As our final arti­cle for 2011, let us repur­pose one of Sharp­Brains’ most pop­u­lar blog posts since 2006. It may give you a few point­ers to sharpen those New Years Res­o­lu­tions. Let’s sum­ma­rize some lifestyle guide­lines we can all fol­low to enhance and main­tain a sharp brain through life...

1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic under­stand­ing will serve you well to appre­ci­ate your brain’s beauty as a liv­ing and constantly-developing dense for­est with bil­lions of neu­rons and synapses.
2. Take care of your nutri­tion. Did you know that the brain only weighs 2% of body mass but con­sumes over 20% of the oxy­gen and nutri­ents we intake? As a gen­eral rule, you don’t need expen­sive ultra-sophisticated nutri­tional sup­ple­ments, just make sure you don’t stuff your­self with the “bad stuff”.
3. Remem­ber that the brain is part of the body. Things that exer­cise your body can also help sharpen your brain: phys­i­cal exer­cise enhances neurogenesis.
4. Prac­tice pos­i­tive, future-oriented thoughts until they become your default mind­set and you Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a round-up of recent news on how cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science find­ings are start­ing to inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifespan:

Pedi­a­tri­cians issue a call to aid chil­dren fac­ing ‘toxic stress’ (LA Times)

Teach­ers as Brain-Changers: Neu­ro­science and Learn­ing (EdWeek) Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: Read the rest of this entry »

Yes­ter­day I had the chance to chat with Yaakov Stern, lead­ing Cog­ni­tive Reserve researcher at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, and then with a group of 25 life­long learn­ers in Ari­zona who attended a brain fit­ness class (hello, Robert and friends!) based on our con­sumer guide The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. On reflec­tion, I found both con­ver­sa­tions to be very stim­u­lat­ing for the same rea­son: they were forward-looking, focused not so much on sta­tus quo but on how emerg­ing research, tech­nol­ogy and trends may impact our soci­ety and lives in years to come. Let’s con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion. Let me share the 10 main trends that we analyzed/ fore­casted in our book, and then ask you, sharp read­ers, to add your own 2 cents to the dis­cus­sion. Read the rest of this entry »

Given many of us are start­ing to pre­pare New Year Res­o­lu­tions, let’s revisit one of Sharp­Brains’ most popular-ever arti­cles that can help us all refine our Brain Fit­ness Res­o­lu­tions…

The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains

1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic under­stand­ing will serve you well to appre­ci­ate your brain’s beauty as a liv­ing and constantly-developing dense for­est with bil­lions of neu­rons and synapses.
2. Take care of your nutri­tion. Did you know that Read the rest of this entry »

You may find that too much media cov­er­age on how to take good care of our brains is con­fus­ing, if not poten­tially mis­lead­ing. In The True Story — is men­tal exer­cise good, bad, or irrel­e­vant, Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon dis­sects for you a recent large study which was largely reported as bad news when in fact it brings good news (no mir­a­cles, but good news).  We hope you enjoy her insight­ful analy­sis — and all the excel­lent arti­cles that fol­low in the Sep­tem­ber edi­tion of our monthly eNewslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can use the box in the right col­umn to sub­scribe and receive this newslet­ter via email.

Do you Mind

Dear sapi­ens sapi­ens, do you mind: Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man encour­ages you to ask your­self the tough ques­tions: Do you mind your brain? Do you know your nog­gin’? Can you claim cere­bral own­er­ship or is your men­tal a rental? Plus, why we need a new lex­i­con for pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion interventions.

Time for a Cog­ni­tive Reserve Day: with 36 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide with demen­tia today and related care costs around 1 per­cent of the world’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP), and grow­ing fast, may it be time to com­ple­ment World Alzheimer’s Day with Word Cog­ni­tive Reserve’s Day?

Food for Thought

Debunk­ing learn­ing styles: a recent arti­cle in The New York Times debunks many old myths about learn­ing and learn­ing styles, sum­ma­riz­ing emerg­ing cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science findings.

Sci­ence for the Peo­ple: quick now — think of a ques­tion, any ques­tion, that comes to mind. Chances are some one in the excel­lent ros­ter of 28 sci­ence blog­gers who took part in Sharp­Brains’ edi­tion of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica blog car­ni­val answered it.

Food for Thought — II

‘West­ern’ Style Diet Increases Risk of ADHD: Dr. David Rabiner reports how, on the one hand, a recent large study track­ing 1172 Aus­tralian ado­les­cents and their par­ents found that dietary fac­tors can play an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of atten­tion deficits, at least for some children.

A Con­trolled Trial of Herbal Treat­ment for ADHD: on the other hand, Dr. Rabiner adds, a recent randomized-controlled trial sup­ports the idea that appro­pri­ately pre­pared and tar­geted herbal com­pounds have the poten­tial to be ther­a­peu­tic and reduce atten­tion deficit symptoms.

Shap­ing the Future

Q&A about the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion: we have received many good ques­tions about the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil … here you are our answers.

Meet the Experts: since 2006 we have inter­viewed dozens of experts on the future of cog­ni­tive enhance­ment and men­tal health, build­ing up the foun­da­tion for the type of inno­va­tion the Sharp­Brains Coun­cil wants to fos­ter. Here you can find what 26 leading-edge sci­en­tists and experts believe and why.

Get­ting ther­apy through your iPhone: The Daily Beast (a great new media out­let) just pub­lished this excel­lent arti­cle on an emerg­ing “small rev­o­lu­tion” in men­tal health care.

Brain Teaser

Brain Teaser: are you ready to test your men­tal rota­tion skills?

Please feel free to share this monthly eNewslet­ter to friends and col­leagues. Have a great month of October!

I recently reported on an intrigu­ing study exam­in­ing the impact of an herbal treat­ment for youth with ADHD. Results from this randomized-controlled trial were quite promis­ing and con­sis­tent with the idea that some indi­vid­u­als with ADHD have defi­cien­cies in essen­tial nutri­ents that com­pro­mise healthy brain devel­op­ment and result in ADHD symp­toms. This idea has sparked the long-standing debate about whether dietary fac­tors play an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of ADHD, at least for some chil­dren, and led to many stud­ies of this issue.
Although results of these stud­ies elude any sim­ple con­clu­sions, dietary fac­tors do appear to con­tribute to ADHD symp­toms in some individuals.

Some have argued that research on the rela­tion­ship between diet and ADHD is more impor­tant than ever because the diets of chil­dren in West­ern coun­tries have shown steady increases in the amounts of heav­ily processed foods rich in sat­u­rated fats, salt, and sug­ars accom­pa­nied by decreases in omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, and folate. Is it pos­si­ble that such ‘West­ern’ style diets are asso­ci­ated with an increased risk of ADHD, and per­haps a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the high preva­lence of the disorder?

This impor­tant ques­tion was exam­ined in a study pub­lished recently online in the Jour­nal of Atten­tion Dis­or­ders [Howard et. al. (2010). ADHD is asso­ci­ated with a “West­ern” dietary pat­tern in ado­les­cents. Jour­nal of Atten­tion Dis­or­ders]. Par­tic­i­pants were 1172 14 year-old Aus­tralian ado­les­cents and their par­ents who had been recruited into the study and fol­lowed since the moth­ers were between 16 and 20 weeks preg­nant. Read the rest of this entry »

Many par­ents, health care pro­fes­sion­als, and edu­ca­tors agree that there is a press­ing need to develop effec­tive treat­ments for ADHD to com­ple­ment or sub­sti­tute for tra­di­tional med­ica­tion and behav­ior ther­apy approaches. This is because such treat­ments do not work for every­one, impor­tant dif­fi­cul­ties often remain even when these treat­ments are effec­tive, and evi­dence for the long-term ben­e­fits of these treat­ments remains less com­pelling than one would like. In addi­tion, in the case of med­ica­tion treat­ment, some indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­ence intol­er­a­ble side effects and many have con­cerns about tak­ing ADHD med­ica­tion for an extended period.

One alter­na­tive approach to treat­ing ADHD has relied on the use of Com­pound Herbal Prepa­ra­tions (CHP) derived from tra­di­tional Chi­nese med­i­cine. Prac­ti­tion­ers of this approach believe that such prepa­ra­tions have impor­tant cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing prop­er­ties because they sup­ply essen­tial nutri­ents, fatty acids, phos­pho­lipids, amino acids, B vit­a­mins, min­er­als, and other micronu­tri­ents that are impor­tant for opti­mal brain growth and devel­op­ment. As a treat­ment for ADHD, the idea is that many indi­vid­u­als with ADHD have defi­cien­cies in essen­tial nutri­ents that com­pro­mise healthy brain devel­op­ment and result in ADHD symp­toms. Pro­vid­ing these nutri­ents via an appro­pri­ately pre­pared herbal com­pound thus has the poten­tial to be ther­a­peu­tic and reduce these symptoms.

This idea was tested recently in a randomized-controlled trial of a spe­cific CHP for chil­dren with ADHD [Katz, Kol-Degani, & Kav-Venaki (2010). A com­pound herbal prepa­ra­tion (CHP) in the treat­ment of ADHD: A ran­dom­ized con­trolled trial. Jour­nal of Atten­tion Dis­or­ders. Pub­lished online on March 12, 2010.] Par­tic­i­pants were 120 6–12 year-old chil­dren newly diag­nosed with ADHD based on a com­pre­hen­sive diag­nos­tic eval­u­a­tion. These chil­dren were all eval­u­ated at the Sheba Med­ical Cen­ter, one of the largest university-affiliated ter­tiary care cen­ters in Israel.

(Editor´s note: Dr. David Rabiner, author of this arti­cle, pre­vi­ously reviewed a 2005 meta-analysis whose find­ings need to be kept in mind to con­tex­tu­al­ize this new study. In the arti­cle Dietary Inter­ven­tion for ADHD: A Meta-Analysis, Dr. Rabiner con­cluded that “Results from this meta-analysis pro­vide strong evi­dence that the behav­ior of chil­dren with ADHD can be made worse by dietary fac­tors, and that elim­i­nat­ing AFCs from their diets will, on aver­age, result in behav­ioral improve­ments. This result is con­sis­tent with with accu­mu­lat­ing evi­dence that neu­robe­hav­ioral tox­i­c­ity may result from a wide vari­ety of dis­trib­uted chemicals.”)

Chil­dren were ran­domly assigned to receive either the CHP (n=80) or a placebo (n=40) that was spe­cially pre­pared to Read the rest of this entry »

In light of the cur­rent BBC-led con­tro­versy on whether “brain train­ing” works, we believe it is crit­i­cal to spend some time dis­cussing the basics of brain func­tion­ing and brain-healthy lifestyles, what “brain train­ing” is and isn’t (to be accu­rate, the BBC didn’t test Brain Train­ing as a cat­e­gory, only the new games that their researchers chose to build from scratch and des­ig­nate as “brain train­ing” ignor­ing pre­vi­ous research), what method­olo­gies for brain train­ing are in fact backed up by sci­ence (med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­apy, biofeed­back, com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing) as valu­able for a vari­ety of pop­u­la­tions and goals, and how con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als can learn to nav­i­gate the grow­ing array of claims. Sharp­Brains wants to con­tribute to a healthy con­ver­sa­tion by shar­ing online a new online resource based on the con­tent from the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (May 2009, $19.95), by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg.

The new resource is avail­able via the Nav­i­ga­tion Bar as “HOW-TO GUIDE: all about brain fit­ness”, and below are its main sec­tions. You can engage in the con­ver­sa­tion in this blog, via Face­book, Twit­ter, and LinkedIn. Enjoy!

	Debunk­ing 10 Brain Myths You are a life­long learner. You may also be a care­giver, or a pro­fes­sional in fields such as health­care, edu­ca­tion, or psy­chol­ogy. The goal of this resource is to help you make informed deci­sions about brain health and cog­ni­tive fit­ness, based on lat­est sci­en­tific find­ings. First of all, let’s debunk some com­mon myths. Keep read­ing.
	1. Brain Fit­ness Fundamentals In order to make informed deci­sions about brain health and brain train­ing, you need to first under­stand the under­ly­ing orga­ni­za­tion of the human brain and how it evolves across our lifes­pan. For exam­ple, the brain is com­posed of a num­ber of spe­cial­ized regions serv­ing dis­tinct func­tions, our life and pro­duc­tiv­ity depend on a vari­ety of brain func­tions, not just one, and there is noth­ing inher­ently fixed in the tra­jec­tory of how brain func­tions evolve as we age. Keep read­ing.
	2. The 4 Pil­lars of Brain Maintenance Thanks to life­long neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, our lifestyles and actions play a mean­ing­ful role in how our brains phys­i­cally change. Now, there is no “gen­eral solu­tion” or “magic pill” for brain main­te­nance. A multi-pronged approach cen­tered on nutri­tion, stress man­age­ment, and both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise is rec­om­mended for bet­ter brain health. Keep read­ing.
	3. Brain Train­ing vs. Men­tal Activity In this sec­tion we focus on men­tal exer­cise – which we will call brain train­ing, to dis­tin­guish it from men­tal activ­ity in gen­eral. Brain train­ing goes beyond men­tal activ­ity. It is the struc­tured use of cog­ni­tive exer­cises or tech­niques aimed at improv­ing spe­cific brain func­tions, and can be deliv­ered in a num­ber of ways: med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­apy, cog­ni­tive train­ing, biofeed­back. Keep read­ing.
	4. Mak­ing Informed Brain Train­ing Decisions The state of the research does not allow for strong “pre­scrip­tions” of spe­cific prod­ucts: we want to offer you the best infor­ma­tion avail­able today so that you can make bet­ter informed deci­sions. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple face dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive demands, and have dif­fer­ent start­ing points, so there is no gen­eral solu­tion for every­one and every­thing. As in phys­i­cal fit­ness, informed con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als must ask them­selves a num­ber of ques­tions. Keep read­ing.
	5. Brain Fit­ness through the Lifespan The same way there are many rea­sons to exer­cise our bod­ies (run in a marathon, stay in shape, lose weight, become an Olympian, have strong abdom­i­nal mus­cles, etc.), there are many rea­sons to exer­cise our brains. In this chap­ter, we review a few cur­rent and future appli­ca­tions of brain train­ing through the lifes­pan, includ­ing edu­ca­tion, cor­po­rate well­ness, retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, clin­i­cal con­di­tions, and more. Keep read­ing.
	6. Ready for the Future? In this sec­tion our aim is to describe the trends we think are impor­tant in order to help you be ready for the future. Informed and proac­tive adults will look for solu­tions to inte­grate brain fit­ness to their every­day activ­i­ties. Pro­fes­sion­als will iden­tify oppor­tu­ni­ties to offer new ser­vices and pro­grams. We hope this chap­ter will give you ideas as to how to intro­duce brain fit­ness in your per­sonal life and/or your work­place. Keep read­ing.
	7. Open­ing the Debate Our ulti­mate goal is to stim­u­late dis­cus­sion. In this final sec­tion we want to pro­vide you, proud brain own­ers and ambas­sadors of brain fit­ness, with addi­tional food for though. Pro­cess­ing new infor­ma­tion is a stim­u­lat­ing intel­lec­tual exer­cise, and dis­cussing insights and open ques­tions with a group of peo­ple can be equally if not more stim­u­lat­ing. Keep read­ing.

The July/ August 2009 issue of The Jour­nal on Active Aging includes my arti­cle Why We Need to Retool “Use It Or Lose It“

An excerpt:

“By now you have prob­a­bly heard about brain plas­tic­ity, the life­long capac­ity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stim­u­la­tion of learn­ing and expe­ri­ence. The lat­est sci­en­tific research shows that spe­cific lifestyles and actions can improve the health and level of func­tion­ing of our brains, no mat­ter our age.

Of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance to main­tain­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing through life are the hip­pocam­pus (deep inside the brain, part of what is called the lim­bic sys­tem), which plays a role in learn­ing and mem­ory; and the frontal lobes (behind your fore­head), which are key to main­tain­ing decision-making and auton­omy. Is there a way to phys­i­cally pro­tect these parts of the aging brain? Yes. But the right answer is far from “do one more cross­word puz­zle” or “do more X” (what­ever X is). The key is to add sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties to ensure a flow of nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge, com­bin­ing phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise while not ignor­ing fac­tors such as stress man­age­ment and bal­anced nutrition.

We need, in other words, to retool our under­stand­ing and prac­tice of “Use it or lose it.” We must focus on the impor­tance of get­ting out of our phys­i­cal and men­tal rou­tines and activ­i­ties to get the ben­e­fits of real exercise—physical and mental.”

Con­tinue read­ing Why We Need to Retool “Use It Or Lose It”