NYPL

Brain Fitness at New York Public Library, next week

by

Title: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness — Prac­ti­cal Advice to Keep Your Brain Sharp NYPL

- Two com­mu­ni­ty-based book talks host­ed by New York Pub­lic Library and sup­port­ed by the Ein­stein Aging Study at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine.

Descrip­tion: A fit brain? Can you exer­cise your brain and become men­tal­ly fit? Einstein Aging StudyCan you con­tin­ue to learn and increase your brain’s capac­i­ty at any age? Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, says Yes!, and in this pro­gram he will show you how. Based on research com­piled from lead­ing sci­en­tists in fields of Neu­ro­science, Geron­tol­ogy, and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence, and pre­sent­ed in his book “The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness”, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will pro­vide ways to main­tain and improve your cog­ni­tive health.

He will:
— Debunk 10 Myths of Brain Fitness
— Exam­ine the 4 Pil­lars of Brain Maintenance
— Dis­cuss the dif­fer­ence between Men­tal Exer­cise and Men­tal Activity
— Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing Software
— Explore emerg­ing trends

Book and Bio: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, teach­es “Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness” at UC-Berke­ley and San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty. He is the co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.

When and where: 
> Sep­tem­ber 23rd, 10am, New York Pub­lic Library, Bronx Library Cen­ter. 310 East Kings­bridge Road. (718) 579‑4244. More infor­ma­tion here.

> Sep­tem­ber 25rd, 1pm, New York Pub­lic Library, Stephen Schwarz­man Build­ing Audi­to­ri­um. Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. 917-ASK-NYPL (917–275-6975). More infor­ma­tion here.

Update: Retooling Use It or Lose It at New York Public Library

by

Here you have the Sep­tem­ber edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health Brain Fitnessand brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

In the cur­rent edi­tion of The Jour­nal on Active Aging, I dis­cuss why we need to Retool “Use it or lose it”, and why rou­tine, doing things inside our com­fort zones, is the most com­mon ene­my of the nov­el­ty, vari­ety and chal­lenge our brains need. You can read the full arti­cle for free Here.

Book Tour

We are glad to report that The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness con­tin­ues to obtain excel­lent endorsements:

“This is the only book that I know of that seam­less­ly inte­grates lat­est infor­ma­tion about cog­ni­tive health across the lifes­pan. Very use­ful to any­one inter­est­ed in brain care.”

–Arthur Kramer, Ph. D., Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty of Illinois

“…we now have a rock sol­id primer on brain health that we can rec­om­mend with confidence…I found it par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive to start the book with a list of ten brain myths that need debunking.”
–Michael C. Pat­ter­son, for­mer Man­ag­er NRTA/ Stay­ing Sharp at AARP

The offi­cial book tour starts this week, and includes New York Pub­lic Library!
09/08: Club One Fit­ness Cen­ter, Petaluma, CA
09/09: San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty OLLI
09/11: ASA Brain Health Day, Oak­land, CA
09/23: New York Pub­lic Library, Bronx Library Center
09/25: New York Pub­lic Library, Stephen Schwarz­man Building
10/06, Smart­Sil­vers MIT North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Palo Alto, CA
10/14: UC-Berke­ley OLLI, CA

You can find all the details here. If you haven’t read the book yet, you can order it via Ama­zon Here (print book) or Here (Kin­dle edi­tion). Or ask your local book­store or library.

Brain Reserve

Edu­ca­tion AND Life­long Cog­ni­tive Activ­i­ties Delay Mem­o­ry Loss: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon reports how a recent fol­low-up to the Bronx Aging Study, where 488 ini­tial­ly healthy adults have been tracked over 20 years, shows that every addi­tion­al cog­ni­tive “activ­i­ty day” (par­tic­i­pat­ing in one activ­i­ty for one day a week) helps delay for about two months the onset of rapid mem­o­ry loss as we grow older.
Need ideas for extra activities?

Chang­ing our Minds…by Read­ing Fic­tion: What about get­ting a nov­el in your hands (or writ­ing one)? By imag­in­ing many pos­si­ble worlds, argues psy­chol­o­gist Kei­th Oat­ley, fic­tion gives us the sur­prise which can help expand our under­stand­ing of our­selves and the social world.

Sharp­Brains Fan Page in Face­book: What about par­tic­i­pat­ing in our new Fan Page at Face­book? You can not only receive lat­est updates but com­ment on your favorite arti­cles and teasers, and dis­cuss your own ideas and resources.

Med­ica­tion and Training

Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment via Phar­ma­col­o­gy AND Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy: our co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg inte­grates three appar­ent­ly sep­a­rate worlds ‑cog­ni­tive enhance­ment via drugs, brain fit­ness train­ing soft­ware, com­put­er­ized neu­rocog­ni­tive assessments‑, in a much updat­ed new edi­tion of his book The Exec­u­tive Brain.

Com­par­ing Cog­ni­tive Train­ing & Med­ica­tion Treat­ment for ADHD: a recent study shows that work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing improves work­ing mem­o­ry more than stim­u­lant med­ica­tion treat­ment-and ben­e­fits per­sist longer. Does this mat­ter?, Does this mean train­ing is bet­ter than med­ica­tion for kids with atten­tion deficits?  Dr. David Rabin­er dis­sects the study search­ing for answers.

Inno­va­tion

AAA to deploy Dri­ve­Sharp: Peter Kissinger, CEO of the AAA Foun­da­tion, explains why the cur­rent sys­tem of dri­ver licens­ing is inad­e­quate and incon­sis­tent, why AAA is rec­om­mend­ing old­er dri­vers use a new cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, and why he believes insur­ance com­pa­nies will soon start to offer brain train­ing to their members.

Sharp­Brains Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion: in order to help lead­ers of the brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health com­mu­ni­ty learn, con­nect and col­lab­o­rate, Sharp­Brains has cre­at­ed a vir­tu­al LinkedIn net­work for clients. The net­work will be for­mal­ly launched with a webi­nar on Sep­tem­ber 29th that will dis­cuss The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket in 2009. For orga­ni­za­tions that want to order the report, attend the webi­nar, and join the net­work, more infor­ma­tion is avail­able Here.

Brain Teas­er

Brain Quiz: Do You Have a Brain?: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon dares you to answer these 10 ques­tions cor­rect­ly to prove that you have a brain.

Enjoy!

Cognitive News November-December 2008

by

Here you have sev­er­al recent arti­cles and devel­op­ments wor­thy of attention:Brain Health News

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 to improve stu­dent learn­ing (press release)
6) Health insur­ance firms offer­ing online cog­ni­tive ther­a­py for insom­nia (Los Ange­les Times)
7) Head­Min­der Cog­ni­tive Sta­bil­i­ty Index: Com­put­er­ized Neu­rocog­ni­tive … (Press release)
8) THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE (Intel­li­gent Life)
9) Work­ing Lat­er in Life May Facil­i­tate Neur­al Health (Cere­brum)
10) The Cool Fac­tor: Nev­er Let Them See You Sweat (New York Times)

Links, select­ed quotes and com­men­tary: [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive News Novem­ber-Decem­ber 2008

Brain Fitness at New York Public Library

by

A few weeks ago I had the plea­sure to give a talk to one hun­dred or so staff mem­bers at New York Pub­lic Library. As you would expect, it was a very stim­u­lat­ing group, and one of the par­tic­i­pants, Brigid Caha­lan, just wrote a fun blog post on her impres­sions from the event:

Brain Fit­ness at New York Pub­lic Library:

- “After attend­ing a recent staff train­ing ses­sion offered by the library’s Office of Staff Devel­op­ment, I decid­ed to return to a habit of my childhood–eating sardines.”
— key pil­lars for brain health …are… “1) A bal­anced diet; 2) Car­dio­vas­cu­lar phys­i­cal exer­cise; 3) Stress man­age­ment; and 4) Brain exer­cise: Nov­el­ty, Vari­ety, Chal­lenge (as long as it does­n’t stress us out).”

Read full arti­cle: here.

Com­ment: A very inter­est­ing trend of observe — the grow­ing role of pub­lic libraries in pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty brain health infor­ma­tion and even, why not, becom­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based brain fit­ness des­ti­na­tions. After all, is it not men­tal stim­u­la­tion of all sorts, incor­po­rat­ing Nov­el­ty, Vari­ety, and Chal­lenge, what they tru­ly offer?