Update: Let’s transform brain health from “suffer-in-silence” to “let-me-take-control”

Time for our Sep­tem­ber 2014 e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of insights  and inno­va­tions reports…including four thought-pro­­vok­ing inter­views with Spon­sors of the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th). Enjoy! New per­spec­tives at the fron­tier of Brain, Health & Inno­va­tion: Bar­bara Arrow­smith Young: Every kid should prac­tice stress reduc­tion and tar­get­ed cog­ni­tive exer­cis­es at school Michael Meagher (Cog­nic­i­ti): Let’s trans­form brain…

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When early retirement equals mental retirement and memory decline

The New-York Times reports on the study pub­lished a few days ago in the Jour­nal of Eco­nom­ic Per­spec­tives, “Men­tal retire­ment”: … Data from the Unit­ed States, Eng­land and 11 oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries sug­gest that the ear­li­er peo­ple retire, the more quick­ly their mem­o­ries decline. … what aspect of work is doing that, Dr. Suz­man said.…

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What is Brain Fitness, anyway?

Vijay, one of our read­ers, wrote yes­ter­day a very thought­ful com­ment : “What is brain fit­ness and how it is mea­sured? Is it the same as mind fit­ness which seeks to achieve bal­ance in life?” I am curi­ous to learn how you would answer that ques­tion. I will add my per­spec­tive over the week­end, since I don’t…

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Lifelong Learning and New Neurons in Adults

Very inter­est­ing new study, Crit­i­cal Peri­od Plas­tic­i­ty of Adult-Born Neu­rons, pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­ron by a team of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine researchers. The press release New Adult Brain Cells May Be Cen­tral To Life­long Learn­ing con­tains a good sum­ma­ry (the bold for­mat is mine): “The steady for­ma­tion of new brain cells in…

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Yoga and stress management

Steven Edwards at Wired Blog writes a post titled Yoga Boosts Brain’s GABA Lev­els, say­ing that “Par­tic­i­pants in the yoga group had a 27% increase in GABA lev­els, while those in the read­ing group remained unchanged. Co-authors Chris Streeter from BUSM and Domenic Ciraulo point­ed out that this research shows a method of treat­ing low…

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I have to exercise my brain, too

I was exposed to a fun brain exer­cise on Mon­day: attend my first-ever live TV pro­gram, be ready for 3 very pre­cise questions…and then be asked oth­ers. The anchors were fun. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to observe, behind the scenes, the mak­ing of a news pro­gram: con­stant last-minute appar­ent chaos, the lawyer in the “ask the…

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