Brain Fitness Program and Neuroplasticity @ PBS

December 2, 2007/Alvaro Fernandez/

Update (11/10/10): Have you seen PBS great spe­cials on Brain Fit­ness and Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty ?

The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram DVD ($24.95)

“The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram is based on the brain’s abil­i­ty to change and adapt, even rewire itself. In the past two years, a team of sci­en­tists has devel­oped com­put­er-based stim­u­lus sets that dri­ve ben­e­fi­cial chem­i­cal, phys­i­cal and func­tion­al changes in the Peter Coyote Brain Fitness Programbrain. Dr. Michael Merzenich of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia and his col­leagues share their sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based set of brain exer­cis­es in this life-alter­ing pro­gram. Peter Coy­ote (pic­tured) narrates. ”

PBS aired in Decem­ber 2007 a spe­cial pro­gram on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, brain fit­ness, aging and the brain titled “Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram”. To watch the 3‑minute trail­er: click here.

In 2008, PBS released a sec­ond DVD: 

Brain Fit­ness 2: Sight and Sound DVD ($24.95)

“This pro­gram, specif­i­cal­ly designed to help peo­ple get the most from their vision and hear­ing as they age, con­sid­ers how these sens­es change through­out life and what peo­ple can do to keep them healthy and ful­ly functional.”

.

If you do not have time to watch these great doc­u­men­taries, here are a few points one needs to under­stand about neuroplasticity:

1.  The human brain is now con­sid­ered to be a high­ly dynam­ic and con­stantly reor­ga­niz­ing sys­tem capa­ble of being shaped and reshaped across an entire lifes­pan. It is believed that every expe­ri­ence alters the brain’s orga­ni­za­tion at some lev­el. The key words in this new approach to the brain are neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis. Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity refers to the life­long capac­ity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stim­u­la­tion of learn­ing and expe­ri­ence. Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis is the abil­ity to cre­ate new neu­rons and con­nec­tions between neu­rons through­out a life­time. The lat­ter process is also referred to as synap­to­ge­n­e­sis. This new par­a­digm con­trasts with tra­di­tional ideas of the human brain being a fixed and essen­tially lim­ited sys­tem that only degrades with age.

2. As we age, the rate of change in the brain, or neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, declines but does not come to a halt. In addi­tion, we now know that new neu­rons can appear in cer­tain parts of the brain up until the day we die.

3. Brain plas­tic­ity is cru­cial fol­low­ing head injury. It is the one brain’s abil­ity that allows recov­ery. Brain plas­tic­ity is also the abil­ity that brain train­ing takes advan­tages of to try to slow down the aging process.

To read about evi­dence of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in the human brain take a look at Brain plas­tic­i­ty: How learn­ing changes you brain

———-

Note: How can any­one take care of his or her brain when every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which seem to con­tra­dict each other?

Do sup­ple­ments improve mem­o­ry? Do you need both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise –or is one of them enough? Why is man­ag­ing stress so impor­tant to atten­tion and mem­o­ry? Which brain train­ing approach, if any, is worth one’s time and money?

If you have these ques­tions, check out this new book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness:

“Final­ly, an insight­ful and com­plete overview of the sci­ence, prod­ucts and trends to debunk old myths and help us all main­tain our brains in top shape. A must-read”
—Glo­ria Cavanaugh, for­mer Pres­i­dent & CEO of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging and found­ing Board mem­ber of the Nation­al Alliance for Caregiving
“Kudos for an excel­lent resource! This Sharp­Brains Guide is full of top notch infor­ma­tion, pro­vides prac­ti­cal tips and helps sep­a­rate hype from hope in the brain health arena.”
—Eliz­a­beth Edger­ly, Ph.D., Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer, Alzheimer’s Association

“A mas­ter­ful guide to the brain train­ing rev­o­lu­tion. Promis­es to stim­u­late a much need­ed con­ver­sa­tion that will nudge soci­ety to build a new brain fit­ness cul­ture on sol­id, research-based, foundations.”
—P. Murali Doraiswamy MD, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty and Co-author of The Alzheimer’s Action Plan

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness
SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness. The Book Click

Here

to order at Amazon.com.
Print Edi­tion, $24.95

SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness. The Book Click

Here

to order at Amazon.com,
Kin­dle Edi­tion, $9.99
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76 Comments

  1. Dr Charles Parker on December 3, 2007 at 3:36

    Alvaro-
    Excel­lent infor­ma­tion all around,- am list­ing Smart­Brains on my site, post­ed a recent note on your work, and will be a steady visitor. 

    We are on the same path,
    Thanks for all the great info!
    Chuck



  2. Alvaro on December 3, 2007 at 10:41

    Thank you Chuck. Will check your site too.

    Btw, here you have a quick brain teas­er: what is the dif­fer­ence between Sharp­Brains and SmartBrains :-)



  3. myrna driol on December 5, 2007 at 10:53

    I have searched in vain for infor­ma­tion on the acces­si­ble PBS sta­tions re the “Brain Fitness
    Pro­gram” men­tioned in this newsletter.
    I live in Vancouver,B.C.
    Suggestions?



  4. myrna driol on December 5, 2007 at 10:56

    Re this “Leave a Reply”. It would be less con­fus­ing if you specified
    “E‑Mail” in the “Mail” space — and a clear­er indi­ca­tor that sim­ply click­ing on the “sub­mit com­ment” and see­ing that the blue frame changed to yel­low meant that it had in fact been sumit­ted. Not all of us are expe­ri­enced in tech­nol­o­gy and it would help to have more information.



  5. Alvaro on December 6, 2007 at 12:32

    Thanks for the sug­ges­tions, Myrna.

    As for how to find the pro­gram, you need to find what local sta­tion in Van­cou­ver car­ries PBS pro­grams. The PBS site does­n’t seem to list cities in Cana­da, but you may be able to pick the sig­nal from some close US state-try look­ing for Ore­gon-based sta­tions through the link above or this one
    http://www.pbs.org/stationfinder/stationfinder_relocalize.html



  6. Emory Hill on December 10, 2007 at 11:55

    I do not think the Brain Train­ing pro­gram was ade­quate­ly described as an infomer­cial. The speci­fic­train­ing, as opposed to gen­er­al activ­i­ty, ben­e­fits are snake oil.



  7. Alvaro on December 10, 2007 at 12:07

    Hel­lo Emory,

    I am not sure I under­stand your com­ment. Do you mean the pro­gram is an infomer­cial? that the spe­cif­ic train­ing are snake oil? but that the gen­er­al activ­i­ty ben­e­fits work? Sounds like a quite sur­pris­ing posi­tion to me.

    Hap­py to engage in a dia­logue, but please help me under­stand your impres­sions. Thank you!



  8. mistah charley, ph.d. on December 12, 2007 at 5:59

    Those who haven’t been able to see the PBS pro­gram have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lis­ten to or watch a pre­sen­ta­tion last year by Michael Merzenich, titled Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Bases of Human Abil­i­ty, Dis­abil­i­ty, and Recov­ery, giv­en at Palo Alto Research Cen­ter — http://www.parc.com/cms/get_article.php?id=568

    Maybe the PBS pro­gram counts as “an infomer­cial” — but let’s hope it’s a real­ly good infomer­cial. My chance to see it is lat­er tonight.

    Across PBS sta­tions there is a stan­dard set of “gifts” or “pre­mi­ums” for the tv pro­gram, as is usu­al for Pledge Dri­ve pro­gram­ming. From low to high dona­tion lev­els these are:

    $50 “The Brain Fit­ness Home Primer” This 20-page book­let fea­tures a cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty test that you can take in your own home. It includes edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al about cog­ni­tive issues, as well as assess­ments. And to make the assess­ments more engag­ing and inter­ac­tive, they are designed to be admin­is­tered by a friend or a fam­i­ly mem­ber. The Brain Fit­ness Home Primer will help you find out the cur­rent state of your brain fitness. . 

    $90 “The Brain That Changes Itself by Dr. Nor­man Doige” — book explains the sci­ence of neu­ro-plas­tic­i­ty through inter­views and per­son­al sto­ries about injury and recov­ery. (448 pgs, softcover)

    $120 The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram — DVD is the full, unin­ter­rupt­ed pub­lic tele­vi­sion pro­gram fea­tur­ing Peter Coy­ote, guid­ing you through the excep­tion­al new sci­ence of brain plas­tic­i­ty and how you can use it to increase your men­tal alert­ness and func­tion. Over 50 neu­ro­sci­en­tists have worked to cre­ate a sys­tem for strength­en­ing the brain and mak­ing it per­form with more agili­ty, speed and com­pre­hen­sion. The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram is based on neu­ro-plas­tic­i­ty the abil­i­ty of the brain to change and adapt even rewire itself. The brain remains high­ly mal­leable or plas­tic‚- through­out life. By pre­sent­ing the brain with the prop­er stim­uli, sci­en­tists can dri­ve ben­e­fi­cial phys­i­cal and func­tion­al change. Learn about the lat­est research find­ings and the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-based set of brain exer­cis­es in this inno­v­a­tive and life-alter­ing program.

    $365 KIT Brain Fit­ness — The Brain Fit­ness Gym Pack­age Com­bo contents:
    Book­let, The Brain Fit­ness Primer
    Com­pan­ion DVD, The Brain Fit­ness Program
    Relat­ed Book, The Brain that Changes Itself
    Com­put­er pro­gram with CD-ROM — Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Fam­i­lies. This pro­gram is a series of com­put­er based exer­cis­es that are sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven to improve impor­tant brain func­tions. The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Fam­i­lies is easy to use. It includes 6 engag­ing, easy-to-install lis­ten­ing exer­cis­es per­formed on a com­put­er. To do the exer­cis­es, just click on a com­put­er mouse. No pri­or com­put­er expe­ri­ence is nec­es­sary! The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Fam­i­lies cal­i­brates itself to your skill lev­el. You work at the pace that is right for you — so it fits right into your lifestyle. Reg­u­lar use can range from 15 min­utes to as much time as you’d like.

    The last item seems to me as if it is the “best deal” — inas­much as the price is about what you would pay as an indi­vid­ual cus­tomer for the Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram, and you get the oth­er mate­ri­als as well. 

    Com­menter Emory Hill express­es his skep­ti­cism — “the spe­cif­ic training…benefits are snake oil.” Rea­sons to believe oth­er­wise include a con­trolled study (inter­ven­tion group got the Posit Sci­ence Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram, con­trol group got­up to 40 hours of a com­put­er-based edu­ca­tion­al train­ing pro­gram) pre­sent­ed at the Geron­to­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca. There’s a report in Sci­ence Dai­ly — http://tinyurl.com/2wn65y



  9. Kassandra Dennis on December 12, 2007 at 9:45

    As I did fur­ther research I found that after pur­chas­ing the CD-ROM I can only do the exer­cis­es a total of 2 times. Nobody has men­tioned this before. I think peo­ple will be very dis­ap­point­ed after they pay $365 and find that the CD expires after going through the exer­cis­es two times. I am sure this was meant to “con­trol” shar­ing of the soft­ware with friends, but come on not even Micrs­ft will charge you $365 for soft­ware and only let you do two cycles. I am flab­ber­gast­ed as to how poe­ple who seem to pride them­selves in the healthy brain top­ic area would not come up with a smarter solu­tion for their cus­tomers. I think they loose cred­i­bil­i­ty this way. I also think PBS is not endear­ing them­selves to the spon­sors by not being upfront about this issue. Oh, sup­pos­ed­ly the rea­son behind this 2 cycle usage lim­i­ta­tion is that your brain won’t need the exer­cis­es any­more after that. Why don’t you let the con­sumer be the judge of that. For $365 or $495/$595 as adver­tised on their web­site we should be allowed to “own” the soft­ware and use it as much as we deem nec­es­sary. I was ready to order the pro­gram from their web­site and my hus­band just stum­bled across the 2 cycle lim­it by acci­dent. Shame on you for try­ing to be sneaky and misleading!



  10. Alvaro on December 12, 2007 at 10:21

    Mis­tah: Than you for shar­ing that information.

    Kas­san­dra: You are rais­ing a valid con­cern. I will for­ward your com­plaint to the com­pa­ny that devel­ops and sells that soft­ware-we have noth­ing to do with it! Our role to inform con­sumers and com­pa­nies about lat­est neu­ro­science and brain fit­ness research and trends, so we will work to clar­i­fy this.
    Let’s give them a chance to explain if that pol­i­cy is in fact in place, and why. I will then post an update in this arti­cle, so peo­ple are aware of the issue. Thanks for shar­ing your feedback.

    Does any­one else read­ing this have infor­ma­tion to share?



  11. JP Connelly on December 13, 2007 at 11:48

    As the Super­vi­sor of Cus­tomer Delight at Posit Sci­ence I want­ed to clear up a mis­un­der­stand­ing of Kassandras.
    The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram can be repeat­ed as many times as you would like. In fact, our sci­en­tists rec­om­mend peo­ple repeat the pro­gram peri­od­i­cal­ly to main­tain the cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits that the pro­gram pro­vides. I assure you that our inter­est in healthy brains is gen­uine. In the future if you have any ques­tions about Posit Sci­ence’s prod­ucts, please don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact us!



  12. Alvaro on December 13, 2007 at 6:13

    JP, many thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion, which address­es Kas­san­dra’s con­cerns: the pro­gram “can be repeat­ed as many times as you would like”.



  13. paul bergman on December 13, 2007 at 11:14

    tthank you for savjng me a bundlethatis very sneaky of pbs indeed



  14. Randall Milburn on December 16, 2007 at 7:21

    Thank you very much! I was just about to order the Brain Fit­ness pro­gram after view­ing the PBS pro­gram. Although it was much more expen­sive than Mind­Fit, which accord­ing to the Wal Street Jour­nal is of sim­i­lar qual­i­ty, I was will­ing to pay the addi­tion­al mon­ey to sup­port PBS. Shame on them for not men­tion­ing this limitation!

    I intend to purhcase the Mind­Fit pro­gram, unless some­one has some­thing bet­ter to recommend.

    Ran­dall Mil­burn, Ottawa



  15. JP Connelly on December 17, 2007 at 3:08

    Hi Ran­dall, The Posit Sci­ence Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram does not have any usage lim­i­ta­tions. It can be used as many times as a per­son would like to use it. For more infor­ma­tion, please see my post above.



  16. Joseph Vietvu on December 17, 2007 at 11:13

    I have a lot of prob­lem with my brain,especially with audio abil­i­ty, so I am a hand­i­caped lan­guage. I would like to know if the posit sci­ence of Dr. Merzenich can can help me with the $365 Kit Brain Fit­ness , Please advise me, and I will order it. Thanh You very much. God bless you.
    Joseph Vietvu



  17. Alvaro on December 18, 2007 at 7:19

    Hel­lo Joseph, I rec­om­mend you con­tact your physi­cian, and ask him/ her that same ques­tion, show­ing him infor­ma­tion about Dr. Merzenich’s brain fit­ness pro­gram, that trains audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing. Giv­en that you men­tion you have some clin­i­cal symp­toms, your doc­tor is your best resource, since he/ she knows your spe­cif­ic case and needs. I hope this helps.



  18. Pat Pitch on December 19, 2007 at 10:44

    Alvaro,
    Can two dif­fer­ent per­sons use the CD to do the exercises?



  19. Alvaro on December 19, 2007 at 2:00

    Hel­lo Pat, no, each per­son needs a dif­fer­ent code since the pro­gram is per­son­al­ized (lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty, his­to­ry…). That hap­pens with most soft­ware pack­ages and online options we have seen.

    CORRECTION as of 01/17/08: 2 dif­fer­ent users can use the ver­sion of the pro­gram offered via PBS.



  20. Kristina on December 20, 2007 at 2:49

    Wow. I’m glad I did some research before I made my final deci­sion on the “Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram.” I think thats stu­pid for only let­ting you play the CD-ROM twice for the price of $365? Shame on PBS for not includ­ing that! I’ve been a PBS view­er ever since I was a child and I’m not too hap­py about the results from oth­er peo­ple. Thank you.



  21. MattH on December 20, 2007 at 8:23

    There is some­thing inter­est­ing going on here. “Kas­san­dra Den­nis”, “Ran­dall Mil­burn”, and “Kristi­na” post com­ments but clear­ly don’t read oth­er peo­ples. I’m won­der­ing if they are who they say they are or in fact 1 per­son pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise. Can any­one be that dense?



  22. Kim on December 24, 2007 at 8:34

    Thank you for this infor­ma­tive article.
    I found this one even more inter­est­ing, the Wall Street Jour­nal review­ing Posit Sci­ence, Mind­Fit and oth­er programs

    https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/02/03/mindfit-and-posit-science-in-the-wall-street-journals-putting-brain-exercises-to-the-test/



  23. Luddite on December 28, 2007 at 8:20

    Well when you get the brain fit­ness pro­gram from PBS for $365 it is not rea­son­able to state that you have paid $365 for the pro­gram. Your $365 is a dona­tion to PBS and the brain fit­ness pro­gram is a thank you gift from PBS for your dona­tion. So I would­n’t be sur­prised to learn that the PBS ver­sion is some­what lim­it­ed com­pared to the Posit Sci­ence ver­sion. Same con­cept as using lim­it­ed share­ware ver­sions of soft­ware pro­grams that you must unlock by pay­ing for the full ver­sion. In oth­er words — a teas­er to get you to buy the real thing.



  24. Vandana Chandra on January 1, 2008 at 8:06

    Please let me know when the DVD of the
    brain fit­ness pro­gram is available.



  25. JP Connelly on January 6, 2008 at 3:38

    Hi Lud­dite,

    This is JP Con­nel­ly with Posit Sci­ence’s Cus­tomer Delight Team. 

    The PBS donors who the $365 amount are get­ting the same ver­sion of the pro­gram that we sell for $495.

    The pro­gram, regard­less of where or how it was obtained, can be repeat­ed as many times as you would like.



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