It is a plea­sure to announce the pub­li­ca­tion of the Por­tuguese edi­tion of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, by Edições Sílabo, and with a beau­ti­ful pref­ace by Dr. Alexan­dre Cas­tro Cal­das, Direc­tor of the Health Sci­ences Insti­tute in Lis­bon!

If you speak Por­tuguese here’s a great book on brain health and brain fit­ness (lit­er­al­ly, the title means “How to invest in your brain,” same as in the Span­ish edi­tion).

SINOPSE (in Portuguese):

To order the book:

• In Por­tuguese: Como Inve­stir no Seu Cére­bro? Um guia práti­co para mel­ho­rar a qual­i­dade de vida e a saúde men­tal
• In Eng­lish: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness
• In Span­ish: Cómo inver­tir en su cere­bro
• In Japan­ese: Click Here
• In Pol­ish: Fit­ness mózgu

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Lan­guage is processed in the tem­po­ral lobes, on the sides of your brain, next to you tem­ples.

Dif­fer­ent areas in the tem­po­ral lobes (most­ly on the left side) deal with dif­fer­ent aspects of lan­guage. For instance, the Wer­nicke area sup­ports your abil­i­ty to under­stand words. The Bro­ca area, on the oth­er hand, is the one that allows you to pro­duce lan­guage or artic­u­late words.

Let’s try a fun brain teas­er to help exer­cise your brain’s lan­guage areas Read the rest of this entry »

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Dear read­er,

Time for Sharp­Brains month­ly e-newslet­ter, dis­cussing the lat­est inno­va­tions for brain health and men­tal health, and open­ing in this occa­sion with an impor­tant wake-up call.

New research:

• Only 5% of US chil­dren ages 8–11 fol­low screen time, sleep and exer­cise guide­lines rec­om­mend­ed for brain devel­op­ment
• Neu­ro­feed­back or med­ica­tion to treat ADHD?
• New study rein­forces need for proac­tive cog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing after heart surgery
• One-week brain train­ing can increase cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty and reduce OCD symp­toms

New tools:

• Tran­scra­nial Direct Cur­rent Stim­u­la­tion shows ear­ly promise to ame­lio­rate depres­sion, espe­cial­ly if com­bined with oth­er ther­a­pies and dosage opti­mized
• 10-minute cog­ni­tive test MoCA helps pre­dict long-term motor, cog­ni­tive and mor­tal­i­ty out­comes after stroke
• The Ontario Brain Insti­tute selects 6 neu­rotech start-ups for ONtre­pre­neurs pro­gram
• Antic­i­pat­ing eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of DARPA’s neu­rotech­nol­o­gy push

New thinking:

• Time to adopt Mind­ful­ness-Based Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py (MBCT) as a pub­lic health inter­ven­tion to ease depres­sion?
• Towards a new cul­ture of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness
• Best pre­dic­tor of sus­tained weight-loss? Pre­frontal cor­tex acti­va­tion
• Helius Med­ical and HealthTech Con­nex part­ner to devel­op neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty clin­ics in Cana­da

Hap­py Hal­loween and have a great month of Novem­ber,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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OCD symp­toms could be reduced with ‘brain-train­ing’ app, study says (UPI):

“Peo­ple with obses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der could man­age their symp­toms, includ­ing exces­sive hand­wash­ing and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion fears, by using a “brain train­ing” app, accord­ing to its devel­op­ers.

Researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge in Britain, who test­ed Read the rest of this entry »

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Heart surgery: Does it impact cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty? (Med­ical News Today):

“Almost 8 mil­lion peo­ple in the Unit­ed States under­go car­dio­vas­cu­lar surgery or oth­er relat­ed pro­ce­dures each year.

Thanks to the steady improve­ments made by med­ical sci­ence, the pro­ce­dures are becom­ing ever safer and can give peo­ple a new lease of life.

Aware of improve­ments in phys­i­cal health due to car­dio­vas­cu­lar surgery, sci­en­tists know less about the cog­ni­tive impact of open heart surgery.

A recent study set out to under­stand pre­cise­ly how heart surgery might influ­ence the mind Read the rest of this entry »