You may be read­ing all about brain fit­ness and brain train­ing. It seems every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which often con­tra­dict what you read the month before: Does Gingko Biloba help delay Alzheimer’s Dis­ease? Can phys­i­cal exer­cise help you stay sharp as you age? Which computer-based “brain fit­ness pro­grams”, if any, are worth your money?

All this cov­er­age reflects very excit­ing sci­en­tific find­ings but also poses a key dilemma: How to become an informed life­long learner and con­sumer when there are few and con­tra­dic­tory author­i­ta­tive guidelines?

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (to be pub­lished in May 2009; $24.95) aims to fill that void. This guide is the result of over a year of exten­sive research includ­ing more than a hun­dred inter­views with sci­en­tists, pro­fes­sion­als and con­sumers, and a deep lit­er­a­ture review. Below you have some of the main find­ings from our effort. The guide not only cov­ers these aspects in more depth and offers prac­ti­cal guid­ance, but also includes 18 inter­views with promi­nent sci­en­tists to help you under­stand the research better.

Can we intro­duce you to your Brain?

The Guide will start at the obvi­ous start­ing point: The Human Brain. In order to make informed deci­sions about brain health, one needs to first under­stand the basic orga­ni­za­tion of the human brain and how it tends to change as we get older.

* The brain is com­posed of a num­ber of regions serv­ing dis­tinct func­tions. For­get IQ: our life and pro­duc­tiv­ity depend on a vari­ety of brain func­tions, not just one.

* There is noth­ing inher­ently fixed in the tra­jec­tory of how brain func­tions evolve as we age. Your lifestyle, actions, and even thoughts, do matter.

The 4 Pil­lars of Brain Maintenance

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is the life­long capac­ity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stim­u­la­tion of learn­ing and expe­ri­ence. The lat­est sci­en­tific research shows that spe­cific lifestyles and actions can, no mat­ter our age, improve the health and level of func­tion­ing of our brains.

What fac­tors seem to have the most influ­ence? As described in the sec­ond chap­ter of the Guide, a brain-friendly lifestyle should include at least:
* Bal­anced nutri­tion: As a gen­eral guide­line, what is good for the body and heart is also good for the brain. Gingko Biloba and other sup­ple­ments do not seem to bring the ben­e­fits peo­ple expect.
* Stress man­age­ment: Chronic stress reduces and can even inhibit neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons) and affects mem­ory and other brain func­tions. It is then very impor­tant to learn how to man­age stress.
* Phys­i­cal exer­cise: Phys­i­cal exer­cise improves cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing through increased blood sup­ply and growth hor­mone lev­els in the brain. Of all the types of phys­i­cal exer­cise, car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise that get the heart beat­ing has been shown to have the great­est effect.
* Brain exer­cise: Brain exer­cise strength­ens the synapses or con­nec­tions between neu­rons, thus improv­ing neu­ron sur­vival and cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing. Cumu­lated men­tal stim­u­la­tion through­out our lives (via edu­ca­tion, our jobs, leisure activ­i­ties) can help build a neu­ro­pro­tec­tive Cog­ni­tive Reserve.

Men­tal Exer­cise vs. Men­tal Activity

The third chap­ter of the Guide shows why men­tal exer­cise goes beyond men­tal activ­ity. We define Men­tal Exer­cise (or “Brain train­ing”) as the struc­tured use of cog­ni­tive exer­cises or tech­niques aimed at improv­ing spe­cific brain functions.

Brain train­ing can be deliv­ered in a num­ber of ways:
* Cog­ni­tive ther­apy (CT): the way we per­ceive our expe­ri­ences influ­ences our behav­iors, and one can learn cog­ni­tive skills to mod­ify his or her think­ing and result­ing actions. CT has been around for decades, but there is more recent research show­ing the spe­cific brain ben­e­fits from the tech­nique.
* Med­i­ta­tion: has been shown to improve spe­cific cog­ni­tive func­tions such as atten­tion and emo­tional self-regulation.
* Biofeed­back: these devices can mea­sure and graph­i­cally dis­play var­i­ous phys­i­o­log­i­cal vari­ables such as heart rate vari­abil­ity, so that users can learn to self-adjust and iden­tify and man­age emo­tions bet­ter.
* Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware: these are fully auto­mated appli­ca­tions designed to assess and enhance spe­cific cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. This is the area that has exploded since 2007 – and where we observe the most confusion.

The Value and Lim­i­ta­tions of Brain Train­ing Software

Do brain train­ing soft­ware prod­ucts really “work”? Well, it depends on which prod­uct, and for whom and for what. To help answer­ing this ques­tion, Chap­ter 4 of the Guide will offer a detailed and easy to read review of the recent sci­en­tific evidence.

Some key con­cepts to help you nav­i­gate the exist­ing and future prod­ucts are that:
* Dif­fer­ent peo­ple face dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive demands, and have dif­fer­ent start­ing points, so there is no gen­eral solu­tion or magic pill for every­one and every­thing.
* As in phys­i­cal fit­ness, you must ask your­self: What are the goals I want to accom­plish? What spe­cific cog­ni­tive func­tions am I try­ing to improve on? In what time­frame? What bud­get can I spend on this?

The Guide includes 10 ques­tions to help con­sumers eval­u­ate soft­ware pro­grams, and offers a detailed overview (includ­ing tar­geted brain func­tions, tar­geted users, pric­ing, sci­en­tific evi­dence) of the:

* Top 8 over­all brain main­te­nance prod­ucts.
* Top 8 tar­geted brain work­out prod­ucts.
* Top 5 stress man­age­ment products.

Ready for the Future?

Chap­ter 5 and 6 of the Guide describe impor­tant trends to get you ready for what is coming.

The same way there are dif­fer­ent rea­sons to exer­cise our bod­ies (to run a marathon, to stay func­tion­ally fit, to lose weight…), there are dif­fer­ent rea­sons to exer­cise our brains. Accord­ingly, we are see­ing a grow­ing focus on men­tal exer­cise in a vari­ety of domains: healthy aging, seniors hous­ing, reha­bil­i­ta­tion from brain dis­or­ders (such as ADHD and strokes/ Trau­matic Brain Injury), schools, etc.

We pre­dict the Cul­ture of Brain fit­ness to go main­stream with broad gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives and a bet­ter inte­gra­tion of phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise. Bet­ter tools to assess cog­ni­tive func­tions and to improve brain func­tions are under way. More actors will take brain fit­ness into con­sid­er­a­tion — think of physi­cians, psy­chol­o­gists, insur­ance com­pa­nies, Cor­po­rate America.

Open­ing the Debate

We are aware that the Guide may pro­vide many answers…but also many new ques­tions, which is good to help you eval­u­ate options, and also to get your own brain working!

The Guide ends with a chal­lenge to read­ers: Can you, the ambas­sadors of brain fit­ness and life­long learn­ing, dis­cuss these find­ings and some pro­posed ques­tions with your friends, fam­i­lies, col­leagues, book club members?

Please stay tuned to be among the first to know when the guide will be released. If you haven’t by now, please make sure to sub­scribe to our free monthly Newslet­ter.

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