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 »

Brain func­tion can start declin­ing ‘as early as age 45′ (BBC Health):

“The brain’s abil­ity to func­tion can start to dete­ri­o­rate as early as 45, sug­gests a study in the British Med­ical Jour­nal.  Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don researchers found a 3.6% decline in men­tal rea­son­ing in women and men aged 45–49. They assessed the mem­ory, vocab­u­lary and com­pre­hen­sion skills of 7,000 men and women aged 45 to 70 over 10 years.

The Alzheimer’s Soci­ety said research was needed into how changes in the brain could help demen­tia diag­noses.  Read the rest of this entry »

The recent dis­cov­ery that expe­ri­ence can change brain struc­ture and func­tion at any age has sparked numer­ous health, edu­ca­tion, and pro­duc­tiv­ity appli­ca­tions whose value and lim­i­ta­tions we are only start­ing to grasp.

Brain fit­ness has quickly become a main­stream aspi­ra­tion among baby boomers and elders, pri­mar­ily in North Amer­ica. It has fueled a grow­ing inter­est in brain fit­ness classes, brain fit­ness cen­ters, and brain fit­ness pro­grams, along with atten­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. An increas­ing num­ber of adults want use­ful tools to pro­tect cog­ni­tive health and performance—not nec­es­sar­ily to reverse aging—and what they are find­ing is an expand­ing and noisy mar­ket­place where they (and also pro­fes­sion­als) need to care­fully eval­u­ate their own needs and the avail­able options (Fer­nan­dez and Gold­berg, 2009). Read the rest of this entry »

Over 50 insight­ful and fun mem­bers of the world­wide Sharp­Brains com­mu­nity had the oppor­tu­nity to gather in DC, New York and San Fran­cisco last month in order to meet in per­son –often for the first time!- and to dis­cuss next steps to drive mean­ing­ful inno­va­tion in the brain health and fit­ness space.

It is our plea­sure to invite Sharp­Brains Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants to con­tribute to, and to learn from, this grow­ing net­work, by ask­ing them to please: Read the rest of this entry »

You may have  noticed that Amazon.com is shar­ing aggre­gated data on how ebook read­ers inter­act with the books they are read­ing. For exam­ple, the “Pop­u­lar High­lights” sec­tion (towards the bot­tom of our Kin­dle book page) ranks the Top 10 sen­tences that Kin­dle read­ers have high­lighted and shared while read­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp (April 2009; 182 pages; ranked #1 in Kin­dle Store’s Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine section).

This infor­ma­tion is invalu­able to authors and pub­lish­ers - as you can imag­ine, we’ll make sure to not only main­tain but to elab­o­rate on these top­ics as we pre­pare future edi­tions of the book.

So, what are so far the Top Ten Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, Read the rest of this entry »

AARP recently released a list of Top 5 Best Books for Brain Fit­ness. SharpBrains.com is hon­ored to have pub­lished one of those Top 5 books and to present this Live Q&A Series for you to ask ques­tions to the authors of 3 of those best books on brain fit­ness. Par­tic­i­pants will sub­mit writ­ten ques­tions, mod­er­a­tors will select the most impor­tant and rel­e­vant ques­tions, and book authors will write their answers for every­one to read.

• Novem­ber 1st, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Dr. Gary Small, author of The Mem­ory Bible
• Novem­ber 15th, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness
• Novem­ber 22nd, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain
• (in Span­ish) Novem­ber 29th, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-autor de The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness Read the rest of this entry »

Time for the Sep­tem­ber edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, start­ing with a good brief New Sci­en­tist arti­cle, Maker of cog­ni­tive train­ing game seeks FDA approval: Imag­ine walk­ing away from a doctor’s office with a pre­scrip­tion to play a video game. Brain Plas­tic­ity, the devel­oper of a cog­ni­tive train­ing game, has begun talks with the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) to mar­ket the game as a ther­a­peu­tic drug.

A Course Cor­rec­tion for Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­ogy: A Review of Mar­tin Seligman’s Lat­est Book: As pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion in 1998, Mar­tin Selig­man chal­lenged the psy­cho­log­i­cal com­mu­nity to rad­i­cally change its approach. For too long, he charged, psy­chol­ogy had been pre­oc­cu­pied solely with reliev­ing symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness; instead, he believed it should explore how to thrive in life, not just sur­vive it.

Study: Cog­ni­tive Mark­ers or Bio­mark­ers to man­age Cog­ni­tive Health across the Lifes­pan? Mea­sur­ing people’s changes in cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties is a bet­ter pre­dic­tor of Alzheimer’s dis­ease than changes in bio­mark­ers, researchers from the Ben­ito Menni Com­plex Assis­ten­cial en Salut Men­tal, Barcelona, Spain, reported in Archives of Gen­eral Psy­chi­a­try, a JAMA journal.

Brain Train­ing for Babies: Hope, Hype, Both? We should expect that the brain of a baby could be eas­ily trained. This is what Wass and his col­leagues recently demon­strated in a new study with 11-month-old babies.

Brain Devel­op­ment Through Bilin­gual Edu­ca­tion and Activ­i­ties Requir­ing Self-Control: Kids who learn two lan­guages young are bet­ter able to learn abstract rules and to reverse rules that they’ve already learned.

Who Says This is The Class­room of the Future? What if we ques­tioned the very premise behind nam­ing some class­rooms the “class­rooms of the future” sim­ply because they have been adding tech­nol­ogy in lit­er­ally mind­less ways?

AARP’s Best Brain Fit­ness Books: We are hon­ored to announce that AARP has included our very own book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (182 pages; $14.95) in its new List of Best Books on Brain Fitness.

Inter­ac­tive Human Brain in 3D: Here’s a cool inter­ac­tive Human Brain in 3D you can play with.

Have a great month of Octo­ber and, as always, feel free to share this enewslet­ter with friends and colleagues.

PS: Did you miss the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (Mar 30 — Apr 1, 2011)? Here you can learn more about how to access the recordings.

We are hon­ored to announce that AARP has included our very own book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (182 pages; $14.95) in its new List of Best Books on Brain Fit­ness, which will be unveiled dur­ing AARP’s upcom­ing Life@50 National Event. We hope this list will help many more indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions learn about our resource: given that 80% of respon­dents to a recent AARP sur­vey selected “Stay­ing Men­tally Sharp” as their top pri­or­ity, we cer­tainly know there is a sig­nif­i­cant need for qual­ity information!

AARP’s Best Books Guide


Brain Fit­ness

The Dana Guide to Brain Health, by Floyd E. Bloom, M. Flint Beal, and David J. Kupfer (Dana Press, 2006).

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Elkhonon Gold­berg. (Sharp­Brains Inc., 2009).

Save Your Brain: The 5 Things You Must Do To Keep Your Mind Young and Sharp, by Paul Nuss­baum. (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Sur­pris­ing Tal­ents of the Middle-Aged Mind, by Bar­bara Strauch (Viking, 2010).

The Mem­ory Bible: An Inno­v­a­tive Strat­egy for Keep­ing Your Brain Young, by Gary Small (Hype­r­ion, 2003).

___________

Also Rec­om­mended:

The Mature Mind: The Pos­i­tive Power of the Aging Brain, by Gene Cohen (Basic Books, 2006).

The Brain That Changes Itself, by Nor­man Doidge (Pen­guin, 2007).

Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Exer­cise and the Brain, by John Ratey and Eric Hager­man (Lit­tle, Brown and Co., 2008).

Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Pre­scrip­tion for Improv­ing Your Brain’s Per­for­mance, by Richard Restak (River­head, 2010).

Com­piled by:
Office of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs, AARP

First of all, an announce­ment. We are start­ing a Vir­tual Intern­ship Pro­gram @ Sharp­Brains, allow­ing full-time under­grad and grad stu­dents and post­docs to lead 100-hour projects jointly defined by them­selves and by Sharp­Brains. Inter­ested can­di­dates should Con­tact Us indi­cat­ing a) a pre­lim­i­nary project pro­posal (200 words or less), and b) brief bio and qual­i­fi­ca­tions (200 words or less). Intern­ships don’t require travel and will be paid in-kind, with access to Sharp­Brains reports and con­fer­ence record­ings. Sharp­Brains will select a lim­ited num­ber of Interns based on fit between can­di­dates’ pro­posal and bio and Sharp­Brains mis­sion and activities.

Let’s now explore the lat­est edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, start­ing with a com­pre­hen­sive per­spec­tive on the edu­ca­tional value and lim­i­ta­tions of videogames, writ­ten by Mar­shall Wein­stein, a senior at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity who will be a Sharp­Brains Intern dur­ing the Fall.

Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion and Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing To Enhance Exec­u­tive Func­tions: Two very inter­est­ing new research studies…but please don’t miss the thought-provoking com­ments by reader Jay Kay.

Unlock­ing Dyslexia in Japan­ese: New clues emerge based on the obser­va­tion that some dyslex­ics have an eas­ier time with visual lan­guages like Japan­ese and Chinese.

Does ADHD med­ica­tion treat­ment in child­hood increase adult employ­ment?: A very insight­ful com­men­tary by Dr. David Rabiner.

Boomers’ Abil­ity to Make Finan­cial Deci­sions Often Declines With Age: A new report by Cana­dian bank BMO illus­trates the need for inno­v­a­tive brain fit­ness inter­ven­tions focused on main­tain­ing tar­geted cog­ni­tive func­tion­al­ity. What the report presents as inex­orable decline, it is not.

Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Aware­ness, Test­ing and Pre­ven­tion:  New data rein­forc­e the need to pay­ seri­ous atten­tion to lifestyle-based and non-invasive cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health inter­ven­tions, and the need to per­son­al­ize interventions.

Think­ing glob­ally to improve men­tal health: The National Insti­tutes of Health and the Global Alliance for Chronic Dis­eases announce a Grand Chal­lenges in Global Men­tal Health Ini­tia­tive. We will keep you posted on this.

Have a great month of August and, as always, feel free to share this enewslet­ter with friends and col­leagues… and with poten­tial can­di­dates for the new Vir­tual Intern­ship Pro­gram @ SharpBrains!

Very inter­est­ing new data rein­forc­ing two main themes we have been ana­lyz­ing for a while:
1) We bet­ter start pay­ing seri­ous atten­tion (and R&D dol­lars) to lifestyle-based and non-invasive cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health inter­ven­tions, which are mostly ignored in favor of inva­sive, drug-based options
2) Inter­ven­tions will need to be per­son­al­ized. The study below ana­lyzes data at the coun­try level, but the same logic applies to the indi­vid­ual level

Many fear Alzheimer’s, want to be tested: sur­vey (Reuters):

- “The tele­phone sur­vey of 2,678 adults aged 18 and older in the United States, France, Ger­many, Spain and Poland was con­ducted by researchers at the Har­vard School of Pub­lic Health and Read the rest of this entry »