book-clubs

Update: Is Grey the New Gold?

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Here you have the June edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and Brain Fitnessbrain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

The full sched­ule of the Sharp­Brains’ pow­ered Cog­ni­tive Health Track at the Games for Health Con­fer­ence, June 11–12th in Boston, is now avail­able online. 13 ses­sions will fea­ture 18 inno­va­tors and thought-lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing devel­op­ers, uni­ver­si­ties, clin­i­cians, con­sumers, insur­ance com­pa­nies, and more. You can learn more and reg­is­ter.

Longevi­ty Dividend

Ever heard of the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend? Per­haps Grey is the New Gold: The Kro­nos Longevi­ty Research Insti­tute has released a new report sum­ma­riz­ing the state of aging research that includes an excel­lent intro­duc­tion into the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend, a “the­o­ry that says we hope to inter­vene sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly to slow the aging process, which will also delay the onset of age-relat­ed dis­eases. Delay­ing aging just sev­en years would slash rates of con­di­tions like can­cer, dia­betes, Alzheimer’s dis­ease and heart dis­ease in half.” With that con­text in mind, is the Nation­al Insti­tute on Aging get­ting its fair bud­get share?

Resources

Visu­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the State of the Mar­ket 2009: Paul Van Slem­brouck sum­ma­rizes and beau­ti­ful­ly presents the main find­ings of our 150-page mar­ket report, The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2009. Enjoy this excel­lent graph­ic.

Book Club Dis­cus­sion Guide: The goal of our just pub­lished book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, is to inform you, but also to open a much need­ed debate to con­tribute to our col­lec­tive brain fit­ness. We encour­age book clubs to read and dis­cuss the book, and sug­gest 10 ques­tions to kick­start the con­ver­sa­tion. Please do send us your answers and impressions!

Edu­ca­tion & Learning 

10% Stu­dents may have work­ing mem­o­ry prob­lems: Why does this mat­ter?: A recent study screened over 3,000 school-aged stu­dents in schools in the UK and found that 1 in 10 was iden­ti­fied as hav­ing work­ing mem­o­ry dif­fi­cul­ties. Work­ing mem­o­ry is our abil­i­ty to store and manip­u­late infor­ma­tion for a brief time, and dif­fi­cul­ties in this brain func­tion may lead into dif­fi­cul­ties in read­ing and math­e­mat­ics. Dr. Tra­cy Alloway reviews the study and elaborates.

Brain Sci­en­tists Iden­ti­fy Links between Arts & Learn­ing: Nicky Pen­til­la com­ments on a recent report spon­sored by the Dana Foun­da­tion and a relat­ed Learn­ing, Arts, and the Brain Sum­mit. “Arts edu­ca­tion influ­ences learn­ing and oth­er areas of cog­ni­tion and may deserve a more promi­nent place in schools.” Of par­tic­u­lar note is the find­ing that showed sig­nif­i­cant brain plas­tic­i­ty as a result of instru­men­tal music instruc­tion are repeat­ed practice.

8 Tips To Remem­ber What You Read: Despite tele­vi­sion, cell phones, and  twit­ter, tra­di­tion­al read­ing is still an impor­tant skill. Dr. Bill Klemm offers some tips to read with good speed and com­pre­hen­sion: Read with a pur­pose, Skim first, Get the read­ing mechan­ics right, Be judi­cious in high­light­ing and note tak­ing, Think in pic­tures, Rehearse as you go along, Stay with­in your atten­tion span and work to increase your atten­tion span, Practice.

News

Cor­po­rate Well­ness, Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments and Mem­o­ry Fit­ness Pro­grams: a great Mar­ket­Watch arti­cle pro­vides an overview of how major insur­ers and large employ­ers are start­ing to add brain health to their cor­po­rate well­ness activ­i­ties.  The Stan­ford Longevi­ty Cen­ter released a state­ment urg­ing con­sumers who buy a range of mem­o­ry prod­ucts to make informed deci­sions (we released the book above pre­cise­ly with that goal in mind).

Have a stim­u­lat­ing month of June!

Brain Fitness Update: Why We Need Walking Book Clubs

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Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please brainremem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

News

CNN: Aging boomers fuel ‘brain fit­ness’ explo­sion: An excel­lent arti­cle via Asso­ci­at­ed Press explor­ing why the brain fit­ness mar­ket passed a tip­ping point in 2007 and pre­dict­ing future trends build­ing on our mar­ket report.

Brain Age: Great Game, Wrong Con­cept: One rea­son why we believe the field will keep grow­ing is because we are see­ing more tools avail­able than ever before to assess and train a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive skills. The bad news (is this real­ly news?) is that we should­n’t be expect­ing mag­ic pills and that “brain age” is a fic­tion. [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Update: Why We Need Walk­ing Book Clubs

Brain Fitness @ Education, Training, Health events

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Brain Fitness eventsIn what cat­e­go­ry does Brain Fit­ness fit? Edu­ca­tion, Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Train­ing, Health? Most of the inter­est so far has come from a Healthy Aging angle, but we are start­ing to see broad­er inter­est, as in the events below. After all, isn’t work­ing on our brains rel­e­vant to all those markets?.

2 busy weeks: I am attending/ speak­ing at a vari­ety of events. I will make sure to blog at least the take-aways from the main events dai­ly, and Car­o­line will also add her per­spec­tive as much as possible.

A) Octo­ber 3–6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute

B) Octo­ber 9th: First ses­sion of my class The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness at the UC-Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI)

C) Octo­ber 10th: Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty, work­shop at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health professionals

D) Octo­ber 10th: Sci­ence at Work, Inter­view at the event The Future of Work: Ampli­fied Indi­vid­u­als, Ampli­fied Orga­ni­za­tions, orga­nized by the Insti­tute for the Future 

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A) Octo­ber 3–6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Insti­tute. This promis­es to be a fas­ci­nat­ing event. See below the pan­els I am attending‑I will make sure to write some notes every day to keep you in the discussion.

Wednes­day Octo­ber 3rd:

Great Expec­ta­tions: Amer­i­can Atti­tudes toward Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Medicine

Health­care Re-Imag­ined: Learn­ing from Olympic Athletes

Thurs­day 4th:

The Dam­aged Brain: The Fight Against Neurodegeneration

The Human Ele­ment: A Can­did Con­ver­sa­tion about Pio­neers of Mod­ern Medicine

The Last Fron­tier: The Mind

Glob­al Sci­en­tif­ic Investment

Sci­ence Ver­sus the Bio­log­i­cal Clock [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness @ Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing, Health events