A round-up of inter­ested news dur­ing the month:

1) Train­ing Young Brains to Behave (New York Times)

2) Head Games (OpEd in New York Times)

3) Will Geron­tol­ogy rec­og­nize the Brain? (Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging event)

4) Brain func­tion gets a boost from walk­ing (Los Ange­les Times)

5) An idea whose time has (finally) come (McKnight’s Long Term Care News)

6) Train your brain (Finan­cial Times Germany)

7) Toman auge ejer­ci­cios que adies­tran la mente (Mile­nio, Mexico)

Trois nou­vellestudes IDATE : Seri­ous Games (Publi-News, France)

Links and com­men­tary below. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Fri­day, dur­ing the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging’s Brain Health day, a par­tic­i­pant made a com­ment along the lines, “I just com­pleted my Mas­ters in Geron­tol­ogy at Uni­ver­sity XYZ. Despite my best efforts, I could not find a sin­gle brain-related class to attend as part of my stud­ies. Which is why I decided to come to a con­fer­ence like this”.

Incred­i­ble that this hap­pens in 2008, a decade after the “Decade of the Brain”.

Health­care and cog­ni­tive sci­ence seem to have inhab­ited dif­fer­ent uni­verses for too long. I hope we start to see more active cross-pollination between both fields. Geron­tol­ogy would be a great place to start, given the grow­ing demand for pre­ven­tive pro­grams to con­tribute to the cog­ni­tive health of an aging population.

We are host­ing here at Sharp­Brains the next edi­tions of sev­eral great blog car­ni­vals. If you blog about these top­ics, please sub­mit your best recent posts using our Con­tact Us form:

- August 27th: Car­ni­val of Education.

- Sep­tem­ber 9th: Car­ni­val of Biogerontology.

- Sep­tem­ber 17th: Car­ni­val of HR.

Enjoy the  weekend!

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

First, I am pleased to report that have been invited to par­tic­i­pate in a new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nomic Forum. Described as “In a global envi­ron­ment marked by short-term ori­en­ta­tion and silo-thinking, Global Agenda Coun­cils will fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and long-range think­ing to address the pre­vail­ing chal­lenges on the global agenda”, my spe­cific Coun­cil will focus on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy. More infor­ma­tion on the Global Agenda Coun­cils here. Will keep you updated via this blog.

In the News

Yes, It is Smart to Learn New Tricks: a recent Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle presents a good overview of brain health trends, but framed around a highly arti­fi­cial choice for con­sumers: either you a) do phys­i­cal exer­cise, or b) take part in social inter­ac­tions, or c) engage in men­tal exer­cise. What about switch­ing off those TVs and hav­ing time for all a, b, c, and more?

Mind Games: the August issue of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Jour­nal brings a very good piece on the emerg­ing brain fit­ness soft­ware cat­e­gory (sub­scrip­tion required), which we enhance by pro­vid­ing a quick overview of the field.

Cog­niFit raises USD 5 mil­lion: if 2007 was the year of brain fit­ness media cov­er­age, 2008 seems to be the year of seri­ous invest­ments. This Cog­niFit round fol­lows other recent ven­ture invest­ments: Dakim ($10.6m), Lumos Labs ($3m). We hear all these com­pa­nies are devot­ing part of these resources to fund clin­i­cal trials…never too late.

Brain Sci­ence and Life­long Learning

Schools as Brain Train­ing Hubs?: in a recent post we asked for sug­ges­tions to refine our pre­dic­tions for the 2007–2015 period. A good num­ber of read­ers con­tributed, and the win­ner of this infor­mal con­test is… Scott Spears, retired pub­lic schools super­in­ten­dent, for his thoughts on the future impli­ca­tions of cog­ni­tive research on schooling.

Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and Brain Plas­tic­ity in Adult Brains: while “adults may have a ten­dency to get set in their ways I’ve been doing it this way for a long time and it works, so why change?”, change itself is an excel­lent prac­tice for healthy brain aging, as Lau­rie Bar­tels explains.

A Farewell to Demen­tia?: a fas­ci­nat­ing recent edi­to­r­ial in Archives of Neu­rol­ogy, titled Demen­tia: A Word to be For­got­ten, calls for more con­struc­tive ter­mi­nol­ogy. Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man weighs in.

Other Thought-Provoking Articles

To Think or to Blink?: should Ham­let be liv­ing with us now and read­ing best­sellers, he might be won­der­ing: To Blink or not to Blink? To Think or not to Think? We are pleased to present an arti­cle by Madeleine Van Hecke, offer­ing the “on the other hand” to Mal­colm Gladwell’s Blink argument.

The impact of web 2.0 on health­care: we hosted Med­i­cine 2.0, a bi-weekly col­lec­tion of arti­cles that ana­lyze the cur­rent and poten­tial impact of web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies on med­i­cine and healthcare.

Brain Teasers

Brain Teasers: Spot the Dif­fer­ence: how many dif­fer­ences can you spot (and how many cog­ni­tive func­tions can you engage with this sim­ple exercise?)

I hope you are hav­ing a great August!

Edu­ca­tion, Aging…two seem­ingly unre­lated top­ics, but with more biol­ogy in com­mon than may meet the eye…

You may enjoy the most recent edi­tions of two great blog carnivals:

- Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion, hosted by Joanne Jacobs.

- Hour­glass: a car­ni­val of biogeron­tol­ogy, hosted by Chris at Ouroboros. Chris recently launched this blog car­ni­val to pro­vide a home for “blog­gers who are writ­ing about biogeron­tol­ogy, lifes­pan exten­sion tech­nolo­gies, and aging in general.”

Anne writes my favorite post at Exis­tence is Won­der­ful, link­ing education/ learning/ nur­ture with aging.

She first explains that

“Many peo­ple use the word “aging” as a short­hand not just for the mere process of get­ting older (which is not only inevitable for every­thing in exis­tence, but some­thing to cel­e­brate — “get­ting older”, after all, means “expe­ri­enc­ing more life”!), but for the phys­i­cal degen­er­a­tion that occurs as meta­bolic, immune, and mechan­i­cal side effects take hold as a per­son ages. Per­son­ally I find this dual use of the word “aging” ter­ri­bly confusing”.

And then adds

“We don’t nec­es­sar­ily know what hard lim­its are on longevity until we opti­mize care. I saw a dra­matic turn­around in my fish when I learned how to prop­erly con­fig­ure the tank setup, and I hope to see the day when human med­i­cine makes a sim­i­lar leap in effectiveness”

My brain is hon­oured to have been invited to participate-together with the rest of my body of course– in a new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nomic Forum. Of course I have accepted, given that the Global Agenda Coun­cils have this fas­ci­nat­ing charter:

- “Global Agenda Coun­cils will chal­lenge pre­vail­ing assump­tions, mon­i­tor trends, map inter­re­la­tion­ships and address knowl­edge gaps. Equally impor­tant, Global Agenda Coun­cils will also pro­pose solu­tions, devise strate­gies and eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of actions using mea­sur­able benchmarks.”

- “In a global envi­ron­ment marked by short-term ori­en­ta­tion and silo-thinking, Global Agenda Coun­cils will fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and long-range think­ing to address the pre­vail­ing chal­lenges on the global agenda.”

—
Update (Novem­ber 2nd, 2008): my pro­posal is to cre­ate a Global Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion. I will keep you informed via this blog.

—

The Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are have the Monthly Digest of our Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sider it your monthly Brain Exer­cise Magazine.

Grat­i­tude is a very impor­tant emo­tion to cul­ti­vate, as Pro­fes­sor Robert Emmons tells us in this inter­view, based on his last book. Please take some time to read it, and to find at least one thing you are thank­ful for-it will be good for your health.

We are grate­ful about a very stim­u­lat­ing November:

Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket News

10 Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Trends: a lead­ing indus­try orga­ni­za­tion released their Top 10 Neu­roTrends for 2007, and brain fit­ness mat­ters appeared in 3 of them.

Thank Boomers for Buff­ing Up Brain Mar­ket: great overview of the mar­ket from a tech­nol­ogy point of view, quot­ing our mar­ket pro­jec­tions. To clar­ify the num­bers men­tioned: we project $225m in the US alone for the brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket (grow­ing from $70m in 2003), broken-down as fol­lows: $80m for the Con­sumer seg­ment, $60m in K12 Edu­ca­tion, $50m in Clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, and $35m in the Cor­po­rate seg­ment. The Con­sumer seg­ment, with a healthy aging value propo­si­tion, is the most recent one but the most rapidly grow­ing.

Exer­cise On the Brain: a NYT OpEd: a widely read opin­ion piece in the New York Times, writ­ten by 2 neu­ro­sci­en­tists, that some­how seems to miss the research behind the value of men­tal stim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing. Other neu­ro­science teams and us write let­ters to the edi­tor that go unpub­lished. Should you have any con­tacts with jour­nal­ists, please ask them to con­tact us: we are always happy to serve as a resource to the media.

Posit Sci­ence @ GSA: well-designed Brain Train­ing Works: a timely heads up on how well-designed computer-based pro­grams can be a great com­ple­ment to other inter­ven­tions. We will be inter­view­ing the lead­ing researcher behind that study dur­ing the next 2 weeks, so keep tuned!

Brain and Mind News and Arti­cles: a vari­ety of links to good media reports, includ­ing a spec­tac­u­lar spe­cial on mem­ory in National Geographic.

News You Can Use

Mar­ian Dia­mond on the brain: lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tist Mar­ian Dia­mond, now 81, shares her pre­scrip­tion for life­long brain health– diet, exer­cise, chal­lenge, new­ness and ten­der lov­ing care.

From Med­i­ta­tion to MBSR (Mind­ful­ness Based Stress Reduc­tion): a report on the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion and how it is becom­ing more main­stream in medicine.

Teasers

50 Mind and Brain Games for adults: you may have seen these teasers, but we want to alert you we have opened a new sec­tion in the site where you can eas­ily find our grow­ing col­lec­tion of teasers

Your Haiku, please?: a friendly chal­lenge to your brain.

Edu­ca­tion and Life­long Learning

Carol Dweck on Mind­sets, Learn­ing and Intel­li­gence: we found a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view on the impor­tance on hav­ing a growth and learn­ing ori­ented mind­set. Both for kids and adults.

Is Intel­li­gence Innate and Fixed?: some reflec­tions based on biology.

Cor­po­rate Train­ing, Well­ness and Leadership

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness and The Future of Work: an excel­lent con­cept map on how neu­ro­science may influ­ence the work­place of the future, drawn in real time as I spoke at an Insti­tute for the Future event.

Emo­tional Intel­li­gence and Faces: how many uni­ver­sal emo­tions and facial expres­sions are there?

Events

Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together: I spoke at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cisco, where we explored some of the basic con­cepts we should all know about how our brains and mind work.

Let me prac­tice the Grat­i­tude concept…Thank You for your atten­tion and participation!

You can also enjoy our pre­vi­ous edi­tions of this monthly digest:

- Octo­ber

- Sep­tem­ber

- August

- July

We finally had time to hear and enjoy the 35-minute inter­view with WSJ sci­ence writer Sharon Beg­ley about her new book, Train Your Mind Change Your Brain. Highly rec­om­mended. (Thanks Beate!)

NPR Talk of the Nation, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2007: “For years, sci­en­tists believed the brain’s struc­ture couldn’t be changed. The new sci­ence of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity says that’s not the case, and argue the brain is much more flex­i­ble than pre­vi­ously thought.”

Lis­ten to the inter­view here.