Given that we are get­ting new read­ers let’s re-introduce our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series. If you click on the cat­e­gory (in the right bar) that says Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series, you will find the updated list of inter­views we have con­ducted (and also some that we have found else­where, such as the one with Posit Science’s Dr. Michael Merzenich and Dr. John Ratey).

The inter­views we have con­ducted and pub­lished so far, with most recent first:

• 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.
• Go Hirano on Brain Train­ing and “Brain-ism” in Japan. Go is a ser­ial Japan­ese entre­pre­neur who has launched NeuWell (Neu­ro­science for Well­ness) there. He also talks about Nin­tendo Brain Age.
• On Enhanc­ing Trader Per­for­mance and The Psy­chol­ogy of Trad­ing: Inter­view with Brett N. Steen­barger. Dr. Steen­barger is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at SUNY Upstate Med­ical Uni­ver­sity, and author of The Psy­chol­ogy of Trad­ing and the new Enhanc­ing Trader Performance.
• 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.
• 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
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and ADD/ADHD: Inter­view with Prof. David Rabiner, Senior Research Sci­en­tist and the Direc­tor of Psy­chol­ogy and Neu­ro­science Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke University.
• 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).

And we have a few more inter­views in the works-please keep tuned.

Enjoy!

We are spend­ing more time talk­ing to jour­nal­ists these days. A fre­quent ques­tion we receive is, “OK, which computer-based pro­grams do you con­sider to be Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams, not just “games” for pure fun”?.

Our answer: the rate of devel­op­ment of new pro­grams by neu­ro­sci­en­tists world­wide is really increas­ing, and there are already a few out there that com­bine good under­ly­ing sci­ence with embed­ded qual­ity assess­ments and user-friendly guide­lines and exercises from a fit­ness and pre­ven­tion (vs. med­ical “pre­scrip­tion”) per­spec­tive. Some of these are:

Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing pro­gram (RoboMemo), helps chil­dren with atten­tion deficits to over­come the work­ing mem­ory gap. and is dis­trib­uted exclu­sively through selected clin­i­cal providers.

Freeze-Framer is a biometric-based sys­tem that helps peo­ple of all ages and occu­pa­tions (from stu­dents to nurses and traders) get into The Zone of opti­mal learn­ing and per­for­mance by man­ag­ing the neg­a­tive effects of stress and anx­i­ety. Our part­ner is the Insti­tute of HeartMath.

Intel­li­Gym  pro­vides a men­tal work­out to improve core bas­ket­ball abil­i­ties, such as coor­di­na­tion, atten­tion con­trol, periph­eral vision, and perception.  Yes, this can be trained. It is bas­ket­ball spe­cific, so we don’t rec­om­mend it for other sports. Our part­ner is ACE.

Mind­Fit helps train 14 dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive func­tions that are impor­tant for healthy aging. Even if the activ­i­ties are help­ful for peo­ple of all ages (I per­son­ally use it as my “brain gym” dur­ing flights, being in my mid-30s), the look & feel is more appro­pri­ate for peo­ple over 50, so we rec­om­mend it mainly for that group. Our part­ner is Vig­or­ous Mind.

Posit Sci­ence offers an inten­sive pro­gram for train­ing core audi­tory pro­cess­ing abil­i­ties. Audi­tory pro­cess­ing is one of the areas that typ­i­cally decline with age, so this would be a great start­ing point for any­one, usu­ally above 60 given the mar­ket­ing we see in their web­site, who may be expe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with his/ her hear­ing and under­stand­ing capa­bil­i­ties. We do not offer this pro­gram through our web­site, but cer­tainly respect their sci­en­tists and research.

We are con­stantly look­ing for new ones, so keep tuned.

 

We are very excited to announce our newly released Brain Fit­ness for Sharp Brains: Your New New Year Res­o­lu­tion. We wrote it in order to pro­vide an intro­duc­tion to the con­cept, sci­ence, and prac­tice of brain fit­ness in plain Eng­lish, by answer­ing the Top 25 ques­tions we have received over the last four months. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and myself (Car­o­line) have been work­ing hard on this.

You can click here to get your copy of the com­plete guide. Oth­er­wise, keep check­ing back this blog, as we will pub­lish a new ques­tion and its answer every Mon­day and Thurs­day before 9AM Pacific Stan­dard Time. If we missed your press­ing ques­tion, let us know!

Here is a sneak pre­view of the ques­tions we will be answering …

Read the rest of this entry »

Busy day today. And very fun.

- Great chat with Rolf Hal­len­creutz, Chair­man of the Board of Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing pro­gram, RoboMemo-now only for kids with ADD/ ADHD-, dis­cussing how work­ing mem­ory train­ing may influ­ence med­i­cine, edu­ca­tion, cor­po­rate train­ing, and health & well­ness in gen­eral (Dear Skype: thanks one more help for con­tribut­ing to US-Sweden relations!).

- another great chat with Dr. Arthur Lavin, pedi­a­tri­cian and clin­i­cal provider of RoboMemo in the Cleve­land area.

- lots of work on the web­site and com­pany, you will start see­ing great changes. Please keep tuned!.

Good night,

Alvaro

Today we are trav­el­ing to Japan. Go Hirano is a ser­ial Japan­ese entre­pre­neur who has been explor­ing neuroscience-based oppor­tu­ni­ties in Japan, hav­ing recently cre­ated the com­pany NeuWell (neu­ro­science for well­ness). NeuWell and Sharp­Brains are explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties together to bring world-class pro­grams to Japan, and we thought that Sharp­Brains’ blog read­ers may be inter­ested in learn­ing about trends in Japan.

———————-

Key take-aways:

- Peo­ple in Japan devour any prod­uct with brain-related claims

- But there has been a recent back­lash against chil­dren videogames, so game devel­op­ers have started to focus on older audi­ences with (mostly unproven) brain-health-improving games

- The mar­ket is ripe for pro­grams with proven research and tan­gi­ble benefits

———————-

AF: Hirano-san, tell us a bit about your­self and how you became inter­ested in applied neuroscience.

GH: after help­ing launch one of the first DSL providers in Japan, I started to won­der what the next big­ger value for soci­ety would be. I have always been fas­ci­nated by brain research, so I started to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties to help bring to mar­ket neuroscience-based pro­grams to help stu­dents do bet­ter in exams, and adults age in brain-friendly ways.

AF: what is the state of Brain Fit­ness and Brain Train­ing in Japan? what are the most pop­u­lar appli­ca­tions so far?

GH: I think peo­ple under­stand the con­cepts of Brain Fit­ness and Brain Train­ing. If one method or product/service sounds a bit sci­en­tific there are peo­ple who would try it for fun and curios­ity. How­ever, Read the rest of this entry »

Mind­Fit, Intel­li­Gym, RoboMemo, Freeze-Framer? Is this a puz­zle? As you may have noticed, we just started to offer through the web­site some of the Brain Fit­ness pro­grams we have been talk­ing about. For over a year we have been search­ing for best pro­grams world­wide, and here you have some of the pro­grams we have found. We have inter­viewed in this blog the key sci­en­tists behind two of them, and will inter­view the rest over the next weeks. You will be hear­ing more about these pro­grams in the gen­eral media in the next months, as the field of science-based Brain Fit­ness and pro­grams like this mature. If you want a quick overview of these pro­grams, Read the rest of this entry »

Very fun day at the Seri­ous Games Sum­mit yes­ter­day. I was part of a panel on Games that Change Behav­iors or Teach Skills. We had 90–100 peo­ple in the room, who were will­ing to par­tic­i­pate and do the Stroop test aloud to have some fun (many of them being in the mil­i­tary, they were pretty good!) and see how dif­fi­cult it may be to inhibit learned behav­iors. We reviewed the key ele­ments in a pow­er­ful Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram such as Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing (now for peo­ple with ADD/ ADHD), RoboMemo. Many inter­est­ing peo­ple, includ­ing from some mil­i­tary train­ing acad­e­mies, came to speak after­wards. Fun.

I shared some of the design impli­ca­tions of try­ing to accom­plish behav­ior change, using RoboMemo as an exam­ple:
Read the rest of this entry »

Some days ago we men­tioned atten­tion deficits and exec­u­tive func­tions, as part of a review of Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and Edu­ca­tion. Let me explore that in more depth now, hav­ing just met a num­ber of very inter­est­ing researchers, doc­tors and experts at CHADD con­fer­ence, and wit­nessed the first baby steps of a com­ing rev­o­lu­tion.

First, 3 clar­i­fi­ca­tions are in order: Read the rest of this entry »

Great day at CHADD today. Very good con­ver­sa­tions on Brain Fit­ness with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and the Cogmed team, pedi­a­tri­cians such as Dr. Arthur Lavin, who was the first clin­i­cal provider of Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing in the US, and neu­rop­shy­chol­o­gist Dr. Sam Goldstein-this con­ver­sa­tion around how biofeed­back devices can help golfers bet­ter man­age their stress lev­els and improve their game.

Mark Katz won a well-deserved award and talked about his inter­est in resilience and emo­tional endurance, and Richard Barkley, in his keynote, showed pre­lim­i­nary find­ings from his research on adults with ADD/ ADHD and con­cluded that most rel­e­vant symp­toms to diag­nose an adult with ADD/ ADHD involve exec­u­tive func­tion­ing and frontal lobe prob­lems. We have talked about this ear­lier, but in short: exec­u­tive func­tions reside in our brain’s frontal lobes (behind our fore­head), and deal with abil­i­ties such as inhi­bi­tion, work­ing mem­ory, orga­ni­za­tion to time and future events, emo­tional man­age­ment, self-motivation, and planning.

Will add some rel­e­vant links over the week­end, when I have some time.

Alvaro