Information Overload? Seven Learning and Productivity Tips

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 19, 2007 |

We often talk in this blog about how to expand fun­da­men­tal abil­i­ties or cog­ni­tive func­tions, like atten­tion, or mem­o­ry, or emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­­tion. Think of them as mus­cles one can train. Now, it is also impor­tant to think of ways one can use our exist­ing mus­cles more effi­cient­ly. Let’s talk about how to man­age bet­ter the…

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Neuroplasticity 101 and Brain Health Glossary

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 10, 2007 |

Giv­en the grow­ing num­ber of arti­cles in the pop­u­lar press men­tion­ing words such as “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty”, “fMRI” and “cog­ni­tive reserve”, let’s review some key find­ings, con­cepts and terms. First, a pre­scient quote by Span­ish neu­ro­sci­en­tist San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934): “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”. Thanks to new neuroimaging…

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Exercise Your Brain! Enjoy Learning!

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 30, 2007 |

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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Brain Health and Fitness Workshops

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 13, 2007 |

Today I have an announce­ment to make. You prob­a­bly are seeing all the arti­cles about Brain Fit­ness in the press and wondering, “What is this all about?”, “Can some­one help me nav­i­gate through all the pro­grams out there?”, “How is Brain Fit­ness rel­e­vant to me in my per­son­al life or at work?”. Well…we are deliv­er­ing a series of…

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Brain Health for lawyers

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 12, 2007

The Com­plete Lawyer, a legal pub­li­ca­tion dis­trib­uted to bar mem­bers in sev­er­al states, just pub­lished an arti­cle on Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging: How we age is at least par­tial­ly under our con­trol, By Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez. We were hap­py to con­tribute to the ongo­ing debate about ethics and aging in the legal…

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Brain class at UC-Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 9, 2007 |

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…

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