PNAS

Top 10 Cognitive Fitness Events of 2008 (Webinar)

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We have just announced an upcom­ing webi­nar to pro­vide a mar­ket update:  Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events of 2008 — A Mar­ket Update.

cognitive fitness When: Thurs­day Decem­ber 11th, from 12:00 to 1:00 pm Pacif­ic Time. The same webi­nar will be repeat­ed on Thurs­day Decem­ber 18th, from 9:00 to 10:00 pm Pacif­ic Time.

The Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events that will be dis­cussed include: 

1) Feb­ru­ary: Dakim secures a $10.6m invest­ment from Galen Part­ners. Jack LaLanne becomes spokesperson.
2) April: The Gov­ern­ment of Ontario, Cana­da, invests $10m in Bay­crest to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize cog­ni­tive fit­ness technologies.
3) April: Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan researchers reveal in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences how com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing can gen­er­al­ize and improve flu­id intel­li­gence in healthy adults.
4) May: Humana unveils Games for Health ini­tia­tives, not renew­ing its agree­ment with Posit Science.
5) June: The US Army launch­es a new pol­i­cy requir­ing cog­ni­tive screen­ings of all sol­diers before deploy­ment (in order to [Read more…] about Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events of 2008 (Webi­nar)

Brain Exercise: Software vs. Crosswords

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Today I had a great con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­tin Buschkuehl, one of the U Michi­gan researchers involved in the cog­ni­tive train­ing study that has received much media atten­tion since ear­ly last week, when the study was pub­lished at the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

I will pub­lish the inter­view notes next week. For the moment, let me para­phrase his answer to the ques­tion: “Why are com­put­er­ized pro­grams like the one you used fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from, say, sim­ply doing many cross­word puzzles?”.

[Read more…] about Brain Exer­cise: Soft­ware vs. Crosswords

Stress Management for Lawyers

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The ABA (Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion) Jour­nal has a good arti­cle titled Law Hacks: 101 tips, tricks and tools to make you a more pro­duc­tive, less stressed-out lawyer, com­bin­ing tips on email usage, soft­ware, and some brain tips from us:

  • 67 “The Web site Sharp­Brains sug­gests self-improve­ment exer­cis­es. Try this one: Take five-minute visu­alization breaks with deep and reg­u­lar breath­ing, pic­tur­ing beau­ti­ful land­scapes or pleas­ant or suc­cess­ful mem­o­ries, espe­cial­ly after fin­ish­ing a tough task.”
  • 68 “Improve your men­tal acu­ity by sub­tract­ing num­bers, i.e., 7 from 200 (200, 193, 186, 179 …) or prac­tic­ing an expo­nen­tial series (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 …). The point is not to become a math genius or be smarter than a fifth-grad­er, but just to keep your mind sharp.”
  • 69 “It takes a sys­tem to be pro­duc­tive, but it’s also use­ful to try some­thing dif­fer­ent every day to stay sharp. For exam­ple, try com­mut­ing dif­fer­ent­ly or talk­ing to new people.”

Some more tips?