Some recent brain train­ing and health news:

1) A Promis­ing Debut for Com­put­er­ized Therapies

2) Fit­ness pro­tects brain in Alzheimer’s patients

3) Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram Clas­sic comes to Mac

4) Posit Sci­ence gains own­er­ship of Sci­en­tific Learn­ing (NSDQ: SCIL) BrainConnection.

5) Brain train­ing on your mobile

6) You must remem­ber this: how the mind works

Here you have the links and my com­men­tary for these news: Read the rest of this entry »

This pro­mo­tion ends April 16th-so make sure you enter if you want to have the chance to win some nice mind and brain exer­cise for free.

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Some weeks we were con­tacted by Sony Pic­tures to pro­vide the Grand Prize for one of their Sweep­stakes pro­grams, for just-released San­dra Bullock’s Pre­mo­ni­tion movie.

We were happy to put together a com­plete Brain Fit­ness Kit, some­thing like a boot camp for the brain (a “brain camp”?), which you can get FOR FREE. The kit is com­posed of:

- One (1) Com­plete Men­tal Work­out Soft­ware pro­gram (Mind­Fit) that helps train mem­ory and other skills (ARV: $149.00)
– One (1) Stress Man­age­ment Biofeed­back pro­gram (Freeze-Framer) (ARV: $320.00)
– One (1) Exer­cise Your Brain DVD (ARV: $20.00)
– One (1) Brain Fit­ness 101 eBook ($12.00)

- Five (5) pri­vate phone-based ses­sions with our Brain Coach (you will hear more about this soon) (ARV: $350.00)
If you want the chance to win this Prize, together with a $1,000 check, you can sim­ply visit Pre­mo­ni­tion Expect the Unex­pected Sweep­stakes pro­gram and fill in your details. There is no cost asso­ci­ated with this pro­mo­tion. This is why you are see­ing ban­ners in this site for the first time.

Good luck!

Here is ques­tion 11 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. To down­load the com­plete ver­sion, please click here

Ques­tion:
Is it nec­es­sary to train under the super­vi­sion of a doc­tor or other specialist?

Key Points:

• Recre­ational activ­i­ties have always been done for fun either socially or independently.
• Most computer-based soft­ware pro­grams are intended for you to use on your own com­puter when it suits you. Think exer­cise and fit­ness, not medicine.
• A few pro­grams used for peo­ple with med­ical con­di­tions may be super­vised or reviewed by the treat­ing neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, physi­cian, or other health­care personnel.

Answer: Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the inau­gural edi­tion of the Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val. The tim­ing couldn’t be bet­ter  you have prob­a­bly seen the fea­tured CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neuroplasticity.

Thanks to the over 40 peo­ple who sub­mit­ted posts. We have had to select the posts we enjoyed the most to help facil­i­tate an engag­ing and informed conversation.

Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Our expe­ri­ence lit­er­ally shapes our brains. And vice versa. The media seems to be focus­ing mostly on brain fit­ness for seniors, but its impli­ca­tions go beyond that, as you will see in this post by Car­o­line: What is Brain Fit­ness?, and the arti­cles in this carnival.

Science-based under­stand­ing is evolv­ing from “Use it or Lose It” to “Use It and Improve It.”  As Fast Company’s Alan Deutschman provoca­tively puts it in his last book, Change or Die. We couldn’t agree more with his sum­mary rec­om­men­da­tion: “Relate. Repeat. Reframe.” Alan presents a blog arti­cle announc­ing his book (here is his orig­i­nal arti­cle). Read the rest of this entry »

You may have seen our last and excel­lent post, Train Your Brain: Get a Head Coach, and won­dered, have Car­o­line and Alvaro become Head Coaches now?

Rest assured. We haven’t.

Please wel­come our Head Coach, Neal Cohen, Psy.D. Neal is a licensed clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Read the rest of this entry »

You have prob­a­bly heard about cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties or cog­ni­tion. What is cog­ni­tion? Cog­ni­tion has to do with how a per­son under­stands and acts in the world. It is a set of abil­i­ties, skills or processes that are part of nearly every human action.

Cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties are the brain-based skills we need to carry out any task from the sim­plest to the most com­plex. They have more to do with the mech­a­nisms of how we learn, remem­ber, problem-solve, and pay atten­tion rather than with any actual knowl­edge. Any task can be bro­ken down into the dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive skills or func­tions needed to com­plete that task suc­cess­fully. For instance, answer­ing the tele­phone involves at least: per­cep­tion (hear­ing the ring tone), deci­sion tak­ing (answer­ing or not), motor skill (lift­ing the receiver), lan­guage skills (talk­ing and under­stand­ing lan­guage), social skills (inter­pret­ing tone of voice and inter­act­ing prop­erly with another human being).

The fields of neu­ropsy­chol­ogy, cog­ni­tive psy­chol­ogy, and thus cog­ni­tive train­ing are based on the frame­work that cog­ni­tion con­sists of dif­fer­ent men­tal func­tions or cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties which are based on spe­cific con­stel­la­tions of brain struc­tures. For instance mem­ory skills rely mainly on parts of the tem­po­ral lobes (next to the tem­ples) and parts of the frontal lobes (behind the forehead).

In the table below, you can browse through the main brain func­tions involved in cog­ni­tion. You will also find brain teasers that will help you chal­lenge all the cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties described: Learn and have fun!

COGNITIVE ABILITIES ARE MENTAL SKILLS

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COGNITIVE ABILITIES CAN IMPROVE IF EXERCISED

With age, some cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties decline, espe­cially the exec­u­tive func­tions. In addi­tion, cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties that are not used reg­u­larly tend to dimin­ish over time. This may hap­pen at any age but is mostly observed in older age. For­tu­nately, these skills can also be improved at any age with reg­u­lar practice.

Fur­ther rel­e­vant and use­ful resources:

- An inter­view with Yaakov Stern, explain­ing what cog­ni­tive reserve is and how cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties can be improved through life­time experiences.

- Short posts on what can boost cog­ni­tive abilities:

• • • • How learn­ing can change your brain
      • Does cof­fee boost cog­ni­tive func­tions over time?
      • Fit­ter bod­ies = fit­ter brains. True at all ages?
      • Are men­tally stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties good or bad for the brain?
      • Does cog­ni­tive train­ing work?
      • Nutri­tion and supplements

We are very excited to announce our newly released Brain Fit­ness for Sharp Brains: Your New New Year Res­o­lu­tion. We wrote it in order to pro­vide an intro­duc­tion to the con­cept, sci­ence, and prac­tice of brain fit­ness in plain Eng­lish, by answer­ing the Top 25 ques­tions we have received over the last four months. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and myself (Car­o­line) have been work­ing hard on this.

You can click here to get your copy of the com­plete guide. Oth­er­wise, keep check­ing back this blog, as we will pub­lish a new ques­tion and its answer every Mon­day and Thurs­day before 9AM Pacific Stan­dard Time. If we missed your press­ing ques­tion, let us know!

Here is a sneak pre­view of the ques­tions we will be answering …

Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg is a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, and author of over 50 peer-reviewed papers. His areas of exper­tise include exec­u­tive func­tions, mem­ory, atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, demen­tia, trau­matic brain injury, and oth­ers. Dr. Gold­berg was a stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria. His book The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civ­i­lized Mind (Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001) has received crit­i­cal acclaim and has been pub­lished in 12 lan­guages. His recent book The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older (Gotham Books, Pen­guin, 2005) offers an inno­v­a­tive under­stand­ing of cog­ni­tive aging and what can be done to fore­stall cog­ni­tive decline. It has been, or is in the process of being, pub­lished in 13 languages.

We are for­tu­nate that Dr. Gold­berg is Sharp­Brains Co-Founder and Chief Sci­en­tific Advi­sor. His book The Wis­dom Para­dox inspired me to embark in this path, and has been a key sound­ing board in the devel­op­ment of what we are doing.

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Key take-aways

- “Use It and Get More of It” reflects real­ity bet­ter than “Use It or Lose It”.

- Let’s demys­tify cog­ni­tion and the brain. Every­one needs to have a basic under­stand­ing of the brain-and how to cul­ti­vate it.

- Well-directed men­tal exer­cise is a must for cog­ni­tive enhance­ment and healthy aging.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the post Trader Peak Per­for­mance and biofeed­back pro­grams we showed the Heart Rate Vari­abil­ity pat­terns cor­re­lated with lev­els of a) anx­i­ety or b) Peak Per­for­mance, “The Zone”. Biofeed­back sup­ports our emo­tional self-regulation: we can visu­ally track what is going on inside us and train our­selves to man­age our emo­tional state. On the left you have an exam­ple of my own per­for­mance dur­ing a 5-minute exper­i­ment 4 months ago. At the top, you see my name; at the bot­tom, the dura­tion of the ses­sion. Right axis, for top half, is Heart Rate. (This is only the half left of the screen in the program-the right half would give you more infor­ma­tion.) I have high­lighted sev­eral phases:

A: you can see long waves fol­low­ing a smooth rhythm-that is the phys­i­o­log­i­cal “The Zone”, where I can per­form at max­i­mum level. I was using breath­ing and visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques that are some­times called “The Men­tal Game” in ath­let­ics and sports.

B: I stressed myself. How? well, maybe think­ing of a pre­vi­ous boss, or some bad moment in my life. You see that the “waves” dis­ap­pear, and nar­row erratic pat­terns appear instead.

C: I quickly go back into “The Zone”, Read the rest of this entry »