Please Save these Dates if you are inter­ested in explor­ing and dis­cussing the lat­est on Opti­miz­ing Health Through Neuroplasticity-Driven Inno­va­tion; the theme for our third annual vir­tual Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (“vir­tual” means every­thing takes place online; no one has to travel):

• Pre-Summit work­shops: May 31st-June 1st, 2012
• Sum­mit: June 7-8th, 2012
• Expo Week: June 12-14th, 2012

17 Con­firmed Sum­mit Speak­ers include: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

On Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 7, at 7 p.m., Cleve­land Park Library in Wash­ing­ton, DC will host Alvaro Fer­nan­dez as he dis­cusses  The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews to Keep Your Brain Sharp (book also avail­able via DC library sys­tem).

The book expands on the con­cept of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity that recent works such as the New York Times best­seller, The Brain that Changes Itself, and the PBS Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram have intro­duced to the world. Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, or the the brain’s capac­ity to Read the rest of this entry »

We just came across a new sci­en­tific study on the value and lim­i­ta­tions of cog­ni­tive train­ing in Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI), based on a pro­gram of cog­ni­tive exer­cises pro­vided by Lumos Labs (devel­op­ers of lumosity.com).

Study: Com­put­erised Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Older Per­sons With Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment: A Pilot Study Using a Ran­domised Con­trolled Trial Design (Brain Impair­ment): Read the rest of this entry »

Spon­sored Ad (How to Adver­tise on SharpBrains.com)

Time for our monthly eNewslet­ter track­ing recent news and devel­op­ments on how the neu­ro­science of cog­ni­tion and emo­tions can inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifes­pan. Let us try to be as con­cise as pos­si­ble, so you can spend as much time as pos­si­ble con­nect­ing with your Loved Ones instead of with the World Wide Web.

• Your Brain: Capa­ble of Great­ness, Hard-wired for Survival
• How Phys­i­cal Exer­cise Ben­e­fits the Brain
• Brain changes seen in cab­bies who take ‘The Knowledge’
• How Cul­tural Evo­lu­tion Out­paces Nat­ural Evolution
• Cog­ni­tive Test­ing Pro­gram Fails Sol­diers, Leav­ing Brain Injuries Undetected
• Cog­ni­tive Behav­iour Ther­apy Helps Adults with ADHD
• Check­list to Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing and Brain Health Claims
• Could study­ing the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?
• New Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012
• The Sharp­Brains Guide: Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine Best­seller in Ama­zon Kin­dle Store
• Offi­cial selec­tion  by AARP of Best Books on Brain Fitness
• Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and Neurogenesis
• Invi­ta­tion for Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Par­tic­i­pants to Com­ment on Meet­ing Report

Wish­ing you a won­der­ful end of 2011 and a happy and suc­cess­ful 2012!

PS: thirty-nine peo­ple have reg­is­tered since this past Tues­day to par­tic­i­pate in the upcom­ing Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012. Please remem­ber we will only be able to acco­mo­date the first two hun­dred reg­is­trants, so please take a look soon to see if you are inter­ested in joining!

We are pleased to announce a new online course designed to equip par­tic­i­pants with the under­stand­ing and infor­ma­tion required to apply emerg­ing sci­ence and tools to enhance brain health and func­tion­al­ity across the lifespan.

Course descrip­tion: Infor­ma­tion over­load and longer lives expose our brains to more demands than even before. This fast-paced and inter­ac­tive online course will exam­ine the emerg­ing sci­ence of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and cog­ni­tive reserve and sur­vey lat­est tools and best prac­tices to equip you to become your own ‘brain fit­ness coach’ and address per­sonal and pro­fes­sional pri­or­i­ties. Avail­able online from any­where with an Inter­net con­nec­tion, this course will help you pin­point ways to opti­mize brain health and func­tion­al­ity and delay decline, nav­i­gat­ing the maze of frag­mented research, super­fi­cial media cov­er­age and exag­ger­ated mar­ket­ing claims. The course is based on The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness –recently named a Best Book by AARP– and Sharp­Brains’ new ABBC frame­work (Address Basics, Build Capac­i­ties), and includes weekly read­ings and activities.

Mechan­ics: The course con­sists of four two-hour-long live online ses­sions to be held in March 2012 (detailed syl­labus avail­able), and an online pri­vate forum for Fac­ulty and Par­tic­i­pants to inter­act dur­ing March and April 2012.

Who this is for: This course is for any­one who wants to under­stand how emerg­ing cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science can be applied to enhance brain health and per­for­mance, and who is will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in a fast-paced course that lever­ages e-learning to facil­i­tate a global learn­ing experience.

Note: In order to ensure a valu­able and inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence, par­tic­i­pa­tion will be lim­ited to the first 200 indi­vid­u­als who register.

Fac­ulty:

• Instruc­tor: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (SharpBrains)
• Guest Lec­tur­ers: Alvaro Pascual-Leone (Har­vard Med­ical School), Robert M. Bilder (UCLA Semel Insti­tute for Neu­ro­science and Human Behavior)

To Learn More and Reg­is­ter, please visit the course page: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012.

Thank you for vis­it­ing us today. May we encour­age you to dis­con­nect from the World Wide Web for a few days, includ­ing clos­ing this web page, and to spend time con­nect­ing with your Loved Ones.

Hav­ing said that, if you really really need to read good infor­ma­tion on brain, cog­ni­tion, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, learn­ing and life­long brain health, may we encour­age you to read some of our recent eNewsletters:

• Novem­ber 30th, 2011: Time to Invest in our Brains?
• Octo­ber 28th, 2011: How Stress and Emo­tions Impact Brain Performance
• Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2011: On Brain Train­ing, Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­ogy and the FDA

If you’re look­ing for a great book to read (yes, we’re biased, but we do think it is a great book), please take a look at The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. If you are look­ing for brain teasers and games, look Here.

We’ll be back next week. In the mean­time, let us Wish You Happy Hol­i­days, Merry Christ­mas and Happy Hanukkah!

We are pleased to report that the AARP’s Best Books Series: Brain Fit­ness List (link opens PDF doc­u­ment you can view, down­load and print at AARP web­site) is finally offi­cially avail­able, described as “a list­ing for pub­lic libraries of well-prepared books on main­tain­ing a sharp and fit mind through­out the aging process.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today with David DiS­alvo, author of What makes your brain happy and why you should do the oppo­site, mod­er­ated by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez. You visit pre­vi­ous Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Full Tran­script (Lightly edited) of Live Q&A held on Decem­ber 9th, 2-3pm ET

Read the rest of this entry »

You may have  noticed that Amazon.com is shar­ing aggre­gated data on how ebook read­ers inter­act with the books they are read­ing. For exam­ple, the “Pop­u­lar High­lights” sec­tion (towards the bot­tom of our Kin­dle book page) ranks the Top 10 sen­tences that Kin­dle read­ers have high­lighted and shared while read­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp (April 2009; 182 pages; ranked #1 in Kin­dle Store’s Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine section).

This infor­ma­tion is invalu­able to authors and pub­lish­ers - as you can imag­ine, we’ll make sure to not only main­tain but to elab­o­rate on these top­ics as we pre­pare future edi­tions of the book.

So, what are so far the Top Ten Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, Read the rest of this entry »