To boost brainpower, ignore “smart drugs” and focus on experiences that harness neuroplasticity the right way

By SharpBrains | June 3, 2014

Tra­di­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic ideas cast the human brain as a fixed and essen­tial­ly lim­it­ed sys­tem that only degrades with age. This view saw the brain as a rigid machine in many ways, pret­ty much set after child­hood. By con­trast, we have now come to appre­ci­ate that the human brain is actu­al­ly a high­ly dynam­ic and constantly…

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Dr. Chapman Q&A Transcript: Best Brain Health Fitness Tip? “Never let status quo be an option”

By Alvaro Fernandez | January 4, 2013

Here’s the light­ly edit­ed tran­script of the Jan­u­ary 4th online Q&A ses­sion with Dr. San­dra Chap­man, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at UT-Dal­las and author of the new book Make Your Brain Smarter (Free Press; Jan­u­ary 2013). Enjoy! 1:59 AlvaroF: You can start writ­ing ques­tions so we have a few to choose from as we…

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Why our brains weigh 1.3 kilograms, have ~100 billion neurons, consume 20% of the oxygen we breathe

By SharpBrains | April 12, 2012

Team­work Builds Big Brains (Sci­ence Now): — “The aver­age adult human’s brain weighs about 1.3 kilo­grams, has 100 bil­lion or so neu­rons, and sucks up 20% of the oxy­gen we breathe. It’s much big­ger than an ani­mal our size needs. Accord­ing to a new com­put­er mod­el, the brains of humans and relat­ed pri­mates are so large…

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Learning & the Brain: Resources for Educators

By Laurie Bartels | July 20, 2008 |

As promised in my pre­vi­ous post (10 Brain Train­ing Tips To Teach and Learn), here are some of the resources that inform my under­stand­ing of the brain: books, con­fer­ences, and web­sites. BOOKS There are a mul­ti­tude of books about the brain. For edu­ca­tors, the best of these are books that demys­ti­fy the lan­guage of neuroscience…

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