the-wisdom-paradox

Cogmed, Freeze-Framer, IntelliGym, MindFit, Posit Science

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We are spend­ing more time talk­ing to jour­nal­ists these days. A fre­quent ques­tion we receive is, “OK, which com­put­er-based pro­grams do you con­sid­er to be Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams, not just “games” for pure fun”?.

Our answer: the rate of devel­op­ment of new pro­grams by neu­ro­sci­en­tists world­wide is real­ly increas­ing, and there are already a few out there that com­bine good under­ly­ing sci­ence with embed­ded qual­i­ty assess­ments and user-friendly guide­lines and exercises from a fit­ness and pre­ven­tion (vs. med­ical “pre­scrip­tion”) per­spec­tive. Some of these are:

Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing pro­gram (RoboMemo), helps chil­dren with atten­tion deficits to over­come the work­ing mem­o­ry gap. and is dis­trib­uted exclu­sive­ly through select­ed clin­i­cal providers.

Freeze-Framer is a bio­met­ric-based sys­tem that helps peo­ple of all ages and occu­pa­tions (from stu­dents to nurs­es and traders) get into The Zone of opti­mal learn­ing and per­for­mance by man­ag­ing the neg­a­tive effects of stress and anx­i­ety. Our part­ner is the Insti­tute of HeartMath.

Intel­li­Gym  pro­vides a men­tal work­out to improve core bas­ket­ball abil­i­ties, such as coor­di­na­tion, atten­tion con­trol, periph­er­al vision, and perception.  Yes, this can be trained. It is bas­ket­ball spe­cif­ic, so we don’t rec­om­mend it for oth­er sports. Our part­ner is ACE.

Mind­Fit helps train 14 dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive func­tions that are impor­tant for healthy aging. Even if the activ­i­ties are help­ful for peo­ple of all ages (I per­son­al­ly use it as my “brain gym” dur­ing flights, being in my mid-30s), the look & feel is more appro­pri­ate for peo­ple over 50, so we rec­om­mend it main­ly for that group. Our part­ner is Vig­or­ous Mind.

Posit Sci­ence offers an inten­sive pro­gram for train­ing core audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing abil­i­ties. Audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing is one of the areas that typ­i­cal­ly decline with age, so this would be a great start­ing point for any­one, usu­al­ly above 60 giv­en the mar­ket­ing we see in their web­site, who may be expe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with his/ her hear­ing and under­stand­ing capa­bil­i­ties. We do not offer this pro­gram through our web­site, but cer­tain­ly respect their sci­en­tists and research.

We are con­stant­ly look­ing for new ones, so keep tuned.

 

How do I start a brain fitness program?

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Computer ClassroomHere is ques­tion six of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. To down­load the com­plete ver­sion, please click here.

Ques­tion:
How do I start a brain fit­ness program?

Key Points:

  • Any activ­i­ty that requires you to use your brain in new, chal­leng­ing ways helps your brain.
  • Recre­ation­al activ­i­ties like bridge, chess, puz­zles, sudoku, var­i­ous class­es, read­ing, and sports are all bet­ter than pas­sive­ly watch­ing television.
  • Add a com­put­er­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram to get a com­plete men­tal work­out on a reg­u­lar basis.

Answer: [Read more…] about How do I start a brain fit­ness program?

Do I really need a brain fitness program?

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Here is the fifth ques­tion of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. To down­load the com­plete ver­sion, please click here.

Ques­tion:
Do I real­ly need a brain fit­ness program?

Key Points:

  • Brain fit­ness requires men­tal stim­u­la­tion, phys­i­cal fit­ness, good nutri­tion, and stress management.
  • A good pro­gram of men­tal stim­u­la­tion must pro­vide nov­el­ty, chal­lenge, and cog­ni­tive variety.
  • Use it or lose it! (Or even bet­ter, “use it and improve it!”)

Answer:
Yes, you need a brain fit­ness pro­gram if you want to keep your mind in top shape and dra­mat­i­cal­ly slow the effects of age-relat­ed cog­ni­tive decline. If you don’t do any­thing [Read more…] about Do I real­ly need a brain fit­ness program?

Enhancing Trader Performance and The Psychology of Trading: Interview with Brett N. Steenbarger

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Today we are going to talk about the appli­ca­tions of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science to trad­ing and neu­ro­fi­nance. Brett N. Steen­barg­er , Ph.D. is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at SUNY Upstate Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty, active trad­er for over 30 years, for­mer Direc­tor of Trad­er Devel­op­ment for Kingstree Trad­ing, LLC, and author of The Psy­chol­o­gy of Trad­ing: Tools and Tech­niques for Mind­ing the Mar­kets(Wiley, 2003) and the new Enhanc­ing Trad­er Per­for­mance: Proven Strate­gies From the Cut­ting Edge of Trad­ing Psy­chol­o­gy (Wiley, 2007).

He writes fea­ture columns for the Trad­ing Mar­kets web­site and sev­er­al trad­ing pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Stocks Futures and Options Magazine.

Key take-aways

-Elite per­form­ers in any high­ly-com­pet­i­tive field fol­low struc­tured learn­ing and train­ing process­es to devel­op their skills, ensur­ing con­tin­u­ous feed­back and refinement.

- Traders would ben­e­fit to fol­low­ing this exam­ple. Tools at their dis­pos­al include books, sim­u­la­tion pro­grams, biofeed­back pro­grams for emo­tion­al man­age­ment, and coaches.

- Spe­cif­ic skills to train are brain speed and work­ing mem­o­ry (for short-term traders), ana­lyt­i­cal skills (long-term ones). For both, man­ag­ing emo­tion­al-dri­ven impul­sive behavior.

Books on Trad­ing and Peak Performance

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (Alvaro): Wel­come, Prof. Steen­barg­er. Why don’t you start by pro­vid­ing us some con­text on your inter­est in trad­ing per­for­mance and how it led you to your new book? [Read more…] about Enhanc­ing Trad­er Per­for­mance and The Psy­chol­o­gy of Trad­ing: Inter­view with Brett N. Steenbarger

Executive Functions and MacArthur “Genius Grants”

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The MacArthur Foun­da­tion has award­ed the 2006 MacArthur “Genius Grants” to 25 indi­vid­u­als for their “their cre­ativ­i­ty, orig­i­nal­i­ty, and poten­tial to be sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors in their fields”. We are hap­py that some friends received the award, and that we will be able to inter­view them here, in this blog.

How were they able to accom­plish such a feat? what kind of brain is help­ing them? Also, how are their life­long expe­ri­ences shap­ing their brains?

braintop We can not place them all under fMRI exam­i­na­tion , so we will have to ask them ques­tions to under­stand how they deal with, and devel­oped, what neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists call Exec­u­tive Func­tions, which are most­ly locat­ed in our Frontal Lobes , the most recent part of our brains in evo­lu­tion­ary terms.

We will ask them about some key Frontal Lobe “Men­tal Mus­cles”, such as:

Plan­ning: fore­sight in devis­ing mul­ti-step strategies.

Flex­i­bil­i­ty: capac­i­ty for quick­ly switch­ing to the appro­pri­ate men­tal mode.

Inhi­bi­tion: the abil­i­ty to with­stand dis­trac­tion, and inter­nal urges.

Antic­i­pa­tion: pre­dic­tion based on pat­tern recognition.

Crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion: log­i­cal analysis.

Work­ing mem­o­ry: capac­i­ty to hold and manip­u­late infor­ma­tion “on-line” in our minds in real time.

Fuzzy log­ic: capac­i­ty to choose with incom­plete information.

Divid­ed atten­tion: abil­i­ty to pay atten­tion to more than one thing at a time.

Deci­sion-mak­ing: both qual­i­ty and speed.

A high­ly rec­om­mend­ed book, if you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about Exec­u­tive Func­tions and Frontal Lobes, is The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civ­i­lized Mind , by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg. You can read an in-depth review here.

If you had some of the MacArthur Fel­lows in front of you, right now, what would you ask them?

The Executive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger

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Last week I had the plea­sure to meet with our sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, renowned neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist and author of The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civ­i­lized Mind and The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older 

Let me sum­ma­rize some of the key over­all research find­ings out­lined in the books:

-  Our brains enjoy Life­long Brain Plas­tic­i­ty: until recent­ly, a pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tion was that  neu­rons die through life and do not get replen­ished. Now, neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, or the abil­i­ty of our brains to cre­ate new neu­rons until the very day we die, is proven.

- Intense men­tal chal­lenges pro­vide extra resis­tance to age­ing and improve pat­tern recog­ni­tion and brain “effi­cien­cy”, this is, the abil­i­ty to take on sim­i­lar chal­lenges with reduced meta­bol­i­cal demands

- Our men­tal activ­i­ty influ­ences the gen­er­a­tion of neu­rons and where they go. The func­tion­al capac­i­ty of our neur­al net­works depends on the num­ber of neu­rons and their con­nec­tions-both short and long

- Exer­cis­ing our brains is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies. “Use it or lose it” came from ath­let­ics to brain sci­ence. Even bet­ter, now we know that“Use it and get more of it.

-  The path­ways that con­nect the frontal lobes with the rest of the brain are slow to mature, reach­ing full oper­a­tional state, and there­fore social matu­ri­ty, between the ages of 18 and 30.

- Inten­sive neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-based pro­grams can pro­duce good results in as short as 3 months if well-targeted.

- The rate of devel­op­ment of new neu­rons can be influ­enced by phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive activities.