exercise-my-brain

Brain Health: Physical or Mental Exercise?

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Our fel­low blog­ger Jere­my over at Psy­Blog has writ­ten a thought­ful post com­par­ing the val­ue of a num­ber of cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing tools. His over­all verdict?

“The evi­dence for exer­cise boost­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion is head-and-shoul­ders above that for brain train­ing, drugs, nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ments and med­i­ta­tion. Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, on the cur­rent evi­dence, exer­cise is the best way to enhance your cog­ni­tive func­tion. And as for its side-effects: yes there is the chance of an injury but exer­cise can also reduce weight, low­er the chance of demen­tia, improve mood and lead to a longer life-span. Damn those side-effects!”

Arti­cle: Which Cog­ni­tive Enhancers Real­ly Work: Brain Train­ing, Drugs, Vit­a­mins, Med­i­ta­tion or Exercise?

Jere­my, I start­ed writ­ing this as a com­ment to your post in your blog, but then it got too long. Let me write my reac­tion to your post here.

While I appre­ci­ate your analy­sis and share most of your points, I think the “rank­ing” effort (this type of inter­ven­tion is bet­ter than that one) is ulti­mate­ly mis­lead­ing.  It is Rubik's Cube brain exercisebased on a faulty search for a gen­er­al solution/ mag­ic pill for every­one and everything.

If only things were so sim­ple. Per­haps one day there will be research to sup­port that view, but cer­tain­ly not today. A num­ber of inter­ven­tions have shown their val­ue. In dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions, and con­texts. For “exer­cise is the best way to enhance your cog­ni­tive func­tion” to be true, one needs to have a pret­ty spe­cif­ic under­stand­ing of “best”, “your” and “cog­ni­tive function”.

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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