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Study: A Day of Hard Thinking Can Lead to Bad Choices

AHA Publisher — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 07:24:55 +0000

Christine Ruggeri, CHHC via Dr. Axe – Have you ever noticed a feeling a brain fog and fatigue after a day of thinking hard? Perhaps after a difficult day at work or long test, your brain just feels … tired. A new study suggests that your body may be pushing you to make poor choices after a long day. It’s not that you’re being lazy or trying to punish yourself, but natural biological regulations are working to combat cognitive fatigue by favoring easy, short-term decision making. Study Findings: Thinking Hard Can Lead to Bad Choices A study published in August 2022 in Current Biology explored cognitive fatigue with magnetic resonance spectroscopy during a workday. This tool measures electromagnetic signals within metabolites of the brain. For the study, two groups of participants performed either high-demand or low-demand cognitive control tasks and economic decisions. Data showed that choice-related fatigue markers were only present in the high-demand group, and those participants were more likely to prefer short-delay and little-effort options during decision making. Researchers found that the hard thinking group displayed increased glutamate levels in the cognitive control region of the brain compared to the low-demand thinkers. Glutamate is a neurotransmitter (or chemical messenger) in the brain that has “excitatory effects,” meaning that it can actually excite cells to their death, according to prior research. Study data also shows that this glutamate increase triggers a natural regulation mechanism in the cognitive region of the brain, which reduces a person’s control over decision making. What It Means This study indicates that after a day of hard thinking, you may experience a reduced ability to make decisions, and your brain will prefer little-effort options. Because there’s a natural increase of glutamate levels in the brain after a day of intense thinking, it becomes more difficult to use the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that controls our thoughts and decision making. We can learn from the study that it’s normal to feel brain fatigue after a day of hard thinking, and although we may not be aware of how tired our brains are, we should consider our abilities to make good decisions in these moments. Tips to Support Cognition Clearly, your brain is impacted by hard thinking and needs nourishment and rest to function optimally. Here are some tips to support cognition that you can practice every day: Eat nutrient-rich brain foods. Your diet has a tremendous impact on the health of your brain, so opt for foods that are rich in nutrients, including antioxidants, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals. Some of the best brain foods include avocado, berries, cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, walnuts, coconut oil, bone broth and dark chocolate. Try nootropics. Nootropics are supplements that help cognitive function and support concentration. Some of the most popular nootropics include ginseng, ginkgo biloba, medicinal mushrooms, omega-3 fish oil, ashwagandha and vitamin B12. Get enough rest. It’s clear from this study that the brain needs time to rest. For starters, make sure you get enough sleep every night — at least seven hours is needed. It’s also important to take breaks throughout the day to reset and recover. This can include taking a leisurely walk outdoors, chatting with a loved one or sitting quietly over a cup of tea. Reduce stress. Stress increases cortisol levels, which impacts cognitive function, energy, sleep and more. When stress is chronic, or occurs daily, it can have a detrimental effect on your ability to think and make good decisions. Some effective ways to reduce stress include spending time outdoors, practicing meditation or quiet time, doing gentle exercise, and spending time with loved ones or pets. Move your body. Daily movement increases energy and cognition, improves sleep, and helps balance your hormones. Opt for at least 30 minutes of exercise every day. This can include walking, jogging, biking, swimming, dancing, lifting weights, yoga, pilates and more. Conclusion A study published in Current Biology indicates that after high-demand thinking the brain will experience fatigue, resulting in a preference for short-delay and little-effort options during decision making. Hard thinking increases neurotransmitters that excite brain cells, triggering a natural regulation system in the brain that can cause cognitive fatigue. As a result, people have a hard time making difficult decisions, sometimes without even noticing the difficulty. To avoid this brain fatigue, make sure you get enough rest and support your brain health with nutritious foods, proper sleep and exercise. To read the original article click here.

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Mount Sinai Researchers Uncover a Key Neural Mechanism Believed to Support Advanced Cognitive Abilities

AHA Publisher — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 08:00:13 +0000

Mount Sinai Health System via Newswise – New York, NY (Dec. 21, 2021) – Mount Sinai scientists have discovered a neural mechanism that is believed to support advanced cognitive abilities such as planning and problem-solving. It does so by distributing information from single neurons to larger populations of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that temporarily stores and manipulates information. It is well established that humans can only hold a limited amount of information in mind at a time, and that they enlist different cognitive strategies, like organizing information into lists or groups, to overcome these constraints. The research team found that when the brain uses these strategies to organize information, neural codes in the prefrontal cortex become less dependent on the highly selective responses of single neurons. Instead, they become distributed among a larger pool of neurons, which may make the information more reliable or robust. The findings were published online in Neuron on December 20. “Our study gives the field an important new perspective on how the brain allocates its resources to improve cognitive performance,” says senior author Erin Rich, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Findings from our study will help scientists to better understand, and in the future to potentially treat, disorders of memory and cognition.” The study was led by Feng-Kuei Chiang, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Rich’s lab who has previously studied functions of the prefrontal cortex in sequencing tasks. Traditionally, studies of neural coding—which transforms electrical impulses from the neurons into memories, knowledge, decisions, and actions—have focused on selective responses of single neurons. The Mount Sinai team demonstrated the shortcomings of such an approach by designing a task to probe changes in the prefrontal cortex that result in improved cognitive performance. The task allowed the subjects to use a mnemonic (or memory aid) strategy to order information into a sequence. “We found that subjects spontaneously generated different selection patterns, including routine sequences, to decrease the working memory demands of the task,” said Dr. Chiang. Researchers were surprised to find that interpretable responses of single neurons were a poor predictor of memory performance when subjects used the sequencing strategy to organize information held in the mind. Using the strategy reduced error rates in the task, but the activity of single neurons appeared to convey less information. They were able to reconcile these findings by showing that the information was not lost, but more widely distributed among a larger population of neurons. The task-relevant information could be recovered as well or better than when the codes were dominated by a smaller number of highly tuned neurons, and the distributed codes appeared to be more reliable, since they improved behavioral performance. “This is a brand-new discovery in the nature of prefrontal codes, and it could point to a key neural mechanism that supports advanced cognitive abilities like planning, strategizing, and problem-solving that depend on real-time organization of information,” explains Dr. Rich. “By shifting the focus from selective responses of single neurons, we’ve shown that the collective activity of neural populations needs to be considered when developing new strategies to improve cognitive performance or treat cognitive disorders.” To read the original article click here.

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What Jigsaw Puzzles Tell Us About Child Development

AHA Publisher — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 07:00:16 +0000

University of East Anglia via EurekAlert – They’ve been used as an educational toy for hundreds of years and are thought to develop skills such as hand-eye coordination and problem solving. But little has been known about how children learn to do jigsaw puzzles. Now, new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) has put jigsaw puzzles to the test – and found that children only learn to do them once they have reached a certain stage of development. The study, published today in the journal Child Development, reveals that three-year-olds use trial and error, but four-year olds are able to use information in the picture to complete the puzzles. The research team say this understanding is the foundation of drawing and painting. Lead researcher Dr Martin Doherty, from UEA’s School of Psychology, said: “We looked at children’s ability to do jigsaw puzzles. Surprisingly, there’s virtually no research on this, despite the common assumption these are good educational toys. “We were interested in children’s understanding of pictures as representations. Jigsaws require assembly of a picture, so if children understand how pictures work then they should be better at jigsaw puzzles.” The team, which includes researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh Napier, West of Scotland and Warwick, worked with 169 children aged between three and five, to see how they put together different types of puzzles at different ages. Some of the children worked on traditional jigsaw puzzles with a picture, jigsaws with no picture, and picture-based puzzles made up of equal-sized rectangular pieces. Half of this group were given a picture guide showing what the completed image should look like. The researchers recorded how long it took the children to complete the puzzles and the number of times they attempted to join puzzle pieces. Another group of children were given a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing, and different options to fill the gap. The children were also tested on their level of representational understanding, including how well they understood other people’s beliefs. The researchers argue that understanding the relationship between a belief and the part of the world it is about develops alongside understanding the relationship between a picture and what it is about. Dr Doherty said: “This is the first investigation of how children do jigsaw puzzles, and we were particularly interested in how they use their understanding of pictures to complete them. “We found that children who passed tests for representational understanding were able to complete picture jigsaws faster and more efficiently. In general, efficiency increased between the ages of three and five years. “The really unique thing about this study is that we are showing the age and stage of development at which children gain a fundamental understanding of the nature of pictures. “We think this lays a vital foundation for learning to draw and paint,” he added. To read the original article click here.

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