Time for the Novem­ber edi­tion of the month­ly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of resources and insights on how to invest in our brains, includ­ing top­ics such as brain health, med­i­ta­tion, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy, brain train­ing games, chemo brain, dyslex­ia, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, cog­ni­tive bias­es, stress, and more. Not to for­get a cou­ple of fun teasers. Enjoy!

Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions:

• Tran­script: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Men­tal Cap­i­tal­ism and Non-inva­sive Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment
• Tran­script: Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­o­ry and the Brain
• Tran­script: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum on Med­i­ta­tion and Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy

The Big Pic­ture:

• Steve Jobs: Com­put­ers are the Bicy­cles of the Mind
• Brain Fit­ness: Def­i­n­i­tion, Pri­or­i­ties, and Links to Neu­rolead­er­ship, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez
• Is the Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tered on The Learn­er or the Pro­fes­sor?, by Miguel Angel Escotet
• Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Med­ical Blog­ging, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez

New Research:

• Can Brain Train­ing Games and Biofeed­back Help Pre­vent Depres­sion, by Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon
• ‘Chemo Brain’: MRI Shows Brain Changes After Chemother­a­py
• Dyslex­ia not relat­ed to intel­li­gence. Impli­ca­tions for dis­crep­an­cy mod­el?
• Vet­er­ans learn to use yoga and med­i­ta­tion exer­cis­es to recon­nect with their emo­tions
• Applied Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: Rewiring the Brain to Ease Pain

New Books:

• What makes your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site, by David DiS­al­vo (We’ll have a Live Q&A on Decem­ber 9th)
• How cog­ni­tive illu­sions blind us to rea­son
• The Series on Stress & the Brain, by Dr. Jerome Schultz, con­tin­ues with: The Lit­tle Brain Down Under, The Stress Response Explained, The Human Brain Likes to Be in Bal­ance, To Fight, Flee or Freeze –That is the Ques­tion

Brain Teasers:

• Math Teas­er: Unfin­ished The­sis, by Maria Lan­do
• Math Teas­er: How to Choose a Mans Shirt, by Maria Lan­do
• How many Share This Arti­cle links, right below, do you know how to use? Try a cou­ple of them and share via Face­book and Twit­ter!

Thank you for your inter­est and atten­tion and have a great Decem­ber.

AARP recent­ly released a list of Top 5 Best Books for Brain Fit­ness. SharpBrains.com is hon­ored to have pub­lished one of those Top 5 books and to present this Live Q&A Series for you to ask ques­tions to the authors of 3 of those best books on brain fit­ness. Par­tic­i­pants will sub­mit writ­ten ques­tions, mod­er­a­tors will select the most impor­tant and rel­e­vant ques­tions, and book authors will write their answers for every­one to read.

• Novem­ber 1st, 2011, 2–3pm ET: Dr. Gary Small, author of The Mem­o­ry Bible
• Novem­ber 15th, 2011, 2–3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness
• Novem­ber 22nd, 2011, 2–3pm ET: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain
• (in Span­ish) Novem­ber 29th, 2011, 2–3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-autor de The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness Read the rest of this entry »

We are hon­ored to announce that AARP has includ­ed our very own book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (182 pages; $14.95) in its new List of Best Books on Brain Fit­ness, which will be unveiled dur­ing AARP’s upcom­ing Life@50 Nation­al Event. We hope this list will help many more indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions learn about our resource: giv­en that 80% of respon­dents to a recent AARP sur­vey select­ed “Stay­ing Men­tal­ly Sharp” as their top pri­or­i­ty, we cer­tain­ly know there is a sig­nif­i­cant need for qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion!

AARP’s Best Books Guide


Brain Fitness

The Dana Guide to Brain Health, by Floyd E. Bloom, M. Flint Beal, and David J. Kupfer (Dana Press, 2006).

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Elkhonon Gold­berg. (Sharp­Brains Inc., 2009).

Save Your Brain: The 5 Things You Must Do To Keep Your Mind Young and Sharp, by Paul Nuss­baum. (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Sur­pris­ing Tal­ents of the Mid­dle-Aged Mind, by Bar­bara Strauch (Viking, 2010).

The Mem­o­ry Bible: An Inno­v­a­tive Strat­e­gy for Keep­ing Your Brain Young, by Gary Small (Hype­r­i­on, 2003).

___________

Also Rec­om­mend­ed:

The Mature Mind: The Pos­i­tive Pow­er of the Aging Brain, by Gene Cohen (Basic Books, 2006).

The Brain That Changes Itself, by Nor­man Doidge (Pen­guin, 2007).

Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Exer­cise and the Brain, by John Ratey and Eric Hager­man (Lit­tle, Brown and Co., 2008).

Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Pre­scrip­tion for Improv­ing Your Brain’s Per­for­mance, by Richard Restak (River­head, 2010).

Com­piled by:
Office of Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs, AARP

Every­one these days is talk­ing about edu­ca­tion and test­ing reform, but why is rel­e­vant brain research often ignored? Which organ if not the brain does the learn­ing and teach­ing part? Renowned edu­ca­tor and brain expert Dr. Robert Syl­west­er shares his rec­om­mend­ed Top Brain Books for Edu­ca­tors and Learn­ers to help inform the con­ver­sa­tion. A must read!

Save the Date: the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, the sec­ond edi­tion of our annu­al indus­try and research con­fer­ence, will take place vir­tu­al­ly from March 28th to March 31st 2010. Details will fol­low soon.

With­out fur­ther ado…please enjoy the Novem­ber edi­tion of our month­ly eNewslet­ter:

Research Bites

Foot­ball and brain dam­age: In high-con­tact sports such as foot­ball, even hits not lead­ing to con­cus­sions can affect the brain.

How to take omega-3: Eat­ing fish (source of omega-3) reduces risks of demen­tia but DHA sup­ple­ments have no effect on Alzheimer’s symp­toms.

Vit­a­mins against Alzheimer’s? A good review shows that Vit­a­min B has unclear effects on mem­o­ry and cog­ni­tive decline.

Brain train­ing helps old­er dri­vers: tar­get­ed cog­ni­tive train­ing can help reduce old­er dri­vers’ car crash­es. Dr. Mich­e­lon explains why and how.

Resources and Tips

Top 10 Q&A about Child’s Brain Devel­op­ment: In the 1st part of our series, The Brain across the Lifes­pan, we answer 10 ques­tions to help you under­stand the devel­op­ing brain.

Our Brain on Music: Scott Kauf­man shows that there is lit­tle evi­dence that lis­ten­ing to Mozart’s music boosts brain func­tions. Music can have an effect, but we need to do more than lis­ten.

Work­ing Mem­o­ry: What is work­ing mem­ory? Why do we care? How can we best enhance it? Dr. Mich­e­lon answers these ques­tions through con­crete exam­ples and a Q&A.

Books

Rethink­ing Alzheimer’s Pre­ven­tion and Treat­ment: In this excerpt from their recent book “The Alzheimer’s Solu­tion” Ken Kosik and Lin­da Clegg pro­pose a new mod­el for brain care: The “cog­ni­tive shop”.

Did You See the Goril­la? Daniel Simons, co-author of  “The Invis­i­ble Goril­la”, inter­viewed by David DiS­al­vo, tells us about the myth of mul­ti-task­ing.

Cog­ni­tive Devel­op­ment in the first 20 years: In this excerpt from his lat­est book “A Child’s Brain”, Dr. Syl­west­er syn­the­sizes the first 20 years of devel­op­ment.

Council Insights

How will we assess, enhance and repair cog­ni­tion across the lifes­pan?: Learn about a brain health rev­o­lu­tion in the mak­ing and how we can shape it, straight from the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion.

Brain Teasers

Brain Games for each Cog­ni­tive Abil­i­ty: To under­stand why we need to go beyond cross­word puz­zles, stim­u­late your whole brain with this selec­tion of brain teasers and games.

Have a great Decem­ber, and please don’t for­get to engage via Face­book and Twit­ter!

The pow­er­ful Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Accred­i­ta­tion of Teacher Edu­ca­tion (NCATE) has now issued a report that encour­ages pre-ser­vice and grad­u­ate teacher edu­ca­tion pro­grams to incor­po­rate cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science dis­cov­er­ies about child and ado­les­cent devel­op­ment into their cur­ric­u­la.  This link to a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle on this devel­op­ment will also get you to the NCATE report.