Brain News: Lifelong Learning for Cognitive Health

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 30, 2009

Here you have the March edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page. I know I am biased — but do believe this Newslet­ter issue might well be our best…

Read More

Elderhostel’s Marty Knowlton and Lifelong Learning

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 22, 2009

A per­son who helped rein­vent “aging”, “retire­ment” and “learn­ing”, con­tribut­ing to the cog­ni­tive health of mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als as a result: Mar­tin P. ‘Mar­ty’ Knowl­ton dies at 88; co-founder of Elder­hos­tel (Los Ange­les Times) — “Mar­tin P. “Mar­ty” Knowl­ton, a world trav­el­er who fought ageism by co-found­ing Elder­hos­tel, a pro­gram that pio­neered learn­ing vaca­tions for mature…

Read More

Travel and Engagement as Good Brain Exercise

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 15, 2007 |

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is defined as “the abil­i­ty of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence”. We typ­i­cal­ly sum­ma­rize a lot of brain research by encour­ag­ing Sharp­Brains read­ers is to seek for nov­el­ty, vari­ety and chal­lenge, as guide­lines for “brain exer­cise” that will help build new con­nec­tions in the brain, force one to be mind­ful and pay…

Read More

Smart Brains, Sharp Brain… new research on maintaining one

By Caroline Latham | December 26, 2006 |

A New York Times edi­to­r­i­al print­ed today states:When test­ed five years lat­er, these par­tic­i­pants [in a cog­ni­tive train­ing study] had less of a decline in the skill they were trained in than did a con­trol group that received no cog­ni­tive train­ing. The pay­off from men­tal exer­cise seemed far greater than we are accus­tomed to get­ting for phys­i­cal exer­cise — as if 10 work­outs at the gym were enough to keep you fit five years later.and If fur­ther stud­ies show that men­tal exer­cis­es can improve every­day func­tion­ing, doc­tors may need to pre­scribe such train­ing, senior cen­ters may want to set up “brain gyms,” and aging Amer­i­cans would be wise to do brain-stretch­ing activities.

Read More