Brain Training: the Art and the emerging Science

Tom alerts us (thanks!) of a fun book review in the New York Times today, by Abi­gail Zuger, titled The Brain: Mal­leable, Capa­ble, Vul­ner­a­ble, on the book The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psy­chi­a­trist Nor­man Doidge. Some quotes: “In book­stores, the sci­ence aisle gen­er­al­ly lies well away from the self-help sec­tion, with hard…

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Cognitive Neuroscience @ MIT OpenCourseWare

The great MIT Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive offers a lot of free mate­ri­als on Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences. You can browse lec­ture notes, read­ings, and more on a vari­ety of psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science cours­es. “The human brain is the most com­plex, sophis­ti­cat­ed, and pow­er­ful infor­­ma­­tion-pro­cess­ing device known. To study its com­plex­i­ties, the Depart­ment of Brain and Cognitive…

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Joaquin Fuster wins the George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience

We are very hap­py that Joaquin Fuster, one of our sci­en­tif­ic advi­sors, has won the 2007 George A. Miller Prize in Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science. The George A. Miller Prize in Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science was estab­lished in 1995 by the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Soci­ety and the James S. McDon­nell Foun­da­tion to hon­or the career con­tri­bu­tions of George A. Miller…

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TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), Iraq and neuropsychology

You prob­a­bly have seen the news about Bob Woodruf­f’s own recov­ery and his arti­cles now to raise aware­ness about the plight of Iraq veterans.In the arti­cle A First­hand Report on the Wounds of War we learn how “Woodruff, 45, is launch­ing a mul­ti­me­dia cam­paign that includes appear­ances Tues­day with Oprah Win­frey and on “Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca,” and the release of a book (“ In an Instant”) writ­ten with his wife, Lee, about their ordeal.”“Woodruff’s report­ing packs an emo­tion­al punch because he is, quite sim­ply, a man who cheat­ed death.… dis­cuss­es what a great work the mil­i­tary is doing to pre­vent deaths of injured sol­diers in Iraq-with the unin­tend­ed con­se­quence that reha­bil­i­ta­tion ser­vices back in the US are com­plete­ly overwhelmed.Neurophilosopher puts this prob­lem in a wider con­text with DoD is neglect­ing troops’ men­tal health.For a bet­ter pre­spec­tive, this is a quote from our inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, talk­ing about the birth of mod­ern neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy dur­ing World War II:“Of course there weren’t advanced neu­roimag­ing tech­niques those days, so sci­en­tists could only spec­u­late about what hap­pened in healthy brains.

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

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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Is physical fitness important to your brain fitness?

Here is ques­tion 18 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Is phys­i­cal fit­ness important?Key Points: Exer­cise improves learn­ing through increased blood sup­ply and growth hormones.Exercise is an anti-depres­sant by reduc­ing stress and pro­mot­ing neurogenesis.Exercise pro­tects the brain from dam­age and dis­ease, as well speed­ing the recovery.Answer:Yes. Accord­ing to Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”According to the research of Richard Smeyne, PhD at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal in Mem­phis, with just two months of exer­cise there are more brain cells and that high­er lev­els of exer­cise were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ben­e­fi­cial than low­er amounts, although any exer­cise was bet­ter than none.

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