Lifelong-Learning-Institute

Exercise your brain at these events

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Here are the dates and loca­tions of some upcom­ing events where I will be pre­sent­ing. Please intro­duce your­self if you are attending!

» Sep­tem­ber 4–5th, San Fran­cis­co, CA: sev­er­al Brain Health Pro­mo­tion ses­sions, at the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging conference.

» Octo­ber 9th, Van­cou­ver, Cana­da: Exer­cis­ing Our Brains 101 and Nav­i­gat­ing The Brain Fit­ness Maze, at the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion annu­al conference.

» Octo­ber 11th, San Jose, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Octo­ber 23rd, Pocatel­lo, Ida­ho: Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tion­al Train­ing for Healthy Aging, at the Ida­ho Con­fer­ence on Health Care. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 1st, Berke­ley, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at UC-Berke­ley’s Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 7–9th, Dubai: Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils Inau­gur­al Sum­mit in Dubai, orga­nized by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 17th, New York City: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Research and Impli­ca­tions, at New York Pub­lic Library.

» Decem­ber 5th, San Anto­nio, Texas: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Overview of Research and Tools, at the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Active Aging con­fer­ence. (Infor­ma­tion here).

As always, I will share the main take-aways via this blog. I hope to meet some of you down the road!

The Science and Practice of Brain Fitness

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A few quick updates: Lecture

1)  Yes­ter­day we had a fun webi­nar with John Med­i­na, author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School.

You may enjoy check­ing out the slides we dis­cussed.

2) Please remem­ber that there is anoth­er webi­nar com­ing, next Tues­day. I hope you can join us!

Webi­nar: In “The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, I will pro­vide an overview of the Brain 101, lat­est research find­ings and impli­ca­tions for how to improve brain health and per­for­mance based on my class at UC-Berke­ley Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute and speak­ing engagements.
— Tar­get audi­ence: Any­one who wants to learn more about brain health and per­for­mance. This is designed to be not a tech­ni­cal ses­sion, but a fun, stim­u­lat­ing hour.
— Date and time: Tues­day June 10th, 2pm EDT/ 11am PDT
Reg­is­ter: Here

[Read more…] about The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fitness

Workshop on Brain Fitness: The Science and Practice

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LectureFyi, I will be teaching this work­shop soon, as part of our col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Institutes: 

 

San José State University’s Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (web­site) presents 

Title: Brain Fit­ness: The Sci­ence and Practice.

When: Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2008 9:30–3:30

What: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty (the abil­i­ty to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of what aging means. In this class, we will review the sci­ence behind some of the key con­cepts in this field and explore their impli­ca­tions on our lifestyles in a fun and engag­ing way. We have all heard “Use it or lose it.” Lat­est research sug­gests, “Use it and improve it!” [Read more…] about Work­shop on Brain Fit­ness: The Sci­ence and Practice

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