The Brain Fitness Program DVD (Michael Merzenich)

22 Comments

1. Mary on January 13, 2008 at 7:11

   Hel­lo, I want to buy the DVD of the actu­al Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram that aired, NOT a DVD of exer­cis­es. Is that DVD the show itself or just exercises?

   
   
   
2. Alvaro on January 14, 2008 at 1:22

   Hel­lo Mary, yes, that’s what we are talk­ing about. You can buy the PBS pro­gram that aired: Sim­ply click on the DVD image above and you will be sent to the PBS online store page where you can buy it. Enjoy!

   
   
   
3. Beky Townsend on January 26, 2008 at 3:07

   I am inter­est­ed in buy­ing a DVD of exer­cis­es. Where can I get that?

   
   
   
4. Alvaro on January 26, 2008 at 3:15

   Hel­lo Beky,

   There are 2 dif­fer­ent things: a) a DVD that con­tains the TV pro­gram that aired in PBS, b) CD-Roms that con­tain the exer­cis­es men­tioned in that TV pro­gram, or oth­er ones. To our knowl­edge, there is no sci­ence-based “DVD of exercises”.

   Are you look­ing for com­put­er-based exer­cis­es for use in your PC?

   
   
   
5. Beatrice on January 31, 2008 at 3:05

   Is the Brain Fit­ness HOme Primer going to be avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic as well, with­out hav­ing to make a dona­tion to a PBS sta­tion? I don’t mind mak­ing a dona­tion, but I’m already a mem­ber, and have lim­it­ed funds. $55 for a 20 page book­let (how big?? 4x6? 8x10?) sounds like a lot. For now I can’t afford the $365 either.

   
   
   
6. Alvaro on January 31, 2008 at 8:44

   Hel­lo Beatrice,

   If what you want is infor­ma­tion, let me sug­gest you sub­scribe to our month­ly newslet­ter and you will get 2 com­pli­men­ta­ry dig­i­tal doc­u­ments with over 80 pages of great content…

   
   
   
7. michael on February 1, 2008 at 6:29

   real­ly keen to find out ways to improve my brain fit­ness, i am look­ing for small things i can do dur­ing the day while walk­ing to class­es or play­ing golf?
   thanks the web­site is real­ly good

   
   
   
8. Beatrice on February 1, 2008 at 1:08

   Alvaro, from what I can tell, the Home Primer allows you to do a test on your­self to get some sort of a rat­ing. I’m look­ing more for the test than infor­ma­tion (although I want that, too!)I am a sub­scriber to the newslet­ter already, and have had a lot of fun with the brain teasers.

   
   
   
9. Jon on February 1, 2008 at 4:08

   nev­er trust a com­pa­ny that sells prod­ucts to give you a good test…more like­ly than not, you will end up need­ing the prod­uct they want to sell you! bet­ter ask your doc­tor, what test he recommends.

   actu­al­ly, sharp­brains should offer a test, i love the site.

   
   
   
10. Brian Rose on February 1, 2008 at 8:38

    Why should we pay $25 for a repeat of a PBS pro­gram. That seems like a very large amount of mon­ey for a sim­ple copy. How about $10? The pro­gram will prob­a­bly be aired again in the near future because it was so popular.

    
    
    
11. Alvaro on February 4, 2008 at 8:33

    Michael: great ques­tion. While play­ing golf, prob­a­bly the best is to prac­tice stress man­age­ment tech­niques, breath­ing and visu­al­iza­tions, so that you don’t only exer­cise your brain but also per­haps improve your game! Try out the tec­nique quot­ed in the sec­ond arti­cle here (once you have a lit­tle prac­tice, you can do it with eyes open)
    https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/02/04/stress-management-as-key-factor-for-cognitive-fitness-and-more-news/

    While class­ing to class­es, you can do the same to ensure a great start of the day, or try some men­tal games like these
    https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/01/12/brain-exercises-for-the-weekend/

    Beat­rice, thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Great to hear you are enjoy­ing our newslet­ter and teasers! I have to agree with Jon: you will be bet­ter off trust­ing the test put for­ward by an inde­pen­dent source, not some­one who wants to sell a prod­uct. Your doctor/ health provider can prob­a­bly point you to some good resources. We will write a post nest week about sev­er­al rat­ings avail­able for free online, so stay tuned.

    Jon, thank you for your support!

    Bri­an: we cer­tain­ly don’t con­trol PBS pric­ing deci­sions… we hope you enjoy watch­ing it.

    
    
    
12. Arlene on February 4, 2008 at 5:48

    I want to get com­put­er-based exer­cis­es for a brain fit­ness pro­gram. What is your pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion about the Brain Fit­ness Gym?
    And what about Mind­fit — which is con­sid­er­ably less expensive.(I notice some of their demo exer­cis­es are in your Brain Teasers sec­tion.) Are there oth­er options that are com­put­er based you rec­om­mend? Thanks!

    
    
    
13. Alvaro on February 4, 2008 at 7:25

    Hel­lo Arlene, the Posit Sci­ence pro­gram is very nar­row: it is design to train audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing. If you need that, it’s the best.

    Mind­Fit may be a bet­ter starter point for wider train­ing. Oth­er options include lumosity.com and happyneuron.com, both online, and more inexpensive.

    They are all dif­fer­ent tools: it depends on what you want. For guid­ance, you can check our 10-Ques­tion Eval­u­a­tion Checklist
    /wp-content/uploads/2007/05/sharpbrains_checklist.pdf

    and you can check this arti­cle in the Wall Street Journal
    https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/02/03/mindfit-and-posit-science-in-the-wall-street-journals-putting-brain-exercises-to-the-test/

    
    
    
14. Eric on February 5, 2008 at 9:51

    Hi Arlene,
    I am Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing for for Posit Sci­ence. A cou­ple of points about our exercises:
    1. Our first prod­uct focus­es on the audi­to­ry sys­tems of the brain because so much of what we need to remem­ber and process in life is audi­to­ry. Our audi­to­ry prod­uct improves speed of pro­cess­ing and accu­ra­cy of the audi­to­ry sys­tem. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have used this prod­uct and report remem­ber­ing bet­ter, find­ing words more eas­i­ly, fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tion more quick­ly and oth­er benefits.
    2. Newsweeks Sharon Beg­ley does a great job describ­ing why the focus on audi­to­ry mem­o­ry is so impor­tant in the arti­cle below. As you’ll read, our Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram is the only pro­gram on the mar­ket that improves your mem­o­ry — not just the trained tasks. The the improve­ments “gen­er­al­ize” to broad mea­sures of cog­ni­tion. http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/11/17/brain-training-how-it-works.aspx
    3. The Posit Sci­ence pro­gram is the only one to have been shown effec­tive in pub­lished, peer-reviewed stud­ies. This is the sci­en­tif­ic “gold stan­dard” and the only way you can be cer­tain a prod­uct actu­al­ly works to improve cog­ni­tive func­tion. No oth­er prod­uct has under­gone this rig­or­ous clin­i­cal scruti­ny, includ­ing oth­ers ref­er­enced above. 

    Best Regards,
    Eric Mann

    
    
    
15. Alvaro on February 5, 2008 at 10:43

    Hel­lo Eric, thanks for stop­ping by. We rec­om­mend users check our 10-Ques­tion Eval­u­a­tion Check­list, because there is no research enough today to “pre­scribe” any spe­cif­ic inter­ven­tion for every­one. Each user must decide what may be the best tool for him or her.

    There are many impor­tant cog­ni­tive skills to take care of, so a very nar­row inter­ven­tion is not nec­es­sar­i­ly what every sin­gle per­son would ben­e­fit from, jus­ti­fy­ing time com­mit­ment and expense.

    Let me ask you

    1- how you you know what ben­e­fits Arlene has in mind? if she is look­ing to reduce like­li­hood of poten­tial­ly devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symp­toms, for exam­ple, phys­i­cal exer­cise or a vari­ety of social­ly and men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties have more research sup­port than any spe­cif­ic com­put­er-based program

    2- how many stud­ies have been pub­lished as of today in peer-reviewed jour­nals sup­port­ing the valid­i­ty of your program

    3- what is the medi­an age for peo­ple in pub­lished stud­ies? what may be rel­e­vant for peo­ple in their 70s may not be the top pri­or­i­ty for peo­ple in their 40s or 50

    4- What is the use pro­to­col in pub­lished stud­ies? hours of train­ing per week?

    5- Does pub­lished research show far trans­fer into non-trained domains such as visu­al mem­o­ry and exec­u­tive functions?

    6- can you pro­vide an overview of all major cog­ni­tive skills and where audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing fits in

    7- Have you seen the pub­lished research back­ing oth­er pro­grams such as Cogmed, Space­Fortress, cog­ni­tive ther­a­py, biofeed­back? I find it sur­pris­ing that (despite the appar­ent great qual­i­ty of the IMPACT study, not pub­lished yet), you can make claims like the ones you make in your comment.

    Look­ing for­ward your response.

    
    
    
16. Laura Fay on February 6, 2008 at 1:27

    Hel­lo Arlene,
    I am Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer with Hap­py Neu­ron, a provider of var­i­ous Brain Fit­ness pro­grams (men­tioned above)

    Alvaro makes a good point about choos­ing the pro­gram that is right for YOU. Sharp­brains 10-Ques­tion Eval­u­a­tion Check­list is a great way to eval­u­ate the most suit­able brain fit­ness pro­gram. To assist with that eval­u­a­tion, Hap­py Neu­ron has out­lined how our pro­gram stacks up against the check­list. You can read it here.
    http://www.happy-neuron.com/docs/checklist_sb.php

    Good luck with your research.

    Lau­ra

    
    
    
17. Talya on February 15, 2008 at 11:28

    Hi,
    Is there any way to find a tran­script of the Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram DVD that aired on PBS?
    Thanks!

    
    
    
18. Alvaro on February 15, 2008 at 11:38

    Hel­lo Talya: I don’t know; you bet­ter con­tact PBS directly. 

    Please let us know what you find out.

    
    
    
19. Roy Israely on February 24, 2008 at 3:37

    Hel­lo Arlene,
    I’m a psy­chol­o­gist at Cog­niFit, a leader in devel­op­ing brain fit­ness software.
    I have to agree with Alvaro’s answer: When try­ing to find a cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, the most impor­tant thing is to make sure it fits YOU. Since most com­put­er­ized train­ing pro­grams last for sev­er­al months, it’s impor­tant that you will choose the pro­gram that will keep your moti­va­tion high, as well as will improve your cog­ni­tion. Although dif­fer­ent pro­grams offer dif­fer­ent things to the users, if a wide cog­ni­tive train­ing is what you are look­ing for, Mind­Fit could be the solu­tion for you, since it trains 14 major cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties that are cru­cial for a day to day func­tion­ing. In addi­tion, it is worth men­tion­ing that Mind­Fit offers an assess­ment phase before the begin­ning of the actu­al train­ing, which makes it pos­si­ble to cre­ate a self- suit­ed train­ing pro­gram that match­es the spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive needs for each user. You can find some more infor­ma­tion on our web­site: http://www.e‑mindfitness.com .
    Keep in mind that men­tal train­ing is not enough. In order to main­tain a healthy brain you’ll also need to engage in phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, prop­er nutri­tion and stress man­age­ment. You can find a good sum­ma­ry in the fol­low­ing link:
    https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/04/11/easy-steps-to-improve-your-brain-health-now/

    
    
    
20. Thomas (Doubting) on March 12, 2008 at 1:20

    “The Posit Sci­ence pro­gram is the only one to have been shown effec­tive in pub­lished, peer-reviewed stud­ies. This is the sci­en­tif­ic “gold stan­dard” and the only way you can be cer­tain a prod­uct actu­al­ly works to improve cog­ni­tive func­tion. No oth­er prod­uct has under­gone this rig­or­ous clin­i­cal scruti­ny, includ­ing oth­ers ref­er­enced above.”

    »This is far from the truth. Being pub­lished in a peer-reviewed jour­nal does not equal being “effec­tive.”

    No sin­gle study could legit­imize the claim for being “effec­tive.”

    List the ref­er­ences for the stud­ies and let us review the empir­i­cal evi­dence for our­selves. Please include the dou­ble-blind atten­tion con­trol ran­dom­ized study with 6 month fol­low up. Thanks.

    
    
    
21. Mike Logan on June 3, 2008 at 4:23

    While I can appre­ci­ate the need for research, and use it as a guide, I like to try out tools like this to see what hap­pens. Then look to the research to see if there is any intu­itive “aha!” My expe­ri­ence will guide me as much as the research. I read some­where once that sta­tis­tics are tools used to try and make sense of incom­plete data. Or course, I am not mar­ket­ing to the uni­verse here. Mike Logan

    
    
    
22. Alvaro on June 3, 2008 at 8:50

    Mike, beau­ti­ful point. 

    Sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies are very valu­able to see what works, what may work, and what does NOT work.… there­by inform­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy, con­sumers and professionals.

    Now, lab results needs not replace the judge­ment of healthy indi­vid­u­als mak­ing their own deci­sions with their own money.