Charles Darwin (1809-1882)’s autobiography (full text free online) includes some very insightful refections on the evolution of his own mind during his middle-age, showcasing the power of the brain to rewire itself through experience (neuroplasticity) during our whole lifetimes-not just when we are youngest.

He wrote these paragraphs at the age of 72 (I have bolded some key sentences for emphasis, the whole text makes great reading):

“I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily– against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better.

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with Read the rest of this entry »

We are a brain fitness center because we want to offer the best information, tools and support on how to exercise our brains. Same way you join the gym to stay in shape and find the best machines and personal trainers.

One of the “tools” or “machines” we offer was designed under the scientific supervision of Professor Daniel Gopher and his team for basketball players: click here to read our interview with him. And here for a fun clip with the Memphis Tigers.

Our partner ACE just issued this press release:

Fighter Pilots Help Purdue and Long Beach State Reach the Tournament

The Basketball IntelliGym™ Improves Decision-Making

STUDIO CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The same technology initially developed to train Israeli fighter pilots on the cognitive, brain level has been an integral part of the training regimen for both Long Beach State and Purdue, two teams earning their first NCAA tournament births since 1995 and 2003 respectively.

The innovative Basketball IntelliGym™ software program has been proven to improve real-time decision-making and execution for thousands of basketball players worldwide and players on more than a dozen college basketball teams. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we will continue our review of the benefits of brain training for specific occupations: in this case, pilots and basketball players. The lessons can be relevant not only for corporate training but also for education and brain health & wellness.

To do so, we will select quotes from our interview last year with one of the major scientists in the field of cognitive simulations, Professor Daniel Gopher. You can read the full interview here.

Prof. Gopher published an award-winning article in 1994, Gopher, D., Weil, M. and Baraket, T. (1994), Transfer of skill from a computer game trainer to flight, Human Factors 36, 1–19., that constitutes a key milestone in the cognitive engineering field.

On Cognitive Training and Cognitive Simulations

AF: Tell us a bit about your overall research interests

DG: My main interest has been how to expand the limits of human attention, information processing and response capabilities which are critical in complex, real-time decision-making, high-demand tasks such as flying a military jet or playing professional basketball. Using a tennis analogy, my goal has been, and is, how to help develop many “Wimbledon”-like champions. Each with their own styles, but performing to their maximum capacity to succeed in their environments.

What research over the last 15-20 years has shown is that cognition, or what we call thinking and performance, is really a set of skills that we can train systematically. And that computer-based cognitive trainers or “cognitive simulations” are the most effective and efficient way to do so.

This is an important point, so let me emphasize it. What we have discovered is that a key factor for an effective transfer from training environment to reality is that the training program ensures “Cognitive Fidelity”, this is, it should faithfully represent the mental demands that happen in the real world. Traditional approaches focus instead on Read the rest of this entry »

See our second press release below, and visit our Press Room for the great press we are starting to get about our brain fitness gym.

Special Offer: For a limited time, you can receive a complimentary copy of our Brain Fitness 101 e-Guide: Answers to your Top 25 Questions, written by Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg and Alvaro Fernandez, by subscribing to our monthly newsletter. You can subscribe Here.

SharpBrains introduces First Online Brain Fitness Center

– Unique, Full-Service, Science-Based Fitness Center Ushers in the Next Workout Revolution: Mental Exercise –

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Thirty years after the emergence of the exercise boom, the fitness revolution has finally gone to people’s heads: SharpBrains.com has launched the first online brain fitness center. Complete with a variety of science-based mental exercise equipment, personal brain trainers, and nearly 200 articles, interactive blog postings and interviews with industry experts, SharpBrains is spearheading the evolution of the fitness industry to include a sound mind as well as a healthy body.

The new mental exercise movement is founded on using structured, computer-based brain fitness routines tailored to each member’s specific needs and level of ability. Just as crunches and kick-boxing tone abs and increase cardio strength, Read the rest of this entry »

…a few questions: how did you find us, what we are doing well, what we can do better?

We have just found out that more than 600 people are receiving our feeds, but we only know-and just a bit- the 50-60 who leave comments and link to us. We enjoy having so many readers not just in the US but in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia…(thanks Google Analytics!).

Would you mind writing a comment to allow us to learn about you and your interests, and also include your feedback for us? If you have a blog, please write the URL so we can pay a visit.

Enjoy the weekend, and thanks a lot for your time and attention!

Caroline and Alvaro

Given that we are getting new readers let’s re-introduce our Neuroscience Interview Series. If you click on the category (in the right bar) that says Neuroscience Interview Series, you will find the updated list of interviews we have conducted (and also some that we have found elsewhere, such as the one with Posit Science’s Dr. Michael Merzenich and Dr. John Ratey).

The interviews we have conducted and published so far, with most recent first:

• Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg on Brain Fitness Programs and Cognitive Training. Dr. Goldberg is a neuropsychologist and clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine. He was a student and close associate of the great neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, and has written The Executive Brain and The Wisdom Paradox.
• Go Hirano on Brain Training and “Brain-ism” in Japan. Go is a serial Japanese entrepreneur who has launched NeuWell (Neuroscience for Wellness) there. He also talks about Nintendo Brain Age.
• On Enhancing Trader Performance and The Psychology of Trading: Interview with Brett N. Steenbarger. Dr. Steenbarger is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and author of The Psychology of Trading and the new Enhancing Trader Performance.
• On Cognitive Simulations for Basketball Game-Intelligence: Interview with Prof. Daniel Gopher. Dr. Gopher is Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Human Factors Engineering at Technion, Israel’s Institute of Science, and scientific advisor for IntelliGym.
• An ape can do this. Can we not? with Dr. James Zull, Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at Case Western University, and author of The Art of Changing the Brain
• Cognitive Training and ADD/ADHD: Interview with Prof. David Rabiner, Senior Research Scientist and the Director of Psychology and Neuroscience Undergraduate Studies at Duke University.
• On Working Memory Training and RoboMemo: Interview with Dr. Torkel Klingberg, professor at Karolinska Institute, and director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, part of the Stockholm Brain Institute. He is also the scientific advisor for Cogmed Working Memory Training program (RoboMemo).

And we have a few more interviews in the works-please keep tuned. 

Enjoy!

You may have seen our last and excellent post, Train Your Brain: Get a Head Coach, and wondered, have Caroline and Alvaro become Head Coaches now?

Rest assured. We haven’t.

Please welcome our Head Coach, Neal Cohen, Psy.D. Neal is a licensed clinical psychologist Read the rest of this entry »

We are spending more time talking to journalists these days. A frequent question we receive is, “OK, which computer-based programs do you consider to be Brain Fitness Programs, not just “games” for pure fun”?.

Our answer: the rate of development of new programs by neuroscientists worldwide is really increasing, and there are already a few out there that combine good underlying science with embedded quality assessments and user-friendly guidelines and exercises from a fitness and prevention (vs. medical “prescription”) perspective. Some of these are:

Cogmed Working Memory Training program (RoboMemo), helps children with attention deficits to overcome the working memory gap. and is distributed exclusively through selected clinical providers.

Freeze-Framer is a biometric-based system that helps people of all ages and occupations (from students to nurses and traders) get into The Zone of optimal learning and performance by managing the negative effects of stress and anxiety. Our partner is the Institute of HeartMath.

IntelliGym  provides a mental workout to improve core basketball abilities, such as coordination, attention control, peripheral vision, and perception.  Yes, this can be trained. It is basketball specific, so we don’t recommend it for other sports. Our partner is ACE.

MindFit helps train 14 different cognitive functions that are important for healthy aging. Even if the activities are helpful for people of all ages (I personally use it as my “brain gym” during flights, being in my mid-30s), the look & feel is more appropriate for people over 50, so we recommend it mainly for that group. Our partner is Vigorous Mind.

Posit Science offers an intensive program for training core auditory processing abilities. Auditory processing is one of the areas that typically decline with age, so this would be a great starting point for anyone, usually above 60 given the marketing we see in their website, who may be experiencing problems with his/ her hearing and understanding capabilities. We do not offer this program through our website, but certainly respect their scientists and research.

We are constantly looking for new ones, so keep tuned.

 

We are very excited to announce our newly released Brain Fitness for Sharp Brains: Your New New Year Resolution. We wrote it in order to provide an introduction to the concept, science, and practice of brain fitness in plain English, by answering the Top 25 questions we have received over the last four months. Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, Alvaro Fernandez and myself (Caroline) have been working hard on this.

You can click here to get your copy of the complete guide. Otherwise, keep checking back this blog, as we will publish a new question and its answer every Monday and Thursday before 9AM Pacific Standard Time. If we missed your pressing question, let us know!

Here is a sneak preview of the questions we will be answering …

Read the rest of this entry »