《我們的一生》The Art of Becoming Human by Mary E. Mercer 嚴韻譯 台北:一方2005
Being a Lifelong Bookworm May Keep You Sharp in Old Age
To keep their bodies running at peak performance, people often hit the gym, pounding away at the treadmill to strengthen muscles and build endurance. This dedication has enormous benefits—being in shape now means warding off a host of diseases when you get older. But does the brain work in the same way? That is, can doing mental exercises help your mind stay just as sharp in old age?
Experts say it’s possible. As a corollary to working out, people have begun joining brain gyms to flex their mental muscles. For a monthly fee of around $15, websites like Lumosity.com and MyBrainTrainer.com promise to enhance memory, attention and other mental processes through a series of games and brain teasers. Such ready-made mind exercises are an alluring route for people who worry about their ticking clock. But there’s no need to slap down the money right away—new research suggests the secret to preserving mental agility may lie in simply cracking open a book.
The findings, published online today in Neurology, suggest that reading books, writing and engaging in other similar brain-stimulating activities slows down cognitive decline in old age, independent of common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, people who participated in mentally stimulating activities over their lifetimes, both in young, middle and old age, had a slower rate of decline in memory and other mental capacities than those who did not.
Researchers used an array of tests to measure 294 people’s memory and thinking every year for six years years. Participants also answered a questionnaire about their reading and writing habits, from childhood to adulthood to advanced age. Following the participants’ deaths at an average age of 89, researchers examined their brains for evidence of the physical signs of dementia, such as lesions, plaques and tangles. Such brain abnormalities are most common in older people, causing them to experience memory lapses. They proliferate in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, leading to memory and thinking impairments that can severely affect victims’ daily lives.
Using information from the questionnaire
The researchers found that mental activity accounted for nearly 15 percent of the difference in memory decline, beyond what could be explained by the presence of plaque buildup. “Based on this, we shouldn’t underestimate the effects of everyday activities, such as reading and writing, on our children, ourselves and our parents or grandparents,” says study author Robert S. Wilson, a neuropsychologist at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, in a statement.
Reading gives our brains a workout because comprehending text
requires more mental energy than, for example, processing an image on a
television screen. Reading exercises our working memory, which actively
processes and stores new information as it comes. Eventually, that
information gets transferred into long-term memory, where our
understanding of any given material deepens. Writing can be likened to
practice: the more we rehearse the perfect squat, the better our form
becomes, tightening all the right muscles. Writing helps us consolidate
new information for the times we may need to recall it, which boosts our
memory skills.
So the key to keeping our brains sharp for the long haul does have something in common with physical exercise: we have to stick with it. And it’s best to start early. In 2009, a seven-year study of 2,000 healthy individuals aged 18 to 60 found that mental agility peaks at 22. By 27, mental processes like reasoning, spatial visualization and speed of thought began to decline.
So the key to keeping our brains sharp for the long haul does have something in common with physical exercise: we have to stick with it. And it’s best to start early. In 2009, a seven-year study of 2,000 healthy individuals aged 18 to 60 found that mental agility peaks at 22. By 27, mental processes like reasoning, spatial visualization and speed of thought began to decline.
Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/07/being-a-lifelong-bookworm-may-keep-you-sharp-in-old-age/#ixzz2YPEaggZG
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of BAYARD RUSTIN by John D'EMILIO
One of the most important figures of the American civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin taught Martin Luther King Jr. the methods of Gandhi, spearheaded the 1963 March on Washington, and helped bring the struggle of African Americans to the forefront of a nation's consciousness. But despite his incontrovertibly integral role in the movement, the openly gay Rustin is not the household name that many of his activist contemporaries are. In exploring history's Lost Prophet, acclaimed historian John D'Emilio explains why Rustin's influence was minimized by his peers and why his brilliant strategies were not followed, or were followed by those he never meant to help.
台大撿的 他們的故事多激勵一些人 不過我太老又定型了. 只能讀出一些社會史.
王智弘《一個臺灣小留學生到哈佛之路》台北市: 健行,1995
菜鳥醫生上前線一個臺灣小留學生到哈佛之路2
王智弘 - 健行,1999-10-10 出版
哈佛醫師報到
王智弘 - 九歌,2002-08-10 出版
黑幼龍《破局而出》台北市: 天下文化,2001
賴東進. 《乞丐囝仔》. 台北市: 平安文化. 2000年(2005年,賴氏受邀至泰國,參與其自傳《乞丐囝仔》泰語版的簽書會,時該書也已譯為簡體中文、韓文、日文。[2])
了解一些此行業的動態 .
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