SharpBrains

We had a very fun session titled Teaching Brain Fitness in Your Community at an American Society on Aging (ASA) conference for health professionals a couple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 attendants and very good participation, showing great interest in the topic. I can't wait to see the evaluations.

These are some of the resources I promised as a follow-up, which can be useful to everyone interested in our field:

Good general articles in the business and general media:

Change or Die

Want a sharp mind for your golden years? Start now

You’re Wiser Now

On how new neurons are born and grow in the adult brain:

Salk Scientists Demonstrate For The First Time That Newly Born Brain Cells Are Functional In The Adult Brain

Old Brains, New Tricks

On the surprising plasticity and development potential throughout life:

Brain Plasticity, Language Processing and Reading

Juggling Juggles the Brain

Successful Aging of the Healthy Brain

Other important aspects:

Stress and the Brain

Exercise and the Brain

Humor, Laughter and The Brain

On the importance and impact of mental stimulation and training: Continue Reading »

Quick post for my UC-Berkeley OLLI students: here are the links I promised.

- Collection of 50 Brain Teasers.

- Neuroscience Interview Series including in-depth notes of interviews with leading scientists and practitioners.

- Build Your Cognitive Reserve-Yaakov Stern: which talks about the Cognitive Reserve and Alzheimer's symptoms, and includes a great clip on the famous "nun study".

- Articles and Papers: a collection of good reading materials.

- Books: the selection of books we discussed.

- YouTube Channel: some clips you will enjoy to refresh your class memories.

Enjoy!

An anonymous reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog writes a superb comment, reproduced here:

"One thing Watson and others forget is that the brain is highly malleable based on environment. Although he is the father of DNA he knows very little about neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Previously it was thought that the human brain was 'hardwired' after a certain age. This is not true. Not only is not true, but the human mind is capable of adaptation but actual neuron growth even late in life. Ten years ago this was thought impossible.

Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity proves that a nurturing social and family setting shifts IQ, perspective, and emotional IQ. The so-called bell curve isn't genetic. Oppressed Tibetans and Chinese ethnic minorities -whose test scores soar in the United States and Canada- are 20-30 points lower in their homeland. That 20-30 points deficit is in the same range of a lot of groups that are attacked or threatened (Muslims in France, Christians in Nigeria, Blacks in America). Conversely when oppressed groups are removed from their environment their IQ, emotional health returns to a normal rate, thus proving that is NOT genetic.

It is plastic, shifting and based upon the environment.

That is why people Continue Reading »

Context: Last February we had the chance to attend a great conference on how brain research is influencing education. Highly recommended. Caroline wrote our impressions, summarized as "It was a fascinating mix of neuroscientists and educators talking with and listening to each other. Some topics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought - insight on where science and education are headed and how they influence each other". See some of our take-aways below.

Announcement: the 2008 edition of this conference, titled Using Brain Research to Enhance Learning, Attention & Memory For Educators, Parents and Clinicians, will take place in San Francisco,  on February 7-9th, 2008. The organizers have kindly invited me to deliver a lecture on Interventions to Sharpen Minds, as part of the Brain Plasticity & Attention track. I will provide an overview of the science behind computer-based cognitive training interventions and discuss a number of research-based programs that are being used today. Let me know if you are planning to attend!

Registration fees: the general registration fees are $495 per person, if you register before January 25th, 2008.

Special Discount for SharpBrains readers: you can register for $450 before that date,  making sure to write
SharpBrains1 in the comments section of How did you hear about the conference? in this Registration Page. 

To learn more about the conference: Continue Reading »

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)'s autobiography (full text free online) includes some very insightful refections on the evolution of his own mind during his middle-age, showcasing the power of the brain to rewire itself through experience (neuroplasticity) during our whole lifetimes-not just when we are youngest.

He wrote these paragraphs at the age of 72 (I have bolded some key sentences for emphasis, the whole text makes great reading):

"I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-- against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better.

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with Continue Reading »

A reader (thanks Mike!) sends us this fun article, titled A matter of training, on how to train our memory. Some quotes:

“It’s a skill, not a talent. It’s something anyone could have picked up ... I’m not born with this. It’s about training and technique,” he says, explaining his unusual ability. Anant holds the Limca Record – the Indian equivalent of the Guinness Record – for memorising 75 telephone numbers, along with the names of their owners, in less than an hour. He is recognised as “the man with the most phenomenal memory in India.”  

“Unfortunately, most people think that memorising is very difficult. The moment they see someone demonstrate something like this, they think it’s out of this world.”

If you want to remember something, you have to link it to something you already know. Association is the natural principal. For example, if you need directions to a place, a landmark is often used as a point of reference. And if you derive pleasure from something you do, there’s a good chance you’ll remember it. Since the brain already works in this manner, why don’t we take control of it?” 

“To me, an intelligent person is someone who is able to put together more of his skills to solve a problem. Intelligence is about using strategies.” 

The key concept here is that memory, as well as other cognitive skills, can be trained through Continue Reading »

We often talk in this blog about how to expand fundamental abilities or cognitive functions, like attention, or memory, or emotional self-regulation. Think of them as muscles one can train. Now, it is also important to think of ways one can use our existing muscles more efficiently.

Let's talk about how to manage better the overwhelming amount of information available these days.

Hundreds of thousands of new books, analyst reports, scientific papers published every year. Millions of websites at our googletips. The flow of data, information and knowledge is growing exponentially, stretching the capacity of our not-so-evolved brains. We can complain all day that we cannot process ALL this flow. Now, let me ask, should we even try?

Probably not. Why engage in a losing proposition. Instead, let me offer a few strategies that can help manage this flow of information better.

1. Prioritize: strategic consulting firms such as McKinsey and BCG train their staff in the so-called 80/20 rule: 80% of effects are caused by the top 20% of causes. In a company, 80% sales may come from 20% of the accounts. Implication: focus on that top 20%; don't spend too much time on the 80% that only account for 20%.

2. Leverage a scientific mindset. Scientists shift through tons of data in efficient, goal-oriented ways. How do they do it? By first stating a hypothesis and then looking for data. For example, an untrained person could spend weeks "boiling the ocean", trying to read as much as possible, in a very fragmentary way, about how physical exercise affects our brain. A trained scientist would first define clear hypotheses and preliminary assumptions, such as "Physical exercise can enhance the brain's ability to generate new neurons" or "Those new neurons appear in the hippocampus", and then look specifically for data that corroborates or refutes those sentences, enabling him or her to refine the hypotheses further, based on accumulated knowledge, in a virtuous learning cycle.     

First of all, thank you for coming to enjoy our 50 brain teasers...the reaction was overwhelming. We will prepare more!

Second, quick links to excellent health-related blog carnivals:

Grand Rounds: the most comprehensive one

Health Wonk Review: focused on public policy 

Change of Shift:  nursing-oriented

Medicine 2.0: on how web 2.0 interacts with the medical field

Third, here you have a useful ranking of top 100 Health blogs. Our blog is #10, despite our niche focus on brain health and fitness!