Posit Science, Nintendo Brain Age, and Brain Training Topics

By Alvaro Fernandez | June 24, 2008 |

A few col­leagues referred me over the week­end to a very nice arti­cle at busi­ness pub­li­ca­tion Port­fo­lio. While the arti­cle does an excel­lent job at intro­duc­ing the read­er to the con­cept and promise of com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ments, it also con­tributes to the mythol­o­gy of “Brain Age”.  Let’s first take a look at the arti­cle How…

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Neuroplasticity 101 and Brain Health Glossary

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 10, 2007 |

Giv­en the grow­ing num­ber of arti­cles in the pop­u­lar press men­tion­ing words such as “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty”, “fMRI” and “cog­ni­tive reserve”, let’s review some key find­ings, con­cepts and terms. First, a pre­scient quote by Span­ish neu­ro­sci­en­tist San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934): “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”. Thanks to new neuroimaging…

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MindFit by CogniFit, and Baroness Susan Greenfield

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 8, 2007 |

We are glad to see that Mind­Fit is final­ly mak­ing it into the pop­u­lar press, at least in the UK. The pro­gram is mak­ing big news in the UK (BBC, Times, Dai­ly Telegragh, Guardian…) because Baroness Susan Green­field, direc­tor of the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion and a well-respec­t­ed neu­ro­sci­en­tist, is endors­ing it. We eval­u­at­ed it last year…

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11 Neuroscientists Debunk a Common Myth about Brain Training

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 6, 2007 |

Last Mon­day, NPR (very good US-based radio sta­tion) had a pro­gram on “do brain train­ing pro­grams work?” that reflect­ed very old-fash­ioned think­ing. In short, the guest speak­ers talked and talked about the impor­tance of nutri­tion and phys­i­cal exer­cise (both very impor­tant, as we have cov­ered in this blog mul­ti­ple times), and expressed skep­ti­cism about the…

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Cognitive Training for Basketball Game-Intelligence: Interview with Prof. Daniel Gopher

By SharpBrains | November 2, 2006 |

Pro­fes­sor Daniel Gopher is a fel­low of the U.S. Human Fac­tors and Ergonom­ics Soci­ety and the Inter­na­tion­al Ergonom­ics Asso­ci­a­tion, Pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy and Human Fac­tors Engi­neer­ing at Tech­nion, Israel’s Insti­tute of Sci­ence, and one of world’s lead­ing fig­ures in the field of Cog­ni­tive Train­ing. Dur­ing his 40 year career, he has held a variety…

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