Time for Sharp­Brains’ Sep­tem­ber 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing leading-edge research and insights to help con­nect the dots among tech­nol­ogy, healthy liv­ing, healthare, con­cus­sions, and–our protagonist–the brain.

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• Is the Inter­net mak­ing us dumber? (Nope, just different)
• Increas­ing cog­ni­tive loads on min­ers’ brains: good exam­ple of where soci­ety is heading
• Brain fit­ness meets HRV and EEG biometrics
• Employee Assis­tance Pro­grams enhance cor­po­rate well­ness with brain training
• The NIH Toolbox:First Com­pre­hen­sive & Stan­dard­ized Tests of Brain Function
• MMSE®/MMSE®-2™ Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment Screener, Now a Mobile App

Healthy Liv­ing & the Brain:

• Why do Super­Agers Main­tain Mem­ory and a Thick Cortex?
• Will Medicare’s Annual Well­ness Visit enhance phys­i­cal & cog­ni­tive health? Prob­a­bly — if peo­ple go
• Health value of Omega-3 sup­ple­ments is increas­ingly questioned
• Good Q&A on Mild Cog­ni­tive Impairment

Health­care & the Brain:

• Map­ping the Brain To Bet­ter Enhance and Treat the Mind
• Cog­ni­tive ther­apy or med­ica­tion? Brain scans may help per­son­al­ize treatments
• Mon­i­tor­ing EEG Brain Activ­ity to Per­son­al­ize Mem­ory Training
• Train­ing Atten­tion and Mem­ory after Bypass Surgery
• MRI scan tech­ni­cians can expe­ri­ence neg­a­tive neu­rocog­ni­tive effects

Con­cus­sions & the Brain:

• Retool­ing cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion for mil­i­tary patients with trau­matic brain injury
• NFL donates $30 mil­lion to improve con­cus­sion & brain injury care

Pic cour­tesy of Big­Stock­Photo

If you fol­lowed lat­est head­lines sur­round­ing the release of the National Alzheimer’s Plan, you’d prob­a­bly con­clude that the likely solu­tion to main­tain life­long brain health is sim­ple: sim­ply wait until 2025 for a “magic bul­let” to be dis­cov­ered, to cure (or end or pre­vent) Alzheimer’s dis­ease and aging asso­ci­ated cog­ni­tive decline. These kinds of beliefs, often rein­forced by doc­tors and adver­tis­ing, may explain the bil­lions spent today by pharma com­pa­nies on dis­cov­er­ing new com­pounds, and by con­sumers on sup­ple­ments like ginkgo biloba. But Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 3 of the new 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

Work­ing with Health Care Indus­try Stake­hold­ers: Clin­i­cians, Pharma/Biotech, Pay­ers, PBMs, Lawyers, Medicare, FDA

Clin­i­cians seek clear val­i­dated “rules of thumb” that can be eas­ily imple­mented and fit into their work­flow and reim­burse­ment regime. Many are explor­ing “Clin­i­cal Deci­sion Sup­port (CDS)” tools on the web and solu­tions linked to “Elec­tronic Health Records” (EHR’s). CDC and EHR’s are seed­ing the ground for clin­i­cians to adopt robust Bio­mark­ers that are shown to be unam­bigu­ously clin­i­cally relevant.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spon­sored Ad (How to Adver­tise on SharpBrains.com)

Time for our monthly eNewslet­ter track­ing recent news and devel­op­ments on how the neu­ro­science of cog­ni­tion and emo­tions can inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifes­pan. Let us try to be as con­cise as pos­si­ble, so you can spend as much time as pos­si­ble con­nect­ing with your Loved Ones instead of with the World Wide Web.

• Your Brain: Capa­ble of Great­ness, Hard-wired for Survival
• How Phys­i­cal Exer­cise Ben­e­fits the Brain
• Brain changes seen in cab­bies who take ‘The Knowledge’
• How Cul­tural Evo­lu­tion Out­paces Nat­ural Evolution
• Cog­ni­tive Test­ing Pro­gram Fails Sol­diers, Leav­ing Brain Injuries Undetected
• Cog­ni­tive Behav­iour Ther­apy Helps Adults with ADHD
• Check­list to Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing and Brain Health Claims
• Could study­ing the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?
• New Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012
• The Sharp­Brains Guide: Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine Best­seller in Ama­zon Kin­dle Store
• Offi­cial selec­tion  by AARP of Best Books on Brain Fitness
• Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and Neurogenesis
• Invi­ta­tion for Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Par­tic­i­pants to Com­ment on Meet­ing Report

Wish­ing you a won­der­ful end of 2011 and a happy and suc­cess­ful 2012!

PS: thirty-nine peo­ple have reg­is­tered since this past Tues­day to par­tic­i­pate in the upcom­ing Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012. Please remem­ber we will only be able to acco­mo­date the first two hun­dred reg­is­trants, so please take a look soon to see if you are inter­ested in joining!

Many adults with ADHD do not obtain their diag­no­sis until adult­hood and have strug­gled with dif­fi­cul­ties related to undi­ag­nosed ADHD for their entire lives. As doc­u­mented in recent stud­ies, this includes ele­vated rates of depres­sion, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, sub­stance use, work dif­fi­cul­ties and inter­per­sonal problems.

As with chil­dren and ado­les­cents, med­ica­tion treat­ment for adults with ADHD can be quite help­ful, espe­cially for reduc­ing core ADHD symp­toms of inat­ten­tion and hyperactivity/impulsivity.  How­ever, Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­ated by Harry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP.

Read the rest of this entry »