Sev­eral recent news (includ­ing video of our recent panel discussion):

1) Study Finds Improved Cog­ni­tive Health among Older Amer­i­cans (Jour­nal of the Alzheimer’s Association)

- “Soci­etal invest­ment in build­ing and main­tain­ing cog­ni­tive reserve through for­mal edu­ca­tion in child­hood and con­tin­ued cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion dur­ing work and leisure in adult­hood may help limit the bur­den of demen­tia among the grow­ing num­ber of older adults worldwide”.

- “Cog­ni­tive impair­ment dropped from 12.2 per­cent in 1993 to 8.7 per­cent in 2002 among peo­ple 70 and older.“ 

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Given the cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate, we are pleased to host this thought-provoking arti­cle by 2 of our Expert Con­trib­u­tors. Dear Mr or Mrs Next Pres­i­dent: how can you help our minds take bet­ter care of our brains?

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Ask Not What The Health Sys­tem Can Do For You…

– By Simon J. Evans, PhD and Paul R. Burghardt, PhD.

With the pres­i­den­tial debates gear­ing up again we are sure to hear more about health care. But we pro­pose a slightly dif­fer­ent ques­tion. In addi­tion to ask­ing how we can get more peo­ple health­care cov­er­age, we should also ask why so many peo­ple are sick in the first place.

The words of John Kennedy might today be, “Ask not what the health care sys­tem can do for you. Ask what you can do to reduce the health care bur­den”. But before delv­ing into what we can do, let’s take a look at some real­i­ties that our next pres­i­dent could face in their first ‘State of the Union’ address.

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You may have heard that the brain is plas­tic. As you know the brain is not made of plas­tic! Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity or brain plas­tic­ity refers to the brain’s abil­ity to CHANGE through­out life. The brain has the amaz­ing abil­ity to reor­ga­nize itself by form­ing new con­nec­tions between brain cells (neurons).

In addi­tion to genetic fac­tors, the envi­ron­ment in which a per­son lives, as well as the actions of that per­son, play a role in plasticity.

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity occurs in the brain:

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(Note: neu­ro­feed­back is a form of biofeed­back that mea­sures brain waves and that, accord­ing to prac­ti­tion­ers, pro­vides good “brain train­ing” for spe­cific clin­i­cal con­di­tions).
A few weeks ago Dr. David Rabiner wrote a great post on How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?, con­clud­ing that

- “It is for these rea­sons that neu­ro­feed­back is under­stand­ably regarded as an unproven treat­ment approach for ADHD at this time by many ADHD researchers.

- How­ever, these stud­ies do pro­vide a solid basis for sug­gest­ing that if par­ents choose to pur­sue neu­ro­feed­back for their child, there is a rea­son­able chance that their child will ben­e­fit even though we can’t be sure that it is the spe­cific EEG train­ing that is respon­si­ble for the ben­e­fits. Thus, although the effi­cacy of neu­ro­feed­back has yet to be con­clu­sively con­firmed in a ran­dom­ized, placebo-controlled trial, it is impor­tant to place this lim­i­ta­tion in the con­text of the sup­port­ive research evi­dence that has been accumulated.

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A CDC report esti­mated that, in 2003, 4.4 mil­lion youth ages 4–17 lived with diag­nosed ADHD, and 2.5 mil­lion of them were receiv­ing med­ica­tion treat­ment. Now, which is the core deficit under­ly­ing ADHD-so that treat­ments really address it? and how are ADHD and brain devel­op­ment related? Keep reading…

ADHD & the Nature of Self-Control — Revis­it­ing Barkley’s The­ory of ADHD

— By David Rabiner, Ph.D

As implied in the title of his book, ADHD and the Nature of Self-Control, Dr. Barkley argues that the fun­da­men­tal deficit in indi­vid­u­als with ADHD is one of self-control, and that prob­lems with atten­tion are a sec­ondary char­ac­ter­is­tic of the disorder.

Dr. Barkley empha­sizes that dur­ing the course of devel­op­ment, con­trol over a child’s behav­ior grad­u­ally shifts from exter­nal sources to being increas­ingly gov­erned by inter­nal rules and stan­dards. Con­trol­ling one’s behav­ior by inter­nal rules and stan­dards is what is meant by the term “self-control”.

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Phys­i­cal fit­ness. Cognitive/ brain fit­ness. Both require nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge. Pro­fes­sor Schlomo Breznitz, a sci­en­tific and busi­ness leader in the cog­ni­tive fit­ness field, explains why, elo­quently, below. Per­haps “we want change” really means “we need change”. Enjoy!

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Why are every­day life chal­lenges not suf­fi­cient to keep our brains fit?

– By Prof. Shlomo Breznitz

Often, when describ­ing the ben­e­fits of Mind­Fit to brain health, I am asked by peo­ple in the audi­ence whether this soft­ware is really needed. After all, so they argue, life pro­vides con­tin­ues cog­ni­tive chal­lenges, which should suf­fice for ensur­ing brain fit­ness. From the moment we wake up until we go to sleep our brains have to attend to com­plex stim­uli, plan many activ­i­ties, some of them quite com­plex, and carry us through what­ever the day offers. These tasks should pro­vide suf­fi­cient “brain exer­cise” with­out the need to engage in spe­cific men­tal workout.

This line of argu­ment sounds oddly famil­iar, since it is an exact dupli­ca­tion of claims made in the recent past against the need for phys­i­cal exer­cise. One jumps into the car and from the car and per­haps even climbs a few stairs before sit­ting in the chair, which should be enough to burn the calo­ries and keep fit.

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Two inter­est­ing com­pany press releases, one yes­ter­day one today, show­ing how cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions may be help­ful no mat­ter our age, from kids to seniors, as long as we under­stand what those “tools” are sup­posed to do and don’t expect, or are promised, miracles:

Dakim® , Inc. Secures $10.6 Mil­lion Series C Fund­ing Led by Galen Partners

- “an inno­va­tor in brain fit­ness tech­nol­ogy solu­tions, today announced Read the rest of this entry »

Cog­ni­tive train­ing (the basis for what we call “brain fit­ness” these days) has a wide array of appli­ca­tions. The most recent one, which is cap­tur­ing public’s imag­i­na­tion, monop­o­liz­ing media cov­er­age, and cre­at­ing cer­tain con­fu­sion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are for­tu­nate to have Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, offer today his great voice to this con­ver­sa­tion. Enjoy!

- Alvaro
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Mind­ing the Aging Brain

– By Joshua R. Stein­er­man, M.D.

Sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, artists, and experts from all fields of human endeavor lament: it ain’t easy get­ting older. It? Do they refer to frailty and dis­abil­ity? To bod­ily dis­ease? To life at its essence?

It’s all in your head

The mind is not set in stone, but it is encased by bone. It’s really all about the brain, the hyphen in the mind-body conun­drum. That squishy gray neu­ronal jun­gle is the inter­face between inter­nal life and envi­ron­men­tal sen­sa­tions and stim­u­la­tion. As expected, the brain shows signs of aging just as a wrin­kled brow, a stooped pos­ture, or an arthritic fin­ger might. The most com­mon brain changes observed in aging and in age-associated neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­ease include:

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A cou­ple of excel­lent col­lec­tions of blog posts:

-The Tan­gled Bank: all things sci­ence, with a very clear presentation.

-Med­i­cine 2.0: inter­sec­tion of Health and Web 2.0, hosted by Berta­lan Mesko, its creator.

Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

Thank you for stop­ping dur­ing recess for a quick study session. 35 edu­ca­tors have col­lab­o­rated to present this Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion as a use­ful les­son plan for you and your edu­ca­tion pol­icy team on what our real con­cerns and sug­ges­tions are.

In case this is your first visit to our Sharp­Brains blog, let me first of all point out some use­ful resources to stay sane dur­ing the rest of the cam­paign: selected Brain Teasers, a list of 21 great Brain Books, over a dozen inter­views with lead­ing sci­en­tists on learn­ing and brain-based top­ics, and more.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the issues raised. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Edu­ca­tion as a System