Cognitive Fitness @ Harvard Business Review

The Har­vard Busi­ness Review just pub­lished (thanks Cather­ine!) this arti­cle on cog­ni­tive fit­ness, by Rod­er­ick Gilkey and Clint Kilts. We are hap­py to see the grow­ing inter­est on how to main­tain healthy and pro­duc­tive brains, from a broad­en­ing num­ber of quar­ters. With­out hav­ing yet ful­ly read the article…it seems to pro­vide a rea­son­able intro­duc­tion to brain sci­ence, yet could have more beef regard­ing assess­ment, train­ing and rec­om­men­da­tions. In such an emerg­ing field, though, going one step at a time makes sense. What real­ly mat­ters is thet fact itself that it was published.

The HBR Descrip­tion of the article:

Recent neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research shows that the health of your brain isn’t, as experts once thought, just the prod­uct of child­hood expe­ri­ences and genet­ics; it reflects your adult choic­es and expe­ri­ences as well. Pro­fes­sors Gilkey and Kilts of Emory Uni­ver­si­ty’s med­ical and busi­ness schools explain how you can strength­en your brain’s anato­my, neur­al net­works, and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, and pre­vent func­tions such as mem­o­ry from dete­ri­o­rat­ing as you age. The brain’s alert­ness is the result of what the authors call cog­ni­tive fitness–a state of opti­mized abil­i­ty to rea­son, remem­ber, learn, plan, and adapt. Cer­tain atti­tudes, lifestyle choic­es, and exer­cis­es enhance cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Men­tal work­outs are the key. Brain-imag­ing stud­ies indi­cate that acquir­ing exper­tise in areas as diverse as play­ing a cel­lo, jug­gling, speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage, and dri­ving a taxi­cab expands your neur­al sys­tems and makes them more com­mu­nica­tive. In oth­er words, you can alter the phys­i­cal make­up of your brain by learn­ing new skills. The more cog­ni­tive­ly fit you are, the bet­ter equipped you are to make deci­sions, solve prob­lems, and deal with stress and change. Cog­ni­tive fit­ness will help you be more open to new ideas and alter­na­tive per­spec­tives. It will give you the capac­i­ty to change your behav­ior and real­ize your goals. You can delay senes­cence for years and even enjoy a sec­ond career. Draw­ing from the rapid­ly expand­ing body of neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research as well as from well-estab­lished research in psy­chol­o­gy and oth­er men­tal health fields, the authors have iden­ti­fied four steps you can take to become cog­ni­tive­ly fit: under­stand how expe­ri­ence makes the brain grow, work hard at play, search for pat­terns, and seek nov­el­ty and inno­va­tion. Togeth­er these steps cap­ture some of the key oppor­tu­ni­ties for main­tain­ing an engaged, cre­ative brain.

The authors do men­tion part of the research done by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg (our co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­sor) on pat­tern-recog­ni­tion. You will enjoy read­ing his thoughts directly:
As well as our inter­views with a num­ber of oth­er lead­ing sci­en­tists in this Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series. 

- “Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Learn­ing means the mod­i­fi­ca­tion, growth, and prun­ing of our neu­rons, con­nec­tions called synaps­es  and neu­ronal net­works, through experience…When we do so, we are cul­ti­vat­ing our own neu­ronal net­works. We become our own gar­den­ers — Dr. James Zull, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­o­gy and Bio­chem­istry at Case West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. Full Inter­view Notes.

- “Exer­cis­ing our brains sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies. In my expe­ri­ence, “Use it or lose it should real­ly be “Use it and get more of it”- Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, and dis­ci­ple of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria. Full Inter­view Notes.

- “Today, thanks to fMRI and oth­er neu­roimag­ing tech­niques, we are start­ing to under­stand the impact our actions can have on spe­cif­ic parts of the brain.”- Dr. Judith S. Beck, Direc­tor of the Beck Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py and Research, and author of The Beck Diet Solu­tion: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son. Full Inter­view Notes

- “What research has shown is that cog­ni­tion, or what we call think­ing and per­for­mance, is real­ly a set of skills that we can train sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. And that com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ers or “cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions are the most effec­tive and effi­cient way to do so. — Dr. Daniel Gopher, Direc­tor of the Research Cen­ter for Work Safe­ty and Human Engi­neer­ing at Tech­nion Insti­tute of Sci­ence. Full Inter­view Notes.

- “Indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing lives, through edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion and leisure activ­i­ties, have reduced risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symp­toms. Stud­ies sug­gest that they have 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing the dis­ease — Dr. Yaakov Stern, Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at the Col­lege of Physi­cians and Sur­geons of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, New York. Full Inter­view Notes.

- “It is hard­ly deni­able that brains enchant Japan­ese peo­ple. We love brain train­ing. Dentsu, the biggest adver­tis­ing agency, announced the No.1 Con­sumer-cho­sen 2006 Prod­uct was game soft­ware and books for brain train­ing.”- Go Hira­no, Japan­ese exec­u­tive, founder of NeuWell. Full Inter­view Notes.

- “Elite per­form­ers are dis­tin­guished by the struc­tur­ing of their learn­ing process. It is impor­tant to under­stand the role of emo­tions: they are not “bad”. They are very use­ful sig­nals. It is impor­tant to become aware of them to avoid being engulfed by them, and learn how to man­age them. — Dr. Brett Steen­barg­er, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences, SUNY Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty, and author of Enhanc­ing Trad­er Per­for­mance. Full Inter­view Notes.

- “We have shown that work­ing mem­o­ry can be improved by train­ing…I think that we are see­ing the begin­ning of a new era of com­put­er­ized train­ing for a wide range of appli­ca­tions  Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, Direc­tor of the Devel­op­men­tal Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Lab at Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute. Full Inter­view Notes.

- “Train­ing is very impor­tant: atten­tion­al con­trol is one of the last cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties to devel­op in nor­mal brain development…I can eas­i­ly see the rel­e­vance in 2 fields. One, pro­fes­sion­al sports. Two, mil­i­tary train­ing. Pro­fes­sor Bradley Gib­son is the Direc­tor of the Per­cep­tion and Atten­tion Lab at Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame. Full Inter­view Notes.

May I quote this Los Ange­les Times arti­cle and say that

- “I see this as a new fron­tier of fit­ness over­all,” says Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, founder and chief exec­u­tive of the web­site Sharp­Brains .com, which tracks the busi­ness and sci­ence of brain-train­ing. Amer­i­cans already under­stand the val­ue of phys­i­cal fit­ness as a means of pre­serv­ing the body’s prop­er func­tion and pre­vent­ing age-relat­ed dis­eases, says Fernandez.

- He pre­dicts that cog­ni­tive fit­ness will become a goal to which Amer­i­cans equal­ly aspire as we learn more about aging and the brain.

Pret­ty easy pre­dic­tion, giv­en what we are see­ing and doing every day.

Now, the real mer­it goes to neu­ro­sci­en­tists like Dr. Gold­berg and many oth­er pio­neers who have been say­ing so for the last 10 years, and doing the hard work. And, of course, for each of us who try our best every day to keep our brains and minds healthy and pro­duc­tive, and do more than wait for a mag­ic pill to arrive.

About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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