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Adults can learn new skills and reshape their neural circuitry through focused effort, intensity, and utilizing psychological means and supplements to increase brain plasticity.

Questions to inspire discussion.

Can adults learn new skills effectively?
—Yes, adults can learn new skills effectively through focused effort and intensity, reshaping their neural circuitry in the process.

IN THIS EPISODE OF THE HUMAN UPGRADE™…you’ll learn how much control you can actually have over your brain. There’s a new way of accessing your meat operating system that adds an important element that’s been missing from the brain training conversation. Moha Bensofia joins the show to explain a new piece of neurotech called Mendi. He shares the benefits of getting more blood to the front of your brain. Mendi uses neurofeedback to provide visual feedback based on your brain activity.

A headset measures the activity while you play a fun brain-training mobile game. The system uses fNIRS technology to measure blood flow and oxygenation in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. The brain training game requires focus and calmness, which increases activity and control of your brain’s pathways.

The Sentis Brain Animation Series takes you on a tour of the brain through a series of short and sharp animations. The fourth in the series explains how our most complex organ is capable of changing throughout our lives. This inspiring animation demonstrates how we all have the ability to learn and change by rewiring our brains. Who is Sentis? We are a global team assisting individuals and organisations change their lives for the better. The human mind is our focus and we believe the mind is an individual’s most important performance tool. We are the world leaders in the application of psychology and neuroscience to safety, leadership development, and wellbeing in the workplace. The Sentis Brain Animation Series is the intellectual property of Sentis Pty Ltd and only approved for third party use under a formal licensing agreement.

The advancement of higher cognitive abilities in humans is predominantly associated with the growth of the neocortex, a brain area key to conscious thinking, movement, and sensory perception. Researchers are increasingly realizing, however, that the “little brain” or cerebellum also expanded during evolution and probably contributes to the capacities unique to humans, explains Prof. Henrik Kaessmann from the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University.

His research team has – together with Prof. Dr Stefan Pfister from the Hopp Children’s Cancer Center Heidelberg – generated comprehensive genetic maps of the development of cells in the cerebella of humans, mice, and opossums. Comparisons of these data reveal both ancestral and species-specific cellular and molecular characteristics of cerebellum development spanning over 160 million years of mammalian evolution.

Summary: Mice display behavior akin to self-recognition when viewing their reflections in mirrors. This behavior emerges under specific conditions: familiarity with mirrors, socialization with similar-looking mice, and visible markings on their fur.

The study also identifies a subset of neurons in the hippocampus that are crucial for this self-recognition-like behavior. These findings provide valuable insights into the neural mechanisms behind self-recognition, a previously enigmatic aspect of neurobehavioral research.

An international team led by researchers at the University of Toronto has uncovered over 100 genes that are common to primate brains but have undergone evolutionary divergence only in humans—and which could be a source of our unique cognitive ability.

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Jesse Gillis from the Donnelly Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and the department of physiology at U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, found the genes are expressed differently in the brains of humans compared to four of our relatives—chimpanzees, gorillas, macaques and marmosets.

The findings, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggest that reduced , or tolerance to loss-of-function mutations, may have allowed the genes to take on higher-level cognitive capacity. The study is part of the Human Cell Atlas, a global initiative to map all to better understand health and disease.

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