Here are the dates and loca­tions of some upcom­ing events where I will be pre­sent­ing. Please intro­duce your­self if you are attending!

» Sep­tem­ber 4-5th, San Fran­cisco, CA: sev­eral Brain Health Pro­mo­tion ses­sions, at the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging conference.

» Octo­ber 9th, Van­cou­ver, Canada: Exer­cis­ing Our Brains 101 and Nav­i­gat­ing The Brain Fit­ness Maze, at the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion annual conference.

» Octo­ber 11th, San Jose, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at San Jose State University’s Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Octo­ber 23rd, Pocatello, Idaho: Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Train­ing for Healthy Aging, at the Idaho Con­fer­ence on Health Care. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 1st, Berke­ley, CA: The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, at UC-Berkeley’s Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 7-9th, Dubai: Global Agenda Coun­cils Inau­gural Sum­mit in Dubai, orga­nized by the World Eco­nomic Forum. (Infor­ma­tion here).

» Novem­ber 17th, New York City: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Research and Impli­ca­tions, at New York Pub­lic Library.

» Decem­ber 5th, San Anto­nio, Texas: The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Field: Overview of Research and Tools, at the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil on Active Aging con­fer­ence. (Infor­ma­tion here).

As always, I will share the main take-aways via this blog. I hope to meet some of you down the road!

Start­ing this week, you will start see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors writ­ing in our blog and web­site, so that we can col­lec­tively dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and emo­tional train­ing, brain fit­ness and health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­eral for our every­day lives. All of it, spiced up by stim­u­lat­ing brain teasers.

So, if you haven’t already, make sure to sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).

Let me intro­duce, In alpha­bet­i­cal order, the Expert Con­trib­u­tors who will share their knowl­edge with us in Jan­u­ary and February.

- Wes Car­roll, SB in Com­puter Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing from MIT, and Puz­zle Mas­ter for Ask a Sci­en­tist lec­ture series.

- Simon Evans, PhD., and Paul Burghardt, PhD., who col­lab­o­rate in the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try and the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science Insti­tute, to study the effects of nutri­tion and exer­cise on brain function.

- Greater Good Mag­a­zine, a quar­terly mag­a­zine pub­lished by a UC-Berkeley cen­ter to “high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altruism.“ 

- Gre­gory Kel­lett, a recent grad­u­ate from the Cog­ni­tive Neurology/Research Psychology Masters pro­gram at SFSU.

- Eric Jensen, author of Enrich­ing the Brain: How to Max­i­mize Every Learner’s Poten­tial, and well-known syn­the­sizer of brain research infor­ma­tion with impli­ca­tions for K12 education.

- Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., an Adjunct Fac­ulty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in Saint Louis, Psy­chol­ogy Department.

- Tom O’Brien, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion, South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­sity, and author of prize-winning games.

- Joshua Stein­er­man, M.D., Post­doc­toral Clin­i­cal Fel­low in the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­ogy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Center.

- David Rabiner, Ph.D., Senior Research Sci­en­tist and Direc­tor of Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke Uni­ver­sity. Dr. Rabiner main­tains the highly-regarded Atten­tion Research Update.

Please Note: if you would like to become an Expert Con­trib­u­tor, Read the rest of this entry »

Today we inter­view Dr. Arthur Lavin, Asso­ciate Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Pedi­atrics at Case West­ern School of Med­i­cine, pedi­a­tri­cian in pri­vate prac­tice, and one of the first providers of Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing in the US (the pro­gram whose research we dis­cussed with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and Dr. Bradley Gib­son). Dr. Lavin has a long stand­ing inter­est in technology-as evi­denced by Microsoft’s recog­ni­tion of his paper­less office– and in brain research and applications-he trained with esteemed Mel Levine from All Kinds of Minds-.

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Key take-aways:

- Schools today are not yet in a posi­tion to effec­tively help kids with cog­ni­tive issues deal with increas­ing cog­ni­tive demands.

- Work­ing Mem­ory is a cog­ni­tive skill fun­da­men­tal to plan­ning, sequenc­ing, and exe­cut­ing school-related work.

- Work­ing Mem­ory can be trained, as evi­denced by Dr. Lavin’s work, based on Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing, with kids who have atten­tion deficits.

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Con­text on cog­ni­tive fit­ness and schools

AF (Alvaro Fer­nan­dez): Dr. Lavin, thanks for being with us. It is not very com­mon for a pedi­a­tri­cian to have such an active inter­est in brain research and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Can you explain the source of your interest?

AL (Arthur Lavin): Through­out my life I have been fas­ci­nated by how the mind works. Both from the research point of view and the prac­ti­cal one: how can sci­en­tists’ increas­ing knowl­edge improve kids’ lives? We now live in an truly excit­ing era in which solid sci­en­tific progress in neu­ro­science is at last cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve people’s actual cog­ni­tive func­tion. The progress Cogmed has achieved in cre­at­ing a pro­gram that can make great dif­fer­ences in the lives of chil­dren with atten­tion deficits is one of the most excit­ing recent devel­op­ments. My col­league Ms. Susan Glaser and I recently pub­lished two books: Who’s Boss: Mov­ing Fam­i­lies from Con­flict to Col­lab­o­ra­tion (Col­lab­o­ra­tion Press, 2006) and Baby & Tod­dler Sleep Solu­tions for Dum­mies (Wiley, 2007), so I not only see myself as a pedi­a­tri­cian but also an edu­ca­tor. I see par­ents in real need of guid­ance and sup­port. They usu­ally are both very skep­ti­cal, since Read the rest of this entry »

We want to con­grat­u­late Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, pro­fes­sor of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science at the Karolin­ska Insti­tute and one of the founders of our part­ner Cogmed, on receiv­ing the Philip’s Nordic Prize for his research on work­ing mem­ory train­ing for chil­dren diag­nosed with Atten­tion Deficit Hyper­ac­tiv­ity Dis­or­der (ADHD).

The prize rec­og­nizes out­stand­ing research in the field of neu­ropsy­chi­a­try and was pre­sented by the Nor­we­gian royal princess Martha Louise at the Rik­shos­pi­tal in Oslo, Nor­way. Trans­lat­ing his research into an active train­ing pro­gram, Kling­berg co-founded Cogmed, a devel­oper of software-based work­ing mem­ory train­ing prod­ucts head­quar­tered in Stock­holm. Cogmed’s rig­or­ous and reward­ing pro­gram com­bines computer-based train­ing and per­sonal coach­ing to help peo­ple with atten­tion deficits strengthen their work­ing mem­o­ries. More than 80 per­cent of chil­dren who have com­pleted Cogmed’s inten­sive five-week pro­gram have demon­strated dra­matic and last­ing improve­ments to their atten­tion, impulse con­trol and prob­lem solv­ing skills.

Read the rest of this entry »