c) We decide by relying on habits locked into our neural networks. Repetition produces reinforced habits and we respond by our programming thereafter.

We rarely return to examine anew our thinking and behaviors controlled by habits. Are you thinking how to drive your car or following your learned programming?

Left and Right Brain

Sure, our left-

Do you play the guitar? For rational folks the answer is yes or no. The answer I got from a friend holding one on his lap and strumming it, was more interesting.

He looked up and said, I don’t know, I never tried.

This raises the question, how many skills and talents do we own but leave undeveloped? What if developing your innate skills and talents improve your longevity up to 20 years? Could learning improve your continuing health and quality of life?

It is important because odds are you are going to make it into your nineties.

Learning and Memory

Today, thousands of retirees are learning a second (new) language for the fun of it, as a mental exercise or to be a better tourist.

Two things occur when we study a foreign language: we access structures in our brain never previously used and we improve our overall attention, intention and memory. The second is, we help create a firewall of protection around our brain.

Use-it-or-lose-it applies to the exercise or atrophy of muscles. Fifty years of neurological research indicates mental activities like learning a new language, playing word games (Jeopardy), Bridge and chess, activate neural networks to protect our brain from attack.

Thinking (cognitive processing) is like applying lubricants to your car to reduce the damaging effect of friction. Statistical evidence in 2007 indicates consistent mind work reduces the odds of mental illness, depression, including Alzheimer disease up to 50%.

Google: The Nuns of Mankato, Minnesota. Dr. David Snowdon, University of Kentucky Medical School. The research concerns 678 retired Nuns, ages 75 to 106 of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and how they age gracefully.

Mindfulness and Mindlessness

Dr. Ellen Langer, Harvard Social Psychologist, in her book, Mindfulness, 1989, explained some important distinctions on how we use our mind to make decisions.

She states, regardless of educational and economic level, Mindlessness is going on auto pilot in decision making. Three points:

a) We think in categories (stereotypes) and label people, ideas and

things without paying attention to the here and now. It is faster

and requires less mental effort. We define first, and then see.

b) Act from a single prospective. What is in it for me? (WIIFM), We take the path of no resistance by making decisions by snap judgments based on past experience. It is easy to decide by associations made between the new idea or person and a similar old long-term memory.

c) We decide by relying on habits locked into our neural networks. Repetition produces reinforced habits and we respond by our programming thereafter.

We rarely return to examine anew our thinking and behaviors controlled by habits. Are you thinking how to drive your car or following your learned programming?

Left and Right Brain

Sure, our left-b

Learning and Memory

Today, thousands of retirees are learning a second (new) language for the fun of it, as a mental exercise or to be a better tourist.

Two things occur when we study a foreign language: we access structures in our brain never previously used and we improve our overall attention, intention and memory. The second is, we help create a firewall of protection around our brain.

Use-it-or-lose-it applies to the exercise or atrophy of muscles. Fifty years of neurological research indicates mental activities like learning a new language, playing word games (Jeopardy), Bridge and chess, activate neural networks to protect our brain from attack.

Thinking (cognitive processing) is like applying lubricants to your car to reduce the damaging effect of friction. Statistical evidence in 2007 indicates consistent mind work reduces the odds of mental illness, depression, including Alzheimer disease up to 50%.

Google: The Nuns of Mankato, Minnesota. Dr. David Snowdon, University of Kentucky Medical School. The research concerns 678 retired Nuns, ages 75 to 106 of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and how they age gracefully.

Mindfulness and Mindlessness

Dr. Ellen Langer, Harvard Social Psychologist, in her book, Mindfulness, 1989, explained some important distinctions on how we use our mind to make decisions.

She states, regardless of educational and economic level, Mindlessness is going on auto pilot in decision making. Three points:

a) We think in categories (stereotypes) and label people, ideas and

things without paying attention to the here and now. It is faster

and requires less mental effort. We define first, and then see.

b) Act from a single prospective. What is in it for me? (WIIFM), We take the path of no resistance by making decisions by snap judgments based on past experience. It is easy to decide by associations made between the new idea or person and a similar old long-term memory.

c) We decide by relying on habits locked into our neural networks. Repetition produces reinforced habits and we respond by our programming thereafter.

We rarely return to examine anew our thinking and behaviors controlled by habits. Are you thinking how to drive your car or following your learned programming?

Left and Right Brain

Sure, our left-

Thinking (cognitive processing) is like applying lubricants to your car to reduce the damaging effect of friction. Statistical evidence in 2007 indicates consistent mind work reduces the odds of mental illness, depression, including Alzheimer disease up to 50%.

Google: The Nuns of Mankato, Minnesota. Dr. David Snowdon, University of Kentucky Medical School. The research concerns 678 retired Nuns, ages 75 to 106 of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and how they age gracefully.

Mindfulness and Mindlessness

Dr. Ellen Langer, Harvard Social Psychologist, in her book, Mindfulness, 1989, explained some important distinctions on how we use our mind to make decisions.

She states, regardless of educational and economic level, Mindlessness is going on auto pilot in decision making. Three points:

a) We think in categories (stereotypes) and label people, ideas and

things without paying attention to the here and now. It is faster

and requires less mental effort. We define first, and then see.

b) Act from a single prospective. What is in it for me? (WIIFM), We take the path of no resistance by making decisions by snap judgments based on past experience. It is easy to decide by associations made between the new idea or person and a similar old long-term memory.

c) We decide by relying on habits locked into our neural networks. Repetition produces reinforced habits and we respond by our programming thereafter.

We rarely return to examine anew our thinking and behaviors controlled by habits. Are you thinking how to drive your car or following your learned programming?

Left and Right Brain

Sure, our left-

Dr. Ellen Langer, Harvard Social Psychologist, in her book, Mindfulness, 1989, explained some important distinctions on how we use our mind to make decisions.

She states, regardless of educational and economic level, Mindlessness is going on auto pilot in decision making. Three points:

a) We think in categories (stereotypes) and label people, ideas and

things without paying attention to the here and now. It is faster

and requires less mental effort. We define first, and then see.

b) Act from a single prospective. What is in it for me? (WIIFM), We take the path of no resistance by making decisions by snap judgments based on past experience. It is easy to decide by associations made between the new idea or person and a similar old long-term memory.

c) We decide by relying on habits locked into our neural networks. Repetition produces reinforced habits and we respond by our programming thereafter.

We rarely return to examine anew our thinking and behaviors controlled by habits. Are you thinking how to drive your car or following your learned programming?

Left and Right Brain

Sure, our left-

c) We decide by relying on habits locked into our neural networks. Repetition produces reinforced habits and we respond by our programming thereafter.

We rarely return to examine anew our thinking and behaviors controlled by habits. Are you thinking how to drive your car or following your learned programming?

Left and Right Brain

Sure, our left-brain is the director of language and speech, order, analysis and planning. It is the positive hemisphere-operating run by serial processing. It uses about 40 bits of information per second of bandwidth to produce civilization.

Our right-brain runs our emotions (positive and negative), operates our vegetative (automatic) processes, including our heart, circulation and respiration. Mental imagery, pattern recognition, and spatial skills are right-brained.

Intuition, acting on auto-pilot, uses parallel processing (multitasking). Our right hemisphere requires 11 million bits of information per second of bandwidth. Notice: our Left brain uses 40 while Right hemisphere requires 11 million. Thinking is easy, keeping you alive is hard.

Speech, reading and writing are nonconscious processes strongly influenced by our right-brain.

System Restore

In Mindfulness, Dr. Langer discusses a research project at Harvard with alumni ages 75 to 80. There were there for a five-day alumni homecoming.

She divided them into two groups: one was left alone for the five-days to be nostalgic; the other was placed in a time-warp back thirty-years to 1959.

They read magazines, saw TV and listened to music exclusively from the year 1959. The alumni were instructed to discuss only subjects relevant to events occurring in that time thirty-years before. It was weird but at ages 75-80, the participants enjoyed the scientific experiment and complied wholeheartedly.

Five Days of Yesterday

And the end of five-days of continuously living in a pleasurable past, both groups of alumni were examined physical and tested cognitively.

Check this out: they were tested for joint flexibility, vision, muscle strength, and IQ.

On the first day they were examined physically and tested mentally, and now their functions were compared to those original statistics.

The group of alumni who were left to their own devices showed no change. The second group who spent five-days living three-decades in the past, thrived.

There was statistically significant data indicating a physical and mental improvement. They had thought themselves into feeling and behaving as if they were thirty-years younger than their true age.

This virtual reality experiment produced tangible results of improved health and physical reaction time