Growing up and living with schizophrenia

I recently read Elyn Saks personal account of her life with schizophrenia (<em>The Center Cannot Hold</em>, Hyperion:New York) and found it to be enlightening, frequently almost painful to read, and at the same time heartening, and hopeful.  Her lucid, blunt descriptions of her illness has further amplified my personal motivation (which was already pretty high!)…

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…

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…

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…