Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together

By Alvaro Fernandez | November 25, 2007 |

Every­one has heard of “Use It or Lose It.” Now…what is “It”? Last week I gave a talk at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cis­co, and one of the areas atten­dees seemed to enjoy the most was learn­ing about what our brains are and how they work, peak­ing into the “black box” of our minds. With­out understanding…

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Darwin’s adult neuroplasticity

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 24, 2007 |

Charles Dar­win (1809–1882)‘s auto­bi­og­ra­phy (full text free online) includes some very insight­ful refec­tions on the evo­lu­tion of his own mind dur­ing his mid­­dle-age, show­cas­ing the pow­er of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence (neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty) dur­ing our whole life­­times-not just when we are youngest. He wrote these paragraphs at the age of 72 (I have bold­ed some key…

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Cognitive Fitness as a New Frontier of Fitness

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 15, 2007 |

Very good arti­cle in the LA Times today. Like a Stair­Mas­ter for the brain: Can men­tal work­outs improve the mind’s agili­ty? Baby boomer con­cerns stim­u­late an indus­try expan­sion. The reporter, Melis­sa Healy, reviews the healthy aging seg­ment in the Brain Fit­ness field. A few select­ed quotes: — “There is plau­si­bil­i­ty, both bio­log­i­cal and behav­ioral, to…

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Rethinking the Brain Fitness Business

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 6, 2007 |

Great arti­cle on the grow­ing brain fit­ness field. Rethink­ing the Brain Busi­ness: Why a men­­tal-fit­­ness pro­gram may be the start of some­thing big. Some quotes: — “But Merzenich has lofti­er ambi­tions. He envi­sions his com­pa­ny as part of a new indus­try that will become a “mir­ror” of the drug indus­try. He wants to go far…

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Brain Exercise and Fitness: September Monthly Digest

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 2, 2007 |

Fol­low­ing our July and August edi­tions, here you have our Month­ly Digest of the Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. Today, Octo­ber 2nd, we will list the most pop­u­lar Sep­tem­ber posts. You can con­sid­er it your month­ly Brain Exer­cise Mag­a­zine. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Top­ics sec­tion, and subscribe…

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