Let me pro­vide an overview of the great things going on with the Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion — start­ing this week, we will share a brief update like this every Fri­day to main­tain Sharp­Brains col­leagues and read­ers informed. Please note that all links below require access to the Council’s online platform.

Dri­ving as Next Brain Fit­ness Application? 

Last month, at the MIT/ Smart­Sil­vers event where we pre­sented our Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report, we dis­cussed what spe­cific appli­ca­tions, beyond the cur­rent empha­sis on healthy aging, might take com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing to a new level.  

Assess­ing and improv­ing dri­ving skills would be a top can­di­date, given both the well-defined nature of the need and the appear­ance of pro­grams with grow­ing evi­dence (both sci­en­tific and real-world) behind.

The New York Times Asks… 

Along these lines, the New York Times just published this arti­cle: Are You a Good Dri­ver? Here’s How to Find Out. A few quotes:

- “COULD a video game make you a bet­ter dri­ver? More impor­tant, could com­puter soft­ware pre­vent teenagers from mak­ing fatal mis­takes or even weed out older dri­vers whose debil­i­ties make them crash-prone?”

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Dana Press kindly sent us a cou­ple of books. One of them, The Dana Guide to Brain Health: A Prac­ti­cal Fam­ily Ref­er­ence From Med­ical Experts, is our topic today.

We are impressed by what Dana is doing to insert neu­ro­science find­ings and impli­ca­tions into the pub­lic discourse.

No big sur­prise then, to find out so much qual­ity con­tent inside a 700-page one-of-a-kind guide, some of it, inci­den­tally, pro­vided by Dr. Gold­berg, our Chief Sci­en­tific Advisor.

The guide is really 4 books inside a com­mon bind­ing. Priced at a rea­son­able level, and with superb in-depth text and images in all rel­e­vant areas, the book can be used as a 1) Brain 101 tuto­r­ial, 2) brief sum­mary of the basics of Brain Care and Well­ness, 3) descrip­tion of the stages of brain devel­op­ment, 4) ref­er­ence guide for around 70 brain-related con­di­tions. In my per­sonal opin­ion, every neu­ro­science, med­ical and psy­chol­ogy stu­dent, clin­i­cian and researcher should have this book in their hands to keep abreast of many recent devel­op­ments, and also be exposed to pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment courses based on it. Many fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als inter­ested in the brain should con­sider buy­ing it too.

Given the focus of our blog-brain fit­ness for healthy individuals-, we par­tic­u­larly enjoyed the sec­tions Read the rest of this entry »