You have sur­vived the 2007 shop­ping and eat­ing sea­son. Con­grat­u­la­tions! Now it’s time to shift gears and focus on 2008…whether you write down some New Year res­o­lu­tions or con­tem­plate some things that you want to let go of from last year and set inten­tions and goals for this year — as is a friend’s tra­di­tion on the win­ter solstice.

To sum­ma­rize the key find­ings of the last 20 years of neu­ro­science research on how to “exer­cise our brains”, there are three things that we can strive for: nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge. If we do these three things, we will build new con­nec­tions in our brains, be mind­ful and pay atten­tion to our envi­ron­ment, improve cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties such as pattern-recognition, and in gen­eral con­tribute to our life­long brain health.

With these three prin­ci­ples of brain health in mind — nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge — let me sug­gest a few poten­tial New Years res­o­lu­tions, per­haps some unex­pected, that will help you make 2008 a year of Brain Fit­ness: Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you are hav­ing a joy­ful hol­i­day sea­son, and wish you a Happy and Pros­per­ous 2008. The Brain Fit­ness field has made a great deal of progress in 2007, and we are look­ing for­ward the New Year.

Here you are have the Monthly Digest of our Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sider it your monthly Brain Fitness/ Exer­cise Newsletter.

Let me first of all intro­duce you to our new “Author Speaks Series”, where we will give lead­ing sci­en­tists and experts a forum to present their new brain-related books. We are hon­ored to kick­start the series with Larry McCleary, for­mer act­ing Chief of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­surgery at Den­ver Children’s Hos­pi­tal. You can read Here his arti­cle on how to keep a brain-friendly lifestyle. This series will com­ple­ment our ongo­ing Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series.

Brain Fit­ness in the News

Brain Fit­ness @ PBS: PBS fea­tured a fan­tas­tic spe­cial pro­gram on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and brain fit­ness dur­ing the month of Decem­ber. Before you ask: as of today, the DVD of the pro­gram is still not avail­able in PBS online shop. We expect to see it there in 2–3 weeks. We will keep you informed.

The Huff­in­g­ton Post started fea­tur­ing a col­umn writ­ten by me: you may enjoy tak­ing a look at Alvaro Fer­nan­dez — Liv­ing on The Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Jog­ging our Brains for Brain Vital­ity, Healthy Aging-and Intel­li­gence!: a roundup of sev­eral great recent arti­cles on mem­ory, aging, IQ and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties such as self-control.

Health & Wellness

Brain Train­ing: No Magic Bul­let, Yet Use­ful Tool. Inter­view with Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski: Dr. Zelin­ski, lead­ing researcher of the IMPACT study, shares fas­ci­nat­ing insights. For exam­ple: “…cog­ni­tive enhance­ment requires the engage­ment in a vari­ety of activ­i­ties, those activ­i­ties must be novel, adap­tive and challenging-which is why computer-based pro­grams can be help­ful. But even at a more basic level, what mat­ters is being engaged with life, con­tin­u­ally exposed to stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties, always try­ing to get out of our com­fort zones, doing our best at what­ever we are doing. A major typ­i­cal mis­con­cep­tion is that there is only one gen­eral intel­li­gence to care about. In real­ity, we have many dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, such as atten­tion, mem­ory, lan­guage, rea­son­ing, and more, so it makes sense to have dif­fer­ent pro­grams designed to train and improve each of them.”

How to Eval­u­ate and Choose a Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram: To help you nav­i­gate the grow­ing num­ber of computer-based pro­grams and games, we pub­lished this 10-Question Check­list, based on dozens of inter­views with sci­en­tists, experts and consumers.

Travel and Engage­ment as Good Brain Exer­cise: As we’ve seen, nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge are the key guide­lines for “brain exer­cise” that help build new neural con­nec­tions, force one to be mind­ful and pay atten­tion, improve abil­i­ties such as pattern-recognition, and gen­er­ally con­tribute to life­long brain health. In this post we fea­ture the brain build­ing / mind expand­ing expe­ri­ence of a Sharp­Brains friend work­ing in Namibia.

Alzheimer’s Pre­ven­tion and Diag­nos­tic Tests: analy­sis of sev­eral recent arti­cles on emerg­ing research behind Alzheimer’s diag­nos­tic and prevention.

Cor­po­rate Well­ness and Training

Cog­ni­tive Reserve and Intel­lec­tu­ally Demand­ing Jobs: a recent study shows how “Intel­lec­tu­ally demand­ing work was asso­ci­ated with greater ben­e­fit to cog­ni­tive per­for­mance in later life inde­pen­dent of related fac­tors like edu­ca­tion and intelligence.”

Cog­ni­tive Health and Baby Boomers– 6 Points to Keep in Mind: based upon an excel­lent McK­in­sey report titled Serv­ing Aging Baby Boomers, we dis­cuss a vari­ety a news arti­cles, includ­ing inter­est­ing num­bers, some bad news, and some good news.

Life­long Learn­ing Is Chang­ing My Brain: Andreas, the neu­ro­science PhD stu­dent who spent last sum­mer work­ing with Sharp­Brains, writes some reflec­tions on his expe­ri­ence and on how sci­en­tists and busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als can learn from each other.

Brain Teasers

Trav­eler IQ Game: Check out this stim­u­lat­ing online game…

Events

Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence, Feb­ru­ary 5–7 2008, San Fran­cisco: Sign up now for this great con­fer­ence for edu­ca­tors who want to learn about the lat­est brain research find­ings and impli­ca­tions. I will be speak­ing at the con­fer­ence giv­ing an overview of inno­v­a­tive cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams. The orga­niz­ers are offer­ing a Spe­cial Dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers until Jan­u­ary 25th 2008, so click here if interested.

If we don’t talk beforehand…Happy New Year!

———————

You can also enjoy our pre­vi­ous edi­tions of our Brain Fit­ness Newsletter:

- Novem­ber Edition

- Octo­ber Edition

- Sep­tem­ber Edition

- August Edi­tion

- July Edi­tion

Roundup of sev­eral insight­ful arti­cles and recent research:

Fish Oil May Help Pre­vent Alzheimer’s (Wash­ing­ton Post)

- “The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil might play an impor­tant role in pre­vent­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease, accord­ing to a research team at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les (UCLA).”

- “Pub­lish­ing in the Dec. 26 issue of the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, the sci­en­tists demon­strated that the omega-3 fatty acid docosa­hexaenoic acid (DHA) increases the pro­duc­tion of LR11, a pro­tein that is found at reduced lev­els in Alzheimer’s patients. LR11 is known to destroy the pro­tein that forms the plaques asso­ci­ated with the dis­ease, the researchers explained.“
– “Alzheimer’s is a debil­i­tat­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease that causes mem­ory loss, demen­tia, per­son­al­ity change and ulti­mately death. The Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion esti­mates that 5.1 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are cur­rently afflicted with the dis­ease. The asso­ci­a­tion pre­dicts that may increase to between 11 mil­lion and 16 mil­lion peo­ple by 2050.”

‘Find­ing Alzheimer’s Before a Mind Fails’ (New York Times)

- “Ms. Ker­ley is part of an ambi­tious new sci­en­tific effort to find ways to detect Alzheimer’s dis­ease at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble moment. Although the dis­ease may seem like a calamity that strikes sud­denly in old age, sci­en­tists now think it begins long before the mind fails.”

- “Many sci­en­tists believe the best hope of progress, maybe the only hope, lies in Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last months, thanks to the traf­fic growth of SharpBrains.com (over 100,000 unique vis­i­tors per month these days, THANK YOU for vis­it­ing today and please come back!), a num­ber of proac­tive book agents, pub­lish­ers and authors have con­tacted us to inform us of their lat­est brain-related books. We have taken a look at many books, wrote reviews of The Dana Guide to Brain Health book review‚ and Best of the Brain from Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can, and inter­viewed sci­en­tists such as Judith Beck, Robert Emmons and James Zull.

Now we are launch­ing a new Author Speaks Series to pro­vide a plat­form for lead­ing sci­en­tists and experts writ­ing high-quality brain-related books to reach a wide audi­ence. We are hon­ored to start the series with an arti­cle by Larry McCleary, M.D, for­mer act­ing Chief of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­surgery at Den­ver Children’s Hos­pi­tal, and author of The Brain Trust Pro­gram: A Sci­en­tif­i­cally Based Three-Part Plan to Improve Mem­ory, Ele­vate Mood, Enhance Atten­tion, Alle­vi­ate Migraine and Menopausal Symp­toms, and Boost Men­tal Energy (Perigee Trade, 2007).

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s enjoy Dr. McCleary’s article:

Brain Evo­lu­tion and Why it is Mean­ing­ful Today to Improve Our Brain Health

You may feel over­whelmed by the stream of seem­ingly con­tra­dic­tory sug­ges­tions regard­ing the best way to main­tain men­tal clar­ity as you age. Based on an analy­sis of sem­i­nal fac­tors in the devel­op­ment of mod­ern brain anatomy, I believe it is pos­si­ble to make some very com­pelling rec­om­men­da­tions for grow­ing big brains, enhanc­ing their func­tion, and mak­ing them resis­tant to the aging process. These may be loosely cat­e­go­rized as fac­tors per­tain­ing to the men­tal or phys­i­cal attrib­utes of the brain. Although they are not truly inde­pen­dent enti­ties, such a con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion pro­vides a basis for the gen­er­a­tion of brain healthy pre­scrip­tions. Diet, phys­i­cal exer­cise, and stress reduc­tion enhance neu­ronal resilience. Sleep and men­tal stim­u­la­tion are vital for cog­ni­tive abil­ity, learn­ing, and memory.

Diet: Fol­low a mod­ern shore-based/marine diet includ­ing seafood in its most gen­eral sense, non-starchy veg­eta­bles of all col­ors, berries, and eggs. Other sources of lean pro­tein con­tain­ing long-chain omega 3 fatty acids such as free range beef, chicken, bison, or elk are nutri­tious alternatives.

Phys­i­cal exer­cise (Think fight or flight — activ­ity.): Include all types. Aer­o­bic activ­i­ties such as swim­ming, bicy­cling, walk­ing, or hik­ing for pro­mo­tion of vas­cu­lar health and weight con­trol; resis­tance train­ing for pro­mo­tion of neu­rotrophic fac­tors, nat­u­rally occur­ring com­pounds that make brain cells more resis­tant to aging, such as IGF-1 (Insulin-like growth factor-1) and BDNF (Brain-derived neu­rotrophic fac­tor); and bal­ance, coor­di­na­tion, and agility train­ing such as ping-pong, bal­ance beam, tram­po­line, and jump­ing rope to enhance cog­ni­tive speed and motor skills.

Stress Con­trol: From an evo­lu­tion­ary per­spec­tive, stres­sors (such as meet­ing a cave bear) and intense phys­i­cal activ­ity (run­ning or fight­ing) were brief in dura­tion and usu­ally occurred together. Mod­ern stres­sors (psy­cho­log­i­cal or emo­tional stress) tend to be unremit­ting and are gen­er­ally uncou­pled from the phys­i­cal (fight or flight) com­po­nent, mean­ing stress devel­ops with­out any asso­ci­ated phys­i­cal activ­ity. Such intense phys­i­cal pur­suits are now called exer­cise. Not sur­pris­ingly, exer­cise is a per­fect phys­i­o­logic anti­dote for stress due to its ben­e­fi­cial impact on cor­ti­sol (the stress hor­mone) and blood pres­sure and should be incor­po­rated into any pro­gram of stress reduction.

Ade­quate sleep: The body needs rest, but the brain requires sleep. Acute or chronic sleep depri­va­tion causes dev­as­tat­ing short and long-term con­se­quences to brain anatomy (synap­tic loss) and func­tion (mem­ory and learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties). Off-line infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing and mem­ory con­sol­i­da­tion are addi­tional sleep-related benefits.

Men­tal stim­u­la­tion: Brain-training, a cog­ni­tively chal­leng­ing lifestyle, nov­elty, and social­iza­tion are vital for the pro­mo­tion of neu­ronal plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the for­ma­tion of new nerve cells and neu­ronal con­nec­tions), the enhance­ment of spe­cific brain func­tions such as mem­ory, and the devel­op­ment of cog­ni­tive reserve — addi­tional men­tal pro­cess­ing poten­tial that may be brought online when needed.

The com­bi­na­tion of these rec­om­men­da­tions, each of which was instru­men­tal in the trans­for­ma­tion from prim­i­tive to mod­ern ner­vous sys­tems, pro­vides a tem­plate for the most log­i­cal approach for enhanc­ing men­tal func­tion and resist­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion as we travel through life.

The Evo­lu­tion­ary Rationale

The human brain clearly has the genetic poten­tial for dra­matic expan­sion. This was illus­trated about Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you are hav­ing happy hol­i­days, and are get­ting ready for New Year cel­e­bra­tions. Best wishes to you and your loved ones.

Via Med­Jour­nal­Watch we just found this inter­est­ing paper,

Asso­ci­a­tions of job demands and intel­li­gence with cog­ni­tive per­for­mance among men in late life. Guy G. Pot­ter PhD^*, Michael J. Helms BS, and Brenda L. Plass­man PhD Neu­rol­ogy 2007.

- CONCLUSIONS: “Intel­lec­tu­ally demand­ing work was asso­ci­ated with greater ben­e­fit to cog­ni­tive per­for­mance in later life inde­pen­dent of related fac­tors like edu­ca­tion and intel­li­gence. The fact that indi­vid­u­als with lower intel­lec­tual apti­tude demon­strated a stronger pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tion between work and higher cog­ni­tive per­for­mance dur­ing retire­ment sug­gests that behav­ior may enhance intel­lec­tual reserve, per­haps even years after peak intel­lec­tual activity.”

This is con­sis­tent with the Cog­ni­tive Reserve the­ory we dis­cussed in the inter­view with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Yaakov Stern:

- AF (Alvaro Fer­nan­dez): OK, so our goal is to build that Reserve of neu­rons, synapses, and skills. How can we do that? What defines “men­tally stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties” or good “brain exercise”?

- YS (Yaakov Stern): In sum­mary, we could say that “stim­u­la­tion” con­sists of engag­ing in activ­i­ties. In our research almost all activ­i­ties are seen to con­tribute to reserve. Some have chal­leng­ing lev­els of cog­ni­tive com­plex­ity, and some have inter­per­sonal or phys­i­cal demands. In ani­mal stud­ies, expo­sure to an enriched envi­ron­ment or increased phys­i­cal activ­ity result in increased neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons). You can get that stim­u­la­tion through edu­ca­tion and/ or your occu­pa­tion. There is clear research show­ing how those two ele­ments reduce the risk. Now, what is very excit­ing is that, no mat­ter one’s age, edu­ca­tion and occu­pa­tion, our level of par­tic­i­pa­tion in leisure activ­i­ties has a sig­nif­i­cant and cumu­la­tive effect. A key mes­sage here is that dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties have inde­pen­dent, syn­er­gis­tic, con­tri­bu­tions, which means the more things you do and the ear­lier you start, the bet­ter. But you are never stuck: bet­ter late than never.

- Read more on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve

In short, men­tally and socially stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties, through our edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion AND leisure activ­i­ties, con­tribute to build­ing a Cog­ni­tive Reserve in our brains that may help delay mem­ory prob­lems, Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment, and Alzheimer’s related symp­toms, and help main­tain cog­ni­tive per­for­mance over­all as we age.

If you are think­ing about New Year Res­o­lu­tions, this is one more area to con­sider. Happy 2008!

Hi!
This is Andreas, the Nor­we­gian MD/PhD in neu­ro­science can­di­date who worked as an intern at Sharp­Brains a few months ago. Now I’m back in chilly Oslo where I’ve just begun my PhD pro­gram on cog­ni­tive train­ing for patients with mem­ory problems.

Today I felt it was time to reflect upon my 3 month stay in San Fran­cisco ear­lier this year. It all started when in April when the Nor­we­gian school of entre­pre­neur­ship said: You’ve got a ticket to San Fran­cisco, now you got to find the per­fect start-up com­pany to work for.

Being inter­ested in brain train­ing, I googled Brain fit­ness San Fran­cisco and guess what I found? I got in touch with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, the co-founder of SharpBrains.com and two months later I started work­ing with him and his team.

As a sci­en­tist, being placed in an excit­ing start-up com­pany in a novel mar­ket like brain fit­ness was a huge learn­ing expe­ri­ence that gave me hands-on knowl­edge of busi­ness and entre­pre­neur­ial cul­ture. Being a neu­ro­science stu­dent, I know that learn­ing phys­i­cally changes my brain, strength­en­ing it.

Here’s a list of some of the key things I’ve learned:

1) First of all, one of key rules for brain fit­ness is learn­ing. In Sharp­Brains I imme­di­ately got to expe­ri­ence what a great learn­ing cul­ture can be all about  from key insights in entre­pre­neur­ship to how to make cre­ative videos and writ­ing for the web. The urge for con­stant learn­ing is both fun and stim­u­lat­ing  and I appre­ci­ate Alvaro’s sug­ges­tion to write this post.
Read the rest of this entry »

A quick note to alert you of two very inter­est­ing, grow­ing, and some­how linked debates:

1) Very insight­ful arti­cle on The Aging of the Baby Boomers: What Does It Mean for the Legal Pro­fes­sion (thank you, Stephanie!). Some quotes:

- “As I pen this arti­cle, it seems as though I’m writ­ing about some­one else the older worker. Age and aging, it seems, are in the eye of the one look­ing back at you in the mir­ror. I have this the­ory, espe­cially as it per­tains to men, that when we look in the mir­ror, we still see that 20 year-old stud who can leap tall build­ings. But I know that my ver­ti­cal leap is not what it used to be. The real­ity of aging in the legal pro­fes­sion is upon me and those of our generation.”

- “Also, the per­cep­tion of how old is old varies depend­ing on the job or pro­fes­sion. For exam­ple, Read the rest of this entry »

Sharon Beg­ley, Newsweek’s sci­ence reporter, recently wrote that

- “With the nation’s 78 mil­lion baby boomers approach­ing the age of those dreaded ‘“where did I leave my keys?” moments, it’s no won­der the mar­ket for computer-based brain train­ing has shot up from essen­tially zero in 2005 to $80 mil­lion this year, accord­ing to the con­sult­ing firm SharpBrains.

- “Now comes the largest and most rig­or­ous study of a commercially-available train­ing pro­gram, and it shows that there is hope for aging brains. This morn­ing, at the meet­ing of the Geron­to­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Amer­ica, sci­en­tists are pre­sent­ing data show­ing that after eight weeks of daily one-hour ses­sions with Brain Fit­ness 2.0 from Posit Sci­ence, elderly vol­un­teers got mea­sur­ably bet­ter in their brain’s speed and accu­racy of processing.

We recently had the chance to inter­view Dr. Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski of the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Andrus Geron­tol­ogy Cen­ter, who led the IMPACT (Improve­ment in Mem­ory with Plasticity-based Adap­tive Cog­ni­tive Train­ing) Study Sharon Beg­ley refers to in the quote above.

First, some con­text on this study, which is by far the largest high-quality study of its kind. The study was prospec­tive, ran­dom­ized, con­trolled, and used a dou­ble blind trial. 524 healthy adults 65-year-old and over were divided into two groups. One received an hour a day of train­ing for eight to ten weeks, and the other spent the same amount of time watch­ing edu­ca­tional DVDs. The IMPACT study, funded by Posit Sci­ence cor­po­ra­tion, was per­formed in mul­ti­ple loca­tions, includ­ing the Mayo Clinic, USCF, and San Fran­cisco Vet­eran Affairs Med­ical Center.

The dis­cus­sion cen­ters at his point on the ini­tial results that were pre­sented Geron­to­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Amer­ica (the study hasn’t been pub­lished yet).

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Dr. Zelin­ski. Thank you for being with us. Could you start by set­ting the con­text and pro­vid­ing an overview of how human cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties typ­i­cally evolve as we age based on insights from your Long Beach Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study?

Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski: Of course. The first con­cept to under­stand is that dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive skills evolve over the lifes­pan in dif­fer­ent ways. Some that rely on expe­ri­ence, such as vocab­u­lary, actu­ally improve as we age. Some tend to decline grad­u­ally, start­ing in our late 20s. This hap­pens, for exam­ple, with pro­cess­ing speed (how long it takes us to process and respond to infor­ma­tion), mem­ory, and rea­son­ing. We could sum­ma­rize this phe­nom­e­non by say­ing that as we age we get bet­ter at deal­ing with the famil­iar, but worse at deal­ing with the new. We can always learn, but at a slower pace.

Are there any spe­cific tip­ping or inflec­tion points in this trend, any age when the rate of decline is more pronounced?

We don’t have a clear answer to that. It depends a lot on the indi­vid­ual. In gen­eral it is a grad­ual, cumu­la­tive process, so that by age 70 we sta­tis­ti­cally see clear age declines. Which, for exam­ple, is a strong fac­tor deter­min­ing why older adults strug­gle to adapt to new tech­nolo­gies, but why try­ing to learn them pro­vides needed men­tal stim­u­la­tion. Now we know that genes only account for a por­tion of this decline. Much of it depends on our envi­ron­ment, lifestyle and actions.

Can you sum­ma­rize what a healthy indi­vid­ual can do to slow down this process of decline, and help stay healthy and pro­duc­tive as long as possible?

One gen­eral rec­om­men­da­tion is to do every­thing we can to pre­vent or delay dis­ease processes, such as dia­betes or high-blood pres­sure, that have a neg­a­tive effect on our brains. For exam­ple, it is a tragedy in our soci­ety that we usu­ally reduce our lev­els of phys­i­cal exer­cise dras­ti­cally after we leave school.

Let me then ask: what are the rel­a­tive virtues of phys­i­cal vs. men­tal exercise?

Great ques­tion! That in fact leads into my sec­ond rec­om­men­da­tion. Aer­o­bic exer­cise has been shown to Read the rest of this entry »

A quick note to announce that these blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of selected blog posts on spe­cific top­ics) are available:

- Grand Rounds: spec­tac­u­lar edi­tion of the best health and med­i­cine blog car­ni­val, pre­sented in 100% haiku form!

- Encephalon: neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy topics

- Human Resources: good roundup of posts for HR professionals

- Update 1: The Edu­ca­tion one just appeared. Great for teach­ers and school staff

- Update 2: Tan­gled Bank is online too, with great science-related posts

Also, you can check my new arti­cle at the Huff­in­g­ton Post on 10 Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains.

Just came across this very stim­u­lat­ing and fun Trav­eler IQ inter­ac­tive game…enjoy!

Link: Trav­eler IQ Challenge

Note: at the bot­tom of the page you can select a vari­ety of chal­lenges (flags of the world, UNESCO sites, North Amer­ica…) My favourite: Pho­tos of the World.