In recent years, we have wit­nessed the begin­nings of a rev­o­lu­tion in edu­ca­tion.  Tech­nol­ogy has fun­da­men­tally altered the way we do many things in daily life, but it is just start­ing to make head­way in chang­ing the way we teach.  Just as tele­vi­sion shows like Sesame Street enhanced the pas­sive learn­ing of infor­ma­tion for kids by teach­ing in a fun for­mat, elec­tronic games offer to greatly enhance the way kids and adults are taught by actively engag­ing them in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

What may be the most time and cost-efficient way to attend a con­fer­ence, learn from world-class speak­ers and meet old and new colleagues?

Answer: A vir­tual con­fer­ence, such as the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st).

Please watch this 3-minute clip to learn how the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit works, and why you should con­sider join­ing the good com­pany of over 35 lead­ing Speak­ers drawn from indus­try, research and the front lines.

Con­firmed Speak­ers include:

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To Learn More About Sum­mit Fac­ulty & Agenda, click HERE

We’d be delighted to count on your par­tic­i­pa­tion in this inno­v­a­tive endeavor,

- The Sharp­Brains Team

PS: Early-bird reg­is­tra­tion rates end on Feb­ru­ary 18th, with sub­stan­tial sav­ings avail­able both for com­pa­nies and non-profit orga­ni­za­tions.  To Learn More and Reg­is­ter: click Here

We are proud to con­firm six addi­tional excel­lent Speak­ers at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (remem­ber, this is a fully vir­tual event so it requires no travel). Three Speak­ers are based in the US, two in the UK, one in Aus­tralia, and they truly rep­re­sent a range of per­spec­tives and exper­tise to dis­cuss, as the Sum­mit tagline promises, Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury. Read the rest of this entry »

I am writ­ing to share some infor­ma­tion about our third annual “Neu­ro­science Boot Camp,” which I think the read­ers of the Sharp­Brains blog will find interesting.

The Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia announces their 3rd annual Neu­ro­science Boot Camp, July 31-August 10, 2011!

Why Neu­ro­science Boot Camp?

Neu­ro­science is increas­ingly rel­e­vant to a num­ber of pro­fes­sions and aca­d­e­mic dis­ci­plines beyond its tra­di­tional med­ical appli­ca­tions. Lawyers, edu­ca­tors, econ­o­mists and busi­ness­peo­ple, Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the research behind the book The Sharp­Brains Guide for Brain Fit­ness we inter­viewed dozens of lead­ing cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and experts world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have a num­ber of take-aways to report.

What can we clearly say today that we couldn’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­ago Ramon y Cajal claimed in the XX cen­tury, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”, may well become real­ity in the XXI.

And trans­form Edu­ca­tion, Health, Train­ing, and Gam­ing in the process, since Read the rest of this entry »

We are hon­ored to announce four new con­firmed Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Speak­ers: Nigel Smith at AARP, Peter Kissinger at the AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safety, Keith Wesnes at United BioSource, and Ken Kosik at UCSB Neu­ro­science Research Institute.

Nigel Smith, AARP Strat­egy and Inno­va­tion Direc­tor, is respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing decen­tral­ized inno­va­tion mod­els for AARP and for con­sult­ing with busi­ness units in the exe­cu­tion of inno­va­tion processes. Prior to AARP, Nigel was the Direc­tor or Prod­uct Inno­va­tion for Visa USA. Other pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences have been with McK­in­sey & Com­pany, Gold­man Sachs Group, and KPMG. Nigel holds a Mas­ters in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion degree from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and a Bach­e­lors in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion degree from Howard Uni­ver­sity. 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 »

Mal­prac­tice Method­ol­ogy (New York Times OpEd by Peter Orszag)

Right now, health care is more evidence-free than you might think. And even where evidence-based clin­i­cal guide­lines exist, research sug­gests that doc­tors fol­low them only about half of the time. One esti­mate sug­gests that it takes 17 years on aver­age to incor­po­rate new research find­ings into wide­spread prac­tice. As a result, any clin­i­cal guide­lines that exist often have lim­ited impact. How might we encour­age doc­tors to adopt new evi­dence more quickly?

If this is the case with health care over­all, despite much progress over the last 30–40 years, imag­ine how worse it may be when we talk about brain health, when neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science are rel­a­tively more recent disciplines.

This is a key insight to keep in mind as we debate the value and lim­i­ta­tions of inno­v­a­tive brain health solu­tions, espe­cially those that are non-invasive and have no neg­a­tive side effects:  what mat­ters most to actual human beings liv­ing today is how those tools and solu­tions seem to per­form, based on best evi­dence, com­pared to alter­na­tives avail­able today — not com­pared to Pla­tonic ideals about research and prac­tice which may exist in our minds but not in the real, empir­i­cal world. Of course we then need to guide research so that we have bet­ter evi­dence in the future, but progress must occur in par­al­lel and rein­force each other: progress in prac­tice and in research.

The OpEd author then pro­ceeds to defend mal­prac­tice reform as the pri­mary way to do so. This may well be so with health­care as a whole, but when we are talk­ing about brain care I believe his next 2 pro­pos­als are more directly rel­e­vant: Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine).

We’ve all been there: obsess­ing over a faux pas we com­mit­ted at a party, infu­ri­ated by an unkind word from a col­league, rumi­nat­ing over a tough break-up with a spouse or friend. We suf­fer some misfortune—big or small, real or imagined—and the pain or humil­i­a­tion sticks with us for hours, days, or even years afterward.

“The mind is like Vel­cro for neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences,” psy­chol­o­gist Rick Han­son is fond of say­ing, “and Teflon for pos­i­tive ones.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Draw­ing on some of the lat­est find­ings from neu­ro­science, Han­son has spent years explor­ing how we can over­come our brain’s nat­ural “neg­a­tiv­ity bias” and learn to inter­nal­ize pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences more deeply—while min­i­miz­ing the harm­ful phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of dwelling on the negative.

For years, research has shown that, over time, our expe­ri­ences lit­er­ally reshape our brains and can change our ner­vous sys­tems, for bet­ter or worse. Now, neu­ro­sci­en­tists and psy­chol­o­gists like Han­son are zero­ing in on how we can take advan­tage of this “plas­tic­ity” of the brain to cul­ti­vate and sus­tain pos­i­tive emotions.

In his recent book, the best-selling Buddha’s Brain: The Prac­ti­cal Neu­ro­science of Hap­pi­ness, Love, and Wis­dom, Han­son describes spe­cific prac­tices that can pro­mote last­ing joy, equa­nim­ity, and compassion—and backs it all up with sound science.

Han­son recently spoke with host Michael Bergeisen about some of these very prac­ti­cal, research-based steps we can all take to rewire our brains for last­ing hap­pi­ness. Below we present a con­densed ver­sion of the dis­cus­sion. Read the rest of this entry »