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Brain Fitness/ Training Newsletter: January Edition

January 31, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Brain exercise, brain exercisesAs we have been doing for the last 6 months, here you are have the Month­ly Digest of our Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sid­er it your month­ly Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Newsletter.

(Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our month­ly newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this Month­ly Digest by email).

Let me first intro­duce our new ros­ter of Expert Con­trib­u­tors, high­light­ing first an arti­cle by Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Dr. David Rabin­er, a lead­ing author­i­ty on atten­tion deficits and author of the Atten­tion Research Update newslet­ter, on the “promis­ing, yet unproven” val­ue of neu­ro­feed­back for atten­tion deficits: How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back.

Two oth­er great arti­cles by our Expert Con­trib­u­tors this month:

Look­ing inside the Brain: cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon intro­duces us to the world of neu­roimag­ing and build­ing men­tal reserves.

Med­i­ta­tion in Schools: thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine, we offer an excel­lent arti­cle on the emerg­ing trend of schools using med­i­ta­tion to help stu­dents man­age anx­i­ety and stress.

The fol­low­ing Expert Con­trib­u­tors will be fea­tured in Feb­ru­ary, so make sure to vis­it our blog often:

- Wes Car­roll, Puz­zle Mas­ter for Ask a Sci­en­tist lec­ture series.

- Simon Evans, PhD., and Paul Burghardt, PhD., from Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan’s Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try and the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science Institute.

- Gre­go­ry Kel­lett, mas­ters in Cog­ni­tive Neurology/Research Psy­chol­o­gy from SFSU and researcher at UCSF.

- Joanne Jacobs, edu­ca­tion expert and blog­ger, will par­tic­i­pate in the “Sharp­Brains Author Speaks Series” to present her most recent book.

- Eric Jensen, well-known resource on brain research infor­ma­tion with impli­ca­tions for K12 education.

- Tom O’Brien, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus in Math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion and author of prize-win­ning games.

- Adri­an Pre­da, M.D., Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Human Behav­ior at the UC Irvine School of Medicine.

- Joshua Stein­er­man, M.D., Post­doc­tor­al Clin­i­cal Fel­low in the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Center.

Brain Fit­ness and Sharp­Brains in the News

Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Trends (Jan­u­ary 3rd): Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Corp. (cog­ni­tive train­ing for chil­dren with dislex­ia and read­ing dif­fi­cul­ties) acquires Solil­o­quy Learn­ing, and Paris-based Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Train­ing acquires Tech­no­me­dia, a Cana­di­an provider of cor­po­rate training.

More News on the Field (Jan­u­ary 14th): Posit Sci­ence (audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing train­ing) acquires Visu­al Aware­ness, Inc (visu­al pro­cess­ing train­ing for dri­ving skills, used in ACTIVE tri­als). Cogmed announces work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing for adults. Nature Neu­ro­science brings great resources on the clas­sic Lon­don Taxi Dri­vers study. The 2008 Mind & Life Sum­mer Research Insti­tute starts accept­ing appli­ca­tions by researchers inter­est­ed in study­ing the effects of med­i­ta­tion on the brain.

Sharp­Brains Fea­tured in Newsweek & Fox Busi­ness Net­work (Jan­u­ary 19th): sev­er­al great arti­cles on the emerg­ing brain fitness/ train­ing field. New Sci­en­tist (sub­scrip­tion-only) pro­vides a broad pic­ture of the research. Newsweek kind­ly invites read­ers to “check out SharpBrains.com, which pro­motes sci­ence-based cog­ni­tive train­ing”. Fox Busi­ness Net­work includes our mar­ket esti­mates of $225 mil­lion for the whole brain fit­ness soft­ware field in 2007 in the US. The New York Times has a great arti­cle on the val­ue of music training.

Is Your Brain Ready To Drink Cheap Wine?: Prof. Baba Shiv, one of our advi­sors, pub­lished a fas­ci­nat­ing paper on the pow­er of our beliefs to influ­ence brain acti­va­tion, and on how mar­ket­ing can influ­ence those beliefs.

Sharp­en Your Brain to Improve Per­for­mance, Low­er Stress (sub­scrip­tion required): Nicholas Genes from Med­scape inter­views me on the back­ground behind cog­ni­tive fit­ness and SharpBrains.com.

Health and Wellness

It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: If we can all agree on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing our cars that get us around town, what about main­tain­ing our brains sit­ting behind the wheel?.

Grand Rounds: Brief­ing the Next US Pres­i­dent on 40 Health Issues: we host­ed an open let­ter to the “Next US Pres­i­dent”, gath­er­ing the ques­tions and impres­sions of 40 health and med­ical blog­gers. We will do the same on Edu­ca­tion issues on Feb­ru­ary 20th-see below.

Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Clin­i­cal Tri­al: Seek­ing Old­er Adults:  Neu­ro­sci­en­tists at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter asked for help in recruit­ing vol­un­teers for an excit­ing clin­i­cal tri­al. If you are based in New York City, and between the ages of 60 and 75, please con­sid­er join­ing this study.

10 Brain Fit­ness New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions: prob­a­bly a bit late…but con­tains poten­tial New Years Res­o­lu­tions with the three prin­ci­ples of brain fit­ness in mind — nov­el­ty, vari­ety and challenge.

Edu­ca­tion

Inter­view with Robert Syl­west­er on The Ado­les­cent Brain: Dr. Robert Syl­west­er is an edu­ca­tor of edu­ca­tors, hav­ing received mul­ti­ple awards dur­ing his long career as a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor of the impli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence research for edu­ca­tion and learn­ing. Enjoy this interview.

Don’t Out­source Your Brain: nei­ther to oth­er peo­ple… nor to your GPS sys­tem. Fun­ny, true story.

Feb­ru­ary 20th Blog Car­ni­val of edu­ca­tion: we will host this edi­tion and present it as an open let­ter to the “Next US Pres­i­dent”, gath­er­ing the ques­tions and impres­sions of a num­ber of edu­ca­tion bloggers.

Resources

20 Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Books: we just changed a few things in our site, includ­ing prepar­ing a more sol­id Resources sec­tion. Please take a look at the nav­i­ga­tion bar at the top, includ­ing an expand­ed Books page.

PBS Brain Fit­ness DVD: the PBS shop is already sell­ing DVDs of its great Decem­ber spe­cial on Brain Fit­ness and Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty.

Brain Teasers

Mon­keys and Brain Games: did you read about the recent exper­i­ment where young chimps dis­played amaz­ing visu­al work­ing mem­o­ry capa­bil­i­ty, beat­ing humans? you can release your com­pet­i­tive juices here.

Brain Exer­cis­es for the Week­end: Har­ri­et Vines, Ph.D., an expe­ri­enced author and retired col­lege pro­fes­sor, sends us a few fun brain exer­cis­es to train our atten­tion and work­ing memory.

Events and Speak­ing Engage­ments (more details in our Speak­ing page)

» Feb. 2th: I will lead a Work­shop on Brain Fit­ness: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice, spon­sored by San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Institute.

» Feb. 7th: will speak on “Sharp­en­ing Minds through Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tion­al Train­ing Pro­grams,” at the Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence.

» Feb. 12th: will speak on The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket: Build­ing Bet­ter Brains: spon­sored by The MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, The Busi­ness Forum on Aging and Smart­Sil­vers, we will cov­er how “Sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graph­ic trends have con­verged to cre­ate an excit­ing new mar­ket in brain fit­ness, where soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions can assess and train cog­ni­tive abilities.”

» March 4th: I will be a pan­elist on how to Use Your Head-The Future of Mind Hacks, at O’Reil­ly Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Conference.

» March 27th, 2008: will present an Overview of Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Research and Pro­grams, at the NCOA/ ASA Aging in Amer­i­ca Con­fer­ence.

David Pescovitz, Research Direc­tor, Insti­tute for the Future, says “Alvaro Fer­nan­dez syn­the­sizes and trans­lates the lat­est neu­ro­science into provoca­tive, com­pelling, and enter­tain­ing sto­ries of men­tal fit­ness and the future of the brain.” Please con­tact us, sim­ply respond­ing to this email, if your orga­ni­za­tion is inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about Brain and Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness and this emerg­ing field.

All feed­back and con­tri­bu­tions are wel­come, too. Please leave your com­ments below.

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Filed Under: Attention & ADD/ADHD, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Ask-a-Scientist, attention-deficits, Attention-Research-Update, auditory-processing-training, baba-shiv, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-gym, brain-fitness-software, brain-research, Brain-Training, chimps-memory, cognitive-fitness, David-Pescovitz, David-Rabiner, dislexia, driving-skills, Expert-Contributors, Institute-for-the-Future, meditation, Medscape--Fox-Business-Network, Mental-Reserves, Neurofeedback, neuroimaging, neuroscience, Newsweek, Posit-Science, Psychology, Scientific-Learning, visual-processing-training, working-memory-training

Brain Exercise and Brain Fitness July Monthly Digest

August 1, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

We are often told we share too much con­tent, but it is tough for us to share less giv­en all the news around cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al training!

To make things eas­i­er we will offer a Month­ly Digest. Today, August 1st, we will list the most pop­u­lar July posts. Con­sid­er it your month­ly Brain Exer­cise Mag­a­zine 🙂

 

News you can use

Trad­ing per­for­mance psy­chol­o­gy and self-talk

Stress Man­age­ment for Lawyers

Men­tal Train­ing for Grat­i­tude and Altruism

 

Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Mar­ket News

Mar­ket­Watch on Beat­ing for­get­ful­ness and boost­ing the brain

Nin­ten­do BrainAge, Lumos­i­ty, Hap­py Neu­ron, MyBrainTrainer…

Brain Health through Seri­ous Games and Brain Exercise

Brain Fit­ness Workshops

Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute Brain Fit­ness class at UC Berkeley

 

Healthy Aging

Inter­view with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Yaakov Stern: Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve

Jud­son Laip­ply’s Danc­ing Brain

Jack and Elaine LaLanne and Brain Health

Exer­cise Your Brain! Enjoy Learning!

 

Atten­tion Deficits 

Inter­view with a pedi­a­tri­cian on work­ing mem­o­ry training

Atten­tion deficits: drugs, ther­a­py, cog­ni­tive training

 

Some sharp brains

A very sharp brain: Prof. Hans Rosling

Psy­chol­o­gist Jer­ry Yang and pok­er Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty = Life­long Learning

 

Biol­o­gy and Learning 

Apes are Speedy Learners

Pink Dol­phin Sheds Light on Human Evolution

 

Enjoy! and please feel free to sug­gest ideas and top­ics we can cov­er in the future.

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Filed Under: Attention & ADD/ADHD, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: baby-boomers, Biology, Brain-Fitness, Brain-Resource-Company, cells-that-fire-together-wire-together, chimps-memory, Cognitive-Training, cure-Alzheimer’s, Education & Lifelong Learning, Games-for-Health, gray-gamer, Journal-of-Attention-Disorders, K12, Lifelong-learning, mindfulness-meditation, Mindfulness-Training, novel-problem-solving, Serious-Games, strategic-consulting, substance-abuse, sympathetic

Mental Training for Gratitude and Altruism

July 15, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Bran­don Keim writes a nice post on The Future Sci­ence of Altru­ism at Wired Sci­ence Blog, based on an inter­view with Jor­dan Graf­man, chief of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders and Stroke.

Bran­don pro­vides good con­text say­ing that “Sci­en­tists, said Graf­man, are under­stand­ing how our brains are shaped by cul­ture and envi­ron­ment, and a mech­a­nism of these changes may involve fluc­tu­a­tion in our genes them­selves, which we’re only begin­ning to under­stand”. (more on this in our post Richard Dawkins and Alfred Nobel: beyond nature and nur­ture).

And gives us some very nice quotes from Dr. Graf­man, including

  • “One of the ways we dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves from oth­er species is that we have a sense of future. We don’t have to have imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion.… But how far can we go into the future? How much of our brain is aimed at doing that? […]”
  • “Oth­er great apes have a frontal lobe, fair­ly well devel­oped, but not near­ly as well devel­oped as our own. If you believe in Dar­win and evo­lu­tion, you argue that the area grew, and the neur­al archi­tec­ture had to change in some way to accom­mo­date the abil­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with that behav­ior. There’s no doubt that did­n’t occur overnight; prob­a­bly a slow change, and it was one of the last areas of the brain to devel­op as well. It’s very recent evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­ment that humans took full advan­tage of. What in the future? What in the brains can change?”
  • “The issue becomes — do we teach this? Train peo­ple to do this? Chil­dren tend to be self­ish, and have to be taught to share.”

The UC Berke­ley mag­a­zine Greater Good tries to answer that ques­tion with a series of arti­cles on Grat­i­tude. I espe­cial­ly enjoyed A Les­son in Thanks, described as [Read more…] about Men­tal Train­ing for Grat­i­tude and Altruism

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: accountability, adolescent-brain, adult-neurogenesis, Alexander-Luria, Bill-Klemm, chimps-memory, Cognitive Neuroscience, exercise, Go-Hirano, health-systems, managing-stress, mental-decline, new-neurons, rhyme, strategic-consulting, Texas-A&M-University, write-haiku

Books on neuroplasticity and memory training

April 3, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: the brain’s abil­i­ty to reor­ga­nize itself by form­ing new con­nec­tions through­out life. (see more con­cepts in our Glos­sary).

We coud­n’t be hap­pi­er about the grow­ing num­ber of books pop­u­lar­iz­ing the key lessons about brain train­ing that Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg has been research­ing and writ­ing about for years, and that moti­vat­ed us to embark our­selves in the Sharp­Brains adventure.

Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine presents a great arti­cle, Rewiring the Brain, review­ing two recent books.

  • The sub­ti­tle is “Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty can allow for treat­ment of senil­i­ty, post-trau­mat­ic stress, ­obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der, and depres­sion and Bud­dhists have been cap­i­tal­iz­ing on it for mil­lenia.” I would add that the strong val­ue of life­long learn­ing present in jesuit and jew­ish tra­di­tions reflects the same wis­dom. Some quotes:
  • “Two new books, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Bal­lan­tine Books, $24.95) by sci­ence jour­nal­ist Sharon Beg­ley and The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psy­chi­a­trist Nor­man Doidge, offer mas­ter­ful­ly guid­ed tours through the bur­geon­ing field of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty research. Each has its own style and empha­sis; both are excellent.”
  • “Final­ly, both authors con­clude that adult neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is a vast­ly under­tapped resource, one with which West­ern med­i­cine and psy­chol­o­gy are just now com­ing to grips. An impor­tant emerg­ing research agen­da is to [Read more…] about Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and mem­o­ry training

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Ask-a-Scientist, auditory-processing-training, Books, brain-builder, Brain-Fitness, brain-injuries, brain-research, Brain-Training, brain-training-website, chimps-memory, concept-map, David-Pescovitz, dislexia, driving-skills, Glossary, hiv/aids, K12, Lifelong-learning, malleable, meditation, Medscape--Fox-Business-Network, Memory-Training, mindfulness-trainings, Processing-information, processing-speed, PTSD, relaxation-trick, scientific-mindset, test-anxiety, vibrantbrains, visual-processing-training, yoga, yoga-brain

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