By: Alvaro Fernandez
Neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (see our previous interview with Yaakov Stern on the Cognitive Reserve) have asked for help in recruiting volunteers for an exciting clinical trial. If you are based in New York City, and between the ages of 60 and 75, please consider joining this study.
More information below:
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Use it or Lose it?
Train your Brain! Healthy adults between the ages of 60 and 75 living in NYC are invited to join a study of mental fitness training. Qualified individuals will play a scientifically-based video game in our laboratory, and will be tested to determine the effects on attention, memory, and cognitive performance.
You will earn up to $600 plus transportation costs if you complete the 3-month program.
This exciting study is being performed by the Cognitive Neuroscience Division of the Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center.
If interested, contact us today: Read the rest of this entry »
By: Alvaro Fernandez
Very fun interview with Jack and Elaine LaLanne by Dave Bunnell: read it at Meet Fitness Legends Jack and Elaine LaLanne | ELDR.com. See some quotes:
- In 1936, Jack opened America’s first health club in Oakland, California, called the “Jack LaLanne Physical Culture Studio.”
- Through television shows, public appearances, and books—and by selling health-related products—they have been the most vocal and effective evangelists for preventive health the world has ever known.
- “Elaine works out,” Jack replies, “but I work out eight days a week. I spend an hour and a half in the gym, and then a half hour in the pool, and I change my routine every 30 days completely.”
- “You’ve got to go at it hard and work on different muscles,” he continues. “You know how you stay young, don’t you? You work your butt off. Anything you do in life that’s worthwhile, there’s a price to pay.”
Jack recently celebrated his 92nd birthday!
We all have to be very thankful for their life mission: a recent article from the Society for Neuroscience quotes:
“Everybody knows that exercise is good for your heart, but in recent years we’ve gathered compelling evidence that exercise is also good for your brain,” says Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. “We now know that exercise helps generate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”
You can check other tips in Read the rest of this entry »
By: admin
Hi! It’s Andreas, the Norwegian MD/PhD intern at SharpBrains.
Last week Alvaro wrote about how people with low stress levels are better able to tolerate age-related changes in the brain. The other side of the coin, as mentioned today in the Wall Street Journal, is that chronic stress is a risk factor of dementia and might be related to harmful stress hormones called glucocorticoids.
So why do we have glucocorticoids? Well, they are steroids produced to help us manage short-term periods of stress. However, long-term release may erode pathways (connetions) between brain cells and can potentially accelerate cognitive decline.
Why is this relevant to all of us? Because depression can be seen as a chronic state of brain stress, and explain why stress management is important. Studies now show that depression may actually damage brain structures responsible for memory. The findings from a study in Archives of General Psychiatry showed patients with a history of depression are more likely to suffer from cognitive problems later in life, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia. As the journalist writes, “In findings that highlight the importance of mood and stress to maintaining a healthy brain, researchers and psychiatrists say that a bout of depression may raise the risks of developing dementia later in life.”
In some cases, patients with untreated depression exhibit an 10% volume reduction of the brain’s memory center Read the rest of this entry »
By: Alvaro Fernandez
Today we would like to ask for your opinions on the emerging Brain Fitness field, your interests and needs. We would really appreciate if you can devote 5-minutes to complete this online survey.Â
Thanks! please let us know what you think!
PS: as a small token of appreciation, we will give you a discount of 10% on all products offered in our website, valid for a month after you complete the survey…sorry, no Starbucks cards…
By: Caroline Latham
If you are in the Bay Area, we hope to see you at this event! Feel free to forward the invitation below to anyone you know who may be interested.
The growing movement for improving brain health has brought many interested professionals and interested community members to the table. Sharing our information, activities, and planned events to promote brain health increases the power of our reach.  Â
Please join us on May 16, 2007 from noon to 1:30pm for a complimentary gathering co-sponsored by:
Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, well-known neuroscientist and author of The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older and Alvaro Fernandez, CEO and Co-Founder of SharpBrains and instructor of the Exercising Our Brains class, will provide an overview of the science and trends behind the emerging brain fitness field.
Please bring information on your work and events to share with others interested in brain health.
Where: SFSU OLLI (835 Market Street, 6th Floor, San Francisco, Room 675)
When: Wednesday, May 16, 12-1:30 pm
What: A chance for networking with Read the rest of this entry »
By: Alvaro Fernandez
The New Yorker April 30th issue includes a superb article on The Way We Age Now: Can medicine serve an aging population?. Atul Gawande provides a great (and a bit depressing) survey on the geriatrics field: more and more need for practitioners, with less and less supply.
now, a couple of quotes and data points that are very relevant to our efforts around healthy brain aging.
- “for most of our hundred-thousand-year existence—all but the past couple of hundred years—the average life span of human beings has been thirty years or less. (Research suggests that subjects of the Roman Empire had an average life expectancy of twenty-eight years.)”
- “Inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity. James Vaupel, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, in Rostock, Germany, notes that only six per cent of how long you’ll live, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ longevity; by contrast, up to ninety per cent of how tall you are, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ height. Even genetically identical twins vary widely in life span: the typical gap is more than fifteen years.”
Fascinating. First, let’s appreciate our incredible life expectancy today; we are literally pushing the envelop of how to maintain healthy brains and bodies. By historical standards, many of us are living on “borrowed” time. Second, there you have some evidence for the importance of our experience and our lifestyle on how long we live. In terms of healthy aging, on average, nurture seems to be at least as important as nature, and the one more in our control to take action today.
You can learn more on the Successful Aging of the Healthy Brain: a beautiful essay by Marian Diamond on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit throughout our lives.
Related blog posts
By: Caroline Latham
We hope you are enjoying Brain Awareness Week this week and hopefully thinking a little more about your brain and brain fitness! Below you have the Brain Fitness Newsletter we sent a few days ago. You can subscribe to this monthly email update in the box on the the top of this page.
We have had another busy month behind us, and we’re looking forward to Brain Awareness Week March 12-18. Keep reading for the details (including a special offer in honor of Brain Awareness Week) …
I. Press Coverage
II. Events
III. Program Reviews
IV. New Offerings
V. Website and Blog Summary, including brain teasers
Read the rest of this entry »
By: Caroline Latham
We hope you are enjoying the growing coverage of Brain Fitness as much as we are. Below you have the Brain Fitness Newsletter we sent a few days ago-you can subscribe to this monthly email update in the box on the right hand side.
In this post, we will briefly cover:
I. Press: see what CBS and Time Magazine are talking about. SharpBrains was introduced in the Birmingham News, Chicago Tribune and in a quick note carried by the American Psychological Association news service.
II. Events: we are outreach partners for the Learning & the Brain conference, which will gather neuroscientists and educators, and for the Dana Foundation’s Brain Awareness Week.
III. Program Reviews: The Wall Street Journal reviewed six different programs for brain exercise and aging, and the one we offer is one of the two winners. A college-level counseling center starts offering our stress management one. And we interview a Notre Dame scientist who has conducted a replication study for the working memory training program for kids with ADD/ ADHD.
IV. New Offerings: we have started to offer two information packages that can be very useful for people who want to better understand this field before they commit to any particular program: learn more about our Brain Fitness 101 guide and Exercise Your Brain DVD.
V. Website and Blog Summary: we revamped our home page and have had a very busy month writing many good articles. We also hosted two “Blog Carnivals”- don’t you want to know what that means?
Read the rest of this entry »
By: Alvaro Fernandez
Very fun article in the Birmingham News today on SharpBrains and brain exercises, titled Want a workout for your brain?.
The journalist explains things very well and with great humor (for the humor, you need to read the article!). Here are some quotes:
- “Think of it as a gymnasium for your mind,” SharpBrains CEO and co-founder Alvaro Fernandez says from his office in San Francisco.
- (On only doing crosswords) “That’s good, but, like your body, you don’t just exercise one part of the brain,” says Fernandez, who holds an MBA and a master’s degree in education from Stanford University. “You need constant variety, and new things, to keep your brain working hard.”
- “He sees mental gymnastics as the next mainstream adult trend and points out that therapists have long used a variety of similar exercises to help in the recovery of brain-injury patients. Athletes and airplane pilots have had access to exercises designed to improve their peripheral vision and reaction times, Fernandez says.”
- “With SharpBrains co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, a clinical professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, Fernandez has collected what he says are the best computer-based brain workouts available, including a program to help children with attention deficits and another aimed at reducing stress management among business executives.”
By: Alvaro Fernandez
Dana Press kindly sent us a couple of books. One of them, The Dana Guide to Brain Health: A Practical Family Reference From Medical Experts, is our topic today.
We are impressed by what Dana is doing to insert neuroscience findings and implications into the public discourse.
No big surprise then, to find out so much quality content inside a 700-page one-of-a-kind guide, some of it, incidentally, provided by Dr. Goldberg, our Chief Scientific Advisor.
The guide is really 4 books inside a common binding. Priced at a reasonable level, and with superb in-depth text and images in all relevant areas, the book can be used as a 1) Brain 101 tutorial, 2) brief summary of the basics of Brain Care and Wellness, 3) description of the stages of brain development, 4) reference guide for around 70 brain-related conditions. In my personal opinion, every neuroscience, medical and psychology student, clinician and researcher should have this book in their hands to keep abreast of many recent developments, and also be exposed to professional development courses based on it. Many families and individuals interested in the brain should consider buying it too.
Given the focus of our blog-brain fitness for healthy individuals-, we particularly enjoyed the sections Read the rest of this entry »
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