A midday nap markedly boosts the brains learning capacity

October 1, 2010

It looks as though a nap can help increase learning capacity, perhaps by clearing out a backlog of facts and making room for more. From the article:

“It’s as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you’re not going to receive any more mail. It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder.”

If you couple this with the boost in growth hormone that you can obtain from the same nap (a topic I want to post more on soon), it seems that it may be well worth scheduling a daily siesta.

A midday nap markedly boosts the brains learning capacity.


Butter Is Brain Food

August 17, 2010

Today’s post on The Quantified Self shows a correlation (for the author) between butter (vs pork fat) intake and reduced time to perform simple mathematical calculation. He speculates that a temporary downward trend in his performance during the butter period corresponded to an unrelated decrease of omega-3 intake.


Creatine Improves Brain Performance

May 9, 2010

2003 study at the University of Sydney demonstrated “a significant positive effect on both working memory … and intelligence”.

Read the rest of this entry »


Aerobic exercise grows brain cells

January 21, 2010

Another connection between mind and body: a study on mice showed that aerobic exercise stimulated the growth of new brain cells. It’s notable that the new cell growth seems to have an effect on memory and cognition, not just extra dead weight up there.

Aerobic exercise grows brain cells.


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