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The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness:
How to Optimize Brain Health and Performance at Any Age

• 284 pages. Dis­cus­sion Guide (opens PDF)
• Pub­lish­er: Sharp­Brains Incor­po­rat­ed; 2 edi­tion (April 2013)
• For­mat: Soft­cov­er, eBook
• Lan­guage: Eng­lish. Oth­er edi­tions: Español, Japan­ese, Pol­ish.

Book Description:

Mod­ern life places extra­or­di­nary demands on our brains. Not only do we live longer than ever before, but we must con­stant­ly adapt to com­plex and rapid­ly evolv­ing per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al real­i­ties. Yet, we often ignore our most pre­cious resource to do so: our brain.

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness cuts through the clut­ter of mis­con­cep­tions, super­fi­cial and con­flict­ing media cov­er­age, and aggres­sive mar­ket­ing claims, to help read­ers dis­cov­er what real­ly works, and what doesn’t, to improve brain health and per­for­mance at any age, to delay or pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline, and become smarter con­sumers of both media cov­er­age and sci­en­tif­ic research in the process.

With use­ful, prag­mat­ic and per­son­al­ized tips and sug­ges­tions that are easy to imple­ment, the Sharp­Brains Guide offers a ground­break­ing new approach for self-assess­ing cur­rent brain fit­ness needs and iden­ti­fy­ing the most rel­e­vant and evi­dence-based meth­ods to pre­serve and enhance brain func­tion through­out life. Whether your goal is to become more resilient, enhance mem­o­ry, ward off Alzheimer’s dis­ease, or sim­ply improve men­tal focus to per­form bet­ter at work, this how-to guide shows you exact­ly how to “use it or lose it.”

This new and much-expand­ed edi­tion of the guide AARP named a Best Book on Brain Fit­ness com­bines a user-friend­ly tuto­r­i­al on how the brain works with advice on how to choose and inte­grate lifestyle changes and research-based brain train­ing. Fea­tur­ing an inde­pen­dent analy­sis of hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies pub­lished in the last 10 years, the book also includes in-depth inter­views with 20 lead­ing sci­en­tists who often chal­lenge con­ven­tion­al wis­dom and pre­vail­ing brain health think­ing and care.

A thought-pro­vok­ing, prac­ti­cal and cap­ti­vat­ing read, the Sharp­Brains Guide makes the fas­ci­nat­ing and com­plex sub­ject of brain func­tion and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty easy to digest with its com­mon sense approach. It’s time to rethink, and to tru­ly apply, “use it or lose it.”

Authors:

(co-author) Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, named a Young Glob­al Leader by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in 2012, is the CEO of Sharp­Brains, a lead­ing inde­pen­dent mar­ket research and think tank track­ing health and well-being appli­ca­tions of neu­ro­science. He has been quot­ed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal, CNN, Reuters, and Asso­ci­ated Press, among oth­ers. Alvaro pro­duces the annu­al Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit –the lead­ing vir­tu­al con­fer­ence gath­er­ing hun­dreds of brain sci­en­tists and experts world­wide– and is a rec­og­nized speak­er on brain health inno­va­tion. He start­ed his career at McK­in­sey & Co, and led the launch and turn-around of sev­eral edu­ca­tion-relat­ed start-ups. Alvaro has an MBA and MA in Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, and a BA in Eco­nom­ics from Uni­ver­si­dad de Deusto.

(co-author) Elkhonon Gold­berg, Ph.D., is an author, sci­en­tist, edu­ca­tor and clin­i­cian, inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned for his clin­i­cal work, research, writ­ing and teach­ing in neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science. Dr. Gold­berg is a Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, and Diplo­mate of The Amer­i­can Board of Pro­fes­sion­al Psy­chol­o­gy in Clin­i­cal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. A stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria, Dr. Gold­berg has con­tin­ued to advance Luria’s sci­en­tif­ic and clin­i­cal tra­di­tion, and writ­ten pop­u­lar sci­ence books such as The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and The Civ­i­lized Mind and The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Old­er.

(with) Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy, is a sci­en­tist, edu­ca­tor and writer. Dr. Mich­e­lon start­ed her career as a Research Sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in Saint Louis where she con­duct­ed behav­ioral and neu­roimag­ing stud­ies to bet­ter under­stand how the brain process­es and mem­o­rizes visu­al infor­ma­tion. She is now an Adjunct Fac­ul­ty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.