Update: Harness Neuroplasticity with Enthusiasm, Exercise & Personalized Medicine

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Feb­ru­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple and com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives on how to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: with enthu­si­asm, BOTH phys­i­cal AND cog­ni­tive exer­cise, and (once tools become bet­ter stan­dard­ized and wide­ly avail­able) brain-based per­son­al­ized medicine.

Fea­tured Per­spec­tives:

• To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, Start with Enthu­si­asm, by Dr. Hele­na Popovic
• Q&A with Dr. Yaakov Stern on Brain Reserve, Exer­cise, Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, Angry Birds, YMCA and more
• 3‑part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don to sum­ma­rize and build on the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress 2012:
1. The State of Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine: The Role of Biomarkers
2. Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine in Psy­chi­a­try: from DSM to brain-based RDoC, iSPOT‑D and biomarkers
3. Work­ing with Health­care Stake­hold­ers towards Brain-Based Per­son­al­ized Medicine

• To Be (Your Con­nec­tome), or Not to Be (Your Genome), by Dr. Sebas­t­ian Seung
• Enhance Metacog­ni­tion and Prob­lem-Solv­ing by Talk­ing Out Loud to Your­self, by Dr. Judith Tingley
• Final Meet­ing Report @ 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tu­ry, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Dr. Luc Beau­doin, Muki Hansteen-Izo­ra, Mar­garet Mor­ris, Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, Dr. Peter Whitehouse.
• (Want to con­tribute arti­cles like these? Learn details here)

What’s New and Mean­ing­ful:

• Learn­ing to Cope with Google/ Infor­ma­tion Overload
• An Emerg­ing Era of Big Data (in Men­tal Health too)
• When and Why Should Dri­vers with Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment Stop Driving
• Diag­nos­ing ear­ly Alzheimer’s and Mild Cog­ni­tive Impairment
• Glob­al Pop­u­la­tion Age­ing: Per­il or Promise? (New WEF eBook)
• Luria Con­gress on Mod­ern Neuropsychology

Sharp­Brains News:

• Syl­labus for online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach (starts March 7th)
• Save The Date (June 7–8th, 2012), 28 Con­firmed Speak­ers: 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit — Opti­miz­ing Health through Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty & Dig­i­tal Innovation

Final­ly, let us men­tion that Brain Aware­ness Week is approach­ing (March 12–18th, 2012), and that you can now add com­ments to Sharp­Brains arti­cles via Face­book (see below). Look­ing for­ward to a great month of March!