corporate entertainment: Stroke Survivors Tattler: Saturday News

Games to Develop Your Brain:?
? ? 1 - CogniFit: Dr. Shlomo Breznitz?
? ? 2 - Marbles: ?the Brain Store

Shlomo Breznitz From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shlomo Breznitz (Hebrew: ???? ??????, born 3 August 1936) is an Israeli author, psychologist, former professor of psychology, former rector and president of the University of Haifa, and previous member of the Knesset. He is currently the president and founder of Cognifit, a brain fitness software company.

Biography

Breznitz was born in Bratislava in Czechoslovakia (today Slovakia). During the Holocaust he and his sister were hidden in a Roman Catholic orphanage, an experience detailed in his memoirs, "Memory Fields". His father was killed in Auschwitz, but his mother survived and they made aliyah to Israel in 1949. He studied psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gaining a BA in 1960, an MA in 1962 and a PhD in 1965, the first person to receive a doctorate in the new field of psychology in Israel.

From 1969 until 1971, Breznitz served as a consultant to the Israeli Air Force on problems of stress. He was the founding director of the Ray D. Wolfe Center for Study of Psychological Stress at the University of Haifa in 1979. Breznitz also has served as the Lady Davis Professor of Psychology and was the visiting professor at the London School of Economics, Berkeley, Stanford, National Institutes of Health and Rockefeller University. He has also been a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington D.C..

He has written seven books and has contributed chapters to over 20 other books in addition to numerous professional articles and research reports. In 1999 he retired from Haifa University to found brain fitness software company, Cognifit. He has been in the forefront of cognitive training using a personal computer and has developed patented technology that turns the personal computer into a tool for providing individualized training programs for a wide range of cognitive skills needed for everyday function and cognitive skills specific to particular fields of interest.

After Ehud Olmert, a personal friend, convinced him to enter politics, Breznitz was elected to the Knesset on the Kadima list in 2006, the first Slovak to become an MK. However, he retired from politics and left the Knesset on 8 October 2007.

CogniFit's Program

See how CogniFit can help you to discover and improve yourself and your quality of life through cognitive training and brain fitness.

The cognitive assessment and platform train specific brain abilities around attention & focus, perception, motor control and memory. CogniFit offers a large variety of targeting applications that train people on specific aspects such as their memory, dyslexia, ADHD, stroke, driving or even their golf game.

CogniFit' scientifically validated, patented brain fitness program is personalized to each user to help them enhance their cognitive performance, get a sharper brain and a healthy mind.

CogniFit can also help train people who show symptoms of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a precursor of Alzheimer's disease. www.cognifit.com.

CogniFit Brain Training on CBS

Find out how brain training can help you exercise your brain memory, concentration and many other cognitive skills.

CogniFit Brain Fitness is a revolutionary technology that lets you explore your brain, assess your cognitive skills, train the abilities that are important to you and gives you an efficient mind training.

Train Your Brain With Cognifit Brain Training Programs

(SSTattler: The interview has lots of noise; skip-it if it is annoying).

Dr. Karen Oates President/CEO of the Mental Health Association of Rockland County discusses how the Cognifit brain training fitness programs and the 'Smart Brain, Strong Brain, Fit Brain" program help people train their brains as they age.

Keeping Your Mind Sharp with CogniFit

Dated 2009. CogniFit is releasing a new brain fitness online program to keep your mind fit, called CogniFit Personal Coach. The program, which is meant for Baby Boomers to grandparents can improve cognitive skills by up to 40 percent!

Shlomo Breznitz at The Villages - Part 1

Dr. Breznitz went to the Villages, a town of 80,000 residents over the age of 55 years old, to share the benefits of brain training and CogniFit.

Shlomo Breznitz at The Villages - Part 2

Shlomo Breznitz at The Villages - Part 3

About Marbles: the Brain Store

We?re a one-of-a-kind retail store with a smart collection of hand-picked, expert-tested, certifiably fun ways to a healthier brain for all ages. The best part? Our stores are designed to let you roll up your sleeves and get a little brainy while you play games, solve puzzles, try out software and flip through books to find the right products for you and your noggin. Our team is chock-full of smart, outgoing people who are passionate about learning new things and creating a fun, interactive environment where customers can reach their brain?s fullest potential.

Where We Started

Our CEO Lindsay Gaskins and her brainy teammates started Marbles: The Brain Store with the simple idea of finding the best brain games out there and putting them all in one place. Not just products for aging baby boomers concerned about memory loss and victims of brain disorders like stroke, Alzheimer?s, dementia and ADHD. But also products for anyone who wanted to improve focus and attention, enhance creativity, become better multi-taskers and get the most out of the smartest supercomputer out there: the brain.

Our idea was supported by some pretty compelling research and mind-boggling advances in the field of neuroplasticity. So we went for it ? opening a kiosk in May of 2008, one of the deepest parts of the recession and probably not the brightest time to start a new retail store. People thought we had lost our minds. To the contrary, we had just found them.

We failed miserably. Which we?re not ashamed to admit. Hey, failure breeds success, right? The idea was great. The products were great. The experience?not so great. But customers loved the concept so we opened our first store in downtown Chicago in October 2008. This time, we got the experience right. With a bigger space, customers could actually play with every product. Our staff had to play with every product, too, in order to field questions from our brainy customers. The response was phenomenal so we opened three more Chicagoland stores in 2009, four more stores in the midwest in 2010, and now 10 more stores across the east coast in 2011. The rest, they say, is history. Albeit a short one. Which means we?re just getting started.

Where We're Going

Our goal is to bring the smartest and most engaging selection of brain training products to as many people as possible. So we?re not shy about saying we?d like to be a national retail operation within the next five to 10 years. But, we want to do it right so we?re very thoughtful and smart about our growth opportunities.

Stroke

Because stroke affects different functional areas of the brain, there is no single recommended treatment plan for stroke. Instead, doctors and therapists of various disciplines must work together to create an appropriate rehabilitation plan to match each individual stroke victim's needs. This may involve speech therapy, physical therapy, nutrition counseling, mental health treatment, and more.

After a stroke, mental and physical capabilities are regained through the brain's ability to change, or neuroplasticity. This means that a person who loses a particular function due to stroke must work very hard and in a targeted manner to retrain their brain and regain that function.

Board games are an excellent way to target the different sections of the brain and help a recovering stroke victim regain their prior abilities. With practice, a stroke survivor can strengthen neural connections for the lost functions and regain some or all of their prior abilities.

A Small Sample of Hundreds of Games at Marbles the Brain Store:?

? ? ? ? Critical Thinking, Memory, Coordination, Visual Perception, Word Skills

Critical Thinking - Brainware Safari

"As an educational psychologist and parent, I have never seen a program that offers the different activities that BrainWare offers. " - Educational Psychologist

Memory - Dakim Brain Fitness

"The cutting edge of cognitive stimulation... " - Gary Small, Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Director of the UCLA Center on Aging