Elec­tri­cal Brain Stim­u­la­tion Helps Peo­ple Learn Math Faster (Wired): “…sci­en­tists stim­u­lated vol­un­teers’ brains with mild elec­tric cur­rent while they learned new arith­metic oper­a­tions based on made-up sym­bols. Peo­ple who received brain stim­u­la­tion dur­ing train­ing ses­sions on five con­sec­u­tive days learned two to five times faster than those who received sham stim­u­la­tion, and they retained a 30 to 40 per­cent per­for­mance edge six months later… Read the rest of this entry »

Heads up: I’ll be in Toronto this Wednes­day and Thurs­day to speak  on “The Web as a Gym for the Brain” at mesh13, and to present our new book on How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age at MaRS Dis­cov­ery Dis­trict. If you’re attend­ing either, please say Hello! Read the rest of this entry »

Envi­sion­ing The Future With Inven­tor Cori Lathan (NPR): “Com­put­ers were cre­ated to be use­ful tools, but all too often it’s still a chore to get tech­nol­ogy to do our bidding…For exam­ple, work­ing as an engi­neer with astro­nauts at NASA, Lathan real­ized that the phys­i­cal chal­lenges of liv­ing in space in some ways mir­ror the chal­lenges of liv­ing with a dis­abil­ity on Earth. Read the rest of this entry »

Trans­form­ing Diag­no­sis (arti­cle by Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the NIMH): “In a few weeks, the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion will release its new edi­tion of the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (DSM-5)…While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dic­tio­nary, cre­at­ing Read the rest of this entry »

Study shows men­tal agility game slows cog­ni­tive decline in older peo­ple (Iowa Now): “Wolin­sky and col­leagues sep­a­rated 681 gen­er­ally healthy med­ical patients in Iowa into four groups—each fur­ther sep­a­rated into those 50 to 64 years of age and those over age 65. One group was given com­put­er­ized cross­word puz­zles, while three other groups were exposed to a video game called Read the rest of this entry »

Let us share a spe­cial pro­mo­tion you may be inter­ested in: you can now gain com­pli­men­tary 6-month access to the self-paced course How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach when you order two copies of the new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age (284 pages; April 2013) before next Fri­day, May 10th. Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announce that, after much hard work and three global sum­mits to dis­cuss the lat­est sci­ence and best prac­tices, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age (April 2013; 284 pages), is now avail­able for pur­chase as paper­back ($15.95) and e-book ($9.95)!