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scientific-american

Top 10 Mental Health Innovations to Watch: Special SciAm/ WEF report

September 14, 2021 by World Economic Forum

Cred­it: Adobe

The World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Glob­al Future Coun­cil on Men­tal Health, com­pris­ing some of the fore­most lead­ers in men­tal health, tech­nol­o­gy, infor­mat­ics, busi­ness, pub­lic pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy is pub­lish­ing its selec­tions for the Top 10 Inno­va­tions in Men­tal Health. The ini­tia­tive is in part­ner­ship with Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, which is pub­lish­ing arti­cles by these lead­ers on its website.

Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, Coun­cil co-chair and pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine notes that “the coun­cil sift­ed through more than 60 nom­i­na­tions to pick nov­el solu­tions with the high­est near-term poten­tial to impact glob­al men­tal health”.

The Top 10 Inno­va­tions select­ed are: [Read more…] about Top 10 Men­tal Health Inno­va­tions to Watch: Spe­cial SciAm/ WEF report

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Analytics, curricula, esketamine, Innovations, mental health, physiological signals, psychedelics, scientific-american, smartphones, World Economic Forum

Update: A Fresh Look at Enhancing Brain & Mental Health Across the Lifespan

May 30, 2013 by SharpBrains

kid brainTime for Sharp­Brains’ May 2013 e‑newsletter, which fea­tures a vari­ety of arti­cles offer­ing a more opti­mistic and evi­dence-based approach to brain and men­tal health than cur­rent practices.

First of all, let us high­light that Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can just pub­lished an excel­lent review of our new book. The author sums it up by say­ing that “…I wish I had read this awe­some guide when I was much younger…I find the emerg­ing field of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty immense­ly excit­ing, and guides like this one are both hope­ful and rea­son­able.” As a read­er points out, the word “awe­some” does not appear often in sci­ence-ori­ent­ed publications…so we are espe­cial­ly proud to see the book mer­it such treatment.

New think­ing:

  • Founder of Sharp­Brains talks about brain health
  • Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress
  • Time to revamp psy­chi­a­try and men­tal health in light of mod­ern neuroscience?
  • A new type of cog­ni­tive sci­ence think tank
  • Why invest­ment in brain research is an intel­li­gent investment

New sci­ence:

  • White House BRAIN Ini­tia­tive is a nice start, but too small and unfocused
  • Demen­tia costs more than heart dis­ease, and can­cer. And it will balloon.
  • Chal­leng­ing med­ical dog­ma: Men­tal exer­cise vs drugs, sup­ple­ments and phys­i­cal exer­cise to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline
  • What is the com­bined effect of phys­i­cal and men­tal training?
  • Mon­i­tor­ing stress-relat­ed use of antipsy­chot­ic drugs in the military

New tools:

  • Does brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  • Cog­ni­tive enhance­ment in the future: elec­tric brain stim­u­la­tion plus cog­ni­tive training?
  • The future of intu­itive tech­nol­o­gy and neu­rocog­ni­tive care
  • Train your brain with tar­get­ed videogames, not with cross­word puzzles
  • Great Kirkus Review of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (“A stim­u­lat­ing, chal­leng­ing resource, full of sol­id infor­ma­tion and prac­ti­cal tips for improv­ing brain health.”)

That’s it for now. Have a stim­u­lat­ing June!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter Tagged With: antipsychotic drugs, book, brain, Brain-health, Brain-Training, cognitive-decline, cognitive-enhancement, Cognitive-Training, crossword-puzzles, dementia, drugs, electric brain stimulation, Kirkus Review, mental-exercise, Mental-Health, mental-training, neurocognitive, neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity guide, Physical-Exercise, prevent-cognitive-decline, psychiatry, resilience, scientific-american, Stress, supplements, videogames, White House

Great review of The SharpBrains Guide at Scientific American’s Beautiful Minds

May 28, 2013 by SharpBrains

beautiful-mindsReview of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can’s Beau­ti­ful Minds blog):

“In the high­ly sal­able field of “brain fit­ness,” there is an awful lot of hype. How can con­sumers pos­si­bly sort the sci­ence from the pseu­do-sci­ence? Thank­ful­ly, there are resources such as The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness…this guide helps the every­day read­er come to a basic under­stand­ing of brain func­tion­ing and the lifestyle changes that mat­ter the most for keep­ing the brain in tip top shape…There are so many gems in this book, but I thought I’d high­light ten that par­tic­u­lar­ly caught my atten­tion:” Keep read­ing book review by Scott Bar­ry Kaufman

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: book, book review, brain-book, Brain-Fitness, brain-functioning, mental functions, scientific-american, Scott Barry Kaufman, sharpbrains

Cognitive Development and Brain Research: Articles, Books, Papers (ASA)

October 28, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

brain fitness eventWe had a very fun ses­sion titled Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health pro­fes­sion­als a cou­ple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 atten­dants and very good par­tic­i­pa­tion, show­ing great inter­est in the top­ic. I can’t wait to see the evaluations.

These are some of the resources I promised as a fol­low-up, which can be use­ful to every­one inter­est­ed in our field:

Good gen­er­al arti­cles in the busi­ness and gen­er­al media:

Change or Die

Want a sharp mind for your gold­en years? Start now

You’re Wis­er Now

On how new neu­rons are born and grow in the adult brain:

Salk Sci­en­tists Demon­strate For The First Time That New­ly Born Brain Cells Are Func­tion­al In The Adult Brain 

Old Brains, New Tricks

On the sur­pris­ing plas­tic­i­ty and devel­op­ment poten­tial through­out life:

Brain Plas­tic­i­ty, Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing and Reading

Jug­gling Jug­gles the Brain

Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain

Oth­er impor­tant aspects:

Stress and the Brain

Exer­cise and the Brain

Humor, Laugh­ter and The Brain

On the impor­tance and impact of men­tal stim­u­la­tion and train­ing: [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Devel­op­ment and Brain Research: Arti­cles, Books, Papers (ASA)

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: add/-adhd, aging, American-Society-Aging, articles, Books, brain-exercise, brain-fitness-resources, brain-health-resources, brain-improvement, brain-research, brain-reserve, Brain-Training, brain-workouts, cognitive-development, cognitive-fitness, development, Elkhonon-Goldberg, Eric-Kandel, health, health-professionals, healthy-aging, John-Ratey, Marian-Diamond, mental-stimulation, Neurons, older-adults, Prevent-Alzheimers, Ramachandran, Robert-Sapolsky, scientific-american, Sharon-Begley, wellness

Neuroplasticity 101 and Brain Health Glossary

September 10, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Giv­en the grow­ing num­ber of arti­cles in the pop­u­lar press men­tion­ing words such as “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty”, “fMRI” and “cog­ni­tive reserve”, let’s review some key find­ings, con­cepts and terms.

First, a pre­scient quote by Span­ish neu­ro­sci­en­tist San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934): “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”.

fmri.jpgThanks to new neu­roimag­ing tech­niques, regard­ed “as impor­tant for neu­ro­science as tele­scopes were for astron­o­my, neu­ro­sci­en­tists and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gists have been find­ing that the brain has a num­ber of “core capac­i­ties” and “men­tal mus­cles” that can be exer­cised through nov­el­ty, vari­ety and prac­tice, and that exer­cis­ing our brain can influ­ence the gen­er­a­tion of new neu­rons and their con­nec­tions. Brain exer­cise is being rec­og­nized, there­fore, as a crit­i­cal pil­lar of brain health, togeth­er with nutri­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress management.

Pre­vi­ous beliefs about our brain and how it works have been proven false. Some beliefs that have been debunked include claims that adult brains can not cre­ate new neu­rons (shown to be false by Berke­ley sci­en­tists Mar­i­an Dia­mond and Mark Rosen­zweig, and Salk Insti­tute’s Fred Gage), notions that work­ing mem­o­ry has a max­i­mum lim­it of 6 or 7 items (debunked by Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute Torkel Kling­berg), and assump­tions that the brain’s basic process­es can not be reor­ga­nized by repeat­ed prac­tice (UCS­F’s Drs. Paula Tal­lal and Michael Merzenich). The “men­tal mus­cles” we can train include atten­tion, stress and emo­tion­al man­age­ment, mem­o­ry, visual/ spa­tial, audi­to­ry process­es and lan­guage, motor coor­di­na­tion and exec­u­tive func­tions like plan­ning and problem-solving.

Men­tal stim­u­la­tion is impor­tant if done in the right sup­port­ive and engag­ing envi­ron­ment. Stan­ford’s Robert Sapol­sky has proven that chron­ic stress and cor­ti­cal inhi­bi­tion, which may be aggra­vat­ed due to imposed men­tal stim­u­la­tion, may prove coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Hav­ing the right moti­va­tion is essential.

A sur­pris­ing and promis­ing area of sci­en­tif­ic inquiry is Mind­ful­ness-Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR). An increas­ing num­ber of neu­ro­sci­en­tists (such as Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madis­on’s Richard David­son) are inves­ti­gat­ing the abil­i­ty of trained med­i­ta­tors to devel­op and sus­tain atten­tion and visu­al­iza­tions and to work pos­i­tive­ly with pow­er­ful emo­tion­al states and stress through the direct­ed men­tal process­es of med­i­ta­tion practices.

And now, some keywords:

Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram: struc­tured set of brain exer­cis­es, usu­al­ly com­put­er-based, designed to train spe­cif­ic brain areas and process­es in tar­get­ed ways.

Chron­ic Stress: ongo­ing, long-term stress, which blocks the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons and [Read more…] about Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty 101 and Brain Health Glossary

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: baby-boomers-brain, blog, Bob-Sylwester, brain-evolution, Brain-health, brain-health-resources, Cognitive-Training, cognitive-value, Congressional-Quarterly-Researcher, expert-knowledge--neurons, fluid-intelligence, Glossary, gratitude-journal, growing-brain-fitness-market, health-professionals, healthy-brain, hiv/aids, Intellectually-Demanding-Jobs, K12, meditation, Neurogenesis, Nintendo-fad, PBS-brain-fitness, psychological-testing, Retirement-Education-Osher-Lifelong-Learning-Institutes, scientific-american, start-up, Stress, teachers, test-anxiety, tipping-point, visual-processing, Working-memory

Jack and Elaine LaLanne and Brain Health

July 21, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Very fun inter­view with Jack and Elaine LaLanne by Dave Bun­nell: read it at Meet Fit­ness Leg­ends Jack and Elaine LaLanne | ELDR.com. See some quotes:

  • In 1936, Jack opened America’s first health club in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, called the “Jack LaLanne Phys­i­cal Cul­ture Studio.”
  • Through tele­vi­sion shows, pub­lic appear­ances, and books—and by sell­ing health-relat­ed products—they have been the most vocal and effec­tive evan­ge­lists for pre­ven­tive health the world has ever known.
  • “Elaine works out,” Jack replies, “but I work out eight days a week. I spend an hour and a half in the gym, and then a half hour in the pool, and I change my rou­tine every 30 days completely.”
  • “You’ve got to go at it hard and work on dif­fer­ent muscles,” he con­tin­ues. “You know how you stay young, don’t you? You work your butt off. Any­thing you do in life that’s worth­while, there’s a price to pay.”

Jack recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed his 92nd birthday!

We all have to be very thank­ful for their life mis­sion: a recent arti­cle from the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science quotes:

“Every­body knows that exer­cise is good for your heart, but in recent years we’ve gath­ered com­pelling evi­dence that exer­cise is also good for your brain,” says Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies. “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”

You can check oth­er tips in [Read more…] about Jack and Elaine LaLanne and Brain Health

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: brain-fitness-consulting, brain-fitness-exercises, Cognitive-Age, David-Brooks, Exercise-your-brain, Genetics, harm-the-brain, information-processing, Martin-Seligman, mental-fitness-training, Physical-Fitness, physical-fitness-industry, scientific-american, strategic-consulting, Washington-University

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