New Speakers, Sponsor, Partners, for SharpBrains Summit

Our inau­gur­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit con­tin­ues to grow momen­tum — here goes a quick update. New Speak­ers: Thomas M. War­den is Assis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent and Leader of Allstate’s Research and Plan­ning Cen­ter (ARPC). He helps sets ARPC’s research agen­da and man­age its exe­cu­tion by 60-mem­ber ARPC staff, lead­ing the devel­op­ment of sig­nif­i­cant inno­va­tions that con­tribute to…

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Agenda: ASA Brain Health Day, Powered by SharpBrains

The Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging and Sharp­Brains have part­nered to co-pro­­duce a pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment day for pro­fes­sion­als in the field of aging. The day is themed “New Tools, New Part­ner­ships”, and will take place on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2009, dur­ing ASA’s West Coast Con­fer­ence on Aging, in the Oak­land Mar­riot City Cen­ter, Oak­land, CA. “Giv­en aging…

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Learning & The Brain Conference: discount for SharpBrains readers

Con­text: Last Feb­ru­ary we had the chance to attend a great con­fer­ence on how brain research is influ­enc­ing edu­ca­tion. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Car­o­line wrote our impres­sions, sum­ma­rized as “It was a fas­ci­nat­ing mix of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors talk­ing with and lis­ten­ing to each oth­er. Some top­ics were meant to be applied today, but many were food…

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Exercise Your Brain! Enjoy Learning!

Dr. Michael Merzenich has writ­ten a great post titled “cog­ni­tive reserve is a good thing to work on!. Rec­om­mend­ed read­ing if you are inter­est­ed in anoth­er sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive for cog­ni­tive train­ing. I agree we should know more (as usu­al), espe­cial­ly for pol­i­cy deci­sions, but there is enough research, from Mar­i­an Dia­mond et al (see beautiful…

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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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