Alzheimer’s Disease: too serious to play with headlines

By Alvaro Fernandez | June 21, 2007 |

We just came across an arti­cle titled Best Com­put­er Brain Games for Senior Cit­i­zens to Delay Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. The head­line makes lit­tle sci­en­tif­ic sense-and we observe this con­fu­sion often. The arti­cle men­tions a few pro­grams we have dis­cussed often in this blog, such as Posit Sci­ence and Mind­Fit, and oth­ers we haven’t because we haven’t…

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Bilingual brains stay sharp longer

By Alvaro Fernandez | April 7, 2007

In study, Bilin­gual brains stay sharp longer We have seen a num­ber of stud­ies on why and how speak­ing more than one lan­guage may help build a Cog­ni­tive Reserve (inter­view with Yaakov Stern) that pro­tects us against cog­ni­tive decline. This arti­cle does a good job at explain­ing what may be going on (bold added by me):…

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MindFit Corporate and Freeze-Framer for Memory and Brain Fitness

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 31, 2007

Cog­ni­tive train­ing and stress man­age­ment, Mind­Fit and Freeze-Framer (or emWave): two com­ple­men­tary sides of Brain Fit­ness. Research shows that adults can and should take care of their brains, both for short-term and long-term ben­e­fits. Through brain exer­cise we can improve our over­all cog­ni­tive func­tion right now—making quick deci­sions, stay­ing calm and focused under pres­sure, and…

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Brain Fitness news.

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 23, 2007 |

A cou­ple of good recent arti­cles: (You can join our month­ly newslet­ter by sub­scrib­ing at the top of this page). Brain Games will give adults all the chal­lenge they can han­dle Bal­ti­more Sun, MD. Mar 22, 2007.The reporter pro­vides a great sur­vey of prod­ucts. The only parts I find miss­ing are: 1) what spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive skill/s is/are…

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Is physical fitness important to your brain fitness?

By Caroline Latham | February 26, 2007 |

Here is ques­tion 18 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Is phys­i­cal fit­ness important?Key Points: Exer­cise improves learn­ing through increased blood sup­ply and growth hormones.Exercise is an anti-depres­sant by reduc­ing stress and pro­mot­ing neurogenesis.Exercise pro­tects the brain from dam­age and dis­ease, as well speed­ing the recovery.Answer:Yes. Accord­ing to Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”According to the research of Richard Smeyne, PhD at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal in Mem­phis, with just two months of exer­cise there are more brain cells and that high­er lev­els of exer­cise were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ben­e­fi­cial than low­er amounts, although any exer­cise was bet­ter than none.

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Brain Fitness Blog Carnival #2

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 19, 2007 |

Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary 19, 2007 edi­tion of brain fit­ness. Today we want to high­light an excel­lent Inter­view with Aaron Beck on the His­to­ry of Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py sub­mit­ted by the Beck Insti­tute. Dr. Beck was 83 when he gave this inter­view. To the ques­tion “Do you have a view about age­ing?”, he responds “I can…

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