Heads up: these are some of my upcom­ing talks, start­ing tomor­row with a brief insight blast on Upgrad­ing edu­ca­tion and health with the brain in mind at the World Eco­nomic Forum on Latin Amer­ica. If you’re a Sharp­Brains friend and speak­ing at/ attend­ing any, please let me know so we can connect.

• April 23–25, Lima, Peru: Upgrad­ing edu­ca­tion and health with the brain in mind, at the World Eco­nomic Forum on Latin Amer­ica 2013
• May 1–2, San Fran­cisco: Think, Think, Think: Cog­ni­tive Gam­ing Plat­forms, at Neu­rogam­ing
• May 15–16, Toronto:  The Web as a Gym for the Brain, at mesh13
• May 20, Wash­ing­ton, DC: Inno­vat­ing for the 50+, at Aging 2.0
• June 12, Vic­to­ria, BC, Canada: How Can We Invest In Our Brains To Boost Inno­va­tion and Resilience, at the Con­fer­ence Board of Canada’s Annual Coun­cil of Human Resource Executives

Heads up: these are some of the talks I’ll be giv­ing over the next few months. If you’re a Sharp­Brains friend and speak­ing at/ attend­ing any, please let me know so we can connect.

> March 15–17, Los Ange­les: Mar­riage of Sci­ence & Indus­try — How to cre­ate a sus­tain­able busi­ness model that proves end-user value, at ESCoNS2 (Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Society)

> April 1st, Boston: Health from the Neck Up, a guest lec­ture at Har­vard exten­sion course Mind, Brain, Health, and Edu­ca­tion (MBHE): The Sci­ences of Devel­op­ment, Learn­ing, and Well-being

> April 23–25, Lima, Peru: World Eco­nomic Forum on Latin Amer­ica 2013

> May 1–2, San Fran­cisco: Think, Think, Think: Cog­ni­tive Gam­ing Plat­forms, at Neu­rogam­ing

> May 15–16, Toronto:  The Web as a Gym for the Brain, at mesh13  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the lightly edited tran­script of the Jan­u­ary 4th online Q&A ses­sion with Dr. San­dra Chap­man, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at UT-Dallas and author of the new book Make Your Brain Smarter (Free Press; Jan­u­ary 2013). Enjoy!

1:59

AlvaroF: You can start writ­ing ques­tions so we have a few to choose from as we start in a cou­ple of min­utes. Thank you!

2:03
AlvaroF: Just one sec­ond and we’ll be ready. Already get­ting great questions!

2:05
AlvaroF: Let me first thank Dr. San­dra Chap­man for being with us today. She was one of the best speak­ers at our 2012 Sum­mit, and since then we wanted to share her research and think­ing with all Sharp­Brains read­ers. Read the rest of this entry »

Open a week­end New York Times or Wall Street Jour­nal and you’ll find a whole sec­tion with detailed infor­ma­tion and advice for indi­vid­u­als look­ing to invest wisely. What you will not find, how­ever, is com­pa­ra­ble infor­ma­tion and advice for invest­ing in your most impor­tant asset of all: your brain. Pre­cisely because it (usu­ally) does its job so smoothly and effec­tively, it’s all too easy to for­get that your brain is there and that it needs to be invested in just as with any­thing else we value and want to con­tinue reap­ing ben­e­fits from. And with more than 2 bil­lion peo­ple world­wide cur­rently suf­fer­ing from brain-based health and pro­duc­tiv­ity chal­lenges with a result­ing global eco­nomic bur­den of more than $2 tril­lion, it’s also an issue of some importance.

We’ve made a lot of progress 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!

The Cog­ni­tive Ben­e­fits of Being Bilin­gual (Cerebrum):

“Today, more of the world’s pop­u­la­tion is bilin­gual or mul­ti­lin­gual than mono­lin­gual. In addi­tion to facil­i­tat­ing cross-cultural com­mu­ni­ca­tion, this trend also pos­i­tively affects cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Researchers have shown that the bilin­gual brain can have bet­ter atten­tion and task-switching capac­i­ties than the mono­lin­gual brain, thanks to Read the rest of this entry »

‘Chemo Brain’ After Breast Can­cer Backed by Study (US News):

“Breast can­cer patients treated with chemother­apy are at risk for mild men­tal deficits known col­lec­tively as “chemo brain,” a new study finds. Researchers at the Mof­fitt Can­cer Cen­ter in Tampa, Fla., reviewed exist­ing research on brain func­tion (“cog­ni­tive” func­tion­ing) in Read the rest of this entry »