improve-attention

Johns Hopkins study shows how brain training, if correctly targeted, can enhance cognitive and brain performance

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This train­ing exer­cise boosts brain pow­er, Johns Hop­kins researchers say (Johns Hop­kins release)

“One of the two brain-train­ing meth­ods most sci­en­tists use in research is sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter in improv­ing mem­o­ry and atten­tion, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty researchers found. It also results in more sig­nif­i­cant changes in brain activ­i­ty. [Read more…] about Johns Hop­kins study shows how brain train­ing, if cor­rect­ly tar­get­ed, can enhance cog­ni­tive and brain performance

Update: Brain teasers and brain fitness tips to improve attention and memory in 2016

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3_BRAINSDear Sharp­Brains friend,

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Decem­ber e‑newsletter…and we are hon­ored to announce that the Japan­ese edi­tion of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness just became avail­able, and is doing well! (more below)

Let us wish you Hap­py Hol­i­days and Hap­py New Year, and share a few resources and insights that may come handy in 2016.

Resources to enhance brain fitness in 2016:

New brain research:

Take-aways from the 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit:

BrainFitnessJapanese_Amazon

Meanwhile, in Japan…

 

Best wish­es for a sharp, healthy and hap­py 2016!

The Sharp­Brains Team

Brain Scientists Identify Links between Arts, Learning

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Arts edu­ca­tion influ­ences learn­ing and oth­er areas of cog­ni­tion and may deserve a more promi­nent place in schools, accord­ing to a wave of recent neu­ro­science research.One recent study found that chil­dren who receive music instruc­tion for just 15 months show strength­ened con­nec­tions in musi­cal­ly rel­e­vant brain areas and per­form bet­ter on asso­ci­at­ed tasks, com­pared with stu­dents who do not learn an instrument.

A sep­a­rate study found that chil­dren who receive train­ing to improve their focus and atten­tion per­form bet­ter not only on atten­tion tasks but also on intel­li­gence tests. Some researchers sug­gest that arts train­ing might sim­i­lar­ly affect a wide range of cog­ni­tive domains. Edu­ca­tors and neu­ro­sci­en­tists gath­ered recent­ly in Bal­ti­more and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to dis­cuss the increas­ing­ly detailed pic­ture of how arts edu­ca­tion changes the brain, and how to trans­late that research to edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy and the class­room. Many par­tic­i­pants referred to the results of Dana Foun­da­tion-fund­ed research by cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists from sev­en lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties over three years, released in 2008.

“Art must do some­thing to the mind and brain. What is that? How would we be able to detect that? asked Bar­ry Gor­don, a behav­ioral neu­rol­o­gist and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, who spoke May 8 dur­ing the “Learn­ing and the Brain” con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. “Art, I sub­mit to you with­out absolute proof, can improve the pow­er of our minds. How­ev­er, this improve­ment is hard to detect.”

Study links music, brain changes

Among the sci­en­tists try­ing to detect such improve­ment, Ellen Win­ner, a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at Boston Col­lege, and Got­tfried Schlaug, a pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at Beth Israel Dea­coness Med­ical Cen­ter and Har­vard Med­ical School, pre­sent­ed research at the “Learn­ing, Arts, and the Brain sum­mit May 6 in Bal­ti­more. Their work mea­sured, for the first time, changes to the brain as a result of music training.

For four years, Win­ner and Schlaug fol­lowed chil­dren ages 9 to 11, some of whom [Read more…] about Brain Sci­en­tists Iden­ti­fy Links between Arts, Learning

Does cognitive training work? (For Whom? For What?)

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The grow­ing field of cog­ni­tive train­ing (one of the tools for brain fit­ness) can appear very con­fus­ing as the media keeps report­ing con­tra­dic­to­ry claims. These claims are often based on press releas­es, with­out a deep­er eval­u­a­tion of the sci­en­tif­ic evidence.

Let’s take a cou­ple of recent exam­ples, in suc­ces­sive days:

“It does­n’t work!” type of headline:
Reuters (Feb. 10, 2009)  For­mal brain exer­cise won’t help healthy seniors: research”
Healthy old­er peo­ple should­n’t both­er spend­ing mon­ey on com­put­er games and web­sites promis­ing to ward off men­tal decline, the author of a review of sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for the ben­e­fits of these “brain exer­cise” pro­grams says.

It works! type of headline:
Sci­enceDai­ly (Feb. 11, 2009)  “Com­put­er Exer­cis­es Improve Mem­o­ry And Atten­tion, Study Suggests”
Accord­ing to the researchers, par­tic­i­pants who used the Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram also scored as well as those ten years younger, on aver­age, on mem­o­ry and atten­tion tests for which they did not train.

So, does struc­tured brain exer­cise / cog­ni­tive train­ing work or not?

The prob­lem may in fact reside in ask­ing this very ques­tion in the first place, as Alvaro point­ed out a while ago in his arti­cle Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: too seri­ous to play with head­lines.

We need a more nuanced set of questions.

Why? Because:
1. Cog­ni­tion is made of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties (work­ing mem­o­ry, atten­tion, exec­u­tive func­tions such as deci­sion-mak­ing, etc)
2. Avail­able train­ing pro­grams do not all train the same abilities
3. Users of train­ing pro­grams do not all have the same needs or goals
4. We need to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between enhanc­ing cog­ni­tive func­tions and delay­ing the onset of cog­ni­tive deficits such as Alzheimer’s.

Let’s illus­trate these points, by [Read more…] about Does cog­ni­tive train­ing work? (For Whom? For What?)

Should Social-Emotional Learning Be Part of Academic Curriculum?

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The Secret to Success
New research says social-emo­tion­al learn­ing helps stu­dents in every way.
— by Daniel Goleman

Schools are begin­ning to offer an increas­ing num­ber of cours­es in social and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, teach­ing stu­dents how to bet­ter under­stand their own emo­tions and the emo­tions of others.

It sounds warm and fuzzy, but it’s a trend backed up by hard data. Today, new stud­ies reveal that teach­ing kids to be emo­tion­al­ly and social­ly com­pe­tent boosts their aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment. More pre­cise­ly, when schools offer stu­dents pro­grams in social and emo­tion­al learn­ing, their achieve­ment scores gain around 11 per­cent­age points.

That’s what I heard at a forum held last Decem­ber by the Col­lab­o­ra­tive for Aca­d­e­m­ic, Social, and Emo­tion­al Learn­ing (CASEL). (Dis­clo­sure: I’m a co-founder of CASEL.) Roger Weiss­berg, the orga­ni­za­tion’s direc­tor, gave a pre­view of a mas­sive study run by researchers at Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, which ana­lyzed eval­u­a­tions of more than 233,000 stu­dents across the country.

Social-emo­tion­al learn­ing, they dis­cov­ered, helps stu­dents [Read more…] about Should Social-Emo­tion­al Learn­ing Be Part of Aca­d­e­m­ic Curriculum?

Update: Emerging Tools, Not Magic Pills

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Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our 10 most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please brainremem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Our first Brain Training/ Fit­ness Webi­nar Series was a suc­cess with sev­er­al hun­dred par­tic­i­pants and great feed­back. If you could not par­tic­i­pate, you can still review the pre­sen­ta­tion slides by click­ing Here. A key mes­sage from the series: it is excit­ing that our brains remain more flex­i­ble, at all ages, than was once thought pos­si­ble. The impli­ca­tions? Every sin­gle own­er of a brain can ben­e­fit from learn­ing more about how to main­tain the “It” in “Use It or Lose It.” And which tools, if any, can be help­ful. But, remember,there are no mag­ic pills for cog­ni­tive health and performance.

Mar­ket News

Nation­al Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Ini­tia­tive: Neu­rotech lead­ers ask for help to sup­port a pend­ing bill on fund­ing for appli­ca­tions of brain research.

Lumos Labs rais­es $3 m in ven­ture cap­i­tal:  This web­site pro­vides a stim­u­lat­ing [Read more…] about Update: Emerg­ing Tools, Not Mag­ic Pills