Improving the world, and one’s brain, at the same time

By Alvaro Fernandez | April 20, 2009

My wife and I just came back from an inspir­ing Gold­man Prize Award cer­e­mo­ny, where sev­en grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal change­mak­ers were rec­og­nized for their work and resilien­cy, and shared their pas­sion and pur­pose with every­one attend­ing the event. We did hear too from Al Gore, Tra­cy Chap­man, Robert Red­ford, and the founder of the awards 20…

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Memory, Cognitive Abilities and Executive Functions

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 5, 2007

A mis­con­cep­tion we encounter often is that “mem­o­ry” is the only, or most impor­tant, “thing” that our brains do. And the only one we need to care for. We have a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, from atten­tion to pro­cess­ing speed to prob­lem-solv­ing to emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­­tion to, yes, mem­o­ry. (And more). Even mem­o­ry is not one whole…

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TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), Iraq and neuropsychology

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 2, 2007 |

You prob­a­bly have seen the news about Bob Woodruf­f’s own recov­ery and his arti­cles now to raise aware­ness about the plight of Iraq veterans.In the arti­cle A First­hand Report on the Wounds of War we learn how “Woodruff, 45, is launch­ing a mul­ti­me­dia cam­paign that includes appear­ances Tues­day with Oprah Win­frey and on “Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca,” and the release of a book (“ In an Instant”) writ­ten with his wife, Lee, about their ordeal.”“Woodruff’s report­ing packs an emo­tion­al punch because he is, quite sim­ply, a man who cheat­ed death.… dis­cuss­es what a great work the mil­i­tary is doing to pre­vent deaths of injured sol­diers in Iraq-with the unin­tend­ed con­se­quence that reha­bil­i­ta­tion ser­vices back in the US are com­plete­ly overwhelmed.Neurophilosopher puts this prob­lem in a wider con­text with DoD is neglect­ing troops’ men­tal health.For a bet­ter pre­spec­tive, this is a quote from our inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, talk­ing about the birth of mod­ern neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy dur­ing World War II:“Of course there weren’t advanced neu­roimag­ing tech­niques those days, so sci­en­tists could only spec­u­late about what hap­pened in healthy brains.

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