• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

Dana Foundation

Help select the campaign sticker for Brain Awareness Week 2020

November 19, 2019 by Dana Foundation

Thank you to all the Brain Aware­ness Week enthu­si­asts who entered our 2020 Brain Aware­ness Week Stick­er Design Con­test! The Dana Foun­da­tion received many won­der­ful and cre­ative design sub­mis­sions, and we’re pleased to announce that we’ve nar­rowed it down to our five final­ists. Now it’s YOUR turn to choose the win­ning design! [Read more…] about Help select the cam­paign stick­er for Brain Aware­ness Week 2020

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: brain, brain health, brain-awareness-week, Lifelong Neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity

New book explores nine lives impacted by rare brain disorders

September 4, 2018 by Dana Foundation

“Sev­er­al years ago, sci­ence writer Helen Thom­son, con­sul­tant to New Sci­en­tist and con­trib­u­tor to the Wash­ing­ton Post and Nature, decid­ed to trav­el around the world to inter­view peo­ple with “the most extra­or­di­nary brains.” In the process, as described in Unthink­able: An Extra­or­di­nary Jour­ney Through the World’s Strangest Brains (Ecco/Harper Collins 2018), Thomas dis­cov­ered that “by putting their lives side-by-side, I was able to cre­ate a pic­ture of how the brain func­tions in us all. Through their sto­ries, I uncov­ered the mys­te­ri­ous man­ner in which the brain can shape our lives in unexpected—and, some cas­es, bril­liant and alarm­ing ways.” Thom­son was­n’t just learn­ing about the most extra­or­di­nary brains in the world, but in the process was “uncov­er­ing the secrets of my own.” Keep read­ing book review Here, over at the Dana Foundation.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: brain, brains, Unthinkable

Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement: Building an Experience Corps

August 30, 2011 by Dana Foundation

(Editor’s note: Path­ways respon­si­ble for high­er-order think­ing in the pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC), or exec­u­tive cen­ter of the brain, remain vul­ner­a­ble through­out life—during crit­i­cal ear­ly-life devel­op­men­tal win­dows, when the PFC ful­ly matures in the ear­ly 20s, and final­ly from declines asso­ci­at­ed with old age. At all ages, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and PFC-nav­i­gat­ed social con­nec­tions are essen­tial com­po­nents to main­tain­ing brain health. The Expe­ri­ence Corps, a com­mu­ni­ty-based social-engage­ment pro­gram, part­ners seniors with local schools to pro­mote pur­pose-dri­ven involve­ment. Par­tic­i­pat­ing seniors have exhib­it­ed imme­di­ate short-term gains in brain regions vul­ner­a­ble to aging, such as the PFC, indi­cat­ing that peo­ple with the most to lose have the most to gain from envi­ron­men­tal enrichment.)

Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of social con­nect­ed­ness to late-life cog­ni­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and phys­i­cal health. The inte­gra­tion of these find­ings with our under­stand­ing of indi­vid­u­als’ devel­op­men­tal needs through­out life under­scores the impor­tance of the “social brain.” The pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC) is par­tic­u­lar­ly inte­gral to nav­i­gat­ing com­plex social behav­iors and hier­ar­chies over the life course. [Read more…] about Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involve­ment: Build­ing an Expe­ri­ence Corps

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: academic-performance., aging, Alzheimers-disease, Arthur-Kramer, Brain-health, Brain-Plasticity, Cerebrum, chronic disease, cognitive-exercises, developing brain, environmental enrichment, experience-corps, higher-order thinking, literacy, maintain brain health, Mental-Health, Michelle C. Carlson, neurocognitive, Neurogenesis, old-age, PFC, physical exercises, Physical-activity, physical-health, plastic brain, postretirement, prefrontal-cortex, retirement, social brain, The Experience Corps

The Brain in Science Education: What Should Everyone Learn?

August 17, 2010 by Dana Foundation

Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis, Cen­ter for Neuroscience

What should every­one learn about the brain?

At the nation­al lev­el, the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) describes what adults should know in its sem­i­nal work Sci­ence for All Americans.[1] AAAS also rec­om­mends learn­ing goals for K‑12 stu­dents in its Bench­marks for Sci­ence Literacy[2,3], and Atlas of Sci­ence Literacy[4,5], and the Nation­al Research Coun­cil (NRC) offers a sim­i­lar set of goals in its Nation­al Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Standards.[6] States and school dis­tricts use the AAAS and NRC rec­om­men­da­tions as a basis for the design of their own stan­dards, which then inform the devel­op­ment of cur­ricu­lum and assess­ment mate­ri­als (those com­mer­cial­ly devel­oped as well as those devel­oped with grant funds). In addi­tion, the neu­ro­science com­mu­ni­ty has devel­oped its own set of core con­cepts that K‑12 stu­dents and the gen­er­al pub­lic should know about the brain and ner­vous sys­tem and has cor­re­lat­ed those con­cepts to the nation­al standards.[7]

Between the AAAS and NRC rec­om­men­da­tions, there are some areas of broad con­sen­sus on what stu­dents should know. Accord­ing to AAAS’s Bench­marks and Atlas, for exam­ple, stu­dents in the ele­men­tary to mid­dle school grades should under­stand the fol­low­ing ideas:

  • The brain enables human beings to think and sends mes­sages to oth­er body parts to help them work properly.
  • The brain gets sig­nals from all parts of the body telling it what is hap­pen­ing in each part. The brain also sends sig­nals to parts of the body to influ­ence what they do.
  • Inter­ac­tions among the sens­es, nerves, and brain make pos­si­ble the learn­ing that enables human beings to pre­dict, ana­lyze, and respond to changes in their environments.[8]

The Nation­al Research Council’s Stan­dards offers very sim­i­lar con­cepts in [Read more…] about The Brain in Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion: What Should Every­one Learn?

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: AAAS, American Association for the Advancement of Science, brain, Education & Lifelong Learning, high-school, Jo Ellen Roseman, k-12, Learning, Mary Koppal, National-Research-Council, NRC, science, science education, standards

A Decade after The Decade of the Brain – Educational and Clinical Implications of Neuroplasticity

February 23, 2010 by Dana Foundation

(Edi­tor’s Note: In 1990, Con­gressCerebrumFeb2010_feat des­ig­nat­ed the 1990s the “Decade of the Brain.” Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush pro­claimed, “A new era of dis­cov­ery is dawn­ing in brain research.” Dur­ing the ensu­ing decade, sci­en­tists great­ly advanced our under­stand­ing of the brain. The edi­tors of Cere­brum asked the direc­tors of sev­en brain-relat­ed insti­tutes at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) to iden­ti­fy the biggest advances, great­est dis­ap­point­ments, and missed oppor­tu­ni­ties of brain research in the past decade—the decade after the “Decade of the Brain.” They also asked them what looks most promis­ing for the com­ing decade, the 2010s. Experts focused on research that might change how doc­tors diag­nose and treat human brain disorders.)

Neu­ro­science is at a his­toric turn­ing point. Today, a full decade after the “Decade of the Brain,” a con­tin­u­ous stream of advances is shat­ter­ing long-held notions about how the human brain works and what hap­pens when it doesn’t. These advances are also reshap­ing the land­scapes of oth­er fields, from psy­chol­o­gy to eco­nom­ics, edu­ca­tion and the law.

Until the Decade of the Brain, sci­en­tists believed that, once devel­op­ment was over, the adult brain under­went very few changes. This per­cep­tion con­tributed to polar­iz­ing per­spec­tives on whether genet­ics or envi­ron­ment deter­mines a person’s tem­pera­ment and per­son­al­i­ty, apti­tudes, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to men­tal dis­or­ders. But dur­ing the past two decades, neu­ro­sci­en­tists have steadi­ly built the case that the human brain, even when ful­ly mature, is far more plastic—changing and malleable—than we orig­i­nal­ly thought.1 It turns out that the brain (at all ages) is high­ly respon­sive to envi­ron­men­tal stim­uli and that con­nec­tions between neu­rons are dynam­ic and can rapid­ly change with­in min­utes of stimulation.

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is mod­u­lat­ed in part by [Read more…] about A Decade after The Decade of the Brain – Edu­ca­tion­al and Clin­i­cal Impli­ca­tions of Neuroplasticity

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Cerebrum, Clinical Implications, Educational implications, neuroplasticity, NIH, NIH conference, Nora Volkov, ntdp, omar, peter georgescu, peter sims, The Decade of the Brain

Brain Scientists Identify Links between Arts, Learning

May 24, 2009 by Dana Foundation

Arts edu­ca­tion influ­ences learn­ing and oth­er areas of cog­ni­tion and may deserve a more promi­nent place in schools, accord­ing to a wave of recent neu­ro­science research.One recent study found that chil­dren who receive music instruc­tion for just 15 months show strength­ened con­nec­tions in musi­cal­ly rel­e­vant brain areas and per­form bet­ter on asso­ci­at­ed tasks, com­pared with stu­dents who do not learn an instrument.

A sep­a­rate study found that chil­dren who receive train­ing to improve their focus and atten­tion per­form bet­ter not only on atten­tion tasks but also on intel­li­gence tests. Some researchers sug­gest that arts train­ing might sim­i­lar­ly affect a wide range of cog­ni­tive domains. Edu­ca­tors and neu­ro­sci­en­tists gath­ered recent­ly in Bal­ti­more and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to dis­cuss the increas­ing­ly detailed pic­ture of how arts edu­ca­tion changes the brain, and how to trans­late that research to edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy and the class­room. Many par­tic­i­pants referred to the results of Dana Foun­da­tion-fund­ed research by cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists from sev­en lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties over three years, released in 2008.

“Art must do some­thing to the mind and brain. What is that? How would we be able to detect that? asked Bar­ry Gor­don, a behav­ioral neu­rol­o­gist and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, who spoke May 8 dur­ing the “Learn­ing and the Brain” con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. “Art, I sub­mit to you with­out absolute proof, can improve the pow­er of our minds. How­ev­er, this improve­ment is hard to detect.”

Study links music, brain changes

Among the sci­en­tists try­ing to detect such improve­ment, Ellen Win­ner, a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at Boston Col­lege, and Got­tfried Schlaug, a pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at Beth Israel Dea­coness Med­ical Cen­ter and Har­vard Med­ical School, pre­sent­ed research at the “Learn­ing, Arts, and the Brain sum­mit May 6 in Bal­ti­more. Their work mea­sured, for the first time, changes to the brain as a result of music training.

For four years, Win­ner and Schlaug fol­lowed chil­dren ages 9 to 11, some of whom [Read more…] about Brain Sci­en­tists Iden­ti­fy Links between Arts, Learning

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Arts, attention, Barry-Gordon, Brain-Scientists, cognition, cognitive-development, cognitive-domains, dana-foundation, Dana-Press, Ellen-Winner, Harvard-Medical-School, improve-attention, improve-focus, intelligence, IQ, Johns-Hopkins-University, Learning, learning-and-the-brain, Learning-and-the-Brain-Conference, mental-fitness, Michael-Posner, music-training, neuroimaging, neuroscientists

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 35,344 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2022 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy