Brain Fitness Newsletter: Premium Research Sponsors

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 16, 2008

Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page. Have you ever won­dered how we can main­tain Sharp­Brains’ web­site, blog and newslet­ter with­out sell­ing any prod­ucts and with only limited…

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Yes, It is Smart to Learn New Tricks

By Alvaro Fernandez | August 12, 2008 |

Good arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post today:  Is It Real­ly Smart to Teach Old Brains New Tricks? The reporter presents a good overview of what is happening, but framed around a high­ly arti­fi­cial choice for con­sumers: either you a) do phys­i­cal exer­cise, or b) take part in social inter­ac­tions, or c) engage in men­tal exer­cise. What about switching…

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Mind Teaser: Consider Linda

By Alvaro Fernandez | June 30, 2008 |

(I hope you enjoy this very reveal­ing mind teas­er!) Please con­sid­er Lin­da, a 31-year-old woman, sin­gle and bright. When she was a stu­dent, both in high school and col­lege, she was deeply con­cerned with dis­crim­i­na­tion and social jus­tice, and also par­tic­i­pat­ed in anti-nuclear protests. Which is more prob­a­ble about Lin­da’s occu­pa­tion today? (a) Lin­da is…

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Memory Training and Fluid Intelligence

By Alvaro Fernandez | April 29, 2008 |

Quick update: 2 very inter­est­ing news, 2 excel­lent blog car­ni­vals. 1) For­get Brain Age: Researchers Devel­op Soft­ware That Makes You Smarter (Wired). Thanks Senia! — “In a lim­it­ed tri­al, he and his team were able to make 34 test sub­jects sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter at answer­ing IQ test ques­tions after train­ing them on a com­plete­ly sep­a­rate mem­o­ry task”

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SmartBrains, Becoming Smarter, and Intelligence

By Alvaro Fernandez | August 31, 2007 |

The MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review September/ Octo­ber edi­tion brings an arti­cle by Daniel Den­nett titled High­er Games: It’s been 10 years since IBM’s Deep Blue beat Gar­ry Kas­parov in chess. A promi­nent philoso­pher asks what the match meant (sub­scrip­tion required), which is cre­at­ing a lot of buzz on the sci­ence blo­gos­phere on whether humans or machines…

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