SharpBrains

Here you have The 10 Most Popular Brain Fitness & Cognitive Health Books, based on book purchases by SharpBrains' readers during 2008.

Enjoy!

	1. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Pear Press, March 2008) - Dr. John Medina, Director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University, writes an engaging and comprehensive introduction to the many daily implications of recent brain research. He wrote the article Brain Rules: science and practice for SharpBrains readers.
	2. The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person (Oxmoor House, March 2007) - Dr. Judith Beck, Director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, connects the world of research-based cognitive therapy with a mainstream application: maintaining weight-loss. Interview notes here.
	3. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (Viking, March 2007) - Dr. Norman Doidge, psychiatrist and author of this New York Times bestseller, brings us "a compelling collection of tales about the amazing abilities of the brain to rewire, readjust and relearn". Laurie Bartels reviews the book review here.
	4. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain(Little, Brown and Company, January 2008) - Dr. John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, summarizes the growing research on the brain benefits of physical exercise. Laurie Bartels puts this research in perspective here.

	5. The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning (Stylus Publishing, October 2002) - Dr. James Zull, Director Emeritus of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve University, writes a must-read for educators and lifelong learners. Interview notes here.
	6. Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves (Ballantine Books, January 2007) - Sharon Begley, Newsweek' excellent science writer, provides an in-depth introduction to the research on neuroplasticity based on a Mind & Life Institute event.
	7. Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Houghton Mifflin, August 2007) - Prof. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology at UC Davis and Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology, writes a solid book that combines a research-based synthesis of the topic as well as practical suggestions. Interview notes here.
	8. The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind (Oxford University Press, January 2001) - Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine, provides a fascinating perspective on the role of the frontal roles and executive functions through the lifespan. Interview notes here.
	9. The Brain Trust Program: A Scientifically Based Three-Part Plan to Improve Memory (Perigee Trade, September 2007) - Dr. Larry McCleary, former acting Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Denver Children's Hospital, covers many lifestyle recommendations for brain health in this practical book. He wrote the article Brain Evolution and Health for SharpBrains.
	10. A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain (Pantheon, January 2001) - In this book (previous to Spark), Dr. John Ratey provides a stimulating description of how the brain works. An excellent Brain 101 book to anyone new to the field.

Welcome to Encephalon´s 50th edition, where you will find another superb collection of blog posts on all things Brain and Mind.

Enjoy these contributions:

Science & Technology

Mind Hacks reports that Facebook ate my psychiatrist. We can learn about the benefits of social networking sites like Facebook, bringing great perspective to recent and misguided media speculation (fuelled by a recent talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists). Vaughan, will you please report on the benefits of participating (and, better, hosting) Encephalon?.

Dungeons And Dragons - Or Mazes And Monsters?: PodBlack Cat offers a thought-provoking review of the therapy (including self-therapy) applications of role-playing games such as the classic Dungeons And Dragons and the more recent massively multiplayer online games.

Cognitive Daily covers another type of game. Continue Reading »

Cognitive training (the basis for what we call "brain fitness" these days) has a wide array of applications. The most recent one, which is capturing public's imagination, monopolizing media coverage, and creating certain confusion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are fortunate to have Dr. Joshua Steinerman, one of our new Expert Contributors, offer today his great voice to this conversation. Enjoy!

- Alvaro
---------------------------

Minding the Aging Brain

-- By Joshua R. Steinerman, M.D.

Scientists, philosophers, artists, and experts from all fields of human endeavor lament: it ain’t easy getting older. It? Do they refer to frailty and disability? To bodily disease? To life at its essence?

It’s all in your head

The mind is not set in stone, but it is encased by bone. It’s really all about the brain, the hyphen in the mind-body conundrum. That squishy gray neuronal jungle is the interface between internal life and environmental sensations and stimulation. As expected, the brain shows signs of aging just as a wrinkled brow, a stooped posture, or an arthritic finger might. The most common brain changes observed in aging and in age-associated neuropsychiatric disease include:

Continue Reading »

Psychologist Robert Emmons recently told us about the many benefits of practicing gratitude.

- "First, the practice of gratitude can increase happiness levels by around 25%. Second, this is not hard to achieve - a few hours spent writing a gratitude journal over 3 weeks can create an effect that lasts 6 months if not more. Third, that cultivating gratitude brings other health effects, such as longer and better quality sleep time."

Thanksgiving flew by for me this year without my taking the time to express gratitude to many of the people who have been so generous with their time and advice.

Given that this is a blog, I would like to say Thank You! to the following bloggers 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

(Dear reader: Here you have a little gift to continue the Thanksgiving spirit. Enjoy the interview, and thank you for visiting our site.)

Prof. Robert Emmons studies gratitude for a living as Professor of Psychology at UC Davis and is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology. He has just published Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, an interdisciplinary book that provides a research-based synthesis of the topic as well as practical suggestions.

Alvaro Fernandez: Welcome. Prof. Emmons, could you please provide us an overview of the Positive Psychology field so we understand the context for your research?

Robert Emmons: Sure. Martin Seligman and colleagues launched what was called “positive psychology” in the late 90s as an antidote to the traditional nearly exclusive emphasis of “negative psychology” focused on fixing problems like trauma, addiction, and stress. We want to balance our focus and be able to help everyone, including high-functioning individuals. A number of researchers were investigating the field since the late 80s, but Seligman provided a new umbrella, a new category, with credibility, organized networks and funding opportunities for the whole field.

And where does your own research fit into this overall picture?

I have been researching gratitude for almost 10 years. Gratitude is a positive emotion that has traditionally been the realm of humanists and philosophers, and only recently the subject of a more scientific approach. We study gratitude not as a merely academic discipline, but as a practical framework to better functioning in life by taking control of happiness levels and practicing the skill of emotional self-regulation.

What are the 3 key messages that you would like readers to take away from your book?

First, the practice of gratitude can increase happiness levels by around 25%. Second, this is not hard to achieve - a few hours writing a gratitude journal over 3 weeks can create an effect that lasts 6 months if not more. Third, that cultivating gratitude brings other health effects, such as longer and better quality sleep time.

What are some ways to practice gratitude, and what benefits could we expect? Please refer to your 2003 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, where I found fascinating quotes such as that “The ability to notice, appreciate, and savior the elements of one’s life has been viewed as a crucial element of well-being.”

The most common method we use in our research is to ask people to keep a “Gratitude Journal” where you write something you feel grateful for. Doing so 4 times a week, for as little as 3 weeks, is often enough to create a meaningful difference in one’s level of happiness. Another exercise is to write a “Gratitude Letter” to a person who has exerted a positive influence on one’s life but whom we have not properly thanked in the past, and then to meet that person and read the letter to them face to face.

The benefits seem to be very similar using both methods in terms of enhanced happiness, health and wellbeing. Most of the outcomes are self-reported, but there is an increasing emphasis on measuring objective data such as cortisol and stress levels, heart rate variability, and even brain activation patterns. The work of Richard Davidson is exemplary in that respect, showing how mindfulness practice can rewire some activation patterns in Continue Reading »

I am delighted to participate in LifeTwo’s "How to be Happier" week with this post. Happiness is still largely unchartered territory for neuroscience. It sounds like a hidden, elusive El Dorado. However, once one follows positive psychology research and Harvard's Dr. Ben-Shahar’s advice, "The question should not be whether you are happy but what you can do to become happier", the happiness quest starts to become more tangible and workable according to latest neuroscience research.

We are now going to explore the four key concepts of Dr. Ben-Shahar's statement --- 1) "you", 2) "can", 3) "do", and 4) "happier" --- from a neuropsychological perspective.

1) Who is "you"? According to latest scientific understanding, what we experience as "mind", our awareness, emerges from the physical brain. So, if we want to refine our minds, we better start by understanding and training our brains. A very important reality to appreciate: each brain is unique, since it reflects our unique lifetime experiences. Scientists have already shown how even adult brains retain a significant ability to continually generate new neurons and literally rewire themselves. So, each of us is unique, with our own aspirations, emotional preferences, capacities, and each of us in continually in flux. A powerful concept to remind ourselves: "you" can become happier means that "you" are the only person who can take action and evaluate what works for "you". And "you" means the mind that emerges from your own, very personal, unique, and constantly evolving, brain. Which only "you" can train.

2) Why the use of "can"? Well, this reminds me a great quote by Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who said that "Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain". Each of us has immense potential. However, in the same way that Michaelangelo’s David didn’t spontaneously appear out-of-the-blue one day, becoming happier requires attention, intention, and actual practice.

Attention: Every second, you choose what to pay attention to. You can focus on the negative and thereby train your brain to focus on the negative. You can Continue Reading »

LifeTwo, the website focused on all aspects of midlife challenges, from midlife crisis to midlife career change, is presenting a "How to be Happy" week, based on the work of Harvard Professor Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar and his book "Happier". Dr. Ben-Shahar teaches Harvard's most popular class, on Positive Psychology.

Today is their Day 1: From Happy to Happier.

A number of good bloggers are collaborating: Happiness Project, The Brazen Careerist, MenAlive, The Dating Goddess, Boomer Chronicles, Man-o-Pause, AgingBackwards. I will be honored to provide a guest column, this Thursday, on how to identify and overcome some common brain-based obstacles to being happy, and how you apply the latest brain science developments in your own quest to be happier. In the meanwhile, you may enjoy the post On being positive, and check out Day 1: From Happy to Happier.

Enjoy the week!

Senia writes a great article on How You Tell the Story of Your Life in Positive Psychology News Daily. As part of the story, she mentions a very fun study on the power of the Placebo effect.

From Senia's post:

"In the February, 2007 issue of Psychological Science, Langer and colleague Alia Crum reported that they took 84 hotel workers and told one group that “the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. Examples of how their work was exercise were provided.” Langer and Crum told the control group nothing. Four weeks later, Langer and Crum returned to find some measurements of both groups: the control group hadn’t changed physically, but the test group had decreased all of the following: weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index.

Langer and Crum describe this study as supporting the theory that exercise affects health at least partly due to the placebo effect. Furthermore, we can ask, what are the stories that these hotel workers are telling themselves? Why do the hotel workers suddenly believe that they actively affect their exercise regiment?"

Implication: the placebo effect is real, and it can help our health.

A few fun questions to consider:

- How do we prevent other people from selling us stuff that only works based on the placebo effect?

- Once we decide to do something, shouldn't we try to "placebo" ourselves in order to get the most of it? this is another manifestation of the importance of emotional self-regulation.

Enjoy the long weekend

My wife and I were fortunate to conduct recently a mind training experiment, in the form of a breathing & meditation retreat, with some neuroscientists and Adam Engle, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Mind & Life Institute (nice name, isn't it?)

The Mind and Life Dialogues "started in 1987 as an experiment to determine whether a scientific exchange could occur between modern science and Buddhism. MLI has now sponsored 14 dialogues (between the Dalai Lama and neuroscientists) over the last 20 years. In that time MLI has become a recognized world leader in the emerging scientific investigation of the effects of contemplative practices on the brain, behavior, and the translation of this data into effective tools to benefit all people everywhere."

A few notes from our conversation with Adam

• - He helped launch the Mind & Life Institute to build a science-based field of interdisciplinary study to investigate the applications of the "database of practices" that Buddhism and some Christian traditions have accumulated over milennia
• - From early on it became clear that they needed to engage Western neuroscientists in order to be credible and become a real East-West bridge with potential to reach mainstream society. You can see below a partial list of participants in their most recent meeting, 2 weeks ago
• - They are very happy that Sharon Begley's book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain has become a non-fiction Bestseller, since it is based on one of the Mind & Life Dialogues (more on Books on neuroplasticity)
• - He is glad to see the inroads that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is making in the medical world thanks to solid research. He believes the Corporate Training and Leadership market is also going to become very interested in this technique for stress management. The main bottleneck for growth? the existing number of qualified instructors does not meet the increasing demand.

The Institute sponsors research in a number of ways, and they just announced that the 3rd annual Scientists Retreat will take place Continue Reading »