Stanford and Max Planck on Mental Fitness

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 8, 2009

Stan­ford Issues Find­ings from Cog­ni­tive and Brain Experts Urg­ing Con­sumer Cau­tion on Mem­o­ry Fit­ness Prod­ucts (press release) — “Fear of mem­o­ry loss, men­tal impair­ment and Alzheimer’s dis­ease lead many con­sumers to search for prod­ucts — from sup­ple­ments to soft­ware — that claim to ward off such ail­ments,” Lau­ra L. Carstensen, found­ing direc­tor of the Stanford…

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Towards a Healthy Living & Cognitive Health Agenda

By Alvaro Fernandez | November 25, 2008

Here you have the Novem­ber edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page. Thank you for your inter­est, atten­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion in our Sharp­Brains com­mu­ni­ty. As always, we appreciate…

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Brain Fitness Programs For Seniors Housing, Healthcare and Insurance Providers: Evaluation Checklist

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 24, 2008 |

Dur­ing the research phase before the pub­li­ca­tion of the spe­cial report Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Seniors Hous­ing — A Field in the Mak­ing, pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA), we real­ized that there were equal amounts of inter­est and con­fu­sion among exec­u­tives and pro­fes­sion­als think­ing about adding com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive exer­cise prod­ucts to their…

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Resource for Brain Fitness Centers

By Alvaro Fernandez | June 1, 2008

Our Mar­ket Report has received some recent addi­tion­al acco­lades: “In a wide­ly scat­tered and unreg­u­lat­ed field, this clear, cred­i­ble doc­u­ment is a first-class, pio­neer­ing com­pendi­um that’s like­ly to become indus­try-stan­­dard for all of us in this field. Well done!” — Eric Jensen, Founder of Jensen Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. “This is the first clear, con­cise and com­pre­hen­sive overview…

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Brain Exercise: Software vs. Crosswords

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 6, 2008 |

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…

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Exercise your brain in the Cognitive Age

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 3, 2008 |

In the past two days, The New York Times has pub­lished two excel­lent arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Despite appear­ing in sep­a­rate sec­tions (tech­nol­o­gy and editorial), the two have more in com­mon than imme­di­ate­ly meets the eye. Both raise key ques­tions that politi­cians, health pol­i­cy mak­ers, busi­ness leaders, educators and consumers should pay atten­tion to. 1) First, Exer­cise Your Brain, or Else You’ll … Uh …, by Katie…

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