Time for Sharp­Brains’ Feb­ru­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple and com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives on how to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: with enthu­si­asm, BOTH phys­i­cal AND cog­ni­tive exer­cise, and (once tools become bet­ter stan­dard­ized and widely avail­able) brain-based per­son­al­ized medicine.

Fea­tured Per­spec­tives:

• To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Start with Enthu­si­asm, by Dr. Helena Popovic
• Q&A with Dr. Yaakov Stern on Brain Reserve, Exer­cise, Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, Angry Birds, YMCA and more
• 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don to sum­ma­rize and build on the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress 2012:
1. The State of Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine: The Role of Biomarkers
2. Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine in Psy­chi­a­try: from DSM to brain-based RDoC, iSPOT-D and biomarkers
3. Work­ing with Health­care Stake­hold­ers towards Brain-Based Per­son­al­ized Medicine

• To Be (Your Con­nec­tome), or Not to Be (Your Genome), by Dr. Sebas­t­ian Seung
• Enhance Metacog­ni­tion and Problem-Solving by Talk­ing Out Loud to Your­self, by Dr. Judith Tingley
• Final Meet­ing Report @ 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Dr. Luc Beau­doin, Muki Hansteen-Izora, Mar­garet Mor­ris, Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, Dr. Peter Whitehouse.
• (Want to con­tribute arti­cles like these? Learn details here)

What’s New and Mean­ing­ful:

• Learn­ing to Cope with Google/ Infor­ma­tion Overload
• An Emerg­ing Era of Big Data (in Men­tal Health too)
• When and Why Should Dri­vers with Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment Stop Driving
• Diag­nos­ing early Alzheimer’s and Mild Cog­ni­tive Impairment
• Global Pop­u­la­tion Age­ing: Peril or Promise? (New WEF eBook)
• Luria Con­gress on Mod­ern Neuropsychology

Sharp­Brains News:

• Syl­labus for online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach (starts March 7th)
• Save The Date (June 7-8th, 2012), 28 Con­firmed Speak­ers: 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit — Opti­miz­ing Health through Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity & Dig­i­tal Innovation

Finally, let us men­tion that Brain Aware­ness Week is approach­ing (March 12-18th, 2012), and that you can now add com­ments to Sharp­Brains arti­cles via Face­book (see below). Look­ing for­ward to a great month of March!

NO ROAD, NO trail can pen­e­trate this for­est. The long and del­i­cate branches of its trees lie every­where, chok­ing space with their exu­ber­ant growth. No sun­beam can fly a path tor­tu­ous enough to nav­i­gate the nar­row spaces between these entan­gled branches. All the trees of this dark for­est grew from 100 bil­lion seeds planted together. And, all in one day, every tree is des­tined to die.

This for­est is majes­tic, but also comic and even tragic. It is all of these things. Indeed, some­times I think it is every­thing. Every novel and every sym­phony, every cruel mur­der and every act of mercy, every love affair and every quar­rel, every joke and every sor­row — all these things come from the for­est. Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the first edi­tion of MetaCar­ni­val: a Car­ni­val of Car­ni­vals (announced here), the new, monthly, and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary gath­er­ing of blogs and blog carnivals.

Let’s pic­ture all par­tic­i­pants in the shadow of an expan­sive sycamore tree, con­duct­ing a lively Q&A lunch discussion.

Gen­eral Advice

Q: What would you rec­om­mend to live as long as pos­si­ble, and as healthy as pos­si­ble?
- Hour­glass (biol­ogy of aging): Try Not To Stab Your­self Repeat­edly. Or smoke. Or eat that much fast food…you get the idea.  “The vast major­ity of peo­ple are quite com­fort­able engag­ing in habits that cause great harm to the old per­son they will one day be, cut­ting off years or even decades of health.”

Q: Can blog­ging help, too?
- I and the Bird (birds): Indeed. Just read about these life-changing moments in the Kenyan high­lands, brought together spon­ta­neously as a col­lab­o­ra­tion between researchers, con­ser­va­tion­ists, blog­gers. And, yes, birds.

Sports (Well… Brain and Sports)

Q: Tell me some­thing inter­est­ing about ath­letes and “The Zone”.
- Encephalon (neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy): why don’t we review this recent study on the Momen­tum Chain in Sports. You can con­duct your own mini exper­i­ment while watch­ing TV: watch the reac­tions of the play­ers and the teams right after “pre­cip­i­tat­ing events” to see if they actu­ally lead to game-changing moments.

Med­i­cine

Q: Should patients be patient?.
- SurgeX­pe­ri­ences (sur­gi­cal expe­ri­ences): Patience in indeed a virtue, espe­cially Read the rest of this entry »