These days, we all live under con­sid­er­able stress — eco­nomic chal­lenges, job demands, fam­ily ten­sions, always-on tech­nol­ogy and the 24-hour news cycle all con­tribute to cease­less worry. While many have learned to sim­ply “live with it,” this ongo­ing stress can, unless prop­erly man­aged, have a Read the rest of this entry »

Heads up: these are some of my upcom­ing talks, start­ing tomor­row with a brief insight blast on Upgrad­ing edu­ca­tion and health with the brain in mind at the World Eco­nomic Forum on Latin Amer­ica. If you’re a Sharp­Brains friend and speak­ing at/ attend­ing any, please let me know so we can connect.

• April 23–25, Lima, Peru: Upgrad­ing edu­ca­tion and health with the brain in mind, at the World Eco­nomic Forum on Latin Amer­ica 2013
• May 1–2, San Fran­cisco: Think, Think, Think: Cog­ni­tive Gam­ing Plat­forms, at Neu­rogam­ing
• May 15–16, Toronto:  The Web as a Gym for the Brain, at mesh13
• May 20, Wash­ing­ton, DC: Inno­vat­ing for the 50+, at Aging 2.0
• June 12, Vic­to­ria, BC, Canada: How Can We Invest In Our Brains To Boost Inno­va­tion and Resilience, at the Con­fer­ence Board of Canada’s Annual Coun­cil of Human Resource Executives

There’s no doubt that the biggest buzz at this year’s Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show in Las Vegas didn’t come from the slimmest of tele­vi­sions, the most fash­ion­able head­phones or even a danc­ing robot.

The buzz of CES 2013 was firmly cen­tred on all things health and the Dig­i­tal Health Sum­mit is where the action was hap­pen­ing. On the eve of open­ing Ari­anna Huff­in­g­ton described what was about to hap­pen in Las Vegas as a ‘Per­fect Storm’

“I’m talk­ing about one of those moments in which sev­eral trends con­verge to cre­ate some­thing larger, a moment we will look back on as the time every­thing changed ….. this year’s CES has the poten­tial to be one of the most trans­for­ma­tive ever, and that’s because of a sig­nif­i­cant change in atti­tude about what role tech­nol­ogy can, and should, be play­ing in our lives. That’s the foun­da­tion of this per­fect storm”. Read the rest of this entry »

Time for Sharp­Brains’ July 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion an in-depth arti­cle on why and how to Invest in Brain Health to Drive Inno­va­tion and Pros­per­ity, by Veronika Litinski.

Fea­tured Perspectives:

• Invest in Brain Health to Drive Inno­va­tion and Pros­per­ity, by Veronika Litinski
• Under­stand­ing, and Nur­tur­ing, Resilience, by Andrew Zolli
• How Do Words, such as Yes and No, Change Our Brains and Lives?, by Dr. Andrew New­berg and Mark Waldman
• Study: Adap­tive Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing Can Reduce ADHD-related Off-Task Behav­ior, by Dr. David Rabiner
• Pro­mot­ing Men­tal Agility through Cog­ni­tive Con­trol and Men­tal Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, by Judith Tin­gley, PhD

• Cog­ni­tive Mon­i­tor­ing Emerg­ing as Crit­i­cal for Health
• Gait Changes as Indi­ca­tor of Cog­ni­tive Health Decline
• New & Excel­lent Review of Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Train­ing with Older Adults
• Brain Dam­age, Ther­a­peu­tics and the Blood-Brain Barrier
• Necomimi Avail­able in USA
• Car­diac Surgery Can Impact Long-term Cog­ni­tive Functioning
• Cog­ni­tive Deficits May Hin­der Self Care in Patients with Heart Failure
• Brain Researchers Start Map­ping the Human ‘Connectome’

Sharp­Brains News:

• More Thumbs Up for 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (23 and counting!)
• Seven Most Pop­u­lar 2012 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Record­ings Now Avail­able at $75 each

Have a great month of August!

Over and over again—in nat­ural dis­as­ters, after the SARS epi­demic, fol­low­ing the loss of a child or spouse—Bonanno’s lon­gi­tu­di­nal stud­ies on loss and trauma revealed the exact same pat­tern at the pop­u­la­tion level. No mat­ter how bad the trauma, rates of PTSD never exceeded one-third, and rates of resilience were always found in at least one-third and never more than two-thirds of the population.

“This pat­tern of response is so ubiq­ui­tous, and so con­sis­tent, it begs the ques­tion: Why are we, as a species, designed this way?” asks Bonanno.

One pos­si­ble answer is that the design ensures that there is always at least a siz­able minor­ity, or even a major­ity, to take care of those deeply affected by a trauma. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times has recently pub­lished sev­eral very good and seem­ingly unre­lated articles…let’s try and con­nect some dots. What if we ques­tioned the very premise behind nam­ing some class­rooms the “class­rooms of the future” sim­ply because they have been adding tech­nol­ogy in lit­er­ally mind­less ways? What if the Edu­ca­tion of the Future (some­times also referred to as “21st Cen­tury Skills”) wasn’t so much about the How we edu­cate but about the What we want stu­dents to learn and develop, apply­ing what we know about mind and brain to the needs they are likely to face dur­ing the next 50–70 years of their lives? Read the rest of this entry »

Inter­est­ing recent news:

For more on these news, and com­men­tary: Read the rest of this entry »