Brain exercises: Want a workout for your brain?

Very fun arti­cle in the Birm­ing­ham News today on Sharp­Brains and brain exer­cis­es, titled Want a work­out for your brain?.

The jour­nal­ist explains things very well and with great humor (for the humor, you need to read the arti­cle!). Here are some quotes:

- “Think of it as a gym­na­si­um for your mind,” Sharp­Brains CEO and co-founder Alvaro Fer­nan­dez says from his office in San Francisco.

- (On only doing cross­words) “That’s good, but, like your body, you don’t just exer­cise one part of the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, who holds an MBA and a mas­ter’s degree in edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. “You need con­stant vari­ety, and new things, to keep your brain work­ing hard.”

- “He sees men­tal gym­nas­tics as the next main­stream adult trend and points out that ther­a­pists have long used a vari­ety of sim­i­lar exer­cis­es to help in the recov­ery of brain-injury patients. Ath­letes and air­plane pilots have had access to exer­cis­es designed to improve their periph­er­al vision and reac­tion times, Fer­nan­dez says.”

- “With Sharp­Brains co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at the New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, Fer­nan­dez has col­lect­ed what he says are the best com­put­er-based brain work­outs avail­able, includ­ing a pro­gram to help chil­dren with atten­tion deficits and anoth­er aimed at reduc­ing stress man­age­ment among busi­ness executives.”