2007 New Year Resolution: Carnival of Brain Fitness

Hap­py 2007 to everyone!

We have just for­mu­lat­ed our New Year Res­o­lu­tion: make 2007 the year when brain plas­tic­i­ty and Brain Fit­ness became main­stream concepts.

How do we start? well, let’s announce the launch of the Car­ni­val of Brain Fit­ness (a Blog Car­ni­val is basi­cal­ly the vehi­cle that blogs use to share posts around spe­cif­ic topics).

Goal: to facil­i­tate a dia­logue about this emerg­ing field across mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, from sci­en­tists and health pro­fes­sion­als, to edu­ca­tion and train­ing ones, to basi­cal­ly every­one who has con­duct­ed an exper­i­ment on his on her brain and mind, and has news to report.

Con­text: The sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tions lie in neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, cog­ni­tive train­ing and stress man­age­ment. Med­ical and health appli­ca­tions range from stroke and TBI reha­bil­i­ta­tion to ADD/ADHD and ear­ly Alzheimer’s to Mind­ful­ness Based Stress Reduc­tion and cog­ni­tive ther­a­py. Edu­ca­tion­al and train­ing appli­ca­tions go from help­ing kids improve read­ing abil­i­ties to help­ing man­age stress and anx­i­ety — includ­ing work with the “men­tal game” in sports and high-demand activ­i­ties pr pro­fes­sions. Each of us may also have expe­ri­ences to report, where we saw first hand, no mat­ter our age, our innate abil­i­ty to refine and trans­form our­selves (and our brains).

Mechan­ics: If you’d like to con­tribute,send an email with links to up to 3 blog posts to brainfitnesscarnival@sharpbrains.com or vis­it this page. For the inau­gur­al edi­tion the posts do not need to be recent — send any­thing you deem can help estab­lish a good start­ing point. We will host the first 2–3 issues of the car­ni­val and then will glad­ly look for host vol­un­teers among fre­quent con­trib­u­tors. We encour­age world­wide sub­mis­sions: as long as your sub­mit­ted posts are in Eng­lish, even if your blog isn’t. You can also nom­i­nate some­one else’s posts.

Pub­li­ca­tion date: the Car­ni­val will be pub­lished the third Fri­day of every month, to ensure good week­end read­ing material.

Dead­line: if you want to sub­mit your posts for the inau­gur­al issue, Fri­day Jan­u­ary 19th, we need to receive your sub­mis­sion by end of Wednes­day Jan­u­ary 17th, Cal­i­for­nia time. Again, no need for new posts for the inau­gur­al issue, just good ones (and we have seen many dur­ing late 2006).

Sec­tions: we pro­pose to start with the following

1. Sci­ence

2. Med­i­cine, Health and Wellness

3. Edu­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al development

4. News about the field

5. Per­son­al sto­ries and spe­cif­ic tech­niques and programs

6. Brain Teasers, to add some healthy enter­tain­ment to the mix

Look­ing for­ward a fun and learn­ing year, and wish­ing you the same,

-The Sharp­Brains Team