Reader Theresa Cerulli just for­warded this Let­ter to the Edi­tor that she had sent to the New York Times and went unpub­lished. The let­ter addresses the OpEd men­tioned here (pitch­ing phys­i­cal vs. men­tal exer­cise), and refers to the Cogmed work­ing mem­ory train­ing pro­gram, whose results have been stud­ied in mul­ti­ple papers pub­lished in top med­ical and sci­en­tific jour­nals.

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Dear Edi­tor:

I applaud San­dra Aamodt and Sam Wang for throw­ing some cold water on the cur­rent brain fit­ness craze in their recent New York Times Mag­a­zine Opin­ion Edi­to­r­ial “Exer­cise on the Brain.”  They are cor­rect in label­ing the host of “men­tal fit­ness” prod­ucts that tar­get aging baby boomers as “inspired by sci­ence “  not to be con­fused with actu­ally proven by sci­ence. For the last 30 years, terms like “brain plas­tic­ity” have been widely and casu­ally used, cre­at­ing hype that risks drown­ing out the real break­throughs that brain researchers are mak­ing in this area.

How­ever, I would like to dis­tin­guish the “men­tal fit­ness” trend that Aamodt and Wang rightly crit­i­cize from actual researched-based cog­ni­tive train­ing such as the Cogmed pro­gram devel­oped in Swe­den. Unlike “men­tal fit­ness” pro­grams, cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams focus very nar­rowly on spe­cific cog­ni­tive func­tions that research has shown to be plas­tic. This is in stark con­trast to com­pil­ing a smat­ter­ing of exer­cises or activ­i­ties that are gen­er­ally thought to be Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times just pub­lished an OpEd that may be throw­ing out the baby with the bath water.

Exer­cise on the Brain extols the virtue of phys­i­cal exer­cise for brain health at the expense of other impor­tant pil­lars such as good nutri­tion, stress man­age­ment and men­tal exercise.

We have sent a Let­ter to the Edi­tor to clar­ify the sub­ject and put their main rec­om­men­da­tion (go out and walk, or join the gym) in bet­ter context.

Let’s quickly review the four essen­tial pil­lars to help main­tain a healthy brain, and sug­gest some tips. Those pil­lars are:

• Phys­i­cal Exercise
• Men­tal Exercise
• Good Nutri­tion
• Stress Man­age­ment

1. 1. Phys­i­cal Exercise
• - Start by talk­ing to your doc­tor, espe­cially if you are not cur­rently phys­i­cally active, have spe­cial health con­cerns, or are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant changes to your cur­rent program.
• - Set a goal that you can achieve. Do some­thing you enjoy for even just 15 min­utes a day. You can always add more time and activ­i­ties later.
• - Sched­ule exer­cise into your daily rou­tine. It will be become a habit faster if you do.
• - If you can only do one thing, do some­thing car­dio­vas­cu­lar, mean­ing some­thing that gets your heart beat­ing faster. This includes walk­ing, run­ning, ski­ing, swim­ming, bik­ing, hik­ing, ten­nis, bas­ket­ball, play­ing tag, ulti­mate Fris­bee, and other sim­i­lar sports/activities.
2. 2. Men­tal Exercise
• - Be curi­ous! Get to know your local library and com­mu­nity col­lege, look for local orga­ni­za­tions or churches that offer classes or workshops
• - Do a vari­ety of things, includ­ing things you aren’t good at (if you like to sing, try paint­ing too)
• - Work puz­zles like cross­words and sudoku or play games like chess and bridge
• - Try a com­put­er­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram for a cus­tomized workout
• - If you can only do one thing, learn some­thing new every day
3. Good Nutri­tion
• - Eat a vari­ety of foods of dif­fer­ent col­ors with­out a lot of added ingre­di­ents or processes
• - Plan your meals around your veg­eta­bles, and then add fruit, pro­tein, dairy, and/or grains
• - Add some cold-water fish to your diet (tuna, salmon, mack­erel, hal­ibut, sar­dines, and her­ring) which con­tain omega-3 fatty acids
• - Learn what a portion-size is, so you don’t overeat
• - Try to eat more foods low on the Glycemic Index
• - If you can only do one thing, eat more veg­eta­bles, par­tic­u­larly leafy green ones
4. Stress Man­age­ment
• - Get reg­u­lar car­dio­vas­cu­lar exercise
• - Try to get enough sleep each night
• - Keep con­nected with your friends and family
• - Prac­tice med­i­ta­tion, yoga, or some other calm­ing activ­ity as way to take a relax­ing time-out (maybe a bath)
• - Try train­ing with a heart rate vari­abil­ity biofeed­back sensor 
• - If you can only do one thing, set aside 5–10 min­utes to just breathe deeply and recharge

Big party today. Car­ni­vals everywhere. 

Car­o­line and I admit we are quite biased. We see the world through our own lenses. Which, these days, means a lot of pas­sion for the science-based Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion. We have been try­ing hard to com­bine fun brain teasers with seri­ous posts on how brain research is start­ing to influ­ence Edu­ca­tion, Health and Train­ing, and are thank­ful that these efforts are start­ing to pay off-Mission Accomplishing!

The week­end started very well. Kevin from IQ Cor­ner and Tick­Tock­BrainTalk had brought great early aus­pices by intro­duc­ing a Sharp­Brains feed box into his blog. A num­ber of trad­ing blogs, includ­ing Brett Steenbarger’s and Trader Mike’s, enjoyed our posts on trader per­for­mance and biofeedback.

Today has been the full Car­ni­val day. Read the rest of this entry »