10 things you should know about your mind

1. You cannot lose it, unlike the neurons that conduct the electrical impulses that eventually combine to become your mind. Neurons seem to whither at the slightest challenge, like the pill you popped last night, or any binge that end in a hangover. Fortunate for us our mind display a high grade of plasticity, which mean that function lost due to neural death could be taken over by others.

2. You have what you use, and what you don't gets lost as quick as last season's fashion. Which is a bit of a shame as research continue to come up with surprising new and uber cool abilities that babies have. Take for example their efficiency in cross species facial recognition, and then compare it to "I think they all look the same".

3. No challenge is too big or detail too small if you believe it matters. Our brain just love a challenge and can even construct special neural thingamabobs to handle new technologies like cellphones. When challenged to survival it remembers even the minutest of details, like the drop of blood sliding down the blade of grass you saw while crawling away from a fatal explosion.

4. Memory is but a fickle thing, and nowhere near what some people want to make of it. For a start, our brain excel in pattern recognition. Most of our memory is scattered across various neural sites, each one specializing in its own sensory pattern recognition. When we think of something our mind will trigger a harmonious event across the different sections needed to build the memory we want.

5. There is no difference between reality and imagination, at least not to your brain. You may want to argue, but it is a scientific fact that what you think become. Take for instance recent findings that power make hypocrite's of those who play its game, or the curious observation that we model morals to our situation.

6. When emotion kicks in, your ability for objective reasoning go out the window. Lame excuses such as you were angryor upset should not be tolerated in the company of choice, any choice. When we become emotionally involved our brain literally changes to a different operating system where reasoning take a distant second place to feeling.

7. Your brain retain an embryonic stem cell capability that can differentiate to any of a wide range of specialized neural cells and structures. We still don't know exactly how to use it, but at least the farming of stem cells from dead babies will not be necessary to treat the growing number of mental diseases of age like Alzheimer and Parkinson's.

8. You can tune your brain to any mental state by listening to bin-aural frequencies in the range of awareness that you require. The effect depend upon a "frequency following" response, a naturally occurring phenomenon of the the human brain. So if you need to be alert you simply listen to a bin-aural beat that entrain to somewhere in the Beta range, between 12-30 Hz.

9. Babies are born with minds that are messy, and exactly what it is that prevent it from tripping in a massive electrical short circuit is still unknown. What we do know, is that exposing babies to certain auditory stimuli, such as Baroque music before and after birth give them a significant and overall advantage above their peers. The metered beat of the music seem to provide a natural rhythm that order and accelerate the mental development of babies.

10. Most of the actions that you perform daily are not the result of your intention, but a carefully calculated flow of expected events. Our minds are constantly busy predicting the future to provide us with normal motion and fluid movement, allowing us act and play with minimal attention. Once mobile, our senses only monitor events for anything unusual or out of place, while the rest just happen without the need of thought.

Boost your memory

"Gray matter drops as we age," explains Arthur Kramer, professor of human perception and performance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Gray matter is the brain tissue that's rich in nerve cells. "It drops as we get older," says Kramer. "It's dropping as we speak."

The prevention of mental acuity and memory loss is big business, and people seem to be willing to pay a lot of money to keep their Grey matter from dimming under the onslaught of old age, dementia or Alzheimer's. Walk into any chemist or health shop and you will easily find a dozen or more products and supplements that promise to boost your mental performance, but do they actually work?

A lot of scientific research has been done in recent times, and despite our search for some secret elixir there are only a handful of proven remedies that promise to help those of us who are worried about our fading memory. None of these cost any money, and while some of them may surprise you, most of the recommendations supported by research are nothing more than common sense.

A good example is a recent article that looked at a wide range of factors currently being investigated, and only found five things that have been proven to be successful. In no particular order they are regular exercise of both our mind and our body, losing extra weight, and drinking coffee. Now where have I heard that before?

For those of us who just need a boost when we are faced with a mental challenge it may help to just take a few steps back, literally. According to a team of Dutch scientists, walking backwards helps people think more clearly, giving new meaning to the age old wisdom of stepping back when faced with a difficult problem! If that doesn't work it may help to take a nap to boost a "sophisticated kind of memory that helps us see the big picture and get creative".

To get smarter you may want to try and phone a friend, or perhaps you want to indulge in a bit of daydreaming? Studies at the University of Michigan suggest that people who engage in social interaction perform better at intellectual tasks than those who do not, and research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that both daydreaming and complex problem solving occur in the same region of the brain.

But the best scientific advice to prevent loss of memory due to old age is to stop thinking about it. Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that senior citizens who think older people should perform poorly on tests of memory actually score much worse than seniors who do not buy in to negative stereotypes about aging and memory loss.

In summary then you should socialize often, drink coffee, exercise, and remember you either use it or lose it. For a quick fix you can take a nap, get lost in a daydream or simply take a few steps back. As for the rest, just forget about it!