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A Look at Lux­u­ry Resorts That Now Offer Brain Health Pro­grams (Next Avenue):

“Like any self-dis­re­spect­ing woman, I’ve spent a life­time of mir­ror scruti­ny (and cash) on my thighs, hips, heart, back, post-baby bel­ly, even my eye­brows. For all this invest­ment, I’ve paid scant atten­tion to the one irre­place­able body part that keeps every­thing else run­ning: my brain.

Why not learn how to show it some love, then, in the nicest pos­si­ble way — by tak­ing it on a brain vaca­tion?

Gray mat­ter is the lat­est twist in the red-hot well­ness tourism cat­e­go­ry, which is grow­ing by 7.5% a year, accord­ing to the Glob­al Well­ness Insti­tute .… “It’s pos­si­ble to alter 70% of your genet­ic des­tiny by chang­ing non­genet­ic fac­tors, with the deci­sions you make. That’s the new field called epi­ge­net­ics,” says Dr. Richard Car­mona, the 17th U.S. Sur­geon Gen­er­al…

Although any­one can learn brain-health basics at home, doing so with pro­fes­sion­al sup­port while on vaca­tion costs, well, big vaca­tion bucks. 10-room Life­works runs $5,000 for four nights of all-inclu­sive meals and activ­i­ties. Canyon Ranch’s “Boost Your Brain” pro­gram costs $500, and that’s above its stan­dard tab of $1,099 per per­son per night — also all-inclu­sive.

Maybe it’s best to think of this as a brain invest­ment as well as a hol­i­day. What’s the price of a brain that works bet­ter, longer?”

Trend in Context:

• Solv­ing the Brain Fit­ness Puz­zle Is the Key to Self-Empow­ered Aging
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress
• 20 Must-Know Facts to Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Improve Brain Health

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Long-term med­i­ta­tion tied to less brain loss (Reuters):

“Peo­ple who report­ed med­i­tat­ing for an aver­age of 20 years had high­er brain vol­umes than the aver­age per­son, researchers report in Fron­tiers in Psy­chol­o­gy.

Kurth and his col­leagues write that they can’t say med­i­ta­tion caused its prac­ti­tion­ers to lose less brain vol­ume, how­ev­er. Oth­er habits of long-term med­i­ta­tors may also influ­ence brain vol­ume…

Near­ly 18 mil­lion adults and 1 mil­lion chil­dren prac­ticed med­i­ta­tion in the U.S. in 2012, Read the rest of this entry »

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Dif­fer­ent men­tal dis­or­ders cause same brain-mat­ter loss, study finds (press release):

“A meta-analy­sis of 193 brain-imag­ing stud­ies shows sim­i­lar gray-mat­ter loss in the brains of peo­ple with diag­noses as dif­fer­ent as schiz­o­phre­nia, depres­sion and addiction…The find­ings call into ques­tion a long­stand­ing ten­den­cy to dis­tin­guish psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders chiefly by their symp­toms rather than their under­ly­ing brain pathol­o­gy. Read the rest of this entry »

You may have  noticed that Amazon.com is shar­ing aggre­gat­ed data on how ebook read­ers inter­act with the books they are read­ing. For exam­ple, the “Pop­u­lar High­lights” sec­tion (towards the bot­tom of our Kin­dle book page) ranks the Top 10 sen­tences that Kin­dle read­ers have high­light­ed and shared while read­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp (April 2009; 182 pages; ranked #1 in Kin­dle Store’s Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine sec­tion).

This infor­ma­tion is invalu­able to authors and pub­lish­ers — as you can imag­ine, we’ll make sure to not only main­tain but to elab­o­rate on these top­ics as we pre­pare future edi­tions of the book.

So, what are so far the Top Ten Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, Read the rest of this entry »

We just noticed that the Alliance for Aging Research offers an excel­lent list of ref­er­ences on Brain Health Research, orga­nized in these 10 sec­tions below. Enjoy!

#1 Nour­ish Your Nog­gin: Eat a Brain Healthy Diet Read the rest of this entry »