As promised in my pre­vi­ous post (10 Brain Train­ing Tips To Teach and Learn), here are some of the resources that inform my under­stand­ing of the brain: books, con­fer­ences, and websites.

BOOKS

There are a mul­ti­tude of books about the brain. For edu­ca­tors, the best of these are books that demys­tify the lan­guage of neu­ro­science while pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion applic­a­ble to the teaching/learning process.

Among the more pro­lific or well-known authors of this type include Jeb Schenck, Robert Syl­wester, Bar­bara Givens, Robert Marzano, Mar­ilee Sprenger, and Eric Jensen.

I have found books Read the rest of this entry »

Our Mar­ket Report has received some recent addi­tional accolades:

“In a widely scat­tered and unreg­u­lated field, this clear, cred­i­ble doc­u­ment
is a first-class, pio­neer­ing com­pendium that’s likely to become industry-standard
for all of us in this field. Well done!“
– Eric Jensen, Founder of Jensen Learn­ing Corporation.

“This is the first clear, con­cise and com­pre­hen­sive overview and analy­sis I have seen of the emerg­ing Brain-Training mar­ket­place. It is a great mar­ket research for every investor, entre­pre­neur, man­ager, researcher and oth­ers who seek an under­stand­ing of the sub­ject. Per­son­ally, I was wait­ing such a review for quite a while. The Sharp­Brains staff, led by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, really did a great job here.”

– Danny Dankner, CEO, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing (ACE).

“Neu­ro­science is at a cross­roads, and The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 by Sharp­Brains, points the way for­ward. Our under­stand­ing of how the brain works is just begin­ning to yield real fruit in the form of prod­ucts that truly improve the func­tion of the brain. This reports gives any­one inter­ested in how to under­stand which prod­ucts are truly in a posi­tion to make a dif­fer­ence in brain func­tion, and which mar­kets will be inter­ested and prof­itable for such prod­ucts an invalu­able guide. We found the analy­sis clear, pre­cise, loaded with sub­stan­tive insight. One would be fool­hardy not to use this pub­li­ca­tion as the best guide to this mar­ket.”

– Dr. Arthur Lavin, Asso­ciate Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Pedi­atrics, Case Med­ical School, and Med­ical Direc­tor of A Work­ing Mind.

“As we begin the task of devel­op­ing a Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at our Sun­rise Senior Liv­ing Com­mu­nity, this Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report is prov­ing Read the rest of this entry »

We are work­ing on improv­ing sev­eral sec­tions of our web­site, espe­cially our Resources sec­tion. It will look much bet­ter in a few days. Our first step has been to re-organize our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series, and below you have how it looks today.

Last Decem­ber we launched  our stim­u­lat­ing Author Speaks Series to pro­vide a plat­form for lead­ing sci­en­tists and experts writ­ing high-quality brain-related books to share their insights with Sharp­Brains read­ers. Par­tic­i­pants so far include (in order of appearance):

Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are have the bi-monthly Digest of our 10 most Pop­u­lar blog posts. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this digest by email).

After many months of work we have just released our inau­gural report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 for cor­po­rate exec­u­tives, health care pro­fes­sion­als, and investors. This report defines the emerg­ing brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket and ana­lyzes the size and trends of its four cus­tomer seg­ments. For top 10 high­lights and to pur­chase the report at a 10% dis­count (before March 20th) click here: Report: The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008

Brain Fit­ness News and Events

NEWS FEATURE-Brain fit­ness seen as hot indus­try of the future (Reuters 03/12): The most com­pre­hen­sive arti­cle we have seen so far cov­er­ing this emerg­ing field, based on our mar­ket report and with orig­i­nal report­ing. Highly rec­om­mended read.

Read the rest of this entry »

We have planned a num­ber of fun posts, start­ing tomor­row, to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week (March 10-16th). We hope you will enjoy them.

Let me share a taste of a few arti­cles you will find here dur­ing the week:

- Dr. Adrian Preda, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at UC Irvine School of Med­i­cine, will help us exer­cise our brains by chal­leng­ing us to exer­cise more…our bodies.

- We will release our report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 on Tues­day March 11th, shar­ing its 10 High­lights. This is a project where we have spent many many ener­gies over the last 9 months…so we are happy to finally be able to deliver it!

- An arti­cle by UCSF’s Gre­gory Kel­let (who wrote this great arti­cle on why man­ag­ing stress is impor­tant for our brains) help­ing us iden­tify ways to pre­cisely do that.

- An in-depth inter­view with Eric Jensen, brain-based edu­ca­tion expert and author of this great recent arti­cle.

- Edu­won­kette, a superb (and anony­mous) edu­ca­tion blog­ger, will expand the con­ver­sa­tion by ask­ing, “Do we, as a soci­ety, have a clear goal of what the K12 sys­tem is sup­posed to accomplish?”

- Dr. Larry McCleary, one of our esteemed con­trib­u­tors, will speak at the Aspen Cen­ter for Inte­gral Health to present his lat­est book, and will blog about the event.

So, please book­mark our URL, or sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) or join our blog RSS feed.

And, of course, visit the Brain Aware­ness Week’s Inter­na­tional Cal­en­dar of events to find if there are some stim­u­lat­ing events near you. If you live in Wash­ing­ton DC, take a look at the “Part­ners in Edu­ca­tion” activ­i­ties orga­nized by the National Museum of Health and Med­i­cine at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Center.

A few updates and announcements:

- 1) My apolo­gies for slow blog­ging, due to travel. I par­tic­i­pated yes­ter­day in a fun panel dis­cus­sion at ETech on Use Your Head– The Future of Mind Hacks. You can read some take-aways (in Ital­ian, so this may be good brain exer­cise) here.

- 2) We will release our report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 next Mon­day (Update: Tues­day March 11th!), to coin­cide with Brain Aware­ness Week. Make sure to visit our blog next Mon­day if you want to learn more.

- 3) The National Museum of Health and Med­i­cine at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Cen­ter is plan­ning some great activ­i­ties dur­ing Brain Aware­ness Week (Thank you, Tim). Learn more about their “Part­ners in Edu­ca­tion” activ­i­ties for stu­dents in the Wash­ing­ton DC area.

- 4) The Dana Foun­da­tion has released a great research report to address the ques­tion “Are smart peo­ple drawn to the arts or does arts train­ing make peo­ple smarter?” Enjoy the report and some excel­lent related resources Here.

- 5) Eric Jensen has writ­ten a great arti­cle on Brain-Based Edu­ca­tion for PDK Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Edu­ca­tion. Enjoy it!

Here you are have the bi-monthly Digest of our 10 most Pop­u­lar blog posts. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this digest by email).

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 »