As you have prob­a­bly noticed, a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors are writ­ing in our blog, so that we can col­lec­tively dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and brain health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­eral for our every­day lives. 

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

Below you have the pro­files of some of our Con­trib­u­tors and links to their best arti­cles with us so far. Enjoy!

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In the past two days, The New York Times has pub­lished two excel­lent arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Despite appear­ing in sep­a­rate sec­tions (tech­nol­ogy and editorial), the two have more in com­mon than imme­di­ately meets the eye. Both raise key ques­tions that politi­cians, health pol­icy mak­ers, busi­ness leaders, educators and consumers should pay atten­tion to.

1) First, Exer­cise Your Brain, or Else You’ll … Uh …, by Katie Hafner (5/3/08). Some quotes:

- “At the same time, boomers are seiz­ing on a mount­ing body of evi­dence that sug­gests that brains con­tain more plas­tic­ity than pre­vi­ously thought, and many peo­ple are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, doing brain fit­ness exer­cises with the same inten­sity with which they attack a treadmill.”

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Lan­guage in the brain is processed in the tem­po­ral lobes. These are on the sides of your brain, next to you temples.

Dif­fer­ent areas in the tem­po­ral lobe (mostly on the left side of your brain) deal with dif­fer­ent aspects of lan­guage. For instance, the Wer­nicke area is the one that allows you to under­stand words. The Broca area, on the other hand, is the one that allows you to pro­duce lan­guage or artic­u­late words.

Dam­age to Wernicke’s area causes Wernicke’s apha­sia, a con­di­tion in which peo­ple can hear lan­guage being spo­ken, but can­not under­stand it. Dam­age to Broca’s area causes Broca’s apha­sia, a con­di­tion in which peo­ple have trou­ble pro­duc­ing language.

Below you will find a brain exer­cise that tar­gets the neu­rons in your lan­guage areas. Read the rest of this entry »

Stephanie West Allen, our lawyer-blogger friend and Dr. Jef­frey M. Schwartz, a research psy­chi­a­trist at the School of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les and a neu­ro­plas­tic­ity expert, have writ­ten a thought-provoking arti­cle for The Com­plete Lawyer.

See Arti­cle: Exer­cise Mind Hygiene On A Daily Basis. Excerpt:

- “Here’s an exam­ple of a Golden Moment of Choice: You have decided that you are going to keep your promise and get home each evening in time to put the kids to bed. When 7 p.m. rolls around, you rec­og­nize that you can move in one of two direc­tions: you can keep work­ing or get going. Because of your habit of work­ing very late, the synapses in your brain have been forged to sup­port your habit, and you feel the urge to stay. This phys­i­o­log­i­cal com­po­nent of your habit­ual behav­ior is mak­ing your deci­sion dif­fi­cult. Nev­er­the­less, you decide to leave. Now, each time you make this new choice, it will be eas­ier: You will be lay­ing down “going-home-to-the-kids” synapses to sup­port the new behav­ior (and you will be using self-directed neuroplasticity).

- Our abil­ity to step back and see that we have the choice is key. Often we do not even get that far: 7 p.m. comes and goes with­out our real­iz­ing that it’s a GMC. In order to improve your abil­ity to observe your­self and your choices, you need to develop your self-awareness”.

Arti­cle: Exer­cise Mind Hygiene On A Daily Basis

Read­ing this, and with a wife  and 6-week-old baby start­ing to fall asleep, reminds me of something…

how to say, “Good night, dear Blog!”