Preparing Society for the Cognitive Age (Frontiers in Neuroscience article)

(Edi­tor’s note: this arti­cle belongs to the excel­lent May 2009 spe­cial issue on Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion at sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science. The arti­cle, an indus­try overview, is repro­duced here with autho­riza­tion by the Fron­tiers Research Foun­da­tion) Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age By Alvaro Fer­nan­dez Ground­break­ing cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science research has occurred over the last 20 years — without…

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Brain Fitness Update: Best of 2008

Dear read­er and mem­ber of Sharp­Brains’ com­mu­ni­ty, We want to thank you for your atten­tion and sup­port in 2008, and wish you a Hap­py, Pros­per­ous, Healthy and Pos­i­tive 2009! Below you have the Decem­ber edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter. Enjoy: Best of 2008  Announc­ing the Sharp­Brains Most Impor­tant Book of 2008: Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Torkel Kling­berg has writ­ten a very…

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Neuroscience Core Concepts: What is “It” in Use It or Lose It?

We all have heard “Use It or Lose It”. Now, what is “It”? how does “it” work? why is “it” our best (and too often unrec­og­nized) friend? The Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science (SfN) has just released a user-friend­­ly pub­li­ca­tion titled Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts, aimed at help­ing edu­ca­tors and the gen­er­al pub­lic learn more about the brain. Description:…

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Resources for Brain Health Across the Lifespan

As promised in my pre­vi­ous post on Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and Brain Plas­tic­i­ty in Adult Brains, I will now list some inter­views, video, arti­cles, and books that go hand-in-hand with these fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics we are dis­cussing. Please com­ment below if you have favorite addi­tion­al resources! NEUROGENESIS MIT news – Picow­er researcher finds neu­ron growth in adult brain Society…

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Brain Resources and Websites

We recent­ly pre­pared a Direc­to­ry of Web Sites as part of our Resources sec­tion. You will find some gems here, in a vari­ety of areas: » The Dana Foun­da­tion offers sev­er­al excel­lent online resources: — Brainy Kids Online offers chil­dren, teens, par­ents and teach­ers links to games, labs, edu­ca­tion resources and les­son plans. — Brain­Web: gen­er­al information…

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Musical training as mental exercise for cognitive performance

We often hear (glad­ly!) how teach­ers use our blog arti­cles and brain teasers in their class­es. We also hear how many psy­chol­o­gy and biol­o­gy teach­ers are get­ting their stu­dents excit­ed about brain research, and, to con­tribute to their efforts, we like to rec­og­nize some great ini­tia­tives. Last year, Jef­frey Gonce, a Psy­chol­o­gy teacher at Red…

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