outsource-brain

Carnival of Education #159: Briefing the Next US President on 35 Issues

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Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

Thank you for stop­ping dur­ing recess for a quick study ses­siMeditation School Studentson. 35 edu­ca­tors have col­lab­o­rat­ed to present this Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion as a use­ful les­son plan for you and your edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy team on what our real con­cerns and sug­ges­tions are.

In case this is your first vis­it to our Sharp­Brains blog, let me first of all point out some use­ful resources to stay sane dur­ing the rest of the cam­paign: select­ed Brain Teasers, a list of 21 great Brain Books, over a dozen inter­views with lead­ing sci­en­tists on learn­ing and brain-based top­ics, and more.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the issues raised. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Edu­ca­tion as a System 

Brain training to live long and strong

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If you want to live long and strong, you’ve got to do more than work out your body; you’ve got to exer­cise your brain, insists Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine. While we’ve heard for years that men­tal stim­u­la­tion can stave off demen­tia and Alzheimer’s, Dr. Gold­berg says sci­en­tists now know exact­ly how to keep our brains from turn­ing to mush – by stim­u­lat­ing the growth of new neu­rons and inter­con­nec­tions between them that boost brain effi­cien­cy. If you don’t use your brain in new and nov­el ways, your brain won’t be fit to use.

As the chief sci­en­tif­ic advis­er for SharpBrains.com, Dr. Goldberg’s site offers an array of brain teasers and exer­cis­es that improve brain func­tion. But online tests are not all you can do. Just do some­thing dif­fer­ent and chal­leng­ing. Get­ting out of your mid­dle-aged com­fort zone is the dif­fer­ence in a high qual­i­ty of life when you’re old­er than none at all.

Keep read­ing more of the Flori­da Today inter­view with Dr. Gold­berg at Next Up, A Gym for the Mind.

You can also read our more detailed (and prob­a­bly more pre­cise) inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing.

Keep Your Brain Nimble as You Age and Brain Fitness Events

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Some good links today:

1) Keep Your Brain Nim­ble as You Age
MSNBC — May 13, 2007
“If using your com­put­er as a men­tal gym sounds good to you, SharpBrains.com’s Fer­nan­dez sug­gests ask­ing a few ques­tions first to deter­mine a product’s…”

2) Great blog by Stan­ford Busi­ness School’s Jack­son library, includ­ing an announce­ment of an upcom­ing lec­ture there by our very own Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez Pump­ing I.Q., not Iron

3) Some blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cif­ic topics)

All about Brain Fitness

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We are very hap­py to see how the sci­ence-based brain fit­ness field is emerg­ing, and we have pre­pared a Hot Top­ics sec­tion to keep you well informed. Our Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer, Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, has been writ­ing about brain fit­ness for many years. Here you have a selec­tion of the most pop­u­lar posts: Hot Top­ics on Mem­o­ry, Brain Fit­ness, Brain Teasers, Men­tal Exer­cise, Stress Man­age­ment, Phys­i­cal Exer­cise, Nutri­tion, News, Prod­ucts, Events, Stu­dents, Sci­ence, Resources, and more.

We are also open­ing up our mod­er­at­ed Mes­sage Boards to every­one inter­est­ed in learn­ing and shar­ing. You can self-reg­is­ter to cre­ate a new forum account and join the con­ver­sa­tion. Jump in and start ask­ing ques­tions and give us feedback!

This is a new field, and we are hap­py to con­tribute, and to lis­ten. Look­ing for­ward a stim­u­lat­ing dialogue!