The growing field of cognitive training (one of the tools for brain fitness) can appear very confusing as the media keeps reporting contradictory claims. These claims are often based on press releases, without a deeper evaluation of the scientific evidence.

Let’s take a couple of recent examples, in successive days:

“It doesn’t work!” type of headline:
Reuters (Feb. 10, 2009) — Formal brain exercise won’t help healthy seniors: research
“Healthy older people shouldn’t bother spending money on computer games and websites promising to ward off mental decline, the author of a review of scientific evidence for the benefits of these “brain exercise” programs says”.

“It works!” type of headline:
ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2009) — Computer Exercises Improve Memory And Attention, Study Suggests
“According to the researchers, participants who used the Brain Fitness Program also scored as well as those ten years younger, on average, on memory and attention tests for which they did not train.”

So… does structured brain exercise / cognitive training work or not?

The problem may in fact reside in asking this very question in the first place, as Alvaro pointed out a while ago in his article “Alzheimer’s Disease: too serious to play with headlines“.

We need a more nuanced set of questions.

Why? Because:
1. Cognition is made of several different abilities (working memory, attention, executive functions such as decision-making, etc)
2. Available training programs do not all train the same abilities
3. Users of training programs do not all have the same needs or goals
4. We need to differentiate between enhancing cognitive functions and delaying the onset of cognitive deficits such as Alzheimer’s.

Let’s illustrate these points, by Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last year we have gladly seen an avalanche of news on adult neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons in adult brains), following recent research reports. Further, we have seen how the news that physical exercise can enhance neurogenesis is becoming common knowledge among many health systems we work with.

Now, the obvious question that doesn’t always get asked is, “What good are new neurons if they don’t survive?”. And that’s where learning, enrichment, mental exercise, are critical.

We are glad to introduce a new Expert Contributor, Dr. Bill Klemm, a professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, who summarizes much research on how new neurons are born-and what they need to live long happy lives.

- Alvaro

New Neurons: Good News, Bad News

– By Dr. Bill Klemm 

In the last few years, researchers have discovered that new nerve cells (neurons) are born, presumably from residual stem cells that exist even in adults. That should be good news for all of us as we get older and fear mental decline. The bad news is that these new neurons die, unless our minds are active enough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Keim writes a nice post on The Future Science of Altruism at Wired Science Blog, based on an interview with Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Brandon provides good context saying that “Scientists, said Grafman, are understanding how our brains are shaped by culture and environment, and a mechanism of these changes may involve fluctuation in our genes themselves, which we’re only beginning to understand”. (more on this in our post Richard Dawkins and Alfred Nobel: beyond nature and nurture).

And gives us some very nice quotes from Dr. Grafman, including

• “One of the ways we differentiate ourselves from other species is that we have a sense of future. We don’t have to have immediate gratification…. But how far can we go into the future? How much of our brain is aimed at doing that? [...]“
• “Other great apes have a frontal lobe, fairly well developed, but not nearly as well developed as our own. If you believe in Darwin and evolution, you argue that the area grew, and the neural architecture had to change in some way to accommodate the abilities associated with that behavior. There’s no doubt that didn’t occur overnight; probably a slow change, and it was one of the last areas of the brain to develop as well. It’s very recent evolutionary development that humans took full advantage of. What in the future? What in the brains can change?”
• “The issue becomes — do we teach this? Train people to do this? Children tend to be selfish, and have to be taught to share.”

The UC Berkeley magazine Greater Good tries to answer that question with a series of articles on Gratitude. I especially enjoyed A Lesson in Thanks, described as Read the rest of this entry »

Today I have an announcement to make. You probably are seeing all the articles about Brain Fitness in the press and wondering, “What is this all about?”, “Can someone help me navigate through all the programs out there?”, “How is Brain Fitness relevant to me in my personal life or at work?”. Well…we are delivering a series of workshops to companies and organizations combining modules -including scientific overview, the industry trends and key players, fun team-building exercises- that can be tailored to each organization’s specific needs. Sessions last from 1 to 6 hours, depending on the group’s composition and agenda and are delivered either in person or via web conference.

We want to be able to reach more organizations, so please let us know of any ideas!

Some recent examples

1. Managing Stress for Peak Performance (we mentioned some notes on an Accenture session)

New and challenging situations – such as taking on new responsibilities– can trigger reactions in our brain and body that limit or even block our decision-making abilities. These reactions may also harm our long-term brain power and health. Although we cannot avoid change and stressful situations, we can learn how to manage our stress levels to ensure peak performance-even in tough moments. The latest neuroscience research proves that stress management is a trainable “mental muscle.” This is true for any high pressure profession, be it trading, sports, or simply modern life.

2. The Science of Brain Health and Brain Fitness (similar to what I will teach at UC Berkeley OLLI)

Neuroscientists have shown how the human brain retains neuroplasticity (the ability to rewire itself) and neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons) during its full lifetime, leading to a new understanding of Read the rest of this entry »

Eliane writes a great post estimating the size of the Serious Games Market, building on the overall PriceWaterhouseCoopers report that seemed to indicate that the Global Video Game Market is Set to Explode.

Some quotes

• “The overall gaming audience continues to expand and become somewhat more female and older than in the past thanks to casual games and games becoming an “important part of culture” – which in my view would embed the Serious Games segment.”
• “Whereas the military was one of the first customers of Serious Games, it has been joined by a long line of users, including other government agencies, healthcare providers, schools (both K-12 and universities) and Fortune 500 companies (for team building, leadership training, sales training and product education, among others).”
• “This is my conservative estimate: the Serious Games market would be ranging between $200 – 400 million per year only in US, in 2007. “
• “There is now an emergent supply chain for Corporate Serious Games, with a number of corporations taking Read the rest of this entry »

My first full-time job was as a strategic consultant at McKinsey & Company. A very intense 2-year learning experience.

Their Alumni News Service recently interviewed me and published this great article on SharpBrains. The writer does a superb job of providing an overview of what we do, so I recommend you read it. I’d like to emphasize the following quotes for anyone looking for jobs these days, so that “brain exercise” is part of the equation:

• “Alvaro has some very high praise for the mental gymnastics that the McKinsey experience provides.  Given that the frontal lobes in our brain (behind the forehead) only mature in our late 20s, he says, the jobs we take in our early and mid-20s are very important not only for our career prospects, but also for our brain development fitness. This is the stage in our life where, consciously or not, we can improve our decision-making, initiative and self-regulation abilities, all of which literally affect the physical growth of our frontal lobes in a significant way.”
• “Joining McKinsey as a BA is literally like joining a brain gym,” Alvaro says. “The demands of the ‘McKinsey model’ Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago we had a very fun team-building session, titled SharpBrains Mental Workout at Cisco Systems, during the retreat of a Cisco Systems group. We covered recent brain research and its implications for learning and training, and we introduced a lot of fun games and activities. Some key take-aways for participants were:

• a) There are frequently different, but equally valid, ways to look at things. We better try to understand each other before we try to impose our ideas (See old lady-young lady game in a later post, under title “What do you see?”)
• b) Each os us has “3 integrated brains” and 7 key “mental muscles”
• c) Good brain exercise requires novelty, variety and practice.
• d) Doing our best at work and life helps train our brains. Training our brains helps us do our best at work and in life

We went through some areas relevant to business life, through the eyes of neuroscience

• 1) Develop Creative Inspiration through movement
• 2) Improve Teamwork through emotional understanding, appreciation and learning to manage stress
• 3) Manage multi-tasking through Attention and Memory techniques
• 4) Leadership through focus, planning and learning
• 5) Communicate through relating to daily experiences, and analogies
• 6) Improve confidence through a clear vision, and visualize success

And used some classic games and challenges, such as the ones in the other posts, to illuminate some aspects about how our brains work.

If you were in charge of training executives in your company, what other areas would you emphasize?