Events

Exercise your brain at these events

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Here are the dates and loca­tions of some upcom­ing events where I will be pre­sent­ing. Please intro­duce your­self if you are attending!

» Sep­tem­ber 4–5th, San Fran­cis­co, CA: sev­er­al Brain Health Pro­mo­tion ses­sions, at the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging conference.

» Octo­ber 9th, Van­cou­ver, Cana­da: Exer­cis­ing Our Brains 101 and Nav­i­gat­ing The Brain Fit­ness Maze, at the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion annu­al conference.

» Octo­ber 11th, San Jose, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Octo­ber 23rd, Pocatel­lo, Ida­ho: Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tion­al Train­ing for Healthy Aging, at the Ida­ho Con­fer­ence on Health Care. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 1st, Berke­ley, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at UC-Berke­ley’s Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 7–9th, Dubai: Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils Inau­gur­al Sum­mit in Dubai, orga­nized by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 17th, New York City: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Research and Impli­ca­tions, at New York Pub­lic Library.

» Decem­ber 5th, San Anto­nio, Texas: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Overview of Research and Tools, at the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Active Aging con­fer­ence. (Infor­ma­tion here).

As always, I will share the main take-aways via this blog. I hope to meet some of you down the road!

Brain Fitness Newsletter: October Edition

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Brain exercise, brain exercisesFol­low­ing our Sep­tem­ber edi­tion, here you are have our Month­ly Digest of the Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sid­er it your month­ly Brain Exer­cise Magazine.

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

Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket News

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness as a New Fron­tier of Fit­ness: excel­lent Los Ange­les Times arti­cle, cov­er­ing the cog­ni­tive exer­cise angle of healthy aging and lead­ing sci­ence-based players.

A Brain Fit­ness Vaca­tion: what does this mean? Well, read this fun arti­cle to discover.

Rethink­ing the Brain Fit­ness Busi­ness: thought-pro­vok­ing arti­cle on the future of the sec­tor from a busi­ness point of view.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness @ Har­vard Busi­ness Review: HBR makes a first attempt to bring neu­ro­science research into help­ing lead­ers per­form at peak lev­els and main­tain sharp brains.

News You Can Use

Train Your Brain to Be Hap­pi­er: impli­ca­tions of neu­ro­science and pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy research for our dai­ly lives-and our hap­pi­ness. Please keep tuned if you are inter­est­ed in this top­ic: we will pub­lish soon a great inter­view with Dr. Robert Emmons, lead­ing researcher in the field of gratitude.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness: 10 Debunked Myths: what are some mis­con­cep­tions that pre­vent many peo­ple from see­ing the tremen­dous poten­tial from this emerg­ing research?. Read this post to dis­cov­er and discuss.

10 (Sur­pris­ing) Mem­o­ry Improve­ment Tips: and why stress man­age­ment is impor­tant for mem­o­ry and our brain.

Teasers

Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games with a neu­ro­science angle: a list of the most pop­u­lar mind games in our blog.

Events

10 High­lights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum: a sum­ma­ry of impres­sions from this great event, includ­ing what can hap­pen when you have sci­en­tists and politi­cians in the same room.

Brain Fit­ness @ Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing, Health events: an overview of a num­ber of con­fer­ences and uni­ver­si­ty class­es with a brain fit­ness angle.

Thought-pro­vok­ing posts

Dar­win’s adult neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: reflec­tions of a beau­ti­ful mind that ‑as self-report­ed at the age of 72- could have been even more beau­ti­ful.The Gene Delu­sion: IQ and the envi­ron­ment: do genes deter­mine our fates? They don’t. They why do we seem to believe so so often?.

Dis­counts for Sharp­Brains readers

Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: the best con­fer­ence bring­ing neu­ro­science research to edu­ca­tors’ minds, Feb­ru­ary 7–9th in San Fran­cis­co. Reg­is­ter before Jan­u­ary 25th, 2008, for a dis­count­ed price and to make sure you can attend and see our workshop!

Mind­Fit 10% spe­cial dis­count: a 10% dis­count on one of the most pop­u­lar brain fit­ness pro­grams, that com­bines both an in-depth assess­ment of cog­ni­tive skills with per­son­al­ized training.

Books and Resources

Best of the Brain from Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can: a superb col­lec­tion of essays for the curi­ous among us.

Select­ed Resources: Arti­cles, Books, Papers: numer­ous links to media arti­cles, sci­en­tif­ic papers, and rec­om­mend­ed books.

Enjoy!

Executive Functions and Google/ Microsoft Brain Teasers

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Inter­est­ing arti­cle: Want a job at Google? Try these brain­teasers first (CNN)

Quote: “Seem­ing­ly ran­dom ques­tions like these have become com­mon­place in Sil­i­con Val­ley and oth­er tech out­posts, where com­pa­nies aren’t as inter­est­ed in the cor­rect answer to a tough ques­tion as they are in how a prospec­tive employ­ee might try to solve it. Since busi­ness­es today have to be able to react quick­ly to shift­ing mar­ket dynam­ics, they want more than engi­neers with high IQs and good col­lege tran­scripts. They want peo­ple who can think on their feet.”

Com­ment: What are those com­pa­nies (Google, Microsoft, Ama­zon) after? Employ­ees with good Exec­u­tive Func­tions. You can try some of the fun teasers in the article:

1) How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

  • About 500,000, assum­ing the bus is 50 balls high, 50 balls wide, and 200 balls long

2) You’re shrunk and trapped in a blender that will turn on in 60 sec­onds. What do you do?

Some options:

1. Use the mea­sure­ment marks to climb out

2. Try to unscrew the glass

3. Risk rid­ing out the air current

3) How much should you charge to wash all the win­dows in Seattle?

  • Assum­ing 10,000 city blocks, 600 win­dows per block, five min­utes per win­dow, and a rate of $20 per hour, about $10 million

 

PS: Enjoy these 50 brain teasers to test your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty. Free, and fun for adults of any age!

 

Neurotechnology, Health and Brain Fitness News

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Today we have a num­ber of indus­try announcements:

1) New edi­tions of these Blog Car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cif­ic topics)

2) The Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion has launched a Neu­rotech Job Board ded­i­cat­ed to com­mer­cial neu­ro­science (most­ly focused on clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, like drugs and devices, not so much on pre­ven­tion, health & well­ness). And the Kaiser Foun­da­tion Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter is look­ing for a Research Project Man­ag­er.

3) The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence has final­ly released a report of the human enhance­ment work­shop that took place in June 2006. Read more about it at Zack­’s blog.

4) Stephanie West Allen and Dr. Jef­frey Schwartz announce the Sched­ule of Events for their Brains On Pur­pose™ Sem­i­nars (“look­ing at con­flict and the process of con­flict res­o­lu­tion through the lens of neu­ro­science”): Col­orado in Octo­ber and Port­land in November.

5) Reg­is­tra­tion is now open for my class on The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here), Octo­ber 9 30, at UC Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI).

6) A cou­ple of great [Read more…] about Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, Health and Brain Fit­ness News

Brain class at UC-Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

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If you are based in North Cal­i­for­nia, you may be inter­est­ed in the class­es just announced by the UC Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. “Berke­ley OLLI is an inquir­ing and stim­u­lat­ing com­mu­ni­ty of adults, age 50 and above, explor­ing new areas of knowl­edge and tra­di­tion­al dis­ci­plines, chal­leng­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing sub­jects.” If you are not in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you can check the clos­est Life­long Learn­ing Cen­ter to you in either the Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute net­work or the Elder­hos­tel one.

You can see a list­ing of their class­es for the Fall 2007 ses­sion, on a fas­ci­nat­ing vari­ety of top­ics. Keep­ing our edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties since 2005 (first deliv­ered in SFSU), I will be teach­ing the fol­low­ing class

The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here)

Octo­ber 9–30th, 4 class­es, 6.30–8.30pm

Loca­tion: Uni­ver­si­ty Hall, UC Berkeley

Descrip­tion: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty (the abil­i­ty to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of what aging means. In this class, we will review the sci­ence behind some of key con­cepts in this field and explore their impli­ca­tions on our lifestyles: neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, the Cog­ni­tive Reserve the­o­ry for healthy aging, com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams, emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­tion, and the 4 pil­lars for life­long Brain Health. We have all heard “Use it or lose it”. Lat­est research sug­gests, “Use it and improve it”.

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the class­es, you can attend the open House on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 18, 10:00 am to 12:00 noon, at the Berke­ley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berke­ley. I can only say that the SFSU class­es were a lot of fun and I am sure the Berke­ley ones will be as compelling.

Lifelong Learning and Brain Health Event in San Francisco on May 16

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If you are in the Bay Area, we hope to see you at this event! Feel free to for­ward the invi­ta­tion below to any­one you know who may be interested.

The grow­ing move­ment for improv­ing brain health has brought many inter­est­ed pro­fes­sion­als and inter­est­ed com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to the table. Shar­ing our infor­ma­tion, activ­i­ties, and planned events to pro­mote brain health increas­es the pow­er of our reach.

Please join us on May 16, 2007 from noon to 1:30pm for a com­pli­men­ta­ry gath­er­ing co-spon­sored by:

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, well-known neu­ro­sci­en­tist and author of The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Old­er and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains and instruc­tor of the Exer­cis­ing Our Brains class, will pro­vide an overview of the sci­ence and trends behind the emerg­ing brain fit­ness field.

Please bring infor­ma­tion on your work and events to share with oth­ers inter­est­ed in brain health.

Where: SFSU OLLI (835 Mar­ket Street, 6th Floor, San Fran­cis­co, Room 675)
When: Wednes­day, May 16, 12–1:30 pm
What: A chance for net­work­ing with [Read more…] about Life­long Learn­ing and Brain Health Event in San Fran­cis­co on May 16