Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Dec 23, 2008

Top 30 Brain Health and Fitness Articles of 2008

By: Alvaro Fernandez

Here brain teasers job interview you have Sharp­Brains’ 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles, ranked by the num­ber of peo­ple who have read each arti­cle in 2008.

Please note that, since the first arti­cle already includes most of our most pop­u­lar brain teasers, we have excluded teasers from the rest of the rank­ing. (If those 50 are not enough for you, you can also try these brain teasers).

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Blog Chan­nel
 Arti­cle
1. Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games to Test your Brain
It is always good to stim­u­late our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selec­tion of the 50 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed the most.
2. The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains
Let’s review some good lifestyle options we can fol­low to main­tain, and improve, our vibrant brains. My favorite: don’t out­source your brain (even to us).
3. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?
You’re dri­ving through sub­ur­bia one evening look­ing for the street where you’re sup­posed to have din­ner at a friend’s new house. You slow down to a crawl, turn down the radio, stop talk­ing, and stare at every sign. Why is that? Nei­ther the radio nor talk­ing affects your vision. Or do they?
4. Brain Plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain
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.
5. Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends
In an emerg­ing mar­ket like brain fit­ness train­ing, it is dif­fi­cult to make pre­cise pro­jec­tions. But, we can observe a num­ber of trends that exec­u­tives, con­sumers, pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers, and the media should watch closely in the com­ing years, as brain fit­ness and train­ing becomes main­stream, new tools appear, and an ecosys­tem grows around it.

6. Brain Exer­cise and Brain Health FAQs
Answers to 7 most com­mon ques­tions around brain exer­cise and health, to help you nav­i­gate this emerg­ing field.
7. It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101
If we can all agree on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing our cars that get us around town, what about main­tain­ing our brains sit­ting behind the wheel?
8. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware and Train­ing Games
Unless you have been liv­ing in a cave, you have read by now mul­ti­ple arti­cles about the brain train­ing and brain exer­cise craze. Now, how do you know which of the new pro­grams can help you more, or whether you need any of them?
9. Brain Train­ing Games: Con­text, Trends, Ques­tions
This past Tues­day, the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, and Smart­Sil­vers spon­sored an event to explore the real­i­ties and myths of this grow­ing field. Here is the summary.
10. Stress Man­age­ment Work­shop for Inter­na­tional Women’s Day
Global con­sult­ing com­pany Accen­ture orga­nized a series of events, and I was for­tu­nate to lead a fun work­shop on The Neu­ro­science of Stress and Stress Man­age­ment in their San Fran­cisco office, help­ing over 125 accom­plished women (and a few men).
11. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Man­age­ment
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.
12. Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle
“My brain is…fried, toast, fraz­zled, burnt out.” How many times have you said or heard one ver­sion or another of these state­ments. Most of us think we are being fig­u­ra­tive when we utter such phrases, but research shows that the bio­log­i­cal con­se­quences of sus­tained high lev­els of stress may have us being more accu­rate than we would like to think.
13. How can I improve my short term mem­ory? Is there a daily exer­cise I can do to improve it?
By choos­ing to attend to some­thing and focus on it, you cre­ate a per­sonal inter­ac­tion with it, which gives it per­sonal mean­ing, mak­ing it eas­ier to remember.
14. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Devel­op­ment Through Play
Play is rapidly dis­ap­pear­ing from our homes, our schools, and our neigh­bor­hoods. Decades of research has shown that play is cru­cial to phys­i­cal, intel­lec­tual, and social-emotional devel­op­ment at all ages.
15. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son
Brain Fit­ness doesn’t require the use of expen­sive equip­ment. Your brain is enough. We were hon­ored to inter­view Dr. Judith Beck on how cog­ni­tive tech­niques can be applied to develop a num­ber of impor­tant men­tal skills. The lat­est appli­ca­tion of these?. Los­ing weight.
16. Easy Steps to Improve Brain Health
We can sum­ma­rize a lot of research by say­ing that there are four essen­tial pil­lars to main­tain­ing a healthy brain that func­tions bet­ter now and lasts longer. Those pil­lars are: 1) Phys­i­cal Exer­cise, 2) Men­tal Exer­cise, 3) Good Nutri­tion, 4) Stress Management.
17. Report: The State of the Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008
After many months of work, we have just released our inau­gural report on the emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket, the first to define the brain fit­ness and train­ing soft­ware mar­ket and ana­lyze the size and trends of its four cus­tomer segments.
18. Improve Mem­ory with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Test­ing
There are whole mar­kets (think cross­words, herbal sup­ple­ments, drugs, brain fit­ness soft­ware) aimed at help­ing us improve our mem­ory. Now, what is ¨mem­o­ry¨? and how does the process of mem­ory work?.
19. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn
If you agree that our brains are designed for learn­ing, then as edu­ca­tors it is incum­bent upon us to be look­ing for ways to max­i­mize the learn­ing process for each of our stu­dents, as well as for ourselves.
20. Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness: Inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg
Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg is a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine. His areas of exper­tise include exec­u­tive func­tions, mem­ory, atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, demen­tia, trau­matic brain injury. Dr. Gold­berg was a stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria.
21. Max­i­mize the Cog­ni­tive Value of Your Men­tal Work­out
Like in the case of phys­i­cal fit­ness, cog­ni­tive fit­ness requires delib­er­ate exer­cis­ing. The main rea­son for this rests on the fact that our brains are basi­cally lazy. There are in prin­ci­ple two very dif­fer­ent modes of activ­ity that our brains engage in when­ever faced with a problem.
22. Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram and Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity @ PBS
Infor­ma­tion on the PBS spe­cial pro­gram on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, brain fit­ness, aging and the brain titled “Brain Fit­ness Program”.
23. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD
Although med­ica­tion treat­ment is effec­tive for many indi­vid­u­als with ADHD, includ­ing ado­les­cents adults, there remains an under­stand­able need to explore and develop inter­ven­tions that can com­ple­ment or even sub­sti­tute for medication.
24. Can Intel­li­gence Be Trained? Mar­tin Buschkuehl shows how
Dr. Mar­tin Buschkuehl is one of the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s Cog­ni­tive Neu­roimag­ing Lab researchers involved in a recent cog­ni­tive train­ing study that received much media atten­tion since it was pub­lished at the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sciences.
25. How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?
Under­stand­ing the extent of avail­able research can help fam­i­lies bet­ter under­stand the strengths and lim­i­ta­tions of the exist­ing research on neu­ro­feed­back and enable them to make a bet­ter informed deci­sion about whether to con­sider this treat­ment option for their child.
26. Exer­cis­ing the body is exer­cis­ing the mind
One of the most impor­tant devel­op­ment in neu­ro­science was when the offi­cial dogma claim­ing that there was no neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (pro­duc­tion of new brain cells) in the adult brain was toppled.
27. Brain Evo­lu­tion and Why it is Mean­ing­ful Today to Improve Our Brain Health
You may feel over­whelmed by the stream of seem­ingly con­tra­dic­tory sug­ges­tions regard­ing the best way to main­tain men­tal clar­ity as you age. Based on an analy­sis of sem­i­nal fac­tors in the devel­op­ment of mod­ern brain anatomy, I believe it is pos­si­ble to make some very com­pelling rec­om­men­da­tions for grow­ing big brains, enhanc­ing their func­tion, and mak­ing them resis­tant to the aging process.
28. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health
What is the con­nec­tion between phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cises? Do they have addi­tive effects on brain health? Are they redun­dant? Let’s start by review­ing what we know about the effects of phys­i­cal exer­cise on the brain.
29. Posit Sci­ence, Nin­tendo Brain Age, and Brain Train­ing Top­ics
The con­cept of hav­ing a “brain age” is, itself, pro­foundly unsci­en­tific. It is one thing to have that con­cept pop­u­lar­ized by a game devel­oper such as Nin­tendo through its pop­u­lar Brain Age/ Train­ing Series, and another one to have it rein­forced by com­pa­nies that are devel­op­ing and mar­ket­ing science-based applications.
30. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­ory and the Brain
Sleep is so obvi­ous a phys­i­o­logic need (from insects to mam­mals, all ani­mals sleep) that it doesn’t even occur to most of us to won­der why we have to do it.
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Welcome to SharpBrains!

As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal, CNN and more, we are a mar­ket research & pub­lish­ing firm track­ing the research and mar­ket­place for brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health. Our blog was recently ranked # 3 Ana­lyst Blog.
News: Win­ners of the 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards were announced on May 24th, 2010. Learn more Here.

Top 30 Articles

  1. Top 50 Brain Teasers, by Sharp­Brains Team
  2. The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains, by Alvaro Fernandez
  3. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?, by Car­o­line Latham
  4. Brain Plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain, by Pas­cale Michelon
  5. Top 10 Brain Fit­ness Future Trends, by Alvaro Fernandez
  6. 7 FAQs on Men­tal Exer­cise, by Alvaro Fernandez
  7. It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101, by Alvaro Fernandez
  8. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness prod­ucts and games, by Alvaro Fernandez
  9. MIT Event on Brain Games: Con­text, Trends, Ques­tions, by Alvaro Fernandez
  10. Stress Man­age­ment Work­shop for Inter­na­tional Women’s Day, by Alvaro Fernandez
  11. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Man­age­ment, by Jill Sutie
  12. Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle, by Gre­gory Kellet
  13. How can I improve my short term mem­ory?, by Car­o­line Latham
  14. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Devel­op­ment Through Play, by David Elkind
  15. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son, by Alvaro Fernandez
  16. Easy Steps to Improve Brain Health, by Car­o­line Latham
  17. Info­graphic: State of the Mar­ket 2009, by Paul Van Slembrouck
  18. Improve Mem­ory with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Test­ing, by Bill Klemm
  19. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn, by Lau­rie Bartels
  20. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness, by Alvaro Fernandez
  21. Max­i­mize the Cog­ni­tive Value of Your Men­tal Work­out, by Schlomo Breznitz
  22. Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram and Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity @ PBS, by Alvaro Fernandez
  23. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD, by David Rabiner
  24. Can Intel­li­gence Be Trained? Mar­tin Buschkuehl shows how, by Alvaro Fernandez
  25. How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?, by David Rabiner
  26. Exer­cis­ing the body is exer­cis­ing the mind, by Adrian Preda
  27. Brain Evo­lu­tion and Why it is Mean­ing­ful Today to Improve Our Brain Health, by Larry McCleary
  28. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health, by Pas­cale Michelon
  29. Posit Sci­ence, Nin­tendo Brain Age, and Brain Train­ing Top­ics, by Alvaro Fernandez
  30. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­ory and the Brain, by Shan­non Moffet
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