Category: Aging

Curious David in CarrollLand: Reflections on “Neurobics”

In preparing for a Fall semester research seminar, I am reading a number of books dealing with aging, brain fitness, and maintaining brain health. My preference is to read scholarly works based upon good science. I also tend to trust detailed thought pieces from say, The New York Times (e.g. this one) or this piece from The New Yorker “Mentally Fit: Workouts at the Brain Gym.”

How, though, could I resist the book Keep Your Brain Alive which claimed to have 500,000 copies in print and which promised me opportunities to discover the secrets of “neurobics?”

Katz & Rubin’s (2014) Keep Your Brain Alive: 83 Neurobic Exercises to Help Prevent Memory Loss & Increase Mental Fitness was fun to read. The authors are witty, playful, and creative. Chapter 2 gives an accurate, very elementary explanation of “how the brain works.” The research they cite, however,  is “classic” and outdated. Their “Neurobics” concept (“experience novel and unexpected things and enlist the aid of all of your senses”) is common sensical but there is no body of research supporting the efficacy of the exercises. Save your money and get the gist of their ideas by visiting their web page here.

Curious David Redux : Food for Thought

I am over 50 years of age though when with my students I forget and am closer to their age:) I am very impressed by recently released Global Council on Brain Health reports dealing with brain health for adults ages 50 and older. Among those I have so far read are those dealing with nutrition (found here), social engagement (found here), sleep (found here), physical activity (found here), and cognitively stimulating activities (found here).

That most recent detailed report draws upon the expertise of thirteen specialists from four continents and from gerontology, neuropsychology, neurology, neuroscience, psychology, public health and speech-language pathology who met and agreed upon ten best-science-based consensus statements summarizing the impact of cognitively stimulating activities on brain health. The report’s appendices list the participants, provide a glossary with carefully defined terms, share the discussion questions framing the deliberations, clearly explain differences, reveal disclosure statements of potential conflicts of interests, indicate sources of funding, and provide selected references. I find these reports understandable, well-written, full of practical and actionable advice, myth-busting and extremely important. Definitely enriching food for thought.

Curious David Redux: Reflections on Aging

When I was a graduate student, I would religiously read every article in every journal to which I subscribed. Alas, I have fallen out of that good habit.  Perhaps I need to finish reading Charles Duhigg’s books like this one here.

One of my resolutions as I wind up (and wind down!) my teaching career has been to invest more time in reading the scholarly journals to which I subscribe and weaving the knowledge both into my teaching or my life. My research interests across the years have been wide-ranging (impression formation, subliminal perception, the Mozart effect, effects of color on behavior, internet learning tools) no doubt in part due to my Oberlin College liberal arts education. My current research interests now are focused on aging, maintaining brain health, brain fitness training, truth in advertising, and memory —- no doubt because I am older as is evidenced in the photos above!

As I prepare for a research-oriented semester (two sections of Statistics and Experimental Design) and a Research Seminar, an article in the December 2013 issue of Psychological Science intrigued me because of the simplicity of the experimental design and of the data analyses and because of the importance of the results (if replicable). In an article (found here) entitled “Aging 5 Years in 5 Minutes: The Effect of Taking a Memory Test on Older Adults’ Subjective Age” Hughes et al. experimentally demonstrated that older (but not younger) adults felt subjectively older after taking (or even after expecting to take) a standard neurological screening test which dealt with memory! Tremendous implications here for future research on the effects of context on self-perceptions of aging.

I’m doing a lot of reading in preparation for my Fall 2018 courses. Among the books I am carefully reading are:

  1. The Sharpbrains Guide to Brain Fitness (2013). I found the virtual conference that I attended last year of tremendous value (more about it can be found here or in some of my earlier blogs). I look forward to reading the 3rd revised edition when it becomes available. Author Alvaro Fernandez informs me that it might be available in three to four months.
  2. Happiness is a Choice: You Make (2018): Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old by John Leland.
  3. The End of Old Age: Living a Longer More Purposeful Life (2018) by Marc E. Agronin. An interview with the author can be found here.
  4. Two Weeks to a Younger Brain (2016) by Gary Small.
  5. Everything written by Carroll alumna Dr. Michelle Braun who kindly met with my research students for an hour last year to share her insights about brain health. Much of her good work can be found here.

What other books should I carefully examine?

 

Curious David Redux: What evidence is there that collaborative, engaging, Web tools indeed enhance learning— or Promote or Maintain Brain Health?

As I continue my transition to WordPress.org (and apply Margareta Magnusson’s ideas articulated in The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning to blogs I have written and photographs I have taken), I shall be revisiting some earlier pieces I have written during the last 15 years or so. I’ll title those pieces Curious David Redux.

BruceandDavid

[The photo above is of me, Dad, and younger brother Bruce in Grandma Stover’s back yard. I wonder where sister Connie was? Perhaps with Mom.]

The thought piece below first published on September 2, 2008 is actually a slightly revised blog piece I wrote in May of 2004 under the name “Curious David” when I was a community educational blogger for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I was attempting to think through the poential of Internet Learning Tools. Today in 2018  I now am thinking through which of these might lend themselves to maintaining or promoting brain health.

I’m nervous and excited. Time to take off my invisibility cloak. Tomorrow (Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 8:00 a.m.) I meet in person for the first time with my 20 first-year students. What an immense responsibility to be their first professor!

We’re going to explore “21rst century” learning tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, virtual worlds, and YouTube. The idea for this course emerged from my experiences writing this “Curious David” blog column. Last year’s opportunity to write for “JSonline” was transformative for me as I learned from elementary and secondary school teachers, high school students, virtual school advocates, retired faculty and readers about innovations, challenges and successes they faced promoting learning.

In this first-year seminar we shall focus on some of the 25 free learning tools described by educator Jane Hart. [Here is an updated list I would draw upon were I to teach this course again.]  As we examine these learning tools we hope to answer questions such as these:

To what degree can these web tools truly enhance student learning?

To what degree are they just “cool” tools?

Could they be used to develop critical thinking?

Do they improve or degrade communication skills?

Might they be applied to fostering cross-cultural or international understanding?

Might they strengthen or weaken writing skills?

What are their weaknesses or dangers?

Should they complement or replace 20th century learning skills/tools?

How can one evaluate their effectiveness?

[It seems to me it should be possible to produce an evidence-based paper like this to address the questions above.]

 My intent is to assist students in the transition from high school to college—and to investigate Web 2.0 learning tools which might be useful across classes and in the workplace. I want to involve them in educational experiences that will develop and enhance abilities in reading, writing, reflecting, presenting, thinking, and producing. Writing exercises will include short in-class and out-of-class reaction papers, journals, blogs/wikis, and exams. Presentations will be both formal and informal; individual and in small groups. Collaboration will be both with fellow students and with me.

Still Curious,

David