Given the recent James Wat­son “race and IQ” con­tro­versy, I took on to read Stephan Jay Gould’s clas­sic book The Mis­mea­sure of Man, in which he debunks IQ (and the under­ly­ing “g”) as mea­sure of defined, innate, “intel­li­gence”. Fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing overall, very tech­ni­cal in some areas.

The key take-away? In the last chap­ter, A Pos­i­tive Con­clu­sion, he writes that

- “Flex­i­bil­ity is the hall­mark of human evolution…In other mam­mals, explo­ration, play and flex­i­bil­ity of behav­ior are qual­i­ties of juve­niles, only rarely of adults. We retain not only the anatom­i­cal stamp stamp of child­hood, but its men­tal flex­i­bil­ity as well…Humans are learn­ing animals”

He then relates this story from T.H. White’s novel The Once and Future King

- God, he recounts, cre­ated all ani­mals as embryos and called each before his throne, offer­ing them what­ever addi­tions to their anatomy they desired. All opted for spe­cial­ized adult features-the lion for claws and sharp teeth, the deer for antlers and hoofs. The human embryo stepped forth last and said: Please God, I think that you made me in the shape which I now have for rea­sons best known to Your­selves and that it would be rude to change. If I am to have my choice, I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which you gave me…I will stay a defence­less embryo all my life, doing my best to make myself a few fee­ble imple­ments out of the wood, iron, and the other mate­ri­als which You have seen fit to put before me..” “Well done”, exclaimed the Cre­ator in delighted tone. “Here all you embryos, come here with Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times just pub­lished an OpEd that may be throw­ing out the baby with the bath water.

Exer­cise on the Brain extols the virtue of phys­i­cal exer­cise for brain health at the expense of other impor­tant pil­lars such as good nutri­tion, stress man­age­ment and men­tal exercise.

We have sent a Let­ter to the Edi­tor to clar­ify the sub­ject and put their main rec­om­men­da­tion (go out and walk, or join the gym) in bet­ter context.

Let’s quickly review the four essen­tial pil­lars to help main­tain a healthy brain, and sug­gest some tips. Those pil­lars are:

• Phys­i­cal Exercise
• Men­tal Exercise
• Good Nutri­tion
• Stress Man­age­ment

1. 1. Phys­i­cal Exercise
• - Start by talk­ing to your doc­tor, espe­cially if you are not cur­rently phys­i­cally active, have spe­cial health con­cerns, or are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant changes to your cur­rent program.
• - Set a goal that you can achieve. Do some­thing you enjoy for even just 15 min­utes a day. You can always add more time and activ­i­ties later.
• - Sched­ule exer­cise into your daily rou­tine. It will be become a habit faster if you do.
• - If you can only do one thing, do some­thing car­dio­vas­cu­lar, mean­ing some­thing that gets your heart beat­ing faster. This includes walk­ing, run­ning, ski­ing, swim­ming, bik­ing, hik­ing, ten­nis, bas­ket­ball, play­ing tag, ulti­mate Fris­bee, and other sim­i­lar sports/activities.
2. 2. Men­tal Exercise
• - Be curi­ous! Get to know your local library and com­mu­nity col­lege, look for local orga­ni­za­tions or churches that offer classes or workshops
• - Do a vari­ety of things, includ­ing things you aren’t good at (if you like to sing, try paint­ing too)
• - Work puz­zles like cross­words and sudoku or play games like chess and bridge
• - Try a com­put­er­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram for a cus­tomized workout
• - If you can only do one thing, learn some­thing new every day
3. Good Nutri­tion
• - Eat a vari­ety of foods of dif­fer­ent col­ors with­out a lot of added ingre­di­ents or processes
• - Plan your meals around your veg­eta­bles, and then add fruit, pro­tein, dairy, and/or grains
• - Add some cold-water fish to your diet (tuna, salmon, mack­erel, hal­ibut, sar­dines, and her­ring) which con­tain omega-3 fatty acids
• - Learn what a portion-size is, so you don’t overeat
• - Try to eat more foods low on the Glycemic Index
• - If you can only do one thing, eat more veg­eta­bles, par­tic­u­larly leafy green ones
4. Stress Man­age­ment
• - Get reg­u­lar car­dio­vas­cu­lar exercise
• - Try to get enough sleep each night
• - Keep con­nected with your friends and family
• - Prac­tice med­i­ta­tion, yoga, or some other calm­ing activ­ity as way to take a relax­ing time-out (maybe a bath)
• - Try train­ing with a heart rate vari­abil­ity biofeed­back sensor 
• - If you can only do one thing, set aside 5–10 min­utes to just breathe deeply and recharge

Quotes from a great arti­cle, Pro­fes­sor, 81, proves brain stays young:

- In 1960, Dia­mond became the first female fac­ulty mem­ber in Cal’s sci­ence depart­ment, achiev­ing full pro­fes­sor­ship in 1974. She still teaches anatomy with her 81st birth­day two weeks away.

- Dia­mond, a pro­fes­sor of anatomy at UC Berke­ley, deter­mined that the brain can stay young through stim­u­la­tion, which can be achieved through her five-point plan: diet, exer­cise, chal­lenge, new­ness and ten­der lov­ing care.

- Using her plan, how is she challenged?

- “Every stu­dent who sits in that chair,” she said, point­ing across the desk in her fifth-floor office in the Life Sci­ences Build­ing on cam­pus. “They come in here ask­ing ques­tions, and you bet­ter have the answers.”

- What new­ness, then, is in her life?

- “I have grand­chil­dren,” she said. “What could be bet­ter, decid­ing new things for them, to stim­u­late their brains.”

- She has four chil­dren, four grand­chil­dren and a hus­band, Arnold Schei­del, who teaches anatomy at UCLA. They see each other on school weekends,

- Dia­mond feels her own brain growing.

Keep read­ing here.

Related resources

A pre­vi­ous post list­ing a num­ber of her essays: Mar­ian Dia­mond and the Brain Revolution

Her great book Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nur­ture Your Child’s Intel­li­gence, Cre­ativ­ity, and Healthy Emo­tions from Birth Through Ado­les­cence, by Berkeley’s Mar­ian Dia­mond and Janet L. Hopson.

Very nice Los Ange­les Times arti­cle on the grow­ing research behind, and accep­tance of, med­i­ta­tion in main­stream med­i­cine (through what is called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduc­tion, or MBSR): Doctor’s orders: Cross your legs and say ‘Om’.

A few quotes:

- “It appears to work. In a new study, pub­lished in Octo­ber in the jour­nal Pain, Natalia Morone, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­sity of Pitts­burgh, tracked the effect of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion on chronic lower back pain in adults 65 and older. The ran­dom­ized, con­trolled clin­i­cal trial found that the 37 peo­ple who par­tic­i­pated in an eight-week mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion pro­gram had sig­nif­i­cantly greater pain accep­tance and phys­i­cal func­tion than a sim­i­lar size con­trol group. Sub­se­quently, the con­trol group took the same eight-week pro­gram and had sim­i­lar results.”

- “As a med­i­ta­tor, I learned the value of being present and how that allows clar­ity in pro­cess­ing our daily lives,” Zeltzer said. “The clin­i­cal team sees chil­dren with chronic pain who are very dif­fi­cult to treat and have been to many other spe­cial­ists and feel dis­cour­aged by the time they come to us. I felt that learn­ing to med­i­tate would help the team feel a sense of bal­ance and equa­nim­ity in the face of the anx­i­ety and dis­tress brought to them by these patients and their families.”

- “SCIENTISTS have stud­ied the effects of med­i­ta­tion on pain for nearly three decades, ever since 1979, when MIT-trained micro­bi­ol­o­gist Jon Kabat-Zinn, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus and founder of the Cen­ter for Mind­ful­ness at the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts Med­ical Cen­ter, used mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion in a 10-week pro­gram to teach chronic pain patients how to cope. Kabat-Zinn’s 1990 best­seller, “Full Cat­a­stro­phe Liv­ing,” described the tech­nique he used — mindfulness-based stress reduc­tion, or MBSR.”

Full arti­cle: Doctor’s orders: Cross your legs and say ‘Om’

Related posts:

- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) and other stress man­age­ment techniques

- Mind & Life Institute

Pic: Den­nis Col­lette, via Flickr

The Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO) just announced the top ten emerg­ing areas of neu­ro­science that will “impact the future of treat­ments for brain and ner­vous sys­tem”: Top 10 Neu­ro­science Trends in 2007.

It pro­vides superb food for thought. And some of them will sound famil­iar to read­ers of this blog:

* 6. Nor­mal brain aging gets more atten­tion: More research and devel­op­ment is being focused on think­ing impair­ments that only par­tially limit inde­pen­dence and qual­ity of life for senior cit­i­zens, adults and school aged chil­dren. Neu­rosoft­ware will pen­e­trate nurs­ing homes and schools, as brain fit­ness soft­ware becomes new first-line treat­ment strat­egy.
* 8. Pre­ven­tion evi­dence grows: You are what you eat; smok­ing is as bad as we thought; and new stud­ies reveal the effects of envi­ron­men­tal sub­stances on Alzheimer’s dis­ease, Parkinson’s dis­ease and oth­ers.
* 9. Emo­tional dis­or­ders research advances:  New research con­tin­ues to link neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis to treat­ment of depres­sion.  A bet­ter under­stand­ing of PTSD should lead to new treat­ment regimes.

Want to read prob­a­bly the best overview of the neurosoftware/ brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket? Check this arti­cle, fresh from the oven: Thank Boomers for Buff­ing Up Brain Mar­ket.

To clar­ify the num­bers men­tioned: we project $225m in the US alone (grow­ing from $70m in 2003), broken-down as fol­lows: $80m for the Con­sumer seg­ment, $60m in K12 Edu­ca­tion, $50m in Clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, and $35m in the Cor­po­rate seg­ment. The Con­sumer seg­ment, with a healthy aging value propo­si­tion, is the most recent one but the most rapidly growing.

Fol­low­ing our Sep­tem­ber edi­tion, here you are have our Monthly Digest of the Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sider it your monthly Brain Exer­cise Magazine.

(Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Top­ics sec­tion, and sub­scribe to our monthly newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this Digest by email).

Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket News

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness as a New Fron­tier of Fit­ness: excel­lent Los Ange­les Times arti­cle, cov­er­ing the cog­ni­tive exer­cise angle of healthy aging and lead­ing science-based players.

A Brain Fit­ness Vaca­tion: what does this mean? Well, read this fun arti­cle to discover.

Rethink­ing the Brain Fit­ness Busi­ness: thought-provoking arti­cle on the future of the sec­tor from a busi­ness point of view.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness @ Har­vard Busi­ness Review: HBR makes a first attempt to bring neu­ro­science research into help­ing lead­ers per­form at peak lev­els and main­tain sharp brains.

News You Can Use

Train Your Brain to Be Hap­pier: impli­ca­tions of neu­ro­science and pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy research for our daily lives-and our hap­pi­ness. Please keep tuned if you are inter­ested in this topic: we will pub­lish soon a great inter­view with Dr. Robert Emmons, lead­ing researcher in the field of gratitude.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness: 10 Debunked Myths: what are some mis­con­cep­tions that pre­vent many peo­ple from see­ing the tremen­dous poten­tial from this emerg­ing research?. Read this post to dis­cover and discuss.

10 (Sur­pris­ing) Mem­ory Improve­ment Tips: and why stress man­age­ment is impor­tant for mem­ory and our brain.

Teasers

Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games with a neu­ro­science angle: a list of the most pop­u­lar mind games in our blog.

Events

10 High­lights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum: a sum­mary of impres­sions from this great event, includ­ing what can hap­pen when you have sci­en­tists and politi­cians in the same room.

Brain Fit­ness @ Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing, Health events: an overview of a num­ber of con­fer­ences and uni­ver­sity classes with a brain fit­ness angle.

Thought-provoking posts

Darwin’s adult neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: reflec­tions of a beau­ti­ful mind that –as self-reported at the age of 72– could have been even more beau­ti­ful.The Gene Delu­sion: IQ and the envi­ron­ment: do genes deter­mine our fates? They don’t. They why do we seem to believe so so often?.

Dis­counts for Sharp­Brains readers

Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: the best con­fer­ence bring­ing neu­ro­science research to edu­ca­tors’ minds, Feb­ru­ary 7-9th in San Fran­cisco. Reg­is­ter before Jan­u­ary 25th, 2008, for a dis­counted price and to make sure you can attend and see our workshop!

Mind­Fit 10% spe­cial dis­count: a 10% dis­count on one of the most pop­u­lar brain fit­ness pro­grams, that com­bines both an in-depth assess­ment of cog­ni­tive skills with per­son­al­ized training.

Books and Resources

Best of the Brain from Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can: a superb col­lec­tion of essays for the curi­ous among us.

Selected Resources: Arti­cles, Books, Papers: numer­ous links to media arti­cles, sci­en­tific papers, and rec­om­mended books.

Enjoy!