In a mod­ern soci­ety we are con­fronted with a wide range of increas­ingly abstract and inter­con­nected prob­lems. Suc­cess­fully deal­ing with such an envi­ron­ment requires a highly fit brain, capa­ble of adapt­ing to new sit­u­a­tions and chal­lenges through­out life. Con­se­quently, we expect cross-training the brain to soon become as main­stream as cross-training the body is today, going beyond unstruc­tured men­tal activ­ity and Read the rest of this entry »

Often in dis­cussing health related find­ings with non-scientists, I’ve found that sci­en­tific lit­er­acy in the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion tends to be inad­e­quate for eval­u­at­ing sci­en­tific claims. A sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple are reluc­tant to study sci­ence despite the poten­tial to ben­e­fit from the vast amount of use­ful knowl­edge being accu­mu­lated by sci­en­tists. Neil DeGrasse Tyson dis­cussed a sim­i­lar issue with the New York Daily News sev­eral years ago (A Cry to Pass the Sci­ence Test, 2006). In a time when sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion is con­stantly reshap­ing our under­stand­ing Read the rest of this entry »

We are the archi­tects and builders of our own brains.

For mil­len­nia, how­ever, we were obliv­i­ous to our enor­mous cre­ative capa­bil­i­ties. We had no idea that our brains were chang­ing in response to our actions and atti­tudes, every day of our lives. So we uncon­sciously and ran­domly shaped our brains and our lat­ter years because we believed we had an immutable brain that was at the mercy of our genes.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Read the rest of this entry »

Next Tues­day, Novem­ber 3rd: I’ll be pre­sent­ing the Sharp­Brains Guide to a business/ entre­pre­neur­ial audi­ence at the San Fran­cisco Chap­ter of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Cor­po­rate Growth (you can reg­is­ter online).

Descrip­tion: While most of us have heard the phrase “use it or lose it,” very few under­stand what “it” means, or how to prop­erly “use it” in order to improve brain func­tion and fit­ness. This talk will pro­vide an overview of the most recent research, guide­lines and resources to “Use It and Improve It”, sum­ma­riz­ing the main find­ings and top­ics from the new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. We will debunk 10 com­mon brain fit­ness myths; dis­cuss how the brain works and the 4 pil­lars of brain main­te­nance; explain the dif­fer­ence between men­tal exer­cise and men­tal activ­ity and iden­tify prac­ti­cal ways to inte­grate this research into our work and lives for max­i­mum brain health and performance.

To order book: Here. (has been among Amazon.com’s Top 10 Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine books basi­cally since publication!)

Over the last few weeks I have given a cou­ple of AARP-sponsored talks, both in Eng­lish and in Span­ish (this was my first Span­ish pre­sen­ta­tion on a topic I mostly dis­cuss in Eng­lish, so I did get some extra brain points by try­ing to trans­late “neu­ro­plas­tic­ity” and “hip­pocam­pus” on the fly), and had a great cou­ple of meet­ings with AARP staff to explore col­lab­o­ra­tions. AARP can obvi­ously play a major role in how ratio­nally this whole cat­e­gory of “brain fit­ness” evolves.

Here you have a cou­ple of my favorite recent media interviews:

4-minute Video inter­view on the Gilbert Guide:
Book Reveals Secrets Once Only Known to Scientists

30-minute radio inter­view on WMBR (MIT cam­pus radio sta­tion):
Par­a­digm Shifts: Brain Fit­ness (mine is the sec­ond inter­view, starts around the middle)

Finally, a grow­ing num­ber of blog­gers are review­ing the book. This is what they say:

• Brain Fit­ness for Coach­ing and Lead­er­ship (Ed Batista at Stan­ford Busi­ness School)
• Is Your Brain a Couch Potato (Doc Gur­ley at SF Gate)
• Essen­tial ref­er­ence for brain fit­ness, cog­ni­tive health, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (High­light Health)
• Fit­brains learn how to learn (Dr. Larry McCleary)
• Learn about cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing (Teen Health 411)
• A great ded­i­ca­tion: to your Unique Brain, and Unique Mind (Play with your mind)
• Very valu­able inter­views (Nucleus Learning)
• Author­i­ta­tive research and per­spec­tive (Green­stein Institute)

You can order The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness here.

Title: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness — Prac­ti­cal Advice to Keep Your Brain Sharp

- Two community-based book talks hosted by New York Pub­lic Library and sup­ported by the Ein­stein Aging Study at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine.

Descrip­tion: A fit brain? Can you exer­cise your brain and become men­tally fit? Can you con­tinue to learn and increase your brain’s capac­ity at any age? Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, says Yes!, and in this pro­gram he will show you how. Based on research com­piled from lead­ing sci­en­tists in fields of Neu­ro­science, Geron­tol­ogy, and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence, and pre­sented in his book “The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness”, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will pro­vide ways to main­tain and improve your cog­ni­tive health.

He will:
– Debunk 10 Myths of Brain Fit­ness
– Exam­ine the 4 Pil­lars of Brain Main­te­nance
– Dis­cuss the dif­fer­ence between Men­tal Exer­cise and Men­tal Activ­ity
– Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing Soft­ware
– Explore emerg­ing trends

Book and Bio: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, teaches “Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness” at UC-Berkeley and San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity. He is the co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.

When and where:
> Sep­tem­ber 23rd, 10am, New York Pub­lic Library, Bronx Library Cen­ter. 310 East Kings­bridge Road. (718) 579‑4244. More infor­ma­tion here.

> Sep­tem­ber 25rd, 1pm, New York Pub­lic Library, Stephen Schwarz­man Build­ing Audi­to­rium. Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. 917-ASK-NYPL (917–275-6975). More infor­ma­tion here.

I wanted to alert you to a very inter­est­ing find­ing pub­lished in a recent issue of Sci­ence, one of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tific journals.

The study was led by Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and his col­leagues from the Karolin­ska Insti­tute in Swe­den. The goal was to learn whether Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing is asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry, thus sug­gest­ing a mech­a­nism by which train­ing may lead to enhanced work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and a reduc­tion in atten­tion prob­lems. Thus, although Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing has pre­vi­ously shown promis­ing results as a treat­ment for work­ing mem­ory and atten­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, this was a basic sci­ence study rather than a treat­ment study.

The major find­ing was that increased work­ing mem­ory capac­ity fol­low­ing train­ing was asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry. Specif­i­cally, the researchers found changes in the den­sity and bind­ing poten­tial of cor­ti­cal D1 dopamine recep­tors in brain regions that are acti­vated dur­ing work­ing mem­ory tasks.

Results from this study sug­gest a bio­log­i­cal basis for the improve­ment in work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and reduc­tions i Read the rest of this entry »

Study Ques­tions Effec­tive­ness Of $80 Mil­lion Per Year ‘Brain Exer­cise Prod­ucts Indus­try for Elderly (Sci­ence Daily)

- “There is much research on the ben­e­fits of cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion strate­gies among elderly who already expe­ri­ence mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s dis­ease, as well as on the pos­i­tive impact of phys­i­cal exer­cise. The researchers, how­ever, wanted to eval­u­ate cur­rent research that would focus on the impact of cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions in the healthy elderly population.”

- “…they con­cluded that there was no evi­dence indi­cat­ing that struc­tured cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion pro­grams had an impact on the pro­gres­sion of demen­tia in the healthy elderly population”

Com­ment:  we have not reviewed the analy­sis yet, so can­not com­ment in depth. How­ever, just from the press release, we see a few poten­tial prob­lems in how the study was framed, reduc­ing its prac­ti­cal value: Read the rest of this entry »