Debunking 10 Brain Training/ Cognitive Health Myths

By Alvaro Fernandez | June 20, 2009

Think about this: How can any­one take care of his or her brain when every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which seem to con­tra­dict each oth­er? Do sup­ple­ments improve mem­o­ry? Do you need both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise or is one of them enough? Which brain train­ing approach, if any, is worth…

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Brain Teasers on Brain Training/ Games for Health Conference

By Alvaro Fernandez | June 16, 2009

Giv­en the whole dis­tract­ing “con­tro­ver­sy” of whether Nin­ten­do Brain Age “works” or not, I have start­ed to use the fol­low­ing “brain teasers” in my talks in order to help the audi­ence gain a more use­ful per­spec­tive of what is going on. They worked great both in the Medicare Read­mis­sions Sum­mit in DC a few weeks…

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Brain Fitness/ Training Report Finds Market Growth, Potential, and Confusion

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 4, 2009

After many many months of men­tal stim­u­la­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise and the cer­tain need for stress man­age­ment… we have just announced the release of the The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009 report, our sec­ond annu­al com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket analy­sis of the US mar­ket for com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ment and train­ing tools. In this report we…

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Nintendo Brain Age/ Training vs. Crossword Puzzles

By Alvaro Fernandez | January 27, 2009 |

Nin­ten­do brain-train­er ‘no bet­ter than pen­cil and paper’ (The Times): “The sur­vey of ten-year-old chil­dren found no evi­dence to sup­port claims in Nin­ten­do’s adver­tis­ing cam­paign, fea­tur­ing Nicole Kid­man, that users can test and reju­ve­nate their grey cells. The Nin­ten­do DS is a tech­no­log­i­cal jew­el. As a game it’s fine, said Alain Lieury, pro­fes­sor of cog­ni­tive psychology…

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Cognitive News November-December 2008

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 26, 2008

Here you have sev­er­al recent arti­cles and devel­op­ments wor­thy of atten­tion: 1) Boom times for brain train­ing games (CNN) 2) Nav­i­gat­ing the brain fit­ness land­scape: do’s and don’ts (McK­night’s Long Term Care News) 3) USA Hock­ey and Intel­li­gym (press release) 4) Brain Fit­ness at New York Pub­lic Library (NYPL blog) 5) McDon­nell Foun­da­tion grant har­ness­es cog­ni­tive science…

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Brain Training Games @ CNN

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 11, 2008 |

Crisp CNN arti­cle: Boom times for brain train­ing games Includ­ing my final quote “[Brain fit­ness] is not just some fad. The mar­ket is much deep­er than Nin­ten­do.” The “brain fit­ness cen­ter” financed by Ontario is Bay­crest. Com­pa­nies men­tioned: Mind­fit, Posit Sci­ence, Nin­ten­do, All­state, Brain­Builder, MyBrain­Train­er. The reporter and I also dis­cussed in depth the need for…

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