Brain-based-Learning

Online Brain Fitness Gym

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See our sec­ond press release below, and vis­it our Press Room for the great press we are start­ing to get about our brain fit­ness gym.

Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­it­ed time, you can receive a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of our Brain Fit­ness 101 e‑Guide: Answers to your Top 25 Ques­tions, writ­ten by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, by sub­scrib­ing to our month­ly newslet­ter. You can sub­scribe Here.

Sharp­Brains intro­duces First Online Brain Fit­ness Center 

– Unique, Full-Ser­vice, Sci­ence-Based Fit­ness Cen­ter Ush­ers in the Next Work­out Rev­o­lu­tion: Men­tal Exer­cise –

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Thirty years after the emer­gence of the exer­cise boom, the fit­ness rev­o­lu­tion has final­ly gone to peo­ple’s heads: SharpBrains.com has launched the first online brain fit­ness cen­ter. Com­plete with a vari­ety of sci­ence-based men­tal exer­cise equip­ment, per­son­al brain train­ers, and near­ly 200 arti­cles, inter­ac­tive blog post­ings and inter­views with indus­try experts, Sharp­Brains is spear­head­ing the evo­lu­tion of the fit­ness indus­try to include a sound mind as well as a healthy body.

The new men­tal exer­cise move­ment is found­ed on using struc­tured, com­put­er-based brain fit­ness rou­tines tai­lored to each mem­ber’s spe­cif­ic needs and lev­el of abil­i­ty. Just as crunch­es and kick-box­ing tone abs and increase car­dio strength, [Read more…] about Online Brain Fit­ness Gym

Hello: may we ask…

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…a few ques­tions: how did you find us, what we are doing well, what we can do better?

We have just found out that more than 600 people are receiv­ing our feeds, but we only know-and just a bit- the 50–60 who leave com­ments and link to us. We enjoy hav­ing so many read­ers not just in the US but in Europe, the Mid­dle East, Asia, Australia…(thanks Google Analytics!).

Would you mind writ­ing a com­ment to allow us to learn about you and your inter­ests, and also include your feed­back for us? If you have a blog, please write the URL so we can pay a visit.

Enjoy the week­end, and thanks a lot for your time and attention!

Car­o­line and Alvaro

Brain Fitness Glossary

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Giv­en the grow­ing aware­ness of this emerg­ing field, let’s review some of the most rel­e­vant concepts:

Brain Fit­ness: the gen­er­al state of good, sharp, brain and mind, espe­cial­ly as the result of men­tal and phys­i­cal exer­cise and prop­er nutrition.

Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram: struc­tured set of brain exer­cis­es, usu­al­ly com­put­er-based, designed to train spe­cif­ic brain areas and func­tions in tar­get­ed ways, and mea­sured by brain fit­ness assessments.

Chron­ic Stress: ongo­ing, long-term stress. Con­tin­ued phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal where stres­sors block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons and neg­a­tive­ly impact the immune sys­tem’s defenses.

Cog­ni­tive train­ing (or Brain Train­ing): vari­ety of brain exer­cis­es designed to help work out spe­cif­ic “mental muscles”. The prin­ci­ple under­ly­ing cog­ni­tive train­ing is to help improve “core” abil­i­ties, such as atten­tion, mem­o­ry, prob­lem-solv­ing, which many peo­ple con­sid­er as fixed.

Cog­ni­tive Reserve (or Brain Reserve): the­o­ry that address­es the fact that indi­vid­u­als vary con­sid­er­ably in the sever­i­ty of cog­ni­tive aging and clin­i­cal demen­tia. Men­tal stim­u­la­tion, edu­ca­tion and occu­pa­tion­al lev­el are believed to be major active com­po­nents of build­ing a cog­ni­tive reserve that can help resist the attacks of men­tal disease.

fMRI: func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI) is a non-inva­sive neu­roimag­ing [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Glossary

Dana Alliance’s Brain Awareness Week for Brain Health

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The Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives is keep­ing up its great out­reach initiatives:

1‑ Check their blog with posts such as Resolve to be good to your brain, too. Tip: “Brain change takes time; allow your brain time to get used to new cir­cum­stance” (from the Dana Guide to Brain Health). 

You can read our The Dana Guide to Brain Health book review.

2- The Brain Aware­ness Week 2007, March 12–18th, with many activ­i­ties around the world to “advance pub­lic aware­ness about the progress and ben­e­fits of brain research. The Dana Alliance is joined in the cam­paign by part­ners in the Unit­ed States and around the world, includ­ing med­ical and research orga­ni­za­tions; patient advo­ca­cy groups; the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies; ser­vice groups; hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ties; K‑12 schools; and pro­fes­sion­al organizations.”

Learn how you can participate! 

 

Neuroscience Interview Series: on learning and “brain gyms”

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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. Michael Merzenich and Dr. John Ratey).

The inter­views we have con­duct­ed and pub­lished so far, with most recent first:

And we have a few more inter­views in the works-please keep tuned.

Enjoy!

Brain Fitness Blog Carnival #1

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Brain Fitness CarnivalWel­come 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 conversation.

Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Our expe­ri­ence lit­er­al­ly shapes our brains. And vice ver­sa. The media seems to be focus­ing most­ly on brain fit­ness for seniors, but its impli­ca­tions go beyond that, as you will see in this post by Car­o­line: What is Brain Fit­ness?, and the arti­cles in this carnival.

Sci­ence-based under­stand­ing is evolv­ing from “Use it or Lose It” to “Use It and Improve It.”  As Fast Com­pa­ny’s Alan Deutschman provoca­tive­ly puts it in his last book, Change or Die. We could­n’t agree more with his sum­ma­ry rec­om­men­da­tion: “Relate. Repeat. Reframe.” Alan presents a blog arti­cle announc­ing his book (here is his orig­i­nal arti­cle). [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val #1