Researchers at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute found Gingko Biloba triggers significant improvement in verbal memory in subjects with age-associated memory impairment compared to placebo.

Many earlier studies with Ginkgo Biloba have produced conflicting results. According to

Today I received an email from someone who runs a memory and learning improvement internet business. It was the kind of email that gets blasted to thousands of inboxes simultaneously. Although I’ve never purchased any of their products, I always got the impression it was fairly reputable.

Wow, I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around this one…

A real brain buster created by Marcel Debreuil:

Think you can solve this? It looks simple but the more you look the trickier it gets.

Just read an article on WebMD that discusses new research out of the University of Florida.

The study, published in The Journal of Pediatrics, reveals that children who are obese by age 4 are more likely to have lower IQ scores.

Specifically, children that weigh 150% more than their ideal weight had IQ scores that were 25-30 points lower.

My wife’s friend just sent this over via email:

cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty  uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig  to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,

Instead of ‘kicking the dog’, try this for some stress relief.

Interactive Buddy v.1.02  can be found at

Compared to those who drank less than one glass of fruit or vegetable juice per week, those who drank three or more were 76% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Qi Dai and colleagues out of Vanderbilt School of Medicine reported these results in the September issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

You can read the full article

This puzzle comes courtesy of www.rinkworks.com:

If you put a coin in an empty bottle and insert a cork into the neck of the bottle, how could you remove the coin without taking the cork out or breaking the bottle?

Can you make it to the end? I bet most will have trouble doing it on the 1st try.

The Idiot test was created by Ryan Curtis, and is available from www.addictinggames.com

The prevalence of autism amongst our kids is alarmingly high. Many clearly consider it to be an epidemic. Personally, I know of many doctors and nurses whose children have it.

Sometimes I get the impression the brain is like an iceberg. The small part that pokes up above the water is our conscious awareness, as well as the mental capacities we can control at will.

Beneath this, however, lurks a huge subconscious processing station whose activities we’re entirely oblivious of.

According to this article

Julian Beever does some incredible things with pavement art:

This puzzle comes courtesy of www.brainboggled.com.

In an earlier post, I mentioned how a large amount of new research shows that chronic stress plays a major role in destroying the memory engine (hippocampus) of your brain.

Additionally, I’ve also pointed out how many studies

Is there any reason to think that a strong immune system is correlated with a powerful brain?

Here’s an interesting article from physorg.com

If you look carefully at the NASA photo below, you will see a little white dot. This minute speck is Earth seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it exits the solar system, nearly 4 billion miles away. The photo was taken back in 1990.

On a lighter note than the above quote, here’s a short riddle you may enjoy.

Thanks to www.riddles.com for providing.

Although I’m still wondering how Grandma knew “fish is brain food”, while leafing through my latest issue of Archives of Neurology, I came across another neat study that illustrates how beneficial DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid) is for your brain.

There have been several studies lately that reveal how bad sleep disordered breathing can be for your brain.

Now, a recent article published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine

If any of you have ever eaten at Cracker Barrel restaurant, you’ll definitely remember the peg puzzle. It’s been around a long time, but nonetheless is fun.

The schockzone.com has a great flash version of it that you can play by

This neat little optical illusion comes courtesy of www.coolopticalillusions.com.

Probalby one of the cooler optical illusions I’ve seen in awhile.

Note that the picture below is not animated!

A new study out of Boston University and UCLA and published in the journal Current Biology, confirms that learning is more efficient when multiple senses are involved.

Thanks to www.syvum.com for this brain teaser:

A 33″ x 33″ square metal plate needs to be fixed by a carpenter on to a wooden board. The carpenter uses nails all along the edges of the square such that there are 34 nails on each side of the square. Each nail is at the same distance from the neighboring nails. How many nails does the carpenter use?

Nicotine is so powerful and addicting, it turns out a smoker’s craving will not go away until nearly every single one of his brain’s nicotine receptors are completely saturated by the drug.

Based on new research out of the UCLA School of Medicine published in the Archives of General Psychiatry

Prednisone is a corticosteroid, and neurologists typically prescribe it quite often, as many of the diseases we see respond dramatically to it.