Sev­eral recent news pieces, includ­ing this New York Times arti­cle, have reported on an emerg­ing trend: schools using tech­niques such as yoga and med­i­ta­tion to help stu­dents man­age anx­i­ety and stress. To bet­ter under­stand what is going on, we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.

–Alvaro

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Mind­ful Kids, Peace­ful Schools

With eyes closed and deep breaths, stu­dents are learn­ing a new method to reduce anx­i­ety, con­flict, and atten­tion dis­or­ders. But don’t call it meditation.

— By Jill Suttie

At Toluca Lake ele­men­tary school in Los Ange­les, a cyclone fence encloses the asphalt black­top, which is teem­ing with kids. It’s recess time and the kids, who are mostly Latino, are play­ing tag, yelling, throw­ing balls, and jump­ing rope. When the bell rings, they reluc­tantly stop and head back to their class­rooms except for Daniel Murphy’s sec­ond grade class.

Murphy’s stu­dents file into the school audi­to­rium, each car­ry­ing a round blue pil­low dec­o­rated with white stars. They enter gig­gling and chat­ting, but soon they are seated in a cir­cle on their cush­ions, eyes closed, quiet and con­cen­trat­ing. Two teach­ers give the chil­dren instruc­tions on how to pay atten­tion to their breath­ing, telling them to notice the rise and fall of their bel­lies and chests, the pas­sage of air in and out of their noses. Though the room is chilly the heat­ing sys­tem broke down ear­lier that day the chil­dren appear com­fort­able, many with Read the rest of this entry »

A Span­ish friend and neu­ro­sci­en­tist just reminded me of a great quote by San­ti­ago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934): “todo hom­bre puede ser, si se lo pro­pone, escul­tor de su pro­pio cere­bro”.

Which means: “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”.

Which really means: “Each of us can lit­er­ally refine the struc­ture and func­tion of our brains, the same way we can do so with the rest of our body mus­cles” (my 2 cents…).

Our daily thoughts and actions, learn­ings, med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­apy, the grow­ing num­ber of software-based pro­grams, and more, are “sculpt­ing” tools…no more no less than tools. Good for some goals and con­texts, like improv­ing con­cen­tra­tion and mem­ory, becom­ing “sharper”, help­ing pro­tect our minds from decline, or man­age stress better.

I just bought Cajal’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, titled Rec­ol­lec­tions of My Life (thanks, Mind Hacks). Will be writ­ing about it in a month or so-I have too many books on the table now, and only one brain.

If you want to read some good neu­ro­science blog posts, you can find a nice col­lec­tion in the lat­est edi­tion of Encephalon, hosted by Dr Deb­o­rah Serani.

For gen­eral sci­ence ones, try Tan­gled Bank. For edu­ca­tion, enjoy The Edu­ca­tion Car­ni­val.

Finally, I will be host­ing the next edi­tion of Car­ni­val of the Cap­i­tal­ists (I don’t really love the name…but it is the old­est and best blog car­ni­val for busi­ness and eco­nom­ics). If you have some good posts, please sub­mit them here.

For some addi­tional thoughts on sculpt­ing brains, intel­li­gence, and becom­ing smarter, you can check this post.

The field of computer-based cog­ni­tive train­ing (part of what we call “Brain Fit­ness”) is start­ing to get trac­tion in the media and becom­ing an emerg­ing indus­try, and we are happy to see how a grow­ing num­ber of researchers and science-based com­pa­nies are lead­ing stud­ies that will allow to bet­ter mea­sure results and refine the brain exer­cise soft­ware available.

Pub­lished new research

• Com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­ory train­ing after stroke-A pilot study. A pub­lished study on how Cogmed work­ing mem­ory train­ing may help stroke patients. See the ref­er­ence at Cogmed Research page (and full arti­cle here)
• The Jour­nals of Geron­tol­ogy pub­lished a series of related papers in their June issue, includ­ing this by Kar­lene Ball, Jerri D. Edwards, and Les­ley A. Ross on The Impact of Speed of Pro­cess­ing Train­ing on Cog­ni­tive and Every­day Func­tions, J Geron­tol B Psy­chol Sci Soc Sci 2007 62: 19–31.  Abstract: “We com­bined data from six stud­ies, all using the same speed of pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram, to exam­ine the mech­a­nisms of train­ing gain and the impact of train­ing on cog­ni­tive and every­day abil­i­ties of older adults. Results indi­cated that train­ing pro­duces imme­di­ate improve­ments across all sub­tests of the Use­ful Field of View test, par­tic­u­larly for older adults with ini­tial speed of pro­cess­ing deficits. Age and edu­ca­tion had lit­tle to no impact on train­ing gain. Par­tic­i­pants main­tained ben­e­fits of train­ing for at least 2 years, which trans­lated to improve­ments in every­day abil­i­ties, includ­ing effi­cient per­for­mance of instru­men­tal activ­i­ties of daily liv­ing and safer dri­ving per­for­mance.”

Ongoing/ start­ing research

• MindWeavers set to launch new ‘brain health’ soft­ware in the UK. “The company’s move into the adult brain health Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many Sharp Brains around, who is up to date of every­thing related to brain health and fit­ness (yes, Jeanne, that’s you! thanks for being such a great bureau chief!) has sent us a very inter­est­ing press note on how brain fit­ness and train­ing can be applied in the sports per­for­mance world. I haven’t been able to track down the research behind the spe­cific pro­grams men­tioned in the arti­cle, but the the­o­ret­i­cal ratio­nale makes sense based on sim­i­lar pro­grams we are famil­iar with: you can see below a sum­mary of our inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher, sci­en­tific mind behind computer-based cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions for mil­i­tary pilots and for bas­ket­ball play­ers.

The note Sports Vision Train­ing Takes Ath­letes to New Fron­tiers explains how

• “Spe­cialty sports vision facil­i­ties are help­ing ath­letes train skills that many believed were “untrain­able”; skills like antic­i­pa­tion, field vision, tim­ing, sport intel­li­gence, game tempo, reac­tion speed, focus and concentration.”
• “What has every­one all worked up is the knowl­edge that they can actu­ally train ath­letic skills that many believed were “untrain­able.” We’re talk­ing about intan­gi­bles like antic­i­pa­tion, field vision, tim­ing, sport intel­li­gence, game tempo, reac­tion speed, focus and con­cen­tra­tion. “One of the worst mis­takes an ath­lete can make is to believe that you’re either born with or with­out these kinds of skills, and that they’re con­se­quently not train­able, says Brian Stam­mer, edi­tor of SportsVi­sion Mag­a­zine. “If you want to be the best ath­lete you can be, you must do exer­cises to con­di­tion and sharpen your sen­sory sys­tem, includ­ing visual, audi­tory and brain-processing speed.
• This is the link to the mag­a­zine they men­tion: SportsVi­sion Magazine

And here is the sum­mary of my (AF) inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher (DG) on Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions and cog­ni­tive training:

• “AF: …Can you sum­ma­rize your research find­ings across all these exam­ples and fields, and how you see the field evolving?
• DG: In short, I’d sum­ma­rize by say­ing that
• - Cog­ni­tive per­for­mance can be sub­stan­tially improved with proper train­ing. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to live long and strong, you’ve got to do more than work out your body; you’ve got to exer­cise your brain, insists Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine. While we’ve heard for years that men­tal stim­u­la­tion can stave off demen­tia and Alzheimer’s, Dr. Gold­berg says sci­en­tists now know exactly how to keep our brains from turn­ing to mush – by stim­u­lat­ing the growth of new neu­rons and inter­con­nec­tions between them that boost brain effi­ciency. If you don’t use your brain in new and novel ways, your brain won’t be fit to use.

As the chief sci­en­tific adviser for SharpBrains.com, Dr. Goldberg’s site offers an array of brain teasers and exer­cises that improve brain func­tion. But online tests are not all you can do. Just do some­thing dif­fer­ent and chal­leng­ing. Get­ting out of your middle-aged com­fort zone is the dif­fer­ence in a high qual­ity of life when you’re older than none at all.

Keep read­ing more of the Florida Today inter­view with Dr. Gold­berg at Next Up, A Gym for the Mind.

You can also read our more detailed (and prob­a­bly more pre­cise) inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing.

We were very happy to dis­cover that Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Mind has high­lighted Sharp­Brains in their June/July 2007 issue!

Here’s what they had to say:

“Every­one knows the impor­tance of stay­ing phys­i­cally fit. But what about stay­ing men­tally fit? Research in the past sev­eral years has shown that men­tal “work­outs” may improve mem­ory, relieve stress and even help stave off Alzheimer’s. This new site is an online gym for the mind, offer­ing a blog about the sci­ence of brain fit­ness and links to rel­e­vant research. It also sells “exer­cise” soft­ware and offers per­sonal training.”

If you are here due to that intro­duc­tion, we’d like to wel­come you and show you around a bit. You might enjoy:

• The Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series in our brain health blog, in which we inter­view some of the lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists in brain fit­ness, including:
  • Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing,
  • Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intelligence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher,
  • Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg,
  • Mem­ory train­ing and atten­tion deficits: inter­view with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gib­son,
  • and an upcom­ing inter­view with Yaakov Stern, the lead­ing researcher behind the Cog­ni­tive Reserve theory
• Our col­lec­tion of Brain Teasers and Puzzles
• A selec­tion of Hot Top­ics in Brain Health and Fitness
• Or, sign up for our free monthly brain fit­ness newslet­ter that keeps you up to date with the lat­est arti­cles and events in brain fitness

But most of all, enjoy your­self, learn some­thing new, and let us know what you think!