I hope you are having a joyful holiday season, and wish you a Happy and Prosperous 2008. The Brain Fitness field has made a great deal of progress in 2007, and we are looking forward the New Year.

Here you are have the Monthly Digest of our Most Popular Blog Posts. You can consider it your monthly Brain Fitness/ Exercise Newsletter.

Let me first of all introduce you to our new “Author Speaks Series“, where we will give leading scientists and experts a forum to present their new brain-related books. We are honored to kickstart the series with Larry McCleary, former acting Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Denver Children’s Hospital. You can read Here his article on how to keep a brain-friendly lifestyle. This series will complement our ongoing Neuroscience Interview Series.

Brain Fitness in the News

Brain Fitness @ PBS: PBS featured a fantastic special program on neuroplasticity and brain fitness during the month of December. Before you ask: as of today, the DVD of the program is still not available in PBS online shop. We expect to see it there in 2-3 weeks. We will keep you informed.

The Huffington Post started featuring a column written by me: you may enjoy taking a look at Alvaro Fernandez – Living on The Huffington Post.

Jogging our Brains for Brain Vitality, Healthy Aging-and Intelligence!: a roundup of several great recent articles on memory, aging, IQ and cognitive abilities such as self-control.

Health & Wellness

Brain Training: No Magic Bullet, Yet Useful Tool. Interview with Elizabeth Zelinski: Dr. Zelinski, leading researcher of the IMPACT study, shares fascinating insights. For example: “…cognitive enhancement requires the engagement in a variety of activities, those activities must be novel, adaptive and challenging-which is why computer-based programs can be helpful. But even at a more basic level, what matters is being engaged with life, continually exposed to stimulating activities, always trying to get out of our comfort zones, doing our best at whatever we are doing. A major typical misconception is that there is only one general intelligence to care about. In reality, we have many different cognitive abilities, such as attention, memory, language, reasoning, and more, so it makes sense to have different programs designed to train and improve each of them.”

How to Evaluate and Choose a Brain Fitness Program: To help you navigate the growing number of computer-based programs and games, we published this 10-Question Checklist, based on dozens of interviews with scientists, experts and consumers.

Travel and Engagement as Good Brain Exercise: As we’ve seen, novelty, variety and challenge are the key guidelines for “brain exercise” that help build new neural connections, force one to be mindful and pay attention, improve abilities such as pattern-recognition, and generally contribute to lifelong brain health. In this post we feature the brain building / mind expanding experience of a SharpBrains friend working in Namibia.

Alzheimer’s Prevention and Diagnostic Tests: analysis of several recent articles on emerging research behind Alzheimer’s diagnostic and prevention.

Corporate Wellness and Training

Cognitive Reserve and Intellectually Demanding Jobs: a recent study shows how “Intellectually demanding work was associated with greater benefit to cognitive performance in later life independent of related factors like education and intelligence.”

Cognitive Health and Baby Boomers- 6 Points to Keep in Mind: based upon an excellent McKinsey report titled Serving Aging Baby Boomers, we discuss a variety a news articles, including interesting numbers, some bad news, and some good news.

Lifelong Learning Is Changing My Brain: Andreas, the neuroscience PhD student who spent last summer working with SharpBrains, writes some reflections on his experience and on how scientists and business professionals can learn from each other.

Brain Teasers

Traveler IQ Game: Check out this stimulating online game…

Events

Learning & The Brain Conference, February 5-7 2008, San Francisco: Sign up now for this great conference for educators who want to learn about the latest brain research findings and implications. I will be speaking at the conference giving an overview of innovative cognitive training programs. The organizers are offering a Special Discount for SharpBrains readers until January 25th 2008, so click here if interested.

If we don’t talk beforehand…Happy New Year!

———————

You can also enjoy our previous editions of our Brain Fitness Newsletter:

- November Edition

- October Edition

- September Edition

- August Edition

- July Edition

Just came across this very stimulating and fun Traveler IQ interactive game…enjoy!

 

Link: Traveler IQ Challenge

Note: at the bottom of the page you can select a variety of challenges (flags of the world, UNESCO sites, North America…) My favourite: Photos of the World.

In what category does Brain Fitness fit? Education, Productivity and Training, Health? Most of the interest so far has come from a Healthy Aging angle, but we are starting to see broader interest, as in the events below. After all, isn’t working on our brains relevant to all those markets?.

2 busy weeks: I am attending/ speaking at a variety of events. I will make sure to blog at least the take-aways from the main events daily, and Caroline will also add her perspective as much as possible.

A) October 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute

B) October 9th: First session of my class The Science of Brain Health and Brain Fitness at the UC-Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)

C) October 10th: Teaching Brain Fitness in Your Community, workshop at an American Society on Aging (ASA) conference for health professionals

D) October 10th: Science at Work, Interview at the event The Future of Work: Amplified Individuals, Amplified Organizations, organized by the Institute for the Future

—————————–

A) October 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute. This promises to be a fascinating event. See below the panels I am attending-I will make sure to write some notes every day to keep you in the discussion.

Wednesday October 3rd:

Great Expectations: American Attitudes toward Personal Responsibility and Medicine

Healthcare Re-Imagined: Learning from Olympic Athletes

Thursday 4th:

The Damaged Brain: The Fight Against Neurodegeneration

The Human Element: A Candid Conversation about Pioneers of Modern Medicine  

The Last Frontier: The Mind

Global Scientific Investment

Science Versus the Biological Clock Read the rest of this entry »

First, some of my favorite blog carnivals we contributed to this week: Grand Rounds, HR, Education, Law, Carnival of the Green.

2 very interesting news pieces (the second one, including fun brain teasers):

1) With a fresh grasp on – and label for – an academic block, some slow achievers are eager to return to school (Boston Globe)

Quote: “Turns out Ellie has a problem with working memory, a term used to describe the ability to retain information from the top of a page to the bottom. Working memory comes under the umbrella of executive function, a thinking skill that refers to the tasks executives tend to excel at, such as prioritizing, organizing, and mentally shifting information around. It’s a skill that develops progressively, starting in the elementary years and continuing into adulthood…If you’ve never heard of executive function, brace yourself. It’s bursting onto the educational scene.”

Comment: Great article. We covered this in detail in an essay last year: Cognitive Neuroscience and ADD/ADHD Today.

2) Want a job at Google? Try these brainteasers first (CNN)

Quote: “Seemingly random questions like these have become commonplace in Silicon Valley and other tech outposts, where companies aren’t as interested in the correct answer to a tough question as they are in how a prospective employee might try to solve it. Since businesses today have to be able to react quickly to shifting market dynamics, they want more than engineers with high IQs and good college transcripts. They want people who can think on their feet.”

Comment: What are those companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) after? Employees with good Executive Functions. You can try some of the fun teasers in the article. For more context on what those are Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting article titled Key to funding for eldercare technologies? Pilots, just published in CNET. A few quotes:

• “No matter the size, a pilot not only serves as a means to vet whether an eldercare technology will work, but it also generates much needed data for insurance companies and government entities to weigh whether they might be willing to pay for such technologies, according to panelists Tuesday at the fourth annual Healthcare Unbound conference.”
• “Other pilots included a group of 35 participants in 2003 with IBM and the American Society on Aging. The 18-month pilot examined how seniors ages 65 and over used IBM’s software to change the way a Web site is viewed, such as its font sizecolors, size of the page and other features, Gaudet said.”
• “Front Porch, a California-based organization that operates a network of retirement communities, began a pilot two years ago with Dakim, using its Dakim (m)Power Cognitive Fitness System.”

I’d say the key goes beyond pilots: we need good quality and published research to engage policy makers and insurance companies. And a bigger focus on prevention and wellness, as we saw in the post Bill Clinton on health care and wellness.

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.   

Please join us on May 16, 2007 from noon to 1:30pm for a complimentary gathering co-sponsored by:

• The American Society on Aging (Nancy Ceridwyn will make some remarks),
• The Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI) at San Francisco State University and University of California at Berkeley, and
• SharpBrains.

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 »

Very interesting week:

Awards:

1) MindFit ‘Brain Gym’ Software Receives 2007 Award Business and Aging Award by the American Society on Aging (ASA).

“Most people neglect to exercise their brains as much as they should.  MindFit was created specifically for baby boomers and seniors as a fitness center for their minds,” said Prof. Shlomo Breznitz, Ph.D., founder and president of CogniFit, Ltd. 

More on MindFit program.

2) Posit Science received the ASA Small Business award

(You can learn more about the similarities and differences between MindFit and Posit Science here)

3) Keeping Brains Fit: MindAlert Awards Recognize Three Successful Educational Programs, (American Society on Aging-MetLife Foundation MindAlert Awards)

Baby Boomer Summit

Boomer Business Experts Predict “What’s Next” in ‘07 

Marketers need new strategy to reach boomer wallets

Serious Games Summit

Game Friday: Harnessing Collective Intelligence with Jane McGonigal

Serious Games Squared

Persuasive Games: The Missing Social Rituals of Exergames

Other

Mind control: The future of gaming?

Amazing demo of what we remember visually, and why

“…across the country, brain health programs are springing up, offering the possibility of a cognitive fountain of youth.”

“From “brain gyms” on the Internet to “brain-healthy” foods and activities at assisted living centers, the programs are aimed at baby boomers anxious about entering their golden years and at their parents trying to stave off memory loss or dementia.”

Keep reading today’s New York Times article As Minds Age, What’s Next? Brain Calisthenics.

The article also refers to Posit Science, HappyNeuron, MyBrainTrainer, and other companies, insurers and residences offering brain fitness programs/brain exercise software.

And includes a note of caution: “This is going to be one of the hottest topics in the next five years — it’s going to be huge,” said Nancy Ceridwyn, co-director of special projects for the American Society on Aging. “The challenge we have is it’s going to be a lot like the anti-aging industry: how much science is there behind this?”

You can learn more by checking our longer post yesterday, New Research on How to Maintain a Sharp Brain, where we commented on yesterday’s NYT Editorial, the results from the JAMA study and an IHRSA newsletter to fitness and health clubs that we authored.