Working Memory Training can Influence Brain Biochemistry

I want­ed to alert you to a very inter­est­ing find­ing pub­lished in a recent issue of Sci­ence, one of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals. The study was led by Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and his col­leagues from the Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute in Swe­den. The goal was to learn whether Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing is asso­ci­at­ed with changes in…

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Cognitive Training (Cogmed) Changes the Brain More Than We Thought

Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Can Alter Bio­chem­istry Of The Brain (Sci­ence Dai­ly) — “Researchers at the Swedish med­ical uni­ver­si­ty Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute have shown for the first time that the active train­ing of the work­ing mem­o­ry brings about vis­i­ble changes in the num­ber of dopamine recep­tors in the human brain.” — ““Brain bio­chem­istry does­n’t just under­pin our men­tal activ­i­ty; our…

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Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together

Every­one has heard of “Use It or Lose It.” Now…what is “It”? Last week I gave a talk at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cis­co, and one of the areas atten­dees seemed to enjoy the most was learn­ing about what our brains are and how they work, peak­ing into the “black box” of our minds. With­out understanding…

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Darwin’s adult neuroplasticity

Charles Dar­win (1809–1882)‘s auto­bi­og­ra­phy (full text free online) includes some very insight­ful refec­tions on the evo­lu­tion of his own mind dur­ing his mid­­dle-age, show­cas­ing the pow­er of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence (neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty) dur­ing our whole life­­times-not just when we are youngest. He wrote these paragraphs at the age of 72 (I have bold­ed some key…

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Information Overload? Seven Learning and Productivity Tips

We often talk in this blog about how to expand fun­da­men­tal abil­i­ties or cog­ni­tive func­tions, like atten­tion, or mem­o­ry, or emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­­tion. Think of them as mus­cles one can train. Now, it is also impor­tant to think of ways one can use our exist­ing mus­cles more effi­cient­ly. Let’s talk about how to man­age bet­ter the…

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Brain Fitness and SharpBrains.com in the Press

Grow­ing media atten­tion on the brain fit­ness field. At least on the “Healthy Aging” seg­ment (I pre­dict the media with catch up soon with devel­op­ments in oth­er areas, from cog­ni­tive train­ing for kids and adults with ADD/ ADHD to stroke and TBI reha­bil­i­ta­tion, to peak per­for­mance for cor­po­rate train­ing). First, a superb arti­cle by Leslie…

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