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!

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 »

There has been an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the issues related to the aging of the legal pro­fes­sion. Stephanie intro­duced us to the arti­cle “the Gray­ing Bar: let’s not for­get the ethics” by David Giacalone.

In short: sta­tis­tics about the increas­ing ratio of lawyers over 70 in active prac­tice, on the one hand, and the gen­eral inci­dence of Alzheimer’s and other demen­tias, on the other, lead David to point out an increas­ing like­li­hood that some lawyers may be prac­tic­ing in less than ideal con­di­tions for their clients, beyond a rea­son­able “brain age”. The ques­tion then becomes: who and how can solve this prob­lem, which is only going to grow given demo­graphic trends?.

We are not legal experts, but would like to inform the debate by offer­ing 10 con­sid­er­a­tions on healthy aging and job per­for­mance from a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal point of view, that apply to all occupations:

1– We should talk more about change than about decline, as Sharon Beg­ley wrote recently in her great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required).

We dis­cussed some of these effects with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, who wrote his great book The Wis­dom Para­dox pre­cisely on this point, at The Exec­u­tive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger.

2– Some skills improve as we age: In our “Exer­cis­ing Our Brains” Classes, we typ­i­cally explain how some areas typ­i­cally improve as we age, such as self-regulation, emo­tional func­tion­ing and Wis­dom (which means mov­ing from Prob­lem solv­ing to Pat­tern recog­ni­tion). As a lawyer accu­mu­lates more cases under his/ her belt, he or she devel­ops an auto­matic “intu­ition” for solu­tions and strate­gies. As long as the envi­ron­ment doesn’t change too rapidly, this grow­ing wis­dom is very valuable.

3– …whereas, yes, oth­ers typ­i­cally decline: Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple of good recent articles:

(You can join our monthly newslet­ter by sub­scrib­ing at the top of this page).

Brain Games will give adults all the chal­lenge they can handle

Bal­ti­more Sun, MD. Mar 22, 2007.The reporter pro­vides a great sur­vey of prod­ucts. The only parts I find miss­ing are:

1) what spe­cific cog­ni­tive skill/s is/are being trained by each prod­uct? if we under­stand that the brain has a vari­ety of struc­tural and func­tional areas, it becomes evi­dent that dif­fer­ent pro­grams may be train­ing dif­fer­ent “men­tal muscles”.

2) How does each pro­gram enable the user mea­sure progress in an objec­tive way? I’d say this is the main dif­fer­ence between “games” and brain fit­ness pro­grams. If you have a wildly dif­fer­ent brain age every­time you try…that so-called brain age is not very credible.

Does brain exer­cise fight demen­tia?
Min­neapo­lis Star Tri­bune (sub­scrip­tion), MN. Mar 18, 2007.As the arti­cle men­tions, no pro­gram can claim to “pre­vent Alzheimer’s”. And I haven’t seen Posit Sci­ence (or us) claim such a thing, or imply it. But what can be claimed is mean­ing­ful: Read the rest of this entry »

Sev­eral recent sto­ries on brain train­ing and SharpBrains:

1) New brain games may improve mind fit­ness by Kevin Koster­man (U of Wis­con­sin Oshkosh’s Advance-Titan)

“Any­time we learn, we are train­ing, chang­ing, our brain,” Fer­nan­dez said. “The three key core ele­ments for effec­tive brain exer­cise are nov­elty, vari­ety and con­stant chal­lenge, sim­i­lar to increas­ing the level in machines we find in gyms.”

2) “Train­ing the Brain as pos­si­ble as Train­ing the Body”, جريدة النهار by Hanadi El Diri (Anna­har, one of the most pres­ti­gious papers in the Mid­dle East. The text is in Arabic.)

3) “Train your brain” by Mark Muck­en­fuss (The Press-Enterprise in River­side and San Bernardino)

“We can­not promise to peo­ple you will only keep get­ting bet­ter until you are 200 years old. But I think peo­ple still under­es­ti­mate how flex­i­ble the brain really is.”

The Smart­Brains [sic] pro­gram com­bines men­tal exer­cises with a stress reduc­tion pro­gram. Too much stress, says Fer­nan­dez, has been shown to be dam­ag­ing not only to per­for­mance, but to the brain itself.
With all of the avail­able pro­grams for stim­u­lat­ing the brain, he says, it is impor­tant to shop care­fully. A crit­i­cal ele­ment, he says, is how clients or par­tic­i­pants are evaluated.

“Make sure they have a cred­i­ble assess­ment that helps you find your strengths and weak­nesses and that they have pro­grams that address (those areas),” he says. “Assess­ments that give you 50 (as an age-equivalent grade) and a week later you’re 32, that’s not a valu­able assessment.”

Today we will con­tinue our review of the ben­e­fits of brain train­ing for spe­cific occu­pa­tions: in this case, pilots and bas­ket­ball play­ers. The lessons can be rel­e­vant not only for cor­po­rate train­ing but also for edu­ca­tion and brain health & wellness.

To do so, we will select quotes from our inter­view last year with one of the major sci­en­tists in the field of cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions, Pro­fes­sor Daniel Gopher. You can read the full inter­view here.

Prof. Gopher 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.

On Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Cog­ni­tive Simulations

AF: Tell us a bit about your over­all research interests

DG: My main inter­est has been how to expand the lim­its of human atten­tion, infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing and response capa­bil­i­ties which are crit­i­cal in com­plex, real-time decision-making, high-demand tasks such as fly­ing a mil­i­tary jet or play­ing pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball. Using a ten­nis anal­ogy, my goal has been, and is, how to help develop many “Wimbledon”-like cham­pi­ons. Each with their own styles, but per­form­ing to their max­i­mum capac­ity to suc­ceed in their environments.

What research over the last 15–20 years has shown is that cog­ni­tion, or what we call think­ing and per­for­mance, is really a set of skills that we can train sys­tem­at­i­cally. And that computer-based cog­ni­tive train­ers or “cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions” are the most effec­tive and effi­cient way to do so.

This is an impor­tant point, so let me empha­size it. What we have dis­cov­ered is that a key fac­tor for an effec­tive trans­fer from train­ing envi­ron­ment to real­ity is that the train­ing pro­gram ensures “Cog­ni­tive Fidelity”, this is, it should faith­fully rep­re­sent the men­tal demands that hap­pen in the real world. Tra­di­tional approaches focus instead on 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 »

Good WebMD 4-page arti­cle on Brain Fit­ness pro­grams for seniors. Check Keep­ing Your Brain Fit for Life:Software com­pa­nies are offer­ing new pro­grams that promise to keep your brain sharp as you get older.

Some quotes:

- “The notion of brain fit­ness has even invaded pop­u­lar cul­ture. In April, Nin­tendo released Brain Age, a Japanese-inspired, hand­held video game to help users’ minds stay active. While the game is mar­keted for all ages, the buy­ers — now num­ber­ing more than 655,000 in the U.S. — have mainly been older peo­ple, Nin­tendo of Amer­ica spokes­woman Amber McCol­lom writes in an email.”

- “Play­ers take a non­sci­en­tific test that cal­cu­lates a “brain age” for the pur­poses of the game. Read the rest of this entry »