Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is defined as “the abil­ity of the brain to rewire itself through experience”.

We typ­i­cally sum­ma­rize a lot of brain research by encour­ag­ing Sharp­Brains read­ers is to seek for nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge, as guide­lines for “brain exer­cise” that will help build new con­nec­tions in the brain, force one to be mind­ful and pay atten­tion, improve abil­i­ties such as pattern-recognition, and in gen­eral con­tribute to life­long brain health.

A friend just sent an update on her amaz­ing expe­ri­ence in Namibia (the pic on the right shows the entrance to the Uni­ver­sity of Namibia) that shows how Travel and Engage­ment with mean­ing­ful projects can pro­vide superb men­tal stim­u­la­tion, or “brain exer­cise”. This is rel­e­vant at all ages, and we are encour­aged to see orga­ni­za­tions such as Civic Ven­tures and Elder­hos­tel that offer oppor­tu­ni­ties for baby boomers and older adults who want to main­tain active minds.

Try pic­tur­ing in your mind, as you read this, all her dif­fer­ent brain areas that are get­ting needed stim­u­la­tion through her Namibia experience.

UPDATE: my friend just wrote to expand on the “be mind­ful” angle by say­ing that “it def­i­nitely requires pur­pose­ful pro­cess­ing of the infor­ma­tion that you are con­sum­ing in order to make it a use­ful brain exer­cise. For exam­ple, I always try to jour­nal or write thought­ful emails about my expe­ri­ence in order to try to best under­stand it.” Great point.

With her per­mis­sion, here you have:

———————————-

Dear Friends,

I am just return­ing from Namibia and am buzzing with excite­ment about all of the oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to make an impact there when we return with our stu­dents next Spring.

Namibia is very dif­fer­ent than I expected. It was the last coun­try in Africa to gain inde­pen­dence from colo­nial­ism, gain­ing inde­pen­dence just 20 years ago. Thus, it is much more devel­oped than any African coun­try that I have vis­ited, with rel­a­tively good infra­struc­ture and no exist­ing debt. That said, the lega­cies of apartheid can still be felt in today’s soci­ety, and the peo­ple are very clearly deal­ing con­stantly with issues of race and iden­tity. One of the most inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences that I had was attend­ing a “braai” (the Namib­ian ver­sion of a bar­be­cue which basi­cally con­sists of Read the rest of this entry »

Quick: say the color in which each word in this graphic is dis­played (don’t just read the word!):

Here you have a round-up of some great recent arti­cles on mem­ory, aging, and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties such as self-control:

1) How to Boost Your Willpower (New York Times).

- “The video watch­ers were later given a con­cen­tra­tion test in which they were asked to iden­tify the color in which words were dis­played. (Note: now you see why we started with that brain exer­cise…) The word  for instance, might appear in blue ink. The video watch­ers who had sti­fled their responses did the worst on the test, sug­gest­ing that their self-control had already been depleted by the film challenge.”

- “Finally, some research sug­gests that peo­ple strug­gling with self-control should start small. A few stud­ies show that peo­ple who were instructed for two weeks to make small changes like improv­ing their pos­ture or brush­ing their teeth with their oppo­site hand improved their scores on lab­o­ra­tory tests of self-control. The data aren’t con­clu­sive, but they do sug­gest that the quest for self-improvement should start small. A vow to stop swear­ing, to make the bed every day or to give up just one food may be a way to strengthen your self-control, giv­ing you more willpower reserves for big­ger chal­lenges later.”

Com­ment: learn­ing, build­ing abil­i­ties, are processes that require prac­tice and grow­ing lev­els of dif­fi­culty. Like train­ing our mus­cles in the gym. So the advice to start small and pro­gres­sively do more makes sense. Many times the enemy of learn­ing is the stress and anx­i­ety we pro­voke by try­ing to do too many things at the same time…

2) Jog­ging Your Mem­ory (Newsweek) Thanks Chris for alert­ing us!

- “No one should expect mir­a­cles soon, if at all. But the deeper sci­en­tists peer into the work­ings of mem­ory, the bet­ter they under­stand Read the rest of this entry »

Great news: I have been invited to be one of the blog­gers at that fun news and blog­ging exper­i­ment called The Huff­in­g­ton Post. I appre­ci­ate very much the oppor­tu­nity to engage a broader com­mu­nity around the lat­est research on brain fit­ness and the brain fit­ness mar­ket, and around how to “exer­cise our brains” for hap­pi­ness, health, life­long learning and peak performance.

You can take a look at the first post: How “Say­ing Thanks” Will Make You Hap­pier.

SharpBrains.com/blog will keep being our main blog. Thank you for all your support!

Reader Theresa Cerulli just for­warded this Let­ter to the Edi­tor that she had sent to the New York Times and went unpub­lished. The let­ter addresses the OpEd men­tioned here (pitch­ing phys­i­cal vs. men­tal exer­cise), and refers to the Cogmed work­ing mem­ory train­ing pro­gram, whose results have been stud­ied in mul­ti­ple papers pub­lished in top med­ical and sci­en­tific jour­nals.

——————————-

Dear Edi­tor:

I applaud San­dra Aamodt and Sam Wang for throw­ing some cold water on the cur­rent brain fit­ness craze in their recent New York Times Mag­a­zine Opin­ion Edi­to­r­ial “Exer­cise on the Brain.”  They are cor­rect in label­ing the host of “men­tal fit­ness” prod­ucts that tar­get aging baby boomers as “inspired by sci­ence “  not to be con­fused with actu­ally proven by sci­ence. For the last 30 years, terms like “brain plas­tic­ity” have been widely and casu­ally used, cre­at­ing hype that risks drown­ing out the real break­throughs that brain researchers are mak­ing in this area.

How­ever, I would like to dis­tin­guish the “men­tal fit­ness” trend that Aamodt and Wang rightly crit­i­cize from actual researched-based cog­ni­tive train­ing such as the Cogmed pro­gram devel­oped in Swe­den. Unlike “men­tal fit­ness” pro­grams, cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams focus very nar­rowly on spe­cific cog­ni­tive func­tions that research has shown to be plas­tic. This is in stark con­trast to com­pil­ing a smat­ter­ing of exer­cises or activ­i­ties that are gen­er­ally thought to be Read the rest of this entry »

The hol­i­days are approach­ing and you can expect many soft­ware and game devel­op­ers to adver­tise their prod­ucts aggres­sively, try­ing to get you buy their “brain train­ing” prod­ucts for you or as a gift for a loved one.

The good news is that there are more and more tools we can use to keep men­tally stim­u­lated and even train and improve spe­cific cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties (like pro­cess­ing speed, short-term mem­ory…). You may be read­ing about Nin­tendo Brain Age, Posit Sci­ence, Fast For­Word, Mind­Fit, Lumos­ity, Happy Neu­ron, MyBrain­Trainer, emWave, StressEraser and more. And, of course, there are also non-technology based interventions.

The bad news is that it is dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate mar­ket­ing from sci­en­tific claims, and to under­stand which one, if any, may be a good com­ple­ment to other healthy lifestyle choices.

To help you nav­i­gate this process, we are pub­lish­ing the Sharp­Brains Check­list below, based on dozens of inter­views with sci­en­tists, experts and consumers:

10 Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for You (and a brief expla­na­tion of why each ques­tion is important)

* 1. Are there sci­en­tists, ide­ally neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, and a sci­en­tific advi­sory board Read the rest of this entry »

Psy­chol­o­gist Robert Emmons recently told us about the many ben­e­fits of prac­tic­ing gratitude.

- “First, the prac­tice of grat­i­tude can increase hap­pi­ness lev­els by around 25%. Sec­ond, this is not hard to achieve — a few hours spent writ­ing a grat­i­tude jour­nal over 3 weeks can cre­ate an effect that lasts 6 months if not more. Third, that cul­ti­vat­ing grat­i­tude brings other health effects, such as longer and bet­ter qual­ity sleep time.”

Thanks­giv­ing flew by for me this year with­out my tak­ing the time to express grat­i­tude to many of the peo­ple who have been so gen­er­ous with their time and advice.

Given that this is a blog, I would like to say Thank You! to the fol­low­ing blog­gers Read the rest of this entry »

Very inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of recent news…let’s con­nect some dots

1) Great arti­cle titled Boom time for retirees (Finan­cial Times)

- “By 2015, boomers will have a net worth of some $26,000bn (£12,750bn, ¬17,670bn)  equiv­a­lent to a year’s gross domes­tic prod­uct for the US and euro­zone com­bined. They will con­trol a larger pro­por­tion of wealth, income and con­sump­tion than any other gen­er­a­tion in the coun­try  the first time that con­sumers over 50 have held such sway over the world’s largest economy.”

- “But as the boomers aged by 2015 they will all be out­side the fabled under-49 cohort  cor­po­rate Amer­ica failed to grow old with them. Mar­ket­ing experts argue that the con­tin­ued focus of large com­pa­nies such as P&G and Gap on the youth of  “gen­er­a­tion and “gen­er­a­tion” over­looks a sim­ple sta­tis­tic: the 18–49 age group will grow by only 1m peo­ple in the next 10 years, com­pared with the 22.5m Amer­i­cans set to enter the 50-plus bracket.”

- “The last thing the [boomer] gen­er­a­tion needs is a com­pany that tells them they need tools to address their lack of dex­ter­ity, he says. “They don’t want geri­atric tools, they want cool stuff.

Main take-way: baby boomers are always “awake” and rein­vent­ing things…companies, adver­tis­ers, time to wake-up!

Full arti­cle: Boom time for retirees

2) The arti­cle is based upon this excel­lent McK­in­sey report Read the rest of this entry »

A mis­con­cep­tion we encounter often is that “mem­ory” is the only, or most impor­tant, “thing” that our brains do. And the only one we need to care for.

We have a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, from atten­tion to pro­cess­ing speed to problem-solving to emo­tional self-regulation to, yes, mem­ory. (And more). Even mem­ory is not one whole thing, but has dif­fer­ent types and processes: work­ing mem­ory vs. long-term, audi­tory vs. visual, events vs. facts vs. skills.

I say this in the con­text of this arti­cle and video you may already have seen, where a young chimp dis­plays amaz­ing visual work­ing mem­ory capa­bil­ity, beat­ing humans.

- Read insight­ful blog post here. Quote

“This study shows that chimps can mem­o­rize at a glance the numer­als pre­sented Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a few recent great blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of selected blog posts focused on spe­cific topics):

- Grand Rounds: health and medicine

- Encephalon: neu­ro­science and psychology

- COTC: busi­ness and entrepreneurship

- Human Resources: arti­cles for HR professionals

- Edu­ca­tion: arti­cles for K12 teach­ers and staff

- Tan­gled Bank: gen­eral science 

- Books: good book reviews

 

We also just found a great overview of the brain fit­ness mar­ket in French, sum­ma­riz­ing many of the top­ics we have writ­ten about:

Des logi­ciels qui boos­t­ent le cerveau… et son marché

Update (11/10/10): Have you seen PBS great spe­cials on Brain Fit­ness and Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity ?

The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram DVD ($24.95)

“The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram is based on the brain’s abil­ity to change and adapt, even rewire itself. In the past two years, a team of sci­en­tists has devel­oped computer-based stim­u­lus sets that drive ben­e­fi­cial chem­i­cal, phys­i­cal and func­tional changes in the brain. Dr. Michael Merzenich of the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia and his col­leagues share their sci­en­tif­i­cally based set of brain exer­cises in this life-altering pro­gram. Peter Coy­ote (pic­tured) narrates. ”

PBS aired in Decem­ber 2007 a spe­cial pro­gram on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, brain fit­ness, aging and the brain titled “Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram”. To watch the 3-minute trailer: click here.

In 2008, PBS released a sec­ond DVD:

Brain Fit­ness 2: Sight and Sound DVD ($24.95)

“This pro­gram, specif­i­cally designed to help peo­ple get the most from their vision and hear­ing as they age, con­sid­ers how these senses change through­out life and what peo­ple can do to keep them healthy and fully functional.”

.

If you do not have time to watch these great doc­u­men­taries, here are a few points one needs to under­stand about neuroplasticity:

1.  The human brain is now con­sid­ered to be a highly dynamic and con­stantly reor­ga­niz­ing sys­tem capa­ble of being shaped and reshaped across an entire lifes­pan. It is believed that every expe­ri­ence alters the brain’s orga­ni­za­tion at some level. The key words in this new approach to the brain are neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis. Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity refers to the life­long capac­ity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stim­u­la­tion of learn­ing and expe­ri­ence. Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis is the abil­ity to cre­ate new neu­rons and con­nec­tions between neu­rons through­out a life­time. The lat­ter process is also referred to as synap­to­ge­n­e­sis. This new par­a­digm con­trasts with tra­di­tional ideas of the human brain being a fixed and essen­tially lim­ited sys­tem that only degrades with age.

2. As we age, the rate of change in the brain, or neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, declines but does not come to a halt. In addi­tion, we now know that new neu­rons can appear in cer­tain parts of the brain up until the day we die.

3. Brain plas­tic­ity is cru­cial fol­low­ing head injury. It is the one brain’s abil­ity that allows recov­ery. Brain plas­tic­ity is also the abil­ity that brain train­ing takes advan­tages of to try to slow down the aging process.

To read about evi­dence of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in the human brain take a look at Brain plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes you brain

———-

Note: How can any­one take care of his or her brain when every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which seem to con­tra­dict each other?

Do sup­ple­ments improve mem­ory? Do you need both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise –or is one of them enough? Why is man­ag­ing stress so impor­tant to atten­tion and mem­ory? Which brain train­ing approach, if any, is worth one’s time and money?

If you have these ques­tions, check out this new book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness:

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness
	Click Here to order at Amazon.com. Print Edi­tion, $24.95

	Click Here to order at Amazon.com, Kin­dle Edi­tion, $9.99