“On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-related con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mately 50% of patients.  But which 50%?.”

“We need unam­bigu­ous bio­mark­ers that are clin­i­cally rel­e­vant and scal­able at rea­son­able cost. They already exist in Can­cer.   But they do not yet exist in the Brain.” What may change that? Read the rest of this entry »

The MC at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s reunion din­ner encour­aged audi­ence mem­bers to reveal the most sig­nif­i­cant take-away from their under­grad­u­ate nurs­ing edu­ca­tion. The great­est ben­e­fit was quickly clear to me — problem-solving think­ing. Mem­ory pro­duced a mind video: a short, dark-haired, nurs­ing instruc­tor lec­tur­ing a small group of first year stu­dents in an empty patient room. “Don’t mem­o­rize the steps of ster­ile tech­nique. Use a problem-solving think­ing process.” She described the sequen­tial, cycli­cal process: define the prob­lem, gather infor­ma­tion, develop a solu­tion strat­egy, allo­cate resources, mon­i­tor progress, and eval­u­ate the solu­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

Please Save these Dates if you are inter­ested in explor­ing and dis­cussing the lat­est on Opti­miz­ing Health Through Neuroplasticity-Driven Inno­va­tion; the theme for our third annual vir­tual Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (“vir­tual” means every­thing takes place online; no one has to travel):

• Pre-Summit work­shops: May 31st-June 1st, 2012
• Sum­mit: June 7-8th, 2012
• Expo Week: June 12-14th, 2012

18 Con­firmed Sum­mit Speak­ers include: Read the rest of this entry »

Blurry line in diag­nos­ing early Alzheimer’s: study (Reuters):

• “The revised def­i­n­i­tion of a brain con­di­tion called mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment means that many peo­ple now con­sid­ered to have mild or early Alzheimer’s dis­ease could eas­ily be given that diag­no­sis instead, sug­gests a new study.” Read the rest of this entry »

NO ROAD, NO trail can pen­e­trate this for­est. The long and del­i­cate branches of its trees lie every­where, chok­ing space with their exu­ber­ant growth. No sun­beam can fly a path tor­tu­ous enough to nav­i­gate the nar­row spaces between these entan­gled branches. All the trees of this dark for­est grew from 100 bil­lion seeds planted together. And, all in one day, every tree is des­tined to die.

This for­est is majes­tic, but also comic and even tragic. It is all of these things. Indeed, some­times I think it is every­thing. Every novel and every sym­phony, every cruel mur­der and every act of mercy, every love affair and every quar­rel, every joke and every sor­row — all these things come from the for­est. Read the rest of this entry »

Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) is the global cam­paign, orga­nized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives, to increase pub­lic aware­ness of the progress and ben­e­fits of brain research. Every March, BAW unites the efforts of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Events are Read the rest of this entry »

This is an excel­lent (and free) “big pic­ture” eBook pub­lished by the World Eco­nomic Forum to con­tex­tu­al­ize why, and how, our soci­eties, poli­cies and sys­tems will need updat­ing in order to bet­ter man­age global pop­u­la­tion ageing.

EBook descrip­tion: Global age­ing, in devel­oped and devel­op­ing coun­tries alike, will dra­mat­i­cally alter the way that soci­eties and economies work. The issues include how indi­vid­u­als find ful­fil­ment, at what age they retire, and their qual­ity of life once they do retire; how gov­ern­ments devise social con­tracts to pro­vide finan­cial Read the rest of this entry »

Each blue dot in this map (you can click on it to expand it) rep­re­sents a reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pant in our upcom­ing online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012, start­ing on March 7th. Those dots rep­re­sent­ a fas­ci­nat­ing diver­sity of peo­ple and back­grounds: health and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, edu­ca­tors, busi­ness exec­u­tives, traders, con­sul­tants, coaches, soft­ware engi­neers, ther­a­pists,  and more. Based on an ini­tial sur­vey, some seem most inter­ested in the sci­ence; some are most inter­ested in prac­ti­cal guide­lines and appli­ca­tions. The point of this course is to dis­cuss both. To Learn More, and to Reg­is­ter, Click Here. 

Given how influ­en­tial Alexan­der Luria’s work was and still is on many top­ics we dis­cuss often here at SharpBrains.com, let us high­light the upcom­ing Luria Congress/ Moscow Inter­na­tional Con­gress (yes, in Moscow) ded­i­cated to the 110th anniver­sary of Alexan­der Romanovich Luria’s birth.  Read the rest of this entry »

We are the archi­tects and builders of our own brains.

For mil­len­nia, how­ever, we were obliv­i­ous to our enor­mous cre­ative capa­bil­i­ties. We had no idea that our brains were chang­ing in response to our actions and atti­tudes, every day of our lives. So we uncon­sciously and ran­domly shaped our brains and our lat­ter years because we believed we had an immutable brain that was at the mercy of our genes.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Read the rest of this entry »