Happy 2007 to everyone!

We have just for­mu­lated our New Year Res­o­lu­tion: make 2007 the year when brain plas­tic­ity and Brain Fit­ness became main­stream concepts.

How do we start? well, let’s announce the launch of the Car­ni­val of Brain Fit­ness (a Blog Car­ni­val is basi­cally the vehi­cle that blogs use to share posts around spe­cific topics).

Goal: to facil­i­tate a dia­logue about this emerg­ing field across mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, from sci­en­tists and health pro­fes­sion­als, to edu­ca­tion and train­ing ones, to basi­cally every­one who has con­ducted an exper­i­ment on his on her brain and mind, and has news to report.

Con­text: The sci­en­tific foun­da­tions lie in neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, cog­ni­tive train­ing and stress man­age­ment. Med­ical and health appli­ca­tions range from stroke and TBI reha­bil­i­ta­tion to ADD/ADHD and early Alzheimer’s to Mind­ful­ness Based Stress Reduc­tion and cog­ni­tive ther­apy. Edu­ca­tional and train­ing appli­ca­tions go from help­ing kids improve read­ing abil­i­ties to help­ing man­age stress and anx­i­ety — includ­ing work with the “men­tal game” in sports and high-demand activ­i­ties pr pro­fes­sions. Each of us may also have expe­ri­ences to report, where we saw first hand, no mat­ter our age, our innate abil­ity to refine and trans­form our­selves (and our brains).

Mechan­ics: If you’d like to con­tribute, Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg is a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, and author of over 50 peer-reviewed papers. His areas of exper­tise include exec­u­tive func­tions, mem­ory, atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, demen­tia, trau­matic brain injury, and oth­ers. Dr. Gold­berg was a stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria. His book The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civ­i­lized Mind (Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001) has received crit­i­cal acclaim and has been pub­lished in 12 lan­guages. His recent book The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older (Gotham Books, Pen­guin, 2005) offers an inno­v­a­tive under­stand­ing of cog­ni­tive aging and what can be done to fore­stall cog­ni­tive decline. It has been, or is in the process of being, pub­lished in 13 languages.

We are for­tu­nate that Dr. Gold­berg is Sharp­Brains Co-Founder and Chief Sci­en­tific Advi­sor. His book The Wis­dom Para­dox inspired me to embark in this path, and has been a key sound­ing board in the devel­op­ment of what we are doing.

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Key take-aways

- “Use It and Get More of It” reflects real­ity bet­ter than “Use It or Lose It”.

- Let’s demys­tify cog­ni­tion and the brain. Every­one needs to have a basic under­stand­ing of the brain-and how to cul­ti­vate it.

- Well-directed men­tal exer­cise is a must for cog­ni­tive enhance­ment and healthy aging.
Read the rest of this entry »

What an event yes­ter­day night. My wife and I were for­tu­nate to visit the Google Cam­pus and attend the Sixth Annual North Amer­i­can Fel­low­ship Induc­tion Pro­gram of Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Pub­lic, a social ven­ture fund where we have been involved for a num­ber of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and I met in the first place.

18 new Ashoka Fellows/ social entre­pre­neurs were elected, and after a fun cock­tail recep­tion the cer­e­mony began. Sergei Brin (Google Co-founder), Sheryl Sand­berg (who helped launch Google Foun­da­tion and google.org), Salar Kaman­gar (the mind behind AdWords) gave intro­duc­tory remarks. Salar explained how he first heard of Ashoka (through the book How to Change the World, by David Born­stein) and how he saw tremen­dous sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ashoka and Google: both Read the rest of this entry »

Fun arti­cle by Seed Mag­a­zine, WHO WANTS TO BE A COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENTIST MILLIONAIRE? (Thanks, Stephanie!).

A cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science post­grad at Boston Uni­ver­sity relates his expe­ri­ence in Who Wants to Be A Mil­lion­aire? through the lenses of brain science.

Enjoy the article!-here you have some teasers:
Read the rest of this entry »

Very fun ses­sion today at the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute, titled Exer­cis­ing our Brains: new Brain Research and impli­ca­tions for our Lives. As usual, we com­bined some research back­ground with many fun group activ­i­ties, such as the ones you will find in our Brain Exer­cises sec­tion (click here).Want to try a brain teaser? Please count the num­ber of times that the let­ter “f” appears in this sentence:

“Fin­ished files are the result of years of sci­en­tific study com­bined with the expe­ri­ence of years” (The solu­tion appears as first com­ment for this post).

We reviewed some areas that typ­i­cally improve as we age, such as Self-regulation, Emo­tional func­tion­ing and Wis­dom, defined as Pat­tern recognition build­ing on the accu­mu­la­tion of expe­ri­ences.
Read the rest of this entry »

Pro­fes­sor Daniel Gopher is a fel­low of the U.S. Human Fac­tors and Ergonom­ics Soci­ety and the Inter­na­tional Ergonom­ics Asso­ci­a­tion, Pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy and Human Fac­tors Engi­neer­ing at Tech­nion, Israel’s Insti­tute of Sci­ence, and one of world’s lead­ing fig­ures in the field of Cog­ni­tive Train­ing.

Dur­ing his 40 year career, he has held a vari­ety of sci­en­tific and aca­d­e­mic posi­tions, such as act­ing Head of the Research Unit of the Mil­i­tary Per­son­nel Divi­sion, Asso­ciate Edi­tor of the Euro­pean Jour­nal of Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy, mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­ial Boards of Acta Psy­cho­log­ica, the Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Human-Computer Inter­ac­tion, and the jour­nal Psychology.

He pub­lished an award-winning arti­cle in 1994, Gopher, D., Weil, M. and Baraket, T. (1994), Trans­fer of skill from a com­puter game trainer to flight, Human Fac­tors 36, 1–19., that con­sti­tutes a key mile­stone in the cog­ni­tive engi­neer­ing field.

Prof. Gopher has also devel­oped inno­v­a­tive a) med­ical sys­tems, assess­ing the nature and causes of human error in med­ical work, and redesign­ing med­ical work envi­ron­ments to improve safety and effi­ciency, and b) work safety sys­tems, devel­op­ing meth­ods and mod­els for the analy­sis of human fac­tors, ergonomic, safety and health prob­lems at the indi­vid­ual, team and plant level.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (AF): Pro­fes­sor Gopher, it is an honor that you speak to us. Could you pro­vide an overview of the projects are you work­ing on now? Read the rest of this entry »

What do you see?

Keep look­ing at it …

Hint:
You should be able to per­ceive two dif­fer­ent images.

Brain Sci­ence:
This image is an exam­ple of an ambigu­ous illu­sion — a pic­ture or object that requires per­cep­tual switch­ing between the alter­na­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of fig­ure and ground. And although you may be able to switch back and forth to see one image or the other, your eyes will not let you see both at the same time.

Our visual per­cep­tion is cre­ated by our brain’s inter­pre­ta­tion in the cere­bral cor­tex of visual infor­ma­tion enter­ing through the visual path­way. And some­times our minds get too involved in inter­pret­ing the per­cep­tual input, rather than pas­sively record­ing it, and make mis­takes, oth­er­wise known as “opti­cal illusions”.

Answer:
An Indian Chief or an Eskimo
Links:
Opti­cal illu­sion def­i­n­i­tion
Opti­cal illu­sions primer

 

I have been rec­om­mend­ing, in this blog and in “real” life, the won­der­ful book Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nur­ture Your Child’s Intel­li­gence, Cre­ativ­ity, and Healthy Emo­tions from Birth Through Ado­les­cence, by Berkeley’s Mar­ian Dia­mond and Janet L. Hop­son.
Read the rest of this entry »

Is the inner shape a real circle?

Hint:
Some­times extra­ne­ous infor­ma­tion around your tar­get can dis­tort your view. Try cov­er­ing the lines with a piece of card to remove some of the inter­fer­ing information.

Brain Use:
Here you are exer­cis­ing your visual per­cep­tion and decision-making skills. The visual cor­tex in your occip­i­tal lobes processes visual input from your eyes. Not only is the occip­i­tal lobe mainly respon­si­ble for visual recep­tion, it also con­tains asso­ci­a­tion areas that help in the visual recog­ni­tion of shapes and col­ors. Prob­lem solv­ing, selec­tive atten­tion, and exec­u­tive func­tions used in this exer­cise are han­dled by the ante­rior por­tion of the frontal lobes.

Links:
Basic Neu­roanatomy
Brain Map
Visual Per­cep­tion

Answer:
Both shapes are per­fect circles.

“The main din­ner course was just being served in the mas­sive, ancient Greek hall when the expan­sive ceil­ing col­lapsed, crush­ing every one of the many guests in their seats. Not a sin­gle attendee sur­vived, except for the poet Simonides, who had left the room just before the tragedy. In the days that fol­lowed, work­ers who lifted the heavy rub­ble found that the vic­tims were so hor­ri­bly dis­fig­ured that they were impos­si­ble to iden­tify. But Simonides was able to help. By men­tally walk­ing along­side the long table, he found he could recon­struct which guest had been sit­ting in which place. Based on where the bod­ies lay, he named each one of the deceased.”

You can read about a  very pow­er­ful mem­ory tech­nique, called loci method or mem­ory palace, that requires train­ing and has been used since clas­sic Greece. Maybe the Old­est Brain Fit­ness Program.

Great Wikipedia entry, too.