Here you have the syl­labus for upcom­ing online course How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach. There are still some seats avail­able, so please take a look and reg­is­ter if interested.

Ses­sion I. Debunk­ing Brain and Brain Fit­ness Myths: We will first debunk pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tions that stand in the way of mak­ing informed deci­sions to spend our time and money wisely. We will explore hot top­ics such as genet­ics vs. envi­ron­ment vs. lifestyle, intel­li­gence, left/ right brain hemi­spheres, “brain age”, cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, sup­ple­ments, learn­ing styles, brain train­ing, neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, cog­ni­tive reserve, and Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. Addi­tion­ally we’ll con­trast the find­ings from a major recent sci­en­tific study with their media cov­er­age, equip­ping par­tic­i­pants to become bet­ter informed read­ers of news and sci­en­tific findings.

When: Wednes­day, March 7th, 11am-1pm US Pacific Time (live ses­sion will be recorded for later view­ing). Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Reader,

Would you mind tak­ing this brief sur­vey to help us bet­ter under­stand your per­cep­tions and needs around cog­ni­tive health, brain fit­ness inno­va­tion and applied neu­ro­science, and how we may be able to serve you bet­ter? Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 1 of the new 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

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

Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine seeks to move away from the cur­rent “1 size fits all, trial and error” approach that has been nec­es­sary because of a lack of evi­dence. Instead, it focuses on Read the rest of this entry »

“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 »

Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) is the global cam­paign, orga­nized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives, to increase pub­lic aware­ness of the progress and ben­e­fits of brain research. Every March, BAW unites the efforts of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Events are 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 »

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!

Thank you for vis­it­ing us today. May we encour­age you to dis­con­nect from the World Wide Web for a few days, includ­ing clos­ing this web page, and to spend time con­nect­ing with your Loved Ones.

Hav­ing said that, if you really really need to read good infor­ma­tion on brain, cog­ni­tion, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, learn­ing and life­long brain health, may we encour­age you to read some of our recent eNewsletters:

• Novem­ber 30th, 2011: Time to Invest in our Brains?
• Octo­ber 28th, 2011: How Stress and Emo­tions Impact Brain Performance
• Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2011: On Brain Train­ing, Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­ogy and the FDA

If you’re look­ing for a great book to read (yes, we’re biased, but we do think it is a great book), please take a look at The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. If you are look­ing for brain teasers and games, look Here.

We’ll be back next week. In the mean­time, let us Wish You Happy Hol­i­days, Merry Christ­mas and Happy Hanukkah!