We are hon­ored to announce that AARP has included our very own book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (182 pages; $14.95) in its new List of Best Books on Brain Fit­ness, which will be unveiled dur­ing AARP’s upcom­ing Life@50 National Event. We hope this list will help many more indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions learn about our resource: given that 80% of respon­dents to a recent AARP sur­vey selected “Stay­ing Men­tally Sharp” as their top pri­or­ity, we cer­tainly know there is a sig­nif­i­cant need for qual­ity information!

AARP’s Best Books Guide


Brain Fit­ness

The Dana Guide to Brain Health, by Floyd E. Bloom, M. Flint Beal, and David J. Kupfer (Dana Press, 2006).

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Elkhonon Gold­berg. (Sharp­Brains Inc., 2009).

Save Your Brain: The 5 Things You Must Do To Keep Your Mind Young and Sharp, by Paul Nuss­baum. (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Sur­pris­ing Tal­ents of the Middle-Aged Mind, by Bar­bara Strauch (Viking, 2010).

The Mem­ory Bible: An Inno­v­a­tive Strat­egy for Keep­ing Your Brain Young, by Gary Small (Hype­r­ion, 2003).

___________

Also Rec­om­mended:

The Mature Mind: The Pos­i­tive Power of the Aging Brain, by Gene Cohen (Basic Books, 2006).

The Brain That Changes Itself, by Nor­man Doidge (Pen­guin, 2007).

Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Exer­cise and the Brain, by John Ratey and Eric Hager­man (Lit­tle, Brown and Co., 2008).

Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Pre­scrip­tion for Improv­ing Your Brain’s Per­for­mance, by Richard Restak (River­head, 2010).

Com­piled by:
Office of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs, AARP

Quick note: we just started a new Face­book group to dis­cuss brain fit­ness, cog­ni­tive health and men­tal per­for­mance top­ics in gen­eral and The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness in particular.

Care to exer­cise your brain by shar­ing your thoughts? Please join us Here!

Given the fact I love Kin­dle, and some of our Twit­ter friends had been ask­ing for a Kin­dle ver­sion of our new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness…well, here it is:
Amazon.com: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (Kin­dle Edi­tion, $9.99)

The book has also received two excel­lent new endorsements:

“Kudos for an excel­lent resource! This Sharp­Brains Guide is full of top notch infor­ma­tion, pro­vides prac­ti­cal tips and helps sep­a­rate hype from hope in the brain health arena.“
— Eliz­a­beth Edgerly, Ph.D., Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer, Alzheimer’s Association

“The Sharp­Brains’ Guide to Brain Fit­ness helped answer many of my ques­tions on the impor­tance of both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise to stay sharp as we age, as they act in syn­ergy on one another. The Guide also pro­vided guide­lines and spe­cific calls to action to expand what we tra­di­tion­ally do in our fit­ness clubs. This is an impor­tant book for any­one in the fit­ness indus­try, and, for that mat­ter, for any­one with a brain.“
— Robin Klaus, Chair­man, Club One Fit­ness Centers

More infor­ma­tion on the book: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness

Also: Book Club Dis­cus­sion Guide

Our first book is avail­able in Amazon.com!

After sev­eral meet­ings with Dr. Gold­berg, who kindly responded to my ini­tial unso­licited let­ter, we decided to part­ner and cre­ate Sharp­Brains with a mis­sion to “to pro­vide indi­vid­u­als, com­pa­nies and insti­tu­tions with inde­pen­dent, high-quality, research-based, infor­ma­tion and guid­ance to nav­i­gate the grow­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness market.”

Since then, we have launched one of the most pop­u­lar brain web­sites, blogs and newslet­ters, two annual mar­ket reports that have become the stan­dard in our field, a life­long learn­ing cur­ricu­lum taught in mul­ti­ple uni­ver­si­ties, and we are now pleased to bring to you our first book. We hope you enjoy it.

Book descrip­tion: While most of us have heard the phrase “use it or lose it,” very few under­stand what “it” means, or how to prop­erly “use it” in order to main­tain brain func­tion and fit­ness. The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness is an invalu­able guide that helps read­ers nav­i­gate grow­ing brain research and iden­tify the lifestyle fac­tors and prod­ucts that con­tribute to brain fit­ness. By gath­er­ing insights from eigh­teen of the world’s top sci­en­tists and offer­ing tools and detailed descrip­tions of over twenty prod­ucts, this book is an essen­tial guide to the field of brain fit­ness, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and cog­ni­tive health. An acces­si­ble and thought-provoking read, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness edu­cates life­long learn­ers and pro­fes­sion­als in health­care, edu­ca­tion, busi­ness, etc., on emerg­ing trends and fore­casts of what the future will hold.

Praise for the book

“Finally, an insight­ful and com­plete overview of the sci­ence, prod­ucts and trends to debunk old myths and help us all main­tain our brains in top shape. A must-read for every­one with a brain – an instant clas­sic.”
—Glo­ria Cavanaugh, for­mer Pres­i­dent & CEO of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging and found­ing Board mem­ber of the National Alliance for Caregiving

“The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness offers a valu­able and stim­u­lat­ing blue­print for any­one who wants to grow older sus­tain­ably — that is, with sound mind and good humor. Fer­nan­dez and Gold­berg are the pio­neers we’ve been wait­ing for to help us do exactly that. Buy­ing this book is the ulti­mate no-brainer.“
—Joel Makower, Exec­u­tive Edi­tor, GreenBiz.com, and author, Strate­gies for the Green Economy

“A mas­ter­ful guide to the brain train­ing rev­o­lu­tion. Promises to stim­u­late a much needed con­ver­sa­tion that will nudge soci­ety to build a new brain fit­ness cul­ture on solid, research-based, foun­da­tions.“
—P. Murali Doraiswamy MD, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try, Duke Uni­ver­sity and Co-author of The Alzheimer’s Action Plan

“Our cur­ricu­lum and research cir­cle will begin sum­mer work by read­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, a much-needed new resource to help us bet­ter under­stand our brains and minds and how to nour­ish them through life.“
—Susan E. Hoff­man, Direc­tor, Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute at UC Berkeley

“All of us research­ing healthy brain func­tion owe Sharp­Brains a debt of grat­i­tude for pro­mot­ing a science-based approach to brain health edu­ca­tion and offer­ing an unbi­ased view of the land­scape. Now, with The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg serve up plen­ti­ful food for thought to sat­isfy the grow­ing num­ber of adults who are hun­gry for a healthy mind.“
—Joshua R. Stein­er­man, M.D., Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­ogy and Direc­tor of the Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Dis­ease Clin­i­cal Tri­als Pro­gram at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Med­i­cine, Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Center

“I am a neu­ro­sur­geon and have a great inter­est in the rapidly advanc­ing field of neu­ro­science, espe­cially the areas of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and neu­ro­plas­tic­ity. New devel­op­ments hap­pen so fast that it is dif­fi­cult to keep up. This book by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Elkhonon Gold­berg offers a spec­tac­u­lar intro­duc­tion to the field, valu­able both to the pub­lic at large and health­care pro­fes­sion­als.“
—Guy Otis Daniel­son III, MD, Pres­i­dent of the Neu­ro­Care Net­work Tyler, Texas

“Finally, a book that makes sense out of the con­fus­ing brain fit­ness move­ment! I believe brain fit­ness could very well be the next big thing. Baby boomers like me are get­ting older and we want to stay men­tally sharp, main­tain if not strengthen our cog­ni­tive skills, and above all avoid men­tal decline and Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s been many con­flict­ing claims and con­fus­ing prod­ucts that has made it dif­fi­cult for me and thou­sands of oth­ers peo­ple to decide just what we should do. Sharp­Brains’ guide is an hon­est, clearly writ­ten exam­i­na­tion of brain fit­ness con­cepts, the under­ly­ing sci­ence, and the best prod­ucts and ser­vices out there. It’s a first-class, pio­neer­ing resource that sum­ma­rizes all I need to know about how to stay sharp for many more years.“
—David Bun­nell, founder of PC, PC World, Mac­world and BioWorld

Con­tinue read­ing about (and order!) The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp

This is a press release that went through the wire ear­lier today. If you are inter­ested, in attend­ing the con­fer­ence, you can learn more and reg­is­ter Here

Note that below you can find 5 out of the 12 ses­sions — we will announce the full track tomor­row. To get a 15% off reg­is­tra­tion fees, you can use dis­count code: sharp09, when you register.

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The Games for Health Project, orga­niz­ers of the 5th Annual Games for Health Con­fer­ence, today announced its first Cog­ni­tive Health Track pow­ered by Sharp­Brains, a lead­ing mar­ket research com­pany focused on the brain fit­ness and the cog­ni­tive health market.

The Cog­ni­tive Health track builds upon pre­vi­ous year’s sam­pling of ses­sions look­ing at cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness, expand­ing to a full two-day track at The Games for Health Con­fer­ence, June 11–12, Boston, MA. The Con­fer­ence fea­tures the largest gath­er­ing of orga­ni­za­tions inter­ested in the inter­sec­tion between videogames, health and healthcare.

“There is already a very active cog­ni­tive health videogames indus­try and field of research,” said Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the Games for Health Con­fer­ence. “We part­nered with Sharp­Brains to bring their exper­tise in this field our con­fer­ence plan­ning. Together we have for the first time cre­ated a pow­er­ful set of ses­sions and a much needed con­ver­sa­tion with researchers, thought-leaders and indus­try pio­neers who will attend the event in June.”

The track fea­tures a dozen ses­sions cov­er­ing research find­ings and part­ner­ships, imple­men­ta­tion in insur­ance, con­sumer and clin­i­cal set­tings, and spe­cial ses­sions look­ing at inno­v­a­tive areas such as dri­ver safety, healthy aging, atten­tion deficits, stroke/traumatic brain injury, schiz­o­phre­nia and mul­ti­ple sclerosis.

“The con­ver­gence of inter­ac­tive media such as videogames with cog­ni­tive sci­ence opens the door to inno­v­a­tive and scal­able approaches to Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the March edi­tion of our monthly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page. I know I am biased — but do believe this Newslet­ter issue might well be our best so far. I hope you find the time to enjoy it!

Bird’s Eye View

Brain Fit­ness Sur­vey: Over 2,000 thought­ful responses to our Jan­u­ary sur­vey (Thank You!) rein­force the need for pub­lic aware­ness ini­tia­tives and qual­ity infor­ma­tion to help eval­u­ate and nav­i­gate lifestyle and prod­uct claims, as well as the need for more research, an expanded health­care cul­ture, as more. Given this con­text, we are pub­lish­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness in May 2009, a book with 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, in addi­tion to our annual mar­ket report for pro­fes­sion­als and exec­u­tives (to be pub­lished in April). If you have ideas to help us pro­mote the book, please reply to this email and let us know!

Life­long Learning