Research-based information on Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health, authored by Alvaro Fernandez and over 10 Expert Contributors.
(Hat tip: Boing Boing)
The CIA has posted the full text of one of its guidebooks, "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis", published in 1999 by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence.
Haven't had time to play with it yet, but these quotes sound fascinating:
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:
I hope you are having happy holidays, and are getting ready for New Year celebrations. Best wishes to you and your loved ones.
Via MedJournalWatch we just found this interesting paper,
Associations of job demands and intelligence with cognitive performance among men in late life. Guy G. Potter PhD*, Michael J. Helms BS, and Brenda L. Plassman PhD Neurology 2007.
- CONCLUSIONS: "Intellectually demanding work was associated with greater benefit to cognitive performance in later life independent of related factors like education and intelligence. The fact that individuals with lower intellectual aptitude demonstrated a stronger positive association between work and higher cognitive performance during retirement suggests that behavior may enhance intellectual reserve, perhaps even years after peak intellectual activity."
This is consistent with the Cognitive Reserve theory we discussed in the interview with neuroscientist Yaakov Stern:
- AF (Alvaro Fernandez): OK, so our goal is to build that Reserve of neurons, synapses, and skills. How can we do that? What defines "mentally stimulating activities" or good "brain exercise"?
- YS (Yaakov Stern): In summary, we could say that "stimulation" consists of engaging in activities. In our research almost all activities are seen to contribute to reserve. Some have challenging levels of cognitive complexity, and some have interpersonal or physical demands. In animal studies, exposure to an enriched environment or increased physical activity result in increased neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons). You can get that stimulation through education and/ or your occupation. There is clear research showing how those two elements reduce the risk. Now, what is very exciting is that, no matter one's age, education and occupation, our level of participation in leisure activities has a significant and cumulative effect. A key message here is that different activities have independent, synergistic, contributions, which means the more things you do and the earlier you start, the better. But you are never stuck: better late than never.
- Read more on the Cognitive Reserve
In short, mentally and socially stimulating activities, through our education, occupation AND leisure activities, contribute to building a Cognitive Reserve in our brains that may help delay memory problems, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's related symptoms, and help maintain cognitive performance overall as we age.
If you are thinking about New Year Resolutions, this is one more area to consider. Happy 2008!
Here you are have the Monthly Digest of our Most Popular Blog Posts. You can consider it your monthly Brain Exercise Magazine.
Gratitude is a very important emotion to cultivate, as Professor Robert Emmons tells us in this interview, based on his last book. Please take some time to read it, and to find at least one thing you are thankful for-it will be good for your health.
We are grateful about a very stimulating November:
Brain Fitness Market News
10 Neurotechnology Trends: a leading industry organization released their Top 10 NeuroTrends for 2007, and brain fitness matters appeared in 3 of them.
Thank Boomers for Buffing Up Brain Market: great overview of the market from a technology point of view, quoting our market projections. To clarify the numbers mentioned: we project $225m in the US alone for the brain fitness software market (growing from $70m in 2003), broken-down as follows: $80m for the Consumer segment, $60m in K12 Education, $50m in Clinical applications, and $35m in the Corporate segment. The Consumer segment, with a healthy aging value proposition, is the most recent one but the most rapidly growing.
Exercise On the Brain: a NYT OpEd: a widely read opinion piece in the New York Times, written by 2 neuroscientists, that somehow seems to miss the research behind the value of mental stimulation and cognitive training. Other neuroscience teams and us write letters to the editor that go unpublished. Should you have any contacts with journalists, please ask them to contact us: we are always happy to serve as a resource to the media.
Posit Science @ GSA: well-designed Brain Training Works: a timely heads up on how well-designed computer-based programs can be a great complement to other interventions. We will be interviewing the leading researcher behind that study during the next 2 weeks, so keep tuned!
Brain and Mind News and Articles: a variety of links to good media reports, including a spectacular special on memory in National Geographic.
News You Can Use
Marian Diamond on the brain: leading neuroscientist Marian Diamond, now 81, shares her prescription for lifelong brain health- diet, exercise, challenge, newness and tender loving care.
From Meditation to MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction): a report on the benefits of meditation and how it is becoming more mainstream in medicine.
Teasers
50 Mind and Brain Games for adults: you may have seen these teasers, but we want to alert you we have opened a new section in the site where you can easily find our growing collection of teasers
Your Haiku, please?: a friendly challenge to your brain.
Education and Lifelong Learning
Carol Dweck on Mindsets, Learning and Intelligence: we found a fascinating interview on the importance on having a growth and learning oriented mindset. Both for kids and adults.
Is Intelligence Innate and Fixed?: some reflections based on biology.
Corporate Training, Wellness and Leadership
Cognitive Fitness and The Future of Work: an excellent concept map on how neuroscience may influence the workplace of the future, drawn in real time as I spoke at an Institute for the Future event.
Emotional Intelligence and Faces: how many universal emotions and facial expressions are there?
Events
Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together: I spoke at the Italian Consulate in San Francisco, where we explored some of the basic concepts we should all know about how our brains and mind work.
Let me practice the Gratitude concept...Thank You for your attention and participation!
You can also enjoy our previous editions of this monthly digest:
- October
- August
- July
Just came accross an excellent Interview with Carol Dweck. Thank you Coert! 
Carol Dweck is a professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Last year she published a great book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, where she elaborates on her (and ours) key message: the way you view your own intelligence largely determines how it will develop. And no matter how you define "intelligence". In this interview Coert asks Carol Dweck about the book and about what the practical implications of her work are for managers. See a couple of quotes below:
- "In my book I identify two mindsets that play important roles in people's success. In one, the fixed mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities are fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that; nothing can be done to change it. Many years of research have now shown that when people adopt the fixed mindset, it can limit their success. They become over-concerned with proving their talents and abilities, hiding deficiencies, and reacting defensively to mistakes or setbacks-because deficiencies and mistakes imply a (permanent) lack of talent or ability. People in this mindset will actually pass up important opportunities to learn and grow if there is a risk of unmasking weaknesses. This is not a recipe for success in business, as ultimately shown by the folks at Enron, who rarely admitted any mistakes. What is the alternative?"
- "In the other mindset, the growth mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities can be developed through passion, education, and persistence. For them, it's not about looking smart or grooming their image. It's about a commitment to learning--taking informed risks and learning from the results, surrounding yourself with people who will challenge you to grow, looking frankly at your deficiencies and seeking to remedy them. Most great business leaders have had this mindset, because building and maintaining excellent organizations in the face of constant change requires it."Enjoy the whole Interview with Carol Dweck
And this related blog post, where we posited that "In short: there is much that each of us can do to improve our brain fitness, no matter our age, occupation or starting point. There are some fundamental capacities that we can train. And we have to care for good physical exercise and stress management on top of mental exercise."
Given the recent James Watson "race and IQ" controversy, I took on to read Stephan Jay Gould's classic book The Mismeasure of Man, in which he debunks IQ (and the underlying "g") as measure of defined, innate, "intelligence". Fascinating reading overall, very technical in some areas.
The key take-away? In the last chapter, A Positive Conclusion, he writes that
- "Flexibility is the hallmark of human evolution...In other mammals, exploration, play and flexibility of behavior are qualities of juveniles, only rarely of adults. We retain not only the anatomical stamp stamp of childhood, but its mental flexibility as well...Humans are learning animals"
He then relates this story from T.H. White's novel The Once and Future King
- God, he recounts, created all animals as embryos and called each before his throne, offering them whatever additions to their anatomy they desired. All opted for specialized adult features-the lion for claws and sharp teeth, the deer for antlers and hoofs. The human embryo stepped forth last and said: Please God, I think that you made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourselves and that it would be rude to change. If I am to have my choice, I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which you gave me...I will stay a defenceless embryo all my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron, and the other materials which You have seen fit to put before me.." "Well done", exclaimed the Creator in delighted tone. "Here all you embryos, come here with Continue Reading »
Quotes from a great article, Professor, 81, proves brain stays young:
- In 1960, Diamond became the first female faculty member in Cal's science department, achieving full professorship in 1974. She still teaches anatomy with her 81st birthday two weeks away.
- Diamond, a professor of anatomy at UC Berkeley, determined that the brain can stay young through stimulation, which can be achieved through her five-point plan: diet, exercise, challenge, newness and tender loving care.
- Using her plan, how is she challenged?
- "Every student who sits in that chair," she said, pointing across the desk in her fifth-floor office in the Life Sciences Building on campus. "They come in here asking questions, and you better have the answers."
- What newness, then, is in her life?
- "I have grandchildren," she said. "What could be better, deciding new things for them, to stimulate their brains."
- She has four children, four grandchildren and a husband, Arnold Scheidel, who teaches anatomy at UCLA. They see each other on school weekends,
- Diamond feels her own brain growing.
Keep reading here.
Related resources
A previous post listing a number of her essays: Marian Diamond and the Brain Revolution
Her great book Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nurture Your Child's Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence, by Berkeley's Marian Diamond and Janet L. Hopson.
An anonymous reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog writes a superb comment, reproduced here:
"One thing Watson and others forget is that the brain is highly malleable based on environment. Although he is the father of DNA he knows very little about neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Previously it was thought that the human brain was 'hardwired' after a certain age. This is not true. Not only is not true, but the human mind is capable of adaptation but actual neuron growth even late in life. Ten years ago this was thought impossible.
Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity proves that a nurturing social and family setting shifts IQ, perspective, and emotional IQ. The so-called bell curve isn't genetic. Oppressed Tibetans and Chinese ethnic minorities -whose test scores soar in the United States and Canada- are 20-30 points lower in their homeland. That 20-30 points deficit is in the same range of a lot of groups that are attacked or threatened (Muslims in France, Christians in Nigeria, Blacks in America). Conversely when oppressed groups are removed from their environment their IQ, emotional health returns to a normal rate, thus proving that is NOT genetic.
It is plastic, shifting and based upon the environment.
That is why people Continue Reading »
Several recent stories on brain training and SharpBrains:
1) New brain games may improve mind fitness by Kevin Kosterman (U of Wisconsin Oshkosh's Advance-Titan)
"Anytime we learn, we are training, changing, our brain," Fernandez said. "The three key core elements for effective brain exercise are novelty, variety and constant challenge, similar to increasing the level in machines we find in gyms."
2) "Training the Brain as possible as Training the Body", جريدة النهار by Hanadi El Diri (Annahar, one of the most prestigious papers in the Middle East. The text is in Arabic.)
3) "Train your brain" by Mark Muckenfuss (The Press-Enterprise in Riverside and San Bernardino)
"We cannot promise to people you will only keep getting better until you are 200 years old. But I think people still underestimate how flexible the brain really is."
The SmartBrains [sic] program combines mental exercises with a stress reduction program. Too much stress, says Fernandez, has been shown to be damaging not only to performance, but to the brain itself.
With all of the available programs for stimulating the brain, he says, it is important to shop carefully. A critical element, he says, is how clients or participants are evaluated."Make sure they have a credible assessment that helps you find your strengths and weaknesses and that they have programs that address (those areas)," he says. "Assessments that give you 50 (as an age-equivalent grade) and a week later you're 32, that's not a valuable assessment."
We hope you are enjoying the growing coverage of Brain Fitness as much as we are. Below you have the Brain Fitness Newsletter we sent a few days ago-you can subscribe to this monthly email update in the box on the right hand side.
In this post, we will briefly cover:
I. Press: see what CBS and Time Magazine are talking about. SharpBrains was introduced in the Birmingham News, Chicago Tribune and in a quick note carried by the American Psychological Association news service.
II. Events: we are outreach partners for the Learning & the Brain conference, which will gather neuroscientists and educators, and for the Dana Foundation’s Brain Awareness Week.
III. Program Reviews: The Wall Street Journal reviewed six different programs for brain exercise and aging, and the one we offer is one of the two winners. A college-level counseling center starts offering our stress management one. And we interview a Notre Dame scientist who has conducted a replication study for the working memory training program for kids with ADD/ ADHD.
IV. New Offerings: we have started to offer two information packages that can be very useful for people who want to better understand this field before they commit to any particular program: learn more about our Brain Fitness 101 guide and Exercise Your Brain DVD.
V. Website and Blog Summary: we revamped our home page and have had a very busy month writing many good articles. We also hosted two “Blog Carnivals”- don’t you want to know what that means?
Continue Reading »
- Next »
