To call, or to text, that is the (mental well-being) question

By Greater Good Science Center | November 3, 2020

Like most peo­ple, I’ve been doing a lot of tex­ting with friends and fam­i­ly late­ly. COVID-19 (and the phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion it neces­si­tates) has made social­iz­ing in per­son very lim­it­ed, which means I’ve had to work hard­er than ever to keep my rela­tion­ships strong and healthy. But a new study sug­gests that if that’s my aim,…

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Move, Nourish, Connect, Be: Four daily habits to protect our mental well-being while sheltering in place

By Greater Good Science Center | April 1, 2020 |

__ It’s a crazy time. Here in the Cal­i­for­nia, we are shel­ter­ing-in-place, leav­ing the house only for essen­tials like gro­ceries and med­ical care. And while we’re all (appro­pri­ate­ly) focused on car­ing for the phys­i­cal health of our­selves, our fam­i­lies, our com­mu­ni­ties, and soci­ety at large, our men­tal, emo­tion­al, and social health needs are quick­ly emerging…

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Neuroplasticity and “real” Brain Games: The opportunity at hand

By SharpBrains | March 23, 2016

In prepa­ra­tion for the new sea­son of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Brain Games, their pro­duc­ers asked me to par­tic­i­pate in a vir­tu­al round­table around this thought-pro­­vok­ing ques­tion: Do you think indi­vid­u­als can train their brain to respond in a par­tic­u­lar way to cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, or do you think our brain’s innate “star­tle response” is too hard­wired to alter? My…

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What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite

By David DiSalvo | November 29, 2011

(Edi­tor’s Note: This is an excerpt from David DiS­alvo’s new book What makes  your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site.) Tak­ing a posi­tion in any argument—large or small—is slip­pery busi­ness for our brains. We can have every inten­tion of hon­est­ly pur­su­ing an answer, yet still fool our­selves into think­ing our method is…

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New resource: Brain Fitness for All

By SharpBrains | April 26, 2010 |

In light of the cur­rent BBC-led con­tro­ver­sy on whether “brain train­ing” works, we believe it is crit­i­cal to spend some time dis­cussing the basics of brain func­tion­ing and brain-healthy lifestyles, what “brain train­ing” is and isn’t (to be accu­rate, the BBC did­n’t test Brain Train­ing as a cat­e­go­ry, only the new games that their researchers…

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Manage Stress for Your Brain Health

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 23, 2008

We just received this very insight­ful essay on stress man­age­ment and brain health writ­ten by Lan­don, a home­school­er and par­tic­i­pant in Susan Hill’s writ­ing work­shop. Susan asked her stu­dents to write about impli­ca­tions of recent brain research. Enjoy the arti­cle and the long week­end (at least here in the US) and Relax… ——————— Stress Man­age­ment for…

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