(Editor’s note: below you have part 4 of the 6-part The Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy of Stress series. If you are join­ing the series now, you can read the pre­vi­ous part Here.)

Stayin’  Alive

THE STRESS RESPONSE EXPLAINED

Stress was put on the map, so to speak, by a Hun­gar­ian — born Cana­dian endocri­nol­o­gist named Hans Hugo Bruno Selye (ZEL — yeh) in 1950, when he pre­sented his research on rats at the annual con­ven­tion of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. To explain the impact of stress, Selye pro­posed some­thing he called the Gen­eral Adap­ta­tion Syn­drome (GAS), which he said had three com­po­nents. Accord­ing to Selye, when an organ­ism expe­ri­ences some novel or threat­en­ing stim­u­lus it responds with an alarm reac­tion. This is fol­lowed by what Selye referred to as the recov­ery or resis­tance stage, a period of time dur­ing which the brain repairs itself and stores the energy it will need to deal with the next stress­ful event.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very inter­est­ing new study pub­lished in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence: Short-Term Music Train­ing Enhances Ver­bal Intel­li­gence and Exec­u­tive Func­tion.

Abstract: Researchers have designed train­ing meth­ods that can be used to improve men­tal health and to test the effi­cacy of edu­ca­tion pro­grams. How­ever, few stud­ies have demon­strated broad trans­fer from such train­ing to per­for­mance on untrained cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties. Here we report the effects of two inter­ac­tive com­put­er­ized train­ing pro­grams devel­oped for preschool chil­dren: one for music and one for visual art. After only 20 days of train­ing, Read the rest of this entry »

Pre­dict­ing Alzheimer’s Dis­ease More Accu­rate Through Cog­ni­tive Changes Than Bio­mark­ers (Med­ical News):

• “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.”
• “The inves­ti­ga­tors used a range of tests to assess Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple of very inter­est­ing recent announce­ments show (in a mil­i­tary con­text) how well-targeted brain train­ing can com­ple­ment and aug­ment exist­ing approaches, both to help “nor­mal” and “clin­i­cal” pop­u­la­tions, in ways that silo-based, rear-mirror think­ing often misses: Read the rest of this entry »

Sharp­Brains served a highly thought-provoking and infor­ma­tive 2011 Vir­tual Sum­mit on Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury over 3 days, March 30th — April 1st. Here is a brief dis­til­la­tion of the large num­ber (40+) of presentations.

1.The range and vari­ety of pre­sen­ta­tions left no room for doubt that the dig­i­tal brain health mar­ket is con­cerned with much more than improv­ing cog­ni­tive per­for­mance and preventing/treating dis­ease. There is a need for many tools in each of the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: Read the rest of this entry »

We are excited to invite you to the first vir­tual, global Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (Jan­u­ary 18-20th, 2010). The Sharp­Brains Sum­mit will fea­ture a dream team of over 25 speak­ers who are lead­ers in indus­try and research from 7 coun­tries, to dis­cuss emerg­ing research, tools and best prac­tices for cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance. This inau­gural event will expose health and insur­ance providers, devel­op­ers, inno­va­tors at For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, investors and researchers, to the oppor­tu­ni­ties, part­ner­ships, trends, and stan­dards of the rapidly evolv­ing cog­ni­tive fit­ness field.

Reg­is­ter Today

Learn more and reg­is­ter Here today, at dis­counted early-bird rates, to receive these benefits:

• Learn: Full access to all Con­fer­ence live ses­sions, and Down­load­able Record­ings and Handouts
• See: lat­est tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts dur­ing Expo Day
• Con­nect and Dis­cuss: become a mem­ber of the Sharp­Brains Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion (members-only LinkedIn Group) through the end of 2010, access online chats dur­ing the sum­mit, meet other reg­is­trants in your city
• Under­stand the Big Pic­ture: access 10 Research Exec­u­tive Briefs pre­pared by lead­ing scientists

On top of those early-bird dis­counts, we offer an addi­tional 15% dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers who want Reg­u­lar Admis­sion. Dis­count code: sharp2010. You can reg­is­ter Here.

Agenda/ Speak­ers

Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 18th, 2010:

(Pre­lim­i­nary sched­ule, US Pacific Time)

8–9.15am. Cog­ni­tion & Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: The New Health­care Frontier

• Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains
• David White­house, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions
• William Reich­man, Baycrest
• P Murali Doraiswamy, Duke University

9.30-11am. Tools for Safer Dri­ving: The Oppor­tu­nity with Teenagers and Adults

• Steven Aldrich, Posit Science
• Shlomo Breznitz, CogniFit
• Jerri Edwards, Uni­ver­sity of South Florida
• Peter Chris­tian­son, Young Dri­vers of Canada

Noon-1.30pm. Baby Boomers and Beyond: Main­tain­ing Cog­ni­tive Vitality

• Kunal Sarkar, Lumos Labs
• Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski, USC Davis School of Geron­tol­ogy Read the rest of this entry »

You can see speak­ers and agenda by click­ing on Sharp­Brains Sum­mit. Please reg­is­ter if you are inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing: Jan­u­ary 18-20th 2010 (Pacific Time).

• Con­fer­ence: Jan­u­ary 18-19th. 9–10 pan­els to dis­cuss Mar­ket and Research Insights,  together with online discussions.
• Expo Day: Jan­u­ary 20th. Prod­uct demos by Sponsors.

Con­firmed speak­ers and themes:

Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 18th, 2010:

Cog­ni­tion and Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: The New Health­care Frontier

• Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO, SharpBrains
• David White­house, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions
• William Reich­man, Pres­i­dent, Baycrest
• P Murali Doraiswamy, Bio­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try Divi­sion Head, Duke University

Tools for Safer Dri­ving: Teenagers and Older Adults

• Steven Aldrich, CEO, Posit Science
• Peter Chris­tian­son, Pres­i­dent of Young Dri­vers of Canada
• Jerri Edwards, Assoc. Pro­fes­sor Uni­ver­sity of South Florida

Clin­i­cal Appli­ca­tions: Research­ing, Iden­ti­fy­ing, Treat­ing Cog­ni­tive Deficits

• Keith Wesnes, Prac­tice Leader, United BioSource Corporation
• Jonas Jendi, CEO, Cogmed
• Michel Noir, Pres­i­dent, Sci­en­tific Brain Training
• Elkhonon Gold­berg, Chief Sci­en­tific Advi­sor, SharpBrains

Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s note: one of the most com­mon ene­mies of get­ting qual­ity cog­ni­tive exer­cise is being on “men­tal autopi­lot”. I recently came across an excel­lent new book, titled The Daily Trad­ing Coach: 101 Lessons for Becom­ing Your Own Trad­ing Psy­chol­o­gist, by trad­ing per­for­mance expert Dr. Brett Steen­barger, which explic­itly calls for address­ing the “men­tal autopi­lot” prob­lem in his Les­son 4. Even for those of us who are not traders, Dr. Steen­barger advice pro­vides excel­lent guid­ance for peak cog­ni­tive per­for­mance. Dr. Steen­barger gra­ciously gave us per­mis­sion to share with you, below, Les­son 4: Change Your Envi­ron­ment, Change Your­self. Enjoy!).

Human beings adapt to their envi­ron­ments. We draw on a range of skills and per­son­al­ity traits to fit into var­i­ous set­tings. That is why we can behave one way in a social set­ting and then seem like a totally dif­fer­ent human being at work. One of the endur­ing attrac­tions of travel is that it takes us out of our native envi­ron­ments and forces us to adapt to new peo­ple, new cul­tures, and new ways. When we make those adap­ta­tions, we dis­cover new facets of our­selves. As we’ll see shortly, dis­crep­ancy is the mother of all change: when we are in the same envi­ron­ments, we tend to draw upon the same, rou­tine modes of thought and behavior.

A few months ago I had an attack of acute appen­dici­tis while stay­ing in a LaGuardia air­port hotel await­ing a return flight to Chicago. When I went to the near­est emer­gency room at Elmhurst Hos­pi­tal out­side Jack­son Heights, Queens, I found that I was seem­ingly the only native Eng­lish speaker in a sea of peo­ple await­ing med­ical care. After some dif­fi­culty attract­ing atten­tion, I was admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal and spent the next sev­eral days of recu­per­a­tion nav­i­gat­ing my way through patients and staff of every con­ceiv­able nation­al­ity. By the end of the expe­ri­ence, I felt at home there. I’ve since stayed at the same air­port hotel and rou­tinely make vis­its into the sur­round­ing neighborhoods—areas I would have never in my wildest dreams ven­tured into pre­vi­ously. In adapt­ing to that envi­ron­ment, I dis­cov­ered hid­den strengths. I also over­came more than a few hid­den prej­u­dices and fears.

The great­est enemy of change is rou­tine. When we lapse into rou­tine and oper­ate on autopi­lot, we are no longer fully and actively con­scious of what we’re doing and why. That is why some of the most fer­tile sit­u­a­tions for per­sonal growth—those that occur within new environments—are those that force us to exit our rou­tines and actively mas­ter unfa­mil­iar challenges.

In famil­iar envi­ron­ments and rou­tines, we oper­ate on autopi­lot. Noth­ing changes.

When you act as your own trad­ing coach, your chal­lenge is to stay fully con­scious, alert to risk and oppor­tu­nity. One of your great­est threats will be the autopi­lot mode in which you act with­out think­ing, with­out full aware­ness of your sit­u­a­tion. If you shift your trad­ing envi­ron­ment, you push your­self to adapt to new sit­u­a­tions: you break rou­tines. If your envi­ron­ment is always the same, you will find your­self grav­i­tat­ing to the same Read the rest of this entry »

We just received this quote of how a major health sys­tem is using our Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report:

“At Sut­ter Health Part­ners we rec­og­nize the impor­tance of brain health and how much the health of the brain and the body are inter­de­pen­dent.  The mar­ket report helped us fur­ther tar­get our coach­ing efforts to inte­grate brain fit­ness and upgrade our entire coach­ing plat­form.  It is easy to read and gives you the indus­try per­spec­tive in a thor­ough yet con­cise man­ner.  I highly rec­om­mend it!”

– Mar­garet Sabin, CEO of Sut­ter Health Part­ners and VP, New Prod­uct Devel­op­ment, at Sut­ter Health.

You may won­der, “what is the link between  well­ness coach­ing and brain fitness”?

In prac­tice, good health and well­ness coaches pro­vide excel­lent brain health advice, given that the areas they focus on (nutri­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise, stress man­age­ment) do play an impor­tant role in main­tain­ing our brains in top shape.

Addi­tion­ally, pio­neers  such as Sut­ter Health Part­ners are adding a Brain “lens” to their work. How?

First, by bet­ter under­stand­ing and explain­ing the brain ben­e­fits of what they already do, in order to pro­vide addi­tional moti­va­tion to stick with healthy behav­iors. For exam­ple, most peo­ple will be able to recite mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits of mod­er­ate car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise. But how many know  that it can also con­tribute to neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis –the cre­ation of new neu­rons — in adult brains?

Sec­ond, by start­ing to offer brain fit­ness guide­lines to clients who want too go beyond cross­word puz­zles and sudoku.

I had a great train­ing ses­sion with a num­ber of Sut­ter Health coaches last week — let me sum­ma­rize some of the main points we cov­ered. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you heard of or read John Ratey’s book “Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Exer­cise and The Brain”? Accord­ing to Har­vard Psy­chi­a­try Pro­fes­sor John Ratey noth­ing beats exer­cise for pro­mot­ing brain heath.

I am sure you have also heard that exer­cis­ing your mind pro­motes brain health.

What is the con­nec­tion between phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cises? Do they have addi­tive effects on brain health? Are they redundant?

Read the rest of this entry »