Calisthenics and Brain Games for a Child’s Mind

By SharpBrains | April 29, 2013

Brain Games Aim to Make Kids Smarter (Sci­Am Mind, requires sub­scrip­tion): “Sci­en­tists have con­coct­ed men­tal fit­ness reg­i­mens to strength­en weak think­ing skills in students—in effect, mak­ing kids smarter…Psychologists have long believed that think­ing capac­i­ties such as atten­tion, mem­o­ry and rea­son­ing were fixed, but 

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Cognitive Development and Brain Research: Articles, Books, Papers (ASA)

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 28, 2007 |

We had a very fun ses­sion titled Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health pro­fes­sion­als a cou­ple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 atten­dants and very good par­tic­i­pa­tion, show­ing great inter­est in the top­ic. I can’t wait to see the eval­u­a­tions. These are some…

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Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning — Learning & The Brain Conference

By Caroline Latham | February 26, 2007

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing.… Some top­ics were meant to be applied imme­di­ate­ly, but many were food for thought — dis­cus­sions on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed.Using dra­mat­ic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies. Dis­cov­er how new adven­tures could change edu­ca­tion, learn­ing dis­or­der inter­ven­tions, and even soci­ety itself in the future.

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Are yoga and meditation good for my brain?

By Caroline Latham | February 15, 2007 |

Here is ques­tion 16 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Are yoga and med­i­ta­tion good for my brain?Key Points: Yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion are all excel­lent ways to learn to man­age your stress levels.Reducing stress, and the stress hor­mones, in your sys­tem is crit­i­cal to your brain and over­all fitness.Answer:Yes.… the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.Prolonged expo­sure to the adren­al steroid hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, released dur­ing the stress response, can dam­age the brain and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons in the hip­pocam­pus, which is the key play­er in encod­ing new mem­o­ries in your brain.

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