As we have been doing for the last 6 months, here you are have the Monthly Digest of our Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sider it your monthly Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Newsletter.

Sev­eral recent news pieces, includ­ing this New York Times arti­cle, have reported on an emerg­ing trend: schools using tech­niques such as yoga and med­i­ta­tion to help stu­dents man­age anx­i­ety and stress. To bet­ter under­stand what is going on, we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.

–Alvaro

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Mind­ful Kids, Peace­ful Schools

With eyes closed and deep breaths, stu­dents are learn­ing a new method to reduce anx­i­ety, con­flict, and atten­tion dis­or­ders. But don’t call it meditation.

— By Jill Suttie

At Toluca Lake ele­men­tary school in Los Ange­les, a cyclone fence encloses the asphalt black­top, which is teem­ing with kids. It’s recess time and the kids, who are mostly Latino, are play­ing tag, yelling, throw­ing balls, and jump­ing rope. When the bell rings, they reluc­tantly stop and head back to their class­rooms except for Daniel Murphy’s sec­ond grade class.

Murphy’s stu­dents file into the school audi­to­rium, each car­ry­ing a round blue pil­low dec­o­rated with white stars. They enter gig­gling and chat­ting, but soon they are seated in a cir­cle on their cush­ions, eyes closed, quiet and con­cen­trat­ing. Two teach­ers give the chil­dren instruc­tions on how to pay atten­tion to their breath­ing, telling them to notice the rise and fall of their bel­lies and chests, the pas­sage of air in and out of their noses. Though the room is chilly the heat­ing sys­tem broke down ear­lier that day the chil­dren appear com­fort­able, many with Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announce that we’ll have 2 addi­tional excel­lent con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing February:

- Adrian Preda, M.D., will write about a brain plas­tic­ity topic.

Adrian Preda, M.D. is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Human Behav­ior in the UC Irvine School of Med­i­cine. His exper­tise in human behav­ior, psy­chol­ogy and spir­i­tu­al­ity is based on years of expe­ri­ence work­ing as a psy­chi­a­trist, psy­chother­a­pist, teacher and researcher in a vari­ety of aca­d­e­mic clin­i­cal and non-clinical set­tings, includ­ing Yale Psy­chi­atric Insti­tute, Yale New Haven Hos­pi­tal, Yale Health Plan, UT South­west­ern and UC Irvine Neuro-Psychiatric Research.

- Joanne Jacobs, edu­ca­tion expert and great blog­ger, will par­tic­i­pate in our Author Speaks Series. 

Once a Knight Rid­der columnist, Joanne is now a free­lance writer and author of a book about a char­ter school that pre­pares His­panic stu­dents for college. Her most recent book is Our School: The Inspir­ing Story of Two Teach­ers, One Big Idea and the Char­ter School That Beat the Odds.  

Prof. Baba Shiv, one of our advi­sors, just pub­lished a fas­ci­nat­ing paper on the power of our beliefs to influ­ence brain acti­va­tion, and on how mar­ket­ing can influ­ence those beliefs:

Price Tag Can Change The Way Peo­ple Expe­ri­ence Wine, Study Shows (Sci­ence Daily)

- Accord­ing to researchers at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness and the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, if a per­son is told he or she is tast­ing two dif­fer­ent wines and that one costs $5 and the other $45 when they are, in fact, the same wine the part of the brain that expe­ri­ences plea­sure will become more active when the drinker thinks he or she is enjoy­ing the more expen­sive vintage.

- “What we doc­u­ment is that price is not just about infer­ences of qual­ity, but it can actu­ally affect real qual­ity,” said Baba Shiv, a pro­fes­sor of mar­ket­ing who co-authored a paper titled “Mar­ket­ing Actions Can Mod­u­late Neural Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Expe­ri­enced Pleas­ant­ness,” pub­lished online Jan. 14 in the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences. (Note: link here)

This Stan­ford arti­cle pro­vides an overview of his research: click Here.

- “The belief in the aca­d­e­mic field is that emo­tions are essen­tial to deci­sion mak­ing, oth­er­wise you’ll end up mak­ing bad deci­sions, Shiv says. “But, he adds, explain­ing his huge con­trar­ian streak, “I can show the oppo­site as well, that Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: Neu­ro­feed­back is one of the tech­nolo­gies that peo­ple often ask us about.  It is a promis­ing inter­ven­tion in a vari­ety of areas, and has got sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion in help­ing kids with ADD/ ADHD. Now, given the sig­nif­i­cant cost it poses for par­ents, we need to ask the ques­tion: “How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment of Chil­dren with ADHD”? We are hon­ored to present the thoughts of Duke University’s Dr. David Rabiner, a lead­ing author­ity on the field, on that impor­tant issue. As a bonus, you will enjoy his detailed descrip­tion and sug­ges­tions of how to design a high-quality sci­en­tific study.)

(Update as of March 2009: Dr. David Rabiner has writ­ten an update to the arti­cle below based on a newer study. You can read it click­ing on link: New Study Sup­ports Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD)
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How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment of Chil­dren with ADHD?

Nei­ther of the two promi­nent approaches to treat­ing ADHD — med­ica­tion treat­ment and behav­ior ther­apy — are expected to effect long term changes in the child. Med­ica­tion treat­ment induces short-term changes in brain activ­ity that is asso­ci­ated with a reduc­tion in symp­toms for many indi­vid­u­als. Behav­ior ther­apy attempts to cre­ate a set of envi­ron­men­tal con­tin­gen­cies that pro­mote desired behav­ior in the child, but which is unlikely to endure when those con­tin­gen­cies are removed.

In recent years, researchers have begun devot­ing greater atten­tion to the pos­si­bil­ity that chil­dren — and adults — may be pro­vided with par­tic­u­lar kinds of expe­ri­ences that may induce alter­ations in brain func­tion­ing that are asso­ci­ated with more endur­ing changes, i.e., they do not dis­si­pate as soon as treat­ment ends.

Neu­ro­feed­back — also known as EEG Biofeed­back — is reflec­tive of this approach and has a his­tory that goes back Read the rest of this entry »

This is an event you may be inter­ested in, if you are based in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area.

The MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, The Busi­ness Forum on Aging and Smart­Sil­vers presents:

The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket:  Build­ing Bet­ter Brains (Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here)

Date: 02/12/2008 Tues­day
Time: 6:00pm
Venue: Wil­son Son­sini
Loca­tion: 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto
Cost: $20 online, $25 walk-in

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Here is the buzz  Sci­en­tific, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graphic trends have con­verged to cre­ate an excit­ing new mar­ket in brain fit­ness, where soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions can assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. That equates to a sharper mind and bet­ter mem­ory reten­tion con­tribut­ing to health­ier aging.  There is cur­rently a $400m world­wide mar­ket with high growth ahead predicted.

Join us in lively and infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions as Alvaro Fer­nan­dez; CEO of SharpBrains.com sum­ma­rizes the sci­ence, key mar­ket seg­ments, play­ers and trends, based on the first Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report, pre­sented in this event.  He will dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions with sev­eral neuro-technology, gam­ing experts and investors.”  Mod­er­ated by Zack Lynch, the speaker and panel will dis­cuss: Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a few good recent blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of selected blog posts around spe­cific topics)

- Tan­gled Bank: science-related posts across a vari­ety of disciplines.

- 2 edi­tions of the Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion: this week and last one.

- HR car­ni­val: because “human resources” have brains, too.

- Med­i­cine 2.0: how web 2.0 can enhance the prac­tice of medicine.

- Change of Shift: nurs­ing topics.

- Gene Genie: human genetics.

Today we have the plea­sure to have Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, write her first arti­cle here. Enjoy, and please com­ment so we hear your thoughts and engage in a nice conversation.

(Btw, if you notice some sim­i­lar­ity between the col­ors in the fMRI scan below and the look & feel of this site…well, the rea­son is that those orange-grey fMRI col­ors were our inspi­ra­tion! the orange color denotes the most brain activation).

- Alvaro

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You have prob­a­bly heard about CAT and MRI scans (pro­duced thanks to machines like the one to the top right). So you know that these are tech­niques that doc­tors and sci­en­tists use to look inside the brain.

You have prob­a­bly also heard about brain fit­ness and how impor­tant it is to keep a healthy brain to be pro­tected against age-related and disease-related brain damages.

The ques­tion we ask here is the fol­low­ing: Can we use brain scans to eval­u­ate how fit the brain is? Before we try to answer this ques­tion let’s start with the basics and try to under­stand how brain scans work.

Brain imag­ing, also called neu­roimag­ing, allows one to Read the rest of this entry »

Start­ing this week, you will start see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors writ­ing in our blog and web­site, so that we can col­lec­tively dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and emo­tional train­ing, brain fit­ness and health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­eral for our every­day lives. All of it, spiced up by stim­u­lat­ing brain teasers.

So, if you haven’t already, make sure to sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).

Let me intro­duce, In alpha­bet­i­cal order, the Expert Con­trib­u­tors who will share their knowl­edge with us in Jan­u­ary and February.

- Wes Car­roll, SB in Com­puter Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing from MIT, and Puz­zle Mas­ter for Ask a Sci­en­tist lec­ture series.

- Simon Evans, PhD., and Paul Burghardt, PhD., who col­lab­o­rate in the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try and the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science Insti­tute, to study the effects of nutri­tion and exer­cise on brain function.

- Greater Good Mag­a­zine, a quar­terly mag­a­zine pub­lished by a UC-Berkeley cen­ter to “high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altruism.“ 

- Gre­gory Kel­lett, a recent grad­u­ate from the Cog­ni­tive Neurology/Research Psychology Masters pro­gram at SFSU.

- Eric Jensen, author of Enrich­ing the Brain: How to Max­i­mize Every Learner’s Poten­tial, and well-known syn­the­sizer of brain research infor­ma­tion with impli­ca­tions for K12 education.

- Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., an Adjunct Fac­ulty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in Saint Louis, Psy­chol­ogy Department.

- Tom O’Brien, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion, South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­sity, and author of prize-winning games.

- Joshua Stein­er­man, M.D., Post­doc­toral Clin­i­cal Fel­low in the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­ogy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Center.

- David Rabiner, Ph.D., Senior Research Sci­en­tist and Direc­tor of Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke Uni­ver­sity. Dr. Rabiner main­tains the highly-regarded Atten­tion Research Update.

Please Note: if you would like to become an Expert Con­trib­u­tor, Read the rest of this entry »

Fyi, I will be teaching this work­shop soon, as part of our col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­eral Osher Life­long Learn­ing Institutes: 

 

San José State University’s Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (web­site) presents

Title: Brain Fit­ness: The Sci­ence and Practice.

When: Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2008 9:30–3:30

What: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of what aging means. In this class, we will review the sci­ence behind some of the key con­cepts in this field and explore their impli­ca­tions on our lifestyles in a fun and engag­ing way. We have all heard “Use it or lose it.” Lat­est research sug­gests, “Use it and improve it!” Read the rest of this entry »