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Jan 31, 2011 Comments Off

Virtual Book Club on March 14th to Celebrate Brain Awareness Week

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Please Join us on Mon­day March 14th for the largest global and vir­tual book club dis­cus­sion ever focused on the brain.

An open dis­cus­sion on what new brain research means to each of us.

In honor of Brain Aware­ness Week.

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Why March 14th?

Because we want to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW), the cam­paign founded by The Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives to increase pub­lic aware­ness about the progress and ben­e­fits of brain research. BAW 2011 takes place March 14-20th, 2011.

Every March, Read the rest of this entry »

Oct 5, 2010 7

Grand Rounds: 22 Health and Medicine Questions and Answers

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Wel­come to Grand Rounds, the weekly col­lec­tion of best health and med­ical blog posts. This week we invite you to enjoy a broad range of insights, tips, and first-hand sto­ries, pre­sented as a Q&A con­ver­sa­tion with blog­gers will­ing to answer, below, a total of 22 good questions.

On Health and Med­i­cine

  1. What can one-word pre­scrip­tions deliver
  2. How does food pro­cess­ing change food´s nutri­tional value
  3. Can diet Increases Risk of ADHD
  4. Is alco­holism an illness
  5. What´s bet­ter: steady dete­ri­o­ra­tion over 10 years, or symp­tom-free life for 9 years fol­lowed by rapid dete­ri­o­ra­tion in year 10

On Patient Life

  1. As we talk about wellness…what about devel­op­ing self-compassion
  2. Can patients with chronic pain still live a full life
  3. What is the patient-doctor eti­quette for using Face­book and Twitter
  4. Should patients in an ideal world con­tract directly with their doctors
  5. What are patient advo­cates focus­ing on these days

On Health Care pro­fes­sion­als Read the rest of this entry »

Sep 8, 2009 Comments Off

Update: Retooling Use It or Lose It at New York Public Library

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Here you have the Sep­tem­ber edi­tion of our monthly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health Brain Fitnessand brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

In the cur­rent edi­tion of The Jour­nal on Active Aging, I dis­cuss why we need to Retool “Use it or lose it”, and why rou­tine, doing things inside our com­fort zones, is the most com­mon enemy of the nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge our brains need. You can read the full arti­cle for free Here.

Book Tour

We are glad to report that The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness con­tin­ues to obtain excel­lent endorsements:

“This is the only book that I know of that seam­lessly inte­grates lat­est infor­ma­tion about cog­ni­tive health across the lifes­pan. Very use­ful to any­one inter­ested in brain care.”

–Arthur Kramer, Ph. D., Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy at Uni­ver­sity of Illinois

“…we now have a rock solid primer on brain health that we can rec­om­mend with confidence…I found it par­tic­u­larly effec­tive to start the book with a list of ten brain myths that need debunk­ing.“
–Michael C. Pat­ter­son, for­mer Man­ager NRTA/ Stay­ing Sharp at AARP

The offi­cial book tour starts this week, and includes New York Pub­lic Library!
09/08: Club One Fit­ness Cen­ter, Petaluma, CA
09/09: San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity OLLI
09/11: ASA Brain Health Day, Oak­land, CA
09/23: New York Pub­lic Library, Bronx Library Cen­ter
09/25: New York Pub­lic Library, Stephen Schwarz­man Build­ing
10/06, Smart­Sil­vers MIT North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Palo Alto, CA
10/14: UC-Berkeley OLLI, CA

You can find all the details here. If you haven’t read the book yet, you can order it via Ama­zon Here (print book) or Here (Kin­dle edi­tion). Or ask your local book­store or library.

Brain Reserve

Edu­ca­tion AND Life­long Cog­ni­tive Activ­i­ties Delay Mem­ory Loss: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon reports how a recent follow-up to the Bronx Aging Study, where 488 ini­tially healthy adults have been tracked over 20 years, shows that every addi­tional cog­ni­tive “activ­ity day” (par­tic­i­pat­ing in one activ­ity for one day a week) helps delay for about two months the onset of rapid mem­ory loss as we grow older.
Need ideas for extra activities?

Chang­ing our Minds…by Read­ing Fic­tion: What about get­ting a novel in your hands (or writ­ing one)? By imag­in­ing many pos­si­ble worlds, argues psy­chol­o­gist Keith Oat­ley, fic­tion gives us the sur­prise which can help expand our under­stand­ing of our­selves and the social world.

Sharp­Brains Fan Page in Face­book: What about par­tic­i­pat­ing in our new Fan Page at Face­book? You can not only receive lat­est updates but com­ment on your favorite arti­cles and teasers, and dis­cuss your own ideas and resources.

Med­ica­tion and Training

Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment via Phar­ma­col­ogy AND Neu­ropsy­chol­ogy: our co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg inte­grates three appar­ently sep­a­rate worlds –cog­ni­tive enhance­ment via drugs, brain fit­ness train­ing soft­ware, com­put­er­ized neu­rocog­ni­tive assessments-, in a much updated new edi­tion of his book The Exec­u­tive Brain.

Com­par­ing Cog­ni­tive Train­ing & Med­ica­tion Treat­ment for ADHD: a recent study shows that work­ing mem­ory train­ing improves work­ing mem­ory more than stim­u­lant med­ica­tion treatment-and ben­e­fits per­sist longer. Does this mat­ter?, Does this mean train­ing is bet­ter than med­ica­tion for kids with atten­tion deficits?  Dr. David Rabiner dis­sects the study search­ing for answers.

Inno­va­tion

AAA to deploy Dri­ve­Sharp: Peter Kissinger, CEO of the AAA Foun­da­tion, explains why the cur­rent sys­tem of dri­ver licens­ing is inad­e­quate and incon­sis­tent, why AAA is rec­om­mend­ing older dri­vers use a new cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, and why he believes insur­ance com­pa­nies will soon start to offer brain train­ing to their members.

Sharp­Brains Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion: in order to help lead­ers of the brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health com­mu­nity learn, con­nect and col­lab­o­rate, Sharp­Brains has cre­ated a vir­tual LinkedIn net­work for clients. The net­work will be for­mally launched with a webi­nar on Sep­tem­ber 29th that will dis­cuss The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket in 2009. For orga­ni­za­tions that want to order the report, attend the webi­nar, and join the net­work, more infor­ma­tion is avail­able Here.

Brain Teaser

Brain Quiz: Do You Have a Brain?: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon dares you to answer these 10 ques­tions cor­rectly to prove that you have a brain.

Enjoy!

Aug 21, 2008 Comments Off

Searching for Brain Health and Fitness Information?

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A cou­ple of quick notes about our blog:

1– We have just added a Search box to allow you eas­ily find con­tent in our 600+ arti­cle archive. Take a look at the top of the right side­bar, and let us know if you have any feed­back! Btw, feel free to say Thank You to our reader Luc…whose feed­back gave a new impe­tus to this Search option.

2–  You will also find a but­ton named BOOKMARK at the bot­tom of all blog posts, includ­ing this one. This allows you to eas­ily sub­mit blog posts to the social media sites where you have accounts: Face­book, Digg, Red­dit, Stum­ble­Upon, Del.ic.ious, you name it. We appre­ci­ate your help in let­ting more peo­ple know about our arti­cles and teasers!

As always, any feed­back is welcome.

Jul 31, 2008 Comments Off

Update: Brain Health Promotion Event and Predictions

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Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please brainremem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

News and Events

Brain Health Pro­mo­tion by the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging: You may be inter­ested in the excel­lent agenda the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging has put together for health pro­fes­sion­als, from Sep­tem­ber 2-5th in San Fran­cisco, devot­ing a full day to Brain Health. Alvaro will par­tic­i­pate in 3 of the ses­sions, includ­ing giv­ing a keynote on the Future of Brain Health.

Can Google Kill Neu­rons and Rewire Your Whole Brain?: The Atlantic Monthly pub­lished an arti­cle titled Is Google Mak­ing Us Stu­pid, which basi­cally blamed Google for lit­er­ally rewiring our brains into more stu­pid brains (not being able to pay atten­tion, read deep books…). We are not very impressed by the super­fi­cial treat­ment given to this very impor­tant topic.

Mobile Brain Train­ing, Sci­en­tific Learn­ing, and More News: Overview of cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness news, includ­ing recent research on how phys­i­cal exer­cise can help diag­nosed Alzheimer’s patients, the new Mac ver­sion of Posit Science’s audi­tory pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram, and more.

Mar­ket Analysis

Top 10 Brain Health Pre­dic­tions: In an emerg­ing mar­ket, like brain health and train­ing, it is dif­fi­cult to make pre­cise pro­jec­tions. Here we point out a num­ber of trends that exec­u­tives, con­sumers, pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers, and the media should watch closely in the com­ing years. Your feed­back is very wel­come…we will give a com­pli­men­tary copy of our mar­ket report to the per­son who pro­vides the most insight­ful addi­tional pre­dic­tion by August 10th.

Cog­ni­tive Health Pio­neers: Thank You! The qual­ity and vari­ety of our client list brings up the cross-sector demand for qual­ity infor­ma­tion in the emerg­ing brain fitness/ cog­ni­tive health cat­e­gory. And it helps us pri­or­i­tize efforts and cov­er­age of mar­ket and research news and trends.

Research Analy­sis

Encephalon blog car­ni­val: Brain & Mind Research: We hosted Encephalon´s 50th edi­tion, where you will find a selec­tion of superb blog posts on all things Brain and Mind. Exam­ples? you may enjoy Face­book Ate My Psy­chi­a­trist or per­haps the Com­pul­sive Col­lect­ing of Toy Bul­lets and Tele­vi­sions.

Atten­tion Deficits At Work: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon pro­vides an in-depth overview of a recent study by Ron de Graaf and col­leagues, in which they found that an aver­age of 3.5% of work­ers (in ten coun­tries) meet the cri­te­ria for adult ADHD, In the US, the per­cent­age increased to 4.5%. This has clear effects on productivity.

Edu­ca­tion and Learning

Learn­ing & the Brain: Resources for Edu­ca­tors: Edu­ca­tor Lau­rie Bar­tels reviews her favorite brain resources for teach­ing and learn­ing: books, con­fer­ences, and websites.

Brain Teasers

Top 25 Brain and Mind Haikus. Yours?: Read­ers have con­tributed a good num­ber of haikus on brain-related top­ics. You can fol­low the link to check out our Favorite 7, and many other fun ones…which ones do you like the most?

Jul 21, 2008 3

Encephalon #50 Edition: Brain & Mind Research

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Wel­come to Encephalon 50th edi­tion, where you will find another superb col­lec­tion of blog posts on all things Brain and Mind.Encephalon brain and mind blog carnival

Enjoy these contributions:

Sci­ence & Technology

Mind Hacks reports that Face­book ate my psy­chi­a­trist. We can learn about the ben­e­fits of social net­work­ing sites like Face­book, bring­ing great per­spec­tive to recent and mis­guided media spec­u­la­tion (fuelled by a recent talk at the Royal Col­lege of Psy­chi­a­trists). Vaughan, will you please report on the ben­e­fits of par­tic­i­pat­ing (and, bet­ter, host­ing) Encephalon?.

Dun­geons And Drag­ons — Or Mazes And Mon­sters?: Pod­Black Cat offers a thought-provoking review of the ther­apy (includ­ing self-therapy) appli­ca­tions of role-playing games such as the clas­sic Dun­geons And Drag­ons and the more recent mas­sively mul­ti­player online games.

Cog­ni­tive Daily cov­ers another type of game. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to SharpBrains!

As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal, CNN and more, Sharp­Brains is an inde­pen­dent mar­ket research and pub­lish­ing firm track­ing brain fit­ness and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­ity research and mar­ket­place. AARP recently named The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness a Best Book on the subject.

UPCOMING ONLINE COURSE: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012 (March 2012).

NEWS: How to Sub­mit a Guest Post to SharpBrains.com.

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Top 30 Articles

  1. Top 50 Brain Teasers, by Sharp­Brains Team
  2. The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains, by Alvaro Fernandez
  3. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?, by Car­o­line Latham
  4. Brain Plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain, by Pas­cale Michelon
  5. Top 10 Brain Fit­ness Future Trends, by Alvaro Fernandez
  6. 7 FAQs on Men­tal Exer­cise, by Alvaro Fernandez
  7. It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101, by Alvaro Fernandez
  8. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness prod­ucts and games, by Alvaro Fernandez
  9. MIT Event on Brain Games: Con­text, Trends, Ques­tions, by Alvaro Fernandez
  10. Stress Man­age­ment Work­shop for Inter­na­tional Women’s Day, by Alvaro Fernandez
  11. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Man­age­ment, by Jill Sutie
  12. Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle, by Gre­gory Kellet
  13. How can I improve my short term mem­ory?, by Car­o­line Latham
  14. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Devel­op­ment Through Play, by David Elkind
  15. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son, by Alvaro Fernandez
  16. Easy Steps to Improve Brain Health, by Car­o­line Latham
  17. Info­graphic: State of the Mar­ket 2009, by Paul Van Slembrouck
  18. Improve Mem­ory with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Test­ing, by Bill Klemm
  19. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn, by Lau­rie Bartels
  20. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness, by Alvaro Fernandez
  21. Max­i­mize the Cog­ni­tive Value of Your Men­tal Work­out, by Schlomo Breznitz
  22. Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram and Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity @ PBS, by Alvaro Fernandez
  23. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD, by David Rabiner
  24. Can Intel­li­gence Be Trained? Mar­tin Buschkuehl shows how, by Alvaro Fernandez
  25. How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?, by David Rabiner
  26. Exer­cis­ing the body is exer­cis­ing the mind, by Adrian Preda
  27. Brain Evo­lu­tion and Why it is Mean­ing­ful Today to Improve Our Brain Health, by Larry McCleary
  28. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health, by Pas­cale Michelon
  29. Posit Sci­ence, Nin­tendo Brain Age, and Brain Train­ing Top­ics, by Alvaro Fernandez
  30. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­ory and the Brain, by Shan­non Moffet

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