“On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-related con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mately 50% of patients.  But which 50%?.”

“We need unam­bigu­ous bio­mark­ers that are clin­i­cally rel­e­vant and scal­able at rea­son­able cost. They already exist in Can­cer.   But they do not yet exist in the Brain.” What may change that? Read the rest of this entry »

Blurry line in diag­nos­ing early Alzheimer’s: study (Reuters):

• “The revised def­i­n­i­tion of a brain con­di­tion called mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment means that many peo­ple now con­sid­ered to have mild or early Alzheimer’s dis­ease could eas­ily be given that diag­no­sis instead, sug­gests a new study.” Read the rest of this entry »

Each blue dot in this map (you can click on it to expand it) rep­re­sents a reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pant in our upcom­ing online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012, start­ing on March 7th. Those dots rep­re­sent­ a fas­ci­nat­ing diver­sity of peo­ple and back­grounds: health and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, edu­ca­tors, busi­ness exec­u­tives, traders, con­sul­tants, coaches, soft­ware engi­neers, ther­a­pists,  and more. Based on an ini­tial sur­vey, some seem most inter­ested in the sci­ence; some are most inter­ested in prac­ti­cal guide­lines and appli­ca­tions. The point of this course is to dis­cuss both. To Learn More, and to Reg­is­ter, Click Here. 

SharpBrains.com is a lead­ing blog and online com­mu­nity for brain health and applied neu­ro­science, with 100,000+ monthly read­ers, 40,000+ opt-in eNewslet­ter sub­scribers and 8,000+ fol­low­ers on Face­book, Twit­ter, LinkedIn and RSS.

The web­site and blog are curated by the staff at Sharp­Brains, the inde­pen­dent mar­ket research firm  that pub­lishes The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness –recently named a Best Book by AARP– and pro­duces the annual Sharp­Brains Sum­mit–the largest vir­tual con­fer­ence on brain health, applied neu­ro­science and inno­va­tion–, among other activities.

You can engage this grow­ing and influ­en­tial audi­ence by sub­mit­ting a guest arti­cle on any topic related to brain health that meets our qual­ity stan­dards. Learn more here »

Engag­ing peo­ple where they are in the life-course

Eighty per­cent of the 38,000 adults over age 50 who were respon­ders in the 2010 AARP Mem­ber Opin­ion Sur­vey indi­cated “stay­ing men­tally sharp” was their top ranked inter­est and con­cern (Dinger, 2010). What exactly does this phrase mean? And what role can tech­nol­ogy play in “stay­ing men­tally sharp”? Intel CEO Paul Otellini has said, “You have to start by think­ing about what peo­ple want to do… and work back­ward.” Read the rest of this entry »

Dur­ing a debrief­ing after the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, Rick Moody, Direc­tor of the Office of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP, sug­gested that I con­tribute a thought-leadership piece to a spe­cial issue on brain health for one of their pro­fes­sional pub­li­ca­tions by the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging. You can now read the result, over 3,000 words on “The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom”:

• Tomor­row, Jan­u­ary 5th: Part 1 — The Business
• This Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 6th: Part 2 — The Ethics
• Next Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 9th: Part 3 — The Real Need
• Next Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 10th: Part 4 — The Future

You can track and dis­cuss each part as it becomes avail­able via my Twit­ter account, our Face­book page, LinkedIn group, and RSS feed. Enjoy, and please add your 2 cents!

As the pres­i­dent and med­ical direc­tor of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF), it’s my job to stay on top of advances in the field of Alzheimer’s research. Recently, a num­ber of arti­cles in the med­ical lit­er­a­ture have caught my atten­tion. They are focused on a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion that con­cerns most Baby Boomers like me: “Is mem­ory loss just a nor­mal part of aging?” Read the rest of this entry »

Spon­sored Ad (How to Adver­tise on SharpBrains.com)

Time for our monthly eNewslet­ter track­ing recent news and devel­op­ments on how the neu­ro­science of cog­ni­tion and emo­tions can inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifes­pan. Let us try to be as con­cise as pos­si­ble, so you can spend as much time as pos­si­ble con­nect­ing with your Loved Ones instead of with the World Wide Web.

• Your Brain: Capa­ble of Great­ness, Hard-wired for Survival
• How Phys­i­cal Exer­cise Ben­e­fits the Brain
• Brain changes seen in cab­bies who take ‘The Knowledge’
• How Cul­tural Evo­lu­tion Out­paces Nat­ural Evolution
• Cog­ni­tive Test­ing Pro­gram Fails Sol­diers, Leav­ing Brain Injuries Undetected
• Cog­ni­tive Behav­iour Ther­apy Helps Adults with ADHD
• Check­list to Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing and Brain Health Claims
• Could study­ing the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?
• New Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012
• The Sharp­Brains Guide: Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine Best­seller in Ama­zon Kin­dle Store
• Offi­cial selec­tion  by AARP of Best Books on Brain Fitness
• Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and Neurogenesis
• Invi­ta­tion for Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Par­tic­i­pants to Com­ment on Meet­ing Report

Wish­ing you a won­der­ful end of 2011 and a happy and suc­cess­ful 2012!

PS: thirty-nine peo­ple have reg­is­tered since this past Tues­day to par­tic­i­pate in the upcom­ing Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012. Please remem­ber we will only be able to acco­mo­date the first two hun­dred reg­is­trants, so please take a look soon to see if you are inter­ested in joining!

We are pleased to announce a new online course designed to equip par­tic­i­pants with the under­stand­ing and infor­ma­tion required to apply emerg­ing sci­ence and tools to enhance brain health and func­tion­al­ity across the lifespan.

Course descrip­tion: Infor­ma­tion over­load and longer lives expose our brains to more demands than even before. This fast-paced and inter­ac­tive online course will exam­ine the emerg­ing sci­ence of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and cog­ni­tive reserve and sur­vey lat­est tools and best prac­tices to equip you to become your own ‘brain fit­ness coach’ and address per­sonal and pro­fes­sional pri­or­i­ties. Avail­able online from any­where with an Inter­net con­nec­tion, this course will help you pin­point ways to opti­mize brain health and func­tion­al­ity and delay decline, nav­i­gat­ing the maze of frag­mented research, super­fi­cial media cov­er­age and exag­ger­ated mar­ket­ing claims. The course is based on The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness –recently named a Best Book by AARP– and Sharp­Brains’ new ABBC frame­work (Address Basics, Build Capac­i­ties), and includes weekly read­ings and activities.

Mechan­ics: The course con­sists of four two-hour-long live online ses­sions to be held in March 2012 (detailed syl­labus avail­able), and an online pri­vate forum for Fac­ulty and Par­tic­i­pants to inter­act dur­ing March and April 2012.

Who this is for: This course is for any­one who wants to under­stand how emerg­ing cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science can be applied to enhance brain health and per­for­mance, and who is will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in a fast-paced course that lever­ages e-learning to facil­i­tate a global learn­ing experience.

Note: In order to ensure a valu­able and inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence, par­tic­i­pa­tion will be lim­ited to the first 200 indi­vid­u­als who register.

Fac­ulty:

• Instruc­tor: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (SharpBrains)
• Guest Lec­tur­ers: Alvaro Pascual-Leone (Har­vard Med­ical School), Robert M. Bilder (UCLA Semel Insti­tute for Neu­ro­science and Human Behavior)

To Learn More and Reg­is­ter, please visit the course page: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012.

To assist those look­ing for ideas, prod­ucts and ser­vices in the brain training/ health area, either as hol­i­day gifts or New Year Res­o­lu­tions, let us share this resource: Sharp­Brains’ Check­list to eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing and Brain Health claims, includ­ing Ten Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram— and a brief expla­na­tion of why each ques­tion is important.