Hillary

Carnival of Education #159: Briefing the Next US President on 35 Issues

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Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

Thank you for stop­ping dur­ing recess for a quick study ses­siMeditation School Studentson. 35 edu­ca­tors have col­lab­o­rat­ed to present this Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion as a use­ful les­son plan for you and your edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy team on what our real con­cerns and sug­ges­tions are.

In case this is your first vis­it to our Sharp­Brains blog, let me first of all point out some use­ful resources to stay sane dur­ing the rest of the cam­paign: select­ed Brain Teasers, a list of 21 great Brain Books, over a dozen inter­views with lead­ing sci­en­tists on learn­ing and brain-based top­ics, and more.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the issues raised. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Edu­ca­tion as a System 

10 (Surprising) Memory Improvement Tips

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Healthy Seniors

There are sev­er­al brain fit­ness top­ics where we still see a large dis­con­nect between research and pop­u­lar knowl­edge, and a major one is the rela­tion­ship between mem­o­ry and stress. Car­o­line and I col­lab­o­rat­ed on this post to bring you some con­text and tips.

Our soci­ety has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with phys­i­cal, imme­di­ate­ly life-threat­en­ing crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and ill­ness­es that gnaw away at us slow­ly, that stress us out and that, believe it or not, end up hurt­ing our mem­o­ry and brain.

Dr. Robert Sapol­sky, in an inter­view about his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, points out that humans unique­ly “can get stressed sim­ply with thought, turn­ing on the same stress response as does the zebra.” But, the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.

What is the rela­tion­ship between stress and mem­o­ry? We all know chron­ic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our mem­o­ry? Inter­est­ing­ly, acute stress can help us focus and remem­ber things more vivid­ly. Chron­ic stress, on the oth­er hand, reduce our abil­i­ty to focus and can specif­i­cal­ly dam­age cells in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain struc­ture crit­i­cal to encod­ing short term memory.

When is stress chron­ic? When one feels [Read more…] about 10 (Sur­pris­ing) Mem­o­ry Improve­ment Tips

Better science and data for eldercare and wellness technologies

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Inter­est­ing arti­cle titled Key to fund­ing for elder­care tech­nolo­gies? Pilots, just pub­lished in CNET. A few quotes:

  • “No mat­ter the size, a pilot not only serves as a means to vet whether an elder­care tech­nol­o­gy will work, but it also gen­er­ates much need­ed data for insur­ance com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment enti­ties to weigh whether they might be will­ing to pay for such tech­nolo­gies, accord­ing to pan­elists Tues­day at the fourth annu­al Health­care Unbound conference.”
  • “Oth­er pilots includ­ed a group of 35 par­tic­i­pants in 2003 with IBM and the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging. The 18-month pilot exam­ined how seniors ages 65 and over used IBM’s soft­ware to change the way a Web site is viewed, such as its font size­col­ors, size of the page and oth­er fea­tures, Gaudet said.”
  • “Front Porch, a Cal­i­for­nia-based orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates a net­work of retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, began a pilot two years ago with Dakim, using its Dakim (m)Power Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness System.”

I’d say the key goes beyond pilots: we need good qual­i­ty and pub­lished research to engage pol­i­cy mak­ers and insur­ance com­pa­nies. And a big­ger focus on pre­ven­tion and well­ness, as we saw in the post Bill Clin­ton on health care and well­ness.

The Dana Guide to Brain Health and Brain Research

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Dana Press kind­ly sent us a cou­ple of books. One of them, The Dana Guide to Brain Health: A Prac­ti­cal Fam­i­ly Ref­er­ence From Med­ical Experts, is our top­ic today.

We are impressed by what Dana is doing to insert neu­ro­science find­ings and impli­ca­tions into the pub­lic discourse.

No big sur­prise then, to find out so much qual­i­ty con­tent inside a 700-page one-of-a-kind guide, some of it, inci­den­tal­ly, pro­vid­ed by Dr. Gold­berg, our Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Advisor.

The guide is real­ly 4 books inside a com­mon bind­ing. Priced at a rea­son­able lev­el, and with superb in-depth text and images in all rel­e­vant areas, the book can be used as a 1) Brain 101 tuto­r­i­al, 2) brief sum­ma­ry of the basics of Brain Care and Well­ness, 3) descrip­tion of the stages of brain devel­op­ment, 4) ref­er­ence guide for around 70 brain-relat­ed con­di­tions. In my per­son­al opin­ion, every neu­ro­science, med­ical and psy­chol­o­gy stu­dent, clin­i­cian and researcher should have this book in their hands to keep abreast of many recent devel­op­ments, and also be exposed to pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment cours­es based on it. Many fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als inter­est­ed in the brain should con­sid­er buy­ing it too.

Giv­en the focus of our blog-brain fit­ness for healthy individuals‑, we par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed the sec­tions [Read more…] about The Dana Guide to Brain Health and Brain Research