SharpBrains

If you could, you would. You can, but prefer not to know it?

More than any other organ, your brain is up to you. You are what you think, not just what you eat. Here's some food for thought:

Design your Mind

Setting cognitive and behavioral goals raises challenging and worthy questions: What do you want from your brain? Will you know it when you achieve it?

To attain the brain of our choosing, we must understand our selves and current abilities. Introspection and curiosity are helpful if they trigger and sustain the effort to enrich the mind. However, objective information which leads to informed assessment of brain function is often lacking.

Mind your Brain

Honesty. Openness. Self-awareness.

Irrefutable virtues, but in practice most people fall short. Few regularly appraise their brain skills; even so, the ability to accurately judge one's own mental performance is not guaranteed. I believe the first step to minding the brain is shedding hang-ups while offering and soliciting frank feedback from family and close confidants. In the clinical setting, routine cognitive screening and "mental check ups" are not currently practiced, in part due to time constraints and limited utility of traditional paper-and-pencil tests. From a public health perspective, the U.S. Preventative Task Force reviewed Continue Reading »

Here you are have the twice-a-month newsletter with our 10 most popular blog posts. Please remember that you can subscribe to receive this Newsletter by email, simply by submitting your email at the top of this page.

Our first Brain Training/ Fitness Webinar Series was a success with several hundred participants and great feedback. If you could not participate, you can still review the presentation slides by clicking Here. A key message from the series: it is exciting that our brains remain more flexible, at all ages, than was once thought possible. The implications? Every single owner of a brain can benefit from learning more about how to maintain the "It" in "Use It or Lose It." And which tools, if any, can be helpful. But, remember, there are no magic pills for cognitive health and performance.

Market News

National Neurotechnology Initiative: Neurotech leaders ask for help to support a pending bill on funding for applications of brain research.

Lumos Labs raises $3 m in venture capital:  This website provides a stimulating Continue Reading »

Zack Lynch asks for support to Write Congress Today in Support of the National Neurotechnology Initiative Act, explaining:

"With the recent introduction of the National Neurotechnology Initiative (NNTI) Act in the House (H.R. 5989) and the Senate (S.2989) earlier this month, the time has come to ramp up a national grassroots campaign in support of the NNTI and I would like to ask for your help. It is imperative that we get a substantive amount of Congressional support as quickly as possible as we are targeting Congressional hearings prior to the August break.

Take action: We need to flood Congressional fax machines and mail boxes with individual letters of support from key constituents like you over the next four weeks. I urge you to visit NIO's Take Action webpage.

Continue Reading »

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

- September

- August

- July

Today we have a number of industry announcements:

1) New editions of these Blog Carnivals (collections of blog posts around specific topics)

• Encephalon (neuroscience)
• Grand Rounds (medicine)
• Education (guess!)
• Happiness

2) The Neurotechnology Industry Organization has launched a Neurotech Job Board dedicated to commercial neuroscience (mostly focused on clinical applications, like drugs and devices, not so much on prevention, health & wellness). And the Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center is looking for a Research Project Manager.

3) The American Association for the Advancement of Science has finally released a report of the human enhancement workshop that took place in June 2006. Read more about it at Zack's blog.

4) Stephanie West Allen and Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz announce the Schedule of Events for their Brains On Purpose™ Seminars ("looking at conflict and the process of conflict resolution through the lens of neuroscience"): Colorado in October and Portland in November.

5) Registration is now open for my class on The Science of Brain Health and Brain Fitness (more here), October 9–30, at UC Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).

6) A couple of great Continue Reading »

One of the companies presenting at our panel on Brain Fitness at Neurotech Industry Conference, May 17th in San Francisco, was Cogmed. They offer a working memory training program focused now on kids with attention deficits. What was exciting in the panel was to hear how Cogmed is helping kids train working memory, Posit Science is helping (mostly) seniors train auditory processing, and there is a growing field starting to provide structured brain exercise to people of all ages with different priorities and needs.

The Chicago Tribune has an article today titled Giving a child a better mind. Quotes:

• "Working memory is the ability to store information in the brain for a short time, typically a few seconds. In daily life, working memory helps people remember instructions, solve problems, control impulses and focus attention."
• "Cogmed Working Memory Training, developed by Swedish brain researcher Dr. Torkel Klingberg, features video game software on an engaging robot interface. The research-validated program has been successful in Europe, and now is being offered in the United States."
• "The program may not apply to everyone with attention deficit, according to Graham, because not all people with ADD have a deficit in working memory. Schools or psychologists can determine whether Continue Reading »

Notre Dame Professor Bradley Gibson, whom we interviewed a few months ago (see below) presented the results from his study recently at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD):

University of Notre Dame Professor and Research Team are First in U.S. to Validate Breakthrough Study on  the Effectiveness of Working Memory Training in Improving Attention Deficits in Children (pdf)

• "Dr. Bradley Gibson, associate professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and his colleagues (Gibson, Seroczynski, Gondoli, Braungart-Rieker, & Grundy, 2007)  will share new findings from the first U.S. study on the effectiveness of Cogmed Working Memory Training for improving attention abilities in children with ADHD. The study validates previous research from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute which revealed a fundamental breakthrough in the way attention problems are proactively treated. Gibson will unveil the results of the U.S. study during the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) bi-annual conference in Boston. Cogmed is a pioneer in neurotechnology and a developer of software-based working memory training products."

Our interview with Notre Dame's Bradley Gibson

• AF: Tell us about ADD/ ADHD and development trajectories.
• BG: There is a very insightful study by Walter Mischel on pre-schoolers aged 4 and 5. Some of them had a Continue Reading »

Zack Lynch from NeuroInsights reminds us that the earlybird registration for the Neurotech Industry Investing and Business conference is about to expire. You can register by April 13th to save $300.

Conference Details:

Date: May 17 - 18, 2007
Location: Westin San Francisco, Millbrae, CA

Highly recommended conference for anyone working on biotech, medical devices, diagnostics and neurotechnology in general, and with added value for anyone interested in learning more about science-based Brain Fitness thanks to what we hope will be a groundbreaking panel:

Title: Brain Fitness Through Software and Neurofeedback

Thursday May 17th, 4.45-5.30pm

Description: Spurred by the discovery of neuroplasticity, the aging baby boomer population and demand for safe treatments for childhood ADHD, software companies, large and small, are venturing into the realm of Continue Reading »

Reminder: 60 or so science bloggers are celebrating the Week of Science presented at Just Science, from Monday, February 5, through Sunday, February 11. We will be writing about "just science" this week, by discussing peer-reviewed research papers in the field of brain fitness.

Yesterday we talked about Cognitive Reserve and Lifestyle, a paper and research area that helps build the case for mental stimulation/ brain exercise if we care about long-term healthy aging.

Today we will approach the subject of cognitive training from the opposite corner: we will discuss immediate benefits of training for quality of life and performance in children with ADD/ ADHD. Some of the most promising effects seen are those that show how working memory training can generalize into better complex reasoning (measured by Ravens), inhibition (Stroop) and ADD/ ADHD symptoms ratings, beyond WM improvements.

Our main character: Dr. Torkel Klingberg, whom we had the fortune to interview last September (full notes at Working Memory Training and RoboMemo: Interview with Dr. Torkel Klingberg), and who has since received the pretigious Philip’s Nordic Prize.

We highlight some of the interview notes: Continue Reading »

Given that we are getting new readers let's re-introduce our Neuroscience Interview Series. If you click on the category (in the right bar) that says Neuroscience Interview Series, you will find the updated list of interviews we have conducted (and also some that we have found elsewhere, such as the one with Posit Science's Dr. Michael Merzenich and Dr. John Ratey).

The interviews we have conducted and published so far, with most recent first:

• Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg on Brain Fitness Programs and Cognitive Training. Dr. Goldberg is a neuropsychologist and clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine. He was a student and close associate of the great neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, and has written The Executive Brain and The Wisdom Paradox.
• Go Hirano on Brain Training and "Brain-ism" in Japan. Go is a serial Japanese entrepreneur who has launched NeuWell (Neuroscience for Wellness) there. He also talks about Nintendo Brain Age.
• On Enhancing Trader Performance and The Psychology of Trading: Interview with Brett N. Steenbarger. Dr. Steenbarger is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and author of The Psychology of Trading and the new Enhancing Trader Performance.
• On Cognitive Simulations for Basketball Game-Intelligence: Interview with Prof. Daniel Gopher. Dr. Gopher is Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Human Factors Engineering at Technion, Israel’s Institute of Science, and scientific advisor for IntelliGym.
• An ape can do this. Can we not? with Dr. James Zull, Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at Case Western University, and author of The Art of Changing the Brain
• Cognitive Training and ADD/ADHD: Interview with Prof. David Rabiner, Senior Research Scientist and the Director of Psychology and Neuroscience Undergraduate Studies at Duke University.
• On Working Memory Training and RoboMemo: Interview with Dr. Torkel Klingberg, professor at Karolinska Institute, and director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, part of the Stockholm Brain Institute. He is also the scientific advisor for Cogmed Working Memory Training program (RoboMemo).

And we have a few more interviews in the works-please keep tuned. 

Enjoy!