Thank you to the 118 sharp minds who have already ordered their $15 tick­ets to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week by watch­ing the lat­est on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, brain health and inno­va­tion. We need many more well-informed ambas­sadors of brain health and cog­ni­tive fit­ness, and Read the rest of this entry »

We look for­ward to the final day @ 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit, today, fea­tur­ing four great edu­ca­tional work­shops on: Read the rest of this entry »

Q: Where does the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit take place?

A: The full Sum­mit takes place online; you can access it from your com­puter any­where you are con­nected to the inter­net. You don’t need to travel any­where. Watch this 3-minute video to see how it all works.

Q: Why not have a tra­di­tional con­fer­ence in one place?

A: Because we want to bring you the best global speak­ers at the lead­ing edge of research, mar­ket trends and best practices…in an eco­nom­i­cal way. Gath­er­ing the Summit’s extra­or­di­nary and diverse speaker ros­ter in one place might be possible..but you’d be pay­ing over $1,500 in com­bined reg­is­tra­tion fees and travel expenses. In com­par­i­son, Read the rest of this entry »

Kate Sul­li­van will run an edu­ca­tional work­shop on  How to Set Up a Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter to Enhance Cog­ni­tive Retrain­ing and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion, at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (June 7-14th, 2012).

Descrip­tion: Learn the nuts and bolts of open­ing a rehab-oriented “brain fit­ness cen­ter”, includ­ing staffing, mea­sure­ment of behavioral/ cog­ni­tive out­comes, Read the rest of this entry »

Please take a look at the  pre­lim­i­nary Sum­mit Agenda fea­tur­ing a stel­lar ros­ter of con­firmed Speak­ers and Mod­er­a­tors and  includ­ing sev­eral in-depths workshops:

• How Nation­wide Insur­ance rolled-out a Brain-based Cor­po­rate Well­ness Ini­tia­tive, with Kath­leen Herath, Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent Health & Pro­duc­tiv­ity, Nation­wide Insurance.
• How to Con­nect Neu­ro­science and Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion: A School-based Exam­ple, with Howard Eaton, CEO, Eaton Edu­ca­tional Group and Annette Good­man, Chief Edu­ca­tion Offi­cer, Arrow­smith Program.
• How to Set Up a Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter to Drive Cog­ni­tive Retrain­ing and Rehab, with Kate Sul­li­van, Direc­tor of the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter, Wal­ter Reed National Mil­i­tary Med­ical Center.
• How to Improve Cog­ni­tive Care and Pro­long Inde­pen­dence in Senior Liv­ing, with Rod­ney Stoops, Admin­is­tra­tor, Prov­i­dence Place Retire­ment Community.

To Learn More, you can click on:

• Sum­mit Speak­ers and Moderators
• Sum­mit Agenda
• How to Reg­is­ter at early-bird rates

This is a par­tial list of the lit­er­a­ture we reviewed dur­ing the research phase of our new book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.  We know many friends of Sharp­Brains are researchers, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, graduate/ Ph.D. stu­dents, who want have direct access to the ref­er­ences (per­haps PubMed should pro­mote itself as a never end­ing source of men­tal stim­u­la­tion?), so here you have this list, orga­nized by rel­e­vant chap­ter. Please note that the list below appears in the book — whose man­u­script we had to close in Jan­u­ary 2009.

Intro­duc­tion

Basak, C. et al. (2008). Can train­ing in a real-time strat­egy video game atten­u­ate cog­ni­tive decline in older adults? Psy­chol­ogy and Aging.
Beg­ley, S. (2007). Train your mind, change your brain: How a new sci­ence reveals our extra­or­di­nary poten­tial to trans­form our­selves. Bal­lan­tine Books.
DeKosky, S. T., et al. (2008). Ginkgo biloba for pre­ven­tion of demen­tia: a ran­dom­ized con­trolled trial. Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, 300, 2253–2262.
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain that changes itself: Sto­ries of per­sonal tri­umph from the fron­tiers of brain sci­ence. Viking Adult.

Chap­ter 1. The Brain and Brain Fit­ness 101

Bunge, S. A., & Wright, S. B. (2007). Neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal changes in work­ing mem­ory and cog­ni­tive con­trol. Cur­rent Opin­ion In Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy, 17(2), 243–50.
Dama­sio, A. (1995). Descartes error: Emo­tion, rea­son, and the human brain. Pen­guin Press.
David Kolb, D. (1983). Expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing: Expe­ri­ence as the source of learn­ing and devel­op­ment. FT Press.
Dra­gan­ski, B., Gaser, C., Kem­per­mann, G., Kuhn, H. G., Win­kler, J., Buchel, C., & May A. (2006). Tem­po­ral and spa­tial dynam­ics of brain struc­ture changes dur­ing exten­sive learn­ing. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 261231, 6314–6317.
Gage, F. H., Kem­per­mann, G., & Song, H. (2007). Adult Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis. Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­tory Press, NY.
Gard­ner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The the­ory of mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences. New York: Basic Books.
Gaser, C. & Schlaug, G. (2003). Brain struc­tures dif­fer between musi­cians and non-musicians. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 23, 9240–9245. Read the rest of this entry »