Under­stand­ing Indi­vid­ual Dif­fer­ences: UC River­side psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor receives $1.9 mil­lion grant to study mem­o­ry train­ing (press release):

“Aaron Seitz, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, River­side and the direc­tor of the UCR Brain Game Cen­ter for men­tal fit­ness and well­be­ing, and Susanne Jaeg­gi, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the school of edu­ca­tion at UC Irvine, have been award­ed a $1.9 mil­lion grant to study mem­o­ry train­ing Read the rest of this entry »

Brain Game Claims Fail A Big Sci­en­tif­ic Test (NPR):

“In Octo­ber 2014, more than 70 sci­en­tists pub­lished an open let­ter object­ing to mar­ket­ing claims made by brain train­ing com­pa­nies. Pret­ty soon, anoth­er group, with more than 100 sci­en­tists, pub­lished a rebut­tal say­ing brain train­ing has a sol­id sci­en­tif­ic base.

“So you had two con­sen­sus state­ments, each signed by many, many peo­ple, that came to Read the rest of this entry »

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For Effec­tive Brain Fit­ness, Do More Than Play Sim­ple Games (The New York Times):

“…Legions of baby boomers already use com­put­ers or apps to stim­u­late the brain, but they should be thought of as part of a larg­er engage­ment with the world…Finding new ways to chal­lenge your­self every day, Mr. Rebok said, is a good idea. This can include lots of ordi­nary activ­i­ties like doing men­tal cal­cu­la­tions rather than reach­ing for a cal­cu­la­tor, or tak­ing a new dri­ving route or eat­ing with the oppo­site hand…

Mr. Fer­nan­dez of Sharp­Brains said he would like to see a more sys­tem­at­ic way to mea­sure cog­ni­tion, such as annu­al men­tal health check­ups. “If we had bet­ter assess­ments, we could empow­er con­sumers,” he said. “That’s the next fron­tier.”

To learn more:

• Solv­ing the Brain Fit­ness Puz­zle Is the Key to Self-Empow­ered Aging

Nike Moves into Brain Train­ing with Launch of Pro Genius (Cre­ativ­i­ty):

“Nike has made its first move into the world of men­tal train­ing with the launch of Pro Genius, a series of tools and tech­niques designed to help young soc­cer play­ers devel­op the men­tal side of their game Read the rest of this entry »

(Edi­tor’s Note: In order to help read­ers famil­iar­ize them­selves with the work and think­ing of Dr. Michael Merzenich, one of the win­ners of the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neu­ro­science for ground­break­ing work on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, we are con­dens­ing and repub­lish­ing the com­pre­hen­sive con­ver­sa­tion that Dr. Merzenich and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez had in 2009, in prepa­ra­tion for the inau­gur­al Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit.)

Dr. Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at UCSF, is a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant. In 1996, he was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, and in 2004 became co-founder and Read the rest of this entry »