Top Articles

Here you have Sharp­Brains’ 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles since 2007. Thir­teen Expert Con­trib­u­tors and staff mem­bers have writ­ten these arti­cles for you, cov­er­ing a wide range of brain health and fit­ness topics.

Please note that, since the first arti­cle already includes most of our most pop­u­lar brain teasers, we have exclud­ed teasers from the rest of the ranking.

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Blog Chan­nel	Arti­cle
Brain teasers	1. Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games to Test your Brain - By Alvaro Fernandez It is always good to stim­u­late our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selec­tion of the 50 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed the most.
Health & Wellness	2. The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains - By Alvaro Fernandez Let’s review some good lifestyle options we can fol­low to main­tain, and improve, our vibrant brains. My favorite: don’t out­source your brain (even to us).
Cog­ni­tive Neuroscience	3. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost? - By Car­o­line Latham You’re dri­ving through sub­ur­bia one evening look­ing for the street where you’re sup­posed to have din­ner at a friend’s new house. You slow down to a crawl, turn down the radio, stop talk­ing, and stare at every sign. Why is that? Nei­ther the radio nor talk­ing affects your vision. Or do they?
Cog­ni­tive Neuroscience	4. Brain Plas­tic­i­ty: How learn­ing changes your brain - By Pas­cale Michelon You may have heard that the brain is plas­tic. As you know the brain is not made of plas­tic! Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty or brain plas­tic­i­ty refers to the brain’s abil­i­ty to CHANGE through­out life.
Brain Fit­ness Industry	5. Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends - By Alvaro Fernandez In an emerg­ing mar­ket like brain fit­ness train­ing, it is dif­fi­cult to make pre­cise pro­jec­tions. But, we can observe a num­ber of trends that exec­u­tives, con­sumers, pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers, and the media should watch close­ly in the com­ing years, as brain fit­ness and train­ing becomes main­stream, new tools appear, and an ecosys­tem grows around it.
Health & Wellness	6. Brain Exer­cise and Brain Health FAQs - By Alvaro Fernandez Answers to 7 most com­mon ques­tions around brain exer­cise and health, to help you nav­i­gate this emerg­ing field.
Health & Wellness	7. It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101 - By Alvaro Fernandez If we can all agree on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing our cars that get us around town, what about main­tain­ing our brains sit­ting behind the wheel?
Brain Fit­ness Industry	8. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware and Train­ing Games - By Alvaro Fernandez Unless you have been liv­ing in a cave, you have read by now mul­ti­ple arti­cles about the brain train­ing and brain exer­cise craze. Now, how do you know which of the new pro­grams can help you more, or whether you need any of them?
Brain Fit­ness Industry	9. Brain Train­ing Games: Con­text, Trends, Questions - By Alvaro Fernandez This past Tues­day, the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, and Smart­Sil­vers spon­sored an event to explore the real­i­ties and myths of this grow­ing field. Here is the summary.
Peak Per­for­mance	10. Stress Man­age­ment Work­shop for Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day - By Alvaro Fernandez Glob­al con­sult­ing com­pa­ny Accen­ture orga­nized a series of events, and I was for­tu­nate to lead a fun work­shop on The Neu­ro­science of Stress and Stress Man­age­ment in their San Fran­cis­co office, help­ing over 125 accom­plished women (and a few men).
Edu­ca­tion	11. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Management - By Jill Sutie With eyes closed and deep breaths, stu­dents are learn­ing a new method to reduce anx­i­ety, con­flict, and atten­tion dis­or­ders. But don’t call it meditation.
Cog­ni­tive Neuroscience	12. Stress and Neur­al Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Puzzle - By Gre­go­ry Kellet “My brain is fried, toast, fraz­zled, burnt out. How many times have you said or heard one ver­sion or anoth­er of these state­ments. Most of us think we are being fig­u­ra­tive when we utter such phras­es, but research shows that the bio­log­i­cal con­se­quences of sus­tained high lev­els of stress may have us being more accu­rate than we would like to think.
Health & Wellness	13. How can I improve my short term mem­o­ry? Is there a dai­ly exer­cise I can do to improve it? - By Car­o­line Latham By choos­ing to attend to some­thing and focus on it, you cre­ate a per­son­al inter­ac­tion with it, which gives it per­son­al mean­ing, mak­ing it eas­i­er to remember.
Edu­ca­tion	14. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tion­al Devel­op­ment Through Play - By David Elkind Play is rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing from our homes, our schools, and our neigh­bor­hoods. Decades of research has shown that play is cru­cial to phys­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and social-emo­tion­al devel­op­ment at all ages.
Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series	15. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person - By Alvaro Fernandez Brain Fit­ness does­n’t require the use of expen­sive equip­ment. Your brain is enough. We were hon­ored to inter­view Dr. Judith Beck on how cog­ni­tive tech­niques can be applied to devel­op a num­ber of impor­tant men­tal skills. The lat­est appli­ca­tion of these?. Los­ing weight.
Health & Wellness	16. Easy Steps to Improve Brain Health - By Car­o­line Latham We can sum­ma­rize a lot of research by say­ing that there are four essen­tial pil­lars to main­tain­ing a healthy brain that func­tions bet­ter now and lasts longer. Those pil­lars are: 1) Phys­i­cal Exer­cise, 2) Men­tal Exer­cise, 3) Good Nutri­tion, 4) Stress Management.
Brain Fit­ness Industry	17. Report: The State of the Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 - By Alvaro Fernandez After many months of work, we have just released our inau­gur­al report on the emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket, the first to define the brain fit­ness and train­ing soft­ware mar­ket and ana­lyze the size and trends of its four cus­tomer segments.
Cog­ni­tive Neuroscience	18. Improve Mem­o­ry with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Testing - By Bill Klemm There are whole mar­kets (think cross­words, herbal sup­ple­ments, drugs, brain fit­ness soft­ware) aimed at help­ing us improve our mem­o­ry. Now, what is “mem­o­ry”? and how does the process of mem­o­ry work?.
Edu­ca­tion	19. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn - By Lau­rie Bartels If you agree that our brains are designed for learn­ing, then as edu­ca­tors it is incum­bent upon us to be look­ing for ways to max­i­mize the learn­ing process for each of our stu­dents, as well as for ourselves.
Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series	20. Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness: Inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg - By Alvaro Fernandez Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg is a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine. His areas of exper­tise include exec­u­tive func­tions, mem­o­ry, atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, demen­tia, trau­mat­ic brain injury. Dr. Gold­berg was a stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria.
Brain Fit­ness Industry	21. Max­i­mize the Cog­ni­tive Val­ue of Your Men­tal Workout - By Schlo­mo Breznitz Like in the case of phys­i­cal fit­ness, cog­ni­tive fit­ness requires delib­er­ate exer­cis­ing. The main rea­son for this rests on the fact that our brains are basi­cal­ly lazy. There are in prin­ci­ple two very dif­fer­ent modes of activ­i­ty that our brains engage in when­ev­er faced with a problem.
Brain Fit­ness Industry	22. Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram and Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty @ PBS - By Alvaro Fernandez Infor­ma­tion on the PBS spe­cial pro­gram on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, brain fit­ness, aging and the brain titled “Brain Fit­ness Program”.
ADD/ADHD	23. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD - By David Rabiner Although med­ica­tion treat­ment is effec­tive for many indi­vid­u­als with ADHD, includ­ing ado­les­cents adults, there remains an under­stand­able need to explore and devel­op inter­ven­tions that can com­ple­ment or even sub­sti­tute for medication.
Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series	24. Can Intel­li­gence Be Trained? Mar­tin Buschkuehl shows how - By Alvaro Fernandez Dr. Mar­tin Buschkuehl is one of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan’s Cog­ni­tive Neu­roimag­ing Lab researchers involved in a recent cog­ni­tive train­ing study that received much media atten­tion since it was pub­lished at the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sciences.
ADD/ADHD	25. How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits? - By David Rabiner Under­stand­ing the extent of avail­able research can help fam­i­lies bet­ter under­stand the strengths and lim­i­ta­tions of the exist­ing research on neu­ro­feed­back and enable them to make a bet­ter informed deci­sion about whether to con­sid­er this treat­ment option for their child.
Health & Wellness	26. Exer­cis­ing the body is exer­cis­ing the mind - By Adri­an Preda One of the most impor­tant devel­op­ment in neu­ro­science was when the offi­cial dog­ma claim­ing that there was no neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (pro­duc­tion of new brain cells) in the adult brain was toppled.
Author Speaks Series	27. Brain Evo­lu­tion and Why it is Mean­ing­ful Today to Improve Our Brain Health - By Lar­ry McCleary You may feel over­whelmed by the stream of seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry sug­ges­tions regard­ing the best way to main­tain men­tal clar­i­ty as you age. Based on an analy­sis of sem­i­nal fac­tors in the devel­op­ment of mod­ern brain anato­my, I believe it is pos­si­ble to make some very com­pelling rec­om­men­da­tions for grow­ing big brains, enhanc­ing their func­tion, and mak­ing them resis­tant to the aging process.
Cog­ni­tive Neuroscience	28. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health - By Pas­cale Michelon What is the con­nec­tion between phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cis­es? Do they have addi­tive effects on brain health? Are they redun­dant? Let’s start by review­ing what we know about the effects of phys­i­cal exer­cise on the brain.
Brain Fit­ness Industry	29. Posit Sci­ence, Nin­ten­do Brain Age, and Brain Train­ing Topics - By Alvaro Fernandez The con­cept of hav­ing a “brain age” is, itself, pro­found­ly unsci­en­tif­ic. It is one thing to have that con­cept pop­u­lar­ized by a game devel­op­er such as Nin­ten­do through its pop­u­lar Brain Age/ Train­ing Series, and anoth­er one to have it rein­forced by com­pa­nies that are devel­op­ing and mar­ket­ing sci­ence-based applications.
Cog­ni­tive Neuroscience	30. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­o­ry and the Brain - By Shan­non Moffet Sleep is so obvi­ous a phys­i­o­log­ic need (from insects to mam­mals, all ani­mals sleep) that it does­n’t even occur to most of us to won­der why we have to do it.