Good sleep, secret behind recovering lost skills
Tue, Nov 18 01:05 PM

Washington, Nov 18 (ANI): A good night's sleep not only helps people learn complicated tasks, but also helps them recover skills they otherwise thought they had forgotten over the course of a day, according to a research at the University of Chicago.

Sleep helps the mind learn complicated tasks and helps people recover learning they otherwise thought they had forgotten over the course of a day, research at the University of Chicago shows.

For the study, researchers tested about 200 college students, most of whom were women, who had little previous experience playing video games.

And they showed for the first time that people, who had "forgotten" how to perform a complex task 12 hours after training, had those abilities restored after a night's sleep.

"Sleep consolidated learning by restoring what was lost over the course of a day following training and by protecting what was learned against subsequent loss. These findings suggest that sleep has an important role in learning generalized skills in stabilizing and protecting memory," said Howard Nusbaum, Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago, and a researcher in the study.

According to the findings, this consolidation may help in learning language processes such as reading and writing as well as eye-hand skills such as tennis.

The scientists made the students learn video games containing a rich, multisensory virtual environment in which players must use both hands to deal with continually changing visual and auditory signals. The first-person navigation games require learning maps of different environments.

In the study, they used first-person shooter games, with the goal of killing enemy bots (software avatars that play against the participant) while avoiding being killed.

The subjects were given a pre-test to determine their initial performance level on the games. They were then trained to play the games and later tested on their performance.

One group was trained in the morning and then tested 12 hours later after being awake for that time. A second group was trained in the morning and then tested the next day, 24 hours after being trained. Another group was trained in the evening, then tested 12 hours after a night's sleep and a fourth group was trained in the evening and then also tested 24 hours after training.

The researchers observed that trained in the morning subjects showed an 8-percentage point improvement in accuracy immediately after training.

However after 12 waking hours following training, subjects lost half of that improvement when tested in the evening.

When subjects were tested the next morning 24 hours after training, they showed a 10 percentage point improvement over their pre-test performance.

"The students probably tested more poorly in the afternoon because following training, some of their waking experiences interfered with training. Those distractions went away when they slept and the brain was able to do its work," said Nusbaum.

The team reported the findings in the paper, "Consolidation of Sensorimotor Learning During Sleep," in the current issue of Learning and Memory. (ANI)

Vitamin C may after all be your heart's best friend
Fri, Nov 14 12:25 PM
Washington, November 14 (ANI): Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, say that they have found further evidence suggesting that vitamin C supplements can lower concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP), a central biomarker of inflammation which is a powerful predictor of heart disease and diabetes.

The researchers have also found in the same study that daily doses of vitamin E, another antioxidant, are not very beneficial.

The findings emerge just days after an eight-year clinical trial, led by researchers at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, failed to confirm that vitamins C or E supplements could prevent heart attacks or strokes.

Gladys Block, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of epidemiology and public health nutrition, said that their study did not close the books on the benefits of vitamin C for cardiovascular health.

She said that the Brigham and Women's Hospital study did not screen study participants for elevations in CRP, defined by the American Heart Association as 1 milligram per litre or greater, which is an important distinction in determining who might benefit from taking vitamin C.

She insisted that her study showed that for healthy, non-smoking adults with an elevated level of CRP a daily dose of vitamin C lowered levels of the inflammation biomarker after two months compared with those who took a placebo.

However, the study published in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine did not find any benefit from vitamin C supplementation for participants that did not start out with elevated CRP levels.

"This is an important distinction; treatment with vitamin C is ineffective in persons whose levels of CRP are less than 1 milligram per litre, but very effective for those with higher levels. Grouping people with elevated CRP levels with those who have lower levels can mask the effects of vitamin C. Common sense suggests, and our study confirms, that biomarkers are only likely to be reduced if they are not already low," said Block.

She reckoned that for people with elevated CRP levels, the amount of CRP reduction achieved by taking vitamin C supplements in the study was comparable to that in many other studies of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins.

While several larger statin trials lowered CRP levels by about 0.2 milligrams per litre, she said, the present study showed that vitamin C lowered these levels by 0.25 milligrams per litre.

"This finding of an effect of vitamin C is important because it shows in a carefully conducted randomized, controlled trial that for people with moderately elevated levels of inflammation, vitamin C may be able to reduce CRP as much as statins have done in other studies," said Block.

The researchers, however, are uncertain as to why vitamin E did not show an effect even though it is also an antioxidant.

Block thinks that the difference perhaps relates to the fact that vitamin E is fat soluble and thus found in cell membranes, while vitamin C is water soluble and found in intercellular fluid.

Though the study lasted for two months only, the researchers insist that there is no evidence to date of adverse effects for longer-term use of vitamin C at high levels.

They agree that further studies are required to see whether vitamin C's beneficial impact on CRP levels continue past two months.

"This is clearly a line of research worth pursuing. It has recently been suggested by some researchers that people with elevated CRP should be put on statins as a preventive measure. For people who have elevated CRP but not elevated LDL cholesterol, our data suggest that vitamin C should be investigated as an alternative to statins, or as something to be used to delay the time when statin use becomes necessary," said Block

12 simple ways to supercharge your brain by Jay @ Dumb Little Man, on Wed Oct 22, 2008 6:00am PDT Read More from This Author » 141 Comments Post a Comment Report Abuse

Have you ever felt exasperated when you bumped into someone at the store but absolutely couldn't remember their name? Sure, it happens to all of us.
Despite being the strongest computer on the planet, our brains do lapse. It's hard to blame them really. As humans, we spend much of or existence stuffing our brains with stuff.

No matter how powerful our brains are, they need recuperation time to be kept in shape. Think of it as a tune up for your brain. Skipping brain maintenance is as silly as the person wandering the parking garage because they forgot where they parked. Is that you? Are you that person? If so, fear not; we are all that person at some point.

Now I am not a brain surgeon and I am not going to suggest you do anything surgical or dangerous. I am however an astute student of human behavior so I always look for simple ways to super charge my brain.

Here are some things you can begin doing as soon as today to begin the great brain tune up:

Eat Almonds
Almond is believed to improve memory. If a combination of almond oil and milk is taken together before going to bed or after getting up at morning, it strengthens our memory power. Almond milk is prepared by crushing the almonds without the outer cover and adding water and sugar to it.

Drink Apple Juice
Research from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) indicates that apple juice increases the production of the essential neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain, resulting in an increased memory power.

Sleep well
Research indicates that the long-term memory is consolidated during sleep by replaying the images of the experiences of the day. These repeated playbacks program the subconscious mind to store these images and other related information.

Enjoy simple Pleasures
Stress drains our brainpower. A stress-ridden mind consumes much of our memory resources to leave us with a feeble mind. Make a habit to engage yourself in few simple pleasures everyday to dissolve stress from your mind. Some of these simple pleasures are good for your mind, body and soul.

Enjoy music you love
Play with your children
Appreciate others
Run few miles a day, bike or swim
Start a blog
Take a yoga class or Total Wellness routine
Exercise your mind
Just as physical exercise is essential for a strong body, mental exercise is equally essential for a sharp and agile mind. Have you noticed that children have far superior brainpower than an adult does? Children have playful minds. A playful mind exhibits superior memory power. Engage in some of the activities that require your mind to remain active and playful.

Play scrabble or crossword puzzle
Volunteer
Interact with others
Start a new hobby such as blogging, reading, painting, bird watching
Learn new skill or a foreign language
Practice Yoga or Meditation
Yoga or Meditation relives stress. Stress is a known memory buster. With less stress, lower blood pressure, slower respiration, slower metabolism, and released muscle tension follows. All of these factors contribute significantly towards increases in our brainpower.

Reduce Sugar intake
Sugar is a non-food. It’s a form of carbohydrate that offers illusionary energy, only to cause a downhill slump once the initial burst has been worn off. Excess intake of sugar results in neurotic symptoms. Excess sugar is known to cause claustrophobia, memory loss and other neurotic disorders. Eat food without adding sugar. Stay away from sweet drinks or excess consumption of caffeine with sugar.

Eat whole wheat
The whole wheat germs contain lecithin. Lecithin helps ease the problem of the hardening of the arteries, which often impairs brain functioning.

Eat a light meal at night
A heavy meal at night causes tossing and turning and a prolonged emotional stress while at sleep. It’s wise to eat heavy meal during the day when our body is in motion to consume the heavy in-take. Eating a light meal with some fruits allows us to sleep well. A good night sleep strengthens our brainpower.

Develop imagination
Greeks mastered the principle of imagination and association to memorize everything. This technique requires one to develop a vivid and colorful imagination that can be linked to a known object. If you involve all your senses - touching, feeling, smelling, hearing and seeing in the imagination process, you can remember greater details of the event.

Control your temper
Bleached food, excess of starch or excess of white bread can lead to nerve grating effect. This results in a violent and some time depressive behavior. Eat fresh vegetables. Drink lots of water and meditate or practice yoga to relieve these toxic emotions of temper and stressful mood swings.

Take Vitamin B-complex
Vitamin B-complex strengthens memory power. Eat food and vegetables high in Vitamin B-complex. Stay away from the starch food or white bread, which depletes the Vitamin B-complex necessary for a healthy mind.

I don't believe these are that tough. If you find yourself increasing stumped, give a couple of these a try.

Written by Shilpan Patel of Success Soul and cross-posted from Dumb Little Man, a web site that provides tips for life that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane.

[photo credit: Getty Images}