The MC at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s reunion din­ner encour­aged audi­ence mem­bers to reveal the most sig­nif­i­cant take-away from their under­grad­u­ate nurs­ing edu­ca­tion. The great­est ben­e­fit was quickly clear to me — problem-solving think­ing. Mem­ory pro­duced a mind video: a short, dark-haired, nurs­ing instruc­tor lec­tur­ing a small group of first year stu­dents in an empty patient room. “Don’t mem­o­rize the steps of ster­ile tech­nique. Use a problem-solving think­ing process.” She described the sequen­tial, cycli­cal process: define the prob­lem, gather infor­ma­tion, develop a solu­tion strat­egy, allo­cate resources, mon­i­tor progress, and eval­u­ate the solu­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

Please Save these Dates if you are inter­ested in explor­ing and dis­cussing the lat­est on Opti­miz­ing Health Through Neuroplasticity-Driven Inno­va­tion; the theme for our third annual vir­tual Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (“vir­tual” means every­thing takes place online; no one has to travel):

• Pre-Summit work­shops: May 31st-June 1st, 2012
• Sum­mit: June 7-8th, 2012
• Expo Week: June 12-14th, 2012

17 Con­firmed Sum­mit Speak­ers include: Read the rest of this entry »

NO ROAD, NO trail can pen­e­trate this for­est. The long and del­i­cate branches of its trees lie every­where, chok­ing space with their exu­ber­ant growth. No sun­beam can fly a path tor­tu­ous enough to nav­i­gate the nar­row spaces between these entan­gled branches. All the trees of this dark for­est grew from 100 bil­lion seeds planted together. And, all in one day, every tree is des­tined to die.

This for­est is majes­tic, but also comic and even tragic. It is all of these things. Indeed, some­times I think it is every­thing. Every novel and every sym­phony, every cruel mur­der and every act of mercy, every love affair and every quar­rel, every joke and every sor­row — all these things come from the for­est. Read the rest of this entry »

We are the archi­tects and builders of our own brains.

For mil­len­nia, how­ever, we were obliv­i­ous to our enor­mous cre­ative capa­bil­i­ties. We had no idea that our brains were chang­ing in response to our actions and atti­tudes, every day of our lives. So we uncon­sciously and ran­domly shaped our brains and our lat­ter years because we believed we had an immutable brain that was at the mercy of our genes.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob’s mother writes that ‘Jacob, 10-years-old, still strug­gles with num­ber bonds to 10. Learn­ing to tell the time is still slow – he has not mas­tered half-past. Although he man­aged to learn his 5x tables because we prac­ticed all sum­mer, this has now gone’.

Jacob has dyscal­cu­lia, a math dis­abil­ity where stu­dents strug­gle to learn or under­stand math­e­mat­ics. Stu­dents Read the rest of this entry »

On Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 7, at 7 p.m., Cleve­land Park Library in Wash­ing­ton, DC will host Alvaro Fer­nan­dez as he dis­cusses  The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews to Keep Your Brain Sharp (book also avail­able via DC library sys­tem).

The book expands on the con­cept of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity that recent works such as the New York Times best­seller, The Brain that Changes Itself, and the PBS Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram have intro­duced to the world. Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, or the the brain’s capac­ity to Read the rest of this entry »

Brain Teasers Make Seniors More Open to New Ven­tures (med­page today):

- ” A cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram that included Sudoku and cross­word puz­zles made older adults more open to new expe­ri­ences, accord­ing to a pre­lim­i­nary study.”

- “Older adults undergo changes in per­son­al­ity, includ­ing shifts in open­ness or will­ing­ness to seek out new and cog­ni­tively chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ences. A num­ber of inter­ven­tions have been designed to enrich cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in older adults, but lit­tle has been done to develop open­ness, the authors explained.” Read the rest of this entry »

Kudos to Patri­cia Cohen for one of the best arti­cles I have read in The New York Times in a long time: A Sharper Mind, Mid­dle Age and Beyond, by Patri­cia Cohen. These are a few quotes — please do read the arti­cle in full, it is worth it.

• “Some peo­ple are much bet­ter than their peers at delay­ing age-related declines in mem­ory and cal­cu­lat­ing speed. What researchers want to know is why. Why does your 70-year-old neigh­bor score half her age on a mem­ory test, while you, at 40, have the mem­ory of a senior cit­i­zen? Read the rest of this entry »

Only a cou­ple weeks ago we announced the new online course How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012, and we are happy to report 61 life­long learn­ers have reg­is­tered since. Take a look at the fas­ci­nat­ing geo­graphic dis­tri­b­u­tion of par­tic­i­pants! We are look­ing for­ward to it.

SharpBrains.com is a lead­ing blog and online com­mu­nity for brain health and applied neu­ro­science, with 100,000+ monthly read­ers, 40,000+ opt-in eNewslet­ter sub­scribers and 8,000+ fol­low­ers on Face­book, Twit­ter, LinkedIn and RSS.

The web­site and blog are curated by the staff at Sharp­Brains, the inde­pen­dent mar­ket research firm  that pub­lishes The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness –recently named a Best Book by AARP– and pro­duces the annual Sharp­Brains Sum­mit–the largest vir­tual con­fer­ence on brain health, applied neu­ro­science and inno­va­tion–, among other activities.

You can engage this grow­ing and influ­en­tial audi­ence by sub­mit­ting a guest arti­cle on any topic related to brain health that meets our qual­ity stan­dards. Learn more here »