SharpBrains

The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains. By: Alvaro Fernandez Let’s review some good lifestyle options we can all follow to maintain, and improve, our vibrant brains. 1. Learn more about the “It” in “Use It or Lose It“. A basic understanding will serve you well to appreciate your brain’s beauty as a living and constantly-developing dense forest with billions of neurons and synapses.2. Now, remember that what counts is not reading this article–or any other– but practicing a bit every day until small steps snowball into unstoppable, internalized habits…”cells that fire together wire together”…so, start improving one of these 10 habits today.

–> To learn more about what you can do, check out The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: How to Optimize Brain Health and Performance at Any Age. Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health Authority: Market Research and Advisory Services. Brain Exercise and Brain Health FAQs. Below you have a quick “email inter­view” we had yes­ter­day with a jour­nal­ist, it may help you nav­i­gate through this emerg­ing field. (if you want some brain exer­cise right now, you can check our Top 50 Brain Teasers). 1. Why is it so impor­tant to exer­cise our brains? Our brains are com­posed of dif­fer­ent areas and func­tions, and we can strengthen them through men­tal exer­cise– or they get atro­phied for lack of prac­tice. The ben­e­fits are both short-term (improved con­cen­tra­tion and mem­ory, sus­tained men­tal clar­ity under stress­ful sit­u­a­tions…), and long-term (cre­ation of a “brain reserve” that help pro­tect us against poten­tial prob­lems such as Alzheimer’s). 2.

What are 1 or 2 things that are guar­an­teed “brain drains”? - high-levels of anx­i­ety and stress, that are guar­an­teed to dis­tract us from our main goals and waste our lim­ited men­tal energies.- a very repet­i­tive and routine-driven life, lack­ing in nov­elty and stim­u­la­tion. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Brain Fitness Software and Training Games. Unless you have been liv­ing in a cave, you have read by now mul­ti­ple arti­cles about the brain train­ing and brain exer­cise craze: sudoku, Nin­tendo BrainAge, mul­ti­ple online games, soft­ware like Mind­Fit and Posit Science… If you are look­ing for some fun men­tal stim­u­la­tion now, here you have our selec­tion of Brain Teasers.

Now, how do you know which of the new pro­grams can help you more, or whether you need any of them? Which ones are sim­ply enter­tain­ing Games vs. which ones look like “Games” but are really Train­ing, improv­ing, spe­cific cog­ni­tive and emo­tional skills? Well, that’s why we are pub­lish­ing the Sharp­Brains Check­list below, to help you nav­i­gate through the over­whelm­ing and con­flict­ing media reports and com­pany announcements. 10 Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for You (and a brief expla­na­tion of why each ques­tion is important) * 1.

. * 2. (Pubmed is a ser­vice of the U.S. . * 3. . * 4. . * 5. . * 6. . * 7. . * 8. . * 9. . * 10. The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness - Book on Neuroplasticity and Brain Health. The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age 284 pagesPub­lisher: Sharp­Brains Incor­po­rated; 2 edi­tion (April 2013)USD 15.95 (paper­back); 9.95 (ebook)Lan­guage: Eng­lish (en Español aquí)ISBN: 978–0982362976Dis­cus­sion Guide PDF (includes 20 questions) Book Descrip­tion: Mod­ern life places extra­or­di­nary demands on our brains. Not only do we live longer than ever before, but we must con­stantly adapt to com­plex and rapidly evolv­ing per­sonal and pro­fes­sional real­i­ties. Yet, we often ignore our most pre­cious resource to do so: our brain. With use­ful, prag­matic and per­son­al­ized tips and sug­ges­tions that are easy to imple­ment, the Sharp­Brains Guide offers a ground­break­ing new approach for self-assessing cur­rent brain fit­ness needs and iden­ti­fy­ing the most rel­e­vant and evidence-based meth­ods to pre­serve and enhance brain func­tion through­out life.

Authors: It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Maintenance: Brain Care 101. Last week, the US Car Care Coun­cil released a list of tips on how to take care of your car and “save big money at the pump in 2008.” You may not have paid much atten­tion to this announce­ment. Yes, it’s impor­tant to save gas these days; but, it’s not big news that good main­te­nance habits will improve the per­for­mance of a car, and extend its life. If we can all agree on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing our cars that get us around town, what about main­tain­ing our brains sit­ting behind the wheel? A spate of recent news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and “brain train­ing” has missed an impor­tant con­stituency: younger peo­ple.

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Yaakov Stern of Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, he related how sur­prised he was when, years ago, a reporter from Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine requested an inter­view. What is the Cog­ni­tive Reserve? This part of the brain is del­i­cate: our frontal lobes wait until our mid to late 20s to fully mature.