Brain Fitness Newsletter: Brain Awareness Week is March 10–16th

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Here you are have the bi-month­ly Digest of our 10 most Pop­u­lar blog posts. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this digest by email).Crossword Puzzles Brain fitness

First, an announce­ment: March 10–16th is Brain Aware­ness Week, an inter­na­tion­al effort orga­nized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives to advance pub­lic aware­ness about the progress and ben­e­fits of brain research. Join the hun­dreds of activ­i­ties world­wide by vis­it­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Cal­en­dar of events, or the week’s main web­site.

Brain Fit­ness in the News

Cog­ni­tive Health and Train­ing News: round-up of stim­u­lat­ing news, from Dakim rais­ing over $10 mil­lion dol­lars to grow their retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty offer­ings, to the full video of our 90-minute pan­el on brain fit­ness trends, to a research report on how over­all cog­ni­tive health rates have improved since 1993.

Sci­ence

Brain Plas­tic­i­ty: How learn­ing changes the brain: Why do Lon­don taxi dri­vers have a larg­er hip­pocam­pus than Lon­don bus dri­vers? Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon explains how, when we become experts in a spe­cif­ic domain, the areas in our brain that deal with those learned skills grow.

Mind­ing the Aging Brain: Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man high­lights why the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty may not yet have the nec­es­sary tools to study brain fit­ness inter­ven­tions designed to achieve suc­cess­ful cog­ni­tive aging.

Encephalon: Brief­ing the Next US Pres­i­dent on Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy: ques­tions posed by 24 blog­gers on neu­ro­science and psy­chol­o­gy issues. Very inter­est­ing points of view!

Health & Wellness

Max­i­mize the Cog­ni­tive Val­ue of Your Men­tal Work­out: Prof. Shlo­mo Breznitz, a sci­en­tist and indus­try leader, encour­ages us to “engage in qual­i­ty cog­ni­tive train­ing exer­cis­es that cov­er the broad spec­trum of cog­ni­tive skills and max­i­mize the cog­ni­tive val­ue per unit of time spent.

“Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine for Brain Health: Dr. Simon Evans and Dr. Paul Burghardt invite us to “ask not what the health care sys­tem can do for you. Ask what you can do to reduce the health care burden”. Great overview of good habits for the brain.

Self-Reg­u­la­tion and Barkley’s The­o­ry of ADHD: A CDC report esti­mat­ed that, in 2003, 4.4 mil­lion youth ages 4–17 lived with diag­nosed ADHD, and 2.5 mil­lion of them were receiv­ing med­ica­tion treat­ment. And per­haps self-con­trol, not atten­tion, is at the core of the prob­lem-Dr. David Rabin­er reports.

Edu­ca­tion

The First Step Is Fail­ure: Joanne Jacobs dis­cuss­es why “when self-esteem became an edu­ca­tion watch­word in 1986, I thought it was a harm­less fad. I was wrong: It wasn’t harm­less.” Very stimulating.

Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion #159: Brief­ing the Next US Pres­i­dent on 35 Issues: great col­lec­tion of arti­cles cov­er­ing many edu­ca­tion-relat­ed top­ics, from sys­tem issues to learn­ing and teach­ing philoso­phies and dai­ly practices.

Rec­om­mend­ed Book

Enrich­ing the Brain: How to Max­i­mize Every Learn­er’s Poten­tial, by Eric Jensen: last issue, we rec­om­mend­ed a great book on phys­i­cal exer­cise. This book is an excel­lent overview of over­all enrich­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for every brain.

Enjoy the weekend!

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