Hi! It’s Andreas, the Norwegian MD/PhD intern at SharpBrains.

Last week Alvaro wrote about how people with low stress levels are better able to tolerate age-related changes in the brain. The other side of the coin, as mentioned today in the Wall Street Journal, is that chronic stress is a risk factor of dementia and might be related to harmful stress hormones called glucocorticoids.

So why do we have glucocorticoids? Well, they are steroids produced to help us manage short-term periods of stress. However, long-term release may erode pathways (connetions) between brain cells and can potentially accelerate cognitive decline.

Why is this relevant to all of us? Because depression can be seen as a chronic state of brain stress, and explain why stress management is important. Studies now show that depression may actually damage brain structures responsible for memory. The findings from a study in Archives of General Psychiatry showed patients with a history of depression are more likely to suffer from cognitive problems later in life, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia. As the journalist writes, “In findings that highlight the importance of mood and stress to maintaining a healthy brain, researchers and psychiatrists say that a bout of depression may raise the risks of developing dementia later in life.”

In some cases, patients with untreated depression exhibit an 10% volume reduction of the brain’s memory center Read the rest of this entry »

We can summarize a lot of research by saying that there are four essential pillars to maintaining a healthy brain that functions better now and lasts longer. Those pillars are:

• 1) Physical Exercise
• 2) Mental Exercise
• 3) Good Nutrition
• 4) Stress Management

Great … now what?! How do you develop a healthy lifestyle that includes all four pillars? Let’s look at each one.

1. 1. Physical Exercise
• - Start by talking to your doctor, especially if you are not currently physically active, have special health concerns, or are making significant changes to your current program.
• - Set a goal that you can achieve. Do something you enjoy for even just 15 minutes a day. You can always add more time and activities later.
• - Schedule exercise into your daily routine. It will be become a habit faster if you do.
• - If you can only do one thing, do something cardiovascular, meaning something that gets your heart beating faster. This includes walking, running, skiing, swimming, biking, hiking, tennis, basketball, playing tag, ultimate Frisbee, and other similar sports/activities.
2. 2. Mental Exercise
• - Be curious! Get to know your local library and community college, look for local organizations or churches that offer classes or workshops
• - Do a variety of things, including Read the rest of this entry »

Very fun article in the Birmingham News today on SharpBrains and brain exercises, titled Want a workout for your brain?.

The journalist explains things very well and with great humor (for the humor, you need to read the article!). Here are some quotes:

- “Think of it as a gymnasium for your mind,” SharpBrains CEO and co-founder Alvaro Fernandez says from his office in San Francisco.

- (On only doing crosswords) “That’s good, but, like your body, you don’t just exercise one part of the brain,” says Fernandez, who holds an MBA and a master’s degree in education from Stanford University. “You need constant variety, and new things, to keep your brain working hard.”

- “He sees mental gymnastics as the next mainstream adult trend and points out that therapists have long used a variety of similar exercises to help in the recovery of brain-injury patients. Athletes and airplane pilots have had access to exercises designed to improve their peripheral vision and reaction times, Fernandez says.”

- “With SharpBrains co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, a clinical professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, Fernandez has collected what he says are the best computer-based brain workouts available, including a program to help children with attention deficits and another aimed at reducing stress management among business executives.”

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.

 

Happy 2007 to everyone!

We have just formulated our New Year Resolution: make 2007 the year when brain plasticity and Brain Fitness became mainstream concepts.

How do we start? well, let’s announce the launch of the Carnival of Brain Fitness (a Blog Carnival is basically the vehicle that blogs use to share posts around specific topics).

Goal: to facilitate a dialogue about this emerging field across multiple perspectives, from scientists and health professionals, to education and training ones, to basically everyone who has conducted an experiment on his on her brain and mind, and has news to report.

Context: The scientific foundations lie in neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, cognitive training and stress management. Medical and health applications range from stroke and TBI rehabilitation to ADD/ADHD and early Alzheimer’s to Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and cognitive therapy. Educational and training applications go from helping kids improve reading abilities to helping manage stress and anxiety – including work with the “mental game” in sports and high-demand activities pr professions. Each of us may also have experiences to report, where we saw first hand, no matter our age, our innate ability to refine and transform ourselves (and our brains).

Mechanics: If you’d like to contribute, Read the rest of this entry »

Getting ready for the holidays, not the best time to write great original content…so let us share the only review we have found so far on one of the programs we offer, MindFit.

First, a good article titled The dawn of cognitive technology, on the science behind the need for structured computer-based programs, with quotes such as Read the rest of this entry »

Ten sessions of exercises to boost reasoning skills, memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body. The researchers also showed that the benefits of the brain exercises extended well beyond the specific skills the volunteers learned.

Keep reading a very important and timely Washington Post article that reports the findings of a JAMA study at Short Mental Workouts May Slow Decline of Aging Minds, Study Finds.

A few other very insightful sentences:

• “People think education is for people who are already educated,” said Michael Marsiske, one of the researchers. “This kind of training works no matter where you are in society.”
• “What I personally take away from the study is, if you challenge yourself to do some new learning, something that isn’t easy at the start, it can have dividends.”
• “The study did not indicate that mental training can hold off all cognitive decline permanently. Rather, as is the case with physical exercise, strengthening the mind appeared to slow decline.”
• “Mental exercise is the same way. It has to be consistent, and it has to be challenging. Just like you have to keep increasing the weights at the gym to make it challenging, you have to do the same with mental activity.”

You can learn more by:

• Reading our Science overview of Brain Fitness
• Downloading our Brain Fitness Guide for Your New New Year Resolution
• Reading our interview with SharpBrains’ Chief Scientific Advisor: Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg on Brain Fitness Programs and Cognitive Training

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 »

In the post Trader Peak Performance and biofeedback programs we showed the Heart Rate Variability patterns correlated with levels of a) anxiety or b) Peak Performance, “The Zone”. Biofeedback supports our emotional self-regulation: we can visually track what is going on inside us and train ourselves to manage our emotional state. On the left you have an example of my own performance during a 5-minute experiment 4 months ago. At the top, you see my name; at the bottom, the duration of the session. Right axis, for top half, is Heart Rate. (This is only the half left of the screen in the program-the right half would give you more information.) I have highlighted several phases:

A: you can see long waves following a smooth rhythm-that is the physiological “The Zone”, where I can perform at maximum level. I was using breathing and visualization techniques that are sometimes called “The Mental Game” in athletics and sports.

B: I stressed myself. How? well, maybe thinking of a previous boss, or some bad moment in my life. You see that the “waves” dissappear, and narrow erratic patterns appear instead.

C: I quickly go back into “The Zone”, Read the rest of this entry »