Bi-Weekly Update: Preventing Memory Loss and Public Policy

Here you are have the bi-month­ly Digest of our 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).

Brain Fit­ness News and Events

Upcom­ing Events: I will be speak­ing at five Health, Edu­ca­tion and Gam­ing events over the next cou­ple of months to intro­duce find­ings from our recent mar­ket report. Please intro­duce your­self if you attend any of these events.

Pre­vent­ing Mem­o­ry Loss-Spe­cial Issue: Con­gres­sion­al Quar­ter­ly Researcher, one of the main pub­li­ca­tions on Capi­tol Hill, pub­lished an impres­sive 24-page spe­cial issue titled Pre­vent­ing Mem­o­ry Loss. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed if you want to be on top of the lat­est research trends and their pol­i­cy implications.

Cog­ni­tive Health News: Round-up of inter­est­ing recent news on the cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness field. Bay­crest opens a Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness with !10 mil­lion invest­ment from Ontario Gov­ern­ment. Poten­tial uses for cog­ni­tive assess­ments. New brain games. 

Salon.com on “Brain Fit­ness”: Salon.com pub­lish­es a mixed arti­cle on a soft­ware pro­gram that, in our view, con­fus­es the for­est from the trees.

Health, Well­ness and Education

Select­ed Stu­dent Essays: we were glad to receive sev­er­al great stu­dent essays on brain-relat­ed top­ics and select­ed three for pub­li­ca­tion-two on Ways to Reduce Alzheimer’s Risks and one on Treat­ment Direc­tions.

Social Con­nec­tions for Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness: Men­tal fit­ness seems to depend in large part on being con­nect­ed with oth­er peo­ple, as shown in a recent study Men­tal Exer­cis­ing Through Sim­ple Social­iz­ing: Social Inter­ac­tion Pro­motes Gen­er­al Cog­ni­tive Func­tion­ing (Ybar­ra, 2008) reviewed by Dr. Pas­cale Michelon.

Sci­ence

Peace Among Pri­mates: neu­ro­sci­en­tist Robert Sapol­sky (thanks to our ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine), shares two install­ments of a three-part series to rein­force how impor­tant cul­ture is in shap­ing behav­iors and over­com­ing genet­ic deter­min­ism. See install­ments One and Two.

Brain Books: Your Sug­ges­tions?: Last Decem­ber we launched a stim­u­lat­ing Author Speaks Series to pro­vide a plat­form for lead­ing sci­en­tists and experts writ­ing high-qual­i­ty brain-relat­ed books to share their insights with Sharp­Brains’ read­ers. Six authors have par­tic­i­pat­ed so far. Do you have any sug­ges­tions for more books? Let us know…