Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Neuroplasticity, Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Study: Families’ Perspectives on ADHD and its Treatment

In 2005 the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Pedi­atrics (AAP) began an ini­tia­tive to pro­mote an approach to care among its mem­bers in which “…the pedi­atric team works in part­ner­ship with a child and a child’s fam­ily to assure that all of the med­ical and non-medical needs of the patient are met.” A crit­i­cally impor­tant focus of this approach is the role of the fam­ily and child — as devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate — in the devel­op­ment of an over­all plan of care.

This shared decision-making approach is espe­cially impor­tant for con­di­tions like ADHD where there is not a sin­gle treat­ment that is the most appro­pri­ate and pre­ferred option for all patients. How­ever, Read the rest of this entry »

Mindfulness Meditation for Adults & Teens with ADHD

We have talked about the value of med­i­ta­tion before (see Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in meditationSchools), as a form of well-directed men­tal exer­cise than can help train atten­tion and emo­tional self-regulation.  Which other stud­ies have shown how it strength­ens spe­cific parts of the brain, mainly in the frontal lobe.

Dr. Rabiner shares with us, below, an excel­lent review of a new study that ana­lyzes the ben­e­fits of mind­ful­ness for ado­les­cents and adults with atten­tion deficits. He writes that “although this is clearly a pre­lim­i­nary study, the results are both inter­est­ing and encouraging.”

- Alvaro

Does Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion Help Adults & Teens with ADHD

– By Dr. David Rabiner

Although med­ica­tion treat­ment is effec­tive for many indi­vid­u­als with ADHD, includ­ing ado­les­cents adults, there remains an under­stand­able need to explore and develop inter­ven­tions that can com­ple­ment or even sub­sti­tute for med­ica­tion. This is true for a vari­ety of rea­sons includ­ing:
1) Not all adults with ADHD ben­e­fit from med­ica­tion.
2) Among those who ben­e­fit, many have resid­ual dif­fi­cul­ties that need to be addressed via other means.
3) Some adults with ADHD expe­ri­ence adverse effects that pre­vent them from remain­ing on medication.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brain Exercise and Brain Fitness July Monthly Digest

We often are told that we offer too much con­tent for you to read given var­i­ous time pres­sures… but it is tough for us to write less given the wealth of areas we cover around cog­ni­tive and emo­tional training.

To make your life eas­ier (and please feel free to give us feed­back!), what we will do is to offer a Monthly Digest of Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. Today, August 1st, we will list the most pop­u­lar July posts. Con­sider it your monthly Brain Exer­cise Mag­a­zine :-)

(Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Top­ics sec­tion, and sub­scribe to our monthly newslet­ter at the top of this page).

News you can use

Trad­ing per­for­mance psy­chol­ogy and self-talk

Stress Man­age­ment for Lawyers

Men­tal Train­ing for Grat­i­tude and Altruism

Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Mar­ket News

Mar­ket­Watch on Beat­ing for­get­ful­ness and boost­ing the brain

Nin­tendo BrainAge, Lumos­ity, Happy Neu­ron, MyBrainTrainer…

Brain Health through Seri­ous Games and Brain Exercise

Brain Fit­ness Workshops

Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute Brain Fit­ness class at UC Berkeley

Healthy Aging

Inter­view with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Yaakov Stern: Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve

Jud­son Laipply’s Danc­ing Brain

Jack and Elaine LaLanne and Brain Health

Exer­cise Your Brain! Enjoy Learning!

Atten­tion Deficits

Read the rest of this entry »

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Debunk­ing 10 com­mon brain fit­ness myths, by Alvaro Fernandez
  2. Brain plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain, by Pas­cale Michelon
  3. 8 Tips To Remem­ber What You Read, by Bill Klemm
  4. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?, by Car­o­line Latham
  5. Retool­ing Brain Care With Low-Cost, Data-Driven Tech­nolo­gies, by Alvaro Fernandez
  6. Do you believe these neu­romyths?, by SharpBrains
  7. Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-damaging stress, by SharpBrains
  8. Does cog­ni­tive train­ing work? (For Whom? For What?), by Pas­cale Michelon
  9. The Emo­tional Life of Your Brain, by by Richard David­son, Sharon Begley
  10. To Be (Your Con­nec­tome), or Not to Be (Your Genome), by Sebas­t­ian Seung
  11. Top 10 Brain Fit­ness Future Trends, by Alvaro Fernandez
  12. Biofeed­back now a “Level 1 — Best Sup­port” Inter­ven­tion for ADHD, by SharpBrains
  13. When 1 + 1 = 5: Dyscal­cu­lia and Work­ing Mem­ory, by Tracy Alloway
  14. Train­ing Atten­tion and Emo­tional Self-Regulation — Inter­view with Michael Pos­ner, by Alvaro Fernandez
  15. The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains, by Alvaro Fernandez
  16. Does brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 con­di­tions, by SharpBrains
  17. Cog­ni­tive ther­apy or med­ica­tion? Brain scans may help per­son­al­ize treat­ments, by SharpBrains
  18. New Study shows Teens with ADHD helped by Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­apy, by David Rabiner
  19. How Do Words Change Our Brains and Lives?, by Andrew New­berg, Mark Waldman
  20. BBC “Brain Train­ing” Exper­i­ment: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, by Alvaro Fernandez
  21. From Anti-Alzheimer’s “Magic Bul­lets” to True Brain Health, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Peter Whitehouse
  22. Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Ratio­nal and Intu­itive Problem-Solving, by Judith Tingley
  23. Why I Wrote The Woman Who Changed Her Brain, by Bar­bara Arrowsmith-Young
  24. The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom, by Alvaro Fernandez
  25. Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup, by Dharma Singh Khalsa
  26. Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, by Alvaro Fernandez
  27. To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Start with Enthu­si­asm, by Helena Popovic
  28. Q&A with Yaakov Stern on Brain Reserve, Exer­cise, Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, Angry Birds, by Alvaro Fernandez
  29. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness prod­ucts and games, by Alvaro Fernandez
  30. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Man­age­ment, by Jill Sutie
  31. Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle, by Gre­gory Kellet
  32. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Devel­op­ment Through Play, by David Elkind
  33. AARP’s Brain Fit­ness Best Books List, by SharpBrains
  34. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son, by Alvaro Fernandez
  35. Improve Mem­ory with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Test­ing, by Bill Klemm
  36. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn, by Lau­rie Bartels
  37. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness, by Alvaro Fernandez
  38. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD, by David Rabiner
  39. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health, by Pas­cale Michelon
  40. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­ory and the Brain, by Shan­non Moffet

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