Big Brains in Oregon

This past weekend I visited two outstanding programs in Portland designed to inform Oregon educators (and through them, school-age children) and an interested citizenry about advances in neuroscience. I was very much impressed by these programs; they are good models of what SHOULD be happening, all across America.  <strong>Brain Awareness</strong> (www.oregonbrains.org) targets teachers and school…

An Insight for Successful Aging

Many of you may not be aware that Posit Science has launched another wonderful suite of brain fitness exercises, for visual training in BrainHQ, that focuses on improving visual perception, attention, memory/cognition, and fast-responding abilities (see www.positscience.com). We are very proud of this new training program suite. It was created with the help and assistance…

An insight into INSIGHT

I spent a little time yesterday, describing the obvious virtues of our new <strong>INSIGHT</strong> brain fitness training program. Here’s two more: 1) Visual cognition is language independent. If your native language is German or Italian or Tagalog or Swahili or Bengali, it should work, for YOU! You need to read a little English to follow…

Rust and Kissinger win coveted “Merzie”

After long consideration, a jury (of one, your honorable scribe) has chosen Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal as the winners of a prestigious “Merzie” in the category of Investigative Reporting for an article titled “EPA drops ball on danger of chemicals to children”, posted on March 29, 2008. This article…

The Posit Brain Plasticity Institute

Over the past decade, I have visited a large number of the great (and lesser) research institutions in the world where scientists are focused on practical (therapeutic) extensions of brain plasticity research. Especially over the past year, I’ve witnessed a great ground-swell of activity generated by scientists employing the principles of brain plasticity to drive…

A traumatic-brain-injury success story

About two weeks ago, Posit Science was visited by a family who appeared to have greatly benefited from the use of our exercises in BrainHQ. This family’s story began with a late-night boating accident involving a beloved young son, circa 20 years of age. The boat that Ryan was riding in was struck by a…

Is bipolar disorder in childhood an emergent plague?

About a month ago, results from a NIMH-sponsored statistical study that determined the rate at which children were being labelled and treated for bipolar disorder were published, and reported widely in the popular press (I initially read about it on September 4th in the Sunday New York Times). Twenty years ago, bipolar disorder was a…

Eating crow

Some months ago, after my grand-daughter Leila’s school in Oakland, California burned down and its rebuilding seems to be drowning in a bureaucratic swamp, I predicted that it would NEVER be rebuilt in time to begin the 2007-8 school year on time. I was wrong. The Oakland Unified School District and the contractors that they…

A connected kid

I know a 16-year-old boy who is addicted to video games. By ‘addiction’, I mean that he is compelled to play them for several to many hours each day, even while he knows that it is in his own best interests to limit his play time, even while his parents continually (ineffectively) try to curtail…