human-capital

Why stress regulation and working memory are core building blocks of lifelong resilience

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How anx­i­ety affects your focus (BBC Worklife):

Feel like you can’t con­cen­trate on any­thing at the moment? You’re not alone. The extra anx­i­ety caused by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has impaired our work­ing mem­o­ry, experts say … What’s hap­pen­ing is a mal­func­tion of work­ing mem­o­ry: the abil­i­ty to grasp incom­ing infor­ma­tion, form it into a cohe­sive thought, and hold onto it long enough to do what you need to with it.

In oth­er words, work­ing mem­o­ry is the abil­i­ty to rea­son in real time, and it’s a big part of what makes the human brain so pow­er­ful. But research has showed that rapid­ly chang­ing cir­cum­stances, wor­ry and anx­i­ety can all have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on your abil­i­ty to focus.

[Read more…] about Why stress reg­u­la­tion and work­ing mem­o­ry are core build­ing blocks of life­long resilience

Accenture ranked #10 Holder of Pervasive Neurotech Intellectual Property*

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accentureAccen­ture is a multi­na­tion­al firm pro­vid­ing con­sult­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, and out­sourc­ing ser­vices to enter­prise clients. As human cap­i­tal is the pri­ma­ry val­ue dri­ver for Accen­ture’s ser­vices, Accen­ture has devised large num­ber of process­es [Read more…] about Accen­ture ranked #10 Hold­er of Per­va­sive Neu­rotech Intel­lec­tu­al Property*

Update: How to hold off Alzheimer’s Disease 8+ Years (even APOE4 carriers)

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woman_brain___

Time for Sharp­Brains’ June 2014 e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of insights, sci­ence reports, upcom­ing events, and fun brain teasers.

First of all, let us high­light what may well become the research find­ing of the year. As you can read in Men­tal stim­u­la­tion over genet­ics: How to hold off Alzheimer’s Dis­ease 8+ Years, “For APOE4 car­ri­ers with high life­time intel­lec­tu­al enrich­ment, the onset of cog­ni­tive impair­ment was approx­i­mate­ly 8.7 years lat­er com­pared with low life­time intel­lec­tu­al enrichment.”

Should­n’t accu­mu­lat­ing find­ings like this inform human cap­i­tal and health poli­cies across the whole lifes­pan, and also how all of us lead our lives, har­ness­ing neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty the right way to max­i­mize men­tal per­for­mance at any age and to delay decline and disease?

New think­ing

New research

New tech­nolo­gies

Upcom­ing events

Brain teasers

That’s all for today. Have a great summer!

Neuroleadership, Human Capital and Technology in Washington, DC next week

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washingtonHeads-up: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will speak at the 2013 Neu­rolead­er­ship Sum­mit tak­ing place next week in Wash­ing­ton, DC, with an over­all theme of “The Neu­ro­science of Lead­er­ship Effec­tive­ness.” His ses­sion is titled Tech­nol­o­gy Solu­tions and promis­es to spark stim­u­lat­ing con­ver­sa­tions: [Read more…] about Neu­rolead­er­ship, Human Cap­i­tal and Tech­nol­o­gy in Wash­ing­ton, DC next week

Brain Fitness: Definition, Priorities, and Links to Neuroleadership and Human Capital

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Yes­ter­day we had a fun ses­sion on Brain Fit­ness dur­ing the Neu­rolead­er­ship Sum­mit tak­ing place now in San Fran­cis­co, explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to enhance per­for­mance and health of lead­ers and work­forces by deploy­ing both old tools (like breath­ing and med­i­ta­tion) and new ones (such as biofeed­back and data­base-dri­ven per­son­al­ized brain train­ing solu­tions). Here are a cou­ple of the main ideas I want­ed to introduce:

A. Let’s define Brain Fit­ness as an “inte­grat­ed approach to enhance brain func­tion­al­i­ty”, com­bin­ing as appro­pri­ate lifestyle, inva­sive and non-inva­sive options. “Brain fit­ness” is above all an out­come, a cul­ture, sim­i­lar to “phys­i­cal fit­ness” (jok­ing­ly, I also said that “brain fit­ness” is the part of “phys­i­cal fit­ness” that “phys­i­cal fit­ness” does­n’t yet know what to do with)

B. Then, the ques­tion becomes, “what are the most impor­tant brain func­tions to enhance/ develop/ main­tain?”. Here I shared the fol­low­ing results [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness: Def­i­n­i­tion, Pri­or­i­ties, and Links to Neu­rolead­er­ship and Human Capital

Making Healthy Choices: Primare Care and Prevention

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Hiroshi Komiya­ma, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo and Chair­per­son of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy I am a mem­ber of, just pro­vid­ed coun­cil mem­bers with a brief update of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the recent World Eco­nom­ic Forum.

Part of the pro­ceed­ings are pub­lic — you may enjoy read­ing this pan­el write-up of the ses­sion Health­care under Stress:

- “Japan has the world’s old­est pop­u­la­tion. Health and longevi­ty cre­ate wealth and, thus, “health begets wealth”. It is doc­u­ment­ed that nations that devel­op a five-year life expectan­cy advan­tage also cre­ate a larg­er GDP. A healthy child­hood and adult­hood con­tribute to a more pro­duc­tive old age. New mar­kets and indus­tries are aris­ing – “sil­ver indus­tries” such as finan­cial ser­vices, health, hous­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty geared to senior cit­i­zens. Longevi­ty needs to be linked to health – includ­ing cog­ni­tive health – and lifestyle choic­es play a major role in health.”

- “The pub­lic health focus is shift­ing from infec­tions to car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases. Com­plex new mod­els are nec­es­sary to devel­op bet­ter respons­es and improved health – with the pri­ma­ry empha­sis on “real­ly good pri­ma­ry health­care” and pre­ven­tion – to low­er costs. Pre­ven­tion increas­es the healthy years of a person’s life. The chal­lenge is cre­at­ing the incen­tive for pre­ven­tion: how can peo­ple be encour­aged to make healthy choic­es? Mobi­lized pop­u­la­tions can dri­ve the change. Fin­land has an 80% low­er inci­dence of heart dis­ease than 30 years ago due to such incentives.”

Full write-up: Health­care under Stress

Relat­ed articles:

- The Future of the Aging Soci­ety: Bur­den or Human Capital?

- Update: Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Innovation