Don’t Invite Memory Loss

At one time or another nearly everyone over the age of 30 has received a birthday card joking about their declining memory or other common ailments of old age.

Now a study suggest that such negative portrayals of old age actually help bring about the  problems they joke about, such as  memory loss in old age.

In one part of the study Harvard University researcher Bacca Levy, Ph.D., asked volunteers aged 60 or over to press either the up or down arrow on a keyboard each time a word was flashed on a computer monitor. Some participants were shown words with negative connotations about aging, such as senile and incompetent, while other folks saw terms with more positive associations, such as wise or alert

Each word was visible for such a brief period of time–anywhere from a tenth to a twentieth of a second–that the participants couldn’t actually read them. Even so, subjects shown words that reinforced negative views of the erderly later performed more poorly on memory loss tests than folks who saw the positive words, Levy reports in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

So negative stereotypes may become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially if we’re not conscious that we’ve been exposed to them. This shows how insidious our views of aging are, Levy says. Maybe it’s no coincidence that in an earlier cross-cultural study Levy found that views of aging are particularly positive in China–where elders far outperform their American counterparts on memory tests designed to measure memory loss in old age.

Secrets of Mind-Body Health

You’ve heard the saying, You are what you eat.  But did you know that positive thoughts are just as important to the health of your brain… AND your body too?

Obviously positive thoughts are very important. How we view ourselves, how we perceive the world around us, and how we interact with others have profound effects on  keeping our brain healthy. But it also has a very powerful impact on our overall well-being.

It is widely agreed among the medical profession today that most all disease and negative aging conditions are DIRECTLY tied to stress, and our ability to handle the stress around us. The good news is that this IS  within our control.

No matter what challenges we face, we can choose to  look at the glass as half full, rather than half empty. In fact when you consider the current mess the world economy is in, it becomes even more important to DO something about our mental outlook and stress management.

Why? because when we are stressed our brain focuses down into its older, more primitive centers. Then instead of being able to come up with solutions — we end up trapped in fear and worry cycles that just go on and on. And most of us NEED to come up with some new solutions today.

According to Marilyn Albert, PhD, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, having a  healthy brain and body requires an ability to adapt to life’s challenges. It also requires that we maintain a degree of control over our lives, and  feel as if we are contributing to our families and to our society.

Her studies showed that two things are important to mind-body health at any age: (1) having stress under control, and (2) and having a solid sense of self worth.

Proof We All Read Minds

Are we all natural mind readers? The evidence is YES. It all has to do with what are now being called mirror neurons. And you DO have them in YOUR brain.

Back in 1996 three neuroscientists were probing the brain of a macaque monkey when they stumbled across a curious cluster of cells in the premotor cortex, an area of the brain that helps us plan our movements.

They found that the cluster of cells was active not only when the monkey performed an action, but also when the monkey saw the same action performed by someone else. The cells  responded the same way whether the monkey reached out to grasp a peanut, or merely watched as another monkey or human grab a peanut.

Later experiments confirmed the existence of mirror neurons in humans, and revealed yet another surprise: In addition to mirroring actions, the cells also mirrored sensations and emotions. Because of mirror neurons we are practically in another person’s mind, says Marco Iacoboni, neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. The conclusion? We are all natural mind readers.

Since their discovery,  mirror neurons have been implicated in a broad range of behavioral phenomena. Apparently when we interact with someone, we do more than just observe the other person’s behavior. Some scientists believes we actually create brain-based internal representations of the other person’s actions, sensations and emotions within ourselves, as if WE are the one that is doing the moving, sensing and feeling.

These insights are typical of  the author’s remarkable personal empowerment ecourse. Want to learn to read minds? Come find out for yourself why thousands of intelligent people around the world use her proven techniques to experience higher states of consciousness and achievement. Click here.

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