In what cat­e­gory does Brain Fit­ness fit? Edu­ca­tion, Pro­duc­tiv­ity and Train­ing, Health? Most of the inter­est so far has come from a Healthy Aging angle, but we are start­ing to see broader inter­est, as in the events below. After all, isn’t work­ing on our brains rel­e­vant to all those markets?.

2 busy weeks: I am attending/ speak­ing at a vari­ety of events. I will make sure to blog at least the take-aways from the main events daily, and Car­o­line will also add her per­spec­tive as much as possible.

A) Octo­ber 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute

B) Octo­ber 9th: First ses­sion of my class The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness at the UC-Berkeley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI)

C) Octo­ber 10th: Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­nity, work­shop at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health professionals

D) Octo­ber 10th: Sci­ence at Work, Inter­view at the event The Future of Work: Ampli­fied Indi­vid­u­als, Ampli­fied Orga­ni­za­tions, orga­nized by the Insti­tute for the Future

—————————–

A) Octo­ber 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Insti­tute. This promises to be a fas­ci­nat­ing event. See below the pan­els I am attending-I will make sure to write some notes every day to keep you in the discussion.

Wednes­day Octo­ber 3rd:

Great Expec­ta­tions: Amer­i­can Atti­tudes toward Per­sonal Respon­si­bil­ity and Medicine

Health­care Re-Imagined: Learn­ing from Olympic Athletes

Thurs­day 4th:

The Dam­aged Brain: The Fight Against Neurodegeneration

The Human Ele­ment: A Can­did Con­ver­sa­tion about Pio­neers of Mod­ern Medicine

The Last Fron­tier: The Mind

Global Sci­en­tific Investment

Sci­ence Ver­sus the Bio­log­i­cal Clock

The Mys­te­ri­ous Human Heart

Fri­day 5th:

What’s Hot: Emerg­ing Trends in Biotech, Pharma and Health IT

Crack­ing the Code: Life and Well­ness in the Genomic Age

Inno­va­tion and Incen­tives: Can Break­through Sci­ence Sur­vive Mar­ket Forces?

The New Sci­en­tific Power: The Role of Phil­an­thropy, Patient Advo­cates, and Other Novel Part­ners in Chang­ing Our Med­ical Future

The Elec­tronic Pre­scrip­tion: How Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Will Change the Face of Medicine

HIV and the World

Apply­ing New Sci­ence to Global Health

Sat­ur­day 6th (I am fly­ing back to SF on Sat­ur­day, so my notes prob­a­bly won’t appear till Sunday)

Bio­med­ical Ethics

Health, Human­ity and Pol­i­tics: Prospects for Reform

The Female Body

Win­ning the Game of Life

B) Octo­ber 9th: First ses­sion my class The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness at the UC-Berkeley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI). We have over 35 reg­is­trants so far, with room avail­able (think about it, if you are in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area). A very beau­ti­ful detail I just dis­cov­ered while check­ling out the list of stu­dents: there are sev­eral hus­band & wife teams attend­ing the class together. First read­ing assign­ment: Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging.

Descrip­tion: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of what aging means. In this class, we will review the sci­ence behind some of the key con­cepts in this field and explore their impli­ca­tions on our lifestyles: neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, the Cog­ni­tive Reserve the­ory for healthy aging, computer-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams, emo­tional self-regulation, and the four pil­lars for life­long Brain Health. We have all heard “Use it or lose it.” Lat­est research sug­gests “Use it and improve it.”  Fac­ulty: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez is CEO and co-founder of Sharp­Brains. He holds an M.A. in edu­ca­tion and an M.B.A. from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. Fer­nan­dez started his career with McK­in­sey & Com­pany and has par­tic­i­pated in the launch and turn­around of sev­eral edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies, and has been teach­ing the class “Exer­cis­ing Our Brains” at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity Osher Life­long Learn­ing Cen­ter since 2005.

C) Octo­ber 10th: Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­nity, work­shop at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health professionals.

Descrip­tion: Accord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal, a new wave in brain health pro­grams for older adults is mov­ing through the coun­try. What are you pro­vid­ing in your site? This ses­sion will give you a sam­pling of a model brain health series that you can con­duct in your site. The ses­sion will intro­duce you to the sci­ence of brain fit­ness, includ­ing many engag­ing brain exer­cises to do indi­vid­u­ally or in a group. Exer­cise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Impli­ca­tions has been taught at sev­eral dif­fer­ent Bay Area loca­tions includ­ing the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Institutes.

Pre­sen­ter: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, MBA, MA, CEO and Founder, Sharp­Brains, San Fran­cisco, CA .

D) Octo­ber 10th: Sci­ence at Work, Inter­view at the event The Future of Work: Ampli­fied Indi­vid­u­als, Ampli­fied Orga­ni­za­tions, orga­nized by the Insti­tute for the Future

For­mat: David Pescovitz, Research Direc­tor, Insti­tute for the Future, inter­views Alvaro Fernandez

Descrip­tion: We are on the brink of a new “sci­en­tifi­ca­tion” of work. Over the next decade, work­place sci­ence will more fre­quently draw from advances in neu­ro­science, biol­ogy, and math­e­mat­ics, enabling design based on quan­tifi­able infor­ma­tion. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-founder and CEO of Sharp­Brains, sits down with David Pescovitz to dis­cuss how neu­ro­science can be used to improve pro­duc­tiv­ity and think­ing abil­i­ties, thus cre­at­ing bet­ter work­ers. Immer­sive Mis­sions: As Cog­ni­tive Resources Man­agers and Neu­ro­log­i­cal Train­ers, you’ll put the lat­est brain sci­ence to work on yourselves!

As promised, you can expect a write-up of the main take-aways dur­ing every event. Neu­rons, get ready!

Be Socia­ble, Share!

•