Here you have The 10 Most Popular Brain Fitness & Cognitive Health Books, based on book purchases by SharpBrains’ readers during 2008.

Enjoy!

	1. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Pear Press, March 2008) - Dr. John Medina, Director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University, writes an engaging and comprehensive introduction to the many daily implications of recent brain research. He wrote the article Brain Rules: science and practice for SharpBrains readers.
	2. The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person (Oxmoor House, March 2007) - Dr. Judith Beck, Director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, connects the world of research-based cognitive therapy with a mainstream application: maintaining weight-loss. Interview notes here.
	3. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (Viking, March 2007) - Dr. Norman Doidge, psychiatrist and author of this New York Times bestseller, brings us “a compelling collection of tales about the amazing abilities of the brain to rewire, readjust and relearn”. Laurie Bartels reviews the book review here.
	4. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain(Little, Brown and Company, January 2008) - Dr. John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, summarizes the growing research on the brain benefits of physical exercise. Laurie Bartels puts this research in perspective here.

	5. The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning (Stylus Publishing, October 2002) - Dr. James Zull, Director Emeritus of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve University, writes a must-read for educators and lifelong learners. Interview notes here.
	6. Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves (Ballantine Books, January 2007) - Sharon Begley, Newsweek’ excellent science writer, provides an in-depth introduction to the research on neuroplasticity based on a Mind & Life Institute event.
	7. Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Houghton Mifflin, August 2007) - Prof. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology at UC Davis and Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology, writes a solid book that combines a research-based synthesis of the topic as well as practical suggestions. Interview notes here.
	8. The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind (Oxford University Press, January 2001) - Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine, provides a fascinating perspective on the role of the frontal roles and executive functions through the lifespan. Interview notes here.
	9. The Brain Trust Program: A Scientifically Based Three-Part Plan to Improve Memory (Perigee Trade, September 2007) - Dr. Larry McCleary, former acting Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Denver Children’s Hospital, covers many lifestyle recommendations for brain health in this practical book. He wrote the article Brain Evolution and Health for SharpBrains.
	10. A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain (Pantheon, January 2001) - In this book (previous to Spark), Dr. John Ratey provides a stimulating description of how the brain works. An excellent Brain 101 book to anyone new to the field.

Superb blog article by Newsweek’s Sharon Begley: The Lotus and the Synapse, introducing a new Study that shows compassion meditation changes the brain.

To read the original paper led by Richard Davidson and Antoine Lutz, click Here. We will be covering this in more detail next week.

As you may have noticed, we just changed a few things in our site, including preparing a more solid Resources section. Please take a look at the navigation bar at the top.

One of the new pages, that we will update often, is an expanded Books page. Here are the books that we are recommending now.

Fascinating books on neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to rewire itself through experience):

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves – by Sharon Begley.

 

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science – by Norman Doidge.

 

Great popular science books by Read the rest of this entry »

The most popular question we got when we announced that PBS had a great special on Brain Fitness Program and Neuroplasticity in December was, when will the DVD be available?

Well, finally here it comes. You can click on the image or the title to go over to PBS shop to learn more and buy it.

The Brain Fitness Program DVD ($24.95, shipped by 02/01/08). “This program presents a workout to help viewers get their brains in better shape. The Brain Fitness Program is based on neuro-plasticity, the ability of the brain to change and adapt — even rewire itself. In the past two years, a team of scientists has developed computer-based stimulus sets that drive beneficial chemical, physical and functional changes in the brain. Dr. Michael Merzenich of the University of California San Francisco and his colleagues around the world have been leading this effort; he brings the research findings, along with a scientifically based set of brain exercises, to PBS viewers in this innovative and life-altering program. Peter Coyote narrates. ”

To purchase: click Here.

You can watch a 3-minute trailer: click here.

———-

Note: How can anyone take care of his or her brain when every week brings a new barrage of articles and studies which seem to contradict each other?

Do supplements improve memory? Do you need both physical and mental exercise –or is one of them enough? Why is managing stress so important to attention and memory? Which brain training approach, if any, is worth one’s time and money?

If you have these questions, check out this new book, The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness:

Order Book at Amazon.com
	Click Here to order at Amazon.com. Print Edition, $24.95

Order Kindle Edition
	Click Here to order at Amazon.com, Kindle Edition, $9.99

Sharon Begley, Newsweek’s science reporter, recently wrote that

- “With the nation’s 78 million baby boomers approaching the age of those dreaded “where did I leave my keys?” moments, it’s no wonder the market for computer-based brain training has shot up from essentially zero in 2005 to $80 million this year, according to the consulting firm SharpBrains.”

- “Now comes the largest and most rigorous study of a commercially-available training program, and it shows that there is hope for aging brains. This morning, at the meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, scientists are presenting data showing that after eight weeks of daily one-hour sessions with Brain Fitness 2.0 from Posit Science, elderly volunteers got measurably better in their brain’s speed and accuracy of processing. “

We recently had the chance to interview Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski of the University of Southern California Andrus Gerontology Center, who led the IMPACT (Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training) Study Sharon Begley refers to in the quote above. 

First, some context on this study, which is by far the largest high-quality study of its kind. The study was prospective, randomized, controlled, and used a double blind trial. 524 healthy adults 65-year-old and over were divided into two groups. One received an hour a day of training for eight to ten weeks, and the other spent the same amount of time watching educational DVDs. The IMPACT study, funded by Posit Science corporation, was performed in multiple locations, including the Mayo Clinic, USCF, and San Francisco Veteran Affairs Medical Center.

The discussion centers at his point on the initial results that were presented Gerontological Society of America (the study hasn’t been published yet).

Alvaro Fernandez: Dr. Zelinski. Thank you for being with us. Could you start by setting the context and providing an overview of how human cognitive abilities typically evolve as we age – based on insights from your Long Beach Longitudinal Study?

Elizabeth Zelinski: Of course. The first concept to understand is that different cognitive skills evolve over the lifespan in different ways. Some that rely on experience, such as vocabulary, actually improve as we age. Some tend to decline gradually, starting in our late 20s. This happens, for example, with processing speed (how long it takes us to process and respond to information), memory, and reasoning. We could summarize this phenomenon by saying that as we age we get better at dealing with the familiar, but worse at dealing with the new. We can always learn, but at a slower pace.

Are there any specific tipping or inflection points in this trend, any age when the rate of decline is more pronounced?

We don’t have a clear answer to that. It depends a lot on the individual. In general it is a gradual, cumulative process, so that by age 70 we statistically see clear age declines. Which, for example, is a strong factor determining why older adults struggle to adapt to new technologies, but why trying to learn them provides needed mental stimulation. Now we know that genes only account for a portion of this decline. Much of it depends on our environment, lifestyle and actions.

Can you summarize what a healthy individual can do to slow down this process of decline, and help stay healthy and productive as long as possible?

One general recommendation is to do everything we can to prevent or delay disease processes, such as diabetes or high-blood pressure, that have a negative effect on our brains. For example, it is a tragedy in our society that we usually reduce our levels of physical exercise drastically after we leave school.

Let me then ask: what are the relative virtues of physical vs. mental exercise?

Great question! That in fact leads into my second recommendation. Aerobic exercise has been shown to Read the rest of this entry »

Update (01/07/08): The most popular question we got when we announced that PBS had a great special on Brain Fitness Program and Neuroplasticity in December was, when will the DVD be available?

Well, finally here it comes. You can click on the DVD image or the title to go over to PBS shop to learn more and buy it.

The Brain Fitness Program DVD ($24.95, shipped by 02/01/08)

“This program presents a workout to help viewers get their brains in better shape. The Brain Fitness Program is based on neuro-plasticity, the ability of the brain to change and adapt — even rewire itself. In the past two years, a team of scientists has developed computer-based stimulus sets that drive beneficial chemical, physical and functional changes in the brain. Dr. Michael Merzenich of the University of California San Francisco and his colleagues around the world have been leading this effort; he brings the research findings, along with a scientifically based set of brain exercises, to PBS viewers in this innovative and life-altering program. Peter Coyote (pictured) narrates. ”

To purchase this informational DVD: please click Here.

PBS aired in December a special program on neuroplasticity, brain fitness, aging and the brain titled “Brain Fitness Program”. You can check local times and listings:

To watch the 3-minute trailer: click here.

———-

Note: How can anyone take care of his or her brain when every week brings a new barrage of articles and studies which seem to contradict each other?

Do supplements improve memory? Do you need both physical and mental exercise –or is one of them enough? Why is managing stress so important to attention and memory? Which brain training approach, if any, is worth one’s time and money?

If you have these questions, check out this new book, The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness:

Order Book at Amazon.com
	Click Here to order at Amazon.com. Print Edition, $24.95

Order Kindle Edition
	Click Here to order at Amazon.com, Kindle Edition, $9.99

Newsweek’s Sharon Begley writes a great note on Brain Training: How It Works based on initial data presented at the Gerontological Society of America over the weekend. Some quotes:

- With the nation’s 78 million baby boomers approaching the age of those dreaded “where did I leave my keys?” moments, it’s no wonder the market for computer-based brain training has shot up from essentially zero in 2005 to $80 million this year, according to the consulting firm SharpBrains.

- Now comes the largest and most rigorous study of a commercially-available training program, and it shows that there is hope for aging brains. This morning, at the meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, scientists are presenting data showing that after eight weeks of daily one-hour sessions with Brain Fitness 2.0 from Posit Science, elderly volunteers got measurably better in their brain’s speed and accuracy of processing. And unlike every other training program tested before, the improvements “generalize to broad measures of cognition and are noticeable in everyday life,” Elizabeth Zelinski of the University of Southern California, who led the IMPACT (Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training) Study, reports.

- For the IMPACT study, 468 participants, all healthy adults 65 and over, were divided into two groups. One received an hour a day of training on BrainFitness for eight to ten weeks, and the other (the control group) got the same amount of computer-based learning. That choice of control group is significant. It means that Brain Fitness was being compared not to staring into space or some similarly unhelpful activity, but to one that might reasonably be expected to improve mental ability.

- Because the Brain Fitness group showed greater improvements than the controls, including on tasks that the computer-based exercises did not explicitly target, it suggests that the auditory training has altered something fundamental in the brain and not just specific circuits for, say, memory.

Read full post: Brain Training: How It Works

The Gerontological Society of America press release includes

- Researchers released initial data today at the 60th Annual Meeting of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) that showed that doing the right kind of brain exercise can enhance memory and other cognitive abilities of older adults.

- “We presented these important results at the Annual Meeting of GSA, because aging experts need to spread the word that cognitive decline is not an inevitable part of aging,” said Dr. Zelinski. “Doing the properly designed cognitive activities can actually enhance abilities as you age.”

I will be interviewing Elizabeth Zelinski as part of our Neuroscience Interview Series, so keep tuned.

One clarification: this is not the first study to show how cognitive training can generalize beyond the tasks directly trained. Others have already shown an effect on cognitive abilities and even on real-world tasks, on a variety of age groups and trained functions. But the size of it (468 participants) makes it by far the largest that does so, and the effects are very significant and promising.

We had a very fun session titled Teaching Brain Fitness in Your Community at an American Society on Aging (ASA) conference for health professionals a couple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 attendants and very good participation, showing great interest in the topic. I can’t wait to see the evaluations.

These are some of the resources I promised as a follow-up, which can be useful to everyone interested in our field:

Good general articles in the business and general media:

Change or Die

Want a sharp mind for your golden years? Start now

You’re Wiser Now

On how new neurons are born and grow in the adult brain:

Salk Scientists Demonstrate For The First Time That Newly Born Brain Cells Are Functional In The Adult Brain

Old Brains, New Tricks

On the surprising plasticity and development potential throughout life:

Brain Plasticity, Language Processing and Reading

Juggling Juggles the Brain

Successful Aging of the Healthy Brain

Other important aspects:

Stress and the Brain

Exercise and the Brain

Humor, Laughter and The Brain

On the importance and impact of mental stimulation and training: Read the rest of this entry »

Just released in Scientific American:
Memory workouts beat other computer games in study

Some quotes

• “Training the brain with a computer workout program may be better than classic computer games at staving off age-related mental decline, scientists reported on Friday.”
• “Researchers in Israel compared how one brain-training program, MindFit, fared versus a workout with a sampling of classic computer games, such as the puzzle game Tetris.”
• “The study, funded by a grant from game maker CogniFit Ltd., involved 121 volunteers over 50 who used the MindFit training program or a sampling of computer games for three months.”
• “Both groups benefited, but the group using the MindFit program showed a statistically significant improvement in spatial short-term memory, spatial learning and focused attention.”
• “Improvement was especially pronounced in users who started out with some form of cognitive decline.
• The findings, which were presented on Friday at an Alzheimer’s conference in Salzburg, Austria, were similar to a smaller study done at the University of California last year.”

 

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.

Related blog posts

- Brain Fitness: November Monthly Digest: a collection of articles and links including news, resources, brain teasers, and more.

- Neuroplasticity 101 and Brain Fitness Glossary: an overview of the emerging science and some key concepts to understand it.

- Brain Training Games and “Games”: a 10-Question Checklist on how to evaluate programs that make brain-related claims.

- Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology Interview Series: in-depth interviews with 11 scientists and experts in cognitive training and brain fitness.

- Books on neuroplasticity and memory training: reviews of Train Your Brain, Change Your Mind, by Sharon Begley, and The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge. Both books are fascinating and powerful; each would have merited appearing in the 2007 New York Times List of 100 Notable Books.

Here is question 18 of 25 from Brain Fitness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.

Question:
Is physical fitness important to your brain fitness?

Key Points:

• Exercise improves learning through increased blood supply and growth hormones.
• Exercise is an anti-depressant by reducing stress and promoting neurogenesis.
• Exercise protects the brain from damage and disease, as well as speeding the recovery.
• Exercise benefits you the most when you start young.

Answer:
Read the rest of this entry »