What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite

(Edi­tor’s Note: This is an excerpt from David DiS­alvo’s new book What makes  your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site.) Tak­ing a posi­tion in any argument—large or small—is slip­pery busi­ness for our brains. We can have every inten­tion of hon­est­ly pur­su­ing an answer, yet still fool our­selves into think­ing our method is…

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Michael Merzenich on Brain Training, Assessments, and Personal Brain Trainers

Inter­view with Dr. Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at UCSF, a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant. In 1996, he was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (Nas­daq: SCIL), and in 2004 became co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer of Posit Sci­ence. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1999 and to the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine this year. He retired as Fran­cis A. Sooy Pro­fes­sor and Co-Direc­tor of the Keck Cen­ter for Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Fran­cis­co in 2007. You may have learned about his work in one of PBS TV spe­cials, mul­ti­ple media appear­ances, or neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-relat­ed books.

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Brain Fitness at New York Public Library, next week

Title: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness — Prac­ti­cal Advice to Keep Your Brain Sharp  — Two com­­mu­ni­­ty-based book talks host­ed by New York Pub­lic Library and sup­port­ed by the Ein­stein Aging Study at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Med­i­cine. Descrip­tion: A fit brain? Can you exer­cise your brain and become men­tal­ly fit? Can you con­tin­ue to…

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References on Cognitive Health/ Brain Fitness

This is a par­tial list of the lit­er­a­ture we reviewed dur­ing the research phase of our new book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.  We know many friends of Sharp­Brains are researchers, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, graduate/ Ph.D. stu­dents, who want have direct access to the ref­er­ences (per­haps PubMed should pro­mote itself as a nev­er end­ing source…

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