In the past two days, The New York Times has pub­lished two excel­lent arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Despite appear­ing in sep­a­rate sec­tions (tech­nol­ogy and editorial), the two have more in com­mon than imme­di­ately meets the eye. Both raise key ques­tions that politi­cians, health pol­icy mak­ers, busi­ness leaders, educators and consumers should pay atten­tion to.

1) First, Exer­cise Your Brain, or Else You’ll … Uh …, by Katie Hafner (5/3/08). Some quotes:

- “At the same time, boomers are seiz­ing on a mount­ing body of evi­dence that sug­gests that brains con­tain more plas­tic­ity than pre­vi­ously thought, and many peo­ple are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, doing brain fit­ness exer­cises with the same inten­sity with which they attack a treadmill.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick update: 2 very inter­est­ing news, 2 excel­lent blog carnivals.

1) For­get Brain Age: Researchers Develop Soft­ware That Makes You Smarter (Wired). Thanks Senia!

- “In a lim­ited trial, he and his team were able to make 34 test sub­jects sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter at answer­ing IQ test ques­tions after train­ing them on a com­pletely sep­a­rate mem­ory task”

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last year we have gladly seen an avalanche of news on adult neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons in adult brains), fol­low­ing recent research reports. Fur­ther, we have seen how the news that phys­i­cal exer­cise can enhance neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis is becom­ing com­mon knowl­edge among many health sys­tems we work with.

Now, the obvi­ous ques­tion that doesn’t always get asked is, “What good are new neu­rons if they don’t sur­vive?”. And that’s where learn­ing, enrich­ment, men­tal exer­cise, are critical.

We are glad to intro­duce a new Expert Con­trib­u­tor, Dr. Bill Klemm, a pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity, who sum­ma­rizes much research on how new neu­rons are born-and what they need to live long happy lives.

- Alvaro

New Neu­rons: Good News, Bad News

– By Dr. Bill Klemm

In the last few years, researchers have dis­cov­ered that new nerve cells (neu­rons) are born, pre­sum­ably from resid­ual stem cells that exist even in adults. That should be good news for all of us as we get older and fear men­tal decline. The bad news is that these new neu­rons die, unless our minds are active enough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s review some good lifestyle options we can fol­low to main­tain, and improve, our vibrant brains.

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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 look for­ward to every new day in a con­struc­tive way. Stress and anx­i­ety, no mat­ter whether induced by exter­nal events or by your own thoughts, actu­ally kills neu­rons and pre­vent the cre­ation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the oppo­site of exer­cise: it pre­vents the cre­ation of new neurons.
5. Thrive on Learn­ing and Men­tal Chal­lenges. The point of hav­ing a brain is pre­cisely to learn and to adapt to chal­leng­ing new envi­ron­ments. Once new neu­rons appear in your brain, where they stay in your brain and how long they sur­vive depends on how you use them. “Use It or Lose It” does not mean “do cross­word puz­zle num­ber 1,234,567″. It means, “chal­lenge your brain often with fun­da­men­tally new activities”.
6. We are (as far as we know) the only self-directed organ­isms in this planet. Aim high. Once you grad­u­ate from col­lege, keep learn­ing. The brain keeps devel­op­ing, no mat­ter your age, and it reflects what you do with it.
7. Explore, travel. Adapt­ing to new loca­tions forces you to pay more atten­tion to your envi­ron­ment. Make new deci­sions, use your brain.
8. Don’t Out­source Your Brain. Not to media per­son­al­i­ties, not to politi­cians, not to your smart neigh­bour… Make your own deci­sions, and mis­takes. And learn from them. That way, you are train­ing your brain, not your neighbour’s.
9. Develop and main­tain stim­u­lat­ing friend­ships. We are “social ani­mals”, and need social inter­ac­tion. Which, by the way, is why ‘Baby Ein­stein’ has been shown not to be the panacea for chil­dren development.
10. Laugh. Often. Espe­cially to cog­ni­tively com­plex humor, full of twists and sur­prises. Bet­ter, try to become the next Jon Stewart

Now, remem­ber that what counts is not read­ing this article-or any other-, but prac­tic­ing a bit every day until small steps snow­ball into unstop­pable, inter­nal­ized habits…so, pick your next bat­tle and try to start improv­ing at least one of these 10 habits today. Revisit the habit above that really grabbed your atten­tion, click on the link to learn more, and make a deci­sion to try some­thing dif­fer­ent today!

The ABA (Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion) Jour­nal has a good arti­cle titled Law Hacks: 101 tips, tricks and tools to make you a more pro­duc­tive, less stressed-out lawyer, com­bin­ing tips on email usage, soft­ware, and some brain tips from us:

• 67 “The Web site Sharp­Brains sug­gests self-improvement exer­cises. Try this one: Take five-minute visu­alization breaks with deep and reg­u­lar breath­ing, pic­tur­ing beau­ti­ful land­scapes or pleas­ant or suc­cess­ful mem­o­ries, espe­cially after fin­ish­ing a tough task.”
• 68 “Improve your men­tal acu­ity by sub­tract­ing num­bers, i.e., 7 from 200 (200, 193, 186, 179 …) or prac­tic­ing an expo­nen­tial series (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 …). The point is not to become a math genius or be smarter than a fifth-grader, but just to keep your mind sharp.”
• 69 “It takes a sys­tem to be pro­duc­tive, but it’s also use­ful to try some­thing dif­fer­ent every day to stay sharp. For exam­ple, try com­mut­ing dif­fer­ently or talk­ing to new people.”

Some more tips?

• Here is our full post on Brain Exer­cise FAQs.
• And the notes from a Stress Man­age­ment Work­shop we run at Accen­ture recently.
• You may also be inter­ested in this arti­cle on Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging: How we age is at least par­tially under our con­trol, pub­lished by The Com­plete Lawyer, where you can learn why stress man­age­ment is impor­tant, and more tips.
• And a Best prac­tice for peak per­for­mance: emwave biofeedback

A col­lec­tion of recent announce­ment in the “brain games” or “brain train­ing games” space:

The Wii sets new gen­er­a­tional stan­dards for the videogame industry

• “The age­ing of the Japan­ese pop­u­la­tion com­pelled gamemaker Nin­tendo to widen its audi­ence. Now, the Wii is lead­ing the indus­try stan­dards. But hard­core gamers are still too impor­tant to be neglected.”

Strain your brain the smart way

• “George Har­ri­son, Nintendo’s senior vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has said that more than half of the company’s mar­ket­ing for Wii is aimed at adults. And the sys­tem has been pre­sented at con­ven­tions for the aging “gray gamer” pop­u­la­tion.” and talks about sudoku, Brain Age, Big Brain Acad­emy, and more.

SBT Announces the Acqui­si­tion of Quixit

• “Sci­en­tific Brain Train­ing (“SBT”), based in Lyon, France, today has announced that Read the rest of this entry »

A new ver­sion of emWave® PC Stress Relief Sys­tem (for­merly Freeze-Framer) has been released with a new name, new games, new fea­tures, new inter­ac­tive coach, and all new content.

New fea­tures and enhance­ments include:

• Cat­e­go­rized con­tent sec­tions with over 100 pages of ref­er­ence infor­ma­tion includ­ing Health and Well-Being, Health Pro­fes­sion­als, Sports Per­for­mance, Work­place Per­for­mance, and Test­ing and Learning.
• The Coher­ence Coach™ teaches stress reduc­tion and trains you to find “The Zone”.
• Emo­tion Visu­al­izer™ dis­plays col­or­ful images which change as you change your emo­tional state.
• Inter­ac­tive games help you trans­form stress into cre­ative energy.



• An inte­grated music player and improved audio feed­back functionality.
• Inte­grated web access to online forums, trou­bleshooter and knowledgebase.
• Advanced data log­ging for pulse, inter-beat-intervals, power spec­trum and more.
• New and improved tuto­r­ial and help system.
• and much more…

emWave PC col­lects infor­ma­tion from your heart through a USB fin­ger or ear-clip sen­sor that plugs into your com­puter and then trans­lates that heart rhythm infor­ma­tion into user-friendly graph­ics on your com­puter screen to help train you to relax and find “The Zone”. As you reduce your stress, you see your heart rhythms change in real time as you move into a more bal­anced, pro­duc­tive men­tal state.

emWave PC allows you to track your progress and has three inter­ac­tive games pow­ered by your abil­ity to trans­form stress into renewed energy. A new fea­ture of emWave PC is its Emo­tion Visu­al­izer, a prac­tice appli­ca­tion that pro­vides images which adjust the degrees of color and move­ment as you adjust your emo­tional state.

If you pur­chased Freeze-Framer from us and are inter­ested in a Soft­ware Upgrade Kit, please con­tact us.

We all know chronic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our mem­ory? Inter­est­ingly, acute stress can help you focus and remem­ber things more vividly. Chronic stress, on the other hand, reduces your abil­ity to focus and can specif­i­cally dam­age cells in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain struc­ture crit­i­cal to encod­ing short term memory.

When is stress chronic? When you feel out of con­trol of your life. You may feel irri­ta­ble or anx­ious. While every indi­vid­ual varies in their response the type and quan­tity of stress, there are some things you can do to feel more in con­trol of your envi­ron­ment. This sense of empow­er­ment can lower your stress, and as a result, help your memory.

What are some ways to feel in con­trol and less stressed?

1. Use a cal­en­dar to sched­ule impor­tant things. Give items a date and a priority.
2. Make a list of things that need to be done. Even if it’s a long list, it can be reward­ing to cross off items as you com­plete them.
3. Use a con­tem­pla­tive prac­tice like yoga or med­i­ta­tion to calm your mind and body or try using a heart rate vari­abil­ity sen­sor to learn to relax and focus your mind and body.
4. Ask your­self how impor­tant some­thing truly is to you. Maybe you’re stress­ing over some­thing that you are bet­ter off just let­ting go.
5. Del­e­gate what you can.
6. Get reg­u­lar exer­cise to burn off those excess stress hormones.
7. Get enough sleep so that you can recharge your batteries.
8. Eat well and reduce your caf­feine and sugar intake which can add to your sense of jitteriness.
9. Main­tain your social net­work. Shar­ing con­cerns with friends and fam­ily can help you feel less overwhelmed.
10. Give your­self 10 min­utes just to relax every day.

Fur­ther Read­ing on Stress and Mem­ory
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapol­sky, Ph.D.
A Primer on Mul­ti­task­ing
Sim­ple Stress Test
Quick Stress Buster
Is there such thing as GOOD stress?
Brain Yoga: Stress — Killing You Softly

Pro­fes­sor, trader and author Brett Steen­barger, one of the main experts on Trad­ing psy­chol­ogy and Trader Per­for­mance (see our inter­view with him here), just announced he will speak at a Free Inter­ac­tive Webi­nar on Trader Performance

• “Dur­ing the Webi­nar, I will sum­ma­rize and elab­o­rate basic ideas from my book and also intro­duce new ideas devel­oped and applied since the book’s pub­li­ca­tion. A unique fea­ture of the ses­sion will be a par­tic­i­pant Q&A mod­er­ated by Steve.” (Steven Buss, a mem­ber of the NeoTicker forum)

He recently wrote a great post on My Favorite Tech­niques for Over­com­ing Per­for­mance Anx­i­ety in Trad­ing, includ­ing a won­der­ful tech­nique (see arti­cle to read the full description)

• “Of late, I’ve been mak­ing use of heart rate vari­abil­ity feed­back through the Freeze-Framer pro­gram, which offers a nice graph­i­cal inter­face to help users track their progress and visu­ally deter­mine whether or not they’re in “the zone”.
• “Once the trader becomes adept at this, I then add Read the rest of this entry »

Cog­ni­tive train­ing and stress man­age­ment, Mind­Fit and Freeze-Framer (or emWave): two com­ple­men­tary sides of Brain Fitness.

Research shows that adults can and should take care of their brains, both for short-term and long-term ben­e­fits. Through brain exer­cise we can improve our over­all cog­ni­tive func­tion right now—making quick deci­sions, stay­ing calm and focused under pres­sure, and mul­ti­task­ing effec­tively. Over time, we may not reduce our brain age, but we can build up a cog­ni­tive reserve to buffer against age-related cog­ni­tive decline or other pro­gres­sive dis­eases. Short term and long term, we all want to lead pro­duc­tive, suc­cess­ful lives.

Any good brain fit­ness pro­gram must pro­vide you a vari­ety of new chal­lenges over time. While recre­ational activ­i­ties like bridge, sudoku, and cross­word puz­zles can work our brain, only a com­pre­hen­sive tool based in sci­en­tific research, like Mind­Fit, can work your men­tal mus­cles sys­tem­at­i­cally through a com­pletely indi­vid­u­al­ized train­ing reg­i­men for Read the rest of this entry »