Brain Teasers Make Seniors More Open to New Ven­tures (med­page today):

- ” A cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram that included Sudoku and cross­word puz­zles made older adults more open to new expe­ri­ences, accord­ing to a pre­lim­i­nary study.”

- “Older adults undergo changes in per­son­al­ity, includ­ing shifts in open­ness or will­ing­ness to seek out new and cog­ni­tively chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ences. A num­ber of inter­ven­tions have been designed to enrich cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in older adults, but lit­tle has been done to develop open­ness, the authors explained.” Read the rest of this entry »

Obe­sity linked to Cog­ni­tion (Health­Canal):

- “Obese peo­ple tend to per­form worse than healthy peo­ple at cog­ni­tive tasks like plan­ning ahead, a lit­er­a­ture review has found, con­clud­ing that psy­cho­log­i­cal tech­niques used to treat anorex­ics could help obese peo­ple too.” Read the rest of this entry »

New study shows Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion improves brain func­tion­ing in ADHD stu­dents (press release):

- “Prior research shows ADHD chil­dren have slower brain devel­op­ment and a reduced abil­ity to cope with stress,” said Dr. Stixrud. “Vir­tu­ally every­one finds it dif­fi­cult to pay atten­tion, orga­nize them­selves and get things done when they’re under stress,” he explained. “Stress inter­feres with Read the rest of this entry »

Although I no longer main­tain a clin­i­cal prac­tice, for years I worked with chil­dren with ADHD and their fam­i­lies. One thing I heard from many par­ents was that their child responded well to phys­i­cal exer­cise, that it helped their chil­dren burn off excess energy and main­tain a calmer and more focused state.

Indeed, evi­dence from sev­eral large-scale exper­i­men­tal stud­ies sug­gests that phys­i­cal activ­ity train­ing can have a pos­i­tive influ­ence on children’s cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you read The Brain That Changes Itself: Sto­ries of Per­sonal Tri­umph from the Fron­tiers of Brain Sci­ence, the great book on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity by Nor­man Doidge? If  so, you will have heard about the Arrow­smith School/ Pro­gram, which was also one of the Top Ten Final­ists in 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards.  The fol­low­ing is an excerpt from Brain School: Sto­ries of chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and atten­tion dis­or­ders who changed their lives by improv­ing their cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing (Novem­ber 2010; $22), a new book from Eaton Arrow­smith School’s (EAS) founder and direc­tor, Howard Eaton. It tells the story of how chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties (dyslexia, ADHD, etc.) can over­come edu­ca­tional obsta­cles by reor­ga­niz­ing their brains. An inspir­ing book about how cog­ni­tive pro­grams can result in both aca­d­e­mic and social suc­cess.  Read the rest of this entry »

When you think of how the PC has altered the fab­ric of soci­ety, per­mit­ting instant access to infor­ma­tion and automat­ing processes beyond our wildest dreams, it is instruc­tive to con­sider that much of this progress was dri­ven by Moore’s law. Halv­ing the size of semi­con­duc­tor every 18 months catal­ysed an expo­nen­tial accel­er­a­tion in performance.

Why is this story rel­e­vant to mod­ern neu­ro­science and the work­ings of the brain? Because trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­log­i­cal progress arises out of choice and the actions of indi­vid­u­als who see poten­tial for change, and we may well be on the verge of such progress. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day. To raise aware­ness and funds, asso­ci­a­tions world­wide orga­nize mul­ti­ple activ­i­ties includ­ing impor­tant Mem­ory Walks, and a new report helps quan­tify the grow­ing per­sonal and eco­nomic bur­den of the disease.

Among the report findings:

• Close to 36 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide have demen­tia today
• Demen­tia care costs around 1 per­cent of the world’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP), or 604 bil­lion US dol­lars. Of these, 252 bil­lion rep­re­sent indi­rect costs of care, while annual direct med­ical costs account for 96 bil­lion, and direct non-medical costs for 256 billion
• By 2030, world­wide soci­etal costs will increase by over 85 percent

The good news?

• That the num­ber 1 rea­son for the bad news is sim­ple: we live longer than ever before
• That, while there is noth­ing we can do today to pre­vent Alzheimer’s pathol­ogy, there is much we can do, as indi­vid­u­als and as a soci­ety, to build up Cog­ni­tive Reserve and sig­nif­i­cantly delay cog­ni­tive decline and Alzheimer’s symptoms

Which is why there is so much ongo­ing inno­va­tion to develop tools to effi­ciently mea­sure and enhance cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing and reserve and to fos­ter active aging.

Time per­haps for a World Cog­ni­tive Reserve’s Day?

Next Tues­day, Novem­ber 3rd: I’ll be pre­sent­ing the Sharp­Brains Guide to a business/ entre­pre­neur­ial audi­ence at the San Fran­cisco Chap­ter of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Cor­po­rate Growth (you can reg­is­ter online).

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 improve brain func­tion and fit­ness. This talk will pro­vide an overview of the most recent research, guide­lines and resources to “Use It and Improve It”, sum­ma­riz­ing the main find­ings and top­ics from the new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. We will debunk 10 com­mon brain fit­ness myths; dis­cuss how the brain works and the 4 pil­lars of brain main­te­nance; explain the dif­fer­ence between men­tal exer­cise and men­tal activ­ity and iden­tify prac­ti­cal ways to inte­grate this research into our work and lives for max­i­mum brain health and performance.

To order book: Here. (has been among Amazon.com’s Top 10 Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine books basi­cally since publication!)

Over the last few weeks I have given a cou­ple of AARP-sponsored talks, both in Eng­lish and in Span­ish (this was my first Span­ish pre­sen­ta­tion on a topic I mostly dis­cuss in Eng­lish, so I did get some extra brain points by try­ing to trans­late “neu­ro­plas­tic­ity” and “hip­pocam­pus” on the fly), and had a great cou­ple of meet­ings with AARP staff to explore col­lab­o­ra­tions. AARP can obvi­ously play a major role in how ratio­nally this whole cat­e­gory of “brain fit­ness” evolves.

Here you have a cou­ple of my favorite recent media interviews:

4-minute Video inter­view on the Gilbert Guide:
Book Reveals Secrets Once Only Known to Scientists

30-minute radio inter­view on WMBR (MIT cam­pus radio sta­tion):
Par­a­digm Shifts: Brain Fit­ness (mine is the sec­ond inter­view, starts around the middle)

Finally, a grow­ing num­ber of blog­gers are review­ing the book. This is what they say:

• Brain Fit­ness for Coach­ing and Lead­er­ship (Ed Batista at Stan­ford Busi­ness School)
• Is Your Brain a Couch Potato (Doc Gur­ley at SF Gate)
• Essen­tial ref­er­ence for brain fit­ness, cog­ni­tive health, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (High­light Health)
• Fit­brains learn how to learn (Dr. Larry McCleary)
• Learn about cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing (Teen Health 411)
• A great ded­i­ca­tion: to your Unique Brain, and Unique Mind (Play with your mind)
• Very valu­able inter­views (Nucleus Learning)
• Author­i­ta­tive research and per­spec­tive (Green­stein Institute)

You can order The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness here.

You may be read­ing all about brain fit­ness and brain train­ing. It seems every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which often con­tra­dict what you read the month before: Does Gingko Biloba help delay Alzheimer’s Dis­ease? Can phys­i­cal exer­cise help you stay sharp as you age? Which computer-based “brain fit­ness pro­grams”, if any, are worth your money?

All this cov­er­age reflects very excit­ing sci­en­tific find­ings but also poses a key dilemma: How to become an informed life­long learner and con­sumer when there are few and con­tra­dic­tory author­i­ta­tive guidelines?

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (to be pub­lished in May 2009; $24.95) aims to fill that void. This guide is the result of over a year of exten­sive research includ­ing more than a hun­dred inter­views with sci­en­tists, pro­fes­sion­als and con­sumers, and a deep lit­er­a­ture review. Below you have some of the main find­ings from our effort. The guide not only cov­ers these aspects in more depth and offers prac­ti­cal guid­ance, but also includes 18 inter­views with promi­nent sci­en­tists to help you under­stand the research better.

Can we intro­duce you to your Brain?

The Guide will start at the obvi­ous start­ing point: The Human Brain. In order to make informed deci­sions about brain health, one needs to first under­stand the basic orga­ni­za­tion of the human brain and how it tends to change as we get older.

* The brain is com­posed of a num­ber of regions serv­ing dis­tinct func­tions. For­get IQ: our life and pro­duc­tiv­ity depend on a vari­ety of brain func­tions, not just one.

* There is noth­ing inher­ently fixed in the tra­jec­tory of how brain func­tions evolve as we age. Your lifestyle, actions, and even thoughts, do matter.

The 4 Pil­lars of Brain Maintenance

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is the life­long capac­ity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stim­u­la­tion of learn­ing and expe­ri­ence. The lat­est sci­en­tific research shows that spe­cific lifestyles and actions can, no mat­ter our age, improve the health and level of func­tion­ing of our brains.

What fac­tors seem to have the most influ­ence? Read the rest of this entry »

Given the grow­ing media cov­er­age men­tion­ing the terms Cog­ni­tive Reserve and Brain Reserve, you may be ask­ing your­self, “What exactly is my Cog­ni­tive (or Brain) Reserve?”

The cog­ni­tive reserve hypoth­e­sis, tested in mul­ti­ple stud­ies, states that indi­vid­u­als with more cog­ni­tive reserve can expe­ri­ence more Alzheimer’s dis­ease pathol­ogy in the brain (more plaques and tan­gles) with­out devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease symptoms.

How does that work? Sci­en­tists are not sure but two pos­si­bil­i­ties are con­sid­ered.
1. One is that more cog­ni­tive reserve means more brain reserve, that is more neu­rons and con­nec­tions (synapses) between neu­rons. Indi­vid­u­als with more synapses would then have more synapses to lose before the crit­i­cal thresh­old for Alzheimer’s Dis­ease is reached.
2. Another pos­si­bil­ity is that more cog­ni­tive reserve means more com­pen­satory processes. The brain of indi­vid­u­als with more cog­ni­tive reserve would use more alter­na­tive net­works to com­pen­sate for the dam­ages caused by the pathol­ogy in pre­vi­ously used networks.

In a newly pub­lished study, Roe and col­leagues from Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in St. Louis, used the num­ber of years of edu­ca­tion as a mea­sure of cog­ni­tive reserve. Why years of edu­ca­tion? Because pre­vi­ous stud­ies have shown that peo­ple who have more edu­ca­tion also exhibit a greater resis­tance to Alzheimer’s symp­toms, even while patho­log­i­cal changes are occur­ring in the brain (see Ben­nett el al., 2003 or Roe, Xiong, et al., 2008).

Roe and her col­leagues stud­ied 198 indi­vid­u­als whose mean age was 67. Out of these 198 indi­vid­u­als, 161 were non­de­mented and 37 were diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

All the par­tic­i­pants in the study took a Read the rest of this entry »