New-York-City

May 6th, New York City: Anticipating and Shaping the Neuropsychology of the Future

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Heads-up about an upcom­ing joint meet­ing by the New York Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy Group and the Psy­chol­o­gy Sec­tion of the New York Acad­e­my of Sciences.

  • What: Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy of the future and how we can pre­pare for it today
  • When: Sat­ur­day May 6th, 2017, 10 am – 1 pm
  • Where: Podell Audi­to­ri­um in Bern­stein Pavil­ion, Mount Sinai Beth Israel 10 Nathan D Perl­man Place NY, NY 10003

The Focus

Please join promi­nent neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists and indus­try lead­ers to explore the future of neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and how you can har­ness recent find­ings and tech­nolo­gies to pre­pare for [Read more…] about May 6th, New York City: Antic­i­pat­ing and Shap­ing the Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy of the Future

Minding the Aging Brain

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Cog­ni­tive train­ing (the basis for what we call “brain fit­ness” these days) has a wide array of appli­ca­tions. The most recentneurons one, which is cap­tur­ing pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, monop­o­liz­ing media cov­er­age, and cre­at­ing cer­tain con­fu­sion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are for­tu­nate to have Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, offer today his great voice to this con­ver­sa­tion. Enjoy!

- Alvaro
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Mind­ing the Aging Brain

– By Joshua R. Stein­er­man, M.D.

Sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, artists, and experts from all fields of human endeav­or lament: it ain’t easy get­ting old­er. It? Do they refer to frailty and dis­abil­i­ty? To bod­i­ly dis­ease? To life at its essence?

It’s all in your head

The mind is not set in stone, but it is encased by bone. It’s real­ly all about the brain, the hyphen in the mind-body conun­drum. That squishy gray neu­ronal jun­gle is the inter­face between inter­nal life and envi­ron­men­tal sen­sa­tions and stim­u­la­tion. As expect­ed, the brain shows signs of aging just as a wrin­kled brow, a stooped pos­ture, or an arthrit­ic fin­ger might. The most com­mon brain changes observed in aging and in age-asso­ci­at­ed neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­ease include:

[Read more…] about Mind­ing the Aging Brain

Cognitive Training Clinical Trial: Seeking Older Adults

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fmri.jpgNeu­ro­sci­en­tists at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter (see our pre­vi­ous inter­view with Yaakov Stern on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve) have asked for help in recruit­ing vol­un­teers for an excit­ing clin­i­cal tri­al. If you are based in New York City, and between the ages of 60 and 75, please con­sid­er join­ing this study.

More infor­ma­tion below:

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Use it or Lose it?

Train your Brain! Healthy adults between the ages of 60 and 75 liv­ing in NYC are invit­ed to join a study of men­tal fit­ness train­ing. Qual­i­fied indi­vid­u­als will play a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-based video game in our lab­o­ra­to­ry, and will be test­ed to deter­mine the effects on atten­tion, mem­o­ry, and cog­ni­tive performance.

You will earn up to $600 plus trans­porta­tion costs if you com­plete the 3‑month program.

This excit­ing study is being per­formed by the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Center.

If inter­est­ed, con­tact us today: [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Clin­i­cal Tri­al: Seek­ing Old­er Adults

‘Brain gyms’ tone minds and reduce stress

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Fun arti­cle in the San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er today on how High-tech ‘brain gyms’ tone minds, reduce stress. Quotes:

  • “Sharp­Brains and Posit Sci­ence are just two of a grow­ing num­ber of start-up com­pa­nies lead­ing the way in the area of pack­ag­ing and devel­op­ing suites of soft­ware they call “brain gyms.”
  • “Sharp­Brains offers a suite of prod­ucts that eval­u­ate buyers’ needs and tar­get their weak­ness, gen­tly push­ing for improve­ment, Fer­nan­dez said. One pro­gram helps improve mem­o­ry using a num­ber game (here); anoth­er pro­vides instant biofeed­back to users so they can prac­tice breath­ing and pos­i­tive think­ing to reduce stress (here), Fer­nan­dez said.”
  • “I can start see­ing the changes in my stress lev­el take place right in front of my eyes,” said Baba Shiv (pro­file here), a neu­ro­sci­en­tist and pro­fes­sor at Stanford’s Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, who uses Freeze-Framer 2.0 (here), one of the pro­grams licensed by Sharp­Brains. By mon­i­tor­ing his stress lev­el through heart mon­i­tors hooked to his per­son­al com­put­er at work, he dis­cov­ered that con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing his e‑mail inbox raised his stress lev­el, Shiv said. Now he lim­its him­self to check­ing e‑mail every two hours, Shiv said.

The reporter did a great job in under­stand­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing a new and some­times com­plex top­ic. Read the arti­cle: High-tech ‘brain gyms’ tone minds, reduce stress.

You can learn more about the research on self-con­trol of our advi­sor Baba Shiv in The Frontal Cor­tex blog’s arti­cle Self-Con­trol is a Mus­cle and in Mind Hacks: (un)emotional invest­ment.