Very fun inter­view with Jack and Elaine LaLanne by Dave Bun­nell: read it at Meet Fit­ness Leg­ends Jack and Elaine LaLanne | ELDR.com. See some quotes:

• In 1936, Jack opened America’s first health club in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, called the “Jack LaLanne Phys­i­cal Cul­ture Studio.”
• Through tele­vi­sion shows, pub­lic appear­ances, and books—and by sell­ing health-related products—they have been the most vocal and effec­tive evan­ge­lists for pre­ven­tive health the world has ever known.
• “Elaine works out,” Jack replies, “but I work out eight days a week. I spend an hour and a half in the gym, and then a half hour in the pool, and I change my rou­tine every 30 days completely.”
• “You’ve got to go at it hard and work on dif­fer­ent mus­cles,” he con­tin­ues. “You know how you stay young, don’t you? You work your butt off. Any­thing you do in life that’s worth­while, there’s a price to pay.”

Jack recently cel­e­brated his 92nd birthday!

We all have to be very thank­ful for their life mis­sion: a recent arti­cle from the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science quotes:

“Every­body knows that exer­cise is good for your heart, but in recent years we’ve gath­ered com­pelling evi­dence that exer­cise is also good for your brain,” says Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies. “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”

You can check other tips in Read the rest of this entry »

Bran­don Keim writes a nice post on The Future Sci­ence of Altru­ism at Wired Sci­ence Blog, based on an inter­view with Jor­dan Graf­man, chief of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science at the National Insti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders and Stroke.

Bran­don pro­vides good con­text say­ing that “Sci­en­tists, said Graf­man, are under­stand­ing how our brains are shaped by cul­ture and envi­ron­ment, and a mech­a­nism of these changes may involve fluc­tu­a­tion in our genes them­selves, which we’re only begin­ning to under­stand”. (more on this in our post Richard Dawkins and Alfred Nobel: beyond nature and nur­ture).

And gives us some very nice quotes from Dr. Graf­man, including

• “One of the ways we dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves from other species is that we have a sense of future. We don’t have to have imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion.… But how far can we go into the future? How much of our brain is aimed at doing that? […]”
• “Other great apes have a frontal lobe, fairly well devel­oped, but not nearly as well devel­oped as our own. If you believe in Dar­win and evo­lu­tion, you argue that the area grew, and the neural archi­tec­ture had to change in some way to accom­mo­date the abil­i­ties asso­ci­ated with that behav­ior. There’s no doubt that didn’t occur overnight; prob­a­bly a slow change, and it was one of the last areas of the brain to develop as well. It’s very recent evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­ment that humans took full advan­tage of. What in the future? What in the brains can change?”
• “The issue becomes — do we teach this? Train peo­ple to do this? Chil­dren tend to be self­ish, and have to be taught to share.”

The UC Berke­ley mag­a­zine Greater Good tries to answer that ques­tion with a series of arti­cles on Grat­i­tude. I espe­cially enjoyed A Les­son in Thanks, described as Read the rest of this entry »

The great MIT Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive offers a lot of free mate­ri­als on Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences. You can browse lec­ture notes, read­ings, and more on a vari­ety of psy­chol­ogy and neu­ro­science courses.

• “The human brain is the most com­plex, sophis­ti­cated, and pow­er­ful information-processing device known. To study its com­plex­i­ties, the Depart­ment of Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy com­bines the exper­i­men­tal tech­nolo­gies of neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy, neu­ro­science, and psy­chol­ogy, with the the­o­ret­i­cal power that comes from the fields of com­pu­ta­tional neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive science.”
• “The Depart­ment was founded by Hans-Lukas Teu­ber in 1964 as a Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy, with the then-radical vision that the study of brain and mind are insep­a­ra­ble. Today, at a time of increas­ing spe­cial­iza­tion and frag­men­ta­tion, our goal remains to under­stand cog­ni­tion– its processes, and its mech­a­nisms at the level of mol­e­cules, neu­rons, net­works of neu­rons, and cog­ni­tive mod­ules. We are unique among neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive sci­ence depart­ments in our breadth, and in the scope of our ambi­tion. We span a very large range of inquiry into the brain and mind, and our work bridges many dif­fer­ent lev­els of analy­sis includ­ing mol­e­c­u­lar, cel­lu­lar, sys­tems, com­pu­ta­tional and cog­ni­tive approaches.”

There is a fas­ci­nat­ing new course titled A Clin­i­cal Approach to the Human Brain, Fall 2006, includ­ing Top­ics and Lec­ture Sum­maries such as

• “Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis: Teach­ing Old Dogs New Tricks. A sur­pris­ing dis­cov­ery in the last few years in neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy has been that neu­rons are born, neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, in the adult mam­malian brain. Ini­tially, this had been shown in ani­mals and, more recently, in the humans hip­pocam­pus, the site of declar­a­tive mem­ory for­ma­tion. (See Gree­nough). Fur­ther­more, the rate of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis in ani­mals has been enhanced by expe­ri­ence, both phys­i­cal activ­ity and liv­ing in enriched envi­ron­ments (See Read the rest of this entry »

What a busy week, last one. We will be writ­ing dur­ing the week about some of the Sharp­Brains events that occured. 

The May/June Issue of Stan­ford Mag­a­zine has a nice sec­tion titled Just One Ques­tion, where a num­ber of Stan­ford alumni answer the ques­tion “What do peo­ple in your pro­fes­sion know that you wish every­one knew?”

Some of our favorite answers:

• Zoe Lof­gren, ’70, rep­re­sents California’s 16th dis­trict in Con­gress. “When all is said and done, the Amer­i­can peo­ple decide the kind of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment they get. It’s largely a myth that elected offi­cials dis­re­gard the view­points of their con­stituents. That only hap­pens when vot­ers forgo the oppor­tu­nity to express their point of view or when an elected offi­cial (know­ingly or not) is prepar­ing to leave his or her elected office. A dozen unscripted, indi­vid­ual let­ters on a sub­ject are enough to gal­va­nize a mem­ber of Con­gress rep­re­sent­ing 670,000 people.”
• Doug Osheroff, the J.G. Jack­son and C.J. Wood Pro­fes­sor of Physics, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1996. “I wish that more peo­ple had an under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of how sci­ence is done. That is, how sci­en­tists are able to expand the bound­aries of our knowl­edge and at the same time develop new tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies that really do ben­e­fit mankind.”
• Spencer Sher­man, MA ’69, PhD ’71, is a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist in Santa Bar­bara, Calif. “Psy­chother­a­pists know that it’s okay to be not okay. That every­one suf­fers some­times. That suf­fer­ing is not unend­ing, unen­durable or with­out value. That con­fu­sion and despair have mean­ing, and that out of them wis­dom and com­pas­sion emerge. That help exists and that it is sage to ask for it. That strength can be built and hap­pi­ness learned. That tri­als and mis­takes are nec­es­sary parts of that learn­ing. That there is no life free from pain. That it is the pain that dri­ves the growth. That flow­ers thank the soil from which they rise.”
• (we are biased here) Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, MBA ’01, MA ’02, is CEO and co-founder of Sharp­Brains, Inc. “Many cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists wish that more peo­ple knew how flex­i­ble our brains are through­out our whole lives and what a big dif­fer­ence we can make to ensure a healthy, fit, brain and mind. We can exer­cise our brains—not just our biceps.”

You can check more answers to Just One Ques­tion.

You can use our check­list for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate through the grow­ing num­ber of brain fit­ness programs.

Forbes recently pub­lished a great arti­cle on Top Brain Boost­ers, by Alli­son Van Dusen, with good lifestyle advice on life­long learn­ing, com­puter pro­grams, social inter­ac­tion, stress reduc­tion, sleep, exer­cise and emo­tional health, and nutrition.

The arti­cle also men­tions the Mind­Fit and Posit Sci­ence pro­grams, and includes our Sharp­Brains Check­list to help select the right computer-based program.

Why did we develop a Check­list? Well, research shows that Phys­i­cal Exer­cise, Good Nutri­tion, Stress Man­age­ment and Brain Fitness/Exercise are all four crit­i­cal pil­lars for Brain Health. Most peo­ple already under­stand the first 3, but the 4th one, Brain Fitness/Exercise, is often mis­un­der­stood or over­looked. We have spent over 18 months inter­view­ing sci­en­tists and review­ing avail­able Brain Fitness/Exercise Pro­grams world­wide, and, given the over­whelm­ing amount of pro­grams mak­ing “Brain Fit­ness” claims nowa­days, we would like to share the research-based cri­te­ria we use to eval­u­ate Brain Fitness/Exercise programs.

The Forbes Top Brain Boost­ers arti­cle asks “How do you know if a pricey brain fit­ness soft­ware pro­gram is right for you?”

And offers our checklist:

10 Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Program

* 1. Are there sci­en­tists, ide­ally neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, and a sci­en­tific advi­sory board behind the program?

(Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists spe­cial­ize in mea­sur­ing and under­stand­ing human cog­ni­tion and brain struc­ture and function.)

* 2. Are there pub­lished, peer-reviewed sci­en­tific papers in PubMed writ­ten by those sci­en­tists? How many?

(Pubmed is a ser­vice of the U.S. National Library of Med­i­cine that includes mil­lions of cita­tions sci­ence jour­nals. If a sci­en­tist has not pub­lished a paper that appears in that data­base, he or she can­not make sci­en­tific claims.)

* 3. What are the spe­cific ben­e­fits claimed for using this program?

(Some pro­grams present the ben­e­fits in such a neb­u­lous way that it is impos­si­ble to tell if they will have any results or not…“brain train­ing” itself is a lim­ited ben­e­fit, because activ­i­ties like gar­den­ing or learn­ing a new lan­guage pro­vide “brain train­ing too”…you need to see some­thing more spe­cific, like what cog­ni­tive or emo­tional skill that pro­gram is aimed at)

* 4. Does the pro­gram tell me what part of my brain or which cog­ni­tive skill I am exer­cis­ing, and is there an inde­pen­dent assess­ment to mea­sure my progress?

(The ques­tion is whether the improve­ment expe­ri­enced in the pro­gram will trans­fer into real life. For that to hap­pen we need assess­ments that are dis­tinct from the exer­cises themselves.)

* 5. Is it a struc­tured pro­gram with guid­ance on how many hours per week and days per week to use it?

(Brain exer­cise is not a magic pill. You have to do the exer­cises in order to ben­e­fit, so you need clar­ity on the effort required.)

* 6. Do the exer­cises vary and teach me some­thing new?

(The only way to exer­cise impor­tant parts of our brain is by tack­ling novel challenges.)

* 7. Does the pro­gram chal­lenge and moti­vate me, or does it feel like it would become easy once I learned it?

(Good brain exer­cise requires increas­ing lev­els of difficulty)

* 8. Does the pro­gram fit my per­sonal goals?

(Each indi­vid­ual has dif­fer­ent goals/ needs when it comes to brain health. For exam­ple, some want to man­age anx­i­ety, oth­ers to improve short-term memory…)

* 9. Does the pro­gram fit my lifestyle?

(Some brain exer­cise pro­grams have great short-term results but are very intense. Oth­ers may be bet­ter over time)

* 10. Am I ready and will­ing to do the pro­gram, or would it be too stressful?

(Excess stress reduces, or may even inhibit, neurogenesis-the cre­ation of new neurons-. So, it is impor­tant to make sure not to do things that stress us in unhealthy ways.)

Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­ited time, you can receive a com­pli­men­tary copy of our Brain Fit­ness 101 e-Guide: Answers to your Top 25 Ques­tions, writ­ten by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, by sub­scrib­ing to our monthly newslet­ter. You can sub­scribe Here.

You may also enjoy these related blog posts:

- Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity 101 and Brain Fit­ness Glos­sary: an overview of the emerg­ing sci­ence and some key con­cepts to under­stand it.

- Brain Train­ing Games and “Games”: a 10-Question Check­list on how to eval­u­ate pro­grams that make brain-related claims.

- Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and Psy­chol­ogy Inter­view Series: in-depth inter­views with 11 sci­en­tists and experts in cog­ni­tive train­ing and brain fitness.

- Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and mem­ory train­ing: reviews of Train Your Brain, Change Your Mind, by Sharon Beg­ley, and The Brain That Changes Itself, by Nor­man Doidge. Both books are fas­ci­nat­ing and pow­er­ful; each would have mer­ited appear­ing in the 2007 New York Times List of 100 Notable Books.

Finally, this is one on the impor­tant top­ics we cover in our Sem­i­nars, so let us know if your orga­ni­za­tion needs more information.

If you are in the Bay Area, we hope to see you at this event! Feel free to for­ward the invi­ta­tion below to any­one you know who may be interested.

---

The grow­ing move­ment for improv­ing brain health has brought many inter­ested pro­fes­sion­als and inter­ested com­mu­nity mem­bers to the table. Shar­ing our infor­ma­tion, activ­i­ties, and planned events to pro­mote brain health increases the power of our reach.

Please join us on May 16, 2007 from noon to 1:30pm for a com­pli­men­tary gath­er­ing co-sponsored by:

• The Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (Nancy Cerid­wyn will make some remarks),
• The Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes (OLLI) at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity and Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, and
• Sharp­Brains.

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, well-known neu­ro­sci­en­tist and author of The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharp­Brains and instruc­tor of the Exer­cis­ing Our Brains class, will pro­vide an overview of the sci­ence and trends behind the emerg­ing brain fit­ness field.

Please bring infor­ma­tion on your work and events to share with oth­ers inter­ested in brain health.

Where: SFSU OLLI (835 Mar­ket Street, 6th Floor, San Fran­cisco, Room 675)
When: Wednes­day, May 16, 12–1:30 pm
What: A chance for net­work­ing with Read the rest of this entry »

My first full-time job was as a strate­gic con­sul­tant at McK­in­sey & Com­pany. A very intense 2-year learn­ing experience.

Their Alumni News Ser­vice recently inter­viewed me and pub­lished this great arti­cle on Sharp­Brains. The writer does a superb job of pro­vid­ing an overview of what we do, so I rec­om­mend you read it. I’d like to empha­size the fol­low­ing quotes for any­one look­ing for jobs these days, so that “brain exer­cise” is part of the equation:

• “Alvaro has some very high praise for the men­tal gym­nas­tics that the McK­in­sey expe­ri­ence pro­vides.  Given that the frontal lobes in our brain (behind the fore­head) only mature in our late 20s, he says, the jobs we take in our early and mid-20s are very impor­tant not only for our career prospects, but also for our brain devel­op­ment fit­ness. This is the stage in our life where, con­sciously or not, we can improve our decision-making, ini­tia­tive and self-regulation abil­i­ties, all of which lit­er­ally affect the phys­i­cal growth of our frontal lobes in a sig­nif­i­cant way.”
• “Join­ing McK­in­sey as a BA is lit­er­ally like join­ing a brain gym, Alvaro says. “The demands of the McK­in­sey model. Read the rest of this entry »

This pro­mo­tion ends April 16th-so make sure you enter if you want to have the chance to win some nice mind and brain exer­cise for free.

—————————————–

Some weeks we were con­tacted by Sony Pic­tures to pro­vide the Grand Prize for one of their Sweep­stakes pro­grams, for just-released San­dra Bullock’s Pre­mo­ni­tion movie.

We were happy to put together a com­plete Brain Fit­ness Kit, some­thing like a boot camp for the brain (a “brain camp”?), which you can get FOR FREE. The kit is com­posed of:

- One (1) Com­plete Men­tal Work­out Soft­ware pro­gram (Mind­Fit) that helps train mem­ory and other skills (ARV: $149.00)
– One (1) Stress Man­age­ment Biofeed­back pro­gram (Freeze-Framer) (ARV: $320.00)
– One (1) Exer­cise Your Brain DVD (ARV: $20.00)
– One (1) Brain Fit­ness 101 eBook ($12.00)

- Five (5) pri­vate phone-based ses­sions with our Brain Coach (you will hear more about this soon) (ARV: $350.00)
If you want the chance to win this Prize, together with a $1,000 check, you can sim­ply visit Pre­mo­ni­tion Expect the Unex­pected Sweep­stakes pro­gram and fill in your details. There is no cost asso­ci­ated with this pro­mo­tion. This is why you are see­ing ban­ners in this site for the first time.

Good luck!

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 »