The Perfect Neural Holiday: How To Regenerate Your Brain During The Summer!

 

The holidays are fantastic; they provide a chance of temporarily escaping your stress-filled daily live or deadline-loaded academic curriculum. From a neuroscience-perspective, these benefits are also expressed in your actual brain this summer. While you’re trying to get that perfect tan on a tropical beach, stretching your limits on a challenging mountain-hike or hassling for discount in an unfamiliar language, escaping your daily routine allows your neurotransmitters to replenish themselves, much like brain supplements would enhance your cognition.

When you’re traveling and experiencing new things, your brain’s synaptic plasticity causes novel neural connections to establish themselves. A strange culture with a different languages and new impressions stimulates the brain intensively, resulting in rewiring of neurons and improvement of cognitive functioning.

The lives of many people consist of repetitive strain of daily routines, which is far from optimal for your brain’s functioning. By going on a journey of exploration and new experiences, you give your brain a work-out that stimulates growth and the release of neurotrophins, bio-molecules that repair and improve your neurons.

Besides this, there are various other reason why taking some time-off to gain new experiences is a rewarding brain activity. In this sense, travelling and holidays are just like quality brain supplements, only more fun and rewarding! Keep this in mind this summer and enjoy your holidays!

 

Brain Technology From The Future Has Arrived: Advertising That Reads Your Mind!

Remember that futuristic movie in which Tom Cruise is constantly on the run because of some prediction that he’ll commit a murder in the future? That was minority report, a pretty awesome movie that depicts an interesting future. Now Tom Cruise might not be that interesting for everyone, but there is one awesome feature in the movie that might become part of our daily lives in the very near future: Personalized advertising.

In the movie, advertising is personalized through ingenious face-scanning technology that is able to read your emotions and adjust the advertisements accordingly. This very feature is currently being developed and researched and will possibly make its break-through quite soon!

Question is; is a future in which technology is able to read our minds desirable? Wouldn’t this be a violation of our most inner privacy? In our society, in which brain supplements and neuro-technology is ever-developing, such ethical issues are becoming more and more important. Check out this quick video that explains the interesting developments on personalized advertising and the brain to judge for yourself!

Discovering The Social Brain: How Your Neurons Are Taking Care Of Your Social Skills!

As many of you hopefully know, we humans are social creatures. Almost every aspect of your life is related to social interactions in one form or another. This makes sense when viewed from an evolutionary perspective; our caveman ancestors lived in an extremely harsh world, in which proper social interaction was essential for survival. Through evolutionary processes active over millions of years, the brain has literally become hard-wired for social interaction.

Due to the recent and very awesome developments of brain imaging technology, more and more is being revealed about your social brain; the reading of emotional cues on other's faces, the perception of deception, or the generation of empathy through the mirror-neuron system; all are crucial for proper social interaction. Moreover, neuroimaging techniques have revealed that all these processes, as well as many others, are processed automatically by specific neural circuits in the brain. Next time you're talking to that cute girl/guy on the street, be aware that your social brain is working hard to allow you to act normally!

However, as brain science is continuously evolving, so are the opportunities to improve social interactions. Drugs that improve social cognition are already on the market and being developed. Can you imagine a time when it is not a problem at all to take some supplements every morning before lunch to improve your social skills? These kind of brain supplements are still being researched, but the ethics and attitudes towards such supplements will have to be considered as well at some point!

 

 

 

A different view on Neuroscience & Brain Supplements; The Darker Side Of Brain Science

As many of you probably know, the emergence of neuroscience has caused a revolution in terms of the possibilities available to understand and optimize our lives. Brain supplements allow people to improve their concentration, enhance their creativity and increase their memory capacity. Moreover, using the latest neuroimaging techniques finally reveals the molecular secrets constituting human behavior and mental activity.

On the other hand, all the achievements and results gained through neuroscience and brain supplements also have to potential to blind people from the other perspectives from which neuroscience can be viewed through the eyes of some beholder. One of these different perspectives exposes a darker side of neuroscience by showing the negative aspects and connotations. It’s a very interesting perspective which can open your eyes to a different side of brain science. Check out the full are article about the dark side of brain science and brain supplements. 

 

Neuroimaging Techniques and Its Amazing Discoveries; What Is It All About?

Ever wondered where all the amazing developents in the field of brain science come from? Big change they've been discovered through a neuroimaging technique, e.g fMRI, PET, or EEG. 

Unfortunately a lot of people actually know just as much about neuroimaging techniques as about the reproductive rate of a Heterocarup ensifer (a type of shrimp). This doesn't really help when trying to understand brain science and its related discovered about brain supplements and the likes.

Check out this article to quickly and easily update your knowledge on the latest neuroimaging techniques used to explore the world of  brain science and brain supplements!

How To Get Your Brain Into 'The Flow'!

Ever experienced flow? It’s that optimal state of mind when you’re focusing on a task in which your actions seem to come automatically and you lose complete track of time and self.  In other words; it’s a pretty frikking awesome state of mind to be in when you need to get stuff done.

Unfortunately, deliberately getting ‘the flow’ is a little trickier that getting up to sneeze your nose. Matter of fact, according to Csikszentmihaly, who dedicated his life researching the flow experience, there is no deliberate way to ‘make’ flow happen. Bummer!

Fortunately, brain research might be able to help us out. Since every psychological process has a biological brain mechanism, an experience such as flow also has a directly correlating physical reaction in your brain! It has been discovered that the creativity connected with the flow experience comes from synchronized functioning between both of your brain hemispheres as well as appropriate frontal and temporal lobe activity. With this knowledge, neuroscience might be able to induce flow using brain supplements and neuroscientific techniques such as neurofeedback.

Read more on how brain supplements and other techniques brain supplements and other techniques could help you induce the flow experience whenever you want!

Neurofeedback, Brain Technology To Improve Your Cognition?

Nowadays neuro-technology definitely has some really cool advantages. Ever wondered if it was possible to improve your concentration, increase your motivation or enhance your stress management? With the current developments of brain supplements this is becoming more and more easy, but there is also great option out there for those looking for other ways of improvement; neurofeedback

Through neurofeedback, which is also used in various treatment programs for psychological disorders, it becomes possible to become conscious of your own brain wave activity, eventually allowing you to exert a higher level of control over it! This technique uses a relatively simple learning concept called operant conditioning to maintain your brain wave activity, related to various cognitive processes, in a desired state.

Even though there are still plenty of skeptics out there who think neurofeedback is just as real as Michael Jacksons nose, recent research is providing convincing evidence that neurofeedback effects are genuine. Moreover, neurofeedback seems to be even more effective than brain supplements in the sense that the effects are long-term and last even after therapy is no longer received.

Check out more info about neurofeedback, it’s awesome effects and mechanisms