Brain Health Newsletter, March Edition

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We hope you are enjoy­ing Brain Aware­ness Week this week and hope­ful­ly think­ing a lit­tle more about your brain and brain fit­ness! 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 the top of this page.

We have had anoth­er busy month behind us, and we’re look­ing for­ward to Brain Aware­ness Week March 12–18. Keep read­ing for the details (includ­ing a spe­cial offer in hon­or of Brain Aware­ness Week) …

I. Press Coverage
II. Events
III. Pro­gram Reviews
IV. New Offerings
V. Web­site and Blog Sum­ma­ry, includ­ing brain teasers

I. Press Coverage

Set your DVRs – Sharp­Brains is com­ing to the small screen! Our tele­vi­sion debut will be on CBS 13 West Sacramento’s “Good Day Sacra­men­to” on Mon­day, March 12.

La Opin­ion, the most pres­ti­gious Span­ish-lan­guage paper in the US, fea­tured Sharp­Brains in a recent arti­cle “Secre­to para tri­un­far en los exámenes” (Secrets to Tri­umph­ing in Exams)

Anoth­er great inter­na­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion was an arti­cle called “Training the Brain as Pos­si­ble as Train­ing the Body” in the promi­nent Ara­bic news­pa­per Anna­har.

And Mark Muck­en­fuss of The Press-Enter­prise in River­side writes in “Train Your Brain”:

“I would tend to believe that still we under­es­ti­mate the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, whose back­ground is in edu­ca­tion­al train­ing and mar­ket­ing. He notes that recent stud­ies have shown when a brain is injured by a stroke, “those men­tal struc­tures recre­ate them­selves (with exer­cise). It means to me there are a lot of things we could real­ly do and many times we are not aware of them. We can­not promise to peo­ple you will only keep get­ting bet­ter until you are 200 years old. But I think peo­ple still under­es­ti­mate how flex­i­ble the brain real­ly is.”

II. Events

March 8, Alvaro led the Stress Man­age­ment work­shop at Accen­ture dur­ing the Annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day. He pre­sent­ed the lat­est neu­ro­science find­ings about the impact of stress on per­for­mance and intro­duced a vari­ety of tech­niques to help man­age stress.

Brain Aware­ness Week 2007 is com­ing March 12–18! In hon­or of the week, we are offer­ing a $10 dis­count code on any brain fit­ness pro­gram offered at Sharp­Brains. To use the coupon from today until March 18th, enter the code BAW2007 into the Dis­count Coupon field pre­sent­ed dur­ing the check­out process and get your $10 discount.

Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes: We are also col­lab­o­rat­ing with 35 dif­fer­ent Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes at uni­ver­si­ties across the US to share infor­ma­tion and our Brain Fit­ness 101 guide.

We are teach­ing our class Exer­cis­ing Our Brains once more in San Fran­cis­co and prepar­ing ways to expand to oth­er cities—stay tuned!

Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing: We attend­ed a great con­fer­ence of edu­ca­tors and neu­ro­sci­en­tists shar­ing ideas to influ­ence each oth­er. Some tremen­dous speak­ers were there to talk about the lat­est dis­cov­er­ies in neu­ro­science. One of the main themes we left with was that peo­ple are a mix­ture of cog­ni­tion and emo­tion, and both ele­ments are essen­tial to func­tion and learn properly.

III. Pro­gram Reviews

“John & I keep work­ing the pro­gram. I love it! I just com­plet­ed the sec­ond assess­ment & it showed I have made progress! Thanks also for keep­ing in touch.”
—Sue Anne, reg­is­tered nurse, on Com­pre­hen­sive Brain Workout

“The stress man­age­ment pro­gram is becom­ing a big time sav­ior – keeps my nerves in check.”
—top busi­ness school pro­fes­sor on Freeze-Framer

“Sharp­Brains’ is the first biofeed­back appli­ca­tion that I’m aware of that is unique­ly mar­ket­ed to traders. I’ve used biofeed­back to mon­i­tor my body’s lev­el of arousal dur­ing trad­ing and have found it to be quite useful.”
—Brett Steen­barg­er, trad­ing psy­chol­o­gy expert, on Freeze-Framer

“Inter­ac­tive infor­ma­tion, enter­tain­ing, amus­ing, edu­ca­tion­al, lots of mate­r­i­al cov­ered in short time. Good fun! Mr. Fer­nan­dez is in his ele­ment. Great teacher, wit­ty, his love of his craft is evident.”
—Anonymous eval­u­a­tion from stu­dent, on Exer­cise Your Brain Workshop

IV. New Offerings

Our new Exer­cise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Impli­ca­tions DVD has been a pop­u­lar item since it became avail­able. This one-hour and 20 minute class intro­duces you to the sci­ence of brain fit­ness and includes many engag­ing brain exer­cis­es you can do on your own or in a group set­ting. A per­fect intro­duc­tion to brain fitness!

We are pleased to have added the emWave Per­son­al Stress Reliev­er to our stress man­age­ment pro­grams. It is a con­ve­nient, prac­ti­cal train­ing device that uses the same patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy as Freeze-Framer to help you reduce stress and shift into The Zone any­time, anywhere.

V. Web­site and Blog Summary

Just Sci­ence spon­sored a Week of Sci­ence among blog­gers who agreed to write about “just science” for one week. Here are a few arti­cles we wrote for that week:

Here are some oth­er high­lights from our recent posts:

Final­ly, let us ask a favor: we are active­ly look­ing for part­ners who can help us reach more peo­ple. Orga­ni­za­tions offer­ing advice and pro­grams around health, nutri­tion, phys­i­cal fit­ness, train­ing who may want to part­ner with us to offer an addi­tion­al brain fit­ness com­po­nent to their mem­bers, vis­i­tors, read­ers. Please let us know any suggestions!

Keep exer­cis­ing your brain!

~Alvaro and the Sharp­Brains Team