Brain Training and Cognitive Health: September News

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 28, 2008 |

A round-up of inter­est­ed news dur­ing the month: 1) Train­ing Young Brains to Behave (New York Times) 2) Head Games (OpEd in New York Times) 3) Will Geron­tol­ogy rec­og­nize the Brain? (Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging event) 4) Brain func­tion gets a boost from walk­ing (Los Ange­les Times) 5) An idea whose time has (final­ly) come (McK­night’s Long Term Care News) 6)…

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Training Young Brains to Behave

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 23, 2008 |

Great arti­cle in the New York Times titled Train­ing Young Brains to Behave. A cou­ple of quotes: — “But just as biol­o­gy shapes behav­ior, so behav­ior can accel­er­ate biol­o­gy. And a small group of edu­ca­tion­al and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tists now say that men­tal exer­cis­es of a cer­tain kind can teach chil­dren to become more self-pos­sessed at…

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Computerized Cognitive Assessments: opportunities and concerns

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 14, 2008 |

You know your weight. And your phys­i­cal fit­ness. And a vari­ety of health-relat­ed met­rics. What about your brain fit­ness? Two recent announce­ments bring out how the assess­ment of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, or brain func­tions, is increas­ing­ly being done thanks to new com­put­er­ized options: 1) Last week, OptumHealth announced an exclu­sive 3‑year agree­ment (esti­mat­ed at $18m) with…

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Cognitive, Brain News RoundUp

By Alvaro Fernandez | April 18, 2008

Inter­est­ing recent news: 1) A Par­a­digm Shift in Genet­ics (Philadel­phia Inquir­er) 2)  Con­fer­ence on Brain Devel­op­ment and Learn­ing: Mak­ing Sense of the Sci­ence (thanks Pete) 3) 1 in 5 vet­er­ans found with men­tal dis­or­der (Boston Globe) 4) Com­mon Med­ica­tions May Harm Mem­o­ry in Old­er Peo­ple (U.S. News & World Report) 5) Men More Like­ly to Devel­op Cog­ni­tive Prob­lems (Forbes) For more…

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Minding the Aging Brain

By Dr. Joshua Steinerman | February 20, 2008 |

Cog­ni­tive train­ing (the basis for what we call “brain fit­ness” these days) has a wide array of appli­ca­tions. The most recent one, which is cap­tur­ing pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, monop­o­liz­ing media cov­er­age, and cre­at­ing cer­tain con­fu­sion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are for­tu­nate to have Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, offer today his…

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Physical and Mental Exercise: Why Pitch One Against the other?

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 11, 2007 |

Read­er There­sa Cerul­li just for­ward­ed this Let­ter to the Edi­tor that she had sent to the New York Times and went unpub­lished. The let­ter address­es the OpEd men­tioned here (pitch­ing phys­i­cal vs. men­tal exer­cise), and refers to the Cogmed work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing pro­gram, whose results have been stud­ied in mul­ti­ple papers pub­lished in top medical…

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