Shebilske

Salon.com on Brain Fitness: Tree or Forest?

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Salon.com pub­lished yes­ter­day a thought-pro­vok­ing arti­cle focused on Posit Sci­ence’s Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram, titled Buff Up Your Brain, that com­bined a) some pret­ty good analy­sis and great points about that spe­cif­ic pro­gram and jus­ti­fi­able (to a point) crit­i­cism of the com­mer­cial tone of a recent PBS Spe­cial, with b) the error of con­fus­ing a tree with the for­est, that led the author to make sev­er­al unwar­rant­ed claims regard­ing the field.

Com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing has been around since way before Posit Sci­ence, and will be here way beyond Posit Sci­ence (and Sharp­Brains, and Salon.com), and their audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing prod­uct-fea­tured in the PBS Spe­cial- is not, in our view, the most par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive exam­ple. Well-direct­ed cog­ni­tive exer­cise can enhance men­tal skills and trans­fer to real-life out­comes, act­ing as a good com­ple­men­tary tool, when used prop­er­ly, to oth­er lifestyle options and tools.

[Read more…] about Salon.com on Brain Fit­ness: Tree or Forest?

The Upside of Aging-WSJ

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Sharon Beg­ley writes anoth­er great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required)

  • “The aging brain is sub­ject to a drea­ry litany of changes. It shrinks, Swiss cheese-like holes grow, con­nec­tions between neu­rons become spars­er, blood flow and oxy­gen sup­ply fall. That leads to trou­ble with short-term mem­o­ry and rapid­ly switch­ing atten­tion, among oth­er prob­lems. And that’s in a healthy brain.”
  • “But it’s not all doom and gloom. An emerg­ing body of research shows that a sur­pris­ing array of men­tal func­tions hold up well into old age, while oth­ers actu­al­ly get bet­ter. Vocab­u­lary improves, as do oth­er ver­bal abil­i­ties such as facil­i­ty with syn­onyms and antonyms. Old­er brains are packed with more so-called …”

We dis­cussed some of these effects with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, who wrote his great book The Wis­dom Para­dox pre­cise­ly on this point, at The Exec­u­tive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger.

In our “Exer­cis­ing Our Brains” Class­es, we typ­i­cal­ly explain how some areas typ­i­cal­ly improve as we age, such as self-reg­u­la­tion, emo­tion­al func­tion­ing and Wis­dom (which means mov­ing from Prob­lem solv­ing to Pat­tern recog­ni­tion), where­as other typ­i­cal­ly decline: effort­ful prob­lem-solv­ing for nov­el sit­u­a­tions, pro­cess­ing speed, mem­o­ry, atten­tion and men­tal imagery. 

But the key mes­sage is that our actions influ­ence the rate of improve­ment and/ or decline. Our aware­ness that “it’s not all doom and gloom” and that there’s much we can do is important. You may want to learn more with our Exer­cise Your Brain DVD.

You can also learn more on the Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain: a beau­ti­ful essay by Mar­i­an Dia­mond on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit through­out our lives.

 

Brain exercises: Want a workout for your brain?

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Very fun arti­cle in the Birm­ing­ham News today on Sharp­Brains and brain exer­cis­es, titled Want a work­out for your brain?.

The jour­nal­ist explains things very well and with great humor (for the humor, you need to read the arti­cle!). Here are some quotes:

- “Think of it as a gym­na­si­um for your mind,” Sharp­Brains CEO and co-founder Alvaro Fer­nan­dez says from his office in San Francisco.

- (On only doing cross­words) “That’s good, but, like your body, you don’t just exer­cise one part of the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, who holds an MBA and a mas­ter’s degree in edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. “You need con­stant vari­ety, and new things, to keep your brain work­ing hard.”

- “He sees men­tal gym­nas­tics as the next main­stream adult trend and points out that ther­a­pists have long used a vari­ety of sim­i­lar exer­cis­es to help in the recov­ery of brain-injury patients. Ath­letes and air­plane pilots have had access to exer­cis­es designed to improve their periph­er­al vision and reac­tion times, Fer­nan­dez says.”

- “With Sharp­Brains co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at the New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, Fer­nan­dez has col­lect­ed what he says are the best com­put­er-based brain work­outs avail­able, includ­ing a pro­gram to help chil­dren with atten­tion deficits and anoth­er aimed at reduc­ing stress man­age­ment among busi­ness executives.”