White House BRAIN Ini­tia­tive is a nice start, but it’s too small and timid (Ven­ture Beat): ”…it’s unlikely to move the nee­dle because, unlike pre­vi­ous national projects, it lacks ade­quate fund­ing and action­able objec­tives that can cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion of inno­va­tors and the pub­lic at large…Is there an alter­na­tive approach? Yes. Start with the soci­etal goal in mind, and chart the most likely path to make a ground­break­ing dif­fer­ence there…Although the BRAIN Ini­tia­tive is often com­pared to the moon project, per­haps the bet­ter oppor­tu­nity would be for it to draw inspi­ra­tion from JFK’s fit­ness ini­tia­tive. In announc­ing that pro­gram, Pres­i­dent Kennedy said, “The strength of our democ­racy and our coun­try is really no greater in the final analy­sis than the well-being of our cit­i­zens.” Read full article

We have received sev­eral good ques­tions about the new eCourse How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach, so here are some answers.

Q: How many hours may it take me to com­plete the course?

A: Around 10–12 hours total. The four lec­tures, com­bined, last 8 hours, and we rec­om­mend Read the rest of this entry »

In June of this year, Sharp­Brains hosted its third annual online “vir­tual sum­mit” on our evolv­ing under­stand­ing of how the human brain works, and how it can be made to work bet­ter. As read­ers of this blog know, Sharp­Brains is a US-based mar­ket research firm and think tank ded­i­cated to study­ing the sci­en­tific, social, and busi­ness trends asso­ci­ated with brain health and per­for­mance. As always, the sum­mit fea­tured a range of con­tri­bu­tions from sci­en­tists and busi­ness lead­ers whose com­mon inter­est is in gath­er­ing, com­pil­ing and apply­ing knowl­edge about the brain.

The foun­da­tional con­vic­tion of the sum­mit orga­niz­ers and atten­dees is that Read the rest of this entry »

Reminder: Join Live Q&A with Dr. Paul Nuss­baum by click­ing HERE, today Novem­ber 22nd at 11am Pacific Time/ 2pm East­ern Time. Chat about about a holis­tic approach to brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain, recently named a Best Book on Brain Fit­ness by AARP. You can also learn more about the Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series.

Tran­scripts of pre­vi­ous Q&A Sessions:

• Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­ory and the Brain
• Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on “Men­tal Cap­i­tal­ism” and Cog­ni­tive Fitness

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 »

Just a quick note to announce that next Tues­day, Novem­ber 15th, SharpBrains.com will be host­ing two great resources:

1– Grand Rounds Blog Car­ni­val: the weekly col­lec­tion of what’s best in the health and med­ical blo­gos­phere (see great lat­est edi­tion Here). If you want to con­tribute your own blog post, please do so via this Con­tact Us form.
2– Live Q&A Ses­sion with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, coau­thor of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (recently selected as one of the Best Books on Brain Fit­ness by AARP). Ses­sion will take place at 11am Pacific Time/ 2pm East­ern Time, and will be mod­er­ated by Harry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP. To learn more click Here.

Please make sure to visit us Tuesday!

Yes­ter­day we had a fun ses­sion on Brain Fit­ness dur­ing the Neu­rolead­er­ship Sum­mit tak­ing place now in San Fran­cisco, explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to enhance per­for­mance and health of lead­ers and work­forces by deploy­ing both old tools (like breath­ing and med­i­ta­tion) and new ones (such as biofeed­back and database-driven per­son­al­ized brain train­ing solu­tions). Here are a cou­ple of the main ideas I wanted to introduce:

A. Let’s define Brain Fit­ness as an “inte­grated approach to enhance brain func­tion­al­ity”, com­bin­ing as appro­pri­ate lifestyle, inva­sive and non-invasive options. “Brain fit­ness” is above all an out­come, a cul­ture, sim­i­lar to “phys­i­cal fit­ness” (jok­ingly, I also said that “brain fit­ness” is the part of “phys­i­cal fit­ness” that “phys­i­cal fit­ness” doesn’t yet know what to do with)

B. Then, the ques­tion becomes, “what are the most impor­tant brain func­tions to enhance/ develop/ main­tain?”. Here I shared the fol­low­ing results Read the rest of this entry »