socialization

April 21st virtual lecture to discuss 25 Must-Know Facts about Brain Health, Neuroplasticity and Technology

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BrainFitnessJigsaw_webDear Sharp­Brains friend,

As Dr. Robert Bilder, Tan Le and myself final­ize the cur­ricu­lum for the upcom­ing vir­tu­al lec­ture on April 21st, we are work­ing hard to select the key brain-relat­ed facts that every­one should tru­ly under­stand in order to nav­i­gate the grow­ing stream of news arti­cles, research reports and mar­ket­ing claims. Focus­ing on 25 fun­da­men­tal facts (instead of the 50 ini­tial­ly envi­sioned) will enable us to dis­cuss each in more depth, empow­er­ing par­tic­i­pants with more clear and sol­id take-aways.

With those 25 Must-Know Facts we will zoom into the most sig­nif­i­cant (and often over­looked) areas in the brain fit­ness jig­saw puz­zle you can see above. We won’t dis­cuss gen­er­al­i­ties, we will dis­cuss specifics about:Online_Class-banner_25-facts

  • How the brain works, and what neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is
  • What new sci­en­tif­ic find­ings mean (and what they don’t mean)
  • Key guide­lines for aer­o­bic exer­cise, nutri­tion, men­tal stim­u­la­tion, stress man­age­ment, socialization
  • The do’s and don’ts in lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy for med­i­ta­tion, refram­ing, bio/ neu­ro­feed­back, cog­ni­tive training
  • How to self-mon­i­tor, find indi­vid­ual pri­or­i­ties, pri­or­i­tize options

We hope you will be able to reg­is­ter and join us! (use this 20%-off dis­count when you reg­is­ter: SB20)

Final­ly, let me answer a few ques­tions we have received from many inter­est­ed participants:

  1. Will I be able to ask ques­tions? Yes, of course. We want this to be a very inter­ac­tive ses­sion, and to respond to your spe­cif­ic ques­tions. We will reserve at least 30 min­utes for Q&A.
  2. What if I can’t attend the lec­ture live? Every­thing will be record­ed (both the lec­ture and the Q&A) so reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pants will be able to access it lat­er, start­ing the day after the webinar.
  3. If I reg­is­ter, when do I gain access to all those record­ings from the 2015 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit that you are offer­ing on a com­pli­men­ta­ry basis? Once you reg­is­ter to the April 21st vir­tu­al lec­ture, you will receive an email with­in 24 hours with instruc­tions to access all online record­ings (15+ hours; 30+ amaz­ing speakers…the reg­u­lar price of these record­ings is $125, so we hope as many of you as pos­si­ble can ben­e­fit from this one-time opportunity).

Cheers, and hope to “see you” soon!

Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress

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These days, we all live under con­sid­er­able stress — eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, job demands, fam­i­ly ten­sions, always-on tech­nol­o­gy and the 24-hour news cycle all con­tribute to cease­less wor­ry. While many have learned to sim­ply “live with it,” this ongo­ing stress can, unless prop­er­ly man­aged, have a [Read more…] about Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress

Transcript: Paul Nussbaum on Meditation, Neuropsychology and Thanksgiving

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: [Read more…] about Tran­script: Paul Nuss­baum on Med­i­ta­tion, Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and Thanksgiving

May Update: Brain Training in Mental Health Toolkits for Prevention and Rehabilitation

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The use of a vari­ety of brain train­ing inter­ven­tions is grow­ing in the area of men­tal health. Emerg­ing evi­dence sug­gests that in the near future tar­get­ed brain train­ing may even be used to pre­vent sub­stance abuse. For exam­ple, train­ing work­ing mem­o­ry may reduce sub­stance abusers’ dis­count­ing of long-term rewards and pun­ish­ments — such dis­count­ing is one of the rea­sons why peo­ple sus­cep­ti­ble to addic­tions do not ben­e­fit from tra­di­tion­al informational/ edu­ca­tion­al approach­es to drug prevention.

Let’s explore some expand­ing appli­ca­tions of brain train­ing, and much more, in this lat­est edi­tion of the month­ly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter.

Brain Training and Mental Health

ADHD: Brain Train­ing, Neu­ro­feed­back, Diet, and More: What can be done to fight ADHD and improve the lives of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from it?

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in the Brain of Chil­dren with Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders: Brain train­ing may be an option for chil­dren suf­fer­ing from Tourette Syn­drom to help reduce the symptoms.

Brain Train­ing and Schiz­o­phre­nia: Social cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams can boost schiz­o­phren­ics’ skills social skills.

Rethink­ing the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Men­tal Ill­ness: How can we rethink the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of psy­chopathol­ogy (via the new DSM‑5) to reflect our cur­rent under­stand­ing of the brain as a dynam­ic system?

Upcom­ing events: Cog­ni­tive Reme­di­a­tion in Psy­chi­a­try (June 10th, NYC), Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Soci­ety (Sep­tem­ber 19–20, San Francisco).

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Lifestyle for Brain Health

More Friends, Big­ger Brain: The num­ber of friends you have could be pre­dicted by the size of our amygdala!

Music and Demen­tia: Play­ing music pro­tects the brain lat­er on. Music may also be used to teach new facts to peo­ple suf­fer­ing from dementia.

Exer­cise and Over­weight Chil­dren: Aer­o­bic exer­cise can boost over­weight chil­dren exec­u­tive functions.

The Brain Grows With Prac­tice…: We know that when the brain mas­ters a new skill, tar­get­ed brain areas/ cir­cuits get enlarged. We now know that those areas and cir­cuits even­tu­ally shrink back to nor­mal, but per­for­mance gain can be maintained!

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Food for Thought

What is Brain Fit­ness? What are Emerg­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ties to Retool Brain Health? Here are the answers by sev­en 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Speakers.

Nav­i­gate through the 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles of last year in SharpBrains.com to learn more about the brain and how to maintain/ enhance brain func­tion­ing across the lifes­pan..

Brain Teaser

Can you lis­ten to these laughs and dis­tin­guish whether it is a human or a com­puter laugh­ing? Also, giv­en how good laugh­ing is…how about try­ing this to find out how much stressed you are? You may be surprised.

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We hope you enjoyed this newslet­ter. Please do feel free to share this with friends and col­leagues via Face­book, Twit­ter and LinkedIn.

What about an Adult Playground?

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The pos­i­tive effects of exer­cise on brain health have been demon­strat­ed in many stud­ies now. The next step may be to devel­op low-cost pro­grams in the com­mu­ni­ty that pro­vide appro­pri­ate sup­port and struc­ture for adults (espe­cial­ly old­er adults) to encour­age phys­i­cal activity.
A great exam­ple of such pro­gram is The Adult Play­ground in Bei­jing, Chi­na (Dhand et al., 2010):

Half a foot­ball field large, this space con­sist­ed of all-weath­er stretch­ing and strength­en­ing equip­ment such as ellip­ti­cal machines, flat bench­es, mod­i­fied leg press machines, rail­ings at dif­fer­ent heights, mon­key bars, and arm and leg rota­to­ry devices. The area was teem­ing with adults, most old­er than 60 years, who were not only exer­cis­ing but also play­ing games such as Chi­nese hacky sack (a Chi­nese game from the 5th cen­tu­ry BC) and tra­di­tion­al board games.

The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has erect­ed sev­er­al out­door adult play­ground of this type across urban areas. This seems to be a great exam­ple of a low-cost, eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, solu­tion com­bin­ing phys­i­cal exer­cise with social­iza­tion as well as cog­ni­tive exercise.

Playing the Blame Game: Video Games Pros and Cons

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Play­ing the Blame Game
– Video games stand accused of caus­ing obe­si­ty, vio­lence, and lousy grades. But new research paints a sur­pris­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed and pos­i­tive pic­ture, reports Greater Good Mag­a­zine’s Jere­my Adam Smith.

Cheryl Olson had seen her teenage son play video games. But like many par­ents, she did­n’t know much about them.

Then in 2004 the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice asked Olson and her hus­band, Lawrence Kut­ner, to run a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed study of how video games affect adolescents.

Olson and Kut­ner are the co-founders and direc­tors of the Har­vard Med­ical School’s Cen­ter for Men­tal Health and Media. Olson, a pub­lic health researcher, had stud­ied the effects of media on behav­ior but had nev­er exam­ined video games, either in her research or in her per­son­al life.

And so the first thing she did was watch over the shoul­der of her son, Michael, as he played his video games. Then, two years into her research—which com­bined sur­veys and focus groups of junior high school students—Michael urged her to pick up a joy­stick. “I def­i­nite­ly felt they should be famil­iar with the games if they were doing the research,” says Michael, who was 16 at the time and is now 18.

Olson start­ed with the PC game [Read more…] about Play­ing the Blame Game: Video Games Pros and Cons