improve-concentration

Brain Exercise and Fitness: August Monthly Digest

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Crossword PuzzleAs we announced last month, we are offer­ing a month­ly digest of news. Today we will share the most pop­u­lar August posts. Con­sid­er it your month­ly Brain Exer­cise Magazine!

 

News You Can Use

The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains: our most suc­cess­ful post so far, on how to main­tain fit brains, with over 70,000 read­ers in a few days!

Phys­i­cal Exer­cise Boosts Mem­o­ry: “It is impor­tant for peo­ple of all ages to do 20 to 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic exer­cise sev­er­al times a week.”

 

Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket News

Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram 2.0, Mind­Fit, and more: overview and com­men­tary on recent New York Times and The Times articles.

Brain Train­ing Games and “Games”: 10-ques­tions to help eval­u­ate pro­grams mak­ing brain train­ing claims.

Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, Health and Brain Fit­ness News: a few announcements.

 

Cor­po­rate Well­ness and Training

Train­ing the Aging Work­force: an overview of demo­graph­ic trends and impli­ca­tions, rel­e­vant to every HR and Train­ing pro­fes­sion­al and boomer.

 

On Learn­ing and “Being Smart”

Feed Your Brain with Fun Neu­ro­science: some of my favorite quotes from our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series.

Smart Brains, Becom­ing Smarter, and Intel­li­gence: an essay by David Gamon on what being “smart” means and what hap­pens as we age.

 

Research

Cog­ni­tive train­ing research: Mind­Fit, Lumos­i­ty, Posit Sci­ence, Cogmed: overview of some recent­ly pub­lished and ongo­ing stud­ies.: overview of some recent­ly pub­lished and ongo­ing studies.

Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment and Exer­cise, by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg: a nice pod­cast inter­view with our co-founder, neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg.

 

We hope you enjoy these arti­cles and find them use­fu and stimulating!

Neurotechnology, Health and Brain Fitness News

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Today we have a num­ber of indus­try announcements:

1) New edi­tions of these Blog Car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cif­ic topics)

2) The Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion has launched a Neu­rotech Job Board ded­i­cat­ed to com­mer­cial neu­ro­science (most­ly focused on clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, like drugs and devices, not so much on pre­ven­tion, health & well­ness). And the Kaiser Foun­da­tion Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter is look­ing for a Research Project Man­ag­er.

3) The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence has final­ly released a report of the human enhance­ment work­shop that took place in June 2006. Read more about it at Zack­’s blog.

4) Stephanie West Allen and Dr. Jef­frey Schwartz announce the Sched­ule of Events for their Brains On Pur­pose™ Sem­i­nars (“look­ing at con­flict and the process of con­flict res­o­lu­tion through the lens of neu­ro­science”): Col­orado in Octo­ber and Port­land in November.

5) Reg­is­tra­tion is now open for my class on The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here), Octo­ber 9 30, at UC Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI).

6) A cou­ple of great [Read more…] about Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, Health and Brain Fit­ness News

Bill Clinton on health care and wellness

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We read a good arti­cle on med­ical salaries recent­ly, and are hap­py to see an increased empha­sis pre­ven­tion and well­ness rather than on sickness.

Along these lines, we were for­tu­nate to attend Heal­thetc yes­ter­day, a day-long health event in San Fran­cis­co co-orga­nized by KCBS and CPMC that had Bill Clin­ton as keynote speak­er. You can read an arti­cle on his great inter­ven­tion here.

Some of the speech highlights:

1) Clin­ton’s great overview of key data:

  • 16 vs 10–11: % GDP spent on health care in the US vs. oth­er indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries. This per­cent­age dif­fer­ence equals around $800 bil­lion annually
  • 84 vs 100: % pop­u­la­tion with some form of health insur­ance in the US vs. oth­er countries
  • 34 and 37: rank­ing of the US sys­tem as mea­sured by health out­comes and life expectan­cy, respectively
  • 34 vs 19: % health care costs spent on admin­is­tra­tion in the US vs. oth­er countries

2) He out­lined the 3 main prob­lems with US Health­care as fol­lows-and empathized that any seri­ous, long-term solu­tion needs to [Read more…] about Bill Clin­ton on health care and wellness

Baby Boomers, Healthy Aging and Job Performance

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There has been an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the issues relat­ed to the aging of the legal pro­fes­sion. Stephanie intro­duced us to the arti­cle “the Gray­ing Bar: let’s not for­get the ethics” by David Giacalone.

In short: sta­tis­tics about the increas­ing ratio of lawyers over 70 in active prac­tice, on the one hand, and the gen­er­al inci­dence of Alzheimer’s and oth­er demen­tias, on the oth­er, lead David to point out an increas­ing like­li­hood that some lawyers may be prac­tic­ing in less than ide­al con­di­tions for their clients, beyond a rea­son­able “brain age”. The ques­tion then becomes: who and how can solve this prob­lem, which is only going to grow giv­en demo­graph­ic trends?.

We are not legal experts, but would like to inform the debate by offer­ing 10 con­sid­er­a­tions on healthy aging and job per­for­mance from a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal point of view, that apply to all occupations:

1- We should talk more about change than about decline, as Sharon Beg­ley wrote recent­ly in her great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required).

We dis­cussed some of these effects with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, who wrote his great book The Wis­dom Para­dox pre­cise­ly on this point, at The Exec­u­tive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger.

2- Some skills improve as we age: In our “Exer­cis­ing Our Brains” Class­es, we typ­i­cal­ly explain how some areas typ­i­cal­ly improve as we age, such as self-reg­u­la­tion, emo­tion­al func­tion­ing and Wis­dom (which means mov­ing from Prob­lem solv­ing to Pat­tern recog­ni­tion). As a lawyer accu­mu­lates more cas­es under his/ her belt, he or she devel­ops an auto­mat­ic “intu­ition” for solu­tions and strate­gies. As long as the envi­ron­ment does­n’t change too rapid­ly, this grow­ing wis­dom is very valuable.

3- …where­as, yes, oth­ers typ­i­cal­ly decline: [Read more…] about Baby Boomers, Healthy Aging and Job Performance

Stress Management Workshop for International Women’s Day

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Today is Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day 2007.

Glob­al con­sult­ing com­pa­ny Accen­ture orga­nized a series of events, and I was for­tu­nate to lead a fun work­shop on The Neu­ro­science of Stress and Stress Man­age­ment in their San Fran­cis­co office, help­ing over 125 accom­plished women (and a few men) learn what stress is, its impli­ca­tions for our brain func­tion­ing, per­for­mance and health, and of course some tips and tech­niques to devel­op our “stress man­age­ment” mus­cles. It was an hon­or to be able to wrap up a great event that includ­ed Dis­trict Attor­ney Kamala D. Har­ris, two of the co-authors of This is Not the Life I Ordered, a video by Sen­a­tor Dianne Fein­stein, and some great Accen­ture women.

We dis­cussed how stress is the emo­tion­al and phys­i­o­log­i­cal reac­tion to a threat, whether real or imag­ined, that results in a series of adap­ta­tions by our bod­ies. And how stress man­age­ment can bring a vari­ety of ben­e­fits: sus­tained peak per­for­mance, cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty, mem­o­ry, deci­sion mak­ing, and even longevity.
You can see a very inter­est­ing exam­ple of the rela­tion­ship between atten­tion, mem­o­ry and stress with this exper­i­ment: Atten­tion and work­ing memory

Let me share some key take-aways from the work­shop, togeth­er with some exer­cis­es we used to illus­trate key points:

How can I improve concentration and memory?

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Attention–or con­cen­tra­tion– and mem­o­ry are two crit­i­cal men­tal skills and are direct­ly relat­ed. In fact, many mem­o­ry com­plaints have noth­ing to do with the actu­al abil­i­ty to remem­ber things. They come from a fail­ure to focus prop­er­ly on the task at hand.

Take the exam­ple of not remem­ber­ing where you parked your car after shop­ping at the mall… It is like­ly that you did not pay much atten­tion to where you parked the car in the first place, thus leav­ing your brain with few oppor­tu­ni­ties to reg­is­ter any infor­ma­tion that could be recalled lat­er to help you find your car. The same rea­son­ing goes for not remem­ber­ing where we put our glasses!

Many of our actions are per­formed auto­mat­i­cal­ly. By oppo­si­tion, focus­ing atten­tion is effort­ful. As you know, with age the brain needs more time to process infor­ma­tion.  Along with speed of pro­cess­ing, oth­er brain func­tions decline. A cru­cial one is the abil­i­ty to focus and ignore distraction.

As we age it thus get hard­er and hard­er to pay atten­tion. But focus­ing our atten­tion on the task at hand is key for bet­ter mem­o­ry per­for­mance. What can we do then to improve con­cen­tra­tion and memory?

One gen­er­al solu­tion is to keep the brain healthy. This can be done by adher­ing to the main pil­lars of brain health and main­te­nance: bal­anced diet, phys­i­cal exer­cise, cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion, stress man­age­ment, and social engage­ment.

How to improve concentration

  • Focus on the task at hand: If talk­ing with some­one: ask ques­tions; if read­ing a book or a report: ask your­self how you would sum­ma­rize what you just read to a friend or to your boss.
  • In gen­er­al, avoid and/or elim­i­nate dis­trac­tions. Tune out every­thing else. The hard­er the task, the more impor­tant it is to tune out distractions.
  • Do not try to dou­ble-task, this will increase your errors and divide your atten­tion. Atten­tion is lim­it­ed. When you try to do sev­er­al things at once, you nec­es­sar­i­ly have to divide your atten­tion and thus con­cen­trate less on each indi­vid­ual tasks.Improve Concentration through Meditation
  • Use med­i­ta­tion. Sev­er­al stud­ies have shown that med­i­ta­tion can be a good brain train­ing tool that affects espe­cial­ly atten­tion­al / con­cen­tra­tion skills.

How to improve memory

  • Pay atten­tion and con­cen­trate! (see above)
  • Relate to the infor­ma­tion you are learn­ing. The more per­son­al the infor­ma­tion becomes, the eas­i­er it is to remem­ber it. Ask your­self how it makes you feel. Ask your­self where else you have heard this. Ask your­self whether there is some­thing in your per­son­al life relat­ed to this piece of information.
  • Repeat the infor­ma­tion: Come back to it more than one time. This has been found in tons of stud­ies: repeat­ed infor­ma­tion is eas­i­er to recall. Spaced retrieval (a method with which a per­son is cued to recall a piece of infor­ma­tion at dif­fer­ent inter­vals) is one of the rare meth­ods that show some results with Alzheimer’s patients.
  • Elab­o­rate on the infor­ma­tion: think about it. Things that are con­crete and have a clear mean­ing are eas­i­er to remem­ber than abstract and vague ones. Try­ing to attach mean­ing to the infor­ma­tion you are try­ing to mem­o­rize will make it eas­i­er to recall lat­er. Your brain will have more cues to look for. For instance, try to pic­ture the infor­ma­tion in your head. Pic­tures are much eas­i­er to mem­o­rize than words. To remem­ber fig­ures and per­cent­ages it is much eas­i­er to pic­ture these in a graph for instance. Relate the infor­ma­tion to some­thing you know already.

Keep read­ing…