…a few ques­tions: how did you find us, what we are doing well, what we can do better?

We have just found out that more than 600 people are receiv­ing our feeds, but we only know-and just a bit– the 50–60 who leave com­ments and link to us. We enjoy hav­ing so many read­ers not just in the US but in Europe, the Mid­dle East, Asia, Australia…(thanks Google Analytics!).

Would you mind writ­ing a com­ment to allow us to learn about you and your inter­ests, and also include your feed­back for us? If you have a blog, please write the URL so we can pay a visit.

Enjoy the week­end, and thanks a lot for your time and attention!

Car­o­line and Alvaro

Given that we are get­ting new read­ers let’s re-introduce our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series. If you click on the cat­e­gory (in the right bar) that says Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series, you will find the updated list of inter­views we have con­ducted (and also some that we have found else­where, such as the one with Posit Science’s Dr. Michael Merzenich and Dr. John Ratey).

The inter­views we have con­ducted and pub­lished so far, with most recent first:

• Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing. Dr. Gold­berg is a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist and clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine. He was a stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria, and has writ­ten The Exec­u­tive Brain and The Wis­dom Paradox.
• Go Hirano on Brain Train­ing and “Brain-ism” in Japan. Go is a ser­ial Japan­ese entre­pre­neur who has launched NeuWell (Neu­ro­science for Well­ness) there. He also talks about Nin­tendo Brain Age.
• On Enhanc­ing Trader Per­for­mance and The Psy­chol­ogy of Trad­ing: Inter­view with Brett N. Steen­barger. Dr. Steen­barger is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at SUNY Upstate Med­ical Uni­ver­sity, and author of The Psy­chol­ogy of Trad­ing and the new Enhanc­ing Trader Performance.
• On Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intelligence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher. Dr. Gopher is Pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy and Human Fac­tors Engi­neer­ing at Tech­nion, Israel’s Insti­tute of Sci­ence, and sci­en­tific advi­sor for Intel­li­Gym.
• An ape can do this. Can we not? with Dr. James Zull, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy and Bio­chem­istry at Case West­ern Uni­ver­sity, and author of The Art of Chang­ing the Brain
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and ADD/ADHD: Inter­view with Prof. David Rabiner, Senior Research Sci­en­tist and the Direc­tor of Psy­chol­ogy and Neu­ro­science Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke University.
• On Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, pro­fes­sor at Karolin­ska Insti­tute, and direc­tor of the Devel­op­men­tal Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Lab, part of the Stock­holm Brain Insti­tute. He is also the sci­en­tific advi­sor for Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing pro­gram (RoboMemo).

And we have a few more inter­views in the works-please keep tuned.

Enjoy!

Wel­come to the inau­gural edi­tion of the Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val. The tim­ing couldn’t be bet­ter  you have prob­a­bly seen the fea­tured CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neuroplasticity.

Thanks to the over 40 peo­ple who sub­mit­ted posts. We have had to select the posts we enjoyed the most to help facil­i­tate an engag­ing and informed conversation.

Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Our expe­ri­ence lit­er­ally shapes our brains. And vice versa. The media seems to be focus­ing mostly on brain fit­ness for seniors, but its impli­ca­tions go beyond that, as you will see in this post by Car­o­line: What is Brain Fit­ness?, and the arti­cles in this carnival.

Science-based under­stand­ing is evolv­ing from “Use it or Lose It” to “Use It and Improve It.”  As Fast Company’s Alan Deutschman provoca­tively puts it in his last book, Change or Die. We couldn’t agree more with his sum­mary rec­om­men­da­tion: “Relate. Repeat. Reframe.” Alan presents a blog arti­cle announc­ing his book (here is his orig­i­nal arti­cle). Read the rest of this entry »

We are spend­ing more time talk­ing to jour­nal­ists these days. A fre­quent ques­tion we receive is, “OK, which computer-based pro­grams do you con­sider to be Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams, not just “games” for pure fun”?.

Our answer: the rate of devel­op­ment of new pro­grams by neu­ro­sci­en­tists world­wide is really increas­ing, and there are already a few out there that com­bine good under­ly­ing sci­ence with embed­ded qual­ity assess­ments and user-friendly guide­lines and exercises from a fit­ness and pre­ven­tion (vs. med­ical “pre­scrip­tion”) per­spec­tive. Some of these are:

Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing pro­gram (RoboMemo), helps chil­dren with atten­tion deficits to over­come the work­ing mem­ory gap. and is dis­trib­uted exclu­sively through selected clin­i­cal providers.

Freeze-Framer is a biometric-based sys­tem that helps peo­ple of all ages and occu­pa­tions (from stu­dents to nurses and traders) get into The Zone of opti­mal learn­ing and per­for­mance by man­ag­ing the neg­a­tive effects of stress and anx­i­ety. Our part­ner is the Insti­tute of HeartMath.

Intel­li­Gym  pro­vides a men­tal work­out to improve core bas­ket­ball abil­i­ties, such as coor­di­na­tion, atten­tion con­trol, periph­eral vision, and perception.  Yes, this can be trained. It is bas­ket­ball spe­cific, so we don’t rec­om­mend it for other sports. Our part­ner is ACE.

Mind­Fit helps train 14 dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive func­tions that are impor­tant for healthy aging. Even if the activ­i­ties are help­ful for peo­ple of all ages (I per­son­ally use it as my “brain gym” dur­ing flights, being in my mid-30s), the look & feel is more appro­pri­ate for peo­ple over 50, so we rec­om­mend it mainly for that group. Our part­ner is Vig­or­ous Mind.

Posit Sci­ence offers an inten­sive pro­gram for train­ing core audi­tory pro­cess­ing abil­i­ties. Audi­tory pro­cess­ing is one of the areas that typ­i­cally decline with age, so this would be a great start­ing point for any­one, usu­ally above 60 given the mar­ket­ing we see in their web­site, who may be expe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with his/ her hear­ing and under­stand­ing capa­bil­i­ties. We do not offer this pro­gram through our web­site, but cer­tainly respect their sci­en­tists and research.

We are con­stantly look­ing for new ones, so keep tuned.

 

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 »

Just a quick note to sum­ma­rize a num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions we have been hav­ing at a num­ber of hol­i­day parties.

In short, who may ben­e­fit from a biofeedback-based stress man­age­ment pro­gram? any­one, no mat­ter the age (after 6-years-old) who wants a more mea­sur­able way to man­age stress and anx­i­ety and per­form at peak lev­els. Our Head Coach, a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, lit­er­ally men­tioned yes­ter­day that this tool is one of the most use­ful he has ever seen.

We have seen some spe­cific groups ben­e­fit the most, such as stu­dents and school staff, traders and golfers: Read the rest of this entry »

We’re full of res­o­lu­tions for the upcom­ing new year. But, if you haven’t found one yet and need a lit­tle inspi­ra­tion, here are some ideas to stim­u­late your com­mit­ment to a healthy brain and body this year …

Read the rest of this entry »

We are very excited to announce our newly released Brain Fit­ness for Sharp Brains: Your New New Year Res­o­lu­tion. We wrote it in order to pro­vide an intro­duc­tion to the con­cept, sci­ence, and prac­tice of brain fit­ness in plain Eng­lish, by answer­ing the Top 25 ques­tions we have received over the last four months. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and myself (Car­o­line) have been work­ing hard on this.

You can click here to get your copy of the com­plete guide. Oth­er­wise, keep check­ing back this blog, as we will pub­lish a new ques­tion and its answer every Mon­day and Thurs­day before 9AM Pacific Stan­dard Time. If we missed your press­ing ques­tion, let us know!

Here is a sneak pre­view of the ques­tions we will be answering …

Read the rest of this entry »

What may be the con­nec­tion between yesterday’s post on Trading’s Mid-Life Cri­sis: Get­ting Big­ger Vs. Get­ting Broader, writ­ten by a trader and author­ity in trad­ing psy­chol­ogy, and Time Magazine’s arti­cle on How to bring schools into 21st cen­tury?

Let’s first read a cou­ple of quotes from the shools arti­cle: Read the rest of this entry »

In the post Trader Peak Per­for­mance and biofeed­back pro­grams we showed the Heart Rate Vari­abil­ity pat­terns cor­re­lated with lev­els of a) anx­i­ety or b) Peak Per­for­mance, “The Zone”. Biofeed­back sup­ports our emo­tional self-regulation: we can visu­ally track what is going on inside us and train our­selves to man­age our emo­tional state. On the left you have an exam­ple of my own per­for­mance dur­ing a 5-minute exper­i­ment 4 months ago. At the top, you see my name; at the bot­tom, the dura­tion of the ses­sion. Right axis, for top half, is Heart Rate. (This is only the half left of the screen in the program-the right half would give you more infor­ma­tion.) I have high­lighted sev­eral phases:

A: you can see long waves fol­low­ing a smooth rhythm-that is the phys­i­o­log­i­cal “The Zone”, where I can per­form at max­i­mum level. I was using breath­ing and visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques that are some­times called “The Men­tal Game” in ath­let­ics and sports.

B: I stressed myself. How? well, maybe think­ing of a pre­vi­ous boss, or some bad moment in my life. You see that the “waves” dis­ap­pear, and nar­row erratic pat­terns appear instead.

C: I quickly go back into “The Zone”, Read the rest of this entry »