Brain Health Newsletter, February Edition, and Brain Awareness Week

We hope you are enjoy­ing the grow­ing cov­er­age of Brain Fit­ness as much as we are. Below you have the Brain Fit­ness Newslet­ter we sent a few days ago-you can sub­scribe to this month­ly email update in the box on the right hand side.

In this post, we will briefly cover:

I. Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chica­go Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.

II. Events: we are out­reach part­ners for the Learn­ing & the Brain con­fer­ence, which will gath­er neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors, and for the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week.

III. Pro­gram Reviews: The Wall Street Jour­nal reviewed six dif­fer­ent pro­grams for brain exer­cise and aging, and the one we offer is one of the two win­ners. A col­lege-lev­el coun­sel­ing cen­ter starts offer­ing our stress man­age­ment one. And we inter­view a Notre Dame sci­en­tist who has con­duct­ed a repli­ca­tion study for the work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing pro­gram for kids with ADD/ ADHD.

IV. New Offer­ings: we have start­ed to offer two infor­ma­tion pack­ages that can be very use­ful for peo­ple who want to bet­ter under­stand this field before they com­mit to any par­tic­u­lar pro­gram: learn more about our Brain Fit­ness 101 guide and Exer­cise Your Brain DVD.

V. Web­site and Blog Sum­ma­ry: we revamped our home page and have had a very busy month writ­ing many good arti­cles. We also host­ed two “Blog Carnivals”- don’t you want to know what that means?

I. Press

• Good overview in Life­long learn­ing, lit­er­al­ly: neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for stu­dents, boomers, seniors…
• TIME Magazine’s spe­cial issue A User Guide to the Brain.
• CBS NEWS/TIME Mag­a­zine’s Series on Brain Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Mem­o­ry Exer­cis­es.
• Birm­ing­ham News on Sharp­Brains with Want a work­out for your brain?.
• “Online Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter Intro­duced” in the Amer­i­can Psy­chol­o­gy Asso­ci­a­tion News Ser­vice, on SharpBrains.

II. Events

• Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence, Feb­ru­ary 15–17 in San Francisco.
• The Dana Alliance’s Brain Aware­ness Week 2007 will take place March 12–18. As part of the glob­al activ­i­ties we will offer our Exer­cis­ing Our Brains class togeth­er with the Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute and deliv­er a fun work­shop on The Neu­ro­science of Stress and Stress Man­age­ment for Accen­ture’s Inter­na­tion­al Women. Learn more about this week and how you can participate.

III. Pro­gram Reviews

• Wall Street Jour­nal “Putting Brain Exer­cis­es to the Test”, where Mind­Fit emerged as one of the top two programs.
• Inter­view with a Sci­en­tist on ADD/ADHD and work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing regard­ing Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing program.
• Coun­sel­ing cen­ter offers biofeed­back to help decrease stress, talk­ing about Freeze-Framer.

IV. New Offerings

• Brain Fit­ness 101 Guide: based on great feed­back on our ini­tial draft, we have refined and redesigned the guide and offer it now for only $11.95.
• Exer­cise Your Brain DVD: this one-hour and 20 minute class intro­duces you to the sci­ence and prac­tice of brain exer­cise and includes many engag­ing activ­i­ties. It is avail­able for pre-order now until Feb­ru­ary 20 for $14.99 ($5 off from the reg­u­lar $19.99!). Videos will ship Feb­ru­ary 23.

V. Web­site and Blog Summary

• We hope you enjoy our new home page and new sec­tion for Psy­chol­o­gists.
• Cog­ni­tive Neuroscience
  Brain Fit­ness Glossary
  Cog­ni­tive Reserve and Lifestyle
  Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty as an Index of Reg­u­lat­ed Emo­tion­al Responding
  Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series: on learn­ing and “brain gyms”
• Edu­ca­tion
  Coun­sel­ing cen­ter offers biofeed­back to help decrease stress
  Life­long learn­ing, lit­er­al­ly: neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for stu­dents, boomers, seniors…
• Health & Wellness
  Want to Improve Mem­o­ry? Strength­en Your Synapses.
  How do I know if com­put­er-based brain fit­ness pro­grams work?
  I already do cross­words and sudoku. Do I need any­thing else?
  Learn­ing Slows Phys­i­cal Pro­gres­sion of Alzheimer’s Disease
• Pro­fes­sion­al Development
  Improv­ing Your Brain Tools: Read­ing Emo­tion­al Mes­sages in the Face
  Enhanc­ing the Trader’s Self-Control
• Brain Teasers
  Exer­cise Your Brains — Visu­al Log­ic Brain Teaser
  Brain Work­out for Your Frontal Lobes
• Blog Car­ni­vals: (col­lec­tion of best blog arti­cles around par­tic­u­lar topics)
  We host­ed Encephalon #15: Neu­ro­science and Psy­chol­o­gy Blog Car­ni­val.
  And launched Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val #1.