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 »

Accord­ing to a new posi­tion state­ment by the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Neu­rol­ogy (AAN), pre­scrib­ing cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, “attention-boosting,” drugs to healthy chil­dren is mis­guided and not jus­ti­fi­able. Inter­est­ingly, a 2009 posi­tion state­ment by AAN still in force today stated that doing so with adult “patients” is both legal and eth­i­cal (includ­ing the remark that “Neu­rol­o­gists who pre­scribe med­ica­tions for the off-label use of neu­roen­hance­ment are act­ing law­fully,” with­out really chal­leng­ing whether the drugs have been proven to be a) effec­tive and b) safe in that con­text). Read the rest of this entry »

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Novem­ber 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing lat­est sci­ence, tools and think­ing to upgrade brain health. Before we start, do you believe these 32 neu­romyths? Do we only use 10% of our brain?

New Sci­ence:

• Fast cycling can help Parkinson’s Dis­ease patients strengthen brain con­nec­tiv­ity for motor ability
• There’s no sin­gle sil­ver bul­let to treat depres­sion (not even aer­o­bic exercise)
• The cog­ni­tive and brain fit­ness ben­e­fits of being bilingual
• New­born neu­rons in the adult brain are crit­i­cal for learn­ing and memory
• Call­ing high school students/ teach­ers to design cre­ative exper­i­ments on the human brain

New Tools:

• Brain health cen­ters adding cog­ni­tive coach­ing services
• Study: Emerg­ing brain com­puter inter­face can mon­i­tor and train atten­tion in unmed­icated ADHD children
• 10–12 hours of med­i­ta­tion train­ing can improve daily-life emo­tional regulation
• On the lim­its of Citi­co­l­ine and the need for com­pre­hen­sive brain injury rehabilitation

New Think­ing:

• Do you believe these neu­romyths? Do we only use 10% of our brain?
• Smart pills as cog­ni­tive enhance­ment? Let’s first mon­i­tor neg­a­tive cog­ni­tive side-effects of com­mon medications
• Brains shape tech­nol­ogy as tech­nol­ogy shapes brains

Finally, a request to  reporters, ana­lysts and blog­gers read­ing this. As we’re prepar­ing to release a major mar­ket report, we’d like to ensure you are in our Media List. If you’re inter­ested in brain health & inno­va­tion and want to be noti­fied as soon as the report becomes avail­able, please Fill This Form and let us know a bit about the publication/s you are writ­ing for. Thank you!

Mem­ory Loss Could Be The Fault Of Your Meds, Not Your Age (Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times):

“Mem­ory loss isn’t always an inevitable sign of get­ting old – in some cases, com­mon med­ica­tions that seniors take to treat insom­nia, anx­i­ety, or even aller­gies could be to blame…Tannenbaum and her col­leagues recently inves­ti­gated what kinds of med­ica­tion are most likely to affect both mem­ory and con­cen­tra­tion. In a meta-analysis of 162 exper­i­ments on var­i­ous drugs, Tan­nen­baum con­cluded that the recur­rent use of sev­eral kinds of med­ica­tions can have impacts Read the rest of this entry »

“The 2012 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit proved to be a highly reward­ing, enjoy­able and extremely use­ful expe­ri­ence. The hands-on information-rich work­shops are help­ing take our cur­rent efforts to the next level” - Josep M Tor­mos, Research Coor­di­na­tor, Insti­tut Guttmann

“The Sharp­Brains Sum­mit brings together lead­ers in all rel­e­vant cog­ni­tive fields from busi­ness to aca­d­e­mic com­mu­ni­ties, as well as pro­vid­ing a forum to address the evo­lu­tion of this emerg­ing indus­try. Because cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, fit­ness, and enter­tain­ment are rel­a­tively nascent indus­tries, it has been dif­fi­cult to use tra­di­tional bench­marks to eval­u­ate its suc­cess and growth. Sharp­Brains is quickly becom­ing the “go to” resource for inno­va­tion and busi­ness insight. Alvaro and his team delve into a vari­ety of top­ics — both on macro and niche lev­els, mak­ing the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit the per­fect forum for dis­cov­ery and idea exchange “- Stan­ley Yang, CEO, NeuroSky

“I can­not rec­om­mend the Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit highly enough. It’s a fan­tas­tic forum for knowl­edge shar­ing in the com­plex area of brain health pro­vid­ing access and dis­cus­sion with world lead­ers in the field. I found the vir­tual for­mat actu­ally enhanced the learn­ing expe­ri­ence and the short ses­sions focused the con­tent in an engag­ing way which is often lack­ing in other tra­di­tional con­fer­ence set­tings” — David Coleiro, Part­ner, Strate­gic North

–> To Learn More about the 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit and to Access Record­ings: click HERE.

We will announce in a few weeks the dates for the 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit. Please stay tuned!

Pic credit: Big­Stock­Photo

The 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit: Opti­miz­ing Health through Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Inno­va­tion and Data, held June 7-14th, con­cluded with a call to enhance brain health by har­ness­ing neuroplasticity-based appli­ca­tions, big data plat­forms and con­sumer inter­est to aug­ment the tra­di­tional reliance on disease-based phar­ma­co­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions and frag­mented clin­i­cal trials.

All ses­sions held dur­ing the 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit were recorded, and all audio­vi­sual record­ings are avail­able now for online access until July 31th, 2013. How to Watch 2012 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Recordings:

1. If you already have login infor­ma­tion, you can sim­ply visit the Sum­mit Agenda and click on the ses­sion you want to watch
2. If you want to order 1-year access to Sum­mit Record­ings, Click HERE. You can order the Full Record­ings for all 4-Days of 2012 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (includ­ing 2 days of Sum­mit, Expo Day, and Edu­ca­tional Work­shops; all for $325), or order the Record­ings cor­re­spond­ing to one par­tic­u­lar day ($150).

We are proud to report that 95% of respon­dents in a post-Summit sur­vey expressed a High or Very High level of sat­is­fac­tion with their Sum­mit expe­ri­ence and with the Qual­ity of Con­tent. We are even prouder to have started receiv­ing glow­ing endorse­ments from research lead­ers and indus­try inno­va­tors includ­ing: Read the rest of this entry »

Time for the Novem­ber edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of resources and insights on how to invest in our brains, includ­ing top­ics such as brain health, med­i­ta­tion, neu­ropsy­chol­ogy, brain train­ing games, chemo brain, dyslexia, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, cog­ni­tive biases, stress, and more. Not to for­get a cou­ple of fun teasers. Enjoy!

Brain Fit­ness Q&A Sessions:

• Tran­script: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Men­tal Cap­i­tal­ism and Non-invasive Cog­ni­tive Enhancement
• Tran­script: Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­ory and the Brain
• Tran­script: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum on Med­i­ta­tion and Neuropsychology

The Big Picture:

• Steve Jobs: Com­put­ers are the Bicy­cles of the Mind
• Brain Fit­ness: Def­i­n­i­tion, Pri­or­i­ties, and Links to Neu­rolead­er­ship, by Alvaro Fernandez
• Is the Uni­ver­sity Cen­tered on The Learner or the Pro­fes­sor?, by Miguel Angel Escotet
• Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Med­ical Blog­ging, by Alvaro Fernandez

New Research:

• Can Brain Train­ing Games and Biofeed­back Help Pre­vent Depres­sion, by Dr. Pas­cale Michelon
• ‘Chemo Brain’: MRI Shows Brain Changes After Chemotherapy
• Dyslexia not related to intel­li­gence. Impli­ca­tions for dis­crep­ancy model?
• Vet­er­ans learn to use yoga and med­i­ta­tion exer­cises to recon­nect with their emotions
• Applied Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: Rewiring the Brain to Ease Pain

New Books:

• What makes your brain happy and why you should do the oppo­site, by David DiS­alvo (We’ll have a Live Q&A on Decem­ber 9th)
• How cog­ni­tive illu­sions blind us to reason
• The Series on Stress & the Brain, by Dr. Jerome Schultz, con­tin­ues with: The Lit­tle Brain Down Under, The Stress Response Explained, The Human Brain Likes to Be in Bal­ance, To Fight, Flee or Freeze –That is the Question

Brain Teasers:

• Math Teaser: Unfin­ished The­sis, by Maria Lando
• Math Teaser: How to Choose a Mans Shirt, by Maria Lando
• How many Share This Arti­cle links, right below, do you know how to use? Try a cou­ple of them and share via Face­book and Twitter!

Thank you for your inter­est and atten­tion and have a great December.