If so, time to celebrate! Today starts 2010 Brain Awareness Week (opens website with calendar of activities and resources).

First of all, please take the time to say Hello to the new neurons that are being generated in your brain every single day. This morning you’ll have some “baby neurons” that weren’t there last night, thanks to lifelong neurogenesis. Then, consider, how will you put them to good use and help them thrive over time? To guide you here, Dr. Deb summarized the gist of 10 Habits of Highly Effective Brains:

1. Use it or lose it.
2. Take care of your nutrition.
3. Exercise your brain and your body. They nourish each other.
4. Practice positive thoughts until they become your default mindset.
5. Thrive on learning and mental challenges.
6. Aim high and keep learning.
7. Explore and travel.
8. Don’t Outsource Your Brain. Make your own decisions.
9. Develop and maintain stimulating friendships.
10. Laugh often.

Your brain will surely appreciate.

The July/ August 2009 issue of The Journal on Active Aging includes my article Why We Need to Retool “Use It Or Lose It”

An excerpt:

“By now you have probably heard about brain plasticity, 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 improve the health and level of functioning of our brains, no matter our age.

Of particular importance to maintaining cognitive functioning through life are the hippocampus (deep inside the brain, part of what is called the limbic system), which plays a role in learning and memory; and the frontal lobes (behind your forehead), which are key to maintaining decision-making and autonomy. Is there a way to physically protect these parts of the aging brain? Yes. But the right answer is far from “do one more crossword puzzle” or “do more X” (whatever X is). The key is to add significantly different activities to ensure a flow of novelty, variety and challenge, combining physical and mental exercise while not ignoring factors such as stress management and balanced nutrition.

We need, in other words, to retool our understanding and practice of “Use it or lose it.” We must focus on the importance of getting out of our physical and mental routines and activities to get the benefits of real exercise—physical and mental.”

Continue reading Why We Need to Retool “Use It Or Lose It”

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? Read the rest of this entry »

As the Brain Fitness industry continues to gain momentum, and people explore all the incredible brain-training tools being developed, we hope that enthusiasts don’t take their eye off the importance of the physical health of the brain and all the systems it communicates with. The brain is unique in that it houses our cognitive and emotional capacities in the form of the mind. It is a ‘cognitive’ organ that hungers for stimulation from new experiences and challenges. Many brain fitness programs strive to satisfy this need. Yet the brain is also a physical organ that plays by many of the same rules as the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. To stay healthy and perform optimally it requires quality nutrition, physical activity and optimal sleep. The brain, especially, relies on a healthy vascular system to efficiently deliver oxygen and key nutrients and remove waste. In fact, the brain uses approximately 20% of the oxygen we breathe to satisfy its high-energy demands. Given that the brain only weighs about 2% of the body, we can consider it an energy hog and we must cater to its needs very carefully.

Nutrients play key roles in brain function. Several have shown efficacy in clinical trials treating cases of mood disorders, cognitive decline and of course benefiting the physical health of the brain. Nutrients are both the raw materials employed in creating new neural connections and Read the rest of this entry »

We just received this quote of how a major health system is using our Brain Fitness Market Report:

“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. Read the rest of this entry »

In an emerging, dynamic, high growth market, like brain 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.

1. We predict an increased emphasis on brain maintenance in locations ranging from retirement communities to gyms. As a computer-savvy baby boomer population looks for ways to stay mentally fit, brain fitness, or brain training, is becoming part of their vocabulary and concern.

2. Physical and mental exercise will be better integrated. Physical exercise has been shown to increase the rate of neurogenesis, whereas mental exercise helps ensure the survival of any newly created neurons. Today both activities usually take place in very different settings: the former, in health clubs, the later, in universities. We predict that the borders between them will become more diffuse. Expect new programs such as brain fitness podcasts that allow us to train working memory as we jog or exercise bikes with built-in brain games.

3. Watch for a Read the rest of this entry »

As promised in my previous post (10 Brain Training Tips To Teach and Learn), here are some of the resources that inform my understanding of the brain: books, conferences, and websites.

BOOKS

There are a multitude of books about the brain. For educators, the best of these are books that demystify the language of neuroscience while providing information applicable to the teaching/learning process.

Among the more prolific or well-known authors of this type include Jeb Schenck, Robert Sylwester, Barbara Givens, Robert Marzano, Marilee Sprenger, and Eric Jensen.

I have found books Read the rest of this entry »

July is shaping up to be a fascinating month, full of cognitive health research reports and applications. Here you have a roundup, covering food for the brain, cognitive assessments, mental training and DNA, and more.

1) Brain foods: the effects of nutrients on brain function (Nature Neuroscience)

I wrote this article for the March/ April edition of the publication Aging Today, published by the American Society on Aging, and received permission to reproduce it here.

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In recent years, most professionals in aging have become aware of the growing scientific evidence showing that human brains retain the ability to generate neurons and change over a lifetime, discoveries that have broken the scientific paradigm prevalent during the 20th century. Furthermore, neuroimaging and cognitive training studies are showing how well-directed exercise presents people major opportunities for healthy brain aging.

How can people use emerging technologies to keep their brains healthy and productive as long as possible? An emerging market for brain health– $225 million market in 2007, in the United States alone, of which consumers account for $80 million–is trying to address that question in a way that complements other important more traditional pillars (and multi-billion industries) of brain health, such as physical exercise, balanced diet, stress management (stress has been shown to actually kill neurons and reduce the rate of creation of new ones) and overall mental stimulation and lifelong learning.

2007 AN ACTIVE YEAR

A series of important events took place in 2007, a seminal year for the brain health field, beginning in January when many mainstream media publications, such as Time Magazine and CBS News, started to publish major stories on neuroplasticity and brain exercise. This media coverage followed the publication of the long-awaited results from national clinical trials showing that significant percentages of the participants age 65 and older who trained for five weeks improved their memory, reasoning and information-processing speed. Findings from the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) Study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Dec. 20, 2006) and revealed that even after five years, participants in the ACTIVE computer-based program showed less of a decline in information-processing skills than those in a control group that received no cognitive training.

Read the rest of this entry »