Brain training works! Brain training doesn’t work! Every week, I see a new headline in the news about brain training, and they reliably go back and forth between these two extremes like the tick-tock of a clock. Why the back and forth? If a study shows that brain training works in one week, how can…
Sometimes when I read science news, it seems as though the world is moving incredibly quickly. I see stories about gene editing, stem cells, and cloning…and I think, “what time to be alive!” But usually just a bit later, I read more science news, and it seems like the world is moving incredible slowly. We…
How many of us were told by our moms and dads when we were young that “good things come to those who wait?” But sometimes that wait can seem like forever… This week, that advice came true for a pioneering group of scientists—and it took more than twenty years. Time Magazine just announced its special…
Our blog editor asked me to write about how we started working with Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady. It started with a phone call after the 2014 Super Bowl. The caller said he worked with Tom Brady. Yes, the Patriots’ Tom Brady. He was, in fact, Alex Guerrero, who has been Tom’s personal trainer and body…
When I was in college, I took a lot of science courses. Really, a lot — maybe even too many. And mostly what they taught me was how scientists believed the world worked — right then, as of the early 1990’s. Luckily for me, my college roommate took a somewhat broader curriculum, and much to my benefit, we talked…
An interesting paper came across my radar week – “Placebo effects in cognitive training” published in PNAS (with a paywall, unfortunately). In this paper, the authors investigate the effect that people’s expectations might have on the results of brain-training experiments. Every research study needs to recruit people to participate, and a common way is to…
Posit Science’s very own Dr. Michael Merzenich has been awarded the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for his work in discovering adult brain plasticity and applying its principles to improve the human condition! The Kavli Prize––a partnership between The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, The Kavli Foundation, and The Norwegian Ministry of Education and…
Do you find you’re often tired and lack energy? There are lots of things that can contribute to fatigue and low energy, and you may not even realize that some common habits and practices can make you tired. Here are 10 things that sap your energy and make you tired all the time. Some of…
I am incredibly excited to announce that the scientists who ran the ACTIVE trial have reported that certain types of brain training—including one of the exercises in BrainHQ from Posit Science—can drive cognitive benefits that last 10 years. The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, is the first to show such…