We are proud to share that Kirkus Reviews, one of the most cred­i­ble inde­pen­dent review­ers of new books, just pub­lished a very good review of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age (April 2013; 284 pages).

Kirkus Review

“Your brain is your most pre­cious asset, and it is wise to invest in it,” the authors write. Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of every­one with a brain and an ebook reader, we are mak­ing the Kin­dle edi­tion of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness free to down­load until this Fri­day. You will notice that a few sec­tions require updat­ing (we’re work­ing on a sec­ond edi­tion) but the book has aged pretty well since 2009. Descrip­tion: Named a Best Book by AARP, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness is an invalu­able guide that helps read­ers nav­i­gate grow­ing brain research and iden­tify the lifestyle fac­tors and prod­ucts that Read the rest of this entry »

As with “expert,” the root of expe­ri­ence is “experiri,” a Latin word mean­ing “to try out.” Peo­ple with a lot of expe­ri­ence should be will­ing to try new things, as their knowl­edge should pro­vide more con­text and points of view, enable more explo­ration of an issue, and min­i­mize risk with deci­sions. How­ever, highly expe­ri­enced peo­ple tend to fall into the habits of the past. Once we have accu­mu­lated a valu­able base of knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence pro­vides a use­ful short­cut for deci­sion mak­ing. Rely­ing on expe­ri­ence is very fast and very effi­cient, but it is also poten­tially very dan­ger­ous. Oper­at­ing with the least effort pos­si­ble, the brain retrieves what­ever quickly seems to fit. We apply past pat­terns to the future. Rather than call upon its amaz­ing cre­ativ­ity, too often the brain works as noth­ing but a huge stor­age bin of precedents.

Because “close is good enough” as our brain fills in the blanks, we Read the rest of this entry »

We have always thought that “our brain shapes us.” I wrote my new book, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain (May 2012; Free Press, Fore­word by Nor­man Doidge), to prove that the reverse is equally true. I wanted to demon­strate how “we can shape our brains.”

Imag­ine hav­ing a brain that is capa­ble and inca­pable at the same time. Grow­ing up, I had severe learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. I lived in a world that was con­fus­ing and incom­pre­hen­si­ble. As I was to later dis­cover, a crit­i­cal part of my brain was not work­ing prop­erly, the end result being that all lan­guage was expe­ri­enced as for­eign and my trans­la­tor was Read the rest of this entry »

The Arrow­smith Pro­gram has agreed to become a Gold Spon­sor @ 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (June 7-14th): Opti­miz­ing Health through Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Inno­va­tion and Data. Thank you!

The Arrow­smith Pro­gram,  avail­able in pub­lic and pri­vate schools in  the U.S. and Canada, is a com­pre­hen­sive suite of cog­ni­tive pro­grams for stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties that tar­gets 19 areas of the brain that are most com­monly involved in learn­ing. The Arrow­smith Pro­gram iden­ti­fies and strength­ens the weak cog­ni­tive areas that affect learn­ing and each stu­dent works on cog­ni­tive pro­grams that are indi­vid­u­ally designed for his or her areas of learn­ing difficulty.

Please note that Bar­bara Arrowsmith-Young, the founder of the pro­gram whose back­ground story was described in the best­selling book The Brain That Changes Itself, by Nor­man Doidge, is releas­ing her own book this May.  Titled, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain. Learn More Here.

On Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 7, at 7 p.m., Cleve­land Park Library in Wash­ing­ton, DC will host Alvaro Fer­nan­dez as he dis­cusses  The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews to Keep Your Brain Sharp (book also avail­able via DC library sys­tem).

The book expands on the con­cept of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity that recent works such as the New York Times best­seller, The Brain that Changes Itself, and the PBS Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram have intro­duced to the world. Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, or the the brain’s capac­ity to Read the rest of this entry »

SharpBrains.com is a lead­ing blog and online com­mu­nity for brain health and applied neu­ro­science, with 100,000+ monthly read­ers, 40,000+ opt-in eNewslet­ter sub­scribers and 8,000+ fol­low­ers on Face­book, Twit­ter, LinkedIn and RSS.

The web­site and blog are curated by the staff at Sharp­Brains, the inde­pen­dent mar­ket research firm  that pub­lishes The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness –recently named a Best Book by AARP– and pro­duces the annual Sharp­Brains Sum­mit–the largest vir­tual con­fer­ence on brain health, applied neu­ro­science and inno­va­tion–, among other activities.

You can engage this grow­ing and influ­en­tial audi­ence by sub­mit­ting a guest arti­cle on any topic related to brain health that meets our qual­ity stan­dards. Learn more here »