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Huntingtons-Disease

Perspective: How brain training games could help patients with Huntington’s disease

July 20, 2018 by Emma Yhnell

– Lia Koltyrina/Shutterstock

In the search for new treat­ments, sci­ence often focus­es on med­ica­tion first. But drugs aren’t the only way to fight ill­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly when look­ing at brain dis­eases. My research looks into how play­ing spe­cial­ly designed com­put­er games might help peo­ple who are liv­ing with Huntington’s dis­ease. [Read more…] about Per­spec­tive: How brain train­ing games could help patients with Huntington’s disease

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain-disorder, Brain-Training, brain-training-games, games, Huntingtons-Disease

Learning & The Brain: Interview with Robert Sylwester

January 6, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Robert SylwesterDr. Robert Syl­west­er is an edu­ca­tor of edu­ca­tors, hav­ing received mul­ti­ple awards dur­ing his long career as a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor of the impli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence research for edu­ca­tion and learn­ing. He is the author of sev­er­al books and many jour­nal arti­cles, and mem­ber of our Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­so­ry Board. His most recent book is The Ado­les­cent Brain: Reach­ing for Auton­o­my (Cor­win Press, 2007). He is an Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oregon.

I am hon­ored to inter­view him today.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Let’s start with that eter­nal source of debate. What do we know about the respec­tive roles of genes and our envi­ron­ment in brain devel­op­ment?

Robert Syl­west­er: Genet­ic and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors both con­tribute to brain mat­u­ra­tion. Genet­ics prob­a­bly play a stronger role in the ear­ly years, and the envi­ron­ment plays a stronger role in lat­er years. Still the moth­er’s (envi­ron­men­tal) use of drugs dur­ing the preg­nan­cy could affect the genet­ics of fetal brain devel­op­ment, and some adult ill­ness­es, such as Hunt­ing­ton’s Dis­ease, are genet­i­cal­ly triggered.

Nature and nur­ture both require the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions of the oth­er in most devel­op­men­tal and main­te­nance func­tions. We typ­i­cal­ly think of envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors as things that hap­pen to us, over which we have lit­tle control.

Can’t our own deci­sions have an effect in our own brain devel­op­ment? For exam­ple, what if I choose a career in invest­ment bank­ing, vs. one in jour­nal­ism or teaching?

We make our own career deci­sions in life, and most of us make a com­bi­na­tion of good and bad deci­sions, which influ­ence our brain’s maturation.

My father was very unusu­al in his career tra­jec­to­ry in that he worked at one place through­out his entire adult life, and died three months after he retired at 91. I’ve always thought that it’s a good idea to make a change every ten years or so and do some­thing dif­fer­ent either with­in the same orga­ni­za­tion or to move to anoth­er one.

It’s just as good for orga­ni­za­tions to have some staff turnover as it is for staff to move to new chal­lenges. The time to leave one posi­tion for anoth­er is while you and your employ­er are [Read more…] about Learn­ing & The Brain: Inter­view with Robert Sylwester

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: attention, Biology, brain, Brain-Connection, brain-development, Brain-Plasticity, BrainConnection, cognition, cognitive-psychology, cognitive-science, competencies, Developmental-psychology, Education & Lifelong Learning, emotion, frontal-lobe, Genetics, Howard-Gardner, Huntingtons-Disease, Learning, Learning-&-The-Brain, mentoring, multiple-intelligences, Nature-and-nurture, neuroscience, Parenting, problem-solving, Robert-Sylwester, schools, Science-and-technology, staff-turnover, Steven-Pinker, teaching, The-Adolescent-Brain

Exercise and The Brain in Newsweek

March 18, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

The new edi­tion of Newsweek brings us a great cov­er sto­ry titled Stronger, Faster, Smarter. “Exer­cise does more than build mus­cles and help pre­vent heart dis­ease. New sci­ence shows that it also boosts brainpower—and may offer hope in the bat­tle against Alzheimer’s.” Check it out!

We addressed the ques­tion Is phys­i­cal fit­ness impor­tant to your brain fit­ness? recently:

Accord­ing to Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.

Accord­ing to the research of Richard Smeyne, PhD at Saint Jude Chil­dren’s Research Hos­pi­tal in Mem­phis, with just two months of exer­cise there are more brain cells and that high­er lev­els of exer­cise were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ben­e­fi­cial than low­er amounts, although any exer­cise was bet­ter than none. He also found that [Read more…] about Exer­cise and The Brain in Newsweek

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: 2008-elections, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-checklist, Brain-health, brain-training-games, Genetics, Grand-Rounds, Huntingtons-Disease, information-overload, Martin-Seligman, mindful, Namibia, Nature-and-nurture, pubmed, school, scientific-american, SCIL, strategic-consulting, work

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