SharpBrains

In what category does Brain Fitness fit? Education, Productivity and Training, Health? Most of the interest so far has come from a Healthy Aging angle, but we are starting to see broader interest, as in the events below. After all, isn't working on our brains relevant to all those markets?.

2 busy weeks: I am attending/ speaking at a variety of events. I will make sure to blog at least the take-aways from the main events daily, and Caroline will also add her perspective as much as possible.

A) October 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute

B) October 9th: First session of my class The Science of Brain Health and Brain Fitness at the UC-Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)

C) October 10th: Teaching Brain Fitness in Your Community, workshop at an American Society on Aging (ASA) conference for health professionals

D) October 10th: Science at Work, Interview at the event The Future of Work: Amplified Individuals, Amplified Organizations, organized by the Institute for the Future

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A) October 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute. This promises to be a fascinating event. See below the panels I am attending-I will make sure to write some notes every day to keep you in the discussion.

Wednesday October 3rd:

Great Expectations: American Attitudes toward Personal Responsibility and Medicine

Healthcare Re-Imagined: Learning from Olympic Athletes

Thursday 4th:

The Damaged Brain: The Fight Against Neurodegeneration

The Human Element: A Candid Conversation about Pioneers of Modern Medicine  

The Last Frontier: The Mind

Global Scientific Investment

Science Versus the Biological Clock Continue Reading »

I am delighted to participate in LifeTwo’s "How to be Happier" week with this post. Happiness is still largely unchartered territory for neuroscience. It sounds like a hidden, elusive El Dorado. However, once one follows positive psychology research and Harvard's Dr. Ben-Shahar’s advice, "The question should not be whether you are happy but what you can do to become happier", the happiness quest starts to become more tangible and workable according to latest neuroscience research.

We are now going to explore the four key concepts of Dr. Ben-Shahar's statement --- 1) "you", 2) "can", 3) "do", and 4) "happier" --- from a neuropsychological perspective.

1) Who is "you"? According to latest scientific understanding, what we experience as "mind", our awareness, emerges from the physical brain. So, if we want to refine our minds, we better start by understanding and training our brains. A very important reality to appreciate: each brain is unique, since it reflects our unique lifetime experiences. Scientists have already shown how even adult brains retain a significant ability to continually generate new neurons and literally rewire themselves. So, each of us is unique, with our own aspirations, emotional preferences, capacities, and each of us in continually in flux. A powerful concept to remind ourselves: "you" can become happier means that "you" are the only person who can take action and evaluate what works for "you". And "you" means the mind that emerges from your own, very personal, unique, and constantly evolving, brain. Which only "you" can train.

2) Why the use of "can"? Well, this reminds me a great quote by Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who said that "Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain". Each of us has immense potential. However, in the same way that Michaelangelo’s David didn’t spontaneously appear out-of-the-blue one day, becoming happier requires attention, intention, and actual practice.

Attention: Every second, you choose what to pay attention to. You can focus on the negative and thereby train your brain to focus on the negative. You can Continue Reading »

(Graph Source: Klingberg et al, 2005)

Working memory is a key cognitive function that allows you to hold several units of information in mind—“online”—for brief periods of time, typically a few seconds, and manage them.

For example, if I tell you the 7 digits of my telephone number, would you remember them? and, could you tell them back to me...in reverse order?

Questions:

- What if that curve could be moved upwards?

- What activities may help kids and youth expand working memory?

- What activities can help adults over 30 reduce that rate of decline?

- And what is the relationship between working memory and the brain?

To Be Continued...

Roundup of recent articles:

1) Awards

-Very smart brains: Fun Slate article, Seven Ingenious Rules: How to become a MacArthur genius, once the 24 new MacArthur Fellows were announced (Dear reader: if you are a past, present or future winner, please forgive me for the title).

-The Tech Museum of Innovation Announces 2007 Awards (we had been nominated, didn't win).

2) Encouraging for the whole field: NASDAQ and NeuroInsights Launching Neurotech Index.

3) Cognitive Training Products: Hype or Hope for Maintaining Independence?.

Great June article we had missed, including a link to a 23-page PDF overview: Intellectual Functioning in Adulthood: Growth, Maintenance, Decline and Modifiability by K. Warner Shaie & Sherry L. Willis (San Francisco: American Society on Aging, 2005). 

 

4) Military Backs Reforms: "The military will expand psychological screening for both new recruits and active-duty service members, and will make safeguarding mental health part of the core training for leaders".

5) Ed Boyden, who leads the MIT leads the Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Group, has a new neurotechnology blog.

6) More blog carnivals: Education, Tangled Bank (Science).

There are several brain fitness topics where we still see a large disconnect between research and popular knowledge, and a major one is the relationship between memory and stress. Caroline and I collaborated on this post to bring you some context and tips. 

Our society has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with physical, immediately life-threatening crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and illnesses that gnaw away at us slowly, that stress us out and that, believe it or not, end up hurting our memory and brain.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky, in an interview about his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, points out that humans uniquely "can get stressed simply with thought, turning on the same stress response as does the zebra." But, the zebra releases the stress hormones through life-preserving action, while we usually just keep muddling along, getting more anxious by the moment.

What is the relationship between stress and memory? We all know chronic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our memory? Interestingly, acute stress can help us focus and remember things more vividly. Chronic stress, on the other hand, reduce our ability to focus and can specifically damage cells in the hippocampus, a brain structure critical to encoding short term memory.

When is stress chronic? When one feels Continue Reading »

LifeTwo, the website focused on all aspects of midlife challenges, from midlife crisis to midlife career change, is presenting a "How to be Happy" week, based on the work of Harvard Professor Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar and his book "Happier". Dr. Ben-Shahar teaches Harvard's most popular class, on Positive Psychology.

Today is their Day 1: From Happy to Happier.

A number of good bloggers are collaborating: Happiness Project, The Brazen Careerist, MenAlive, The Dating Goddess, Boomer Chronicles, Man-o-Pause, AgingBackwards. I will be honored to provide a guest column, this Thursday, on how to identify and overcome some common brain-based obstacles to being happy, and how you apply the latest brain science developments in your own quest to be happier. In the meanwhile, you may enjoy the post On being positive, and check out Day 1: From Happy to Happier.

Enjoy the week!

The Dana Foundation kindly sent us a copy of the great book Best of the Brain from Scientific American, a collection of 21 superb articles published previously in Scientific American magazine. A very nicely edited and illustrated book, this is a must for anyone who enjoys learning about the brain and speculating about what the future will bring us.

Some essays, like the ones by Eric Kandel (The New Science of Mind), Fred Gage (Brain, Repair Yourself), Carl Zimmer (The Neurobiology of the Self) and that by Steven Hollon, Michael Thase and John Markowitz (Treating Depression: Pills or Talk), are both intellectual feasts and very relevant to brain fitness. And finally starting to percolate into mainstream consciousness.

Let me quote some quotes and reflections as I was reading the book a couple of days ago, in the courtyard of a beautiful French cafe in Berkeley:

1)  On Brain Plasticity (the ability of the brain to rewire itself), Fred Gage says: "Within the past 5 years, however, neuroscientists have discovered that the brain does indeed change throughout life-...The new cells and connections that we and others have documented may provide the extra capacity the brain requires for the variety of challenges that individuals face throughout life. Such plasticity offers a possible mechanism through which the brain might be induced to repair itself after injury or disease. It might even open the prospect of enhancing an already healthy brain's power to think and ability to feel"  

2)  and How Experience affects Brain Structure: Under the section title "A Brain Workout", Fred Gage says "One of the mot striking aspects of neurogenesis (Note: the creation of new neurons) is that experience can regulate the rate of cell division, the survival of newborn neurons and their ability to integrate into the existing neural circuits...The best way to augment brain function might not involve drugs or cell implants but lifestyle changes."

3) Biology of Mind: Eric Kandel provides a wonderful overview of the most Continue Reading »

Brain Fitness doesn't require the use of expensive equipment. Your brain is enough. Today we are 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.

Dr. Judith Beck is the Director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond. Her most recent book is The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person.

Dr. Beck, thanks for your time. What does the Beck Institute do?

We have 3 main activities. One, we train practitioners and researchers through a variety of training programs. Two, we provide clinical care. Three, we are involved in research on cognitive therapy.

Please explain cognitive therapy in a few sentences

Cognitive therapy, as developed by my father Aaron Beck, is a comprehensive system of psychotherapy, based on the idea that the way people perceive their experience influences their emotional, behavioral, and physiological responses. Part of what we do is to help people solve the problems they are facing today. We also teach them cognitive and behavioral skills to modify their dysfunctional thinking and actions.

I understand that cognitive therapy has been tested for many years in a variety of clinical applications. What motivated you to bring those techniques to the weight-loss field by writing The Beck Diet Solution?

Since the beginning, I have primarily Continue Reading »