Time for the Novem­ber edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of resources and insights on how to invest in our brains, includ­ing top­ics such as brain health, med­i­ta­tion, neu­ropsy­chol­ogy, brain train­ing games, chemo brain, dyslexia, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, cog­ni­tive biases, stress, and more. Not to for­get a cou­ple of fun teasers. Enjoy!

Brain Fit­ness Q&A Sessions:

• Tran­script: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Men­tal Cap­i­tal­ism and Non-invasive Cog­ni­tive Enhancement
• Tran­script: Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­ory and the Brain
• Tran­script: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum on Med­i­ta­tion and Neuropsychology

The Big Picture:

• Steve Jobs: Com­put­ers are the Bicy­cles of the Mind
• Brain Fit­ness: Def­i­n­i­tion, Pri­or­i­ties, and Links to Neu­rolead­er­ship, by Alvaro Fernandez
• Is the Uni­ver­sity Cen­tered on The Learner or the Pro­fes­sor?, by Miguel Angel Escotet
• Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Med­ical Blog­ging, by Alvaro Fernandez

New Research:

• Can Brain Train­ing Games and Biofeed­back Help Pre­vent Depres­sion, by Dr. Pas­cale Michelon
• ‘Chemo Brain’: MRI Shows Brain Changes After Chemotherapy
• Dyslexia not related to intel­li­gence. Impli­ca­tions for dis­crep­ancy model?
• Vet­er­ans learn to use yoga and med­i­ta­tion exer­cises to recon­nect with their emotions
• Applied Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: Rewiring the Brain to Ease Pain

New Books:

• What makes your brain happy and why you should do the oppo­site, by David DiS­alvo (We’ll have a Live Q&A on Decem­ber 9th)
• How cog­ni­tive illu­sions blind us to reason
• The Series on Stress & the Brain, by Dr. Jerome Schultz, con­tin­ues with: The Lit­tle Brain Down Under, The Stress Response Explained, The Human Brain Likes to Be in Bal­ance, To Fight, Flee or Freeze –That is the Question

Brain Teasers:

• Math Teaser: Unfin­ished The­sis, by Maria Lando
• Math Teaser: How to Choose a Mans Shirt, by Maria Lando
• How many Share This Arti­cle links, right below, do you know how to use? Try a cou­ple of them and share via Face­book and Twitter!

Thank you for your inter­est and atten­tion and have a great December.

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­ated by Harry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP. You learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Grand Rounds blog car­ni­val, the weekly edi­tion of what’s best in the health and med­ical blo­gos­phere. This week, twenty four blog­gers share data, insights, ques­tions, reflec­tions and more. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »

In two inno­v­a­tive pilot stud­ies, Ian Gotlib and his col­leagues at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, Cal­i­for­nia, showed that brain train­ing can be used to help elim­i­nate depres­sion, even before it starts. They stud­ied young girls (10 to 14 year old) whose moth­ers were depressed and who thus were at higher risk of devel­op­ing depres­sion them­selves later-on. The girls had not expe­ri­enced depres­sion per se but already showed behav­iors typ­i­cal of depressed brains, such as over­re­ac­tion to neg­a­tive stim­uli. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes­ter­day we had a fun ses­sion on Brain Fit­ness dur­ing the Neu­rolead­er­ship Sum­mit tak­ing place now in San Fran­cisco, explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to enhance per­for­mance and health of lead­ers and work­forces by deploy­ing both old tools (like breath­ing and med­i­ta­tion) and new ones (such as biofeed­back and database-driven per­son­al­ized brain train­ing solu­tions). Here are a cou­ple of the main ideas I wanted to introduce:

A. Let’s define Brain Fit­ness as an “inte­grated approach to enhance brain func­tion­al­ity”, com­bin­ing as appro­pri­ate lifestyle, inva­sive and non-invasive options. “Brain fit­ness” is above all an out­come, a cul­ture, sim­i­lar to “phys­i­cal fit­ness” (jok­ingly, I also said that “brain fit­ness” is the part of “phys­i­cal fit­ness” that “phys­i­cal fit­ness” doesn’t yet know what to do with)

B. Then, the ques­tion becomes, “what are the most impor­tant brain func­tions to enhance/ develop/ main­tain?”. Here I shared the fol­low­ing results Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today on mem­ory, mem­ory tech­niques and brain-healthy lifestyles with Dr. Gary  Small, Direc­tor of UCLA’s Mem­ory Clinic and Cen­ter on Aging, and author of The Mem­ory Bible. You can learn more about his book  Here, and learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Per­haps one of the best ques­tions and answers was:

2:55
Ques­tion: Gary, you’ve worked many years in this field. Let us in on the secret. What do YOU do you, per­son­ally, to pro­mote your own brain fit­ness?
2:57
Answer: I try to get at least 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing each day; try to min­i­mize my stress by stay­ing con­nected with fam­ily and friends; gen­er­ally eat a brain healthy diet (fish, fruits, veg­eta­bles), and try to bal­ance my online time with my offline time. Which reminds me, I think it is almost time for me to sign off line. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2005 the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Pedi­atrics (AAP) began an ini­tia­tive to pro­mote an approach to care among its mem­bers in which “…the pedi­atric team works in part­ner­ship with a child and a child’s fam­ily to assure that all of the med­ical and non-medical needs of the patient are met.” A crit­i­cally impor­tant focus of this approach is the role of the fam­ily and child — as devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate — in the devel­op­ment of an over­all plan of care.

This shared decision-making approach is espe­cially impor­tant for con­di­tions like ADHD where there is not a sin­gle treat­ment that is the most appro­pri­ate and pre­ferred option for all patients. How­ever, Read the rest of this entry »

Let me pro­vide an overview of the great things going on with the Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion — start­ing this week, we will share a brief update like this every Fri­day to main­tain Sharp­Brains col­leagues and read­ers informed. Please note that all links below require access to the Council’s online platform.

Neu­ro­feed­back Gains Pop­u­lar­ity and Lab Atten­tion (New York Times)

The treat­ment is also gain­ing atten­tion from main­stream researchers, includ­ing some for­mer skep­tics. The National Insti­tute of Men­tal Health recently spon­sored its first study of neu­ro­feed­back for A.D.H.D.: a ran­dom­ized, con­trolled trial of 36 subjects.

The results are to be announced Oct. 26 at the annual meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Child and Ado­les­cent Psy­chi­a­try. In an inter­view in the sum­mer, the study’s direc­tor, Dr. L. Eugene Arnold, an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Ohio State, noted that there had been “quite a bit of improve­ment” in many of the children’s behav­ior, as reported by par­ents and teachers.

Com­ment: The arti­cle pro­vides a good overview, and points out one of the main bot­tle­necks for wider use of neurofeedback-based tools, namely the lack of stan­dard­ized pro­to­cols to research and deploy them: “Neu­ro­feed­back in gen­eral is a largely unreg­u­lated, with prac­ti­tion­ers often devis­ing their own pro­to­cols about where on the scalp to place elec­trodes. Results vary widely, and researchers cau­tion that it is extremely impor­tant to choose one’s prac­ti­tioner with care.”

Related arti­cles:

• New Study Sup­ports Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD
• Quan­ti­ta­tive EEG for ADHD diagnosis
• Promis­ing Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Stud­ies for ADHD
• Mind­ful­ness Medita tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD
• How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?
• Self-Regulation and Barkley’s The­ory of ADHD