“At Sutter Health Partners we recognize the importance of brain health and how much the health of the brain and the body are interdependent.  The market report helped us further target our coaching efforts to integrate brain fitness and upgrade our entire coaching platform.  It is easy to read and gives you the industry perspective in a thorough yet concise manner.  I highly recommend it!”

– Margaret Sabin, CEO of Sutter Health Partners and VP, New Product Development, at Sutter Health.

You may wonder, “what is the link between  wellness coaching and brain fitness”?

In practice, good health and wellness coaches provide excellent brain health advice, given that the areas they focus on (nutrition, physical exercise, stress management) do play an important role in maintaining our brains in top shape.

Additionally, pioneers  such as Sutter Health Partners are adding a Brain “lens” to their work. How?

First, by better understanding and explaining the brain benefits of what they already do, in order to provide additional motivation to stick with healthy behaviors. For example, most people will be able to recite multiple benefits of moderate cardiovascular exercise. But how many know  that it can also contribute to neurogenesis -the creation of new neurons – in adult brains?

Second, by starting to offer brain fitness guidelines to clients who want too go beyond crossword puzzles and sudoku.

I had a great training session with a number of Sutter Health coaches last week – let me summarize some of the main points we covered.

What is Brain Fitness?

The general state of feeling alert, in control, productive, especially as the result of mental and physical exercise and proper nutrition. Having the mental abilities required to function in society, in our occupations, in our communities. It is not about “IQ”. It is about skills such as attention, memory, emotional self-regulation, planning, managing distractions…

Can Brain Fitness be measured today?

Yes, but, today, only by neuropsychologists and medical professionals. We expect to see cheaper and widely available assessments (perhaps via a 30-40 minute set of online assessments) over the next few years, thanks to the work underway to make quality computer-based assessments available to a growing number of clinicians, insurance companies, sports teams and the military.

What is the research background that explains the emergence of the brain fitness field?

1- New paradigm in brain research: today it is clear that the brain retains a lifelong capacity to change responding to experience (neuroplasticity), paving the way for lifestyle-based interventions.
2- Neuroimaging tools such as fMRI enable, for the first time i history, the scientific exploration of the live brain.
3- The brain has a core set of brain functions-or “mental muscles”. Our vocabulary must expand beyond “memory” and  “intelligence” if we are to help move “Use It or Lose It” from theory to practice.
4. Some brain functions improve as we age – others typically decline. And there is major variability among groups of individuals.
5- The four “pillars” of brain health: balanced nutrition, physical exercise, stress management and brain exercise.
6- Cross-training the brain builds up the Brain Reserve.
7. Well-directed mental exercise (meditation, cognitive therapy, software-based programs) can be effective to train specific skills and provide needed mental stimulation.
8. Cognitive assessments will become critical to identify bottlenecks and measure progress.
9. The earlier we start, the better. But it is never too late to start.
10. This is still an emerging field: much more research needs to be done.

One of the top 10 predictions on the brain fitness/ brain training market we included in our our Brain Fitness Market Report said that:

“10. Brain training will be added to corporate wellness and leadership initiatives. Large employers with existing corporate wellness and leadership programs will introduce brain fitness specific programs aimed not only at improved health outcomes but also at increased productivity and cognitive performance in the workplace.”

Coaches will play a major role in helping clients navigate this field, as initiatives such as Sutter Health’s indicate. Stay tuned!

Is this correct? In my post today I will attempt to answer this question.

First, while generally healthier people seem to have healthier brains, the physical exercise effect on the brain seems to be independent of other things. 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. Now we know that the brain is “plastic” meaning that, under the right circumstances, the brain can change in terms of both producing new cells and getting more cells connected to each other.

One of the places where neurogenesis has been shown to occur in the adult brain is the dentate gyrus, a strip of grey matter placed deep down in the brain. The dentate gyrus is a part of the hippocampus, the main memory structure, and has been shown to play a role in the forming of new memories. What can the dentate gyrus teach us with regards to physical exercise?

Following a series of extremely thought provoking experiments researchers from the Gage laboratory at UCSD concluded that exercise leads to the production of new brain cells in the dentate. First the researchers found that mice housed in an enriched environment (a larger cage with toys, tunnels, and more opportunity for physical activity, learning, and social interaction than in standard bare cage) have an increased number of new neurons in the dentate gyrus.

The enriched environment is a mice equivalent of not only healthy but good living: leisurely enjoying life, getting both physical and intellectual stimulation, socializing with friends. Now, the fact that new neurons were produced was a big enough news in itself but the Gage group did not stop there. Their next goal was to figure out if neurogenesis was the result of a sum of factors acting together (i.e. the enriched environment) versus a specific effect of individual factor. So, they first dissected the enriched environment in a number of “sub” environments. In their next experiment they placed the mice in a “learning environment” where they had access to a maze, a “physical exercise environment” where mice had unlimited access to a running wheel, in addition to enriched and standard (empty cage) environments. Then they compared the groups in terms of behavioral performance and eventually looked at their brains.

Their conclusion was anything but expected: while both enrichment and wheel running led to improved spatial memory function only physical exercise in a running wheel also promoted neurogenesis and enhanced the survival of newborn neurons in the dentate gyrus.

Bottom line: exercising seems to literally mean “exercising the brain”.

So, in lieu of conclusion, till next I wish you all happy trails (and I don’t mean it as just trails on the paper in a paper and pencil memory task)!

Adrian Preda, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior in the UC Irvine School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. His expertise in human behavior, psychology and spirituality is based on years of experience working as a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, teacher and researcher in a variety of academic clinical and non-clinical settings. He also teaches the UC Irvine Extension class The Mind that Changes the Brain: Wellness in the Second Millennium.
References:

van Praag H, Christie BR, Sejnowski TJ, Gage FH (1999) Running enhances neurogenesis, learning, and long-term potentiation in mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 96: 13427–13431

van Praag H, Kempermann G, Gage FH (1999) Running increases cell proliferation and neurogenesis in the adult mouse dentate gyrus. Nat Neurosci 2: 266–270.

Farmer J, Zhao X, van Praag H, Wodtke K, Gage FH, Christie BR (2004) Effects of voluntary exercise on synaptic plasticity and gene expression in the dentate gyrus of adult male Sprague-Dawley rats in vivo. Neuroscience 124: 71–79

Related reading:

- Physical Exercise and Brain Health

- Art Kramer on Why we Need Walking Book Clubs