My first full-time job was as a strate­gic con­sul­tant at McK­in­sey & Com­pany. A very intense 2-year learn­ing experience.

Their Alumni News Ser­vice recently inter­viewed me and pub­lished this great arti­cle on Sharp­Brains. The writer does a superb job of pro­vid­ing an overview of what we do, so I rec­om­mend you read it. I’d like to empha­size the fol­low­ing quotes for any­one look­ing for jobs these days, so that “brain exer­cise” is part of the equation:

• “Alvaro has some very high praise for the men­tal gym­nas­tics that the McK­in­sey expe­ri­ence pro­vides.  Given that the frontal lobes in our brain (behind the fore­head) only mature in our late 20s, he says, the jobs we take in our early and mid-20s are very impor­tant not only for our career prospects, but also for our brain devel­op­ment fit­ness. This is the stage in our life where, con­sciously or not, we can improve our decision-making, ini­tia­tive and self-regulation abil­i­ties, all of which lit­er­ally affect the phys­i­cal growth of our frontal lobes in a sig­nif­i­cant way.”
• “Join­ing McK­in­sey as a BA is lit­er­ally like join­ing a brain gym, Alvaro says. “The demands of the McK­in­sey model. Read the rest of this entry »

We read a good arti­cle on med­ical salaries recently, and are happy to see an increased empha­sis pre­ven­tion and well­ness rather than on sickness.

Along these lines, we were for­tu­nate to attend Heal­thetc yes­ter­day, a day-long health event in San Fran­cisco co-organized by KCBS and CPMC that had Bill Clin­ton as keynote speaker. You can read an arti­cle on his great inter­ven­tion here.

Some of the speech highlights:

1) Clinton’s great overview of key data:

• 16 vs 10–11: % GDP spent on health care in the US vs. other indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries. This per­cent­age dif­fer­ence equals around $800 bil­lion annually
• 84 vs 100: % pop­u­la­tion with some form of health insur­ance in the US vs. other countries
• 34 and 37: rank­ing of the US sys­tem as mea­sured by health out­comes and life expectancy, respectively
• 34 vs 19: % health care costs spent on admin­is­tra­tion in the US vs. other countries

2) He out­lined the 3 main prob­lems with US Health­care as follows-and empathized that any seri­ous, long-term solu­tion needs to Read the rest of this entry »

We usu­ally spend more time in this blog talk­ing about brain fit­ness sci­ence, pro­grams and trends than talk­ing about peo­ple. Today we are going to change that, since we have been receiv­ing great feed­back from a num­ber of sources. While we still need to improve a lot, we can start to see the results of what we do in our “brain fit­ness cen­ter”. And we couldn’t be hap­pier about the nom­i­na­tion this week of Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and myself, as Sharp­Brains cofounders, for The Tech Museum Awards — Tech­nol­ogy Ben­e­fit­ing Human­ity, in the Health category.

I. Anony­mous Feed­back from an online sur­vey of our online store cus­tomers

• 58% respon­dents are Very Sat­is­fied, and 42% Sat­is­fied, with the prod­ucts and ser­vices they chose. I promise that there were more options (Dis­sat­is­fied, Very Dissatisfied)
• “As a trader, I really need to sus­tain atten­tion for long peri­ods. Your pro­gram (here) has been eye-opening and very helpful.”
• “I LOVE the pro­gram! It is fun, chal­lenges me and gives me hope for improv­ing in the areas where I have lim­i­ta­tions. Staff sup­port & edu­ca­tional infor­ma­tion has been great. It is very impor­tant to be able to talk to some­one about the ques­tions or process prob­lems that we experience…your mem­ber on-line site gives us the oppor­tu­nity to get answers & needed sup­port. Thanks for all you are doing. My hus­band and I love get­ting feed­back about our progress…it is a very pos­i­tive experience!”
• “Keep devel­op­ing pro­grams so when we fin­ish doing the Mind­Fit (here) pro­gram there will be another one to build upon the first! I am impressed at how well your pro­grams are indi­vid­u­al­ized. Good Job to all involved!”
• “Good, I enjoy the games (here) and I can tell a dif­fer­ence in my mem­ory and over­all awareness.”

II. Feed­back about our Stress Man­age­ment for Peak Per­for­mance work­shop (here)

• Accen­ture: 46 per­cent of sur­vey respon­dents Strongly Agreed that they “gained prac­ti­cal skills and knowl­edge they could start using imme­di­ately.” 69 per­cent Strongly Agreed Read the rest of this entry »

There has been an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the issues related to the aging of the legal pro­fes­sion. Stephanie intro­duced us to the arti­cle “the Gray­ing Bar: let’s not for­get the ethics” by David Giacalone.

In short: sta­tis­tics about the increas­ing ratio of lawyers over 70 in active prac­tice, on the one hand, and the gen­eral inci­dence of Alzheimer’s and other demen­tias, on the other, lead David to point out an increas­ing like­li­hood that some lawyers may be prac­tic­ing in less than ideal con­di­tions for their clients, beyond a rea­son­able “brain age”. The ques­tion then becomes: who and how can solve this prob­lem, which is only going to grow given demo­graphic trends?.

We are not legal experts, but would like to inform the debate by offer­ing 10 con­sid­er­a­tions on healthy aging and job per­for­mance from a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal point of view, that apply to all occupations:

1– We should talk more about change than about decline, as Sharon Beg­ley wrote recently in her great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required).

We dis­cussed some of these effects with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, who wrote his great book The Wis­dom Para­dox pre­cisely on this point, at The Exec­u­tive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger.

2– Some skills improve as we age: In our “Exer­cis­ing Our Brains” Classes, we typ­i­cally explain how some areas typ­i­cally improve as we age, such as self-regulation, emo­tional func­tion­ing and Wis­dom (which means mov­ing from Prob­lem solv­ing to Pat­tern recog­ni­tion). As a lawyer accu­mu­lates more cases under his/ her belt, he or she devel­ops an auto­matic “intu­ition” for solu­tions and strate­gies. As long as the envi­ron­ment doesn’t change too rapidly, this grow­ing wis­dom is very valuable.

3– …whereas, yes, oth­ers typ­i­cally decline: Read the rest of this entry »

We are offer­ing a limited-time deal for the rest of Feb­ru­ary 2007.

You will get Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions included for free! (an $11.95 savings!)

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez answer in plain Eng­lish the most com­mon ques­tions around why and how to exer­cise our brains.

…when you buy any of the fol­low­ing brain exer­cise programs:

Exer­cise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Impli­ca­tions DVD

This one-hour and 20 minute class intro­duces you to the sci­ence of brain fit­ness and includes many engag­ing brain exer­cises you can do on your own or in a group set­ting. You will learn about basic neu­roanatomy and phys­i­ol­ogy, as well as hear about the ground­break­ing pub­li­ca­tions that launched this field. Then, get you will prac­tice how to exer­cise your own brain and flex all your men­tal mus­cles. Per­fect intro­duc­tion to Brain Fit­ness!
Read the rest of this entry »

Here is ques­tion 15 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions.

Ques­tion:
I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp?

Key Points:

• Pro­vide your brain with reg­u­lar men­tal stim­u­la­tion that is novel and challenging.
• Main­tain your social net­work for both stim­u­la­tion and stress reduction.

“Research has shown that con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, the brain is con­stantly under­go­ing neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, the devel­op­ment of new neu­rons and den­drites,” said Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine. “Learn­ing and tar­geted men­tal exer­cise pro­motes neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis – the cre­ation of new neu­rons – just as mus­cle growth is pro­moted through phys­i­cal exercise.”

Answer:

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: we now have an in-depth inter­view with Yaakov Stern, lead­ing advo­cate of the cog­ni­tive reserve the­ory, and one of the authors of the paper we review below: click on Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve-Yaakov Stern. 

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In honor of the Week of Sci­ence pre­sented at Just Sci­ence from Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 5, through Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 11, we will be writ­ing about “just sci­ence” this week. We thought we would take this time to dis­cuss more deeply some of the key sci­en­tific pub­li­ca­tions in brain fitness.

Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Scarmeas, Niko­laos and Stern, Yaakov. Cog­ni­tive reserve and lifestyle. Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal and Exper­i­men­tal Neu­ropsy­chol­ogy. 2003;25:625–33.

What is Cog­ni­tive Reserve?
The con­cept of a cog­ni­tive reserve has been around since 1998 when a post mortem analy­sis of 137 peo­ple with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease showed that the patients exhib­ited fewer clin­i­cal symp­toms than their actual pathol­ogy sug­gested. (Katz­man et al. 1988) They also showed higher brain weights and greater num­ber of neu­rons when com­pared to age-matched con­trols. The inves­ti­ga­tors hypoth­e­sized that the patients had a larger “reserve” of neu­rons and abil­i­ties that off­set the losses caused by Alzheimer’s. Since then the con­cept of cog­ni­tive reserve has been defined as the abil­ity of an indi­vid­ual to tol­er­ate pro­gres­sive brain pathol­ogy with­out demon­strat­ing clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive symp­toms.
Read the rest of this entry »