9 Responses

1. Brain Coach Answers: Aren’t crosswords and sudoku sufficient brain exercise? « SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution says:

   October 9, 2006 at 11:35

   […] Using your brain to solve cre­ative chal­lenges is excel­lent prac­tice and will help slow down the effects of aging. The lim­i­ta­tion with your cur­rent brain work­out pro­gram is that it does not have enough vari­ety or nov­elty to work out all your men­tal mus­cles. Have you ever seen the guys in the gym with the buff upper bod­ies sup­ported by lit­tle chicken legs? The same thing can hap­pen in your brain. Just as you crosstrain in your phys­i­cal fit­ness rou­tine (mix­ing car­dio with strength train­ing and flex­i­bil­ity) to get a bal­anced work­out, you need to crosstrain your men­tal fit­ness to exer­cise your brain through motor coor­di­na­tion, emo­tional under­stand­ing, mem­ory, focus and atten­tion, sen­sory com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lan­guage skills, and men­tal visualization. […]
2. New Directions: Social Intelligence and the Frontal Lobes « SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution says:

   October 14, 2006 at 5:34

   […] Social intel­li­gence is one of the eight mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences pro­posed by Howard Gard­ner. It involves the inter­per­sonal skills involved in cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing social rela­tion­ships with other peo­ple. In highly inter­con­nected, com­plex soci­eties, these skills become quite impor­tant for sur­vival and suc­cess. Social and exec­u­tive level skills like per­son­al­ity, moti­va­tion, the abil­ity to plan and fol­low a process with sev­eral steps, the abil­ity to orga­nize actions over time, social graces, and the abil­ity to behave appro­pri­ately for the social sit­u­a­tion reside in the frontal lobes of your brain – the last part of the human brain to evolve, and the part of the brain that makes humans human. Dam­age to the fron­totem­po­ral area can cause social skills to suf­fer, even if other apti­tudes improve with dimin­ished high level control. […]
3. SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution » Blog Archive » Social Intelligence and the Frontal Lobes says:

   October 28, 2006 at 3:30

   […] Social and exec­u­tive level skills like per­son­al­ity, moti­va­tion, the abil­ity to plan and fol­low a process with sev­eral steps, the abil­ity to orga­nize actions over time, social graces, and the abil­ity to behave appro­pri­ately for the social sit­u­a­tion reside in the frontal lobes of your brain – the last part of the human brain to evolve, and the part of the brain that makes humans so uniquely human. Dam­age to the fron­totem­po­ral area can cause these social skills to suf­fer, even if other apti­tudes improve with dimin­ished high level control. […]
4. SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution » Blog Archive » Brain Coach Answers: Aren’t crosswords and sudoku sufficient brain exercise? says:

   October 31, 2006 at 11:06

   […] Using your brain to solve cre­ative chal­lenges is excel­lent prac­tice and will help slow down the effects of aging. The lim­i­ta­tion with your cur­rent brain work­out pro­gram is that it does not have enough vari­ety or nov­elty to work out all your men­tal mus­cles. Have you ever seen the guys in the gym with the buff upper bod­ies sup­ported by lit­tle chicken legs? The same thing can hap­pen in your brain. Just as you crosstrain in your phys­i­cal fit­ness rou­tine (mix­ing car­dio with strength train­ing and flex­i­bil­ity) to get a bal­anced work­out, you need to crosstrain your men­tal fit­ness to exer­cise your brain through motor coor­di­na­tion, emo­tional under­stand­ing, mem­ory, focus and atten­tion, sen­sory com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lan­guage skills, and men­tal visualization. […]
5. SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution » Blog Archive » “Everyone a Changemaker”, Ashoka and Social Entrepreneurs says:

   November 15, 2006 at 6:31

   […] Exec­u­tive Func­tions and MacArthur “Genius Grants” […]
6. » What do successful Traders and Students have in common   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:

   December 10, 2006 at 1:46

   […] Those so-called ““portable skills” are basi­cally what neu­rop­shy­chol­o­gists call Exec­u­tive Functions. […]
7. » Cognitive Neuroscience and ADD/ADHD Today   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:

   December 31, 2006 at 12:38

   […] — “Attention” and exec­u­tive func­tion­ing are rel­e­vant to every human being. They are not binary (either I have good atten­tion, or I have an atten­tion deficit), but a skill, a mus­cle, that can be more or less devel­oped, and that is sub­ject to devel­op­ment and training. […]
8. » Brain Exercise for the Frontal lobes: McKinsey   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:

   May 2, 2007 at 6:20

   […] Exec­u­tive Func­tions and MacArthur “Genius Grants” Tags: brain devel­op­ment, brain exer­cise, brain gym, Deci­sion mak­ing, Exec­u­tive Func­tions, frontal lobes, hypoth­e­sis dri­ven prob­lem solv­ing, ini­tia­tive, log­i­cal analy­sis, McK­in­sey, McK­in­sey model, men­tal gym­nas­tics, men­tal stim­u­la­tion, Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, per­for­mance review, self reg­u­la­tion, stress and anxiety […]
9. » On Bill Gates Harvard commencement speech (and his Frontal Lobes)   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:

   June 16, 2007 at 4:40

   […] A note­wor­thy aspect of the speech was the implicit dis­play of what neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists call Exec­u­tive Func­tions, which are mostly located in our Frontal Lobes-the most recent part of our brains in evo­lu­tion­ary terms, and that enable us to learn and adapt to new envi­ron­ments. You can read more about this in our post Exec­u­tive Func­tions and MacArthur “Genius Grants”. […]