Time for the Novem­ber edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of resources and insights on how to invest in our brains, includ­ing top­ics such as brain health, med­i­ta­tion, neu­ropsy­chol­ogy, brain train­ing games, chemo brain, dyslexia, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, cog­ni­tive biases, stress, and more. Not to for­get a cou­ple of fun teasers. Enjoy!

Brain Fit­ness Q&A Sessions:

• Tran­script: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Men­tal Cap­i­tal­ism and Non-invasive Cog­ni­tive Enhancement
• Tran­script: Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­ory and the Brain
• Tran­script: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum on Med­i­ta­tion and Neuropsychology

The Big Picture:

• Steve Jobs: Com­put­ers are the Bicy­cles of the Mind
• Brain Fit­ness: Def­i­n­i­tion, Pri­or­i­ties, and Links to Neu­rolead­er­ship, by Alvaro Fernandez
• Is the Uni­ver­sity Cen­tered on The Learner or the Pro­fes­sor?, by Miguel Angel Escotet
• Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Med­ical Blog­ging, by Alvaro Fernandez

New Research:

• Can Brain Train­ing Games and Biofeed­back Help Pre­vent Depres­sion, by Dr. Pas­cale Michelon
• ‘Chemo Brain’: MRI Shows Brain Changes After Chemotherapy
• Dyslexia not related to intel­li­gence. Impli­ca­tions for dis­crep­ancy model?
• Vet­er­ans learn to use yoga and med­i­ta­tion exer­cises to recon­nect with their emotions
• Applied Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: Rewiring the Brain to Ease Pain

New Books:

• What makes your brain happy and why you should do the oppo­site, by David DiS­alvo (We’ll have a Live Q&A on Decem­ber 9th)
• How cog­ni­tive illu­sions blind us to reason
• The Series on Stress & the Brain, by Dr. Jerome Schultz, con­tin­ues with: The Lit­tle Brain Down Under, The Stress Response Explained, The Human Brain Likes to Be in Bal­ance, To Fight, Flee or Freeze –That is the Question

Brain Teasers:

• Math Teaser: Unfin­ished The­sis, by Maria Lando
• Math Teaser: How to Choose a Mans Shirt, by Maria Lando
• How many Share This Arti­cle links, right below, do you know how to use? Try a cou­ple of them and share via Face­book and Twitter!

Thank you for your inter­est and atten­tion and have a great December.

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­ated by Harry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP. You learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple weeks ago I attended the Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Con­fer­ence, ESCoNS, at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia San Fran­cisco. The speak­ers’ talks were insight­ful, sur­pris­ing, and inspir­ing in many regards. The pur­pose of this meet­ing was to bring together great minds in a vari­ety of fields from neu­ro­science to game design and to come up with some ideas how to make game based cog­ni­tive train­ing a real­ity as an effec­tive ther­apy for many of today’s most chal­leng­ing dis­or­ders and deficits. Many of the sci­en­tists also thought that game based ther­a­pies for cog­ni­tive deficits could be used as enhance­ment tools for healthy indi­vid­u­als as well. Read the rest of this entry »

You may find that too much media cov­er­age on how to take good care of our brains is con­fus­ing, if not poten­tially mis­lead­ing. In The True Story — is men­tal exer­cise good, bad, or irrel­e­vant, Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon dis­sects for you a recent large study which was largely reported as bad news when in fact it brings good news (no mir­a­cles, but good news).  We hope you enjoy her insight­ful analy­sis — and all the excel­lent arti­cles that fol­low in the Sep­tem­ber edi­tion of our monthly eNewslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can use the box in the right col­umn to sub­scribe and receive this newslet­ter via email.

Do you Mind

Dear sapi­ens sapi­ens, do you mind: Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man encour­ages you to ask your­self the tough ques­tions: Do you mind your brain? Do you know your nog­gin’? Can you claim cere­bral own­er­ship or is your men­tal a rental? Plus, why we need a new lex­i­con for pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion interventions.

Time for a Cog­ni­tive Reserve Day: with 36 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide with demen­tia today and related care costs around 1 per­cent of the world’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP), and grow­ing fast, may it be time to com­ple­ment World Alzheimer’s Day with Word Cog­ni­tive Reserve’s Day?

Food for Thought

Debunk­ing learn­ing styles: a recent arti­cle in The New York Times debunks many old myths about learn­ing and learn­ing styles, sum­ma­riz­ing emerg­ing cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science findings.

Sci­ence for the Peo­ple: quick now — think of a ques­tion, any ques­tion, that comes to mind. Chances are some one in the excel­lent ros­ter of 28 sci­ence blog­gers who took part in Sharp­Brains’ edi­tion of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica blog car­ni­val answered it.

Food for Thought — II

‘West­ern’ Style Diet Increases Risk of ADHD: Dr. David Rabiner reports how, on the one hand, a recent large study track­ing 1172 Aus­tralian ado­les­cents and their par­ents found that dietary fac­tors can play an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of atten­tion deficits, at least for some children.

A Con­trolled Trial of Herbal Treat­ment for ADHD: on the other hand, Dr. Rabiner adds, a recent randomized-controlled trial sup­ports the idea that appro­pri­ately pre­pared and tar­geted herbal com­pounds have the poten­tial to be ther­a­peu­tic and reduce atten­tion deficit symptoms.

Shap­ing the Future

Q&A about the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion: we have received many good ques­tions about the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil … here you are our answers.

Meet the Experts: since 2006 we have inter­viewed dozens of experts on the future of cog­ni­tive enhance­ment and men­tal health, build­ing up the foun­da­tion for the type of inno­va­tion the Sharp­Brains Coun­cil wants to fos­ter. Here you can find what 26 leading-edge sci­en­tists and experts believe and why.

Get­ting ther­apy through your iPhone: The Daily Beast (a great new media out­let) just pub­lished this excel­lent arti­cle on an emerg­ing “small rev­o­lu­tion” in men­tal health care.

Brain Teaser

Brain Teaser: are you ready to test your men­tal rota­tion skills?

Please feel free to share this monthly eNewslet­ter to friends and col­leagues. Have a great month of October!

We have received many good ques­tions about the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion — below you have some answers.

Ques­tion: We are based in Asia/ Australia/ Europe. Will time dif­fer­ences pre­vent us from par­tic­i­pat­ing in monthly brief­ings and ben­e­fit­ing from the Council?

Answer: We will do our best to facil­i­tate a truly global com­mu­nity and exchange. Please con­sider that…

1. we will sched­ule monthly brief­ings at 2 sep­a­rate times, one at 9am US Pacific Time, the other at 4pm US Pacific Time, both cov­er­ing the same topic (but per­haps with dif­fer­ent guest speak­ers). And brief­ings will be recorded.
2. most activ­i­ties and resources are asyn­chro­nous any­way. Our mar­ket intel­li­gence reports and other mate­ri­als are avail­able via this members-only online com­mu­nity 24/7, same as online dis­cus­sion forums, focused groups to track/ dis­cuss spe­cific top­ics, the abil­ity to ask ques­tions to and con­nect with other members…

Ques­tion: Will some­thing change regard­ing SharpBrains.com blog and monthly newslet­ter, which are great free resources?

Answer: We plan to  main­tain those free resources, focus­ing on con­tent of a gen­eral inter­est for every­one with a brain. The Council’s pur­pose is to cre­ate a new valu­able in-depth resource and com­mu­nity for pro­fes­sion­als and orga­ni­za­tions active with brain fit­ness ini­tia­tives, so we can all learn and share dur­ing the year, and help the field mature. That will include Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. John Docherty is an Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at the Weill Med­ical Col­lege, Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, Direc­tor of Post Grad­u­ate Edu­ca­tion there, and Chief Med­ical Offi­cer of Brain Resource. Trained as a clin­i­cal research fel­low in neu­ropsy­chophar­ma­col­ogy at NIMH, he later returned as Chief of the Psy­choso­cial Treat­ments Research Branch, respon­si­ble for all fed­er­ally sup­ported psy­choso­cial treat­ment research in men­tal health nation­wide. He over­saw the land­mark National Col­lab­o­ra­tive Study of the Treat­ment of Depres­sion and served as a mem­ber and Chair­man for over 10 years on the NIMH and then NIDA Treat­ment Research IRGs. Dr. Docherty has wide expe­ri­ence in suc­cess­fully imple­ment­ing inno­va­tion in both clin­i­cal oper­a­tions and man­aged health care. He founded North­east Psy­chi­atric Asso­ciates in 1985. As National Med­ical Direc­tor for National Med­ical Enter­prises, he over­saw med­ical con­trol and qual­ity improve­ment in 74 hos­pi­tals in 34 states. He was the Exec­u­tive Vice-President and Chief Med­ical Offi­cer for Merit Behav­ioral Care, which then cov­ered 30 mil­lion peo­ple. In 1998, he founded Com­pre­hen­sive Neu­ro­Science (CNS). Its Care Man­age­ment Tech­nolo­gies are cur­rently imple­mented in 17 state Med­ic­aid plans. Dr Docherty has received numer­ous hon­ors and awards and has authored over 100 sci­en­tific publications.

(Editor’s note: this inter­view with Dr. John Docherty was orig­i­nally pub­lished in Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan, pub­lished in July 2010)

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Dr. Docherty, it is a plea­sure to be with you today to dis­cuss the main theme of Sharp­Brains’ 2010 mar­ket report – how the con­ver­gence of sci­en­tific find­ings and tech­nol­ogy plat­forms and tools is reshap­ing how as a soci­ety and as indi­vid­u­als we will take care of cog­ni­tion and men­tal well­ness along the life­course, giv­ing birth to the emerg­ing dig­i­tal brain health and fit­ness mar­ket. Can you first briefly dis­cuss your career tra­jec­tory and your cur­rent role at Brain Resource?

Dr. John Docherty: Sure. The main theme of my work since the 1960s has remained the same, “How do we put knowl­edge into effec­tive use to improve men­tal health?” Over the last cen­tury, med­i­cine made tremen­dous progress in gen­er­at­ing sci­en­tific and clin­i­cal knowl­edge. Basic research dis­cov­ery sci­ence and clin­i­cal treat­ment devel­op­ment sci­ence have made great progress. Within Psy­chi­a­try there was stan­dard set­ting advance in the 1960’s through the NIMH-VA coop­er­a­tive stud­ies to the method­ol­ogy of assess­ing the effi­cacy of psy­chophar­ma­co­log­i­cal drugs. This work estab­lished prin­ci­ples adopted for the study of med­ica­tions in the other areas of med­i­cine. The study of psy­chother­apy, how­ever, lagged in devel­op­ment. In my role of Chief of the Psy­choso­cial Treat­ments Branch of the NIMH , I helped con­tribute to the advance of that work by sup­port­ing the efforts of an extra­or­di­nary group of indi­vid­u­als led by Irene Waskow who car­ried out the TDCRP. This study estab­lished the method­olo­gies that made pos­si­ble the effec­tive sci­en­tific study of the effi­cacy of psy­chother­a­pies. The evi­dence base and of such treat­ments as CBT, DBT, Moti­va­tional Enhance­ment Treat­ment and other evidence-based psy­chother­a­pies derives directly from this study and its sem­i­nal influ­ence. This was a con­tri­bu­tion to the sci­ence of Clin­i­cal Treat­ment Devel­op­ment research.

I would say that my major inter­est, how­ever, has been in the next step, the sci­ence of knowl­edge trans­fer. There has been and remains a long and costly (in terms par­tic­u­larly of unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing) lag between the devel­op­ment of new knowl­edge and its com­mon and effec­tive use in practice.

In order the help the field moved for­ward, I have worked for the last 20 years in the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of meth­ods to effec­tively trans­fer knowl­edge into prac­tice. Read the rest of this entry »

An inde­pen­dent expert panel orga­nized by the NIH released yes­ter­day a thought­ful report on the state of the sci­ence for pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and cog­ni­tive decline. The report, avail­able here, sum­ma­rizes the panel’s review by saying:

• “Firm con­clu­sions can­not be drawn about the asso­ci­a­tion of mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors with cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”
• “There is insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to sup­port the use of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal agents or dietary sup­ple­ments to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s dis­ease. How­ever, ongo­ing addi­tional stud­ies includ­ing (but not lim­ited to) anti-hypertensive med­ica­tions, omega-3 fatty acid, phys­i­cal activ­ity, and cog­ni­tive engage­ment may pro­vide new insight into the pre­ven­tion or delay of cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

To put find­ings in per­spec­tive, let me sug­gest our arti­cle Brain main­te­nance: it’s about cog­ni­tive enhance­ment first, Alzheimer’s delay sec­ond. Before peo­ple get scared away by the sen­tence “there is noth­ing we know of that can pre­vent Alzheimer’s Dis­ease”, every­one should under­stand that this is true but dif­fer­ent from say­ing “there is noth­ing we can do to reduce the prob­a­bil­ity from devel­op­ing AD symp­toms” or “there is noth­ing we can do today to enhance our cog­ni­tive func­tions today and tomor­row” (both areas with solid research and use­ful guide­lines and tools). I gave a talk yes­ter­day dur­ing the San Fran­cisco Mini Med­ical School orga­nized by Cal­i­for­nia Pacific Med­ical Center/ Sut­ter Health, and mak­ing this dis­tinc­tion clear was in fact my main point.

The report pro­vides great read­ing and sev­eral excel­lent rec­om­men­da­tions for future research, includ­ing sev­eral areas we iden­ti­fied dur­ing the Jan­u­ary Sharp­Brains Sum­mit as areas where database-driven auto­mated cog­ni­tive assess­ments are likely to add much value both to research and to clin­i­cal prac­tice in years to come Read the rest of this entry »

Excel­lent Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can cover story:

Tur­bocharg­ing the Brain–Pills to Make You Smarter?

“Will a pill at break­fast improve con­cen­tra­tion and memory—and will it do so with­out long-term detri­ment to your health?”

Their answer, in short: not really, not any­time soon.

I couldn’t agree more. Let’s pay real atten­tion to non-invasive options to aug­ment cog­ni­tion, from exer­cise to cog­ni­tive train­ing and meditation.

For more con­text, you may enjoy my recent arti­cle Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age, pub­lished in Fron­tiers in Neuroscience.

Here you have the Sep­tem­ber 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.

In the cur­rent edi­tion of The Jour­nal on Active Aging, I dis­cuss why we need to Retool “Use it or lose it”, and why rou­tine, doing things inside our com­fort zones, is the most com­mon enemy of the nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge our brains need. You can read the full arti­cle for free Here.

Book Tour

We are glad to report that The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness con­tin­ues to obtain excel­lent endorsements:

“This is the only book that I know of that seam­lessly inte­grates lat­est infor­ma­tion about cog­ni­tive health across the lifes­pan. Very use­ful to any­one inter­ested in brain care.”

–Arthur Kramer, Ph. D., Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy at Uni­ver­sity of Illinois

“…we now have a rock solid primer on brain health that we can rec­om­mend with confidence…I found it par­tic­u­larly effec­tive to start the book with a list of ten brain myths that need debunk­ing.“
–Michael C. Pat­ter­son, for­mer Man­ager NRTA/ Stay­ing Sharp at AARP

The offi­cial book tour starts this week, and includes New York Pub­lic Library!
09/08: Club One Fit­ness Cen­ter, Petaluma, CA
09/09: San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity OLLI
09/11: ASA Brain Health Day, Oak­land, CA
09/23: New York Pub­lic Library, Bronx Library Cen­ter
09/25: New York Pub­lic Library, Stephen Schwarz­man Build­ing
10/06, Smart­Sil­vers MIT North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Palo Alto, CA
10/14: UC-Berkeley OLLI, CA

You can find all the details here. If you haven’t read the book yet, you can order it via Ama­zon Here (print book) or Here (Kin­dle edi­tion). Or ask your local book­store or library.

Brain Reserve

Round-up of April arti­cles and news on neu­ro­science, brain devel­op­ment and cog­ni­tive health:

Games for Health Con­fer­ences to host new Cog­ni­tive Health Track:

For the first time, a new Cog­ni­tive Health track –Pow­ered by Sharp­Brains– will cover eleven brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health top­ics dur­ing the 5th Annual Games for Health Con­fer­ence. The cur­rent price is $379, with a 15% dis­count if you use code “sharp09” (with­out quo­ta­tion) when you reg­is­ter Here. Details: June 11-12th at the Hyatt Har­bor­side Hotel in Boston, MA.

Bilin­gual Babies Get Head Start — Before They Can Talk:

- “Unlike the mono­lin­gual group, the bilin­gual group was able to suc­cess­fully learn a new sound type and use it to pre­dict where each char­ac­ter would pop up…The bilin­gual babies’ skill applies to more than just switch­ing between lan­guages. Mehler likened this appar­ently enhanced cog­ni­tive abil­ity to a brain select­ing “the right tool for the right operation”—also called exec­u­tive function.”

- “In this basic process, the brain, ever flex­i­ble, nim­bly switches from one learned response to another as sit­u­a­tions change…Monolingual babies hone this abil­ity later in their young lives, Mehler suggests.”

Study shows how kids’ stress hurts mem­ory:

“Now, research is pro­vid­ing what could be cru­cial clues to explain how child­hood poverty trans­lates into dim­mer chances of suc­cess: Read the rest of this entry »