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. Mickster on January 6, 2008 at 4:30

    Why is the CD-ROM called the “Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Fam­i­lies” when only one fam­i­ly mem­ber can make use of it?



  2. Mickster on January 6, 2008 at 4:34

    BTW, the DVD of the PBS pro­gram is now available



  3. Alvaro on January 8, 2008 at 9:43

    Thank you Mick­ster! I updat­ed this post to take vis­i­tors there.



  4. Lenny on January 12, 2008 at 6:27

    $365 I’m sor­ry but this is a huge scam. $29.95 = rea­son­able price for the pro­gram. $365 = a bunch of huck­sters try­ing to get rich off of gullible people.



  5. LENNLEE KEEP on January 15, 2008 at 3:05

    I am the pro­duc­er of The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram. We select­ed the Posit Sci­ence pro­gram as a Thank you gift because of sol­id sci­ence behind it and the stud­ies pubished in peer reviewed journals.
    The pro­gram that is offered on PBS is NOT lim­it­ed use, it is the full pro­gram that can be used time and time again. Addi­tion­al­ly, this pro­gram can be used by up to 2 users. Please see the attached link to the prod­uct spec­i­fi­ca­tions. This is the pro­gram offered at the $365 pledge lev­el. I hope this clears up any questions.
    Thank you for watching!
    Lennlee Keep
    Producer



  6. Alvaro on January 17, 2008 at 3:15

    Lennlee: thank you for the clarification. 

    I have emailed Pat (above) to cor­rect the infor­ma­tion I gave him, and updat­ed my response. Regards



  7. Kathy Ripley on February 11, 2008 at 12:06

    Is this offer by PBS still good? Can I still call with the $365.00 pledge?



  8. Kathy Ripley on February 11, 2008 at 12:28

    nev­er mind. i found it.



  9. Mary Lu on February 20, 2008 at 2:21

    To Lenny:

    Yes, $365 seems like a lot of mon­ey com­pared to your aver­age soft­ware. I have helped kids with a VERY sim­i­lar pro­gram from anoth­er com­pa­ny Micheal Merzinich is asso­ci­at­ed with. It is tar­get­ed to kids with audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing and relat­ed learning/reading prob­lems. It was all based on plen­ty of hard sci­ence. In my expe­ri­ence it was very effec­tive for these kids.
    A sim­i­lar $50 pro­gram sim­ply did­nt give near­ly the same outcomes.
    In the future if qual­i­ty brain train­ing pro­grams catch on and are mass pro­duced I’m sure the costs will come down.
    The PBS adult brain fit­ness pro­gram is focused on audi­to­ry, lan­guage, and short term mem­o­ry skills, as is its the coun­ter­part for chil­dren. (A visu­al pro­cess­ing pro­gram is in the works.) I will be inter­est­ed to the results of this pro­gram with typ­i­cal adults. 

    I was sat­is­fied enough with the kids pro­gram that I have donat­ed the mon­ey to PBS need­ed to recieve the pro­gram to try it myself. 

    The Mind­Fit soft­ware sounds good also accord­ing to the Wall ST Jour­nal. It looks like its approach is a much more visual/attention/memory one.



  10. Alvaro on February 20, 2008 at 9:38

    Hel­lo Mary: thanks for shar­ing your expe­ri­ence! I guess you refer to Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing’s Fast Forword. 

    Do you remem­ber the name of the pro­gram you refer to with “A sim­i­lar $50 pro­gram sim­ply did­n’t give near­ly the same out­comes.” And, what kind of kids did you use it with?

    Thank you



  11. Mary Lu on February 21, 2008 at 7:28

    Alvaro,

    Yes, I am refer­ing to Fast For­word. Kids with audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing prob­lems are bound to have speech and/or lan­guage delays. Poor audi­to­ry dis­crim­i­na­tion slows lan­guage devel­op­ment. Learn­ing to read relies on “phone­mic aware­ness” an abil­i­ty to make con­nec­tions with sounds and let­ters. Since read­ing relies on a sound based code, you can imag­ine how dif­fi­cult it is for these kids to learn to read. In addi­tion com­pre­hen­sion is affect­ed due to delayed lang skills. Often these kids are labeled “slow.“Frequently they have had a his­to­ry of chron­ic ear infec­tions so they have heard muf­fled speech dur­ing a crit­i­cal peri­od of brain devel­op­ment. The brain has not had as much train­ing need­ed to learn audi­to­ry discrimination.

    The $50.00 pro­gram is Earrobics–also for kids which have had audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing prob­lems. It immi­tates some of Fast For­word’s exer­cis­es. There is a HUGE dif­fer­ence though. Fast For­word was designed with the under­stand­ing of the need to dis­crim­i­nate between sounds in con­nect­ed speech. That depends on dis­crim­i­na­tion of fre­quen­cy changes with­in approx. 40 msec. for typ­i­cal speech. Fast For­word method­i­cal­ly trains that dis­crim­i­na­tion start­ing with slow­er changes in pitch vari­a­tions until the lis­ten­er can process at faster speeds. It does that syl­la­ble, word and sen­tence exer­cis­es. Mem­o­ry and atten­tion skills are exer­cised as well. 

    Ear­ro­bics does dis­crina­tion exer­cis­es with­out address­ing the pre­cise msec speed of processing. 

    While I think Earo­bics has some val­ue for some chil­dren there is absolute­ly no com­par­i­son what­so­ev­er. I know of no oth­er pro­gram that comes close to the effi­ca­cy of Fast For­word to address audi­to­ry processing/language dif­fi­cul­ties and co-occur­ing read­ing problems. 

    Fast For­word’s suc­cess relies in part on inten­sive train­ing in a 4–8 week peri­od. 90 min­utes 5 times per week is the pro­to­col. Reg­u­lar con­sul­ta­tion with a pro­fes­sion­al is required throughout.

    Appar­ent­ly the com­pa­ny has extend­ed the fun­da­men­tals of the pro­gram to an adult ver­sion. I sup­pose we lose some of our abil­i­ty to process quick­ly, to recall and attend over time. There­fore the same pro­gram has been found to be help­ful for typ­i­cal adults as well. I have always felt I have rel­a­tive­ly poor audi­to­ry memory/comprehenion/attention so I am hopeful. 

    I would sug­gest that those who under­take the pro­gram real­ly com­mit to it for a month or so for an hour a day if pos­si­ble. I think hap­haz­ard prac­tice would have lim­it­ed success.

    Mary Lu
    Speech-Lan­guage Pathologist



  12. Alvaro on February 21, 2008 at 12:48

    Hel­lo Mary,

    Thank you for your great response. A great point you raise is that all these cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions aimed at address­ing an under­ly­ing deficit are hard work. They require practice. 

    A ques­tion: in your prac­tice, how do you iden­ti­fy whether a kid’s main cog­ni­tive bot­tle­neck is audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing vs. oth­ers, such as work­ing mem­o­ry, for exam­ple, where dif­fer­ent pro­grams may help more? (or no pro­gram has enough evi­dence behind). We have many cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties to take care of, so the same tool is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the best for everyone.

    Btw, please check the Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series in our Resources sec­tion-you’ll enjoy it. And please read the inter­view with Eliz­a­beth Zelin­s­ki on her ini­tial research results (not pub­lished yet) of using Posit Sci­ence with adults over 60.

    Thank you again



  13. Ann O on February 21, 2008 at 11:02

    HI Mary Lu and Alvaro

    I have used Fast For­Word from Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing for more than 10 years and con­tin­ue to get some incred­i­ble results (improve­ments) in kids with var­i­ous lan­guage and pro­cess­ing issues. I am assum­ing you were refer­ring to Earo­bics, Mary Lu, when you men­tioned anoth­er $50 pro­gram? I have also used that pro­gram to strength­en the phone­mic aware­ness skills–but I find it is more ben­e­fi­cial if I have already put the child through the Fast For­Word Lan­guage pro­gram first. As you said, Mary Lu, Earo­bics is VERY dif­fer­ent than the Fast For­Word products. 

    As an aside, there are now a num­ber of diff­fer­ent time pro­to­cols for Fast For­Word-from 30 minutes/day to 100 minutes/day–still doing it 5 days out of every 7. 

    I am enjoy­ing this blog of yours Alvaro.

    Ann



  14. Mary Lu on February 22, 2008 at 7:18

    Alvaro,

    Good ques­tion regard­ing dif­fer­en­tial diag­no­sis of audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing vs work­ing mem­o­ry dif­fi­cul­ties. Non ver­bal mem­o­ry assess­ment can be used to get some com­par­i­son to oth­er ver­bal assess­ments. Also phone­mic aware­ness test­ing is used. Is the child able to rhyme words? Can the child point to words with only one sound which is dif­fer­ent? EG: “Call/Tall.” If the child had delayed speech, or language,having trou­ble learn­ing phon­ics in Kindergarten/1st grade it is cer­tain­ly sug­ges­tive of pos­si­ble audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing problems.

    I had one child whose par­ents had the 4 year old child use the Fast For­word pro­gram because he was being teased about his speech. Although he had been going to speech twice a week he was mak­ing slow progress. After the pro­gram he made rapid improve­ments with­out speech ther­a­py artic­u­la­tion ther­a­py. For some kids they havnt heard the dif­fer­ence in the sounds so they arnt cor­rect­ly say­ing the sounds either. 

    I believe the pro­gram like­ly pre­vent­ed future read­ing problems. 

    I am not cur­rent­ly prac­tic­ing, but I was a school Speech-Lan­guage Pathol­o­gist who did pri­vate work on the side. It was frus­trat­ing to see kids strug­gling when I knew Fast For­word could have made such a dif­fer­ence. Unfor­tu­nate­ly most schools won’t get near the pro­gram because of the expense involved. Some school sys­tems are begin­ning to use it, but they are few and far between.

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly I only put about 10 kids through the pro­gram since most par­ents balked at the expense and even good insur­ance did­nt cov­er it. ($365 is frac­tion of what these par­ents were pay­ing.) Even so, I don’t blame Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing because of the years and mon­ey it took to devel­op Fast Forword. 

    Regard­ing cog­ni­tive issues which are not audi­to­ri­ly based I am not famil­iar with com­pa­ra­ble com­put­er pro­grams. Recent­ly I have heard about some which address attention/memory pro­grams but I know noth­ing of research and effi­ca­cy. Per­haps the Mind­Fit pro­gram can at least par­tial­ly fit the bill. I’ll look for­ward to when Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing comes out with their visu­al pro­cess­ing program.

    Mary Lu



  15. Alvaro on February 22, 2008 at 12:30

    Ann: wel­come! Thank you for your com­ment and kind words. Does Fast­For­word have a 30-minute pro­to­col? I was aware of their new 60-minute one, not the 30-minute. Have you seen any research paper they have pub­lished based on that protocol?

    Mary Lu: thank you for the addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion. The issue is that we need bet­ter cog­ni­tive assess­ments, right now they require a trained neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist which means the bill for par­ents may even be higher.

    A very inter­est­ing new cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion is Cogmed work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing, most­ly focused on kids with atten­tion deficits. You can see mul­ti­ple papers in PubMed by Torkel Klingberg.

    Mind­Fit is not so much a very inten­sive (and expen­sive) pro­gram aimed at solv­ing an under­ly­ing deficit as a “pre­ven­tive” work­out to slow-down typ­i­cal age-relat­ed cog­ni­tive decline. It may the­o­ret­i­cal­ly also be used with kids, but it does­n’t seem the com­pa­ny, Cog­niFit, is focus­ing there. They have a sep­a­rate pro­gram, Dri­ve­Fit, to train dri­ving-relat­ed cog­ni­tive skills, with sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence in Cana­da and Europe, not in the US so far.



  16. Mary Lu on February 22, 2008 at 2:08

    Alvero,

    Your Neu­ro­science Inter­view series is faci­nat­ing! Thanks

    Mary Lu



  17. Ron on February 22, 2008 at 4:16

    I was won­der­ing some­thing about this pro­gram, I vist­ed the web­site and it seems to use sounds as some of the exer­cis­es for peo­ple. What if your hard of hear­ing? Does it have some­thing dif­fer­ent to offer for thos that have some hear­ing loss?



  18. Alvaro on February 23, 2008 at 10:43

    Glad you enjoy it, Mary Lu!

    Ron, yes, that pro­gram is devot­ed to audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing train­ing, so it is sound-focused. As far as I know, they have noth­ing spe­cif­ic for peo­ple who have hear­ing difficulties.



  19. MK Gates on March 5, 2008 at 10:57

    This is noth­ing but a mon­ey-mak­ing scheme. It is a shame that you’ve got PBS back­ing it just so they can make mon­ey off it too! I would like to know how did they ever derive a price of $350 to 595 for a sin­gle CD ROM pro­gram? This is a rip off!!! It is just dis­guised as help­ing peo­ple. In the past, God always stopped us from giv­ing to PBS. Now I real­ize why: self­ish greed.



  20. Alvaro on March 5, 2008 at 1:17

    Dear MK,

    On the one hand, I agree that I would like to see that soft­ware tool ‑and many more health prod­ucts- at more afford­able rates.

    On the oth­er hand, they are a pri­vate com­pa­ny and are enti­tled to make the pric­ing deci­sions they choose to.

    In any case, I am not sure God real­ly inter­venes in these things.



  21. MK Gates on March 5, 2008 at 1:25

    Yes, He does inter­vene. And He always inter­venes for us because we have a heart to hear from Him.



  22. MK Gates on March 5, 2008 at 3:57

    I would like to see the com­pa­ny sell­ing the prod­uct an afford­able price, $40. The com­pa­ny would then be able to sell tens of mil­lions of copies as the word gets out what it accom­plish­es. This is because peo­ple will then be able to afford to pur­chase a copy for them­selves and also buy copies for relatives/friends who would ben­e­fit from the program.

    When you help oth­ers you will be helped. Do not try to get all your mon­ey from just a few peo­ple by over­pric­ing the soft­ware! Remem­ber, it is drop by drop the ocean is filled. Just imag­ine how dan­ger­ous it would be if, instead of rain­drops, the ocean were filled with rain­gal­lons! My good wish­es go with you!



  23. Alvaro on March 5, 2008 at 6:31

    Thank you!



  24. Kanonklin on March 6, 2008 at 7:06

    I am glad to hear that this can be used by 2 peo­ple, but can it be used by two peo­ple in 2 dif­fer­ent loca­tions, Kansas and Col­orado. I’d like to get this, and share it with my mom who lives in Kansas????? Thanks



  25. Alvaro on March 6, 2008 at 11:24

    Hel­lo Kanon­klin: the prod­uct devel­op­er’s web­site says both peo­ple must be in the “same house­hold”, so I guess you can’t share it that way, since you’ll need to instal the soft­ware CD in one com­put­er (which then may be used by 2 people).



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