The MIT Tech­nol­ogy Review September/ Octo­ber edi­tion brings an arti­cle by Daniel Den­nett titled Higher Games: It’s been 10 years since IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kas­parov in chess. A promi­nent philoso­pher asks what the match meant (sub­scrip­tion required), which is cre­at­ing a lot of buzz on the sci­ence blo­gos­phere on whether humans or machines are “smarter”.

• Chess com­put­ers beat humans: Does this mean com­put­ers are “cre­ative”? (Cog­ni­tive Daily)
• Is Deep Blue Human? (The Frontal Cortex)
• The Intel­li­gence of Game-Playing Soft­ware (Aardvarchaeology)
• Chess and Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (The Ques­tion­able Authority)

All this begs the ques­tion, what does “being smart” means? “Is it pos­si­ble to improve intel­li­gence and become “smarter” and what does it really mean to be “smarter?” (ques­tion asked by Patri­cia, one of our readers).

Today we bring you an answer to those ques­tions pro­vided by David Gamon, author of Build­ing Men­tal Mus­cle: Con­di­tion­ing Exer­cises for the Six Intel­li­gence Zones:

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As we age, our brains accu­mu­late an ever larger col­lec­tion of pat­terns. This gives us a kind of men­tal quick­ness that com­pen­sates for the slow­ing of pro­cess­ing speed. Instead of hav­ing to piece together the pat­tern bit by bit from scratch by asso­ci­at­ing indi­vid­ual pieces of data, you need only a few pieces of data to make you real­ize that they fit a pat­tern you already know, much the way a few bars of melody are all you need to rec­og­nize an entire song.

The more expe­ri­ence we accu­mu­late, the more of these pat­terns we hold in our brains, and the less effort we have to make to piece together new pieces of data in new ways. With that comes a dan­ger. We get lazy. It’s a lot eas­ier to Read the rest of this entry »

Today we have a num­ber of indus­try announcements:

1) New edi­tions of these Blog Car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cific topics)

• Encephalon (neuroscience)
• Grand Rounds (medicine)
• Edu­ca­tion (guess!)
• Hap­pi­ness

2) The Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion has launched a Neu­rotech Job Board ded­i­cated to com­mer­cial neu­ro­science (mostly focused on clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, like drugs and devices, not so much on pre­ven­tion, health & well­ness). And the Kaiser Foun­da­tion Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter is look­ing for a Research Project Man­ager.

3) The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence has finally released a report of the human enhance­ment work­shop that took place in June 2006. Read more about it at Zack’s blog.

4) Stephanie West Allen and Dr. Jef­frey Schwartz announce the Sched­ule of Events for their Brains On Pur­pose™ Sem­i­nars (“look­ing at con­flict and the process of con­flict res­o­lu­tion through the lens of neu­ro­science”): Col­orado in Octo­ber and Port­land in November.

5) Reg­is­tra­tion is now open for my class on The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here), Octo­ber 9 30, at UC Berke­ley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI).

6) A cou­ple of great Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s quickly review 4 recent arti­cles in both “Times” news­pa­pers: the New York Times and the UK-based Times, on brain fit­ness and a cou­ple of programs. 

1) Cal­is­then­ics for the Older Mind, on the Home Com­puter: good overview of one of the grow­ing areas for cog­ni­tive train­ing, “healthy aging”.

• Quotes:
• - “In the past year, some half-dozen pro­grams, with names like Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram 2.0, Mind­Fit and Brain Age2, have aimed at aging con­sumers eager to keep their men­tal edge. Read the rest of this entry »

To all new readers-Welcome!. The Digg Tsunami has brought over 40,000 vis­i­tors so far…and it con­tin­ues. We need to thank Andrey for his excel­lent tech­ni­cal work in help­ing us ride such a beau­ti­ful wave.

Let me give you an overview of what you can find in our blog, bridg­ing neu­ro­science research and brain health/ “brain exer­cise” prac­tice. First, here you have a few of my favorite quotes from the 10 inter­views we have done with neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy experts in cog­ni­tive and emo­tional train­ing in our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series. You can read the in-depth inter­view notes for each if you want to stim­u­late those neurons…

• “Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Learn­ing means the mod­i­fi­ca­tion, growth, and prun­ing of our neu­rons, con­nec­tions called synapses and neu­ronal net­works, through experience…we are cul­ti­vat­ing our own neu­ronal net­works.- Dr. James Zull, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy and Bio­chem­istry at Case West­ern Uni­ver­sity: Read Inter­view Notes
• “Exer­cis­ing our brains sys­tem­at­i­cally ways is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies. In my expe­ri­ence, “Use it or lose it should really be “Use it and get more of it.- Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, and dis­ci­ple of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria: Read Inter­view Notes
• “Indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tally stim­u­lat­ing lives, through edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion and leisure activ­i­ties, have reduced risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symp­toms. Stud­ies sug­gest that they have 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing the dis­ease - Dr. Yaakov Stern, Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at the Col­lege of Physi­cians and Sur­geons of Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, New York: Read Inter­view Notes

“What research has shown is that Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s review some good lifestyle options we can fol­low to main­tain, and improve, our vibrant brains.

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1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic under­stand­ing will serve you well to appre­ci­ate your brain’s beauty as a liv­ing and constantly-developing dense for­est with bil­lions of neu­rons and synapses.
2. Take care of your nutri­tion. Did you know that the brain only weighs 2% of body mass but con­sumes over 20% of the oxy­gen and nutri­ents we intake? As a gen­eral rule, you don’t need expen­sive ultra-sophisticated nutri­tional sup­ple­ments, just make sure you don’t stuff your­self with the “bad stuff”.
3. Remem­ber that the brain is part of the body. Things that exer­cise your body can also help sharpen your brain: phys­i­cal exer­cise enhances neurogenesis.
4. Prac­tice pos­i­tive, future-oriented thoughts until they become your default mind­set and you look for­ward to every new day in a con­struc­tive way. Stress and anx­i­ety, no mat­ter whether induced by exter­nal events or by your own thoughts, actu­ally kills neu­rons and pre­vent the cre­ation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the oppo­site of exer­cise: it pre­vents the cre­ation of new neurons.
5. Thrive on Learn­ing and Men­tal Chal­lenges. The point of hav­ing a brain is pre­cisely to learn and to adapt to chal­leng­ing new envi­ron­ments. Once new neu­rons appear in your brain, where they stay in your brain and how long they sur­vive depends on how you use them. “Use It or Lose It” does not mean “do cross­word puz­zle num­ber 1,234,567″. It means, “chal­lenge your brain often with fun­da­men­tally new activities”.
6. We are (as far as we know) the only self-directed organ­isms in this planet. Aim high. Once you grad­u­ate from col­lege, keep learn­ing. The brain keeps devel­op­ing, no mat­ter your age, and it reflects what you do with it.
7. Explore, travel. Adapt­ing to new loca­tions forces you to pay more atten­tion to your envi­ron­ment. Make new deci­sions, use your brain.
8. Don’t Out­source Your Brain. Not to media per­son­al­i­ties, not to politi­cians, not to your smart neigh­bour… Make your own deci­sions, and mis­takes. And learn from them. That way, you are train­ing your brain, not your neighbour’s.
9. Develop and main­tain stim­u­lat­ing friend­ships. We are “social ani­mals”, and need social inter­ac­tion. Which, by the way, is why ‘Baby Ein­stein’ has been shown not to be the panacea for chil­dren development.
10. Laugh. Often. Espe­cially to cog­ni­tively com­plex humor, full of twists and sur­prises. Bet­ter, try to become the next Jon Stewart

Now, remem­ber that what counts is not read­ing this article-or any other-, but prac­tic­ing a bit every day until small steps snow­ball into unstop­pable, inter­nal­ized habits…so, pick your next bat­tle and try to start improv­ing at least one of these 10 habits today. Revisit the habit above that really grabbed your atten­tion, click on the link to learn more, and make a deci­sion to try some­thing dif­fer­ent today!

…that understanding how our brains and minds work may con­tribute to all of them.

Here you have some of the best blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts on spe­cific top­ics) we have con­tributed to this week:

• Grand Rounds: “brain exer­cise” is as impor­tant as nutri­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress management.
• Green Liv­ing: let’s start the con­ver­sa­tion about “sus­tain­able brains”.
• Human Resources: isn’t it obvi­ous, yet often neglected, that “human cap­i­tal” rests on brain devel­op­ment and learn­ing how to learn?.
• Brain Fit­ness Car­ni­val: fully devoted to our topic.
• Video Game Blog­gers: “games” can be good vehi­cles for cog­ni­tive and emo­tional train­ing, if prop­erly devel­oped and used.
• Gene Genie: our genes are not destiny.

You can also check the Med­i­cine 2.0 car­ni­val that we hosted.

Over the months we have received many requests for good arti­cles that could be reused in a vari­ety of places, from a hos­pi­tal newslet­ter to a cor­po­rate well­ness e-newsletter and a num­ber of web­sites. We want to reach as many peo­ple as possible, so tomor­row we are launch­ing a free Con­tent “Brain Feed”, and also cus­tom con­tent services.

In short, we are going to offer a weekly arti­cle in the new SharpBrains free con­tent feed. This feed is designed to help web­site and newslet­ter pub­lish­ers dis­sem­i­nate good infor­ma­tion on brain exer­cise and fit­ness. 20 arti­cles are avail­able imme­di­ately (check them in our Arti­cles sec­tion), build­ing on the con­tent we have writ­ten in this blog.

And, if an orga­ni­za­tion wants good con­tent on brain health/ training/ fit­ness to dis­trib­ute inter­nally or exter­nally, we can help.

On a related note, we just joined the Blog­Burst net­work to offer our blog con­tent to a vari­ety of news­pa­pers. Let’s see how these ini­tia­tives work!

Wel­come to the August 19, 2007 edi­tion of med­i­cine 2.0.

Med­i­cine 2.0? Yes, some pio­neers are already mak­ing good use of Web 2.0 tools to improve Med­i­cine in a new, col­lab­o­ra­tive way. This blog car­ni­val seems to me to be, in itself, liv­ing proof.

Let’s see.

You may won­der, what exactly is “Med­i­cine 2.0″? well, Con­struc­tive Med­i­cine takes a stab at it, show­ing how it may be much older than we thought.

You want an exam­ple? see a blog­ger (Berta­lan) chron­i­cle an amaz­ing med­ical sim­u­la­tion in Sec­ond Life.

Some blog­gers pro­vide great overview posts:

• A Beginner’s Guide to Read­ing Med­ical Blogs (Vitum Med­i­ci­nus) pro­vides a fan­tas­tic resource cov­er­ing every­thing you need to know about med­ical blogs and blogs in gen­eral, includ­ing why to sub­scribe to RSS feeds (for How, keep reading).
• Nurs­ing and Web 2.0 (Uni­ver­sal Health) is a thought­ful post on the gap between nurs­ing research and prac­tice and how blog­ging and 2.0 can help.
• Essay on the effect of Web 2.0 on the future of med­ical prac­tice and edu­ca­tion (Med­ical Jour­nal of Aus­tralia), that pro­vides a great overview of med­i­cine 2.0, defin­ing and list­ing blogs, wikis, pod­casts and more.
• Social sci­ence as infec­tious dis­ease (Min­ing Drug Space) is an essay on how blogs are con­tribut­ing to knowl­edge cre­ation and exchange, and includes the writer’s reflec­tions on blogging.

…while oth­ers are already address­ing some of the impor­tant points raised:

• There is a need for Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you have been liv­ing in a cave, you have read by now mul­ti­ple arti­cles about the brain train­ing and brain exer­cise craze: sudoku, Nin­tendo BrainAge, mul­ti­ple online games, soft­ware like Mind­Fit and Posit Science…

If you are look­ing for some fun men­tal stim­u­la­tion now, here you have our selec­tion of Brain Teasers.

Now, how do you know which of the new pro­grams can help you more, or whether you need any of them? which ones are sim­ply enter­tain­ing Games vs. which ones look like “Games” but are really Train­ing, improv­ing, spe­cific cog­ni­tive and emo­tional skills? Well, that’s why we are pub­lish­ing the Sharp­Brains Check­list below, to help you nav­i­gate through the over­whelm­ing and con­flict­ing media reports and com­pany announcements.

We have spent over 18 months inter­view­ing sci­en­tists and review­ing avail­able Brain Fit­ness and Exer­cise Pro­grams world­wide, and want to share with you, right now, the research-based cri­te­ria we use to eval­u­ate them.

10 Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for You (and a brief expla­na­tion of why each ques­tion is important)

* 1. Are there sci­en­tists, ide­ally neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, and a sci­en­tific advi­sory board behind the program?

(Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists spe­cial­ize in mea­sur­ing and under­stand­ing human cog­ni­tion and brain struc­ture and function.)

* 2. Are there pub­lished, peer-reviewed sci­en­tific papers in PubMed writ­ten by those sci­en­tists? How many?

(Pubmed is a ser­vice of the U.S. National Library of Med­i­cine that includes mil­lions of cita­tions sci­ence jour­nals. If a sci­en­tist has not pub­lished a paper that appears in that data­base, he or she can­not make sci­en­tific claims.)

* 3. What are the spe­cific ben­e­fits claimed for using this pro­gram? Read the rest of this entry »

I’d love to know what was going in your mind just a few sec­onds ago, when you started read­ing the title of this post. That will help us under­stand your mind­set, pri­or­i­ties, ques­tions, con­cerns, interests, and keep improv­ing our blog!

Thank you