Update: A Fresh Look at Enhancing Brain & Mental Health Across the Lifespan

Time for Sharp­Brains’ May 2013 e‑newsletter, which fea­tures a vari­ety of arti­cles offer­ing a more opti­mistic and evi­­dence-based approach to brain and men­tal health than cur­rent prac­tices. First of all, let us high­light that Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can just pub­lished an excel­lent review of our new book. The author sums it up by say­ing that “…I wish I had read…

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Train your brain with targeted videogames, not with crossword puzzles

Study shows men­tal agili­ty game slows cog­ni­tive decline in old­er peo­ple (Iowa Now): “Wolin­sky and col­leagues sep­a­rat­ed 681 gen­er­al­ly healthy med­ical patients in Iowa into four groups—each fur­ther sep­a­rat­ed into those 50 to 64 years of age and those over age 65. One group was giv­en com­put­er­ized cross­word puz­zles, while three oth­er groups were exposed to…

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Debunking 10 Brain Fitness and Brain Health Myths during Brain Awareness Week

In hon­or of Brain Aware­ness Week, let’s debunk ten myths about brain fit­ness and brain health that remain sur­pris­ing­ly pop­u­lar. Top 10 brain fit­ness and brain health myths, debunked: Myth 1. Genes deter­mine the fate of our brains. Fact: Life­long brain plas­tic­ity means that our lifestyles and behav­iors play a sig­nif­i­cant role in how our brains (and therefore…

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Neuroscientists: Develop digital games to improve brain function and well-being

Authors: Devel­op dig­i­tal games to improve brain func­tion and well-being (UW-Madi­­son News): “Neu­ro­sci­en­tists should help to devel­op com­pelling dig­i­tal games that boost brain func­tion and improve well-being, say two pro­fes­sors spe­cial­iz­ing in the field in a com­men­tary arti­cle pub­lished in the sci­ence jour­nal Nature. In the Feb. 28 issue, the two — Daphne Bave­li­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester…

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National Science Foundation report: Can interactive media boost attention and well-being?

Behav­ioral train­ing inter­ven­tions have received much inter­est as poten­tial­ly effi­cient and cost-effec­­tive ways to main­tain brain fit­ness or enhance skilled per­for­mance with impact rang­ing from health and fit­ness to edu­ca­tion and job train­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, neu­ro­science research has doc­u­ment­ed the impor­tance of explic­it­ly train­ing (i) atten­tion­al con­trol, in order to enhance per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive fitness…

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