Brain Gyms Go Mainstream

We are excit­ed about all the media atten­tion about brain exer­cise these days. Not only have there been some great med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles (read “Smart Brains: New Research on How to Main­tain a Sharp Brain” for links to those), but there are well writ­ten arti­cles in the main­stream press as well. For exam­ple, Joan­na Pon­cav­age of The Morn­ing Call wrote “Get Some Brain Train­ing”.

”Learn­ing and tar­get­ed men­tal exer­cise pro­motes neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis — the cre­ation of new neu­rons — just as mus­cle growth is pro­mot­ed through phys­i­cal exer­cise,” says Elkhonon Gold­berg, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, and chief sci­en­tif­ic adviser.

She goes on to say:

The con­cept of the brain as an organ that can be strength­ened like a mus­cle is due, in part, to new tech­nolo­gies like the func­tion­al MRI, which takes pic­tures of the brain in action. Func­tion­al MRIs help sci­en­tists pin­point parts of the brain involved in activ­i­ties such as mem­o­ry, visu­al per­cep­tion, con­cen­tra­tion or deci­sions, and thus make it pos­si­ble to devel­op rou­tines to exer­cise and strength­en those abil­i­ties. ”This is lit­er­al­ly a new field,” says Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Sharp­Brains CEO.

As more research leads to bet­ter under­stand­ing, we look for­ward to offer­ing more and more brain fit­ness solu­tions for peo­ple to help them meet their goals — from spe­cif­ic to gen­er­al. In the mean time, keep your­self men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ed with diverse and nov­el stim­uli, phys­i­cal­ly active, nutri­tion­al­ly bal­anced, and not too stressed.

Click here to read some of the oth­er recent arti­cles on brain fitness.