Brain Fitness News

Anoth­er great week full of inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant arti­cles. We will start a new tra­di­tion: we will end up the week (either on Fri­day or dur­ing the week­end) with a round-up of the arti­cles we haven’t been able to com­ment on dur­ing the week. Please feel free to send us your sug­ges­tions too! (You can join…

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Brain Health Newsletter, March Edition

We have had anoth­er busy month behind us, and we’re look­ing for­ward to Brain Aware­ness Week March 12–18. Keep read­ing for the details (includ­ing a spe­cial offer in hon­or of Brain Aware­ness Week) … I. Press Cov­er­age II. Events III. Pro­gram Reviews IV. New Offer­ings V. Web­site and Blog Sum­ma­ry. Set your DVRs – Sharp­Brains is com­ing to the small screen! Our tele­vi­sion debut will be on CBS 13 West Sacramento’s “Good Day Sacra­men­to” on Mon­day, March 12. La Opin­ion, the most pres­ti­gious Span­ish-lan­guage paper in the US, fea­tured Sharp­Brains in a recent arti­cle “Secre­to para tri­un­far en los exámenes” (Secrets to Tri­umph­ing in Exams). Anoth­er great inter­na­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion was an arti­cle called “Training the Brain as Pos­si­ble as Train­ing the Body” in the promi­nent Ara­bic news­pa­per Anna­har. And Mark Muck­en­fuss of The Press-Enter­prise in River­side writes in “Train Your Brain”: “I would tend to believe that still we under­es­ti­mate the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, whose back­ground is in edu­ca­tion­al train­ing and mar­ket­ing. He notes that recent stud­ies have shown when a brain is injured by a stroke, “those men­tal struc­tures recre­ate them­selves (with exer­cise). It means to me there are a lot of things we could real­ly do and many times we are not aware of them. We can­not promise to peo­ple you will only keep get­ting bet­ter until you are 200 years old. But I think peo­ple still under­es­ti­mate how flex­i­ble the brain real­ly is.”

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Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning — Learning & The Brain Conference

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing.… Some top­ics were meant to be applied imme­di­ate­ly, but many were food for thought — dis­cus­sions on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed.Using dra­mat­ic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies. Dis­cov­er how new adven­tures could change edu­ca­tion, learn­ing dis­or­der inter­ven­tions, and even soci­ety itself in the future.

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Brain Health Newsletter, February Edition, and Brain Awareness Week

Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chica­go Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.Website and Blog Summary.We hope you enjoy our new Home Page.Cognitive Neu­ro­science­Brain Fit­ness Glos­saryCog­ni­tive Reserve and Lifestyle­Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty as an Index of Reg­u­lat­ed Emo­tion­al Respond­ingNeu­ro­science Inter­view Series: on learn­ing and “brain gyms“EducationCounseling cen­ter offers biofeed­back to help decrease stressLife­long learn­ing, lit­er­al­ly: neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for stu­dents, boomers, seniors…Health & Well­ness­Want to Improve Mem­o­ry?… Do I need any­thing else?Learning Slows Phys­i­cal Pro­gres­sion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease­Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­mentIm­prov­ing Your Brain Tools: Read­ing Emo­tion­al Mes­sages in the FaceEn­hanc­ing the Trader’s Self-Control.Brain Teasers.Exercise Your Brains — Visu­al Log­ic Brain Teaser­Brain Work­out for Your Frontal Lobes­Blog Car­ni­vals: col­lec­tion of best blog arti­cles around par­tic­u­lar topics.We host­ed Encephalon #15: Neu­ro­science and Psy­chol­o­gy Blog Carnival.And launched Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val #1.

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Heart Rate Variability as an Index of Regulated Emotional Responding

Con­tin­u­ing with the theme of a Week of Sci­ence spon­sored by Just Sci­ence, we will high­light some of the key points in: Appel­hans BM, Lueck­en LJ. Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty as an Index of Reg­u­lat­ed Emo­tion­al Respond­ing. Review of Gen­er­al Psy­chol­o­gy. 2006;10:229–240. Effec­tive emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion depends on being able to flex­i­bly adjust your phys­i­o­log­i­cal response to a chang­ing envi­ron­ment moment by moment.Heart rate vari­abil­i­ty (HRV) is a mea­sure of the con­tin­u­ous inter­play between sym­pa­thet­ic and parasym­pa­thet­ic influ­ences on heart rate that yields infor­ma­tion about auto­nom­ic flex­i­bil­i­ty and there­by rep­re­sents the capac­i­ty for reg­u­lat­ed emo­tion­al responding.

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