information-processing

Why, to improve memory, we need to think of the brain as a system

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(Edi­tor’s Note: every month we host an online Q&A with par­tic­i­pants in the e‑course How To Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach. This is the light­ly edit­ed and anonymized tran­script from the Jan­u­ary Q&A ses­sion; the Feb­ru­ary Q&A will take place on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 12th)

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OK, ready to go! Hap­py 2013 again. You can start writ­ing your ques­tions and com­ments in the box at the bot­tom, and hit Send.

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Ques­tion 
Which activ­i­ties or games or web­sites do you rec­om­mend to improve mem­o­ry? [Read more…] about Why, to improve mem­o­ry, we need to think of the brain as a system

Protect Your Asset by Being Your Own Brain Fitness Coach

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Last week I had the good for­tune of spend­ing four days in Nue­vo Val­lar­ta, Mex­i­co, with over 300 amaz­ing indi­vid­u­als from 40+ coun­tries who had been named Young Glob­al Lead­ers by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. The sum­mit agen­da was insight­ful and inspir­ing, con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er par­tic­i­pants always proved to be eye-open­ing and stim­u­lat­ing, and the over­all atmos­phere was con­struc­tive. You can read more about some of those con­ver­sa­tions here.

What I’d like to high­light in this arti­cle is the remark­able (and option­al) activ­i­ty that start­ed off every day at 7 in the morn­ing. Called “Pro­tect Your Asset” [Read more…] about Pro­tect Your Asset by Being Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach

Transcript: Alvaro Fernandez on Brain Health and Non-invasive Cognitive Enhancement

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­at­ed by Har­ry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs at AARP.

[Read more…] about Tran­script: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Brain Health and Non-inva­sive Cog­ni­tive Enhancement

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

IntelliGym cognitive simulation for Ice Hockey players

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Very inter­est­ing new mar­ket development:

The Mark­er, Israel - Oct 28, 2008, Sharp­Brains,

In oth­er words, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing (ACE) and USA Hock­ey have part­nered to bring to mar­ket a cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tion game to improve the per­for­mance of ice hock­ey play­ers — sim­i­lar to what  ACE has been offer­ing to pro­fes­sion­al and ama­teur bas­ket­ball players.

ACE has raised $2.5M, and ACE and USA Hock­ey have received a joint $800k devel­op­ment grant from the BIRD Foun­da­tion for the co-devel­op­ment of a train­ing sys­tem for Ice Hock­ey play­ers. (The arti­cle men­tions Sharp­Brains’ Mar­ket Report as a sign of how the mar­ket is grow­ing, since we cov­er ACE).

For more con­text on cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions, you will enjoy this Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher:

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Tell us a bit about your over­all research interests.

Daniel Gopher: My main inter­est has been how to expand the lim­its of human atten­tion, infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing and response capa­bil­i­ties which are crit­i­cal in com­plex, real-time deci­sion-mak­ing, high-demand tasks such as fly­ing a mil­i­tary jet or play­ing pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball. Using a ten­nis anal­o­gy, my goal has been, and is, how to help devel­op many “Wim­ble­don-like cham­pi­ons. Each with their own styles, but per­form­ing to their max­i­mum capac­i­ty to suc­ceed in their environments.

What research over the last 15–20 years has shown is that cog­ni­tion, or what we call think­ing and per­for­mance, is real­ly a set of skills that we can train sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. And [Read more…] about Intel­li­Gym cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tion for Ice Hock­ey players

Brain Health: Physical or Mental Exercise?

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Our fel­low blog­ger Jere­my over at Psy­Blog has writ­ten a thought­ful post com­par­ing the val­ue of a num­ber of cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing tools. His over­all verdict?

“The evi­dence for exer­cise boost­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion is head-and-shoul­ders above that for brain train­ing, drugs, nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ments and med­i­ta­tion. Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, on the cur­rent evi­dence, exer­cise is the best way to enhance your cog­ni­tive func­tion. And as for its side-effects: yes there is the chance of an injury but exer­cise can also reduce weight, low­er the chance of demen­tia, improve mood and lead to a longer life-span. Damn those side-effects!”

Arti­cle: Which Cog­ni­tive Enhancers Real­ly Work: Brain Train­ing, Drugs, Vit­a­mins, Med­i­ta­tion or Exercise?

Jere­my, I start­ed writ­ing this as a com­ment to your post in your blog, but then it got too long. Let me write my reac­tion to your post here.

While I appre­ci­ate your analy­sis and share most of your points, I think the “rank­ing” effort (this type of inter­ven­tion is bet­ter than that one) is ulti­mate­ly mis­lead­ing.  It is Rubik's Cube brain exercisebased on a faulty search for a gen­er­al solution/ mag­ic pill for every­one and everything.

If only things were so sim­ple. Per­haps one day there will be research to sup­port that view, but cer­tain­ly not today. A num­ber of inter­ven­tions have shown their val­ue. In dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions, and con­texts. For “exer­cise is the best way to enhance your cog­ni­tive func­tion” to be true, one needs to have a pret­ty spe­cif­ic under­stand­ing of “best”, “your” and “cog­ni­tive function”.

[Read more…] about Brain Health: Phys­i­cal or Men­tal Exercise?