Read this recent Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can arti­cle show­ing clearly how the brain can change based on our daily expe­ri­ences and actions:

… a new study in the jour­nal Brain Research demon­strates that […] birth con­trol pills have struc­tural effects on regions of the brain that gov­ern higher-order cog­ni­tive activities

… Whereas the sub­tle struc­tural effects of naturally-occurring steroid hor­mones and sex dif­fer­ences in the brain have been exten­sively stud­ied, few stud­ies have exam­ined the role of syn­thetic hor­mones on changes in the human brain.  What hap­pens, then, when the female brain gets a sig­nif­i­cant and arti­fi­cial dose of steroid hor­mone, either prog­es­terone, estro­gen or both? […] It appears that the brain, that sen­si­tive organ replete with steroid recep­tors, reacts to its hor­monal milieu with star­tling struc­tural modifications.

Com­ments: The study com­pared the brains of men, women cycling nat­u­rally and women tak­ing the pill. Struc­tural dif­fer­ences in spe­cific areas were found a) between men’s and women’s brains, b) between the brains of women cycling nat­u­rally when observed at dif­fer­ent moments of their cycle, and c) between the brains of women cycling nat­u­rally and those of women tak­ing the pill. Over­all the study points out that hor­mones can affect brain struc­tures via neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, the abil­ity of the brain to change. Since no cog­ni­tive mea­sures were used it is not pos­si­ble to know whether any of these struc­tural changes  alter our per­for­mance at all. There is no evi­dence so far as to whether these struc­tural chances are bad or good.

We can sum­ma­rize a lot of research by say­ing that there are four essen­tial pil­lars to main­tain­ing a healthy brain that func­tions bet­ter now and lasts longer. Those pil­lars are:

• 1) Phys­i­cal Exercise
• 2) Men­tal Exercise
• 3) Good Nutrition
• 4) Stress Management

Great … now what?! How do you develop a healthy lifestyle that includes all four pil­lars? Let’s look at each one.

1. 1. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise
   • - Start by talk­ing to your doc­tor, espe­cially if you are not cur­rently phys­i­cally active, have spe­cial health con­cerns, or are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant changes to your cur­rent program.
   • - Set a goal that you can achieve. Do some­thing you enjoy for even just 15 min­utes a day. You can always add more time and activ­i­ties later.
   • - Sched­ule exer­cise into your daily rou­tine. It will be become a habit faster if you do.
   • - If you can only do one thing, do some­thing car­dio­vas­cu­lar, mean­ing some­thing that gets your heart beat­ing faster. This includes walk­ing, run­ning, ski­ing, swim­ming, bik­ing, hik­ing, ten­nis, bas­ket­ball, play­ing tag, ulti­mate Fris­bee, and other sim­i­lar sports/activities.
2. 2. Men­tal Exer­cise
   • - Be curi­ous! Get to know your local library and com­mu­nity col­lege, look for local orga­ni­za­tions or churches that offer classes or workshops
   • - Do a vari­ety of things, includ­ing Read the rest of this entry »

Very fun arti­cle in the Birm­ing­ham News today on Sharp­Brains and brain exer­cises, titled Want a work­out for your brain?.

The jour­nal­ist explains things very well and with great humor (for the humor, you need to read the arti­cle!). Here are some quotes:

- “Think of it as a gym­na­sium for your mind,” Sharp­Brains CEO and co-founder Alvaro Fer­nan­dez says from his office in San Francisco.

- (On only doing cross­words) “That’s good, but, like your body, you don’t just exer­cise one part of the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, who holds an MBA and a master’s degree in edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. “You need con­stant vari­ety, and new things, to keep your brain work­ing hard.”

- “He sees men­tal gym­nas­tics as the next main­stream adult trend and points out that ther­a­pists have long used a vari­ety of sim­i­lar exer­cises to help in the recov­ery of brain-injury patients. Ath­letes and air­plane pilots have had access to exer­cises designed to improve their periph­eral vision and reac­tion times, Fer­nan­dez says.”

- “With Sharp­Brains co-founder Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at the New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, Fer­nan­dez has col­lected what he says are the best computer-based brain work­outs avail­able, includ­ing a pro­gram to help chil­dren with atten­tion deficits and another aimed at reduc­ing stress man­age­ment among busi­ness executives.”

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 »

Get­ting ready for the hol­i­days, not the best time to write great orig­i­nal content…so let us share the only review we have found so far on one of the pro­grams we offer, Mind­Fit.

First, a good arti­cle titled The dawn of cog­ni­tive tech­nol­ogy, on the sci­ence behind the need for struc­tured computer-based pro­grams, with quotes such as Read the rest of this entry »

Ten ses­sions of exer­cises to boost rea­son­ing skills, mem­ory and men­tal pro­cess­ing speed staved off men­tal decline in middle-aged and elderly peo­ple in the first defin­i­tive study to show that hon­ing intel­lec­tual skills can bol­ster the mind in the same way that phys­i­cal exer­cise pro­tects and strength­ens the body. The researchers also showed that the ben­e­fits of the brain exer­cises extended well beyond the spe­cific skills the vol­un­teers learned.

Keep read­ing a very impor­tant and timely Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle that reports the find­ings of a JAMA study at Short Men­tal Work­outs May Slow Decline of Aging Minds, Study Finds.

A few other very insight­ful sentences:

• “Peo­ple think edu­ca­tion is for peo­ple who are already edu­cated,” said Michael Mar­siske, one of the researchers. “This kind of train­ing works no mat­ter where you are in soci­ety.”
• “What I per­son­ally take away from the study is, if you chal­lenge your­self to do some new learn­ing, some­thing that isn’t easy at the start, it can have dividends.”
• “The study did not indi­cate that men­tal train­ing can hold off all cog­ni­tive decline per­ma­nently. Rather, as is the case with phys­i­cal exer­cise, strength­en­ing the mind appeared to slow decline.”
• “Men­tal exer­cise is the same way. It has to be con­sis­tent, and it has to be chal­leng­ing. Just like you have to keep increas­ing the weights at the gym to make it chal­leng­ing, you have to do the same with men­tal activity.”

You can learn more by:

• Read­ing our Sci­ence overview of Brain Fitness
• Down­load­ing our Brain Fit­ness Guide for Your New New Year Resolution
• Read­ing our inter­view with Sharp­Brains’ Chief Sci­en­tific Advi­sor: Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams and Cog­ni­tive Training

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 »

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 »