(Editor’s note: Path­ways respon­si­ble for higher-order think­ing in the pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC), or exec­u­tive cen­ter of the brain, remain vul­ner­a­ble through­out life—during crit­i­cal early-life devel­op­men­tal win­dows, when the PFC fully matures in the early 20s, and finally from declines asso­ci­ated with old age. At all ages, phys­i­cal activ­ity and PFC-navigated social con­nec­tions are essen­tial com­po­nents to main­tain­ing brain health. The Expe­ri­ence Corps, a community-based social-engagement pro­gram, part­ners seniors with local schools to pro­mote purpose-driven involve­ment. Par­tic­i­pat­ing seniors have exhib­ited imme­di­ate short-term gains in brain regions vul­ner­a­ble to aging, such as the PFC, indi­cat­ing that peo­ple with the most to lose have the most to gain from envi­ron­men­tal enrichment.)

Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­ity and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of social con­nect­ed­ness to late-life cog­ni­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and phys­i­cal health. The inte­gra­tion of these find­ings with our under­stand­ing of indi­vid­u­als’ devel­op­men­tal needs through­out life under­scores the impor­tance of the “social brain.” The pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC) is par­tic­u­larly inte­gral to nav­i­gat­ing com­plex social behav­iors and hier­ar­chies over the life course. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, an announce­ment. We are start­ing a Vir­tual Intern­ship Pro­gram @ Sharp­Brains, allow­ing full-time under­grad and grad stu­dents and post­docs to lead 100-hour projects jointly defined by them­selves and by Sharp­Brains. Inter­ested can­di­dates should Con­tact Us indi­cat­ing a) a pre­lim­i­nary project pro­posal (200 words or less), and b) brief bio and qual­i­fi­ca­tions (200 words or less). Intern­ships don’t require travel and will be paid in-kind, with access to Sharp­Brains reports and con­fer­ence record­ings. Sharp­Brains will select a lim­ited num­ber of Interns based on fit between can­di­dates’ pro­posal and bio and Sharp­Brains mis­sion and activities.

Let’s now explore the lat­est edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, start­ing with a com­pre­hen­sive per­spec­tive on the edu­ca­tional value and lim­i­ta­tions of videogames, writ­ten by Mar­shall Wein­stein, a senior at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity who will be a Sharp­Brains Intern dur­ing the Fall.

Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion and Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing To Enhance Exec­u­tive Func­tions: Two very inter­est­ing new research studies…but please don’t miss the thought-provoking com­ments by reader Jay Kay.

Unlock­ing Dyslexia in Japan­ese: New clues emerge based on the obser­va­tion that some dyslex­ics have an eas­ier time with visual lan­guages like Japan­ese and Chinese.

Does ADHD med­ica­tion treat­ment in child­hood increase adult employ­ment?: A very insight­ful com­men­tary by Dr. David Rabiner.

Boomers’ Abil­ity to Make Finan­cial Deci­sions Often Declines With Age: A new report by Cana­dian bank BMO illus­trates the need for inno­v­a­tive brain fit­ness inter­ven­tions focused on main­tain­ing tar­geted cog­ni­tive func­tion­al­ity. What the report presents as inex­orable decline, it is not.

Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Aware­ness, Test­ing and Pre­ven­tion:  New data rein­forc­e the need to pay­ seri­ous atten­tion to lifestyle-based and non-invasive cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health inter­ven­tions, and the need to per­son­al­ize interventions.

Think­ing glob­ally to improve men­tal health: The National Insti­tutes of Health and the Global Alliance for Chronic Dis­eases announce a Grand Chal­lenges in Global Men­tal Health Ini­tia­tive. We will keep you posted on this.

Have a great month of August and, as always, feel free to share this enewslet­ter with friends and col­leagues… and with poten­tial can­di­dates for the new Vir­tual Intern­ship Pro­gram @ SharpBrains!

Think­ing glob­ally to improve men­tal health: NIH announces inter­na­tional research ini­tia­tive (press release):

- “The Grand Chal­lenges in Global Men­tal Health Ini­tia­tive, led by the National Insti­tutes of Health and the Global Alliance for Chronic Dis­eases, has iden­ti­fied the top 40 bar­ri­ers to bet­ter men­tal health around the world. Sim­i­lar to past grand chal­lenges, which Read the rest of this entry »

The use of a vari­ety of brain train­ing inter­ven­tions is grow­ing in the area of men­tal health. Emerg­ing evi­dence sug­gests that in the near future tar­geted brain train­ing may even be used to pre­vent sub­stance abuse. For exam­ple, train­ing work­ing mem­ory may reduce sub­stance abusers’ dis­count­ing of long-term rewards and pun­ish­ments — such dis­count­ing is one of the rea­sons why peo­ple sus­cep­ti­ble to addic­tions do not ben­e­fit from tra­di­tional informational/ edu­ca­tional approaches to drug prevention.

Let’s explore some expand­ing appli­ca­tions of brain train­ing, and much more, in this lat­est edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter.

Brain Train­ing and Men­tal Health

ADHD: Brain Train­ing, Neu­ro­feed­back, Diet, and More: What can be done to fight ADHD and improve the lives of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from it?

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in the Brain of Chil­dren with Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders: Brain train­ing may be an option for chil­dren suf­fer­ing from Tourette Syn­drom to help reduce the symptoms.

Brain Train­ing and Schiz­o­phre­nia: Social cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams can boost schiz­o­phren­ics’ skills social skills.

Rethink­ing the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Men­tal Ill­ness: How can we rethink the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of psy­chopathol­ogy (via the new DSM-5) to reflect our cur­rent under­stand­ing of the brain as a dynamic system?

Upcom­ing events: Cog­ni­tive Reme­di­a­tion in Psy­chi­a­try (June 10th, NYC), Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Soci­ety (Sep­tem­ber 19–20, San Francisco).

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Lifestyle for Brain Health

More Friends, Big­ger Brain: The num­ber of friends you have could be pre­dicted by the size of our amygdala!

Music and Demen­tia: Play­ing music pro­tects the brain later on. Music may also be used to teach new facts to peo­ple suf­fer­ing from dementia.

Exer­cise and Over­weight Chil­dren: Aer­o­bic exer­cise can boost over­weight chil­dren exec­u­tive functions.

The Brain Grows With Prac­tice…: We know that when the brain mas­ters a new skill, tar­geted brain areas/ cir­cuits get enlarged. We now know that those areas and cir­cuits even­tu­ally shrink back to nor­mal, but per­for­mance gain can be maintained!

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Food for Thought

What is Brain Fit­ness? What are Emerg­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ties to Retool Brain Health? Here are the answers by seven 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Speakers.

Nav­i­gate through the 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles of last year in SharpBrains.com to learn more about the brain and how to maintain/ enhance brain func­tion­ing across the lifes­pan..

Brain Teaser

Can you lis­ten to these laughs and dis­tin­guish whether it is a human or a com­puter laugh­ing? Also, given how good laugh­ing is…how about try­ing this to find out how much stressed you are? You may be surprised.

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We hope you enjoyed this newslet­ter. Please do feel free to share this with friends and col­leagues via Face­book, Twit­ter and LinkedIn.

Sharp­Brains served a highly thought-provoking and infor­ma­tive 2011 Vir­tual Sum­mit on Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury over 3 days, March 30th — April 1st. Here is a brief dis­til­la­tion of the large num­ber (40+) of presentations.

1.The range and vari­ety of pre­sen­ta­tions left no room for doubt that the dig­i­tal brain health mar­ket is con­cerned with much more than improv­ing cog­ni­tive per­for­mance and preventing/treating dis­ease. There is a need for many tools in each of the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: Read the rest of this entry »

As announced by the NIMH a few months ago, schiz­o­phre­nia can now be con­sid­ered as a brain dis­or­der. Research is focus­ing on the cog­ni­tive deficits as the main prob­lem of the dis­or­der, prob­a­bly pre­ced­ing and per­haps lead­ing to the symp­toms of hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delusions.

A recent arti­cle in the Psy­chi­atric Times reviews the dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion tech­niques used with peo­ple suf­fer­ing from schiz­o­phre­nia. This is of inter­est to any­body work­ing on men­tal health. Indeed, as Sophia Vino­gradov, Interim Vice Chair Psy­chi­a­try at UCSF will dis­cuss dur­ing the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (next week!) schiz­o­phre­nia is lead­ing the way in under­stand­ing how to iden­tify and address brain-based cog­ni­tive deficits asso­ci­ated with the disorder.

…most [Cog­ni­tive Reme­di­a­tion (CR) pro­grams] are now com­put­er­ized. Some  pro­grams use a mix of gen­eral edu­ca­tional soft­ware, but many train par­tic­i­pants with spe­cial­ized com­puter soft­ware designed to improve cognition.

Most CR pro­grams aim to improve the cog­ni­tive domains usu­ally asso­ci­ated with deficits in schizophrenia—for instance ver­bal and visual work­ing mem­ory, exec­u­tive func­tion, atten­tion, and pro­cess­ing speed.

CR has been demon­strated to improve over­all (global) cog­ni­tion as well as spe­cific domains, includ­ing atten­tion, exec­u­tive func­tion, work­ing mem­ory, ver­bal learn­ing and mem­ory, pro­cess­ing speed, and affect recognition.

Every Mon­day dur­ing the next 10 weeks we’ll dis­cuss here what lead­ing indus­try, sci­ence and pol­icy experts –all of whom will speak at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (March 30th — April 1st, 2011)– have to say about emerg­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges to address, over the next 10 years, the grow­ing brain-related soci­etal demands.

With­out fur­ther ado, here you have what four Sum­mit Speak­ers say…

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Alvaro Pascual-Leone is the Direc­tor of the Berenson-Allen Cen­ter for Non-Invasive Brain Stim­u­la­tion at Har­vard Med­ical School.

1. How would you define “brain fit­ness” vs. “phys­i­cal fit­ness”?

Phys­i­cal fit­ness can refer to an over­all or gen­eral state of health and well-being. How­ever, it is also often used more specif­i­cally to refer to the abil­ity to per­form a given activ­ity, occu­pa­tion, or sport.

Sim­i­larly brain fit­ness might be used to refer to a gen­eral state of healthy, opti­mized brain func­tion, or a more spe­cific brain-based abil­ity to process cer­tain, spe­cific infor­ma­tion, enable cer­tain motor actions, or sup­port cer­tain cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Impor­tantly though, I would argue Read the rest of this entry »

When you think of how the PC has altered the fab­ric of soci­ety, per­mit­ting instant access to infor­ma­tion and automat­ing processes beyond our wildest dreams, it is instruc­tive to con­sider that much of this progress was dri­ven by Moore’s law. Halv­ing the size of semi­con­duc­tor every 18 months catal­ysed an expo­nen­tial accel­er­a­tion in performance.

Why is this story rel­e­vant to mod­ern neu­ro­science and the work­ings of the brain? Because trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­log­i­cal progress arises out of choice and the actions of indi­vid­u­als who see poten­tial for change, and we may well be on the verge of such progress. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me pro­vide an overview of the great things going on with the Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion — start­ing this week, we will share a brief update like this every Fri­day to main­tain Sharp­Brains col­leagues and read­ers informed. Please note that all links below require access to the Council’s online platform.

Wel­come to Grand Rounds, the weekly col­lec­tion of best health and med­ical blog posts. This week we invite you to enjoy a broad range of insights, tips, and first-hand sto­ries, pre­sented as a Q&A con­ver­sa­tion with blog­gers will­ing to answer, below, a total of 22 good questions.

On Health and Med­i­cine

1. What can one-word pre­scrip­tions deliver
2. How does food pro­cess­ing change food´s nutri­tional value
3. Can diet Increases Risk of ADHD
4. Is alco­holism an illness
5. What´s bet­ter: steady dete­ri­o­ra­tion over 10 years, or symp­tom-free life for 9 years fol­lowed by rapid dete­ri­o­ra­tion in year 10

On Patient Life

1. As we talk about wellness…what about devel­op­ing self-compassion
2. Can patients with chronic pain still live a full life
3. What is the patient-doctor eti­quette for using Face­book and Twitter
4. Should patients in an ideal world con­tract directly with their doctors
5. What are patient advo­cates focus­ing on these days

On Health Care pro­fes­sion­als Read the rest of this entry »