Bob's Brain - Technology Evangelist

This Sunday I’ll be 54 years old, which doesn’t make me old per se, but probably makes me older than you and DEFINITELY makes me old for a guy with three sons aged four-and-a-half, two-and-a-half, and eight months. Do the math and you’ll see that I will be 76 years old when the youngest graduates from college – that is IF he can do it in four years.

So I came to the conclusion a couple years ago that for all practical purposes I will never be able to retire. This turns out to be not in the least a gloomy proposition but is actually rather freeing, since it means I don’t have to PLAN for retirement, either. Short of having no plan at all, mine is very simple: buy a lot of term life insurance and work until I die. That’s the downside. The upside is I don’t have to save for retirement and can buy lots of toys.

The only problem with this every-day’s-a-play-day scenario is that I am turning 54, damn it, and parts of me don’t work nearly as well as they used to. Not THOSE parts (notice the three kids, please): I’m referring to my brain.

For a guy who lives by his wits to realize he’s progressively losing his wits is a frightening thing. How am I going to be able to pay all that college tuition 20 years from now if I can’t even remember my name? It’s not that bad yet, but I can see clear evidence that I don’t remember things as well as I used to. Both short- and long-term memory are affected. I don’t think it is Alzheimers (there is none of that in my immediate family, though plenty of orneriness). It’s just old age.

Or to put it more precisely, it is my brain becoming less plastic.

Here’s part of what Wikipedia has to say on the subject: “Neuroplasticity (variously referred to as brain plasticity or cortical plasticity) refers to the changes that occur in the organization of the brain, and in particular changes that occur to the location of specific information processing functions, as a result of the effect of learning and experience.”

MRI studies show that as we age our brains become less plastic. This is not the crud that builds-up with Alzheimers, but rather an artifact of our brains being less challenged over time and, as a result, ultimately less up to a challenge, as I have noticed.

It’s probably good that I write for a living because it works my brain a bit, but from my experience I decided my brain wasn’t being worked enough. What was I to do?

Better brain nutrition could be part of the answer, so I did some reading and added folic acid, melatonin and (just a little) lithium on top of my multivitamin with extra C and CoEnzyme Q10. But vitamins alone won’t do it: my brain won’t improve without proper exercise.

Short of writing a book or trying to win “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” I hoped to find quite specific brain exercises, and there turn out to be many. A little more research led my $395 and me to San Francisco-based Posit Science, authors of The Brain Fitness Program. The founder of Posit is a neurologist from the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center and their work appears to be based on solid research.

The Brain Fitness Program measures your cognitive age, then runs you through a bunch of exercises that involve listening with headphones, then measures your cognitive age again to see any improvement. That sounds easy but the bad news is there are a total of 40 lessons and they are each ONE HOUR LONG.

Forty hours to a more youthful brain really isn’t that much, but I expected it to go faster, frankly. But it wasn’t unpleasant. Now the part you probably wanted to know: my cognitive age started at 49 and after 40 hours of training dropped to 41. This is a good result, but less than the average decrease of 10 years. Posit credits that to my starting out a little younger (my brain, that is) than I really am.

The bottom line for me is that I feel sharper. Call it a placebo if you like, but I think it works. And, son-of-a-gun, I’m even writing a book, which I never expected to do again, so maybe my brain IS younger (or stupider, depending on the quality of the book).

If $395 is too much money for your brain, a similar program of mainly visual exercises called Brain Age is available for the Nintendo DS portable game platform and the Nintendo Wii. I haven’t tried it, but Brain Age costs under $20 at Wal-Mart so the whole investment including the game player is less than half the cost of the Brain Fitness Program.

Maybe I’m not so smart after all.

Full disclosure: I haven't personally tried any of the programs you mentioned or the ones Alvaro mentioned. All I can speak to is the benefits that I have witnessed with Posit Science's Brain Fitness Program.

I purchased the program for my father 1 year ago Christmas. My father trained on it for the required 40hrs. He is a different person. He is much more engaged, and focused. One of the things he used to love to do was write, write about anything. The last 10 years or so he hadn't done much. Around Thanksgiving he started writing for an online media company. He loves it. He feels that the Brain Fitness Program is the reason why. He tells everyone about it. Swears by it. So, I guess thats why I feel that I should tell people about it.

I'm curious if this can help a little problem of mine (mind out of the gutter, you). I have always been able to remember stuff such as model numbers, spec sheets, release dates, etc. These items come naturally to me and stick without a second thought. One thing which is very important and yet does not stick: names of people. I have the worst time remembering names, be it placing the name with a face or remembering what company "name" works for. I can typically remember the *company* but not the name.

It's really annoying. I've tried a bunch of things but eventually surrendered to the idea that I'll just have to fake it most of the time (I said no gutter). Is this something that I can teach my brain to remember? Can I force myself to make this stuff stick?

I believe relationships are very important and the first step in a relationship... remembering the persons name! If I just need to exercise my brain a bit to start having these things stick, well, I'm all game!

It couldn't hurt, Ben, but I have to tell you that names are one of the few memory tasks I am actually pretty good at, so I can't say for sure or not whether the software would help you. Maybe we should just spend more time together with you remembering the model numbers and me remembering the names.

My father swears he remembers names/places/keys you name it. He can hear people clearer in noisy rooms.

Just FYI - Brain Age is only available on the DS - not on the Wii. Big Brain Academy is coming to the Wii and I think it's similar, but no word on Brain Age yet.

Bob, I am 76 years of age and my last child was born when I was 50 so I know a little of what you speak. I want to assure you that your worries about memory will be one of the minor things that you have to keep in shape in the next 25 years. Just like a car, age tends to show up on the body if it is not constantly maintained. Writing and computereze tends to keep the mind functioning well but it really seems to impede the physical side because of the lack of exercise. Right now I would take stock of what you have going for you now as follows:
1. Make sure your waist is not more than half of your height in inches.
2. Make sure your blood pressure is not over 120/80.
3. Make sure that your blood sugar stays below 100.
4. Make sure that you exercise 60 minutes every day and that 30 minutes of that is sweat producing.
5. Make sure that your BMI stays below 25.
6. Drink a minimum of a half ounce of clean water for every pound of body weight daily.
7. Make sure that you are getting 8 hours of sleep each night which should include 2 to 4 hours of deep REM sleep.
8. Eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies that are not cooked at temps above 145 degrees and include a lot of deep green leafy veggies that are raw.
9, Reduce your red meat intake to a max of 4 oz per day and increase your mercury free fish intake.
10. When you rise each morning, think positive and feel like this is going to be the greatest day of your life.

Even with these aids as you approach 70 you will continually wish that you had taken better care of your body when you were in your 20's and 30's and not drank so much soda pop and liquor and did more exercise. Each year will compound the aches and pains of aging but barring a fatal accident you will maximize your ability to live longer in more comfort.

Benjamin: we typically are better at remember 1) things that are meaningful to us, 2) that we can quickly relate to pre-existing knowledge, 3) that are novel, 4) that we repeat a number of times. None of us can remember all names we are exposed to, but you can improve your chances if, whenever you meet a person, you repeat his or her name a few times during that conversation and, more important, create a funny visual image of that person linked to another person or object that will help you remember the name. For instance, if a man is Colin, you can try to visualize Colin Powell standing right behind him. This requires practice.

Programs like Posit Science and MindFit can also help better process, categorize and later retrieve external stimuli, but remembering names is so specific I wouldn't recommend starting there unless you want a more complete workout.

This thread inspired me to look online again for ways to remember names. A method that I've just started to try is emblazing the persons name in my favorite color over their forehead. My quick test of watching 'Psych' on television in where I can never seem to remember the names 'Gus' or 'Shawn' seemed to work well. I'll see how it goes.

Once I get this down, being able to retain the information and keep my ability to process information, remember information and do everything quickly is important to me.

Remembering Names -- Something of which I have struggled with for a long long time. In fact I have been so embarrassed with situations in which I have to ask for names 2-3 times in the same meeting. I now make it the 'active' goal of initial converstaions with somebody. A few tools help me.

1) Make it a game! - Just as somebody previously mentioned make associations with the name. If I meet somebody named Jack - I would thinkg "Jack as in Jack Bauer from 24"

2) Find out how they spell their name - Lots of people have common names but with different spellings! Find out if Michelle is spelled with 1 or 2 L's. At my church I know a "Michele with one L" and call her that. Turns out people like hearing their name and even if you are making a game of it they are honored you are making a deal out of remembering their name.

Stranger says "Hi, my name is Robert I'm with XYZ Computer company"
Me, "Robert right? *pause for nod or non-verbal* - Good to meet you Robert"

4) Say their name as many times within the first conversation as many times as it would make sense. (sounds funny at first but works! -- and again, people love to hear their own name and are flattered that your trying to remember it).

This is a great thread! I'm thrilled to hear that people are benefiting from the work that is being done.

I run marketing for Posit Science. We offer one recommendation that we believe anyone who is serious about improving their cognitive abilities should look for: Proof that the program works. It’s easy to put the word “brain” on a product; it’s much harder to do the core scientific research that makes such a product effective.

We've invested millions of dollars to develop products and run clinical trials (like a pharmaceutical company does) on our programs. We do this to ensure that our products actually help people with their cognition and quality of life. Our published results are tremendous - with more on the way.

We urge anyone considering a brain health program to look for one thing: randomized, controlled studies that are published in credible journals (see Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in Progress in Brain Research for Posit Science studies). You can see other studies presented at neuroscience conferences on our website. Published, randomized, controlled studies are the only way to ensure that a product actually delivers an improvement in cognitive abilities.

Hmphh. This smells a bit like the shared desperation of all us decaying boomers. As someone with a research background I have to point out the placebo affect in something like this is humungous.

To really see if this made a difference you'd need to randomize about 200 people to using either 'The Brain Fitness Program' OR a very similar feeling piece of software built on different principles.

Bob, I know how you feel anyway. I'm 7 years behind you, but also 3 young children -- including some special circumstances. I too will work until I drop, probably bagging groceries.

I'm one of the founder's of Lumosity, a web based cognitive training program. Given your post you may find our product interesting. It's scientifically tested, takes about 10 - 12 mins per day and the exercises themselves are more fun (admittedly I'm a bit biased here). We're currently in beta so you can try it for free at www.lumosity.com

Comments

1. Posted by: Alvaro on January 26, 2007 6:01 PM:

Hi Bob,

Great article. You displayed great discipline by doing through all the program-congratulations!

We do recommend the Posit Science program for people who want an intensive training of, mostly, their auditory processing ability. That is what Posit measures and trains now (they are planning adding future modules).

And we do find that Nintendo Brain Age is a very entertaining option-but we would consider it a game.

Another option is a program called MindFit that we recommend as great training tool for 14 different cognitive abilities involved in healthy aging. It covers more ground than Posit, in a less intensive way. It costs $139-you can learn more in our website.

In short, these are different tools for different purposes. Brain Age is a fun game. Posit Science is a very intensive intervention focused now on auditory processing. MindFit is a more comprehensive and less intensive option.

Yes, I am biased-MindFit is the program I use during my flights...and one of the training programs we offer in our site.

Regards

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