Dr. Adrian Preda, our newest Expert Contributor, writes today the first in a series of thought-provoking articles, challenging us to think about physical exercise as the best and most unappreciated form of “brain exercise”. A superb article.

And one thing is clear, he points out: “the brain really likes it when it’s asked to be “active”. Passive audiences, which are spoon fed information, score less well when tested on retention and understanding of the presented material than audiences that were kept engaged through the process.”

So, will you write a comment below and contribute to an engaging conversation? Thoughts? reactions? questions?
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Don’t ignore plain old common sense.

Brain Lessons Part 1

– By Adrian Preda, M.D.

Let me start with a list of common biases: expensive is better than cheap, free is of dubious value (why would then be free?), rare is likely to be valuable, and while new is better than old, ancient is always best. Which explains a common scenario that is reenacted about twice a week in my office. It starts like this: a patient shows me a fancy looking bottle of the brain supplement of the week: ancient roots with obscure names mixed together in another novel combination which you can exclusively find in that one and only store (rarity oblige!). And not to forget: it ain’t cheap either! Of course, there it is, the perfect the recipe for success: ancient yet new, rare and expensive. It got to be good! But is it, really?

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We are pleased to announce that we’ll have 2 additional excellent contributions during February:

- Adrian Preda, M.D., will write about a brain plasticity topic.

Adrian Preda, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior in the UC Irvine School of Medicine. His expertise in human behavior, psychology and spirituality is based on years of experience working as a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, teacher and researcher in a variety of academic clinical and non-clinical settings, including Yale Psychiatric Institute, Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale Health Plan, UT Southwestern and UC Irvine Neuro-Psychiatric Research.

- Joanne Jacobs, education expert and great blogger, will participate in our Author Speaks Series. 

Once a Knight Ridder columnist, Joanne is now a freelance writer and author of a book about a charter school that prepares Hispanic students for college. Her most recent book is Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds.  

Over the months we have received many requests for good articles that could be reused in a variety of places, from a hospital newsletter to a corporate wellness e-newsletter and a number of websites. We want to reach as many people as possible, so tomorrow we are launching a free Content “Brain Feed”, and also custom content services.

In short, we are going to offer a weekly article in the new SharpBrains free content feed. This feed is designed to help website and newsletter publishers disseminate good information on brain exercise and fitness. 20 articles are available immediately (check them in our Articles section), building on the content we have written in this blog.

And, if an organization wants good content on brain health/ training/ fitness to distribute internally or externally, we can help.

On a related note, we just joined the BlogBurst network to offer our blog content to a variety of newspapers. Let’s see how these initiatives work!

We will be attending the 5th Annual Media X Conference, April 16 and 17, 2007 at Stanford University.

If you are coming, please contact us so we can talk in more detail about cognitive and emotional training (brain fitness).

Description: Media X Annual Conference will highlight fundamental research about people and technology for our Affiliates and friends.  The research ranges from biometrics for authentication, to wireless network sensors for enhanced quality of life, to gaming and leadership along with Read the rest of this entry »