PBS

Top 30 Highlights from the 2013 SharpBrains Virtual Summit: The latest on Brain Research, Health and Innovation

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2013 SharpBrains SummitOver 30 speak­ers and 170 reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pants dis­cussed the lat­est on brain research, health and inno­va­tion at the fourth annu­al Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, held in Sep­tem­ber 2013. Here are some of the fas­ci­nat­ing high­lights* that can help iden­ti­fy emerg­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and pre­pare for sig­nif­i­cant changes like­ly to occur in the next 3–5 years.

What surprised/ impressed us the most (in brack­ets, the Speak­er who prompt­ed the high­light):

  1. How the Human Brain Project is build­ing a com­pre­hen­sive brain sim­u­la­tion web por­tal for hun­dreds of neu­ro­sci­en­tists to find prin­ci­ples that can not only opti­mize brain health but also com­put­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and IT net­works. (Sean Hill)
  2. How dif­fer­ent Brain Health will look in 2020. i.e. we may well see a “self-admin­is­tered annu­al brain health check-up” (Alvaro Fer­nan­dez) build­ing on cur­rent tablet-based cog­ni­tive base­line tests. (Joan Sev­er­son)
  3. Two bil­lion peo­ple world­wide suf­fer from brain based health and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty chal­lenges, and many could ben­e­fit from evi­dence-based inter­ven­tions deliv­ered over the web via computers/ mobile. (Alvaro Fer­nan­dez)
  4. The increas­ing role pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy is play­ing in lead­er­ship and well­ness ini­tia­tives of large orga­ni­za­tions. Many com­pa­nies are using med­i­ta­tion pro­grams at work, help­ing place the human brain at the cen­ter of the human resources equa­tion. (Hyong Un)
  5. How health providers can expand focus to include emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive health. Kaiser Permanente’s sim­ple and pow­er­ful posters are beau­ti­ful and inspir­ing. (Alexan­dra More­house) [Read more…] about Top 30 High­lights from the 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: The lat­est on Brain Research, Health and Innovation

Raising awareness about the distracted mind (PBS special)

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DistractedMindI feel it is crit­i­cal that sci­en­tists make an effort to trans­late their research dis­cov­er­ies into a for­mat that is under­stand­able and mean­ing­ful to the gen­er­al pub­lic. They should also, at least on occa­sion, step beyond detailed descrip­tions of lab­o­ra­to­ry results and spec­u­late on how their find­ings inform the big­ger pic­ture and impact people’s lives. This has nev­er been more impor­tant than it is it right now, in this time of dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced sci­ence fund­ing. In the PBS-spon­sored spe­cial, The Dis­tract­ed Mind, I try to accom­plish this by inte­grat­ing mate­r­i­al from dozens of [Read more…] about Rais­ing aware­ness about the dis­tract­ed mind (PBS special)

Steve Jobs: Computers are the Bicycles of the Mind

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Fas­ci­nat­ing raw footage from a 1990 inter­view with Steve Jobs. Please don’t miss the pro­found and quite fun­ny first three min­utes and a half (the rest is a more usu­al tech interview).

Watch An Inter­view With Steve Jobs on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Mon­ey quote: [Read more…] about Steve Jobs: Com­put­ers are the Bicy­cles of the Mind

Transcript: Alvaro Fernandez on Brain Health and Non-invasive Cognitive Enhancement

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­at­ed by Har­ry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs at AARP.

[Read more…] about Tran­script: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Brain Health and Non-inva­sive Cog­ni­tive Enhancement

Top 30 Brain Health and Fitness Articles of 2008

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Here brain teasers job interview you have Sharp­Brains’ 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles, ranked by the num­ber of peo­ple who have read each arti­cle in 2008.

Please note that, since the first arti­cle already includes most of our most pop­u­lar brain teasers, we have exclud­ed teasers from the rest of the rank­ing. (If those 50 are not enough for you, you can also try these brain teasers).

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Blog Chan­nel
 Arti­cle
1. Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games to Test your Brain
It is always good to stim­u­late our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selec­tion of the 50 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed the most.
2. The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains
Let’s review some good lifestyle options we can fol­low to main­tain, and improve, our vibrant brains. My favorite: don’t out­source your brain (even to us).
3. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?
You’re dri­ving through sub­ur­bia one evening look­ing for the street where you’re sup­posed to have din­ner at a friend’s new house. You slow down to a crawl, turn down the radio, stop talk­ing, and stare at every sign. Why is that? Nei­ther the radio nor talk­ing affects your vision. Or do they?
4. Brain Plas­tic­i­ty: How learn­ing changes your brain
You may have heard that the brain is plas­tic. As you know the brain is not made of plas­tic! Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty or brain plas­tic­i­ty refers to the brain’s abil­i­ty to CHANGE through­out life.
5. Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends
In an emerg­ing mar­ket like brain fit­ness train­ing, it is dif­fi­cult to make pre­cise pro­jec­tions. But, we can observe a num­ber of trends that exec­u­tives, con­sumers, pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers, and the media should watch close­ly in the com­ing years, as brain fit­ness and train­ing becomes main­stream, new tools appear, and an ecosys­tem grows around it.

[Read more…] about Top 30 Brain Health and Fit­ness Arti­cles of 2008

Towards a Healthy Living & Cognitive Health Agenda

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Here you have the Novem­ber edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by brain fitness and health newslettersub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Thank you for your inter­est, atten­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion in our Sharp­Brains com­mu­ni­ty. As always, we appre­ci­ate your com­ments and suggestions.

Sum­mit of the Glob­al Agenda

How can we per­suade busi­ness lead­ers, pol­i­cy-mak­ers and researchers of the urgency to devel­op and pro­mote an inte­grat­ed “Healthy Liv­ing” agen­da focused on main­tain­ing life­long phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive health, vs. the usu­al mind­set focused on deal­ing with spe­cif­ic dis­eases and prob­lems once they arise?

In The Future of the Aging Soci­ety: Bur­den or Human Cap­i­tal?, I sum­ma­rize some of the key themes dis­cussed at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum event in Dubai on Novem­ber 7–9th. The world is aging — and in health­i­er ways. But our health­care and retire­ment sys­tems are on track to go bank­rupt — their premis­es are out­dat­ed. The cur­rent dis­ease-based research agen­da com­pounds the prob­lem. Solu­tions? 1) Pro­mote Healthy Lifestyles that help Main­tain Phys­i­cal and Cog­ni­tive Func­tion­al Abil­i­ties, 2) Redesign Envi­ron­ments to Fos­ter Health, Engage­ment and Finan­cial Secu­ri­ty, 3) Devel­op an Inte­grat­ed Healthy Liv­ing & Aging Research Agen­da. Specif­i­cal­ly, we could work with the UN and Glob­al 2000 com­pa­nies to move for­ward a new agenda.

Plan­et Earth 2.0: A New Oper­at­ing Sys­tem: Imag­ine see­ing a top sheik in Dubai, wrapped in tra­di­tion­al Arab cloth­ing, exclaim “Yes We Can (a la Oba­ma) in front of the 800 glob­al experts, adding that “we build the future with our own hands. Some of the atten­dants of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Sum­mit of the Glob­al Agen­da urged us to “reboot” the sys­tem. More than a “reboot”, we may have to upgrade to a new glob­al “Yes We Can” oper­at­ing system.

Brain Fit­ness Research 

Train­ing Atten­tion and Emo­tion­al Self-Reg­u­la­tion: Dr. Michael Pos­ner, a promi­nent  cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist and first recip­i­ent of the Dogan Prize, grants us a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view on what atten­tion, self-reg­u­la­tion, and effort­ful con­trol are, and how to improve them using soft­ware, med­i­ta­tion, and par­ent­ing. In his words, “we have found no ceil­ing for abil­i­ties such as atten­tion, includ­ing among adults. The more train­ing (…) the high­er the results.”

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and the Brain That Changes Itself: Lau­rie Bar­tels reviews the excel­lent book by Nor­man Doidge, explain­ing that “the neu­ro­science behind Doidge’s book involves neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, which is the brain’s abil­i­ty to rewire itself. This means that the brain  is our intel­li­gence,  is not some­thing fixed in con­crete but rather a chang­ing, learn­ing entity.”

Can We Pick Your Brain re: Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments?: In our view, a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in the matu­ri­ty of the brain fit­ness mar­ket will be the avail­abil­i­ty of inex­pen­sive, valid and reli­able objec­tive cog­ni­tive assess­ments,  to help mea­sure how our brain func­tions change over time and iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ties for tar­get­ed improve­ments. Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man asks if you would be up for them?

Use It (Prop­er­ly) or Lose It

Mem­o­ry Prob­lems? Per­haps you are Mul­ti-task­ing: Dr. Bill Klemm tells us that “Mul­ti-task­ing vio­lates every­thing we know about how mem­o­ry works.” He explains that “(mul­ti-task­ing) prob­a­bly does make learn­ing less tedious, but it clear­ly makes learn­ing less effi­cient and less effective.”

Phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline: The Amer­i­can Med­ical News, a week­ly news­pa­per for physi­cians pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, just pub­lished an excel­lent arti­cle on the impor­tance of phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise. We are very hap­py to see efforts like these to train physi­cians and health pro­fes­sion­als in gen­er­al,  giv­en that most of them were trained under a very dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of the brain than the one we have today.

Brain Fit­ness 2: Sight & Sound: PBS recent­ly announced the sec­ond install­ment of their pop­u­lar Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram show, to start air­ing soon.

MetaCar­ni­val #1: a con­ver­sa­tion across the blo­gos­phere: We often insist on “Nov­el­ty, Vari­ety and Chal­lenge” as key ingre­di­ents for good “brain exer­cise”. There are many ways to mix those ingre­di­ents — you may enjoy this one, the first inter­dis­ci­pli­nary gath­er­ing of blogs and blog car­ni­vals cov­er­ing health, sci­ence, anthro­pol­o­gy, gen­er­al advice and more.

Brain Teasers

Top 15 Brain Teasers and Games for Men­tal Exer­cise: Over the last 2 years we have pub­lished close to 100 puz­zles, teasers, rid­dles, and every kind of men­tal exer­cise (with­out count­ing our in-depth inter­views with top neu­ro­sci­en­tists). Which ones have proven most stim­u­lat­ing for you. Let us know. Here is a selec­tion of our Top 15 teasers.

Final Details

That’s all for now. Next month, we will be offer­ing anoth­er great selec­tion of arti­cles: Dr. Andrew New­berg will dis­cuss the brain val­ue of med­i­ta­tion,  Dr. David Rabin­er will review a recent study on how neu­ro­feed­back may assist in the diag­nos­tic of atten­tion deficits, and much more.

Please share this newslet­ter with your friends and col­leagues if you haven’t done so already.

Have a Hap­py Thanksgiving!