Grand-Rounds

Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Medical Blogging

by

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Grand Rounds blog car­ni­val, the week­ly edi­tion of what’s best in the health and med­ical blo­gos­phere. This week, twen­ty four blog­gers share data, insights, ques­tions, reflec­tions and more. Enjoy! [Read more…] about Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Med­ical Blogging

Upcoming: Grand Rounds Blog Carnival and Brain Fitness Q&A

by

Just a quick note to announce that next Tues­day, Novem­ber 15th, SharpBrains.com will be host­ing two great resources:

1- Grand Rounds Blog Car­ni­val: the week­ly col­lec­tion of what’s best in the health and med­ical blo­gos­phere (see great lat­est edi­tion Here). If you want to con­tribute your own blog post, please do so via this Con­tact Us form.
2- Live Q&A Ses­sion with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, coau­thor of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (recent­ly select­ed as one of the Best Books on Brain Fit­ness by AARP). Ses­sion will take place at 11am Pacif­ic Time/ 2pm East­ern Time, and will be mod­er­at­ed by Har­ry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs at AARP. To learn more click Here.

Please make sure to vis­it us Tuesday!

    Grand Rounds: 22 Health and Medicine Questions and Answers

    by

    Wel­come to Grand Rounds, the week­ly col­lec­tion of best health and med­ical blog posts. This week we invite you to enjoy a broad range of insights, tips, and first-hand sto­ries, pre­sent­ed as a Q&A con­ver­sa­tion with blog­gers will­ing to answer, below, a total of 22 good questions.

    On Health and Medicine

    1. What can one-word pre­scrip­tions deliver
    2. How does food pro­cess­ing change food´s nutri­tion­al value
    3. Can diet Increas­es Risk of ADHD
    4. Is alco­holism an illness
    5. What´s bet­ter: steady dete­ri­o­ra­tion over 10 years, or sym­p­­tom-free life for 9 years fol­lowed by rapid dete­ri­o­ra­tion in year 10

    On Patient Life

    1. As we talk about wellness…what about devel­op­ing self-compassion
    2. Can patients with chron­ic pain still live a full life
    3. What is the patient-doc­tor eti­quette for using Face­book and Twitter
    4. Should patients in an ide­al world con­tract direct­ly with their doctors
    5. What are patient advo­cates focus­ing on these days

    On Health Care pro­fes­sion­als [Read more…] about Grand Rounds: 22 Health and Med­i­cine Ques­tions and Answers

    Update: Live Well to 100 by Using Your Brain

    by

    Here you have the Novem­ber edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing 107px-gray1197thumbnailcog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

    Liv­ing Well to 100

    100 is the new 65: Why do some peo­ple live, and well, to 100? Researchers are try­ing to find out, reports Meera Lee Sethi at Greater Good Mag­a­zine. They are dis­cov­er­ing that genet­ic fac­tors may account for only 20 to 30 per­cent of a per­son­’s lifes­pan, while envi­ron­men­tal and behav­ioral fac­tors can dic­tate the oth­er 70 to 80 percent.

    Does cof­fee boost cog­ni­tive func­tions over time? Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon weighs the evi­dence and reports good and bad news. The good news: long-term effects seem more pos­i­tive than neg­a­tive, so cof­fee leads to no clear harm. The bad news: there are no clear ben­e­fi­cial effects on gen­er­al brain func­tions (impli­ca­tion for pro­po­nents of “smart pills”: don’t use cof­fee as the analogy).

    10 Inno­va­tions for the Aging Soci­ety: In the Thanks­giv­ing’s spir­it, we want to thank 10 pio­neers for emerg­ing inno­va­tions that may help mil­lions of peo­ple alive today to keep our brains in top shape per­haps till we are 100 or more. Many of those pio­neers will par­tic­i­pate in the inau­gur­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit.

    In Autopi­lot?

    Train your autopilot.…and how to turn it off: Madeleine Van Hecke, Ph.D shares an excerpt from The Brain Advan­tage, in which she encour­ages main­tain­ing men­tal “autopi­lot” when it’s work­ing well, yet shift­ing to more con­scious delib­er­a­tions when needed.

    Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­li­ca:  A good way to turn off autopi­lot is to enjoy some great sci­ence and nature blog­ging, cour­tesy of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­li­ca blog car­ni­val. Addi­tion­al­ly, you can enjoy read­ing some of the best neu­ro­science, psy­chol­o­gy and med­ical blog­ging at the first ever com­bined Grand Rounds/ Encephalon edi­tion.

    Games for Health

    Games for Health Research: The Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion announced more than $1.85 mil­lion in grants for research teams to study how dig­i­tal games can improve play­ers health. One of the grantees is UCS­F’s Adam Gaz­za­ley (who will be speak­ing at the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit) to devel­op a dri­ving game for cog­ni­tive fit­ness among younger and old­er adults.

    Smart indus­try-research col­lab­o­ra­tion: Lumos Labs and researchers Susanne Jaeg­gi and Mar­tin Buschkuehl announce a col­lab­o­ra­tion to make the orig­i­nal Dual N‑Back work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing pro­gram avail­able online and use it for ongo­ing research.

    News

    Mar­i­an C. Dia­mond to open Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Kick­ing off our Jan­u­ary 2010 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit is Mar­i­an C. Dia­mond, one of the pio­neers of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty research since the 1960s. She will intro­duce us to the human brain, its anato­my and func­tion, and impli­ca­tions of  neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for brain health and per­for­mance at any age.

    The Sharp­Brains Guide’s reviews and inter­views: a col­lec­tion of links to inter­views and reviews of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness.

    Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion (mem­bers-only): Dis­cus­sion on the future of com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py; Unit­ed BioSource acquires Cog­ni­tive Drug Research; inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ship between Nav­i­gen­ics and Posit Sci­ence; new research on brain impact of Tetris; how a drop in visu­al skills may pre­cede Alzheimer’s Dis­ease;  excel­lent report by the Nation­al Acad­e­mies for the US Army avail­able for free now.

    Brain Teas­er

    Who will you believe, me or your own eyes? dis­cov­er the 3 Win­ners of the 2009 Best Visu­al Illu­sion of the Year Con­test. Neu­ro­sci­en­tists Susana Mar­tinez-Conde and Stephen Mack­nik, who help orga­nize the con­test, will give a fun demo on Mag­ic and the Brain at Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, to dis­cuss the lim­its of human per­cep­tion and cognition.

    Enjoy the final month of 2009!

    Grand Rounds: Brain and Cognition edition

    by

    Encephalon (brain & mind blog car­ni­val, edi­tion ) final­ly meets Grand Rounds (health & med­i­cine blog carnival).

    What a nice sur­prise. Hel­lo. Nice to meet you!

    —

    Note: Chron­ic Babe wins a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness for basi­cal­ly invent­ing cog­ni­tive sleep ther­a­py. Con­grats!

    —

    Life and Death

    Mind­Hacks dis­cuss­es an unex­pect­ed surge in brain activ­i­ty when blood pres­sure drops to zero.

    In Sick­ness & In Health suf­fers a death in the fam­i­ly. Adam shem tov. A man of good name.

    Brain­Blog­ger won­ders, is reli­gion a “nat­ur­al” phe­nom­e­non?

    Mind and Empathy

    Behav­ior­ism & Men­tal Health finds that every­one can have a men­tal ill­ness — take a look at “Adjust­ment Dis­or­der”.

    ACP Internist rein­forces the impor­tance of empa­thy. Nov­el Patient encour­ages patients to dream big, Flo­re­cen­dot­com high­lights how patients them­selves con­tribute to patient safe­ty. The Hip­po­crat­ic Oaf dis­cuss­es the feel­ings of a med­ical stu­dent. Clin­i­cal Cas­es won­ders what doc­tors  in train­ing car­ry in their white coats.

    Advances in the His­to­ry of Psy­chol­o­gy exam­ines an impor­tant ear­ly step in the jour­ney to con­cep­tu­al­ize cog­ni­tion and emo­tion from a neur­al point of view.

    The Fit­ness Fix­er empathizes with her feet.

    Brain

    How to Cope With Pain dis­cuss­es a con­tro­ver­sial treat­ment for severe pain.

    Neu­rophiloso­pher shows how vision (view­ing one’s body) can mod­u­late the sens­es of touch and pain. Fun exper­i­ments  includ­ed. Neu­r­o­crit­ic takes things one step fur­ther, and takes us to the poten­tial future of tat­too removal.

    Prov­i­den­tia announces a new NFL Con­cus­sion Com­mit­tee. 300,000 sports-relat­ed trau­mat­ic brain injuries occur in the Unit­ed States alone each year.

    Sharp­Brains answers 15 com­mon ques­tions relat­ed to neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty.

    Med­ical Smart­phones [Read more…] about Grand Rounds: Brain and Cog­ni­tion edition

    Grand Rounds: Call for Submissions

    by

    Wel­come to the new Sharp­Brains! — we have inau­gu­rat­ed this new theme and look & feel today, so if you find some­thing that does­n’t work, please let us know.

    grandroundslogo

    I will be host­ing Grand Rounds, the week­ly col­lec­tion of great health and med­ical blog­ging, on Tues­day, Octo­ber 20th. Please send me your post at alvaro (at) sharp­brains (dot) com, indi­cat­ing Grand Rounds in the title. Please do so before end of Sun­day, Octo­ber 18th, USA time.

    Option­al theme will be, of course: Cog­ni­tion and the Brain. Would you share your thoughts and expe­ri­ences on how cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy should, will, or may, be used to improve health and health­care? what oppor­tu­ni­ties you see for pre­ven­tive and/ or clin­i­cal care to bet­ter deal with the assess­ment, main­te­nance, rehab, of cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al func­tions, across the lifespan?

    Reward for the extra brain exer­cise? I will give away a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, our recent book, to the blog­ger who (in my edi­to­r­i­al judge­ment) offers the most insight­ful post.

    The theme is option­al. Grand Rounds will include all oth­er impor­tant top­ics you write about. Look­ing for­ward a stim­u­lat­ing edition!