AARP recently released a list of Top 5 Best Books for Brain Fit­ness. SharpBrains.com is hon­ored to have pub­lished one of those Top 5 books and to present this Live Q&A Series for you to ask ques­tions to the authors of 3 of those best books on brain fit­ness. Par­tic­i­pants will sub­mit writ­ten ques­tions, mod­er­a­tors will select the most impor­tant and rel­e­vant ques­tions, and book authors will write their answers for every­one to read.

• Novem­ber 1st, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Dr. Gary Small, author of The Mem­ory Bible
• Novem­ber 15th, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness
• Novem­ber 22nd, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain
• (in Span­ish) Novem­ber 29th, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-autor de The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness Read the rest of this entry »

Today we are for­tu­nate to inter­view Dr. Jerri Edwards, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­sity of South Florida’s School of Aging Stud­ies and Co-Investigator of the influ­en­cial ACTIVE study. Dr. Edwards was trained by Dr. Kar­lene K. Ball, and her research is aimed toward dis­cov­er­ing how cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties can be main­tained and even enhanced with advanc­ing age.

Main focus of research

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Please explain to our read­ers your main research areas

Jerri Edwards: I am par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in how cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions may help older adults to avoid or at least delay func­tional dif­fi­cul­ties and thereby main­tain their inde­pen­dence longer. Much of my work has focused on the func­tional abil­ity of dri­ving includ­ing assess­ing dri­ving fit­ness among older adults and reme­di­a­tion of cog­ni­tive decline that results in dri­ving difficulties.

Some research ques­tions that inter­est me include, how can we main­tain health­ier lives longer? How can train­ing improve cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, both to improve those abil­i­ties and also to slow-down, or delay, cog­ni­tive decline? The spe­cific cog­ni­tive abil­ity that I have stud­ied the most is pro­cess­ing speed, which is one of the cog­ni­tive skills that decline early on as we age.

ACTIVE results

Can you explain what cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing speed is, and why it is rel­e­vant to our daily lives?

Pro­cess­ing speed is men­tal quick­ness. Just like a com­puter with a 486 proces­sor can do a lot of the same things as a com­puter with a Pen­tium 4 proces­sor, but it takes much longer, our minds tend to slow down with age as com­pared to when we were younger. We can do the same tasks, but it takes more time. Quick speed of pro­cess­ing is impor­tant for Read the rest of this entry »

Please enjoy this brain teaser com­pli­ments of puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

The Empty Triangle

Ques­tion:
Which fig­ure should be placed in the empty triangle?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic. Let us know how you do!

Click here to read the Answer and Solu­tion.

Here is a new brain teaser from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

Tip­ping the Scales

Ques­tion:
The top two scales are in per­fect bal­ance. How many dia­monds will be needed to bal­ance the bot­tom set?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.

Click here to read the Answer and Solu­tion.

Here is new brain teaser from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

The Fork in the Road

Ques­tion:
Start at the cen­ter num­ber and col­lect another four num­bers by fol­low­ing the paths shown (and not going back­wards). Add the five num­bers together. What is the low­est num­ber you can score?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your plan­ning skills, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.

Click here to get the Answer.

If you missed Part 1, also writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll, you can start there and then come back here to Part 2.

Con­cen­tric Shapes:
The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)

Ques­tion:
Imag­ine a square within a cir­cle within a square. The cir­cle just grazes each square at exactly four points. Find the ratio of the area of the larger square to the smaller.

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out many of the same skills as in Part I: spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­ory (tem­po­ral lobes), logic (frontal lobes), plan­ning (frontal lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

In honor of Math­e­mat­ics Aware­ness Month 2007: Math­e­mat­ics and the Brain, here is another math­e­mat­i­cal brain ben­der from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll …

The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 1 of 2

Dif­fi­culty: HARD
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)

Ques­tion:
The area of a square is equal to the square of the length of one side. So, for exam­ple, a square with side length 3 has area (3²), or 9. What is the area of a square whose diag­o­nal is length 5?

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out your spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­ory (tem­po­ral lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

Go on to Con­cen­tric Shapes: The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

Here is another mind-bender cre­ated by Wes Car­roll for the Sharp­Brains readers.

Pre­sent­ing …
Dr. Nasty’s Giant Cube

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: HYBRID (Logic/Spatial)

Ques­tion:
The dia­bol­i­cal Dr. Nasty has turned his Growth Ray on a per­fect cube that used to mea­sure one foot on a side. The new larger cube has twice the sur­face area of the orig­i­nal. Find the vol­ume of the larger cube.

Click to read Hint #1.

Click to read Hint #2.

Click to read Hint #3.

Click to read Hint #4.

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

We are delighted to intro­duce you to Wes Car­roll who has gra­ciously cre­ated a few new puz­zles to bend all those sharp brains out there! Keep check­ing back, as we will con­tinue to release new puz­zles regularly.

Wes aspires to the Renais­sance ideal of excel­lence in mul­ti­ple fields: he is the head of Do The Math pri­vate tutor­ing ser­vices, Puz­zle Mas­ter for the Ask A Sci­en­tist lec­ture series, and an inter­na­tion­ally tour­ing per­former and teacher of music. Find out more at wescarroll.com.

With no fur­ther ado, the first puzzle!

Party For Polyglots

Dif­fi­culty: MEDIUM
Type: LOGIC

Ques­tion:
Of the 100 peo­ple at a recent party, 90 spoke Span­ish, 80 spoke Ital­ian, and 75 spoke Man­darin. At least how many spoke all three languages?

Have you solved it yet? If you are work­ing the prob­lem, mak­ing hypothe­ses, test­ing your ideas, and com­ing up with a solu­tion, you are using your frontal lobes. This is great exer­cise because the frontal lobes fol­low the “last hired, first fired” adage. They are they last areas of your brain to develop and the first to suf­fer the rav­ages of time and stress. So, keep exer­cis­ing! Just like your vol­un­tary mus­cles, reg­u­lar brain work­outs will help you keep more active neu­ronal cir­cuits in your brain which helps you func­tion bet­ter today, as well as cre­ate a pro­tec­tive bar­rier against aging.

Click to read the answer.

Let us know what you think of the puz­zle and please wel­come Wes!