We hope you are enjoy­ing the grow­ing cov­er­age of Brain Fit­ness as much as we are. Below you have the Brain Fit­ness Newslet­ter we sent a few days ago-you can sub­scribe to this monthly email update in the box on the right hand side.

In this post, we will briefly cover:

I. Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chicago Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.

II. Events: we are out­reach part­ners for the Learn­ing & the Brain con­fer­ence, which will gather neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors, and for the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week.

III. Pro­gram Reviews: The Wall Street Jour­nal reviewed six dif­fer­ent pro­grams for brain exer­cise and aging, and the one we offer is one of the two win­ners. A college-level coun­sel­ing cen­ter starts offer­ing our stress man­age­ment one. And we inter­view a Notre Dame sci­en­tist who has con­ducted a repli­ca­tion study for the work­ing mem­ory train­ing pro­gram for kids with ADD/ ADHD.

IV. New Offer­ings: we have started to offer two infor­ma­tion pack­ages that can be very use­ful for peo­ple who want to bet­ter under­stand this field before they com­mit to any par­tic­u­lar pro­gram: learn more about our Brain Fit­ness 101 guide and Exer­cise Your Brain DVD.

V. Web­site and Blog Sum­mary: we revamped our home page and have had a very busy month writ­ing many good arti­cles. We also hosted two “Blog Car­ni­vals”- don’t you want to know what that means?
Read the rest of this entry »

BBC News reports that Brain cre­ates ‘new’ nerve cells:

• “Researchers have dis­cov­ered a type of brain cell that con­tin­u­ously regen­er­ates in humans.”
• “Experts said the find­ings, pub­lished in Sci­ence, opened up the poten­tial for research into repair­ing brains in con­di­tions such as Alzheimer’s disease”
• “Dr Mark Bax­ter, Well­come Trust senior research fel­low at Oxford Uni­ver­sity, said: “This study is excit­ing because it reveals a group of brain cells in the adult human brain that are con­tin­u­ously regenerating.”

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 »

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. 

————————

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.”

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 »

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 »

Alzheimer’s dis­ease affects more than 4.5 mil­lion adults in the US today. To help under­stand the pro­gres­sive neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­der, spe­cial mice have been bred to develop the brain lesions asso­ci­ated with the dis­ease. Using these mice, researchers at UC Irvine pub­lished some promis­ing results in the Jan. 24 issue of The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science. Here are some high­lights from the cov­er­age in Sci­ence Daily:

Learn­ing appears to slow the devel­op­ment of two brain lesions that are the hall­marks of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, sci­en­tists at UC Irvine have dis­cov­ered. The find­ing sug­gests that the elderly, by keep­ing their minds active, can help delay the onset of this degen­er­a­tive disease.

This study with genet­i­cally mod­i­fied mice is the first to show that short but repeated learn­ing ses­sions can slow a process known for caus­ing the pro­tein beta amy­loid to clump in the brain and form plaques, which dis­rupt com­mu­ni­ca­tion between cells and lead to symp­toms of Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Learn­ing also was found to slow the buildup of hyperphosphorylated-tau, a pro­tein in the brain that can lead to the devel­op­ment of tan­gles, the other sig­na­ture lesion of the dis­ease. Sci­en­tists say these find­ings have large impli­ca­tions for the under­stand­ing and treat­ment of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, as it is already known that highly edu­cated indi­vid­u­als are less likely to develop the dis­ease than peo­ple with less education.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Barron’s blog high­lighted this recent press release from The Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science.

For decades, it was believed that the adult brain did not pro­duce new neu­rons after birth. But that notion has been dis­pelled by research in the last ten years. It became clear by the mid– to late-1990’s that the brain does, in fact, pro­duce new neu­rons through­out the lifespan.

This phe­nom­e­non, known as neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, occurs in most species, includ­ing humans, but the degree to which it occurs and the extent to which it occurs is still a mat­ter of some con­tro­versy, says Tracey Shors, PhD, at Rut­gers University.

“How­ever, there is no ques­tion that neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis occurs in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain region involved in aspects of learn­ing and mem­ory. Thou­sands of new cells are pro­duced there each day, although many die with weeks of their birth.” Shors’ recent stud­ies have shown a cor­re­la­tion in ani­mal mod­els between learn­ing and cell sur­vival in the hippocampus.

Read the rest of this entry »