Workouts at the (New Yorker) brain gym

NewYorkerGood arti­cle on brain fit­ness and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in the July 29th edi­tion of The New York­er, fea­tur­ing many Sharp­Brains friends. Men­tal­ly fit — Work­outs at the brain gym:

As recent­ly as a few decades ago, most biol­o­gists thought that the brain was ful­ly formed dur­ing child­hood and, like a pho­to­graph after it’s been devel­oped, was doomed to degrade there­after, with neu­rons (nerve cells) fad­ing like pig­ment on paper until you suc­cumbed to senil­i­ty. Today, we regard Alzheimer’s and oth­er demen­tias as dis­eases, rather than as a con­se­quence of nor­mal aging. More­over, we now con­sid­er the brain to be as labile as a dig­i­tal image in the hands of a Pho­to­shop fiend…Not only does the brain have a life­long abil­i­ty to cre­ate new neu­rons; like a gov­ern­ment with an unlim­it­ed high­way bud­get, it has an end­less capac­i­ty to build new roadways…The abil­i­ty of the brain to estab­lish new con­nec­tions is called plas­tic­i­ty, and brain-fit­ness exer­cis­es are pred­i­cat­ed on this mechanism…That’s enough sci­ence for now. Let’s get back to me. . . .”

About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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