We are the archi­tects and builders of our own brains.

For mil­len­nia, how­ever, we were obliv­i­ous to our enor­mous cre­ative capa­bil­i­ties. We had no idea that our brains were chang­ing in response to our actions and atti­tudes, every day of our lives. So we uncon­sciously and ran­domly shaped our brains and our lat­ter years because we believed we had an immutable brain that was at the mercy of our genes.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Read the rest of this entry »

Next Tues­day, Novem­ber 3rd: I’ll be pre­sent­ing the Sharp­Brains Guide to a business/ entre­pre­neur­ial audi­ence at the San Fran­cisco Chap­ter of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Cor­po­rate Growth (you can reg­is­ter online).

Descrip­tion: While most of us have heard the phrase “use it or lose it,” very few under­stand what “it” means, or how to prop­erly “use it” in order to improve brain func­tion and fit­ness. This talk will pro­vide an overview of the most recent research, guide­lines and resources to “Use It and Improve It”, sum­ma­riz­ing the main find­ings and top­ics from the new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. We will debunk 10 com­mon brain fit­ness myths; dis­cuss how the brain works and the 4 pil­lars of brain main­te­nance; explain the dif­fer­ence between men­tal exer­cise and men­tal activ­ity and iden­tify prac­ti­cal ways to inte­grate this research into our work and lives for max­i­mum brain health and performance.

To order book: Here. (has been among Amazon.com’s Top 10 Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine books basi­cally since publication!)

Over the last few weeks I have given a cou­ple of AARP-sponsored talks, both in Eng­lish and in Span­ish (this was my first Span­ish pre­sen­ta­tion on a topic I mostly dis­cuss in Eng­lish, so I did get some extra brain points by try­ing to trans­late “neu­ro­plas­tic­ity” and “hip­pocam­pus” on the fly), and had a great cou­ple of meet­ings with AARP staff to explore col­lab­o­ra­tions. AARP can obvi­ously play a major role in how ratio­nally this whole cat­e­gory of “brain fit­ness” evolves.

Here you have a cou­ple of my favorite recent media interviews:

4-minute Video inter­view on the Gilbert Guide:
Book Reveals Secrets Once Only Known to Scientists

30-minute radio inter­view on WMBR (MIT cam­pus radio sta­tion):
Par­a­digm Shifts: Brain Fit­ness (mine is the sec­ond inter­view, starts around the middle)

Finally, a grow­ing num­ber of blog­gers are review­ing the book. This is what they say:

• Brain Fit­ness for Coach­ing and Lead­er­ship (Ed Batista at Stan­ford Busi­ness School)
• Is Your Brain a Couch Potato (Doc Gur­ley at SF Gate)
• Essen­tial ref­er­ence for brain fit­ness, cog­ni­tive health, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (High­light Health)
• Fit­brains learn how to learn (Dr. Larry McCleary)
• Learn about cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing (Teen Health 411)
• A great ded­i­ca­tion: to your Unique Brain, and Unique Mind (Play with your mind)
• Very valu­able inter­views (Nucleus Learning)
• Author­i­ta­tive research and per­spec­tive (Green­stein Institute)

You can order The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness here.

Title: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness — Prac­ti­cal Advice to Keep Your Brain Sharp

- Two community-based book talks hosted by New York Pub­lic Library and sup­ported by the Ein­stein Aging Study at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine.

Descrip­tion: A fit brain? Can you exer­cise your brain and become men­tally fit? Can you con­tinue to learn and increase your brain’s capac­ity at any age? Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, says Yes!, and in this pro­gram he will show you how. Based on research com­piled from lead­ing sci­en­tists in fields of Neu­ro­science, Geron­tol­ogy, and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence, and pre­sented in his book “The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness”, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will pro­vide ways to main­tain and improve your cog­ni­tive health.

He will:
– Debunk 10 Myths of Brain Fit­ness
– Exam­ine the 4 Pil­lars of Brain Main­te­nance
– Dis­cuss the dif­fer­ence between Men­tal Exer­cise and Men­tal Activ­ity
– Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing Soft­ware
– Explore emerg­ing trends

Book and Bio: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains, teaches “Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness” at UC-Berkeley and San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity. He is the co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.

When and where:
> Sep­tem­ber 23rd, 10am, New York Pub­lic Library, Bronx Library Cen­ter. 310 East Kings­bridge Road. (718) 579‑4244. More infor­ma­tion here.

> Sep­tem­ber 25rd, 1pm, New York Pub­lic Library, Stephen Schwarz­man Build­ing Audi­to­rium. Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. 917-ASK-NYPL (917–275-6975). More infor­ma­tion here.

I wanted to alert you to a very inter­est­ing find­ing pub­lished in a recent issue of Sci­ence, one of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tific journals.

The study was led by Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and his col­leagues from the Karolin­ska Insti­tute in Swe­den. The goal was to learn whether Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing is asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry, thus sug­gest­ing a mech­a­nism by which train­ing may lead to enhanced work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and a reduc­tion in atten­tion prob­lems. Thus, although Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing has pre­vi­ously shown promis­ing results as a treat­ment for work­ing mem­ory and atten­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, this was a basic sci­ence study rather than a treat­ment study.

The major find­ing was that increased work­ing mem­ory capac­ity fol­low­ing train­ing was asso­ci­ated with changes in brain bio­chem­istry. Specif­i­cally, the researchers found changes in the den­sity and bind­ing poten­tial of cor­ti­cal D1 dopamine recep­tors in brain regions that are acti­vated dur­ing work­ing mem­ory tasks.

Results from this study sug­gest a bio­log­i­cal basis for the improve­ment in work­ing mem­ory capac­ity and reduc­tions i Read the rest of this entry »

Study Ques­tions Effec­tive­ness Of $80 Mil­lion Per Year ‘Brain Exer­cise Prod­ucts Indus­try for Elderly (Sci­ence Daily)

- “There is much research on the ben­e­fits of cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion strate­gies among elderly who already expe­ri­ence mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s dis­ease, as well as on the pos­i­tive impact of phys­i­cal exer­cise. The researchers, how­ever, wanted to eval­u­ate cur­rent research that would focus on the impact of cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions in the healthy elderly population.”

- “…they con­cluded that there was no evi­dence indi­cat­ing that struc­tured cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion pro­grams had an impact on the pro­gres­sion of demen­tia in the healthy elderly population”

Com­ment:  we have not reviewed the analy­sis yet, so can­not com­ment in depth. How­ever, just from the press release, we see a few poten­tial prob­lems in how the study was framed, reduc­ing its prac­ti­cal value: Read the rest of this entry »

Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Can Alter Bio­chem­istry Of The Brain (Sci­ence Daily)

- “Researchers at the Swedish med­ical uni­ver­sity Karolin­ska Insti­tute have shown for the first time that the active train­ing of the work­ing mem­ory brings about vis­i­ble changes in the num­ber of dopamine recep­tors in the human brain.”

- ““Brain bio­chem­istry doesn’t just under­pin our men­tal activ­ity; our men­tal activ­ity and think­ing process can also affect the bio­chem­istry,” says Pro­fes­sor Torkel Kling­berg, who led the study.”

- “Changes in the num­ber of dopamine recep­tors in a per­son doesn’t give us the key to poor mem­ory,” says Pro­fes­sor Lars Farde, one of the researchers who took part in the study. “We also have to ask if the dif­fer­ences could have been caused by a lack of mem­ory train­ing or other envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. Maybe we’ll be able to find new, more effec­tive treat­ments that com­bine med­ica­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing, in which case we’re in extremely inter­est­ing territory.”

Com­ment:  couldn’t agree more with “Maybe we’ll be able to find new, more effec­tive treat­ments that com­bine med­ica­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing, in which case we’re in extremely inter­est­ing ter­ri­tory.” This study adds a very impor­tant angle to the grow­ing lit­er­a­ture on work­ing mem­ory train­ing, show­ing a more fun­da­men­tal, struc­tural impact, that once thought (such as the well-known effect that “cells that fire together wire together”). The com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive pro­gram used in the study was Cogmed work­ing mem­ory training.

More on Torkel Klingberg’s research:

- Arti­cle writ­ten by Torkel Kling­berg on The Over­flow­ing Brain & Infor­ma­tion Overload

- His recent book, which was The Sharp­Brains Most Impor­tant Book of 2008: The Over­flow­ing Brain: Infor­ma­tion Over­load and the Lim­its of Work­ing Memory

- 2006 Inter­view with Dr. Kling­berg: Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Klingberg

As the Brain Fit­ness indus­try con­tin­ues to gain momen­tum, and peo­ple explore all the incred­i­ble brain-training tools being devel­oped, we hope that enthu­si­asts don’t take their eye off the impor­tance of the phys­i­cal health of the brain and all the sys­tems it com­mu­ni­cates with. The brain is unique in that it houses our cog­ni­tive and emo­tional capac­i­ties in the form of the mind. It is a ‘cog­ni­tive’ organ that hungers for stim­u­la­tion from new expe­ri­ences and chal­lenges. Many brain fit­ness pro­grams strive to sat­isfy this need. Yet the brain is also a phys­i­cal organ that plays by many of the same rules as the heart, lungs, liver and kid­neys. To stay healthy and per­form opti­mally it requires qual­ity nutri­tion, phys­i­cal activ­ity and opti­mal sleep. The brain, espe­cially, relies on a healthy vas­cu­lar sys­tem to effi­ciently deliver oxy­gen and key nutri­ents and remove waste. In fact, the brain uses approx­i­mately 20% of the oxy­gen we breathe to sat­isfy its high-energy demands. Given that the brain only weighs about 2% of the body, we can con­sider it an energy hog and we must cater to its needs very carefully.

Nutri­ents play key roles in brain func­tion. Sev­eral have shown effi­cacy in clin­i­cal tri­als treat­ing cases of mood dis­or­ders, cog­ni­tive decline and of course ben­e­fit­ing the phys­i­cal health of the brain. Nutri­ents are both the raw mate­ri­als employed in cre­at­ing new neural con­nec­tions and Read the rest of this entry »

After about age 50, most peo­ple begin to expe­ri­ence a decline in mem­ory capa­bil­ity. Why is that? One obvi­ous answer is that the small arter­ies of the brain begin to clog up, often as a result of a life­time of eat­ing the wrong things and a lack of exer­cise. If that life­time has been stress­ful, many neu­rons may have been killed by stress hor­mones. Given the most recent sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture, reviewed in my book Thank You, Brain, For All You Remem­ber. What You For­got Was My Fault, dead neu­rons can’t be replaced, except in the hip­pocam­pus, which is for­tu­nate for mem­ory because the hip­pocam­pus is essen­tial for mak­ing cer­tain kinds of mem­o­ries per­ma­nent. Another cause is incip­i­ent Alzheimer’s dis­ease; autop­sies show that many peo­ple have the lesions of the dis­ease but have never shown symp­toms, pre­sum­ably because a life­time of excep­tional men­tal activ­ity has built up a “cog­ni­tive reserve.

So is there any­thing you can do about it besides exer­cise like crazy, eat healthy foods that you don’t like all that much, pop your statin pills, and take up yoga?

Yes. In short: focus, focus, focus.

Chang­ing think­ing styles can help. Research shows that Read the rest of this entry »