Cognitive Enhancement, Aging Baby Boomers, and the Legal Profession

A quick note to alert you of two very inter­est­ing, grow­ing, and some­how linked debates: 1) Very insight­ful arti­cle on The Aging of the Baby Boomers: What Does It Mean for the Legal Pro­fes­sion (thank you, Stephanie!). Some quotes: — “As I pen this arti­cle, it seems as though I’m writ­ing about some­one else the…

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Brain Fitness Program: How to Evaluate and Choose One

The hol­i­days are approach­ing and you can expect many soft­ware and game devel­op­ers to adver­tise their prod­ucts aggres­sive­ly, try­ing to get you buy their “brain train­ing” prod­ucts for you or as a gift for a loved one. The good news is that there are more and more tools we can use to keep men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ed and…

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Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together

Every­one has heard of “Use It or Lose It.” Now…what is “It”? Last week I gave a talk at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cis­co, and one of the areas atten­dees seemed to enjoy the most was learn­ing about what our brains are and how they work, peak­ing into the “black box” of our minds. With­out understanding…

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11 Neuroscientists Debunk a Common Myth about Brain Training

Last Mon­day, NPR (very good US-based radio sta­tion) had a pro­gram on “do brain train­ing pro­grams work?” that reflect­ed very old-fash­ioned think­ing. In short, the guest speak­ers talked and talked about the impor­tance of nutri­tion and phys­i­cal exer­cise (both very impor­tant, as we have cov­ered in this blog mul­ti­ple times), and expressed skep­ti­cism about the…

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Are there herbal and vitamin supplements that will protect my memory?

Omega‑3 and omega‑6 fat­ty acids found in cold-water fish may be help­ful to long term brain health.Folic acid may also be help­ful to both cog­ni­tive func­tion and hearing.Ginkgo bilo­ba and DHEA do not appear to help your brain.There is still more research to be done and nev­er dis­miss the place­bo effect!Omega‑3 fat­ty acids found in cold-water fish such as mack­er­el, her­ring, salmon, and tuna look more promis­ing. Giu­liano Fontani’s work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Siena in Italy asso­ci­at­ed omega‑3 sup­ple­men­ta­tion with improved atten­tion­al and phys­i­o­log­i­cal func­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those involv­ing com­plex cor­ti­cal processing.

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