Here is ques­tion 15 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions.

Ques­tion:
I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp?

Key Points:

• Pro­vide your brain with reg­u­lar men­tal stim­u­la­tion that is novel and challenging.
• Main­tain your social net­work for both stim­u­la­tion and stress reduction.

“Research has shown that con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, the brain is con­stantly under­go­ing neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, the devel­op­ment of new neu­rons and den­drites,” said Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine. “Learn­ing and tar­geted men­tal exer­cise pro­motes neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis – the cre­ation of new neu­rons – just as mus­cle growth is pro­moted through phys­i­cal exercise.”

Answer:

Read the rest of this entry »

Con­tin­u­ing with the theme of a Week of Sci­ence spon­sored by Just Sci­ence, we will high­light some of the key points in: Appel­hans BM, Luecken LJ. Heart Rate Vari­abil­ity as an Index of Reg­u­lated Emo­tional Respond­ing. Review of Gen­eral Psy­chol­ogy. 2006;10:229–240.

Defin­ing Heart Rate Vari­abil­ity
Effec­tive emo­tional reg­u­la­tion depends on being able to flex­i­bly adjust your phys­i­o­log­i­cal response to a chang­ing environment.

“… heart rate vari­abil­ity (HRV) is a mea­sure of the con­tin­u­ous inter­play between sym­pa­thetic and parasym­pa­thetic influ­ences on heart rate that yields infor­ma­tion about auto­nomic flex­i­bil­ity and thereby rep­re­sents the capac­ity for reg­u­lated emo­tional responding.”

“HRV reflects the degree to which car­diac activ­ity can be mod­u­lated to meet chang­ing sit­u­a­tional demands.”

The sym­pa­thetic (SNS) and parasym­pa­thetic (PNS) branches of the auto­nomic ner­vous sys­tem (ANS) antag­o­nis­ti­cally influ­ence the lengths of time between con­sec­u­tive heart­beats. Faster heart rates, which can be due to increased SNS and/or lower PNS activ­ity, cor­re­spond to a shorter inter­beat inter­val while slower heart rates have a longer inter­beat inter­val, which can be attrib­uted to increased PNS and/or decreased SNS activity.

The frequency-based HRV analy­ses are based on the fact that the vari­a­tions in heart rate pro­duced by SNS and PNS activ­ity occur at dif­fer­ent speeds, or fre­quen­cies. SNS is slow act­ing and medi­ated by nor­ep­i­neph­rine while PNS influ­ence is fast act­ing and medi­ated by acetylcholine.

Read the rest of this entry »

For infor­ma­tion on the 2008 Con­fer­ence, and the dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers, visit: Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers.

The post below refers to the 2007 Conference:

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The orga­niz­ers of this amaz­ing con­fer­ence, whose reg­is­tra­tion is about to expire, just extended their very kind offer to Sharp­Brains read­ers: you can reg­is­ter at the reduced price of $475 (right now the nor­mal price is $545) if you do so by Feb­ru­ary 9nd. You can reg­is­ter here http://www.edupr.com/reg.html, mak­ing sure to write SharpBrains1 in the com­ments section

Update: we now have an in-depth inter­view with Yaakov Stern, lead­ing advo­cate of the cog­ni­tive reserve the­ory, and one of the authors of the paper we review below: click on Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve-Yaakov Stern. 

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In honor of the Week of Sci­ence pre­sented at Just Sci­ence from Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 5, through Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 11, we will be writ­ing about “just sci­ence” this week. We thought we would take this time to dis­cuss more deeply some of the key sci­en­tific pub­li­ca­tions in brain fitness.

Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Scarmeas, Niko­laos and Stern, Yaakov. Cog­ni­tive reserve and lifestyle. Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal and Exper­i­men­tal Neu­ropsy­chol­ogy. 2003;25:625–33.

What is Cog­ni­tive Reserve?
The con­cept of a cog­ni­tive reserve has been around since 1998 when a post mortem analy­sis of 137 peo­ple with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease showed that the patients exhib­ited fewer clin­i­cal symp­toms than their actual pathol­ogy sug­gested. (Katz­man et al. 1988) They also showed higher brain weights and greater num­ber of neu­rons when com­pared to age-matched con­trols. The inves­ti­ga­tors hypoth­e­sized that the patients had a larger “reserve” of neu­rons and abil­i­ties that off­set the losses caused by Alzheimer’s. Since then the con­cept of cog­ni­tive reserve has been defined as the abil­ity of an indi­vid­ual to tol­er­ate pro­gres­sive brain pathol­ogy with­out demon­strat­ing clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive symp­toms.
Read the rest of this entry »

Very fun arti­cle in the Birm­ing­ham News today on Sharp­Brains and brain exer­cises, titled Want a work­out for your brain?.

The jour­nal­ist explains things very well and with great humor (for the humor, you need to read the arti­cle!). Here are some quotes:

- “Think of it as a gym­na­sium for your mind,” Sharp­Brains CEO and co-founder Alvaro Fer­nan­dez says from his office in San Francisco.

- (On only doing cross­words) “That’s good, but, like your body, you don’t just exer­cise one part of the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, who holds an MBA and a master’s degree in edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. “You need con­stant vari­ety, and new things, to keep your brain work­ing hard.”

- “He sees men­tal gym­nas­tics as the next main­stream adult trend and points out that ther­a­pists have long used a vari­ety of sim­i­lar exer­cises to help in the recov­ery of brain-injury patients. Ath­letes and air­plane pilots have had access to exer­cises designed to improve their periph­eral vision and reac­tion times, Fer­nan­dez says.”

- “With Sharp­Brains co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at the New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, Fer­nan­dez has col­lected what he says are the best computer-based brain work­outs avail­able, includ­ing a pro­gram to help chil­dren with atten­tion deficits and another aimed at reduc­ing stress man­age­ment among busi­ness executives.”

The Wall Street Jour­nal has a great arti­cle today, Putting Brain Exer­cises to the Test (requires sub­scrip­tion), that com­pares 6 dif­fer­ent computer-based brain exer­cise pro­grams along ease-of-use, fun, and sci­ence behind. We at Sharp­Brains con­ducted a very sim­i­lar exer­cise last year, com­ing to basi­cally the same conclusions.

The arti­cle com­pares Nin­tendo Brain Age, MyBrain­Builder, MyBrain­Trainer, Hap­pyNeu­ron, (Cog­niFit Sci­ence) Mind­Fit and Posit Sci­ence brain fit­ness 2.0, and ends up rec­om­mend­ing Read the rest of this entry »

See our sec­ond press release below, and visit our Press Room for the great press we are start­ing to get about our brain fit­ness gym.

Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­ited time, you can receive a com­pli­men­tary copy of our Brain Fit­ness 101 e-Guide: Answers to your Top 25 Ques­tions, writ­ten by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, by sub­scrib­ing to our monthly newslet­ter. You can sub­scribe Here.

Sharp­Brains intro­duces First Online Brain Fit­ness Center

– Unique, Full-Service, Science-Based Fit­ness Cen­ter Ush­ers in the Next Work­out Rev­o­lu­tion: Men­tal Exer­cise –

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Thirty years after the emer­gence of the exer­cise boom, the fit­ness rev­o­lu­tion has finally gone to people’s heads: SharpBrains.com has launched the first online brain fit­ness cen­ter. Com­plete with a vari­ety of science-based men­tal exer­cise equip­ment, per­sonal brain train­ers, and nearly 200 arti­cles, inter­ac­tive blog post­ings and inter­views with indus­try experts, Sharp­Brains is spear­head­ing the evo­lu­tion of the fit­ness indus­try to include a sound mind as well as a healthy body.

The new men­tal exer­cise move­ment is founded on using struc­tured, computer-based brain fit­ness rou­tines tai­lored to each member’s spe­cific needs and level of abil­ity. Just as crunches and kick-boxing tone abs and increase car­dio strength, Read the rest of this entry »

…a few ques­tions: how did you find us, what we are doing well, what we can do better?

We have just found out that more than 600 people are receiv­ing our feeds, but we only know-and just a bit– the 50–60 who leave com­ments and link to us. We enjoy hav­ing so many read­ers not just in the US but in Europe, the Mid­dle East, Asia, Australia…(thanks Google Analytics!).

Would you mind writ­ing a com­ment to allow us to learn about you and your inter­ests, and also include your feed­back for us? If you have a blog, please write the URL so we can pay a visit.

Enjoy the week­end, and thanks a lot for your time and attention!

Car­o­line and Alvaro

Here is ques­tion 14 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. To down­load the com­plete ver­sion, please click here.

Ques­tion:
Does a brain fit­ness pro­gram pre­vent Alzheimer’s dis­ease and other forms of dementia?

Key Points:

• Stud­ies have shown men­tally active peo­ple have lower rates and later onset of symp­toms for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and other forms of demen­tia. These dis­eases involve a num­ber of vari­ables like fam­ily his­tory, phys­i­cal fit­ness, nutri­tion, and brain fitness.
• Peo­ple who remain intel­lec­tu­ally active and engage in hob­bies reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease by one third.

Answer:
Read the rest of this entry »

Given the grow­ing aware­ness of this emerg­ing field, let’s review some of the most rel­e­vant concepts:

Brain Fit­ness: the gen­eral state of good, sharp, brain and mind, espe­cially as the result of men­tal and phys­i­cal exer­cise and proper nutrition.

Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram: struc­tured set of brain exer­cises, usu­ally computer-based, designed to train spe­cific brain areas and func­tions in tar­geted ways, and mea­sured by brain fit­ness assessments.

Chronic Stress: ongo­ing, long-term stress. Con­tin­ued phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal where stres­sors block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons and neg­a­tively impact the immune system’s defenses.

Cog­ni­tive train­ing (or Brain Train­ing): vari­ety of brain exer­cises designed to help work out spe­cific “men­tal mus­cles”. The prin­ci­ple under­ly­ing cog­ni­tive train­ing is to help improve “core” abil­i­ties, such as atten­tion, mem­ory, problem-solving, which many peo­ple con­sider as fixed.

Cog­ni­tive Reserve (or Brain Reserve): the­ory that addresses the fact that indi­vid­u­als vary con­sid­er­ably in the sever­ity of cog­ni­tive aging and clin­i­cal demen­tia. Men­tal stim­u­la­tion, edu­ca­tion and occu­pa­tional level are believed to be major active com­po­nents of build­ing a cog­ni­tive reserve that can help resist the attacks of men­tal disease.

fMRI: func­tional mag­netic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI) is a non-invasive neu­roimag­ing Read the rest of this entry »