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trees...

I like trees... everytime i see one, it reminds me of how good life is... and i'm greatful...

my son's little piano

he used to play this just like Schroeder on the Peanuts - it was soo cute!

contacts memory

memory contacts in phone

memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Coffee

Coffee, Can It Keep Your Brain in Shape?

Larger brain may save you from memory loss

Though some people may die of Alzheimer's disease, their ability to retain perfect memories and sharp minds have intrigued researchers. Those people have a larger part of the brain called the hippocampus, which may have protected them from the effects of Alzheimer's disease-related brain changes, a new study has found. Researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University evaluated the brains of 12 people who had sharp memories and thinking skills at the time of death, but whose autopsies revealed Alzheimer's plaques. Their brains were compared to those of 23 people who had the same amount of plaques in their brains, but had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease before death, according to Deniz Erten-Lyons, the study's author. Researchers found that hippocampus was 20 percent greater in the cognitively intact group, compared to the Alzheimer's disease group with dementia. There were no other demographic, clinical or pathological differences between the groups and the results remained the same regardless of gender, age, and total brain volume.

human brain

A study conducted by Australian researchers has revealed that people who do not engage in complex mental activity over their lifetime have twice the shrinkage in a key part of the brain in old age. Michael Valenzuela of the school of psychiatry at the University of NSW has revealed that the finding results from an analysis of the brain scans used during the study. He says that the finding sheds more light on the link between lifestyle and dementia. The results of the study also add strength to the evidence that mental exercises, like puzzles and new languages, stave off ageing diseases. "We``ve got strong evidence here that people who use their brains more have less brain shrinkage," the Australian quoted Valenzuela as saying. "I hope people take this as a further call to arms to get out there and use their brains, get engaged in anything from tai chi to world travel, in the knowledge that it may help delay or prevent the onset of dementia," he added. Valenzuela and his colleagues wanted to determine how mental activity delayed the onset of the degenerative brain diseases, such as Huntington``s, Alzheimer``s and Parkinson``s. For the purpose, they studied the brains of 60-year-olds over three years, and tested their lifetime mental agility with questionnaires. The researchers discovered that, of the 50 subjects, people who had been more mentally active over their lives had a larger hippocampus, an important memory centre in the brain. Among such subjects, the area shrank at half the rate of those who had lower mental activity over the period of three years. "This is a significant finding because a small hippocampus is a specific risk factor for developing Alzheimer``s disease," said Dr Valenzuela. Based on his observations, he came to the conclusion that people could prevent themselves from the shrinkage of the hippocampus. "Our prior research shows the risk for dementia is quite malleable, even into late life," he said.

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Memory and Ageing

Memory is involved in remembering to do things in the future, as well as in remembering what happened in the past. Some studies have found that older adults are worse at prospective memory than younger adults are, yet studies that examine prospective memory in naturalistic contexts often find that older adults are better than younger adults (Henry et al., 2004). It is important to note here that the ability of older adults to remember future events changes depending on the type of task. Studies in the laboratory in which older adults cannot remind themselves with environmental cues suggest impairments to prospective memory, but when the memory skills of older adults are considered in their naturalistic environment the results show they can perform as well as younger adults. For example Maylor (1995)performed a study in which she asked 222 individuals to remember to call her every day for a week. Those that remembered tended to utilize conjunction cues (remember to make the call every day after breakfast) or external cues (set the cooking timer, put the envelope they had been given near the phone, etc.). When such cues were used the ability to remember could match that of younger counterparts. Thus there is reason to believe that older people can easily compensate for some aspects of memory decline.