As part of the research behind the book The Sharp­Brains Guide for Brain Fit­ness we inter­viewed dozens of lead­ing cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and experts world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have a num­ber of take-aways to report.

What can we clearly say today that we couldn’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­ago Ramon y Cajal claimed in the XX cen­tury, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”, may well become real­ity in the XXI.

And trans­form Edu­ca­tion, Health, Train­ing, and Gam­ing in the process, since Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have Sharp­Brains’ 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles, ranked by the num­ber of peo­ple who have read each arti­cle in 2008.

Please note that, since the first arti­cle already includes most of our most pop­u­lar brain teasers, we have excluded teasers from the rest of the rank­ing. (If those 50 are not enough for you, you can also try these brain teasers).

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From the web­site of the invest­ing ven­ture cap­i­tal firm, Milk Capital:

Milk Cap­i­tal invests USD 5 mil­lion in CogniFit

–July 31st, 2008. “Milk Cap­i­tal invest USD 5M in Cog­nifit, a com­pany spe­cial­ized in cog­ni­tive and brain soft­ware The solu­tions devel­oped by Cog­niFit are designed to be applied to a large num­ber of fields, such as health­care, dri­ving, edu­ca­tion, sport and many oth­ers. The field of appli­ca­tions is almost unlim­ited as it is only restricted by the capac­i­ties of the brain.”

-“Since its estab­lish­ment in 1999, as a start-up in the Ofer Group’s Incu­ba­tor, Naiot, Cog­niFit attracted 4.2M$. The com­pany has grown sig­nif­i­cantly and today, its soft­ware is dis­trib­uted in a large num­ber of coun­tries, from the United States through France to New Zealand, and has been trans­lated into ten lan­guages. This 5M$ invest­ment of MILK CAPITAL should drive the devel­op­ment of Cog­niFit all the more than the com­pany intends to con­quer new mar­kets by means of new prod­ucts and appli­ca­tions all over the world.”

Pre­vi­ous post on one of CogniFit’s prod­ucts, Dri­ve­Fit: Dri­ve­Fit; Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Dri­ving.

Other recent ven­ture rounds in the brain fit­ness soft­ware space:

- Feb­ru­ary 2008: Dakim raises $10,6 mil­lion
– June 2008: Lumos Labs (Lumos­ity) raises $3 millions

I spoke at the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia in Feb­ru­ary to pro­vide an overview of the fas­ci­nat­ing land­scape. The write-up: Brain Train­ing Games: Con­text, Trends, Ques­tions.

For in-depth infor­ma­tion on the whole cat­e­gory –size, cus­tomer seg­ments, player land­scape, clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion, trends– you may enjoy our Mar­ket Report.

Over the last year we have inter­viewed a num­ber of lead­ing brain health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report.

What can we say today that we couldn’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­ago Ramon y Cajal claimed in the XX cen­tury, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”, may well become real­ity in the XXI. And influ­ence Edu­ca­tion, Health, Train­ing, and Gam­ing in the process.

We have only scratched the sur­face of what science-based struc­tured cog­ni­tive (i.e., men­tal) exer­cise can do for brain health and pro­duc­tiv­ity. We are now wit­ness­ing the birth of a new indus­try that crosses tra­di­tional sec­tor bound­aries and that may help us under­stand, assess and train our brains, har­ness­ing the grow­ing research about neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons), neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence), cog­ni­tive train­ing and emo­tional regulation.

Let’s now debunk 10 myths, still too preva­lent, that may pre­vent us from see­ing the full poten­tial of this emerg­ing field:

Myth 1: It’s all in our genes.

Real­ity: A big com­po­nent of our life­long brain health and devel­op­ment depends on what we do with our brains. Our own actions, not only our genes, influ­ence our lives to a large extent. Genes pre­dis­pose us, not deter­mine our fates.

“Indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tally stim­u­lat­ing lives, through edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion and leisure activ­i­ties, have reduced risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s. Stud­ies sug­gest that they have 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing the dis­ease” — Dr. Yaakov Stern, Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at Colum­bia University.

Myth 2: The field of Cognitive/ Brain Fit­ness is too new to be credible.

Real­ity: The field rests on solid foun­da­tions dat­ing back more decades — what is new is the num­ber and range of tools that are now start­ing to be avail­able for healthy individuals.

“Rig­or­ous and tar­geted cog­ni­tive train­ing has been used in clin­i­cal prac­tice for many years. Exer­cis­ing our brains sys­tem­at­i­cally is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies.” — Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, and dis­ci­ple of Alexan­der Luria.

“Today, thanks to fMRI and other neu­roimag­ing tech­niques, we are start­ing to under­stand the impact our actions can have on spe­cific parts of the brain.” — Dr. Judith Beck, Direc­tor of the Beck Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive Ther­apy and Research.

Myth 3: Med­ica­tion is and will remain the only evidence-based inter­ven­tion for a num­ber of brain-related problems.

Real­ity: Cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams are start­ing to Read the rest of this entry »

It is always good to stim­u­late our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selec­tion of the 50 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed the most in our blog and speak­ing engagements.

Fun exper­i­ments on how our brains work

1. Do you think you know the col­ors?: try the Stroop Test.

2. Can you count?: Bas­ket­ball atten­tion exper­i­ment (Interactive).

3. Who is this?: A very impor­tant lit­tle guy (Interactive).

4. How is this pos­si­ble?.

5. Take the Senses Chal­lenge (Interactive).

6. Are there more brain con­nec­tions or leaves in the Ama­zon?.

Atten­tion

7. How are your divided atten­tion skills? check out “Inside and Out­side” (Inter­ac­tive, from Mind­Fit).

8. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? try “Two in One” (Inter­ac­tive, from Mind­Fit)

9. Count the Fs in this sen­tence.

10. What do you see? can you alter­nate between 2 views?.

Mem­ory

11. Easy one…draw the face of a penny, please. Read the rest of this entry »

There are sev­eral brain fit­ness top­ics where we still see a large dis­con­nect between research and pop­u­lar knowl­edge, and a major one is the rela­tion­ship between mem­ory and stress. Car­o­line and I col­lab­o­rated on this post to bring you some con­text and tips.

Our soci­ety has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with phys­i­cal, imme­di­ately life-threatening crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and ill­nesses that gnaw away at us slowly, that stress us out and that, believe it or not, end up hurt­ing our mem­ory and brain.

Dr. Robert Sapol­sky, in an inter­view about his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, points out that humans uniquely “can get stressed sim­ply with thought, turn­ing on the same stress response as does the zebra.” But, the zebra releases the stress hor­mones through life-preserving action, while we usu­ally just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.

What is the rela­tion­ship between stress and mem­ory? We all know chronic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our mem­ory? Inter­est­ingly, acute stress can help us focus and remem­ber things more vividly. Chronic stress, on the other hand, reduce our abil­ity to focus and can specif­i­cally dam­age cells in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain struc­ture crit­i­cal to encod­ing short term memory.

When is stress chronic? When one feels Read the rest of this entry »

Ellen recently wrote a nice post titled Top Ten Tips for Men Who Lead Women, and asked for vol­un­teers to offer a com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tive. I hope you enjoy!

1. We men know we are hard to lead, and that can be stress­ful for you and for us. You should know that stress affects short term mem­ory, so it is impor­tant to be able to man­age stress well, with med­i­ta­tion or other meth­ods. Check here your level of stress to see how much this point applies to you. Please remem­ber, laugh­ing is good for your brain.
2. Don’t think too much–we don’t. If we do, we try to find ways to self-talk us out of that uncom­fort­able state.
3. Please remem­ber our hum­ble ori­gins. We are tool-using ani­mals, which is why we like play­ing with all kinds of toys, from a car to that blackberry.
4. When we are stub­born, you are enti­tled to remind us that even apes can learn–if you help us see the point. Show us that change is pos­si­ble at any age. Believe it or not, we can lis­ten.
5. Espe­cially if we can find com­mon ground: what about chat­ting about sports psy­chol­ogy?.
6. Please moti­vate us to lis­ten and be open minded to learn with wise words. If that doesn’t work, please per­se­vere with nice words. Please don’t ever say that we are worse than pink dol­phins–if we feel attacked, we’ll just disengage.
7. Some­times we don’t coop­er­ate enough?. Please give us time for our brains to fully evolve, we have been try­ing for a while!
8. You can help us grow. For the next lead­er­ship work­shop, buy us copies of the Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain book. You may think we don’t need this… but at our core we really want to get bet­ter at Grat­i­tude and Altru­ism. We want to be able to play with the ulti­mate toy: our genes!
9. If that book is sold out, we could also ben­e­fit from read­ing Damasio’s Descartes Error and dis­cover how emo­tions are impor­tant for good decision-making. Or help us improve our abil­ity to read emo­tional mes­sages. As long as we believe we can some­how ben­e­fit from it, we’ll try!
10. If you lead some­one with Bill Gates-like Frontal Lobes, con­grat­u­late him for his brain. If you don’t, encour­age him to fol­low track. Please be patient…

Now, any tak­ers for Top Ten Tips for Women Who Lead Women or Men Who Lead Men?

We all know chronic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our mem­ory? Inter­est­ingly, acute stress can help you focus and remem­ber things more vividly. Chronic stress, on the other hand, reduces your abil­ity to focus and can specif­i­cally dam­age cells in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain struc­ture crit­i­cal to encod­ing short term memory.

When is stress chronic? When you feel out of con­trol of your life. You may feel irri­ta­ble or anx­ious. While every indi­vid­ual varies in their response the type and quan­tity of stress, there are some things you can do to feel more in con­trol of your envi­ron­ment. This sense of empow­er­ment can lower your stress, and as a result, help your memory.

What are some ways to feel in con­trol and less stressed?

1. Use a cal­en­dar to sched­ule impor­tant things. Give items a date and a priority.
2. Make a list of things that need to be done. Even if it’s a long list, it can be reward­ing to cross off items as you com­plete them.
3. Use a con­tem­pla­tive prac­tice like yoga or med­i­ta­tion to calm your mind and body or try using a heart rate vari­abil­ity sen­sor to learn to relax and focus your mind and body.
4. Ask your­self how impor­tant some­thing truly is to you. Maybe you’re stress­ing over some­thing that you are bet­ter off just let­ting go.
5. Del­e­gate what you can.
6. Get reg­u­lar exer­cise to burn off those excess stress hormones.
7. Get enough sleep so that you can recharge your batteries.
8. Eat well and reduce your caf­feine and sugar intake which can add to your sense of jitteriness.
9. Main­tain your social net­work. Shar­ing con­cerns with friends and fam­ily can help you feel less overwhelmed.
10. Give your­self 10 min­utes just to relax every day.

Fur­ther Read­ing on Stress and Mem­ory
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapol­sky, Ph.D.
A Primer on Mul­ti­task­ing
Sim­ple Stress Test
Quick Stress Buster
Is there such thing as GOOD stress?
Brain Yoga: Stress — Killing You Softly

The Seat­tle Times has a good brief arti­cle today on Posit Sci­ence, Happy Neu­ron Games and us (they men­tion Mind­Fit Brain Work­out to “work on short-term mem­ory, nam­ing, divided atten­tion, plan­ning, hand-eye coor­di­na­tion and other cog­ni­tive measures.”).

Check Is your brain ready for the challenge?

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For the record (given a reader’s com­ment below I changed the word “focus” with “men­tion”), we think Posit Sci­ence offers a great and inten­sive pro­gram mostly focused on audi­tory pro­cess­ing, that Hap­pyNeu­ron offers a wider vari­ety of games online so it is a less struc­tured “pro­gram”, and Mind­Fit is a com­bi­na­tion of both approaches (struc­tured pro­gram, wide vari­ety). Each of them are use­ful tools-it depends on what you may want to accom­plish. Sharp­Brains does not pro­duce any of them.

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing. It was a fas­ci­nat­ing mix of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors talk­ing with and lis­ten­ing to each other. Some top­ics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought — insight on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed and how they influ­ence each other.

Using dra­matic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies.… The Con­fer­ence cre­ates an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary forum — a meet­ing place for neu­ro­sci­en­tists, edu­ca­tors, psy­chol­o­gists, clin­i­cians, and par­ents — to exam­ine these new research find­ings with respect to their applic­a­bil­ity in the class­room and clin­i­cal practice.

Take-aways

• Humans are a mix­ture of cog­ni­tion and emo­tion, and both ele­ments are essen­tial to func­tion and learn properly
• Edu­ca­tors and pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers need to learn more about the brain, how it grows, and how to cul­ti­vate it
• Stu­dents of all ages need to be both chal­lenged and nur­tured in order to succeed
• Peo­ple learn dif­fer­ently — try to teach and learn through as many dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties as pos­si­ble (engage lan­guage, motor skills, artis­tic cre­ation, social inter­ac­tion, sen­sory input, etc.)
• While short-term stress can heighten your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, long term stress kills you — you need to find bal­ance and release
• Test anx­i­ety and sub­se­quent poor test results can be improved with behav­ioral train­ing with feed­back based on heart rate variability
• Dr. Robert Sapol­sky is a very very enlight­en­ing and fun speaker
• Allow time for rest and con­sol­i­da­tion of learned material
• Emo­tional mem­o­ries are eas­ier to remember
• Con­fer­ences like these per­form a real ser­vice in fos­ter­ing dia­logues between sci­en­tists and educators

Read the rest of this entry »