If you are based in North Cal­i­for­nia, you may be inter­ested in the classes just announced by the UC Berke­ley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. “Berke­ley OLLI is an inquir­ing and stim­u­lat­ing com­mu­nity of adults, age 50 and above, explor­ing new areas of knowl­edge and tra­di­tional dis­ci­plines, chal­leng­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing sub­jects.” If you are not in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area, you can check the clos­est Life­long Learn­ing Cen­ter to you in either the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute net­work or the Elder­hos­tel one.

You can see a list­ing of their classes for the Fall 2007 ses­sion, on a fas­ci­nat­ing vari­ety of top­ics. Keep­ing our edu­ca­tional activ­i­ties since 2005 (first deliv­ered in SFSU), I will be teach­ing the fol­low­ing class

The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here)

Octo­ber 9-30th, 4 classes, 6.30–8.30pm

Loca­tion: Uni­ver­sity Hall, UC Berkeley

Descrip­tion: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of what aging means. In this class, we will review the sci­ence behind some of key con­cepts in this field and explore their impli­ca­tions on our lifestyles: neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, the Cog­ni­tive Reserve the­ory for healthy aging, computer-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams, emo­tional self-regulation, and the 4 pil­lars for life­long Brain Health. We have all heard “Use it or lose it”. Lat­est research sug­gests, “Use it and improve it”.

If you are inter­ested in learn­ing more about the classes, you can attend the open House on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 18, 10:00 am to 12:00 noon, at the Berke­ley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berke­ley. I can only say that the SFSU classes were a lot of fun and I am sure the Berke­ley ones will be as compelling.

Tom alerts us (thanks!) of a fun book review in the New York Times today, by Abi­gail Zuger, titled The Brain: Mal­leable, Capa­ble, Vul­ner­a­ble, on the book The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psy­chi­a­trist Nor­man Doidge. Some quotes:

• “In book­stores, the sci­ence aisle gen­er­ally lies well away from the self-help sec­tion, with hard real­ity on one set of shelves and wish­ful think­ing on the other. But Nor­man Doidge’s fas­ci­nat­ing syn­op­sis of the cur­rent rev­o­lu­tion in neu­ro­science strad­dles this gap: the age-old dis­tinc­tion between the brain and the mind is crum­bling fast as the power of pos­i­tive think­ing finally gains sci­en­tific credibility.”
• “So it is for­giv­able that Dr. Doidge, a Cana­dian psy­chi­a­trist and award-winning sci­ence writer, recounts the accom­plish­ments of the “neu­ro­plas­ti­cians,”  as he calls the neu­ro­sci­en­tists involved in these new stud­ies, with breath­less rev­er­ence. Their work is indeed mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff, with impli­ca­tions, as Dr. Doidge notes, not only for indi­vid­ual patients with neu­ro­logic dis­ease but for all human beings, not to men­tion human cul­ture, human learn­ing and human history.”
• “Research into the mal­leabil­ity of the nor­mal brain has been no less amaz­ing. Sub­jects who learn to play a sequence of notes on the piano develop char­ac­ter­is­tic changes in the brain’s elec­tric activ­ity; when other sub­jects sit in front of a piano and just think about play­ing the same notes, the same changes occur. It is the vir­tual made real, a solid quan­tifi­ca­tion of the power of thought.”
• “The new sci­ence of the brain may still be in its infancy, but already, as Dr. Doidge makes quite clear, the sci­en­tific minds are leap­ing ahead.”

Here you have some of our inter­views with a few “sci­en­tific minds” that have, for years, been “leap­ing ahead” beyond “pos­i­tive think­ing” into “pos­i­tive training”:

• Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing. Dr. Gold­berg is a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist and clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine. He was a stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria, and has writ­ten The Exec­u­tive Brain and The Wis­dom Paradox.
• On Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intelligence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher. Dr. Gopher is Pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy and Human Fac­tors Engi­neer­ing at Tech­nion, Israel’s Insti­tute of Sci­ence, and sci­en­tific advi­sor for Intel­li­Gym.
• Mem­ory train­ing and atten­tion deficits: inter­view with Pro­fes­sor Bradley Gib­son, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy at Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame, and Direc­tor of the Per­cep­tion and Atten­tion Lab there
• On Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, pro­fes­sor at Karolin­ska Insti­tute, and direc­tor of the Devel­op­men­tal Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Lab, part of the Stock­holm Brain Insti­tute. He is also the sci­en­tific advi­sor for Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing pro­gram (RoboMemo).
• An ape can do this. Can we not? with Dr. James Zull, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy and Bio­chem­istry at Case West­ern Uni­ver­sity, and author of The Art of Chang­ing the Brain.

And a cou­ple of related blog posts:

• Can Thoughts and Action Change Our Brains?
• Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and mem­ory training

The great MIT Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive offers a lot of free mate­ri­als on Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences. You can browse lec­ture notes, read­ings, and more on a vari­ety of psy­chol­ogy and neu­ro­science courses.

• “The human brain is the most com­plex, sophis­ti­cated, and pow­er­ful information-processing device known. To study its com­plex­i­ties, the Depart­ment of Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy com­bines the exper­i­men­tal tech­nolo­gies of neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy, neu­ro­science, and psy­chol­ogy, with the the­o­ret­i­cal power that comes from the fields of com­pu­ta­tional neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive science.”
• “The Depart­ment was founded by Hans-Lukas Teu­ber in 1964 as a Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy, with the then-radical vision that the study of brain and mind are insep­a­ra­ble. Today, at a time of increas­ing spe­cial­iza­tion and frag­men­ta­tion, our goal remains to under­stand cog­ni­tion– its processes, and its mech­a­nisms at the level of mol­e­cules, neu­rons, net­works of neu­rons, and cog­ni­tive mod­ules. We are unique among neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive sci­ence depart­ments in our breadth, and in the scope of our ambi­tion. We span a very large range of inquiry into the brain and mind, and our work bridges many dif­fer­ent lev­els of analy­sis includ­ing mol­e­c­u­lar, cel­lu­lar, sys­tems, com­pu­ta­tional and cog­ni­tive approaches.”

There is a fas­ci­nat­ing new course titled A Clin­i­cal Approach to the Human Brain, Fall 2006, includ­ing Top­ics and Lec­ture Sum­maries such as

• “Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis: Teach­ing Old Dogs New Tricks. A sur­pris­ing dis­cov­ery in the last few years in neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy has been that neu­rons are born, neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, in the adult mam­malian brain. Ini­tially, this had been shown in ani­mals and, more recently, in the humans hip­pocam­pus, the site of declar­a­tive mem­ory for­ma­tion. (See Gree­nough). Fur­ther­more, the rate of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis in ani­mals has been enhanced by expe­ri­ence, both phys­i­cal activ­ity and liv­ing in enriched envi­ron­ments (See Read the rest of this entry »

My first full-time job was as a strate­gic con­sul­tant at McK­in­sey & Com­pany. A very intense 2-year learn­ing experience.

Their Alumni News Ser­vice recently inter­viewed me and pub­lished this great arti­cle on Sharp­Brains. The writer does a superb job of pro­vid­ing an overview of what we do, so I rec­om­mend you read it. I’d like to empha­size the fol­low­ing quotes for any­one look­ing for jobs these days, so that “brain exer­cise” is part of the equation:

• “Alvaro has some very high praise for the men­tal gym­nas­tics that the McK­in­sey expe­ri­ence pro­vides.  Given that the frontal lobes in our brain (behind the fore­head) only mature in our late 20s, he says, the jobs we take in our early and mid-20s are very impor­tant not only for our career prospects, but also for our brain devel­op­ment fit­ness. This is the stage in our life where, con­sciously or not, we can improve our decision-making, ini­tia­tive and self-regulation abil­i­ties, all of which lit­er­ally affect the phys­i­cal growth of our frontal lobes in a sig­nif­i­cant way.”
• “Join­ing McK­in­sey as a BA is lit­er­ally like join­ing a brain gym, Alvaro says. “The demands of the McK­in­sey model. Read the rest of this entry »

My wife and I were for­tu­nate to con­duct recently a mind train­ing exper­i­ment, in the form of a breath­ing & med­i­ta­tion retreat, with some neu­ro­sci­en­tists and Adam Engle, Co-Founder and Chair­man of the Mind & Life Insti­tute (nice name, isn’t it?)

The Mind and Life Dia­logues “started in 1987 as an exper­i­ment to deter­mine whether a sci­en­tific exchange could occur between mod­ern sci­ence and Bud­dhism. MLI has now spon­sored 14 dia­logues (between the Dalai Lama and neu­ro­sci­en­tists) over the last 20 years. In that time MLI has become a rec­og­nized world leader in the emerg­ing sci­en­tific inves­ti­ga­tion of the effects of con­tem­pla­tive prac­tices on the brain, behav­ior, and the trans­la­tion of this data into effec­tive tools to ben­e­fit all peo­ple everywhere.”

A few notes from our con­ver­sa­tion with Adam

• - He helped launch the Mind & Life Insti­tute to build a science-based field of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary study to inves­ti­gate the appli­ca­tions of the “data­base of prac­tices” that Bud­dhism and some Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions have accu­mu­lated over milennia
• - From early on it became clear that they needed to engage West­ern neu­ro­sci­en­tists in order to be cred­i­ble and become a real East-West bridge with poten­tial to reach main­stream soci­ety. You can see below a par­tial list of par­tic­i­pants in their most recent meet­ing, 2 weeks ago
• - They are very happy that Sharon Begley’s book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain has become a non-fiction Best­seller, since it is based on one of the Mind & Life Dia­logues (more on Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity)
• - He is glad to see the inroads that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) is mak­ing in the med­ical world thanks to solid research. He believes the Cor­po­rate Train­ing and Lead­er­ship mar­ket is also going to become very inter­ested in this tech­nique for stress man­age­ment. The main bot­tle­neck for growth? the exist­ing num­ber of qual­i­fied instruc­tors does not meet the increas­ing demand.

The Insti­tute spon­sors research in a num­ber of ways, and they just announced that the 3rd annual Sci­en­tists Retreat will take place Read the rest of this entry »

We are very excited to announce a work­shop hosted jointly by the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes (OLLI) at Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley and San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity and Sharp­Brains (us!). We are offer­ing a three-day work­shop for edu­ca­tors and brain fit­ness prac­ti­tion­ers seek­ing instruc­tional cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the Sharp­Brains course, Exer­cis­ing Our Brains.

“Sharp­Brains has intro­duced the first science-based brain fit­ness cen­ter with infor­ma­tion and pro­grams to help peo­ple of all ages exer­cise their brains. They have offered the pop­u­lar Exer­cis­ing Our Brains course at SF State’s Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI) since Octo­ber 2005.”

Are you see­ing all the arti­cles about Brain Fit­ness in the pop­u­lar press and wondering,“What is this all about?, “Can some­one help me nav­i­gate through all the pro­grams out there? “How is Brain Fit­ness rel­e­vant to me in my per­sonal life or at work?. As the lead­ing source of infor­ma­tion and edu­ca­tion on Brain Fit­ness, we have deliv­ered a series of cus­tomized train­ing ses­sions to com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions that com­bine mod­ules –includ­ing sci­en­tific overview, the indus­try trends and key play­ers, fun team-building exer­cises– that can be tai­lored to your organization’s spe­cific needs. Ses­sions last from 1 to 6 hours, depend­ing on your group’s com­po­si­tion and agenda and are deliv­ered either in per­son or via web con­fer­ence. If you want more infor­ma­tion on Sharp­Brains work­shops for your insti­tu­tion click on Work­shops.

Who should attend:

Edu­ca­tors and prac­ti­tion­ers who are seek­ing to teach the course Exer­cis­ing Our Brains. Ideal can­di­dates are: edu­ca­tors who are work­ing in the area of psy­chol­ogy, health, and well­ness, and who are ide­ally already affil­i­ated with learn­ing cen­ters eager to offer a brain fit­ness class.

Read the rest of this entry »

Zack Lynch from Neu­roIn­sights reminds us that the early­bird reg­is­tra­tion for the Neu­rotech Indus­try Invest­ing and Busi­ness con­fer­ence is about to expire. You can reg­is­ter by April 13th to save $300.

Con­fer­ence Details:

Date: May 17 — 18, 2007
Loca­tion: Westin San Fran­cisco, Mill­brae, CA

Highly rec­om­mended con­fer­ence for any­one work­ing on biotech, med­ical devices, diag­nos­tics and neu­rotech­nol­ogy in gen­eral, and with added value for any­one inter­ested in learn­ing more about science-based Brain Fit­ness thanks to what we hope will be a ground­break­ing panel:

Title: Brain Fit­ness Through Soft­ware and Neurofeedback

Thurs­day May 17th, 4.45–5.30pm

Descrip­tion: Spurred by the dis­cov­ery of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, the aging baby boomer pop­u­la­tion and demand for safe treat­ments for child­hood ADHD, soft­ware com­pa­nies, large and small, are ven­tur­ing into the realm of Read the rest of this entry »

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: the brain’s abil­ity to reor­ga­nize itself by form­ing new con­nec­tions through­out life. (see more con­cepts in our Glos­sary).

We coudn’t be hap­pier about the grow­ing num­ber of books pop­u­lar­iz­ing the key lessons about brain train­ing that Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg has been research­ing and writ­ing about for years, and that moti­vated us to embark our­selves in the Sharp­Brains adventure.

Dis­cover Mag­a­zine presents a great arti­cle, Rewiring the Brain, review­ing two recent books.

• The sub­ti­tle is “Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity can allow for treat­ment of senil­ity, post-traumatic stress, ­obsessive-compulsive dis­or­der, and depres­sion and Bud­dhists have been cap­i­tal­iz­ing on it for mil­lenia.” I would add that the strong value of life­long learn­ing present in jesuit and jew­ish tra­di­tions reflects the same wis­dom. Some quotes:
• “Two new books, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Bal­lan­tine Books, $24.95) by sci­ence jour­nal­ist Sharon Beg­ley and The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psy­chi­a­trist Nor­man Doidge, offer mas­ter­fully guided tours through the bur­geon­ing field of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity research. Each has its own style and empha­sis; both are excellent.”
• “Finally, both authors con­clude that adult neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is a vastly under­tapped resource, one with which West­ern med­i­cine and psy­chol­ogy are just now com­ing to grips. An impor­tant emerg­ing research agenda is to Read the rest of this entry »

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.