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Debunking 10 Cognitive Health and Fitness Myths

December 27, 2010 by SharpBrains

As part of the research behind the book The Sharp­Brains Guide for Brain Fit­ness we inter­viewed dozens of lead­ing cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and experts world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have a num­ber of take-aways to report.

What Santiago Ramon y Cajal can we clear­ly say today that we could­n’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal claimed in the XX cen­tu­ry, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”, may well become real­i­ty in the XXI.

And trans­form Edu­ca­tion, Health, Train­ing, and Gam­ing in the process, since [Read more…] about Debunk­ing 10 Cog­ni­tive Health and Fit­ness Myths

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging, brain-blog, brain-fitness-games, brain-fitness-software, brain-fitness-website, brain-improvement, brain-research, brain-software, brain-training-ds, brain-training-website, cognitive, cognitive-development, cognitive-fitness, cognitive-health, Education & Lifelong Learning, exercise, fitness, Gaming, genes, health, healthy gaming, Neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, on-the-brain, productivity, scientific-brain-training, Serious-Games, training, wellness

Cognitive Fitness and Brain Improvement: 10 Debunked Myths

October 30, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Over the last year we have inter­viewed a num­ber of lead­ing brain health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report.

What can we say today that we could­n’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­a­go Ramon ySantiago Ramon y Cajal Cajal claimed in the XX cen­tu­ry, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”, may well become real­i­ty in the XXI. And influ­ence Edu­ca­tion, Health, Train­ing, and Gam­ing in the process.

We have only scratched the sur­face of what sci­ence-based struc­tured cog­ni­tive (i.e., men­tal) exer­cise can do for brain health and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. We are now wit­ness­ing the birth of a new indus­try that cross­es tra­di­tion­al sec­tor bound­aries and that may help us under­stand, assess and train our brains, har­ness­ing the grow­ing research about neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons), neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty (the abil­i­ty of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence), cog­ni­tive train­ing and emo­tion­al regulation.

Let’s now debunk 10 myths, still too preva­lent, that may pre­vent us from see­ing the full poten­tial of this emerg­ing field:

Myth 1: It’s all in our genes.

Real­i­ty: A big com­po­nent of our life­long brain health and devel­op­ment depends on what we do with our brains. Our own actions, not only our genes, influ­ence our lives to a large extent. Genes pre­dis­pose us, not deter­mine our fates.

“Indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing lives, through edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion and leisure activ­i­ties, have reduced risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s. Stud­ies sug­gest that they have 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing the dis­ease” — Dr. Yaakov Stern, Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at Colum­bia University.

Myth 2: The field of Cognitive/ Brain Fit­ness is too new to be credible. 

Real­i­ty: The field rests on sol­id foun­da­tions dat­ing back more decades — what is new is the num­ber and range of tools that are now start­ing to be avail­able for healthy individuals.

“Rig­or­ous and tar­get­ed cog­ni­tive train­ing has been used in clin­i­cal prac­tice for many years. Exer­cis­ing our brains sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies.” — Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, Frontal Lobes fMRIclin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, and dis­ci­ple of Alexan­der Luria.

“Today, thanks to fMRI and oth­er neu­roimag­ing tech­niques, we are start­ing to under­stand the impact our actions can have on spe­cif­ic parts of the brain.” — Dr. Judith Beck, Direc­tor of the Beck Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py and Research.

Myth 3: Med­ica­tion is and will remain the only evi­dence-based inter­ven­tion for a num­ber of brain-relat­ed problems.

Real­i­ty: Cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams are start­ing to [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness and Brain Improve­ment: 10 Debunked Myths

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Filed Under: Attention & ADD/ADHD, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging, brain-blog, brain-fitness-games, brain-fitness-software, brain-fitness-website, brain-improvement, brain-research, brain-software, brain-training-ds, brain-training-website, cognitive, cognitive-development, cognitive-fitness, Education & Lifelong Learning, exercise, fitness, Gaming, genes, health, Neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, on-the-brain, productivity, scientific-brain-training, Serious-Games, training, wellness

Brain Fitness Software and Training Games

August 16, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Unless you have been liv­ing in a cave, you have read by now mul­ti­ple arti­cles about the brain train­ing and brain exer­cise craze: sudoku, Nin­ten­do BrainAge, mul­ti­ple online games, soft­ware like Mind­Fit and Posit Science…

If you are look­ing for some fun men­tal stim­u­la­tion now, here you have our selec­tion of Brain Teasers.

Now, how do you know which of the new pro­grams can help you more, or whether you need any of them? which ones are sim­ply enter­tain­ing Games vs. which ones look like “Games” but are real­ly Train­ing, improv­ing, spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al skills? Well, that’s why we are pub­lish­ing the Sharp­Brains Check­list below, to help you nav­i­gate through the over­whelm­ing and con­flict­ing media reports and com­pa­ny announcements.

We have spent over 18 months inter­view­ing sci­en­tists and review­ing avail­able Brain Fit­ness and Exer­cise Pro­grams world­wide, and want to share with you, right now, the research-based cri­te­ria we use to eval­u­ate them.

10 Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for You (and a brief expla­na­tion of why each ques­tion is important)

* 1. Are there sci­en­tists, ide­al­ly neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, and a sci­en­tif­ic advi­so­ry board behind the program?

(Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists spe­cial­ize in mea­sur­ing and under­stand­ing human cog­ni­tion and brain struc­ture and function.)

* 2. Are there pub­lished, peer-reviewed sci­en­tif­ic papers in PubMed writ­ten by those sci­en­tists? How many?

(Pubmed is a ser­vice of the U.S. Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine that includes mil­lions of cita­tions sci­ence jour­nals. If a sci­en­tist has not pub­lished a paper that appears in that data­base, he or she can­not make sci­en­tif­ic claims.)

* 3. What are the spe­cif­ic ben­e­fits claimed for using this pro­gram? [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware and Train­ing Games

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: baby-boomers, brain-age, brain-fitness-games, brain-fitness-software, Brain-games, Brain-Training, brain-training-ds, mental-exercise, Neuropsychology, Neurosoftware, nintendo, online-brain-training, synapses

Nintendo BrainAge, Lumosity, Happy Neuron, MyBrainTrainer…

July 17, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

A col­lec­tion of recent announce­ment in the “brain games” or “brain train­ing games” space:

The Wii sets new gen­er­a­tional stan­dards for the videogame industry

  • “The age­ing of the Japan­ese pop­u­la­tion com­pelled gamemak­er Nin­ten­do to widen its audi­ence. Now, the Wii is lead­ing the indus­try stan­dards. But hard­core gamers are still too impor­tant to be neglected.”

Strain your brain the smart way

  • “George Har­ri­son, Nin­ten­do’s senior vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has said that more than half of the com­pa­ny’s mar­ket­ing for Wii is aimed at adults. And the sys­tem has been pre­sent­ed at con­ven­tions for the aging “gray gamer” pop­u­la­tion.” and talks about sudoku, Brain Age, Big Brain Acad­e­my, and more.

SBT Announces the Acqui­si­tion of Quixit

  • “Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Train­ing (“SBT”), based in Lyon, France, today has announced that [Read more…] about Nin­ten­do BrainAge, Lumos­i­ty, Hap­py Neu­ron, MyBrainTrainer…

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Alzheimers, big-brain-academy, brain-builder, brain-exercise, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-checklist, brain-fitness-software, Brain-games, Brain-health, brain-training-ds, brain-training-games, choose-brain-program, cognitive-enhancement, gray-gamer, grey-gamer, Happy-Neuron, happyneuron, happyneuron-games, Lifelong-learning, lumos-labs, Lumosity, lumosity-brain-fitness-program, mental-stimulation, MyBrainTrainer, nintendo-brainage, posit-science-brain-fitness-program, pubmed, quixit, scientific-brain-training, smart-brains, smartbrain, train-cognitive-skills, videogame-industry

Brain Exercise for the Frontal lobes: the McKinsey Mind

May 1, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

My first full-time job was as a strate­gic con­sul­tant at McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny. A very intense 2‑year learn­ing experience.

Their Alum­ni News Ser­vice recent­ly inter­viewed me and pub­lished this great arti­cle on Sharp­Brains. The writer does a superb job of pro­vid­ing an overview of what we do, so I rec­om­mend you read it. I’d like to empha­size the fol­low­ing quotes for any­one look­ing for jobs these days, so that “brain exer­cise” is part of the equation:

  • “Alvaro has some very high praise for the men­tal gym­nas­tics that the McK­in­sey expe­ri­ence pro­vides.  Giv­en that the frontal lobes in our brain (behind the fore­head) only mature in our late 20s, he says, the jobs we take in our ear­ly and mid-20s are very impor­tant not only for our career prospects, but also for our brain devel­op­ment fit­ness. This is the stage in our life where, con­scious­ly or not, we can improve our deci­sion-mak­ing, ini­tia­tive and self-reg­u­la­tion abil­i­ties, all of which lit­er­al­ly affect the phys­i­cal growth of our frontal lobes in a sig­nif­i­cant way.”
  • “Join­ing McK­in­sey as a BA is lit­er­al­ly like join­ing a brain gym, Alvaro says. “The demands of the McK­in­sey mod­el. [Read more…] about Brain Exer­cise for the Frontal lobes: the McK­in­sey Mind

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers Tagged With: aging-population, brain-training-ds, California-Institute-of-Technology, cognitive-powers, cognitive-value, Decision-making, development, education-market, Executive-Functions, fight-Alzheimer's-disease, getting-older, healthcare-investing, K12, mental-decline, nature, Neurogenesis, OLLI, Reading-Assistant, strategic-consulting, University-of-Haifa

Brain Training and “Brain-ism” in Japan

December 4, 2006 by Alvaro Fernandez

Go HiranoToday we are trav­el­ing to Japan. Go Hira­no is a ser­i­al Japan­ese entre­pre­neur who has been explor­ing neu­ro­science-based oppor­tu­ni­ties in Japan, hav­ing recent­ly cre­at­ed the com­pa­ny NeuWell (neu­ro­science for wellness).

———————-

Key take-aways:

- Peo­ple in Japan devour any prod­uct with brain-relat­ed claims

- But there has been a recent back­lash against chil­dren videogames, so game devel­op­ers have start­ed to focus on old­er audi­ences with (most­ly unproven) brain-health-improv­ing games

- The mar­ket is ripe for pro­grams with proven research and tan­gi­ble benefits

———————-

AF: Hira­no-san, tell us a bit about your­self and how you became inter­est­ed in applied neuroscience. 

GH: after help­ing launch one of the first DSL providers in Japan, I start­ed to won­der what the next big­ger val­ue for soci­ety would be. I have always been fas­ci­nat­ed by brain research, so I start­ed to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties to help bring to mar­ket neu­ro­science-based pro­grams to help stu­dents do bet­ter in exams, and adults age in brain-friend­ly ways.

AF: what is the state of Brain Fit­ness and Brain Train­ing in Japan? what are the most pop­u­lar appli­ca­tions so far?

GH: I think peo­ple under­stand the con­cepts of Brain Fit­ness and Brain Train­ing. If one method or product/service sounds a bit sci­en­tif­ic there are peo­ple who would try it for fun and curios­i­ty. How­ev­er, [Read more…] about Brain Train­ing and “Brain-ism” in Japan

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Brain-anatomy-and-imaging, Brain-based-Learning, Brain-Fitness, Brain-games, Brain-health, Brain-Training, brain-training-ds, Casual-Games, Cognitive Neuroscience, Darwin, evolution, Health & Wellness, Kawashima, Learning, Mental-flexibility, Mental-Health, Mind-Fitness, Mind-Games, mind-teasers, mindset, neuroplasticity, Neuroscience Interview Series, Nintendo-Brain, Serious-Games, Working-memory

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