Title: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness — Prac­ti­cal Advice to Keep Your Brain Sharp

- Two community-based book talks hosted by New York Pub­lic Library and sup­ported by the Ein­stein Aging Study at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine.

Descrip­tion: A fit brain? Can you exer­cise your brain and become men­tally fit? Can you con­tinue to learn and increase your brain’s capac­ity at any age? Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, says Yes!, and in this pro­gram he will show you how. Based on research com­piled from lead­ing sci­en­tists in fields of Neu­ro­science, Geron­tol­ogy, and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence, and pre­sented in his book “The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness”, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will pro­vide ways to main­tain and improve your cog­ni­tive health.

He will:
– Debunk 10 Myths of Brain Fit­ness
– Exam­ine the 4 Pil­lars of Brain Main­te­nance
– Dis­cuss the dif­fer­ence between Men­tal Exer­cise and Men­tal Activ­ity
– Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing Soft­ware
– Explore emerg­ing trends

Book and Bio: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, teaches “Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness” at UC-Berkeley and San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity. He is the co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.

When and where:
> Sep­tem­ber 23rd, 10am, New York Pub­lic Library, Bronx Library Cen­ter. 310 East Kings­bridge Road. (718) 579‑4244. More infor­ma­tion here.

> Sep­tem­ber 25rd, 1pm, New York Pub­lic Library, Stephen Schwarz­man Build­ing Audi­to­rium. Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. 917-ASK-NYPL (917–275-6975). More infor­ma­tion here.

“We’ve all heard about dumb­ing down. But there is plenty of evi­dence that the oppo­site is also true. Is this, in fact, the age of mass intelligence?”

Fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle in Intel­li­gent Life, a pub­li­ca­tion by The Economist:

THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE

- “Mil­lions more peo­ple are going to muse­ums, lit­er­ary fes­ti­vals and operas; mil­lions more watch demand­ing tele­vi­sion pro­grammes or down­load serious-minded pod­casts. Not all these activ­i­ties count as mind-stretching, of course. Some are down­right fluffy. But, says Donna Ren­ney, the chief exec­u­tive of the Chel­tenham Fes­ti­vals, audi­ences increas­ingly want “the buzz you get from work­ing that lit­tle bit harder”. This is a dra­matic yet often unrecog­nised devel­op­ment. “When peo­ple talk and write about cul­ture,” says Ira Glass, the cre­ator of the riv­et­ing public-radio show “This Amer­i­can Life”, “it’s apoc­a­lyp­tic. We tell our­selves that every­thing is in bad shape. But the oppo­site is true. There’s an abun­dance of really inter­est­ing things going on all around us.”

- “Third, what does all this say about the wide­spread view that soci­eties are dumb­ing down, edu­ca­tional stan­dards are crum­bling and people’s abil­ity to con­cen­trate is col­laps­ing? The reply must be that it can­not be true across the board and that for a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber, the oppo­site is the case: peo­ple want more intel­lec­tu­ally demand­ing things to see and hear, not fewer. Surely both things are hap­pen­ing at once: part of the pop­u­la­tion is dumb­ing down, part is wis­ing up.”

Full arti­cle: THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE

For a related blog arti­cle: Exer­cise your brain in the Cog­ni­tive Age

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!

Hello, I hope you have been enjoy­ing the long week­end (for folks in the US).

Cre­at­ing a Sharp­Brains Wid­get was in my To Do list for a good while, to make it eas­ier to share our con­tent via other blogs and social sites (Face­book…). Finally, it is done!. And sur­pris­ingly easy.

What it is: A wid­get is basi­cally a box you can embed in your blog or web­page. For exam­ple, after cre­at­ing our Exer­cise Your Brain wid­get, I just embed­ded it into our own blog: you can see it in the right col­umn, titled Share Our Blog. There are sev­eral options (size, color…), very easy to customize.

Descrip­tion: Exer­cise Your Brain. Research-based infor­ma­tion on Brain Fit­ness and Cog­ni­tive Health, authored by Sharp­Brains staff and over 10 neu­ro­sci­en­tists, spiced up with fun Brain Teasers.

What you can do: if you have any web­site or blog where you’d like the wid­get to appear, you can sim­ply Get your Wid­get by click­ing Here. Choose the options (box size, color theme, arti­cle text…) that bet­ter fit your site, and copy and paste the HTML. It lit­er­ally takes 3–5 minutes.

Thank you. I hope we’ll see it appear in a vari­ety of blogs and web­sites inter­ested in brain top­ics, so we can expand the conversation!

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

News and Events

Exer­cise your brain in the Cog­ni­tive Age: The New York Times pub­lished two thought-provoking arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness, one of them fea­tur­ing SharpBrains.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past two days, The New York Times has pub­lished two excel­lent arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Despite appear­ing in sep­a­rate sec­tions (tech­nol­ogy and editorial), the two have more in com­mon than imme­di­ately meets the eye. Both raise key ques­tions that politi­cians, health pol­icy mak­ers, busi­ness leaders, educators and consumers should pay atten­tion to.

1) First, Exer­cise Your Brain, or Else You’ll … Uh …, by Katie Hafner (5/3/08). Some quotes:

- “At the same time, boomers are seiz­ing on a mount­ing body of evi­dence that sug­gests that brains con­tain more plas­tic­ity than pre­vi­ously thought, and many peo­ple are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, doing brain fit­ness exer­cises with the same inten­sity with which they attack a treadmill.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Very fun inter­view with Jack and Elaine LaLanne by Dave Bun­nell: read it at Meet Fit­ness Leg­ends Jack and Elaine LaLanne | ELDR.com. See some quotes:

• In 1936, Jack opened America’s first health club in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, called the “Jack LaLanne Phys­i­cal Cul­ture Studio.”
• Through tele­vi­sion shows, pub­lic appear­ances, and books—and by sell­ing health-related products—they have been the most vocal and effec­tive evan­ge­lists for pre­ven­tive health the world has ever known.
• “Elaine works out,” Jack replies, “but I work out eight days a week. I spend an hour and a half in the gym, and then a half hour in the pool, and I change my rou­tine every 30 days completely.”
• “You’ve got to go at it hard and work on dif­fer­ent mus­cles,” he con­tin­ues. “You know how you stay young, don’t you? You work your butt off. Any­thing you do in life that’s worth­while, there’s a price to pay.”

Jack recently cel­e­brated his 92nd birthday!

We all have to be very thank­ful for their life mis­sion: a recent arti­cle from the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science quotes:

“Every­body knows that exer­cise is good for your heart, but in recent years we’ve gath­ered com­pelling evi­dence that exer­cise is also good for your brain,” says Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies. “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”

You can check other tips in Read the rest of this entry »