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Despite Insta­gram, YouTube, Face­book, Twit­ter, and tele­vi­sion, (or per­haps pre­cise­ly because of all of them) tra­di­tion­al read­ing is still an impor­tant skill. Whether it is mag­a­zines, pro­fes­sion­al man­u­als or fas­ci­nat­ing books, peo­ple still need to read, now and in years ahead. And much of it is non­fic­tion mate­r­i­al, where it’s impor­tant to real­ly under­stand and then remem­ber what you are read­ing.

An unfor­tu­nate rea­son why many peo­ple don’t read much these days is that they don’t read well. Read­ing, for them, is slow, hard work and they don’t remem­ber as much as they should. They often have to read some­thing sev­er­al times before they under­stand and remem­ber what they read.

Why? You would think that every­one learns how to read well at school. Schools do try, but I work with mid­dle-school teach­ers and they tell me that many stu­dents are 2–3 years behind grade lev­el in read­ing pro­fi­cien­cy. Some of the blame can be placed on fads for teach­ing read­ing, such as phon­ics and “whole lan­guage,” which some­times are pro­mot­ed in shal­low ways that don’t respect the need for both approach­es. And much of the blame can be laid at the feet of par­ents who set poor exam­ples and, of course, on the young­sters who are too dis­tract­ed by social media and tele­vi­sion to learn how to read well.

Now the good news. For any­one who missed out on good read­ing skills, it is not too late to improve now. I sum­ma­rize below what I think it takes to read with good speed and com­pre­hen­sion. Read the rest of this entry »

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Is Your iPhone Real­ly Fry­ing Your Brain? Five Things You Need To Know (Forbes):

“…since the announce­ment of the first iPhone ten years ago this week, con­cerns about devices turn­ing their users into mind­less drones seem to have reached a fever pitch. So is the inter­net real­ly bad for your brain? Here’s what we know…“The aver­age IQ of the pop­u­la­tion at large has been increas­ing every 10 years,” says Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, who runs Sharp Brains, an applied neu­ro­science com­pa­ny. “IQ is not the only thing that mat­ters, but if some­thing was very, very harm­ful for our brains, we would have already noticed it there.”

(but)

“We have to be very care­ful with chil­dren,” Alvaro con­cedes. “[Smart devices] can cre­ate an addic­tion if they are exposed too ear­ly. Adults also have to pre­vent con­stant dis­trac­tions.”

To learn more:

• The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains
• 20 Must-Know Facts To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty And Improve Brain Health

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While sophis­ti­cat­ed neu­roimag­ing tech­niques such as fMRI (func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing) pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant boost in our under­stand­ing of the brain — and research stud­ies con­stant­ly report­ed all over the media — they are very cost­ly. This makes it dif­fi­cult to reach the mass scale required to con­duct mean­ing­ful research and to improve the brain health care of mil­lions if not bil­lions of peo­ple around the globe.

Good news is, Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the increas­ing visu­al media we are increas­ing­ly exposed to, read­ing is still an impor­tant skill. Whether it is school text­books, online news­pa­pers or reg­u­lar books, peo­ple still read, though not as much as they used to. One rea­son that many peo­ple don’t read much is that they don’t read well. For them, Read the rest of this entry »

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Brain Train­ing Data­base: Trea­sure Trove for Pre­clin­i­cal Alzheimer’s Research? (Alz­fo­rum):

“Some researchers think brain games in general—which adapt to each user’s cog­ni­tive ability—may one day serve as cog­ni­tive diag­nos­tics to Read the rest of this entry »