Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Neuroplasticity, Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Update: Is Grey the New Gold?

Here you have the June edi­tion of our monthly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and Brain Fitnessbrain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

The full sched­ule of the Sharp­Brains’ pow­ered Cog­ni­tive Health Track at the Games for Health Con­fer­ence, June 11-12th in Boston, is now avail­able online. 13 ses­sions will fea­ture 18 inno­va­tors and thought-leaders rep­re­sent­ing devel­op­ers, uni­ver­si­ties, clin­i­cians, con­sumers, insur­ance com­pa­nies, and more. You can learn more and reg­is­ter.

Longevity Div­i­dend

Ever heard of the Longevity Div­i­dend? Per­haps Grey is the New Gold: The Kro­nos Longevity Research Insti­tute has released a new report sum­ma­riz­ing the state of aging research that includes an excel­lent intro­duc­tion into the Longevity Div­i­dend, a “the­ory that says we hope to inter­vene sci­en­tif­i­cally to slow the aging process, which will also delay the onset of age-related dis­eases. Delay­ing aging just seven years would slash rates of con­di­tions like can­cer, dia­betes, Alzheimer’s dis­ease and heart dis­ease in half.” With that con­text in mind, is the National Insti­tute on Aging get­ting its fair bud­get share?

Resources

Visual Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the State of the Mar­ket 2009: Paul Van Slem­brouck sum­ma­rizes and beau­ti­fully presents the main find­ings of our 150-page mar­ket report, The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2009. Enjoy this excel­lent graphic.

Book Club Dis­cus­sion Guide: The goal of our just pub­lished book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, is to inform you, but also to open a much needed debate to con­tribute to our col­lec­tive brain fit­ness. We encour­age book clubs to read and dis­cuss the book, and sug­gest 10 ques­tions to kick­start the con­ver­sa­tion. Please do send us your answers and impressions!

Edu­ca­tion & Learning

10% Stu­dents may have work­ing mem­ory prob­lems: Why does this mat­ter?: A recent study screened over 3,000 school-aged stu­dents in schools in the UK and found that 1 in 10 was iden­ti­fied as hav­ing work­ing mem­ory dif­fi­cul­ties. Work­ing mem­ory is our abil­ity to store and manip­u­late infor­ma­tion for a brief time, and dif­fi­cul­ties in this brain func­tion may lead into dif­fi­cul­ties in read­ing and math­e­mat­ics. Dr. Tracy Alloway reviews the study and elaborates.

Brain Sci­en­tists Iden­tify Links between Arts & Learn­ing: Nicky Pen­tilla com­ments on a recent report spon­sored by the Dana Foun­da­tion and a related Learn­ing, Arts, and the Brain Sum­mit. “Arts edu­ca­tion influ­ences learn­ing and other areas of cog­ni­tion and may deserve a more promi­nent place in schools.” Of par­tic­u­lar note is the find­ing that showed sig­nif­i­cant brain plas­tic­ity as a result of instru­men­tal music instruc­tion are repeated practice.

8 Tips To Remem­ber What You Read: Despite tele­vi­sion, cell phones, and  twit­ter, tra­di­tional read­ing is still an impor­tant skill. Dr. Bill Klemm offers some tips to read with good speed and com­pre­hen­sion: Read with a pur­pose, Skim first, Get the read­ing mechan­ics right, Be judi­cious in high­light­ing and note tak­ing, Think in pic­tures, Rehearse as you go along, Stay within your atten­tion span and work to increase your atten­tion span, Practice.

News

Cor­po­rate Well­ness, Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments and Mem­ory Fit­ness Pro­grams: a great Mar­ket­Watch arti­cle pro­vides an overview of how major insur­ers and large employ­ers are start­ing to add brain health to their cor­po­rate well­ness activ­i­ties.  The Stan­ford Longevity Cen­ter released a state­ment urg­ing con­sumers who buy a range of mem­ory prod­ucts to make informed deci­sions (we released the book above pre­cisely with that goal in mind).

Have a stim­u­lat­ing month of June!

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Categories: Cognitive Neuroscience, Education & Lifelong Learning, Health & Wellness, Monthly eNewsletter, Technology

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Top Articles on Brain, Cognition and Neuroplasticity

  1. Do you believe these neu­romyths?, by SharpBrains
  2. Brain Plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain, by Pas­cale Michelon
  3. In the Age of Google, Should Schools Teach Mem­o­riza­tion Skills?, by Bill Klemm
  4. Does cog­ni­tive train­ing work? (For Whom? For What?), by Pas­cale Michelon
  5. The Emo­tional Life of Your Brain, by by Richard David­son, Sharon Begley
  6. Cur­rent State of the Sci­ence behind Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD, by David Rabiner
  7. To Be (Your Con­nec­tome), or Not to Be (Your Genome), by Sebas­t­ian Seung
  8. Top 10 Brain Fit­ness Future Trends, by Alvaro Fernandez
  9. Biofeed­back now a “Level 1 — Best Sup­port” Inter­ven­tion for ADHD, by SharpBrains
  10. When 1 + 1 = 5: Dyscal­cu­lia and Work­ing Mem­ory, by Tracy Alloway
  11. Train­ing Atten­tion and Emo­tional Self-Regulation — Inter­view with Michael Pos­ner, by Alvaro Fernandez
  12. The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains, by Alvaro Fernandez
  13. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?, by Car­o­line Latham
  14. Brain fit­ness Q&A: Mem­ory, stress, emo­tions, by Alvaro Fernandez
  15. Cog­ni­tive ther­apy or med­ica­tion? Brain scans may help per­son­al­ize treat­ments, by SharpBrains
  16. New Study shows Teens with ADHD helped by Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­apy, by David Rabiner
  17. How Do Words Change Our Brains and Lives?, by Andrew New­berg, Mark Waldman
  18. BBC “Brain Train­ing” Exper­i­ment: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, by Alvaro Fernandez
  19. Sci­en­tific cri­tique of BBC/ Nature Brain Train­ing Exper­i­ment, by Liz Zelinski
  20. From Anti-Alzheimer’s “Magic Bul­lets” to True Brain Health, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Peter Whitehouse
  21. Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Ratio­nal and Intu­itive Problem-Solving, by Judith Tingley
  22. Why I Wrote The Woman Who Changed Her Brain, by Bar­bara Arrowsmith-Young
  23. The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom, by Alvaro Fernandez
  24. Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup, by Dharma Singh Khalsa
  25. Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, by Alvaro Fernandez
  26. To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Start with Enthu­si­asm, by Helena Popovic
  27. Q&A with Yaakov Stern on Brain Reserve, Exer­cise, Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, Angry Birds, by Alvaro Fernandez
  28. It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101, by Alvaro Fernandez
  29. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness prod­ucts and games, by Alvaro Fernandez
  30. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Man­age­ment, by Jill Sutie
  31. Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle, by Gre­gory Kellet
  32. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Devel­op­ment Through Play, by David Elkind
  33. AARP’s Brain Fit­ness Best Books List, by SharpBrains
  34. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son, by Alvaro Fernandez
  35. Improve Mem­ory with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Test­ing, by Bill Klemm
  36. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn, by Lau­rie Bartels
  37. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness, by Alvaro Fernandez
  38. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD, by David Rabiner
  39. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health, by Pas­cale Michelon
  40. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­ory and the Brain, by Shan­non Moffet

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