A very promis­ing cog­ni­tive train­ing study was pre­sented last week by Helena West­er­berg at the annual meet­ing of the CNS: Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Soci­ety held in San Fran­cisco, and Dr. David Rabiner brings us the highlights.

- Alvaro

———————

The study was con­ducted with a gen­eral adult pop­u­la­tion, rather than adults diag­nosed with ADHD, as was the case in pre­vi­ous pub­lished work­ing mem­ory train­ing studies,

The study was a ran­dom­ized, con­trolled trial of work­ing mem­ory train­ing con­ducted with 55 younger (20–30 years old) and 45 older (60–70 years old) adults. Par­tic­i­pants were ran­domly assigned to receive 5 weeks of active Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing or a placebo train­ing inter­ven­tion. In the active train­ing group, the dif­fi­culty of the work­ing mem­ory train­ing tasks con­tin­u­ally adjusted to match the individual’s per­for­mance. As a result, indi­vid­u­als were con­sis­tently chal­lenged to per­form at their high­est pos­si­ble level. In the placebo train­ing group, the dif­fi­culty level remained con­stant across the train­ing period such that improve­ments in work­ing mem­ory were not expected to occur.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are have the Monthly Digest of our Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sider it your monthly Brain Exer­cise Magazine.

Grat­i­tude is a very impor­tant emo­tion to cul­ti­vate, as Pro­fes­sor Robert Emmons tells us in this inter­view, based on his last book. Please take some time to read it, and to find at least one thing you are thank­ful for-it will be good for your health.

We are grate­ful about a very stim­u­lat­ing November:

Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket News

10 Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Trends: a lead­ing indus­try orga­ni­za­tion released their Top 10 Neu­roTrends for 2007, and brain fit­ness mat­ters appeared in 3 of them.

Thank Boomers for Buff­ing Up Brain Mar­ket: great overview of the mar­ket from a tech­nol­ogy point of view, quot­ing our mar­ket pro­jec­tions. To clar­ify the num­bers men­tioned: we project $225m in the US alone for the brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket (grow­ing from $70m in 2003), broken-down as fol­lows: $80m for the Con­sumer seg­ment, $60m in K12 Edu­ca­tion, $50m in Clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, and $35m in the Cor­po­rate seg­ment. The Con­sumer seg­ment, with a healthy aging value propo­si­tion, is the most recent one but the most rapidly grow­ing.

Exer­cise On the Brain: a NYT OpEd: a widely read opin­ion piece in the New York Times, writ­ten by 2 neu­ro­sci­en­tists, that some­how seems to miss the research behind the value of men­tal stim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing. Other neu­ro­science teams and us write let­ters to the edi­tor that go unpub­lished. Should you have any con­tacts with jour­nal­ists, please ask them to con­tact us: we are always happy to serve as a resource to the media.

Posit Sci­ence @ GSA: well-designed Brain Train­ing Works: a timely heads up on how well-designed computer-based pro­grams can be a great com­ple­ment to other inter­ven­tions. We will be inter­view­ing the lead­ing researcher behind that study dur­ing the next 2 weeks, so keep tuned!

Brain and Mind News and Arti­cles: a vari­ety of links to good media reports, includ­ing a spec­tac­u­lar spe­cial on mem­ory in National Geographic.

News You Can Use

Mar­ian Dia­mond on the brain: lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tist Mar­ian Dia­mond, now 81, shares her pre­scrip­tion for life­long brain health– diet, exer­cise, chal­lenge, new­ness and ten­der lov­ing care.

From Med­i­ta­tion to MBSR (Mind­ful­ness Based Stress Reduc­tion): a report on the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion and how it is becom­ing more main­stream in medicine.

Teasers

50 Mind and Brain Games for adults: you may have seen these teasers, but we want to alert you we have opened a new sec­tion in the site where you can eas­ily find our grow­ing col­lec­tion of teasers

Your Haiku, please?: a friendly chal­lenge to your brain.

Edu­ca­tion and Life­long Learning

Carol Dweck on Mind­sets, Learn­ing and Intel­li­gence: we found a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view on the impor­tance on hav­ing a growth and learn­ing ori­ented mind­set. Both for kids and adults.

Is Intel­li­gence Innate and Fixed?: some reflec­tions based on biology.

Cor­po­rate Train­ing, Well­ness and Leadership

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness and The Future of Work: an excel­lent con­cept map on how neu­ro­science may influ­ence the work­place of the future, drawn in real time as I spoke at an Insti­tute for the Future event.

Emo­tional Intel­li­gence and Faces: how many uni­ver­sal emo­tions and facial expres­sions are there?

Events

Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together: I spoke at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cisco, where we explored some of the basic con­cepts we should all know about how our brains and mind work.

Let me prac­tice the Grat­i­tude concept…Thank You for your atten­tion and participation!

You can also enjoy our pre­vi­ous edi­tions of this monthly digest:

- Octo­ber

- Sep­tem­ber

- August

- July

Just came across an excel­lent Inter­view with Carol Dweck. Thank you Coert!

Carol Dweck is a pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. Last year she pub­lished a great book called Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­ogy of Suc­cess, where she elab­o­rates on her (and ours) key mes­sage: the way you view your own intel­li­gence largely deter­mines how it will develop. And no mat­ter how you define “intel­li­gence”. In this inter­view Coert asks Carol Dweck about the book and about what the prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions of her work are for man­agers. See a cou­ple of quotes below:

- “In my book I iden­tify two mind­sets that play impor­tant roles in people’s suc­cess. In one, the fixed mind­set, peo­ple believe that their tal­ents and abil­i­ties are fixed traits. They have a cer­tain amount and that’s that; noth­ing can be done to change it. Many years of research have now shown that when peo­ple adopt the fixed mind­set, it can limit their suc­cess. They become over-concerned with prov­ing their tal­ents and abil­i­ties, hid­ing defi­cien­cies, and react­ing defen­sively to mis­takes or setbacks-because defi­cien­cies and mis­takes imply a (per­ma­nent) lack of tal­ent or abil­ity. Peo­ple in this mind­set will actu­ally pass up impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn and grow if there is a risk of unmask­ing weak­nesses. This is not a recipe for suc­cess in busi­ness, as ulti­mately shown by the folks at Enron, who rarely admit­ted any mis­takes. What is the alter­na­tive?“
– “In the other mind­set, the growth mind­set, peo­ple believe that their tal­ents and abil­i­ties can be devel­oped through pas­sion, edu­ca­tion, and per­sis­tence. For them, it’s not about look­ing smart or groom­ing their image. It’s about a com­mit­ment to learning–taking informed risks and learn­ing from the results, sur­round­ing your­self with peo­ple who will chal­lenge you to grow, look­ing frankly at your defi­cien­cies and seek­ing to rem­edy them. Most great busi­ness lead­ers have had this mind­set, because build­ing and main­tain­ing excel­lent orga­ni­za­tions in the face of con­stant change requires it.”

Enjoy the whole Inter­view with Carol Dweck

And this related blog post, where we posited that “In short: there is much that each of us can do to improve our brain fit­ness, no mat­ter our age, occu­pa­tion or start­ing point. There are some fun­da­men­tal capac­i­ties that we can train. And we have to care for good phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress man­age­ment on top of men­tal exercise.”

Fol­low­ing our Sep­tem­ber edi­tion, here you are have our Monthly Digest of the Most Pop­u­lar Blog Posts. You can con­sider it your monthly Brain Exer­cise Magazine.

(Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Top­ics sec­tion, and sub­scribe to our monthly newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this Digest by email).

Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket News

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness as a New Fron­tier of Fit­ness: excel­lent Los Ange­les Times arti­cle, cov­er­ing the cog­ni­tive exer­cise angle of healthy aging and lead­ing science-based players.

A Brain Fit­ness Vaca­tion: what does this mean? Well, read this fun arti­cle to discover.

Rethink­ing the Brain Fit­ness Busi­ness: thought-provoking arti­cle on the future of the sec­tor from a busi­ness point of view.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness @ Har­vard Busi­ness Review: HBR makes a first attempt to bring neu­ro­science research into help­ing lead­ers per­form at peak lev­els and main­tain sharp brains.

News You Can Use

Train Your Brain to Be Hap­pier: impli­ca­tions of neu­ro­science and pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy research for our daily lives-and our hap­pi­ness. Please keep tuned if you are inter­ested in this topic: we will pub­lish soon a great inter­view with Dr. Robert Emmons, lead­ing researcher in the field of gratitude.

Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness: 10 Debunked Myths: what are some mis­con­cep­tions that pre­vent many peo­ple from see­ing the tremen­dous poten­tial from this emerg­ing research?. Read this post to dis­cover and discuss.

10 (Sur­pris­ing) Mem­ory Improve­ment Tips: and why stress man­age­ment is impor­tant for mem­ory and our brain.

Teasers

Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games with a neu­ro­science angle: a list of the most pop­u­lar mind games in our blog.

Events

10 High­lights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum: a sum­mary of impres­sions from this great event, includ­ing what can hap­pen when you have sci­en­tists and politi­cians in the same room.

Brain Fit­ness @ Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing, Health events: an overview of a num­ber of con­fer­ences and uni­ver­sity classes with a brain fit­ness angle.

Thought-provoking posts

Darwin’s adult neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: reflec­tions of a beau­ti­ful mind that –as self-reported at the age of 72– could have been even more beau­ti­ful.The Gene Delu­sion: IQ and the envi­ron­ment: do genes deter­mine our fates? They don’t. They why do we seem to believe so so often?.

Dis­counts for Sharp­Brains readers

Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence: the best con­fer­ence bring­ing neu­ro­science research to edu­ca­tors’ minds, Feb­ru­ary 7-9th in San Fran­cisco. Reg­is­ter before Jan­u­ary 25th, 2008, for a dis­counted price and to make sure you can attend and see our workshop!

Mind­Fit 10% spe­cial dis­count: a 10% dis­count on one of the most pop­u­lar brain fit­ness pro­grams, that com­bines both an in-depth assess­ment of cog­ni­tive skills with per­son­al­ized training.

Books and Resources

Best of the Brain from Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can: a superb col­lec­tion of essays for the curi­ous among us.

Selected Resources: Arti­cles, Books, Papers: numer­ous links to media arti­cles, sci­en­tific papers, and rec­om­mended books.

Enjoy!

Over the last year we have inter­viewed a num­ber of lead­ing brain health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report.

What can we say today that we couldn’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­ago Ramon y Cajal claimed in the XX cen­tury, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”, may well become real­ity in the XXI. And influ­ence Edu­ca­tion, Health, Train­ing, and Gam­ing in the process.

We have only scratched the sur­face of what science-based struc­tured cog­ni­tive (i.e., men­tal) exer­cise can do for brain health and pro­duc­tiv­ity. We are now wit­ness­ing the birth of a new indus­try that crosses tra­di­tional sec­tor bound­aries and that may help us under­stand, assess and train our brains, har­ness­ing the grow­ing research about neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons), neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence), cog­ni­tive train­ing and emo­tional regulation.

Let’s now debunk 10 myths, still too preva­lent, that may pre­vent us from see­ing the full poten­tial of this emerg­ing field:

Myth 1: It’s all in our genes.

Real­ity: A big com­po­nent of our life­long brain health and devel­op­ment depends on what we do with our brains. Our own actions, not only our genes, influ­ence our lives to a large extent. Genes pre­dis­pose us, not deter­mine our fates.

“Indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tally stim­u­lat­ing lives, through edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion and leisure activ­i­ties, have reduced risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s. Stud­ies sug­gest that they have 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing the dis­ease” — Dr. Yaakov Stern, Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at Colum­bia University.

Myth 2: The field of Cognitive/ Brain Fit­ness is too new to be credible.

Real­ity: The field rests on solid foun­da­tions dat­ing back more decades — what is new is the num­ber and range of tools that are now start­ing to be avail­able for healthy individuals.

“Rig­or­ous and tar­geted cog­ni­tive train­ing has been used in clin­i­cal prac­tice for many years. Exer­cis­ing our brains sys­tem­at­i­cally is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies.” — Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, and dis­ci­ple of Alexan­der Luria.

“Today, thanks to fMRI and other neu­roimag­ing tech­niques, we are start­ing to under­stand the impact our actions can have on spe­cific parts of the brain.” — Dr. Judith Beck, Direc­tor of the Beck Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive Ther­apy and Research.

Myth 3: Med­ica­tion is and will remain the only evidence-based inter­ven­tion for a num­ber of brain-related problems.

Real­ity: Cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams are start­ing to Read the rest of this entry »

Con­text: Last Feb­ru­ary we had the chance to attend a great con­fer­ence on how brain research is influ­enc­ing edu­ca­tion. Highly rec­om­mended. Car­o­line wrote our impres­sions, sum­ma­rized as “It was a fas­ci­nat­ing mix of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors talk­ing with and lis­ten­ing to each other. Some top­ics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought — insight on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed and how they influ­ence each other”. See some of our take-aways below.

Announce­ment: the 2008 edi­tion of this con­fer­ence, titled Using Brain Research to Enhance Learn­ing, Atten­tion & Mem­ory For Edu­ca­tors, Par­ents and Clin­i­cians, will take place in San Fran­cisco, on Feb­ru­ary 7-9th, 2008. The orga­niz­ers have kindly invited me to deliver a lec­ture on Inter­ven­tions to Sharpen Minds, as part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity & Atten­tion track. I will pro­vide an overview of the sci­ence behind computer-based cog­ni­tive train­ing inter­ven­tions and dis­cuss a num­ber of research-based pro­grams that are being used today. Let me know if you are plan­ning to attend!

Reg­is­tra­tion fees: the gen­eral reg­is­tra­tion fees are $495 per per­son, if you reg­is­ter before Jan­u­ary 25th, 2008.

Spe­cial Dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers: you can reg­is­ter for $450 before that date,  mak­ing sure to write
SharpBrains1 in the com­ments sec­tion of How did you hear about the con­fer­ence? in this Reg­is­tra­tion Page.

To learn more about the con­fer­ence: Read the rest of this entry »

We hope you are enjoy­ing the grow­ing cov­er­age of Brain Fit­ness as much as we are. Below you have the Brain Fit­ness Newslet­ter we sent a few days ago-you can sub­scribe to this monthly email update in the box on the right hand side.

In this post, we will briefly cover:

I. Press: see what CBS and Time Mag­a­zine are talk­ing about. Sharp­Brains was intro­duced in the Birm­ing­ham News, Chicago Tri­bune and in a quick note car­ried by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion news service.

II. Events: we are out­reach part­ners for the Learn­ing & the Brain con­fer­ence, which will gather neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors, and for the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week.

III. Pro­gram Reviews: The Wall Street Jour­nal reviewed six dif­fer­ent pro­grams for brain exer­cise and aging, and the one we offer is one of the two win­ners. A college-level coun­sel­ing cen­ter starts offer­ing our stress man­age­ment one. And we inter­view a Notre Dame sci­en­tist who has con­ducted a repli­ca­tion study for the work­ing mem­ory train­ing pro­gram for kids with ADD/ ADHD.

IV. New Offer­ings: we have started to offer two infor­ma­tion pack­ages that can be very use­ful for peo­ple who want to bet­ter under­stand this field before they com­mit to any par­tic­u­lar pro­gram: learn more about our Brain Fit­ness 101 guide and Exer­cise Your Brain DVD.

V. Web­site and Blog Sum­mary: we revamped our home page and have had a very busy month writ­ing many good arti­cles. We also hosted two “Blog Car­ni­vals”- don’t you want to know what that means?
Read the rest of this entry »

CBS News and TIME mag­a­zine are team­ing up for a five-part series on the “The Com­pli­cated, Mes­mer­iz­ing World of the Brain”. The first report by CBS Evening News con­trib­u­tor Dr. San­jay Gupta focused on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity – “the brain’s abil­ity to reor­ga­nize itself by cre­at­ing new brain cells through men­tal and phys­i­cal exercises.”

Dr. Gupta inter­viewed Arthur Kramer, Ph.D., a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois who stud­ied the effects of exer­cise, diet, and social and men­tal stim­u­la­tion on older adults. Accord­ing to Kramer, the break through anti-aging treat­ment is exercise.

We found in our study that walk­ing will increase the vol­ume of the brain, increase the effi­ciency of the brain and increase improve­ments in the num­ber of cog­ni­tive func­tions such as mem­ory and attention.

Kramer and McAuley’s research showed that aer­o­bic exer­cise led to increased brain vol­ume in the pre­frontal and tem­po­ral cor­tices – areas that show con­sid­er­able age-related deterioration.

To go beyond phys­i­cal exer­cise and look at men­tal exer­cise, Dr. Gupta also inter­viewed Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. of UCSF and Posit Sci­ence. Merzenich said, “The brain is actu­ally revis­ing itself. It is actu­ally plas­ti­cally chang­ing itself as you develop new skills and abil­i­ties, as you learn new things.” Merzenich has been study­ing neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and how the brain changes with expe­ri­ence since the 1980s.

To Catch the Series, Here’s the Sched­ule:
Read the rest of this entry »