Cognitive Fitness and Brain Improvement: 10 Debunked Myths

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 30, 2007 |

Over the last year we have inter­viewed a num­ber of lead­ing brain health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report. What can we say today that we could­n’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal claimed in…

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Cognitive Fitness @ Harvard Business Review

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 30, 2007 |

The Har­vard Busi­ness Review just pub­lished (thanks Cather­ine!) this arti­cle on cog­ni­tive fit­ness, by Rod­er­ick Gilkey and Clint Kilts. We are hap­py to see the grow­ing inter­est on how to main­tain healthy and pro­duc­tive brains, from a broad­en­ing num­ber of quar­ters. With­out hav­ing yet ful­ly read the article…it seems to pro­vide a rea­son­able intro­duc­tion to…

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Cognitive Development and Brain Research: Articles, Books, Papers (ASA)

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 28, 2007 |

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…

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Cognitive Fitness @ UC-Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 26, 2007

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…

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The Gene Delusion: IQ and the environment

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 26, 2007 |

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…

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Learning & The Brain Conference: discount for SharpBrains readers

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 25, 2007 |

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…

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