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!

Fol­low­ing our Sep­tem­ber edi­tion, here you are have our Monthly Digest of the Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sider it your monthly Brain Exer­cise Magazine.

(Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Top­ics sec­tion, and sub­scribe to our monthly newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this Digest by email).

Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket News

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness as a New Fron­tier of Fit­ness: excel­lent Los Ange­les Times arti­cle, cov­er­ing the cog­ni­tive exer­cise angle of healthy aging and lead­ing science-based players.

A Brain Fit­ness Vaca­tion: what does this mean? Well, read this fun arti­cle to discover.

Rethink­ing the Brain Fit­ness Busi­ness: thought-provoking arti­cle on the future of the sec­tor from a busi­ness point of view.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness @ Har­vard Busi­ness Review: HBR makes a first attempt to bring neu­ro­science research into help­ing lead­ers per­form at peak lev­els and main­tain sharp brains.

News You Can Use

Train Your Brain to Be Hap­pier: impli­ca­tions of neu­ro­science and pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy research for our daily lives-and our hap­pi­ness. Please keep tuned if you are inter­ested in this topic: we will pub­lish soon a great inter­view with Dr. Robert Emmons, lead­ing researcher in the field of gratitude.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness: 10 Debunked Myths: what are some mis­con­cep­tions that pre­vent many peo­ple from see­ing the tremen­dous poten­tial from this emerg­ing research?. Read this post to dis­cover and discuss.

10 (Sur­pris­ing) Mem­ory Improve­ment Tips: and why stress man­age­ment is impor­tant for mem­ory and our brain.

Teasers

Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games with a neu­ro­science angle: a list of the most pop­u­lar mind games in our blog.

Events

10 High­lights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum: a sum­mary of impres­sions from this great event, includ­ing what can hap­pen when you have sci­en­tists and politi­cians in the same room.

Brain Fit­ness @ Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing, Health events: an overview of a num­ber of con­fer­ences and uni­ver­sity classes with a brain fit­ness angle.

Thought-provoking posts

Darwin’s adult neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: reflec­tions of a beau­ti­ful mind that –as self-reported at the age of 72– could have been even more beau­ti­ful.The Gene Delu­sion: IQ and the envi­ron­ment: do genes deter­mine our fates? They don’t. They why do we seem to believe so so often?.

Dis­counts for Sharp­Brains readers

Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: the best con­fer­ence bring­ing neu­ro­science research to edu­ca­tors’ minds, Feb­ru­ary 7-9th in San Fran­cisco. Reg­is­ter before Jan­u­ary 25th, 2008, for a dis­counted price and to make sure you can attend and see our workshop!

Mind­Fit 10% spe­cial dis­count: a 10% dis­count on one of the most pop­u­lar brain fit­ness pro­grams, that com­bines both an in-depth assess­ment of cog­ni­tive skills with per­son­al­ized training.

Books and Resources

Best of the Brain from Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can: a superb col­lec­tion of essays for the curi­ous among us.

Selected Resources: Arti­cles, Books, Papers: numer­ous links to media arti­cles, sci­en­tific papers, and rec­om­mended books.

Enjoy!

First, some of my favorite blog car­ni­vals we con­tributed to this week: Grand Rounds, HR, Edu­ca­tion, Law, Car­ni­val of the Green.

2 very inter­est­ing news pieces (the sec­ond one, includ­ing fun brain teasers):

1) With a fresh grasp on — and label for — an aca­d­e­mic block, some slow achiev­ers are eager to return to school (Boston Globe)

Quote: “Turns out Ellie has a prob­lem with work­ing mem­ory, a term used to describe the abil­ity to retain infor­ma­tion from the top of a page to the bot­tom. Work­ing mem­ory comes under the umbrella of exec­u­tive func­tion, a think­ing skill that refers to the tasks exec­u­tives tend to excel at, such as pri­or­i­tiz­ing, orga­niz­ing, and men­tally shift­ing infor­ma­tion around. It’s a skill that devel­ops pro­gres­sively, start­ing in the ele­men­tary years and con­tin­u­ing into adulthood…If you’ve never heard of exec­u­tive func­tion, brace your­self. It’s burst­ing onto the edu­ca­tional scene.”

Com­ment: Great arti­cle. We cov­ered this in detail in an essay last year: Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and ADD/ADHD Today.

2) Want a job at Google? Try these brain­teasers first (CNN)

Quote: “Seem­ingly ran­dom ques­tions like these have become com­mon­place in Sil­i­con Val­ley and other tech out­posts, where com­pa­nies aren’t as inter­ested in the cor­rect answer to a tough ques­tion as they are in how a prospec­tive employee might try to solve it. Since busi­nesses today have to be able to react quickly to shift­ing mar­ket dynam­ics, they want more than engi­neers with high IQs and good col­lege tran­scripts. They want peo­ple who can think on their feet.”

Com­ment: What are those com­pa­nies (Google, Microsoft, Ama­zon) after? Employ­ees with good Exec­u­tive Func­tions. You can try some of the fun teasers in the arti­cle. For more con­text on what those are Read the rest of this entry »

Today we have a num­ber of indus­try announcements:

1) New edi­tions of these Blog Car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cific topics)

• Encephalon (neuroscience)
• Grand Rounds (medicine)
• Edu­ca­tion (guess!)
• Hap­pi­ness

2) The Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion has launched a Neu­rotech Job Board ded­i­cated to com­mer­cial neu­ro­science (mostly focused on clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, like drugs and devices, not so much on pre­ven­tion, health & well­ness). And the Kaiser Foun­da­tion Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter is look­ing for a Research Project Man­ager.

3) The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence has finally released a report of the human enhance­ment work­shop that took place in June 2006. Read more about it at Zack’s blog.

4) Stephanie West Allen and Dr. Jef­frey Schwartz announce the Sched­ule of Events for their Brains On Pur­pose™ Sem­i­nars (“look­ing at con­flict and the process of con­flict res­o­lu­tion through the lens of neu­ro­science”): Col­orado in Octo­ber and Port­land in November.

5) Reg­is­tra­tion is now open for my class on The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here), Octo­ber 9 30, at UC Berke­ley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI).

6) A cou­ple of great Read the rest of this entry »

If you are based in North Cal­i­for­nia, you may be inter­ested in the classes just announced by the UC Berke­ley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. “Berke­ley OLLI is an inquir­ing and stim­u­lat­ing com­mu­nity of adults, age 50 and above, explor­ing new areas of knowl­edge and tra­di­tional dis­ci­plines, chal­leng­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing sub­jects.” If you are not in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area, you can check the clos­est Life­long Learn­ing Cen­ter to you in either the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute net­work or the Elder­hos­tel one.

You can see a list­ing of their classes for the Fall 2007 ses­sion, on a fas­ci­nat­ing vari­ety of top­ics. Keep­ing our edu­ca­tional activ­i­ties since 2005 (first deliv­ered in SFSU), I will be teach­ing the fol­low­ing class

The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here)

Octo­ber 9-30th, 4 classes, 6.30–8.30pm

Loca­tion: Uni­ver­sity Hall, UC Berkeley

Descrip­tion: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of what aging means. In this class, we will review the sci­ence behind some of key con­cepts in this field and explore their impli­ca­tions on our lifestyles: neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, the Cog­ni­tive Reserve the­ory for healthy aging, computer-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams, emo­tional self-regulation, and the 4 pil­lars for life­long Brain Health. We have all heard “Use it or lose it”. Lat­est research sug­gests, “Use it and improve it”.

If you are inter­ested in learn­ing more about the classes, you can attend the open House on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 18, 10:00 am to 12:00 noon, at the Berke­ley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berke­ley. I can only say that the SFSU classes were a lot of fun and I am sure the Berke­ley ones will be as compelling.

If you are in the Bay Area, we hope to see you at this event! Feel free to for­ward the invi­ta­tion below to any­one you know who may be interested.

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The grow­ing move­ment for improv­ing brain health has brought many inter­ested pro­fes­sion­als and inter­ested com­mu­nity mem­bers to the table. Shar­ing our infor­ma­tion, activ­i­ties, and planned events to pro­mote brain health increases the power of our reach.

Please join us on May 16, 2007 from noon to 1:30pm for a com­pli­men­tary gath­er­ing co-sponsored by:

• The Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (Nancy Cerid­wyn will make some remarks),
• The Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes (OLLI) at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity and Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, and
• Sharp­Brains.

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, well-known neu­ro­sci­en­tist and author of The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains and instruc­tor of the Exer­cis­ing Our Brains class, will pro­vide an overview of the sci­ence and trends behind the emerg­ing brain fit­ness field.

Please bring infor­ma­tion on your work and events to share with oth­ers inter­ested in brain health.

Where: SFSU OLLI (835 Mar­ket Street, 6th Floor, San Fran­cisco, Room 675)
When: Wednes­day, May 16, 12–1:30 pm
What: A chance for net­work­ing with Read the rest of this entry »

We hope you are enjoy­ing the grow­ing cov­er­age of Brain Fit­ness as much as we are. Below you have the Brain Fit­ness Newslet­ter we sent a few days ago-you can sub­scribe to this monthly email update in the box on the right hand side.

In this post, we will briefly cover:

I. Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chicago Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.

II. Events: we are out­reach part­ners for the Learn­ing & the Brain con­fer­ence, which will gather neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors, and for the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week.

III. Pro­gram Reviews: The Wall Street Jour­nal reviewed six dif­fer­ent pro­grams for brain exer­cise and aging, and the one we offer is one of the two win­ners. A college-level coun­sel­ing cen­ter starts offer­ing our stress man­age­ment one. And we inter­view a Notre Dame sci­en­tist who has con­ducted a repli­ca­tion study for the work­ing mem­ory train­ing pro­gram for kids with ADD/ ADHD.

IV. New Offer­ings: we have started to offer two infor­ma­tion pack­ages that can be very use­ful for peo­ple who want to bet­ter under­stand this field before they com­mit to any par­tic­u­lar pro­gram: learn more about our Brain Fit­ness 101 guide and Exer­cise Your Brain DVD.

V. Web­site and Blog Sum­mary: we revamped our home page and have had a very busy month writ­ing many good arti­cles. We also hosted two “Blog Car­ni­vals”- don’t you want to know what that means?
Read the rest of this entry »

For infor­ma­tion on the 2008 Con­fer­ence, and the dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers, visit: Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers.

The post below refers to the 2007 Conference:

————————-

The orga­niz­ers of this amaz­ing con­fer­ence, whose reg­is­tra­tion is about to expire, just extended their very kind offer to Sharp­Brains read­ers: you can reg­is­ter at the reduced price of $475 (right now the nor­mal price is $545) if you do so by Feb­ru­ary 9nd. You can reg­is­ter here http://www.edupr.com/reg.html, mak­ing sure to write SharpBrains1 in the com­ments section

The Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives is keep­ing up its great out­reach initiatives:

1- Check their blog with posts such as Resolve to be good to your brain, too. Tip: “Brain change takes time; allow your brain time to get used to new cir­cum­stance” (from the Dana Guide to Brain Health). 

You can read our The Dana Guide to Brain Health book review.

2– The Brain Aware­ness Week 2007, March 12-18th, with many activ­i­ties around the world to “advance pub­lic aware­ness about the progress and ben­e­fits of brain research. The Dana Alliance is joined in the cam­paign by part­ners in the United States and around the world, includ­ing med­ical and research orga­ni­za­tions; patient advo­cacy groups; the National Insti­tutes of Health, and other gov­ern­ment agen­cies; ser­vice groups; hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ties; K-12 schools; and pro­fes­sional organizations.”

Learn how you can participate! 

 

Happy 2007 to everyone!

We have just for­mu­lated our New Year Res­o­lu­tion: make 2007 the year when brain plas­tic­ity and Brain Fit­ness became main­stream concepts.

How do we start? well, let’s announce the launch of the Car­ni­val of Brain Fit­ness (a Blog Car­ni­val is basi­cally the vehi­cle that blogs use to share posts around spe­cific topics).

Goal: to facil­i­tate a dia­logue about this emerg­ing field across mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, from sci­en­tists and health pro­fes­sion­als, to edu­ca­tion and train­ing ones, to basi­cally every­one who has con­ducted an exper­i­ment on his on her brain and mind, and has news to report.

Con­text: The sci­en­tific foun­da­tions lie in neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, cog­ni­tive train­ing and stress man­age­ment. Med­ical and health appli­ca­tions range from stroke and TBI reha­bil­i­ta­tion to ADD/ADHD and early Alzheimer’s to Mind­ful­ness Based Stress Reduc­tion and cog­ni­tive ther­apy. Edu­ca­tional and train­ing appli­ca­tions go from help­ing kids improve read­ing abil­i­ties to help­ing man­age stress and anx­i­ety — includ­ing work with the “men­tal game” in sports and high-demand activ­i­ties pr pro­fes­sions. Each of us may also have expe­ri­ences to report, where we saw first hand, no mat­ter our age, our innate abil­ity to refine and trans­form our­selves (and our brains).

Mechan­ics: If you’d like to con­tribute, Read the rest of this entry »