During the holidays, the color red is everywhere we look, from bulbs and bows to Santa’s trademark threads.
What impact does this favorite holiday hue have on your brain?
For starters, studies show that the color red increases appetite (no wonder holiday goodies are so hard to resist!). Also, when people are exposed to the color red, tests show they become more cautious and attentive to detail, and memory skills improve as well.
In one study, more than 600 people were asked to perform various tasks, usually on a computer. When tasks (such as proofreading) required focus, people performed as much as 31 percent better when their computer screen had a red background.
In contrast, researchers say the color red can keep us from performing our best in situations where creativity and analytical thinking are required. For these tasks, people perform better after being exposed to the colors green and blue. Read the rest of this entry »
Did you know that eating a potato can calm you down? Or that nutmeg and cinnamon can cause feelings of euphoria? Amino acids and other natural compounds are able to steer our mood swings. Nutrients can stimulate different regions of the brain and release chemicals that enhance brain activity or protect the brain from aging.
Scientists in England have done something that makes all the science fiction you’ve ever watched or read seem suddenly plausible. They’ve taken brain cells (neurons) from the brain of a rat, and put them in a bell jar. Creepy enough already, but just wait. They also made a little robot, with sensors that “speak” to the rat’s brain via bluetooth. The data the sensors collect is transmitted to the actual brain. In the bell jar. Then, the brain (in the bell jar) sends commands back to the robot’s wheels. Yes. In this way, the disembodied rat brain actually learns, and, using its robot body, figures out how to avoid walls and scamper about like a normal rat. The most amazing part? Since the brain cells only live for about 3 months, they’ve used several different rats. And guess what? The robot behaved differently with every change. This is a real, live, rat cyborg. Now you’ve officially seen everything (let’s hope!) 
Seems like everybody these days wants to increase their brain power. Take a trip around the web, and you’ll see what I mean. Some people say the best way to increase your brain power is to eat protein in the morning. Others say it has to do with exercise. For others, meditation is the answer to making the brain function at its best. All of these techniques are useful if we are talking about a qualitative increase, that is, getting the brain you have today to work at its best. But what about quantitative increase? Can you make the brain you have today a bigger, better brain tomorrow? That would be an entirely different kind of increase in brain power! There are many ideas out there for improving your brain’s health and function – but LearningRx goes a step further: our mission is to increase your brain power by growing the brain itself, and encouraging it to making new connections. Instead of just a healthy brain, you’ll have more brains! It’s the difference between having one healthy child, and having twins. 
My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Muir, was brilliant. He was kind, and funny, and encouraging, and he knew how to inspire even the most stubborn of his students (like me) to really care about learning. He had this thing in the classroom called the “what-is-it” of the week. It was a random weird item we’d never seen before. We’d have to figure it out what it was and guess at the end of each week, for a prize. There was also the “where-is-it” of the week, which was usually a photo of a place we’d never seen.
