Brain Training Online

"The Adolescent Brain and Gambling: A Risky Partnership" seminar sponsored by the Chautauqua Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Council is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 5.
The first part of the training will deal with the adolescent brain and its maturation. The second part will explore the results of the latest OASAS Adolescent Gambling Survey.
The training will be presented by John Blackman. This is a three-hour training scheduled from 9 a.m. to noon at the First Presbyterian Church, 219 Central Ave., Fredonia.
The fee is $30 and pre-registration is required. Community members interested in the topic are welcome and encouraged to attend. To register for the above course or to learn more about other training offerings the Council may have available contact Kathleen Colby, Director of Training Services, 664-3608, kjcolby@casacweb.or visit our Web Site: http://www.casacweb.org/.
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Add Site Url free for neuro arena games !



Brain training games have been scientifically proven to be a great way to increase you brain performance and develop better cognitive skills. Play neuro arena games online free to boost your brain performance.
Websites like Lumosity.com and others offer brain training programs, but you have to pay a fee. These brain training paid programs are useful because you can keep track of your brain performance exercise progress and focus on certain cognitive skills you might want to improve. If you a are the type that likes competition, you can also compare your brain training scores with other players who play brain teaser games online.
But you can benefit from the brain training games for free. There are many online resources providing games that boost your brain performance and increase your cognitive skills. You just need to know what games to play to improve a certain neurological ability.
Memory
Memory is a basic cognitive skill, and has many different “layers” which scientists are yet to fully comprehend. However they have managed to discovered a so-called working memory, the memory process which helps us learn new things in our day-to-day living. And this, like all other cognitive processes and skills, can be trained and thus improved. Simple yet useful games like Flip the Cards or just about any puzzle game played daily can help you improve your working memory. Also, a lot more difficult games can be played, like Drunken Masters, a really nice game that combines some bartending skills with memory exercises, as you have to memorize your clients faces and orders. Like this, many other games will test your memory and once played daily, will boost your working memory. Just look for games like The Waiter Game, Busy Burger, Face Memory Game (this one is really great!).
Also, you can try a free 5 day trial with Lumosity.com and practice your brain skills while keeping track of your brain performance and progress. Another advantage of registering for a five day trial with Lumosity is that you can check out all their games and then when the trial expires, you can look on the Internet for similar games you can play to exercise your cognitive skills.
Main subjects: neuro arena games, free brain training games, neuro games, free brain booster games, cognitive skill games, online free neuro games, memory games

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WASHINGTON, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Those childhood music lessons could pay off decades later -- even for those who no longer play an instrument -- by keeping the mind sharper as people age, according to a preliminary study published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
The study recruited 70 healthy adults age 60 to 83 who were divided into groups based on their levels of musical experience. The musicians performed better on several cognitive tests than individuals who had never studied an instrument or learned how to read music, according to the research findings published Wednesday online in the APA journal Neuropsychology.
"Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging," said lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center. "Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older."
The three groups of study participants included individuals with no musical training; with one to nine years of musical study; or with at least 10 years of musical training. All of the participants had similar levels of education and fitness and didn' t show any evidence of Alzheimer's disease.
All of the musicians were amateurs who began playing an instrument at about 10 years of age. More than half played the piano while approximately a quarter had studied woodwind instruments such as the flute or clarinet. Smaller numbers performed with stringed instruments, percussion or brass instruments.
The high-level musicians who had studied the longest performed the best on the cognitive tests, followed by the low-level musicians and non-musicians, revealing a trend relating to years of musical practice. The high-level musicians had statistically significant higher scores than the non-musicians on cognitive tests relating to visuospatial memory, naming objects and cognitive flexibility, or the brain's ability to adapt to new information.
The brain functions measured by the tests typically decline as the body ages and more dramatically deteriorate in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. The results "suggest a strong predictive effect of high musical activity throughout the lifespan on preserved cognitive functioning in advanced age," the study stated.
Half of the high-level musicians still played an instrument at the time of the study, but they didn't perform better on the cognitive tests than the other advanced musicians who had stopped playing years earlier. This suggests that the duration of musical study was more important than whether musicians continued playing at an advanced age, Hanna-Pladdy says.
"Based on previous research and our study results, we believe that both the years of musical participation and the age of acquisition are critical," Hanna-Pladdy says. "There are crucial periods in brain plasticity that enhance learning, which may make it easier to learn a musical instrument before a certain age and thus may have a larger impact on brain development."
The preliminary study was correlational, meaning that the higher cognitive performance of the musicians couldn't be conclusively linked to their years of musical study. More research is needed to explore that possible link.
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College Basketball Workout Programs
The best basketball players are known to be those who make smart decisions on courtâ?? their ability to anticipate moves, spot opportunities for the team and make smart money-time decisions, makes them legendary. Up until now, game-intelligence was considered a matter of born-talent a player either had or didn’t. A ground-breaking technology promises to change that equation forever.
In order to improve their basketball skills, players need to practice daily on courtâ?? dribbling, shooting, and memorizing moves. However, no matter how seriously they take their basketball workouts, even the best coach will find it extremely difficult teaching them game intelligence, creativity, real-time decision making and peripheral vision.
Personalized Basketball “Brain-Training” Software
Up until now these brain-skills were considered to be instincts that a player is born with or without. Few years ago a team of cognitive training scientists identified the brain activity involved with the performance of fighter pilots on the air and created a virtual simulator to intensely train and improve those mind functions. College Basketball Workout Programs
The results shocked even the most ardent believers in the concept – fighter pilots that have undergone “brain-training” sessions improved their performance by a whopping 30%!.
The research team of this unique project noticed that the skills required by fighter pilots are amazingly similar to those required of professional basketball players.
And so a team of 30 coaches joined the computer experts and converted the system into personalized basketball “brain-training” software that fit the basketball workouts and needs of individual players including Junior-High, High-School and College players.
It was first tested on real basketball teams such as U. of Memphis Tigers and the U. of Kentucky Wildcats. Within 6 to 8 weeks of training, each players’ performance in the areas of execution, decision-making under intense pressure and movement anticipation skyrocketed – especially during money-time situations.
Quantifiably, players involved with the testing have improved their skills in various areas – on both offence and defense – by 22% to 28%! College Basketball Workout Programs
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LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- To excel in dancing, in music and in sports we practice, practice, practice. It's no secret that the body gets better with the brain's help through repetition. A neuro-feedback program called Neurotopia is helping some people train their brain to achieve their goals.
"We're looking for better sleep, we're looking for lower stress, more focus, intensity of focus, duration of focus, those kind of things," said James Seay, co-founder of Neurotopia.
Seay says the machine used to treat attention-deficit disorder (ADD), seizures and migraines has expanded into other areas.
"It's any kind of training skills that can help me out, I'm going to take advantage of it," said Woodland Hills resident Tyler Kolodny.
Kolodny is a minor league baseball player. He says he's seen substantial changes using it.
"The first thing actually, was when I went to sleep at night, boom -- I was asleep," said Kolodny. "If I get a little distracted, or I get a little off-center, I'm able to catch myself and bring myself centered and back to focus."
Professional athletes have done well with this program, but now it's crossed over to the mainstream. It's being used by regular people who are struggling with goals both in and out of the gym.
"The brain is so powerful, so we believe in training the brain alongside with the skeletal muscular system," said Michael Davis, Elite Fitness Plus.
Davis uses it at his high-end wellness center, where executives and athletes strive to break negative habits and patterns.
Sports medicine expert Holden MacRae says Neurotopia is brilliant in helping with post-traumatic stress disorder as well.
"The quantitative EEG that Neurotopia uses allows you to map the brain and determine at least for blast injuries or mal trauma to the brain, where the injury is, and then treat it," said MacRae, an exercise physiologist and professor of sports medicine at Pepperdine University.
The machine reads delta and theta brain waves. Those measure brain activity during the dream and recovery states.
It also measures alpha waves, your brain's activity when you're relaxed; and beta waves, which are given off when we're at our most alert state.
Leads placed on the brain register wave activity, noting underachieving and over-performing waves.
"It's telling me how quickly his brain is assimilating to what we're asking it to do," said Seay. "It's like a treadmill for the brain. So if his brain catches on and starts to do better, then I can actually increase the treadmill."
It takes about 15 to 20 of these 30-minute sessions to retrain the brain. At $95 a session, it's pricey, although some insurance companies are covering, depending on need. But unlike regular exercise, studies show once the brain is trained, it's apt to stay that way.
(Copyright ©2011 KABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.) Get more Food Coach »
food coach, lori corbin

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San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) October 14, 2010
With 67 percent of Americans overweight, and food addiction a mounting problem, it may be time for neuroscience to weigh in. A method based on brain science launches a new website today, with free courses and membership and special rates on training for those who struggle with food addiction. Previously primarily available through health professionals, the new website makes these tools far more accessible to the public, with specials available through Sunday, October 18th.
According to Laurel Mellin, founder of emotional brain training (EBT), the current approach to overweight may make things worse, "In the last 10 years, we've learned a lot about emotional circuitry. One theory is that the drive to overeat is caused primarily by a circuit formed during stress. The brain encodes a crossed wire the emotional brain, the unconscious memory system. Once encoded, it is easily triggered again, causing a chemical cascade which fuels unstoppable drives for sugary, fatty foods."
"More research is needed, but if the theory is supported by formal study, this may be a way to address the obesity epidemic that is based on neuroscience.
According to Mellin, the breakthrough came about two years ago, when she and collaborators realized that the during a full-blown stress response, the brain forms false associations, and that crossed wire could be at the roots of addiction."
"We all deal with stress on a daily basis, and stress is not bad. In fact, the brain needs a certain amount of stress, but when stress is overwhelming, such as early in life with the prefrontal cortex has yet to fully develop or during trauma, such as a lost relationship, it easily forms these false associations. The most disturbing part of this theory is that to rewire those circuits takes easing stress and using tools of positive emotional plasticity. Dieting ramps up stress, so that more people enter into a vicious cycle of forcing themselves to go against the grain of their survival drives."
EBT emotional brain training (EBT) was developed at the University of California San Francisco. According to Laurel Mellin, who is an associate professor of family and community medicine and pediatrics at the university, "Our preliminary testing in a clinical population is encouraging. The most common response to learning about these circuits is excitement. It's not their fault. It's just a wire and they can learn rather simple techniques to rewire it."
Mellin, a New York Times bestselling author, released a book on EBT Wired for Joy, which describes the recent innovations in the method, including rewiring the "survival drive" for overeating, distancing, merging or staying stuck in a negative mood. It was released by Hay House in June. The method was first developed to treat pediatric obesity, and is widely used in the United States and in the Canadian Health System.
EBT is available nationwide through health professionals who are certified in the method. They facilitate introductory and advanced courses in EBT through groups and coaching. Many offer on site introductions to the method. Certification in the method for health professionals is available through the non-profit organization, the Institute for Health Solutions. According to Mellin, "Health professionals encounter remarkable levels of stress, and suffer from the same stress-fueled circuits that the rest of the nation faces. Certification in the method comes with a bonus: you can't teach EBT unless you have mastered the skills yourself, so the healers who become certified in the method and conduct groups and coaching have the added benefit of healing themselves."
For a free introductory online course in EBT delivered through a video e-course with the method's founder, and a one-month membership to social networking and web-based tools, visit www.ebt.org today though October 18th, 2010. Also, a launch special of courses plus a conference on rewiring survival circuits for food addition is available through Sunday for a reduced fee. For more information, email kelly(at)ebt(dot)org.
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miniLUK Brain Training Young Explorer Complete intellectual development system for age 5-8
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This complete system provides essential learning activities and level thinking skills to complete children’s intellectual boost in areas of memorization, concentration, visual perception, logical thinking, linguistic skills, and basic arithmetic.
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Years after graduating from college, Jason Blair noticed he had trouble focusing.
The 30-year-old musician's ability to concentrate on his work, or switch quickly between tasks, was slipping. He wondered whether his brain was out of shape.
"Being out of school for a while, you realize how much you used to exercise your mind," said Blair, who lives in San Francisco. "I like to go to the gym. I thought I'd like to find something for my mind, too."
That was in September, shortly before Blair joined Lumosity - a 4-year-old subscription-based website where users play a series of increasingly challenging games to sharpen their mental acuity. He now plays for 20 to 30 minutes five times a week, and credits the site for improving his focus and creative abilities.
Blair is one of 12 million people registered for the fast-growing site, where the number of users more than doubled in the past year. Now the backers of Lumos Labs, the San Francisco startup behind Lumosity, say they are on the brink of taking "brain training" mainstream.
"It really feels like an inflection point," said Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners and a member of Lumos Labs' board. The number of monthly visitors to the site over the past year hit 2 million, according to research firm Quantcast, and Lumosity.com now ranks in the top 1,000 websites globally.
Rooted in science
The company was founded in 2005 by Kunal Sarkar, Michael Scanlan and David Drescher. Scanlan was a graduate student in neuroscience at Stanford University, studying how the brain adapts to different demands, when he began to wonder whether there might be demand for brain training rooted in science.
He took a leave of absence from graduate school and began developing a Web-based training program with his co-founders. For two years the company developed prototypes and tried to improve the user experience. Lumosity went online in 2007, and has since raised more than $3 million in venture capital.
Earlier attempts by companies making products for mental fitness focused on serving an older generation, promising to help Baby Boomers stave off memory loss as they age. Lumos' founders saw the potential for a broader market, and created a site where users pay up to $15 a month for access to games and data about their performance.
The founders were inspired by fitness clubs, which grew rapidly in popularity during the 1980s as more people began to focus on staying in shape. Sarkar, who worked in private equity before co-founding Lumos Labs, previously managed an investment in 24 Hour Fitness.
"People of all sorts want to use a gym," Sarkar said, citing his own experiences. In his 20s, he would train for events. Now in his 30s, he trains to stay fit. And his 71-year-old father still goes to the gym regularly to stay healthy.
Sarkar and his co-founders hope that some day, mental fitness will be as much a part of the average person's routine as physical fitness.
Tapping a trend
"It's tapping that same trend of people taking care of themselves more and investing in themselves more," he said. "We are the beneficiaries of that same trend that 24 Hour Fitness was."
On that point, even rivals agree.
"I don't have any doubt that five, 10 or 15 years from now we're going to look back to where we are right now as the Dark Ages," said Henry Mahncke, a neuroscientist and the CEO of San Francisco's Posit Labs. "We're going to be embarrassed and horrified about how we left people to get older without taking care of their brains."
Like Lumosity, Posit is a startup focused on mental fitness. The company produces software that helps people improve their cognitive abilities. The company also participates in research projects, and its clinical team has worked to create therapeutic programs for soldiers returning from war and people with mental illnesses.
"We let people get old - they watch TV, they retreat into their homes, and that's just kind of it," Mahncke said. "We accept that that's the way aging is. ... Well, that's actually not the way it is. We can take the science we know about the brain and create programs that can be clinically shown to arrest and prevent" cognitive decline.
Not everyone is convinced that games and other cognitive exercises produce lasting benefits. In 2009, the British consumer watchdog Which? surveyed researchers and found that there was little scientific evidence to back up claims of lasting benefits.
Technology improves
But since then, supporters say, an increasing body of research published in peer-reviewed journals has supported the idea that brain training has benefits. Posit cites more than 60 peer-reviewed studies supporting mental exercise.
And the technology is still improving.
"We're only on the tip of the iceberg in terms of the possibilities of training," said Lumosity's Scanlan.
Brain training companies need to improve their marketing efforts if they want to gain wider adoption, said Erin Matlock, CEO of the Brain Pages Inc., an industry group that promotes mental fitness. Matlock said the industry can grow significantly by serving people with autism and brain injuries, among other conditions.
Those markets "are full of highly educated consumers who desperately need easily accessible help," Matlock said in an e-mail.
Blair, the San Francisco musician, is among those convinced of the benefits. While working at a toy store, he was constantly asked to switch between tasks - helping multiple customers, retrieving items from the stock room, and so on. Brain training helped him concentrate, he said.
Blair also found that training helped him create his electronic music.
"It helped me connect to

“Work smarter, not harder” is a common aphorism used by those in constant pursuit of productivity. Generally, it cautions you to avoid hyper-focusing on the work itself, and to make conscious choices about exactly how you are working.
Of course, focusing on both your work and your approach can be a difficult game of mental juggling. Often, you have to simply “be smarter” if you want to “work smarter”. Becoming smarter is not quick and easy, but it’s not impossible either. In fact, a lot of new studies are suggesting that you’re not stuck with the brain that you were born with, and that you can develop your brain much like you’d develop your muscles; with increasingly harder workouts.
Which is exactly what the Lumosity Brain Trainer app is designed for. It’s been downloaded over 4.8 million times in less than 8 months, and was #1 in the app store at one point.
I had the privilege of interviewing Joe Hardy PhD, Senior Director of Research and Development Lumos Labs, about their Brain Trainer and the process of designing apps that actually make you smarter.
Peter North: Your “Brain Trainer” exercises are surprisingly fun. How do you meet the need for intense mental exercise while still keeping the training game-like and enjoyable?
Joe Hardy: All the exercises begin with the principles of neuroscience and brain plasticity. We know what it takes to make an experience that changes the brain in positive ways. We know that it needs to create the right level of challenge — not too easy and not too hard — and adapt to the user as they improve. The task needs to challenge the brain in novel ways, keeping it off balance, in much the same way that muscle confusion is used in physical exercise. Once we have a core task identified, we have an excellent team of game designers that know how to make it fun.
Peter North: What kind of short-term and long-term results can a Brain Trainer user expect?
Joe Hardy: In the short term, many people report experiencing feeling more alert. Many people talk about an improved ability to remember small details. These effects are backed up by controlled trials where objective tests show improvements in attention and working memory following brain training. Over time, being cognitively active builds up what neuroscientists call cognitive reserve. This reserve protects you against memory losses associated with aging.
Peter North: How do you distinguish between increased mental fitness and simply getting better at the exercises themselves?
Joe Hardy: There are two ways to distinguish between just getting better at the exercises and really improving the brain. The first method involves controlled trials with objective tests of cognitive performance. In these kinds of studies, some participants get training [with Lumosity], while others do not. Both groups are assessed for attention, memory, and other aspects of cognition before and after training. In studies of Lumosity training, participants doing training consistently get better at objective tests of cognitive performance that were not part of the training while control subjects do not.
Of course, while it’s great to measure objective performance, we care most about what happens in their real life. Often, we learn the most by simply talking to users and asking what they get out of it. Generally, we use a portfolio of different approaches to understand what brain training can and cannot do.
Peter North: How do you develop a Brain Training course to improve a very specific mental capacity such as memory or attention?
Joe Hardy: There are two basic approaches that we take. The first approach involves taking tasks that we know challenge the targeted area and turning these tasks into exercises. Sometimes, we know a task targets working memory, for example, because behavioral studies have shown that this is the limiting resource for that task.
The second approach involves using brain imaging data to identify a particular task that activates certain parts of the brain. Once we’ve identified the central task, we put our game designers to work.
Peter North: Have there been any independent studies testing the effectiveness of your Brain Training exercises?
Joe Hardy: We work with dozens of university-based researchers all over the world. We typically make our software available to them for free for research purposes. They do whatever studies they see fit. This is a great way to leverage the technology to learn about the benefits and limitations of brain training. You can read about most of these efforts in our white paper The Science Behind Lumosity.
In addition, we’ve done our own studies that show positive effects of Lumosity training for improving attention, memory, and executive function.
After trying the Brain Trainer myself for several weeks, I did feel increased memory, focus and mental clarity. My performance in the Brain Trainer exercises steadily improved at the same pace as my self-reported mental fitness improvements.
The training itself requires a remarkable amount of concentration. In some exercises, you’re asked to identify the direction of the center bird in a large flock. Others ask you to ignore the word “YELLOW,” and successfully identify that it’s written in red ink. Regardless of the details of each exercise, the common thread is intense mental focus, the kind you might not get all day.
The Brain Trainer app is free, but the service itself is subscription-based. The training is highly accessible, offered both on their website and all Apple mobile devices. They have “basic training” to start with, and then courses that specialize in whatever area you’d like to improve. Typical training sessions last about five minutes, and they might be the best five minutes of your day if you ask your synapses.
(Image courtesy of dierk schaefer under a Creative Commons  Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)
Peter is a technology professional living in Washington DC. After studying Spanish and working with various programming languages, he has returned to writing in his native language, English. Peter is always finding enjoyment and satisfaction in his work, often in the strangest places.
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The ELEMENTS system is a new interactive table top environment that supports movement assessment and rehabilitation for patients recovering from Traumatic Brain Injury.Credit: ZEDBUFFER
LONDON: The first virtual reality artwork for helping brain injury patients to better control their hand and arm movements has been successfully tested by Australian scientists.
ELEMENTS is a 42-inch tabletop TV on which patients can paint, play games and mix sounds by gesturing with brightly coloured, soft plastic shapes. It complements existing rehabilitation therapy for people recovering from brain injury by providing a fun way to practice skills and continuous feedback on their progress.
A team of researchers from RMIT in Melbourne has carried out initial studies on nine patients, reporting that they showed an improved ability to handle objects after using the system.
"The participants improved significantly in terms of their overall motor abilities," said lead author and experimental psychologist Nick Mumford of the study published in the journal Brain Injury.
How ELEMENTS works
Physical rehabilitation helps people with brain injuries rebuild their muscle strength. But many patients also struggle to turn a decision to move an arm into a controlled arm movement.
The ELEMENTS system helps people with brain injuries plan and refine their movements using sounds and animations to give feedback during games. The system has two game types - the sound-mixing game 'Mixer' and drawing games 'Squiggles' and 'Swarm' allow people to draw simple pictures and create music.
'Bases', 'Random Bases', 'Chase' and 'Go-No-Go' are training games where people try to beat their previous scores on tasks.
Stereo cameras constantly track the positions of the plastic shapes above the LCD screen to within 0.1mm and can generate graphs of patients' progress using the training games. "You don't have this capacity for automatic data collection in normal rehabilitation," said Mumford.
Putting brain training to the test
Mumford and his colleagues' study is among a growing number of tests of how virtual reality (VR) could help people with brain injuries regain their reaching, grasping and carrying skills.
Three men aged 20 or 21 with brain injuries from car accidents played 'Bases', 'Random Bases', 'Chase' and 'Go-No-Go' for 12 one-hour sessions over four weeks. In the 'Chase' game they had to drop the plastic cylinder onto a circle that appeared at random. In the more complicated 'Go-No-Go' game, they had to hit circles while avoiding pentagons, triangles and rectangles.
The two simpler games involved moving the cylinder from a base station onto circles that appeared randomly or in sequence. Water ripple animations, clicking sounds and a circle that drew lines below the cylinder helped the men know when they'd hit the target. The accuracy, speed and smoothness of their gestures were recorded using the stereo camera and used to create performance graphs.
An encouraging first step
The researchers found the men's accuracy and skill at moving the cylinder in a straight line to the target improved during the four weeks. They also got better at standard tests of movement control.
Since this initial study, the system has been tested again in nine men and women of various ages. "Our studies aren't large scale, but they're a first step. We're saying our first set of participants have shown that it might work so it's worth continuing with," said Mumford.
The next stage is "looking at taking the system we've got and trying it in different places with more people", said Mumford. ELEMENTS is now being tested on children with MS in London, and the team also plans to make the system more "user friendly for clinicians to operate".
Physical therapist and rehabilitation neuroscientist Mindy Levin at McGill University, Quebec, Canada, who was not involved in the study, said it was important as a "proof-of-principle". But she cautions about a study on three men with brain injuries: "we need to be careful not to draw too broad conclusions from small-scale studies."

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Brain fitness software company MindSparke and premium brain supplement provider Zortho join forces to provide consumers with peak brain fitness. Environmental toxins destroy brain cells and inhibit our ability to maintain a healthy brain. For optimal brain fitness and cognitive gain, MindSparke's brain training community can now enjoy Zortho's highly effective detoxifying and brain nutrition supplements.

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) April 19, 2011

Environmental toxins destroy healthy brain tissue and inhibit brain fitness. In response, brain fitness company MindSparke now offers brain detoxification to its brain training community.

Since 2008 MindSparke has provided advanced brain training for PC and Mac and brain training online. "We have customers from 5-years old to 85-years old," says Martin Walker, MindSparke CEO, "And the range of brain training goals is just as broad -- school, work, restoring memory loss, treating ADD -- you name it." But after a chance conversation with Zortho's Paul Reynolds Walker realized that brain training was only half of the picture. "People can't achieve peak brain fitness if they're suffering from brain toxicity," as Walker puts it, "And that's all of us to some degree."

Zortho's ZeSol proved to be the perfect answer to Walker's new concern. By providing focused nutritional support for cellular cleansing and protection ZeSol helps the body eliminate all manner of environmental toxins and poisons. Safe for children and sensitive adults, ZeSol also incorporates brain nutrition. Dihydroquercetin (DHQ), a super-nutrient, strengthens capillaries and dramatically boosts the activity of other vitamins. "Zortho's brain nutrition has been shown to produce anti-oxidant benefits up to 100 times greater than those of the Goji or Acai berry," says Reynolds.

"In England the hat-makers used to go crazy from ingesting mercury," says Walker. "But you don't need to be a mad hatter to suffer the ill effects of environmental toxins. When I started using ZeSol it was as if a fog had lifted that I didn't even know was there."

MindSparke's brain fitness programs have been featured in the New York Times, PC Mag, and FHM. Its brain training alone can dramatically boost cognition, even increasing IQ. The combination of Brain Fitness Pro and ZeSol for detoxification and brain nutrition promises to be an unbeatable brain fitness duo.

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Martin Walker
Mind Evolve, LLC
1 800 397 5373
Email Information

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Some rules you encounter are Golden, to be kept in mind forever instead of forgotten. These are useful and important trail markers to guide us and allow us to stay always on course-on target. As soon as you define your goals, begin searching for the Golden Rules that connect with it. Chart your course by these Golden Rules and permit them to guide you to achievement and success.
Listed here are my 5 best Golden Rules to effective brain training.
Golden Rule # 1, Targeting. An effective training task must be carefully targeted to train brain functions that will lead to the maximum benefit for the user in daily life. Some exercises will lead to improvements on the specific tasks trained. Highly effective brain training will be characterized not just by improvements on the tasks themselves, but also on transfer of that improvement to performance of real world tasks. Remember, no training task will improve all aspects of cognition. Targeting the specific aspects of brain functions will lead to the maximum benefit for the user in daily life.
Golden Rule # 2, Adaptivity. This is very important because the response to challenge is a central component of how the nervous system operates, and shaping the response properties of the system progressively and adaptively is a part of all effective learning processes. You’ll want to bear in mind that an effective brain training exercise should adaptively challenge the user, without discouraging him.
Golden Rule # 3, Novelty. Why this is very important is because in order for the brain to be exercised effectively, it must be confronted with novel tasks and challenges. Working in new ways that are not over-learned is critical for driving nervous system remodeling. The brain creates specialized circuitry for doing particular tasks. Tasks that have been performed many times in the past simply reactivate the existing circuitry. This form of stimulation may be helpful in keeping the brain active, but it will not drive fundamental improvements in the way information is processed.
Golden Rule # 4, Engagement. Engagement and reward are critical components of making brain games effective and encouraging people to do them. When the brain is in an engaged and rewarded state, it is much more open to learning and change. If you are rewarded for your hard work, for example by receiving praise from colleagues, friends, or family, you will be more likely to work hard in the future. This basic premise holds for both physical and mental exercise, as well.
Golden Rule # 5, Completeness. The brain is a highly complex, interacting, and integrated system. Training on a limited aspect of brain function, such as visual attention, auditory processing, or working memory, in isolation is unlikely to yield optimal results for real world function. Engaging in the tasks of daily living requires the proper functioning of all aspect of cognition.
Have confidence and rely on these Golden Rules to effective brain training. They’ve been time-tested and also have been proved to be true. Follow them carefully and your own ultimate success will likely be assured plus your satisfaction greater.
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"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert Heinlein

If you're reading this, you're probably an endorphin addict.

You've figured out that your body responds to extreme demands by pumping out hormones called "endorphins." Endorphins increase stamina, cut pain, and make you feel amazing!

But like all mind-altering substances, endorphins must be used responsibly. The endorphin-high is the cleanest, safest, healthiest, and most socially responsible way of getting high -- but there are hidden dangers.

The greatest of these is overtraining.

You probably have one sport that really turns you on. This is your passion, this is where you touch infinity.

And this is the sport most likely to injure you.

Does it matter what this sport is? Aren't sports, like distance running, inherently more dangerous? No! In fact, the most dangerous possible activity is watching television. Fat is an injury. Loss of muscle tone is an injury. Collapsed posture is an injury.

Inactivity is dangerous; we're not designed for it.

But I also know this: More people hurt themselves moving computer mice than climbing mountains. Why? Because your body is not designed for inactivity. But it's also not designed for repetitive motion, however undemanding that motion is.

Repetitive motion is also dangerous.

For most animals, this is not a problem. They do a few things extremely well. This is specialization. Horses don't climb trees. Lion's don't throw things. Dolphins don't run.

But specialization usually leads to extinction. Doing one thing extremely well means utilizing one ecological niche extremely well. That niche disappears? So does the species.

Our remote ancestors took a different path.

I want to walk you back along that path. Why? Because I want you to understand how important it is not to act overspecialized. That's not who you are. There's no use pretending. The result can be fatal.

It used to be thought that our bodies evolved in East Africa because of a drying trend. Trees died. Grasslands grew. Bipedalism became necessary. With our hand free, our brains quickly grew to make use of this new opportunity.

But it didn't happen that way.

True, around 2.5 million years ago, weather in East Africa changed dramatically. But it didn't get dry. It got dry and wet and dry and wet -- back and forth with disastrous speed. It got cold and hot and cold and hot -- zigzagging so fast that it was almost impossible to adjust. Species died out by the hundreds. Ecological niches evaporated, morphed into new niches, then vanished in turn.

The best way to survive this terrible time was to be the ultimate generalist -- a Jack of All Trades. It's as if Mother Nature lined up every member of a small troupe of early hominids and said: "OK, everybody who can't swim! Hands up! Guess what? You're all dead!" Then a short time later: "Now, hands up everybody who can't run twenty miles! You're all dead!" And so forth through a long list of activities.

Very soon, you have an animal that does a lot of things surprisingly well. We can run, swim, climb, crawl, jump, throw things, carry things -- and none of this is directly because of an increase in brain size! The body we inhabited by 2 million years ago is almost indistinguishable from the body we inhabit today.

Guided by much smaller brain than ours, this tough, flexible, highly generalized body took us out of Africa and spread our kind as far as Indonesia -- all in evolutionary blink of an eye.

Fast forward to today. Your bones and muscles serve a very different brain, but they themselves are 2 million years old. And they know something that your brain has forgotten: what they were designed for. They are happiest when they follow the old African blueprint: Do lots of things pretty well. Run, swim, climb, crawl, jump, throw things, lift things.

That's a lot like cross-training, yes?

But you really like one sport? No problem. Because of your deep evolutionary history, cross-training will improve your performance at your favorite sport.

Facing a plateau in your performance? Back off a bit. Add other activities. Your body will remember its ancient wisdom, forgive you for pretending to be what you're not, and figure out how to do everything more efficiently - including your favorite sport.

Design a program that feeds your favorite sport with a customized program of other activities. Your plateau will vanish.

And get a dog. They're great coaches.

Follow Michael Boblett on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Michael Boblett

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