A new study tries to, but unfor­tu­nately doesn’t, answer that ques­tion. Study: Brain Train­ing Game Improves Exec­u­tive Func­tions and Pro­cess­ing Speed in the Elderly: A Ran­dom­ized Con­trolled Trial (PLoS ONE).

“Con­clu­sions: Our results showed that play­ing Brain Age for 4 weeks could lead to improve cog­ni­tive func­tions (exec­u­tive func­tions and pro­cess­ing speed) in the elderly. This result indi­cated that there is a pos­si­bil­ity which the elderly could improve exec­u­tive func­tions and pro­cess­ing speed in short term train­ing. The results need repli­ca­tion in large sam­ples. Long-term effects and rel­e­vance for every-day func­tion­ing remain uncer­tain as yet.” Read the rest of this entry »

We just came across a new sci­en­tific study on the value and lim­i­ta­tions of cog­ni­tive train­ing in Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI), based on a pro­gram of cog­ni­tive exer­cises pro­vided by Lumos Labs (devel­op­ers of lumosity.com).

Study: Com­put­erised Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Older Per­sons With Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment: A Pilot Study Using a Ran­domised Con­trolled Trial Design (Brain Impair­ment): Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, an announce­ment. We are start­ing a Vir­tual Intern­ship Pro­gram @ Sharp­Brains, allow­ing full-time under­grad and grad stu­dents and post­docs to lead 100-hour projects jointly defined by them­selves and by Sharp­Brains. Inter­ested can­di­dates should Con­tact Us indi­cat­ing a) a pre­lim­i­nary project pro­posal (200 words or less), and b) brief bio and qual­i­fi­ca­tions (200 words or less). Intern­ships don’t require travel and will be paid in-kind, with access to Sharp­Brains reports and con­fer­ence record­ings. Sharp­Brains will select a lim­ited num­ber of Interns based on fit between can­di­dates’ pro­posal and bio and Sharp­Brains mis­sion and activities.

Let’s now explore the lat­est edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, start­ing with a com­pre­hen­sive per­spec­tive on the edu­ca­tional value and lim­i­ta­tions of videogames, writ­ten by Mar­shall Wein­stein, a senior at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity who will be a Sharp­Brains Intern dur­ing the Fall.

Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion and Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing To Enhance Exec­u­tive Func­tions: Two very inter­est­ing new research studies…but please don’t miss the thought-provoking com­ments by reader Jay Kay.

Unlock­ing Dyslexia in Japan­ese: New clues emerge based on the obser­va­tion that some dyslex­ics have an eas­ier time with visual lan­guages like Japan­ese and Chinese.

Does ADHD med­ica­tion treat­ment in child­hood increase adult employ­ment?: A very insight­ful com­men­tary by Dr. David Rabiner.

Boomers’ Abil­ity to Make Finan­cial Deci­sions Often Declines With Age: A new report by Cana­dian bank BMO illus­trates the need for inno­v­a­tive brain fit­ness inter­ven­tions focused on main­tain­ing tar­geted cog­ni­tive func­tion­al­ity. What the report presents as inex­orable decline, it is not.

Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Aware­ness, Test­ing and Pre­ven­tion:  New data rein­forc­e the need to pay­ seri­ous atten­tion to lifestyle-based and non-invasive cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health inter­ven­tions, and the need to per­son­al­ize interventions.

Think­ing glob­ally to improve men­tal health: The National Insti­tutes of Health and the Global Alliance for Chronic Dis­eases announce a Grand Chal­lenges in Global Men­tal Health Ini­tia­tive. We will keep you posted on this.

Have a great month of August and, as always, feel free to share this enewslet­ter with friends and col­leagues… and with poten­tial can­di­dates for the new Vir­tual Intern­ship Pro­gram @ SharpBrains!

Chil­dren who exer­cise vig­or­ously tend to have bet­ter grades. In con­trast, over­weight chil­dren tend to under­achieve. With this in mind, Davis and her col­leagues from Med­ical Col­lege of Geor­gia tested whether par­tic­i­pat­ing in an exer­cise pro­gram would help over­weight chil­dren, not only phys­i­cally but also men­tally. Specif­i­cally, they hypoth­e­sized that the chil­dren exec­u­tive func­tions would ben­e­fit from exer­cis­ing. These func­tions are sup­ported by the frontal lobes of the brain and include plan­ning, goal set­ting, self-control, and inhibition.

171 chil­dren, aged 7 to 11, who were over­weight and inac­tive par­tic­i­pated in the study. They were ran­domly assigned to three groups: a low-dose group doing aer­o­bic exer­cise 20 min/day, a high-dose group (40 min/day) and a no exer­cise con­trol group. The exer­cise pro­gram lasted 13 weeks on aver­age. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a fun and inter­ac­tive ver­sion of the famous Stroop test. This test is used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure men­tal speed and flex­i­bil­ity, the hall­marks of exec­u­tive func­tions. Per­form­ing well on the test requires strong atten­tion and self-regulation.

Your job is to name the col­ors of the words. Do NOT read the words but the color of the ink used to write the words. For exam­ple, if the word “GREEN” is printed in a red color, you should say “RED” (and refrain from say­ing “GREEN”!)

Speed mat­ters so try to say the col­ors as fast as you can. A nice fea­ture here: You will be able to record your reac­tion times.

Ready to have fun? GO

Both chil­dren and adults need a good night sleep to func­tion at their best. A recent study, sum­ma­rized here, sug­gests that this is true for babies too: How much sleep a 12 month old baby gets can influ­ence the devel­op­ment of his/her exec­u­tive func­tions. Exec­u­tive func­tions, sup­ported by the frontal lobes of the brain, are often con­sid­ered as indi­ca­tors of children’s like­li­hood of suc­ceed­ing in school. They involve decision-making, problem-solving, plan­ning, inhibit­ing, as well as other high-level func­tions (social behav­ior, emo­tional con­trol, work­ing mem­ory, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »

The Brain Power resis­tance train­ing study pub­lished ear­lier this year showed that 12 months of once-weekly or twice-weekly strength train­ing improved exec­u­tive cog­ni­tive func­tions (selec­tive atten­tion and con­flict resolution).

The study included 155 women aged 65– to 75– years-old. Resis­tance train­ing was done in 60mn-classes using a leg press and free weights. It was com­pared to a con­trol, bal­ance and tone train­ing group who used stretch­ing, range-of-motion, basic core-strength, and bal­ance exer­cises as well as relax­ation techniques.

A few days ago the results of the one-year follow-up study were released: Read the rest of this entry »

My inter­est in the brain stems from want­ing to bet­ter under­stand both how to make school more palat­able for stu­dents, and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment more mean­ing­ful for fac­ulty. To that end, I began my Neu­rons Fir­ing blog in April, 2007, have been doing a lot of read­ing, and been attend­ing work­shops and con­fer­ences, includ­ing Learn­ing & the Brain.

If you agree that our brains are designed for learn­ing, then as edu­ca­tors it is incum­bent upon us to be look­ing for ways to max­i­mize the learn­ing process for each of our stu­dents, as well as for our­selves. Some of what fol­lows is sim­ply com­mon sense, but I’ve learned that all of it has a sci­en­tific basis in our brains. Read the rest of this entry »

Bilin­gual­ism Asso­ci­ated With Brain Reor­ga­ni­za­tion Involv­ing Bet­ter Effi­ciency in Exec­u­tive Func­tions, Research Finds (Sci­ence News)

“Find­ings are very impor­tant because they show an unknown aspect of bilin­gual­ism, which goes beyond lin­guis­tic advan­tages, and they also show bilin­guals are more effec­tive in respond­ing to cer­tain stim­uli,” explains researcher Cesar Avila, who ensures the research shows that bilin­gual­ism does not only have effects on the brain at a lin­guis­tic level, but that it also works dif­fer­ently, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of intro­duc­ing lan­guages at an early age because it gen­er­ates cog­ni­tive benefits.

Jour­nal Ref­er­ence: G. Garbin, A. San­juan, C. Forn, J.C. Bus­ta­mante, A. Rodriguez-Pujadas, V. Bel­loch, M. Her­nan­dez, A. Costa, C. Ávila. Bridg­ing lan­guage and atten­tion: Brain basis of the impact of bilin­gual­ism on cog­ni­tive con­trol. Neu­roIm­age, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.078

This study sup­ports another one we com­mented on a few years ago on how Bilin­gual brains stay sharp longer:

“In short: learn­ing and speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage pro­vides con­stant brain exer­cise to the frontal lobes, the area of the brain right behind your fore­head that focuses our atten­tion, helps us ignore dis­trac­tions, and make decisions.”

Excel­lent arti­cle in the New York Times on learn­ing, self-regulation and exec­u­tive fuunctions:

The School Issue: Preschool: Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control? (New York Times)

- “Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among schol­ars and sci­en­tists who study early-childhood devel­op­ment, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the board­room than the class­room: exec­u­tive func­tion. Orig­i­nally a neu­ro­science term, it refers to the abil­ity to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process infor­ma­tion in a coher­ent way, to hold rel­e­vant details in your short-term mem­ory, to avoid dis­trac­tions and men­tal traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gists have come to believe that exec­u­tive func­tion, and specif­i­cally the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vex­ing ques­tions in edu­ca­tion today.”

- “The abil­ity of young chil­dren to con­trol their emo­tional and cog­ni­tive impulses, it turns out, is a remark­ably strong indi­ca­tor of both short-term and long-term suc­cess, aca­d­e­mic and otherwise.”

A truly excel­lent arti­cle, highly rec­om­mended read­ing. The only aspect lack­ing is the absence of coverage/ analy­sis of training-based alter­na­tives to devel­op­ing self-regulation, such as med­i­ta­tion and com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing, which can help address some of the issues raised in the arti­cle (lim­ited scal­a­bil­ity, dif­fi­culty in iso­lat­ing influ­en­tial vari­ables). We cov­ered this in-depth in our book inter­view with Michael Posner.