Update: Learning about Learning/ more on Brain Age

Here you have the Jan­u­ary edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Bird’s Eye View 

Brain fit­ness heads towards its tip­ping point: How do you know when some­thing is mov­ing towards a Glad­wellian tip­ping point? When health insur­ance com­pa­nies and pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers launch sig­nif­i­cant ini­tia­tives. Dr. Ger­ard Finnemore pro­vides a mar­ket overview, based on Sharp­Brains’ client webi­nar held last December.

Ten Reflec­tions on Cog­ni­tive Health and Assess­ments: Here are 10 high­lights from sev­er­al stim­u­lat­ing Jan­u­ary events:  Sym­po­sium on Adap­tive Tech­nol­o­gy for the Aging (by Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty), Health Blog­gers’ Sum­mit (by Con­sumer Reports), Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury (by Vet­er­an Affairs in Palo Alto), and a new Alzheimer’s/ Demen­tia Expert Pan­el orga­nized by the city of San Francisco.

News and Events

Nin­ten­do Brain Age vs. Cross­word Puz­zles: we need much pub­lic edu­ca­tion in order to help con­sumers sep­a­rate real­i­ty from hope from hype. Nin­ten­do is not help­ing, nei­ther is media reporting.

Col­lec­tion of recent news: includ­ing train­ing for senior fit­ness train­ers, reports on the impor­tance of pur­pose,  on old­er dri­ver safe­ty, and more.

Upcom­ing events: I will be speak­ing soon at the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging/ NCOA con­fer­ence, and the Sil­ver­ing Work­force Sum­mit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na. Let me know if you are attend­ing any.

Edu­ca­tion and Learning 

Learn­ing about Learn­ing: an Inter­view with Joshua Wait­zkin: Scott Bar­ry Kauf­man inter­views “child prodi­gy” Joshua Wait­zkin on The Art of Learn­ing. Many fas­ci­nat­ing insights, includ­ing “I think los­ing my first Nation­al Chess Cham­pi­onship was the great­est thing that ever hap­pened to me, because it helped me avoid many of the psy­cho­log­i­cal traps…(associated with being called a “child prodigy”)”.

Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tion­al intel­li­gence: Daniel Gole­man intro­duces edu­ca­tors and par­ents to a new book that “adds an impor­tant tool to the emo­tion­al intel­li­gence kit: mind­ful­ness, a moment-by-moment aware­ness of one’s inter­nal state and exter­nal environment.”

Resources

Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness Books: Here you have The 10 Most Pop­u­lar Brain Fit­ness & Cog­ni­tive Health Books, based on book pur­chas­es by Sharp­Brains’ read­ers dur­ing 2008.

10-Ques­tion Pro­gram Eval­u­a­tion Check­list: To help con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als nav­i­gate through the grow­ing num­ber of pro­grams mak­ing “brain fit­ness” or “brain train­ing” claims, we pub­lished last year this Eval­u­a­tion Check­list. Now we are mak­ing the Check­list avail­able as a Book­mark giv­en recent requests by uni­ver­si­ties and con­fer­ence organizers.

Brain Teas­er

Brain Teas­er to Exer­cise your Mem­o­ry and Rea­son­ing Skills: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon offers a stim­u­lat­ing teas­er that not only helps exer­cise our brain but also edu­cates us on how and why the same activ­i­ty may exer­cise dif­fer­ent brains dif­fer­ent­ly — depend­ing on where we are from.