why it is harder for them to make left turns

A study produced by the Center for Transportation Studies at the Texas Transportation Institute for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which examined data on crashes in Texas during the 1975-1999 period, found that the probability that an older driver will be involved in a left-turn crash increases with age.

According to U.S. department of transportation statistics for 1994 older adults were nine times more likely to be turning left when involved in an accident.

08/12/2009 - 10:58am

Interacting with women can impair men’s cognitive functioning

When I was still teaching in a comprehensive high school, I used to wonder how the boys in the upper grades were able to concentrate on their studies when the girls surrounding them were wearing tight jeans, halter tops, makeup, etc. Hormones were running wild and so were the kids. Well, it seems that the boys were not functioning at their cognitive peak.

08/10/2009 - 4:20am

Brain Fitness Interview with Dr. Shlomo Breznitz of CogniFit

Alex Colket, a trained neuroscientist is the author of a brain training website, PlayWithYourMind (http://playwithyourmind.com). Prof. Shlomo Breznitz is a renowned psychologist and founder of CogniFit. Alex recently interviewed Shlomo with some very interesting and tough questions about neuroplasticity, cognitive reserve, aging and how, where and why computer brain training fits into these issues.

08/06/2009 - 2:24am

Statins and Dementia

My doctor once said (jokingly- I think) that she thought statins (cholesterol lowering drugs) should be put into the drinking water system, as fluoride is. These types of drugs are so universally prescribed, so prevalent and so effective that why shouldn’t everyone take them?

Besides their cholesterol lowering properties, it was also thought that statins had a part in preventing Alzheimer’s and dementia, although no research was done to uphold this claim.

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