At the Transportation Research Board annual meeting last year I attended a talk by Dr. Fredric Wolinsky of the University of Iowa. Along with his colleagues, he conducted an analysis of participants in the ACTIVE clinical trial, the largest study of cognitive training performed to date. He found that people who had done ten hours [...]

If you ever get a chance to talk to Dr. Mike Merzenich, be assured he’ll fill you with a missionary’s zeal for brain fitness.  You’ll leave the conversation wondering why everyone isn’t taking advantage of their brains’ natural abilities to improve.  However, we know good habits aren’t embraced by our society overnight.  It’s taken decades [...]

I’m becoming a do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) fan.  I make my own limoncello and bacon, keep a small flock of chickens, and do some gardening.  I’ve done bookbinding, have recently taken a letterpress printing class, and am now on the hunt for my own small press. If you’re wondering what this has to do with our brain [...]

There’s a lot of buzz around the office every time we release a new brain game.  In order to give people a taste of brain fitness, we’ve been creating fast, fun games built around different pieces of science, i.e., the Stroop effect or the  N-back test.  It’s a great way to play a little and [...]

I just got a sneak peek of the new PBS show called Brain Fitness Frontiers in which our own founder, Dr. Mike Merzenich, is featured. One of the everyday examples of brain fitness Dr. Mike mentions is how older people can avoid falling down by training their brains to keep their head upright when they [...]

Disney recently announced that it is offering refunds on Baby Einstein DVDs purchased in the past five years. Why? Baby Einstein claimed to make babies “smarter,” but doesn’t. In fact, research suggests that if anything, watching such DVDs slows learning development in young children. Threatened with a class-action lawsuit, Disney began to offer the refunds. [...]

Repair, Reactivate and Rejuvenate are all words I just came across while reading a magazine aimed at the more ‘sophisticated and achievement-oriented’ women of America.  Unfortunately these words were not in an article for brain fitness - although they could have been as that is what brain fitness exercises have been proven to achieve.   Instead the words were [...]

Cognitive ability is a critical measure of safe driving … understanding that point the way toward improving our ability to deal with the many distractions beyond texting that we can’t eliminate or legislate.

There’s a lot of buzz about distracted driving these days.  Maybe it’s because we’re all so distracted that we don’t actually pay attention to the staggering statistics that illustrate what happens when you allow your eyes and mind to wander on the road. We work with the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and they report [...]

Why isn’t brain health top of mind? Recently I’ve been speaking to people all over the country about what a healthy lifestyle means to them.  The reason I’m doing this is to understand where brain health fits in with overall health: eating right, exercise and emotional health.  What I mostly hear from folks is that [...]