A few more interesting brain facts ...

From the book "Welcome to Your Brain", a book that addresses a variety of myths about the human mind (sounds interesting, might have to get it and bring it with me to Peru):

• Working out feeds oxygen and glucose to your neurons and helps prevent the brain from shrinking with age (memory decline can begin as early as age 30 -- that explains a lot!).
• Drinking up to three glasses orf red wine every day (!) also lowers the risk of dementia by half.
• In adjusting to new time zones, your brain releases stress hormones that can weaken the temporal lobe, which is involved in learning. (Moral -- don't cross time zones before taking a test, attending an important meeting or class. :-)
• Willpower-strengthening exercises may actually change the brain regions involved in planning and decision making. Plus, willpower in one aspect of your life may influence another. "Practice difficult tasks such as being nice to people you don't like," the authors advise. "It might help you stick to that diet."
• (Pay attention to this one ...) When female test takers are asked to write down their gender on the first page of a math exam, their scores go down--but when they hear a lecture on famous female mathematicians beforehand, their scores go up. (Remember that for all your tests!)

And, a few more tidbits to add one to the one below about sleeping after studying:

• Even naps are beneficial after studying, according to a Harvard study in which subjects who took a 90-minute snooze after learning a task performed 50 percent better (!) over a 24-hour period than the napless group.
• According to animal studies, when you perform a task, the brain cells fire in a certain sequence. If you then fall asleep, the same cells automatically fire in an identical sequence without being distracted or disrupted by incoming visual stimuli. That, Susumu Tonegawa, Ph.D., a Nobel Prize-winning professor of biology and neuroscience at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, says, "solidifies the synapses, which in turn helps to strenthen the information as a memory."

Some items for you and Heather to discuss.

Love you to Ecuador and back!
Mom