Time for Sharp­Brains’ Jan­u­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple thought-provoking per­spec­tives on how emerg­ing neu­ro­science can and should make us rethink pre­vail­ing prac­tices in edu­ca­tion, healthy aging and pre­ven­tive medicine.

Fea­tured Perspectives:

• The Future of Pre­ven­tive Brain Med­i­cine: Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup, by Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa
• When 1 + 1 = 5: Dyscal­cu­lia and Work­ing Mem­ory, by Dr. Tracy Alloway
• New Review of Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD — Cur­rent State of the Sci­ence, by Dr. David Rabiner
• The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom, by Alvaro Fernandez
• (How to con­tribute arti­cles like these to SharpBrains.com)

New Research: 

• Brain func­tion can start declin­ing as early as age 45
• Edu­ca­tion for Men­tal Fit­ness: “A Sharper Mind, Mid­dle Age and Beyond”
• Life­long cog­ni­tive exer­cise may ward off Alzheimer’s pro­tein beta amyloid
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing & Brain Teasers Can Increase Open­ness Among Older Adults
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing in Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI)
• Does Nin­tendo Brain Age work as a brain train­ing game?
• Brain Injury Care: Treat­ment and Reim­burse­ment Challenges

Resources:

• The Ten Habits of a Sharp Brain
• Brain Teasers and Games, for Kids and Adults
• Upcom­ing Talk & Book Sign­ing in Wash­ing­ton, DC

Have a great month of February.

Jacob’s mother writes that ‘Jacob, 10-years-old, still strug­gles with num­ber bonds to 10. Learn­ing to tell the time is still slow – he has not mas­tered half-past. Although he man­aged to learn his 5x tables because we prac­ticed all sum­mer, this has now gone’.

Jacob has dyscal­cu­lia, a math dis­abil­ity where stu­dents strug­gle to learn or under­stand math­e­mat­ics. Stu­dents Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today with David DiS­alvo, author of What makes your brain happy and why you should do the oppo­site, mod­er­ated by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez. You visit pre­vi­ous Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Full Tran­script (Lightly edited) of Live Q&A held on Decem­ber 9th, 2-3pm ET

Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­ated by Harry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP. You learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today on mem­ory, mem­ory tech­niques and brain-healthy lifestyles with Dr. Gary  Small, Direc­tor of UCLA’s Mem­ory Clinic and Cen­ter on Aging, and author of The Mem­ory Bible. You can learn more about his book  Here, and learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Per­haps one of the best ques­tions and answers was:

2:55
Ques­tion: Gary, you’ve worked many years in this field. Let us in on the secret. What do YOU do you, per­son­ally, to pro­mote your own brain fit­ness?
2:57
Answer: I try to get at least 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing each day; try to min­i­mize my stress by stay­ing con­nected with fam­ily and friends; gen­er­ally eat a brain healthy diet (fish, fruits, veg­eta­bles), and try to bal­ance my online time with my offline time. Which reminds me, I think it is almost time for me to sign off line. Read the rest of this entry »

Brain Study Points to Poten­tial Treat­ments for Math Anx­i­ety (Edu­ca­tion Week):

• “The study, pub­lished this morn­ing in the jour­nal Cere­bral Cor­tex, is a con­tin­u­a­tion of work on highly math-anxious peo­ple being con­ducted by Sian L. Beilock, asso­ciate psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, and doc­toral can­di­date Ian M. Lyons. In prior research, Beilock has found that just the thought of doing math prob­lems can trig­ger stress responses in peo­ple with math anx­i­ety, and adult teach­ers can pass their trep­i­da­tion about math on to their stu­dents.” Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple weeks ago I attended the Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Con­fer­ence, ESCoNS, at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia San Fran­cisco. The speak­ers’ talks were insight­ful, sur­pris­ing, and inspir­ing in many regards. The pur­pose of this meet­ing was to bring together great minds in a vari­ety of fields from neu­ro­science to game design and to come up with some ideas how to make game based cog­ni­tive train­ing a real­ity as an effec­tive ther­apy for many of today’s most chal­leng­ing dis­or­ders and deficits. Many of the sci­en­tists also thought that game based ther­a­pies for cog­ni­tive deficits could be used as enhance­ment tools for healthy indi­vid­u­als as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Train­ing the brain is pos­si­ble because of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity. Our daily expe­ri­ences can trig­ger neu­ro­plas­tic changes in the brain, such as the growth of new brain cells (neu­rons) and new con­nec­tions (synapses) between neu­rons. Plas­tic­ity is observed at all ages but is at its peak dur­ing brain devel­op­ment, as a baby and then a child learns basic knowl­edge and skills nec­es­sary to sur­vive. We should thus expect that the brain of a baby could be eas­ily trained. This is what Wass and his col­leagues recently demon­strated in a new study with 11-month-old babies. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times has recently pub­lished sev­eral very good and seem­ingly unre­lated articles…let’s try and con­nect some dots. What if we ques­tioned the very premise behind nam­ing some class­rooms the “class­rooms of the future” sim­ply because they have been adding tech­nol­ogy in lit­er­ally mind­less ways? What if the Edu­ca­tion of the Future (some­times also referred to as “21st Cen­tury Skills”) wasn’t so much about the How we edu­cate but about the What we want stu­dents to learn and develop, apply­ing what we know about mind and brain to the needs they are likely to face dur­ing the next 50–70 years of their lives? Read the rest of this entry »

New study shows Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion improves brain func­tion­ing in ADHD stu­dents (press release):

- “Prior research shows ADHD chil­dren have slower brain devel­op­ment and a reduced abil­ity to cope with stress,” said Dr. Stixrud. “Vir­tu­ally every­one finds it dif­fi­cult to pay atten­tion, orga­nize them­selves and get things done when they’re under stress,” he explained. “Stress inter­feres with Read the rest of this entry »