Cognitive enhancement in the future: electric brain stimulation plus cognitive training?

Elec­tri­cal Brain Stim­u­la­tion Helps Peo­ple Learn Math Faster (Wired): “…sci­en­tists stim­u­lat­ed vol­un­teers’ brains with mild elec­tric cur­rent while they learned new arith­metic oper­a­tions based on made-up sym­bols. Peo­ple who received brain stim­u­la­tion dur­ing train­ing ses­sions on five con­sec­u­tive days learned two to five times faster than those who received sham stim­u­la­tion, and they retained a…

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Does Brain Fitness Require Medicalization? Insights @ 2012 SharpBrains Virtual Summit

In June of this year, Sharp­Brains host­ed its third annu­al online “vir­tu­al sum­mit” on our evolv­ing under­stand­ing of how the human brain works, and how it can be made to work bet­ter. As read­ers of this blog know, Sharp­Brains is a US-based mar­ket research firm and think tank ded­i­cat­ed to study­ing the sci­en­tif­ic, social, and…

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Research: Does Nintendo Brain Age work as a brain training game?

A new study tries to, but unfor­tu­nate­ly does­n’t, answer that ques­tion. Study: Brain Train­ing Game Improves Exec­u­tive Func­tions and Pro­cess­ing Speed in the Elder­ly: A Ran­dom­ized Con­trolled Tri­al (PLoS ONE). “Con­clu­sions: Our results showed that play­ing Brain Age for 4 weeks could lead to improve cog­ni­tive func­tions (exec­u­tive func­tions and pro­cess­ing speed) in the elder­ly. This result indicated…

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Transcendental Meditation and Working Memory Training To Enhance Executive Functions

New study shows Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion improves brain func­tion­ing in ADHD stu­dents (press release): — “Pri­or research shows ADHD chil­dren have slow­er brain devel­op­ment and a reduced abil­i­ty to cope with stress,” said Dr. Stixrud. “Vir­tu­al­ly every­one finds it dif­fi­cult to pay atten­tion, orga­nize them­selves and get things done when they’re under stress,” he explained. “Stress…

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