Our January Newsletter received a good deal of feedback from many readers. Based on it, our new approach is to select the top 10 most important articles every other week. Please take a look at this first experiment, and let us know you feedback.

(Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our monthly newsletter at the top of this page if you want to receive this newsletter by email).

News and Events

Stress Management is Key Factor For Cognitive Fitness: a great cover story in US News & World Report, and an excellent article in Prevention Magazine that was highlighted on the Today Show this week, both feature the importance of managing stress, one of the 4 pillars of brain health.

Brain Training Games: Context, Trends, Questions: We presented SharpBrains’ upcoming report, The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008, on Tuesday Feb 12th at an event sponsored by the MIT Club of Northern California, the American Society on Aging, and SmartSilvers.

Stress and Neural Wreckage: Part of the Brain Plasticity Puzzle: an insightful article by one of our new Expert Contributors, Gregory Kellet-a researcher at UCSF- who provides context on how stress kills neurons.

Closing the Circuit: Helen Mayberg’s research could revolutionize depression treatment: accumulated chronic stress can build into depression over time. Thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine, Jill Suttie offers a fascinating overview of depression and a promising new treatment.

Posit Science Brain Fitness Program 2.0: Open Questions: we ask several questions to one of the leading “brain fitness gyms”, trying to help consumers and institutions navigate through this emerging landscape.
Improving Driving Skills and Brain Functioning- Interview with ACTIVE’s Jerri Edwards: in-depth interview with Dr. Jerri Edwards, an Associate Professor at University of South Florida’s School of Aging Studies and Co-Investigator of the influencial ACTIVE study, on the value of cognitive training.

Education & Learning

Are Schools (Cognitively) Nutritive for Children’s Complex Thinking?: educators Thomas O’Brien and Christine Wallach present a very stimulating essay on the importance of problem-solving, encouraging complex game-playing for children’s complete “cognitive nutrition”.

Musical training as mental exercise for cognitive performance: We often hear (gladly!) how teachers use our blog articles and brain teasers in their classes. So we are going to recognize and publish a great essay by high school student Megan.

Brain Teaser

Words in your brain: Pascale Michelon presents a brain exercise whose aim is to stimulate the connections or associations between words in your temporal lobe. Learn as you exercise!

Recommended Book

Spark: the Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by John Ratey: a superb overview on why and how physical exercise is so important for our mental health.

Enjoy the weekend!