mental-decline

Brain Health and Fitness Workshops

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Today I have an announce­ment to make. You prob­a­bly are seeing all the arti­cles about Brain Fit­ness in the press and wondering, “What is this all about?”, “Can some­one help me nav­i­gate through all the pro­grams out there?”, “How is Brain Fit­ness rel­e­vant to me in my per­son­al life or at work?”. Well…we are deliv­er­ing a series of work­shops to com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions com­bin­ing mod­ules ‑includ­ing sci­en­tif­ic overview, the indus­try trends and key play­ers, fun team-build­ing exer­cis­es- that can be tai­lored to each orga­ni­za­tion’s spe­cif­ic needs. Ses­sions last from 1 to 6 hours, depend­ing on the group’s com­po­si­tion and agen­da and are deliv­ered either in per­son or via web conference.

We want to be able to reach more orga­ni­za­tions, so please let us know of any ideas!

Some recent examples

1. Man­ag­ing Stress for Peak Per­for­mance (we men­tioned some notes on an Accen­ture ses­sion)

New and chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions – such as tak­ing on new responsibilities– can trig­ger reac­tions in our brain and body that lim­it or even block our deci­sion-mak­ing abil­i­ties. These reac­tions may also harm our long-term brain pow­er and health. Although we can­not avoid change and stress­ful sit­u­a­tions, we can learn how to man­age our stress lev­els to ensure peak per­for­mance-even in tough moments. The lat­est neu­ro­science research proves that stress man­age­ment is a train­able “mental muscle.” This is true for any high pres­sure pro­fes­sion, be it trad­ing, sports, or sim­ply mod­ern life.

2. The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (sim­i­lar to what I will teach at UC Berke­ley OLLI)

Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty (the abil­i­ty to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of [Read more…] about Brain Health and Fit­ness Workshops

Brain Health through Serious Games and Brain Exercise

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Eliane writes a great post esti­mat­ing the size of the Seri­ous Games Mar­ket, build­ing on the over­all Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers report that seemed to indi­cate that the Glob­al Video Game Mar­ket is Set to Explode.

Some quotes

  • “The over­all gam­ing audi­ence con­tin­ues to expand and become some­what more female and old­er than in the past thanks to casu­al games and games becom­ing an “impor­tant part of cul­ture” — which in my view would embed the Seri­ous Games segment.”
  • “Where­as the mil­i­tary was one of the first cus­tomers of Seri­ous Games, it has been joined by a long line of users, includ­ing oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies, health­care providers, schools (both K‑12 and uni­ver­si­ties) and For­tune 500 com­pa­nies (for team build­ing, lead­er­ship train­ing, sales train­ing and prod­uct edu­ca­tion, among others).”
  • “This is my con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate: the Seri­ous Games mar­ket would be rang­ing between $200 — 400 mil­lion per year only in US, in 2007. ”
  • “There is now an emer­gent sup­ply chain for Cor­po­rate Seri­ous Games, with a num­ber of cor­po­ra­tions tak­ing [Read more…] about Brain Health through Seri­ous Games and Brain Exercise

Brain Exercise for the Frontal lobes: the McKinsey Mind

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My first full-time job was as a strate­gic con­sul­tant at McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny. A very intense 2‑year learn­ing experience.

Their Alum­ni News Ser­vice recent­ly inter­viewed me and pub­lished this great arti­cle on Sharp­Brains. The writer does a superb job of pro­vid­ing an overview of what we do, so I rec­om­mend you read it. I’d like to empha­size the fol­low­ing quotes for any­one look­ing for jobs these days, so that “brain exer­cise” is part of the equation:

  • “Alvaro has some very high praise for the men­tal gym­nas­tics that the McK­in­sey expe­ri­ence pro­vides.  Giv­en that the frontal lobes in our brain (behind the fore­head) only mature in our late 20s, he says, the jobs we take in our ear­ly and mid-20s are very impor­tant not only for our career prospects, but also for our brain devel­op­ment fit­ness. This is the stage in our life where, con­scious­ly or not, we can improve our deci­sion-mak­ing, ini­tia­tive and self-reg­u­la­tion abil­i­ties, all of which lit­er­al­ly affect the phys­i­cal growth of our frontal lobes in a sig­nif­i­cant way.”
  • “Join­ing McK­in­sey as a BA is lit­er­al­ly like join­ing a brain gym, Alvaro says. “The demands of the McK­in­sey mod­el. [Read more…] about Brain Exer­cise for the Frontal lobes: the McK­in­sey Mind

SharpBrains Mental Workout at Cisco Systems

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A cou­ple of weeks ago we had a very fun team-build­ing ses­sion, Sharp­Brains at Cis­co Sys­tems, dur­ing the retreat of a Cis­co Sys­tems group. We cov­ered recent brain research and its impli­ca­tions for learn­ing and train­ing, and we intro­duced a lot of fun games and activ­i­ties. Some key take-aways for par­tic­i­pants were:

  1. There are fre­quent­ly dif­fer­ent, but equal­ly valid, ways to look at things. We bet­ter try to under­stand each oth­er before we try to impose our ideas (See old lady-young lady game in a lat­er post, under title “What do you see?”)
  2. We need to train our “3 inte­grat­ed brains” and 7 key “men­tal muscles”
  3. Good brain exer­cise requires nov­el­ty, vari­ety and practice.
  4. Doing our best at work and life helps train our brains. Train­ing our brains helps us do our best at work and in life.

We went through some areas rel­e­vant to busi­ness life, through the eyes of neuroscience

  1. Devel­op Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion through movement
  2. Improve Team­work through emo­tion­al under­stand­ing, appre­ci­a­tion and learn­ing to man­age stress
  3. Man­age mul­ti-task­ing through Atten­tion and Mem­o­ry techniques
  4. Lead­er­ship through focus, plan­ning and learning
  5. Com­mu­ni­cate through relat­ing to dai­ly expe­ri­ences, and analogies
  6. Improve con­fi­dence through a clear vision, and visu­al­ize success

If you were in charge of train­ing exec­u­tives in your com­pa­ny, what oth­er areas would you emphasize?