Neuroplasticity and Lifelong Learning

By Alvaro Fernandez | January 25, 2007 |

What a month. We promised you with our blog title 7 months ago that we would be your “Win­dow into the Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion”, but we could­n’t have pre­dict­ed that CBS, Time Mag­a­zine, WSJ, NYT and oth­er main­stream media would be such great allies in this neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty effort. Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­it­ed time, you…

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What does “normal aging” mean? Do we all age the same way?

By Caroline Latham | January 25, 2007 |

Question:Is it nec­es­sary to train under the super­vi­sion of a doc­tor or oth­er specialist?Key Points: Recre­ation­al activ­i­ties have always been done for fun either social­ly or independently.Most com­put­er-based soft­ware pro­grams are intend­ed for you to use on your own com­put­er when it suits you.… But most of the soft­ware pro­grams today are designed to be user-friend­ly and used in the com­fort and pri­va­cy of your own home with­out any out­side supervision.Many pro­grams have a built in coach or teacher to help explain what you are doing in each exer­cise, why you are doing it, and how you are doing.

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Learning Slows Physical Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease

By Caroline Latham | January 24, 2007

Sci­ence Dai­ly post­ed an excit­ing arti­cle from the Jan. 24 issue of the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science today.“Learning appears to slow the devel­op­ment of two brain lesions that are the hall­marks of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, sci­en­tists at UC Irvine have dis­cov­ered. The find­ing sug­gests that the elder­ly, by keep­ing their minds active, can help delay the onset of this degen­er­a­tive disease.“This study with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mice is the first to show that short but repeat­ed learn­ing ses­sions can slow a process known for caus­ing the pro­tein beta amy­loid to clump in the brain and form plaques, which dis­rupt com­mu­ni­ca­tion between cells and lead to symp­toms of Alzheimer’s disease.

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TIME Magazine — A User Guide to the Brain

By Alvaro Fernandez | January 23, 2007

We announced last week the CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Mem­o­ry Exer­cis­es.  Now, Time Mag­a­zine has pub­lished a spec­tac­u­lar spe­cial issue with many good brain-relat­ed arti­cles. Enjoy TIME Mag­a­zine — A User Guide to the Brain.  

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Neuroscience Interview Series: on learning and “brain gyms”

By Alvaro Fernandez | January 23, 2007 |

Giv­en that we are get­ting new read­ers let’s re-intro­­duce our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series. If you click on the cat­e­go­ry (in the right bar) that says Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series, you will find the updat­ed list of inter­views we have con­duct­ed (and also some that we have found else­where, such as the one with Posit Sci­ence’s Dr.…

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Brain Fitness Blog Carnival #1

By Alvaro Fernandez | January 19, 2007 |

Wel­come to the inau­gur­al edi­tion of the Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val. The tim­ing could­n’t be bet­ter  you have prob­a­bly seen the fea­tured CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty. Thanks to the over 40 peo­ple who sub­mit­ted posts. We have had to select the posts we enjoyed the most to help facil­i­tate an engag­ing and informed…

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