We often talk in this blog about how to expand fun­da­men­tal abil­i­ties or cog­ni­tive func­tions, like atten­tion, or mem­ory, or emo­tional self-regulation. Think of them as mus­cles one can train. Now, it is also impor­tant to think of ways one can use our exist­ing mus­cles more efficiently.

Let’s talk about how to man­age bet­ter the over­whelm­ing amount of infor­ma­tion avail­able these days.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of new books, ana­lyst reports, sci­en­tific papers pub­lished every year. Mil­lions of web­sites at our googletips. The flow of data, infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge is grow­ing expo­nen­tially, stretch­ing the capac­ity of our not-so-evolved brains. We can com­plain all day that we can­not process ALL this flow. Now, let me ask, should we even try?

Prob­a­bly not. Why engage in a los­ing propo­si­tion. Instead, let me offer a few strate­gies that can help man­age this flow of infor­ma­tion better.

1. Pri­or­i­tize: strate­gic con­sult­ing firms such as McK­in­sey and BCG train their staff in the so-called 80/20 rule: 80% of effects are caused by the top 20% of causes. In a com­pany, 80% sales may come from 20% of the accounts. Impli­ca­tion: focus on that top 20%; don’t spend too much time on the 80% that only account for 20%.

2. Lever­age a sci­en­tific mind­set. Sci­en­tists shift through tons of data in effi­cient, goal-oriented ways. How do they do it? By first stat­ing a hypoth­e­sis and then look­ing for data. For exam­ple, an untrained per­son could spend weeks “boil­ing the ocean”, try­ing to read as much as pos­si­ble, in a very frag­men­tary way, about how phys­i­cal exer­cise affects our brain. A trained sci­en­tist would first define clear hypothe­ses and pre­lim­i­nary assump­tions, such as “Phys­i­cal exer­cise can enhance the brain’s abil­ity to gen­er­ate new neu­rons” or “Those new neu­rons appear in the hip­pocam­pus”, and then look specif­i­cally for data that cor­rob­o­rates or refutes those sen­tences, enabling him or her to refine the hypothe­ses fur­ther, based on accu­mu­lated knowl­edge, in a vir­tu­ous learn­ing cycle.

Today I have an announce­ment to make. You prob­a­bly are seeing all the arti­cles about Brain Fit­ness in the press and wondering, “What is this all about?”, “Can some­one help me nav­i­gate through all the pro­grams out there?”, “How is Brain Fit­ness rel­e­vant to me in my per­sonal life or at work?”. Well…we are deliv­er­ing a series of work­shops to com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions com­bin­ing mod­ules –includ­ing sci­en­tific overview, the indus­try trends and key play­ers, fun team-building exer­cises– that can be tai­lored to each organization’s spe­cific needs. Ses­sions last from 1 to 6 hours, depend­ing on the group’s com­po­si­tion and agenda and are deliv­ered either in per­son or via web conference.

We want to be able to reach more orga­ni­za­tions, so please let us know of any ideas!

Some recent examples

1. Man­ag­ing Stress for Peak Per­for­mance (we men­tioned some notes on an Accen­ture ses­sion)

New and chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions – such as tak­ing on new respon­si­bil­i­ties– can trig­ger reac­tions in our brain and body that limit or even block our decision-making abil­i­ties. These reac­tions may also harm our long-term brain power and health. Although we can­not avoid change and stress­ful sit­u­a­tions, we can learn how to man­age our stress lev­els to ensure peak performance-even in tough moments. The lat­est neu­ro­science research proves that stress man­age­ment is a train­able “men­tal mus­cle.” This is true for any high pres­sure pro­fes­sion, be it trad­ing, sports, or sim­ply mod­ern life.

2. The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (sim­i­lar to what I will teach at UC Berke­ley OLLI)

Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of Read the rest of this entry »

Some good links today:

1) Keep Your Brain Nim­ble as You Age
MSNBC — May 13, 2007
“If using your com­puter as a men­tal gym sounds good to you, SharpBrains.com’s Fer­nan­dez sug­gests ask­ing a few ques­tions first to deter­mine a product’s…”

2) Great blog by Stan­ford Busi­ness School’s Jack­son library, includ­ing an announce­ment of an upcom­ing lec­ture there by our very own Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez Pump­ing I.Q., not Iron

3) Some blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cific topics)

• Careers in Mid­dle Age and Baby Boomers
• Work At Home Moms and Dads
• Edu­ca­tion
  Read the rest of this entry »

The NYT Mag­a­zine today is devoted to the topic of Can Sci­ence Tell us Who Grows Wiser.

It may have been even bet­ter had the ques­tion been, “What Sci­ence Tells us About How we Can Grow Wiser”, but it is a pretty good issue anyway.

A very good arti­cle on The Older–and–Wiser Hypoth­e­sis. Quotes: 

• One of the most inter­est­ing areas of neu­ro­science research involves look­ing at the way peo­ple reg­u­late their Read the rest of this entry »

If you are in the Bay Area, we hope to see you at this event! Feel free to for­ward the invi­ta­tion below to any­one you know who may be interested.

Please join us on May 16, 2007 from noon to 1:30pm for a com­pli­men­tary gath­er­ing co-sponsored by:

• The Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (Nancy Cerid­wyn will make some remarks),
• The Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes (OLLI) at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity and Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, and
• Sharp­Brains.

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, well-known neu­ro­sci­en­tist and author of The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains and instruc­tor of the Exer­cis­ing Our Brains class, will pro­vide an overview of the sci­ence and trends behind the emerg­ing brain fit­ness field.

Please bring infor­ma­tion on your work and events to share with oth­ers inter­ested in brain health.

Where: SFSU OLLI (835 Mar­ket Street, 6th Floor, San Fran­cisco, Room 675)
When: Wednes­day, May 16, 12–1:30 pm
What: A chance for net­work­ing with Read the rest of this entry »

Fun arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post: Aging Japan­ese Keep Their Minds Moving

• “part of a broad range of men­tal acu­ity prod­ucts that are all the rage in Japan: books, toys, food and other things, sold with the pledge that they can reen­er­gize aging brains.”
• “Ana­lysts said the cur­rent brain-training trend began in 2004 and 2005 when video games such as Sega Toys Co.‘s Brain Trainer and Nin­tendo Co.‘s Brain Age became smash hits. Since its launch, Brain Age for Nintendo’s DS con­sole has sold 6.7 mil­lion copies around the world, includ­ing 3.4 mil­lion in Japan.”

We were for­tu­nate to inter­view a Japan­ese expert on this trend a few months ago. In Brain Train­ing and “Brain-ism” in Japan, we can learn a lot, such as

• “To see the activ­i­ties inside the brain was fresh for peo­ple, but the method­ol­ogy and logic was not reviewed by any sci­en­tific pub­li­ca­tion. It was pub­lished by Read the rest of this entry »

Here is ques­tion 17 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions.

Ques­tion:
Are there herbal and vit­a­min sup­ple­ments that will pro­tect my memory?

Key Points:

• Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids found in cold-water fish may be help­ful to long term brain health.
• Folic acid may also be help­ful to both cog­ni­tive func­tion and hearing.
• Ginkgo biloba and DHEA do not appear to help your brain.
• There is still more research to be done and never dis­miss the placebo effect!

Answer:
Read the rest of this entry »

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.”

Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary 19, 2007 edi­tion of brain fitness.

Today we want to high­light an excel­lent Inter­view with Aaron Beck on the His­tory of Cog­ni­tive Ther­apy sub­mit­ted by the Beck Insti­tute. Dr. Beck was 83 when he gave this inter­view. To the ques­tion “Do you have a view about age­ing?”, he responds “I can only speak for myself. I know that prac­ti­cally all my col­leagues from med­ical school days who are still around have retired. That is not some­thing that I think about. It is no more on my hori­zon now than it was when we first met a quar­ter of a cen­tury ago. I keep look­ing ahead.” He also says “I have always liked to unify dif­fer­ent fields. Given my back­ground in neu­rol­ogy I do not see a con­flict between neu­rol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy. But if you look at the train­ing of con­tem­po­rary psy­chi­a­trists, for exam­ple, the two domains are totally dis­tinct. If psy­chi­a­try is to sur­vive as a dis­ci­pline, a merg­ing of the con­cepts of neu­rol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy will need to occur.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sharon Beg­ley writes another great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required)

• “The aging brain is sub­ject to a dreary litany of changes. It shrinks, Swiss cheese-like holes grow, con­nec­tions between neu­rons become sparser, blood flow and oxy­gen sup­ply fall. That leads to trou­ble with short-term mem­ory and rapidly switch­ing atten­tion, among other prob­lems. And that’s in a healthy brain.”
• “But it’s not all doom and gloom. An emerg­ing body of research shows that a sur­pris­ing array of men­tal func­tions hold up well into old age, while oth­ers actu­ally get bet­ter. Vocab­u­lary improves, as do other ver­bal abil­i­ties such as facil­ity with syn­onyms and antonyms. Older brains are packed with more so-called …”

We dis­cussed some of these effects with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, who wrote his great book The Wis­dom Para­dox pre­cisely on this point, at The Exec­u­tive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger.

In our “Exer­cis­ing Our Brains” Classes, we typ­i­cally explain how some areas typ­i­cally improve as we age, such as self-regulation, emo­tional func­tion­ing and Wis­dom (which means mov­ing from Prob­lem solv­ing to Pat­tern recog­ni­tion), whereas other typ­i­cally decline: effort­ful problem-solving for novel sit­u­a­tions, pro­cess­ing speed, mem­ory, atten­tion and men­tal imagery. 

But the key mes­sage is that our actions influ­ence the rate of improve­ment and/ or decline. Our aware­ness that “it’s not all doom and gloom” and that there’s much we can do is important. You may want to learn more with our Exer­cise Your Brain DVD.

You can also learn more on the Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain: a beau­ti­ful essay by Mar­ian Dia­mond on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit through­out our lives.