Just a quick heads up: the MetLife Mature Mar­ket Insti­tute has pub­lished a new report: titled Dis­cov­er­ing What Mat­ters: Bal­anc­ing Money, Med­i­cine and Meaning.

Descrip­tion: “The adage that money can’t buy hap­pi­ness is sup­ported ana­lyt­i­cally by new research demon­strat­ing the impor­tance of hav­ing pur­pose in one’s life and that the most con­tent peo­ple focus on the non-financial essen­tials in their lives, even dur­ing dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times.  Liv­ing the “good life” for middle-aged and older Amer­i­cans is equated with spend­ing time with fam­ily and friends, a pre­vi­ously unquan­ti­fied find­ing, accord­ing to the MetLife Mature Mar­ket Institute’s lat­est study, Dis­cov­er­ing What Mat­ters: Bal­anc­ing Money, Med­i­cine and Mean­ing, pro­duced in con­junc­tion with lead­ing author, life coach, and exec­u­tive edu­ca­tor, Richard Lei­der.  They describe the good life in terms of hav­ing health, a finan­cial safety net and the time to do what is impor­tant to them.”

Report is avail­able Here (PDF, 69 kb).

Will com­ment in a few days, when I get the chance to take a look at it. Have a nice weekend!

Here are some upcom­ing events I will par­tic­i­pate in — feel free to leave a com­ment below or con­tact us if you will be attend­ing too and want to say Hello. I really enjoy meet­ing Sharp­Brains readers!

» Jan­u­ary 22nd, Con­sumer Reports’ Blog­ger Health Sum­mit, NYC.

» March 5th, New York Acad­emy of Med­i­cine, NYC. I will present Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware — Con­sumers Guide to dis­tin­guish­ing hope from hype, at the Com­pre­hen­sive Approach to Demen­tia Sym­po­sium spon­sored by Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter and with credit des­ig­nated by Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Med­i­cine. Will blog when their web­site lists the agenda and allows registration.

» March 15-19th, ASA/ NCOA annual con­fer­ence in Las Vegas. I will be pre­sent­ing two ses­sions. Reg­is­tra­tion is open now at 2009 Aging in Amer­ica Con­fer­ence, but there is lim­ited infor­ma­tion on the ses­sions. Will blog when there are detailed abstracts available.

- The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket, 16-Mar-09, 08:00 PM — 09:30 AM

- Brain Fit­ness in Senior Hous­ing: 18-Mar-09, 11:30 AM — 12:30 PM

Good arti­cle in the New York Times today:
An Epi­demic of Crashes Among the Aging? Unlikely, Study Says

- “The (Insur­ance Insti­tute for High­way Dri­ving) insur­ance insti­tute is con­duct­ing fur­ther research to deter­mine why the risks appear to be going down for older dri­vers. It may be that today’s older dri­vers are sim­ply in bet­ter phys­i­cal and men­tal shape than their coun­ter­parts a decade ago, so they are not only less likely to make a dri­ving mis­take, but also less frail and bet­ter able to sur­vive injuries.”

There is no doubt that, as a group, older per­sons of any given age are in bet­ter phys­i­cal and men­tal shape today than their coun­ter­parts years ago. For con­text, world­wide life expectancy has increased more than 20 years in less than 6o years — so you can imag­ine how a per­son in his or her early 70s today is in bet­ter shape than some­one in his or her mid-60s a few decades back.

Still, as the num­ber of peo­ple over the age of 60 starts to grow expo­nen­tially given the influx of baby boomers, soci­ety at large will prob­a­bly ben­e­fit from start­ing to think through 1) what are the types of pro­grams, whether intro­duced and man­aged by the AARP, DMV or car insur­ance com­pa­nies, that can help older adults drive safely for as long as they want and need, 2) what are the mech­a­nisms to pre­vent hav­ing dri­vers in our roads who don’t pos­sess the min­i­mum per­cep­tual and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties required to drive “safely” (and what “safely” really means).

And, yes, we should prob­a­bly have a sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tion regard­ing teenage dri­ving.
For related read­ing, you may enjoy these 2 articles:

- All­state: Can we improve Dri­ver Safety using Posit Sci­ence InSight?

- Improv­ing Dri­ving Skills and Brain Func­tion­ing– Inter­view with ACTIVE’s Jerri Edwards

“For­tu­nately, our field has moved beyond par­ti­san, and some­times polit­i­cal, pref­er­ence and now asks, What treat­ment is most effec­tive for which patients in what con­text?” — Ray­mon A. Levy and J. Stu­art Ablon, clin­i­cal direc­tor and direc­tor of the psy­chother­apy research pro­gram in the depart­ment of psy­chi­a­try at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­eral Hospital.

Yesterday’s New York Times Book Review included some Let­ters to the Edi­tor that were even bet­ter that the orig­i­nal book review of Amer­i­can Ther­apy.

We are see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of research-based tools and tech­niques (includ­ing cog­ni­tive ther­apy, reviewed in the arti­cle) to mea­sure and help main­tain cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health, both technology-based and technology-free. Now, none of them is a gen­eral solu­tion (in the same way that no sin­gle drug is best for every­one and every­thing), so the ques­tion posed above couldn’t be more relevant.

My apolo­gies for not hav­ing blogged in a few days. I landed back in San Fran­cisco today after speak­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a very stim­u­lat­ing event put together by the Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity’s Adap­tive Neural Sys­tems Cen­ter with fund­ing from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion.

The 2-day sym­po­sium was titled Co-Adaptive Learn­ing: Adap­tive Tech­nol­ogy for the Aging (link opens a PDF with the agenda), fea­tured impres­sive speak­ers and a highly qual­i­fied audi­ence, and cov­ered a wide array of cur­rent and future health­care and aging appli­ca­tions of neu­ro­science. The one aspect that was very mean­ing­ful for me to observe how often we dis­cussed cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, cog­ni­tive deficits, cog­ni­tive assess­ments, cog­ni­tive enhance­ment tools (both inva­sive and non-invasive) in a vari­ety of healthy aging and clin­i­cal contexts.

I will share more about the event in the next few days, includ­ing links to the fas­ci­nat­ing work pre­sented by speak­ers, but let me know sim­ply thank the two gra­cious orga­niz­ers and hosts of the event by quot­ing the goal of their cen­ter and work:

- Jimmy Abbas, PhD: “One of the hall­marks of bio­log­i­cal sys­tems is the abil­ity to adapt. In our work, we mimic neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal sys­tems in order to endow tech­nol­ogy with the abil­ity to adapt, and we use tech­nol­ogy to max­i­mize adap­ta­tions in neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal sys­tems. With these approaches, we aim to pro­mote func­tional adap­ta­tion after disability.”

- Ranu Jung, PhD: “Our goal is to improve the qual­ity of life of indi­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties by design­ing tech­niques to inves­ti­gate, replace and repair dam­aged neural sys­tems to enhance mobil­ity and func­tion­al­ity. Whether a per­son has spinal cord injury, limb loss or Parkinson’s dis­ease, mobil­ity and func­tion­al­ity mean independence.”

Links:

Cen­ter: Adap­tive Neural Sys­tems Center.

Agenda (PDF): Co-Adaptive Learn­ing: Adap­tive Tech­nol­ogy for the Aging

The Cal­gary Har­ald and other Cana­dian papers bring a good article:

‘Brain gyms’ a new industry

I’d only add that the rev­enue fig­ures sug­gest we are really talk­ing about a highly-dynamic and grow­ing “baby-market”, which one day (hope­fully, soon enough for all of us to ben­e­fit) will mature to become a real “indus­try”.  We see very pos­i­tive signs, but there is still a lot of (men­tally stim­u­lat­ing) work to do.

Neu­roAc­tive Bike: America’s First and Only Mind-Body Fit­ness Equip­ment Launched at Lady of Amer­ica Fit­ness Cen­ters (press release)

- “The patent-pending bike, engi­neered by Dr. Berg­eron and BCA (Brain Cen­ter America)’s inter­na­tional team of brain spe­cial­ists, makes its U.S. debut this month at Lady of Amer­ica (LOA) fit­ness centers.”

- “Users of the Neu­roAc­tive Bike may select from 22 brain-stimulating exer­cises that train dif­fer­ent parts of the brain, includ­ing: mem­ory of names and faces, 3D visuo-spatial skills, con­cen­tra­tion, word nam­ing and arith­metic. As they pedal, they manip­u­late a wire­less mouse to inter­act with the com­puter and com­plete the Neu­roAc­tive Program”

In our 2008 mar­ket report we offered Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends, includ­ing:

“2. Phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise will be bet­ter inte­grated. Phys­i­cal exer­cise has been shown to increase the rate of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, whereas men­tal exer­cise helps ensure the sur­vival of any newly cre­ated neu­rons. Today both activ­i­ties usu­ally take place in very dif­fer­ent set­tings: the for­mer, in health clubs, the later, in uni­ver­si­ties. We pre­dict that the bor­ders between them will become more dif­fuse. Expect new pro­grams such as brain fit­ness pod­casts that allow us to train work­ing mem­ory as we jog or exer­cise bikes with built-in brain games.”

Start­ing this month we will cover inter­est­ing new brain fit­ness prod­ucts & ser­vices on a reg­u­lar basis, both via this blog and via our monthly newslet­ter (you can sub­scribe at the top of the page).

Please note that we do not endorse any prod­ucts, or make any com­ment on their valid­ity or sup­port­ing research, by cov­er­ing them in our blog & newslet­ter.  We will men­tion what­ever we think, from an edi­to­r­ial point of view, is note­wor­thy from a research, com­mer­cial, or inno­va­tion per­spec­tive, since we have seen that many peo­ple rely on Sharp­Brains to stay abreast of devel­op­ments in the field.

if you are inter­ested in a deeper explo­ration on the spe­cific research and busi­ness dri­vers behind dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies and prod­ucts, we sug­gest you con­sider acquir­ing our Report on the State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008.

Note: We will cat­e­go­rize rel­e­vant posts as “Brain Fit­ness Industry”.

Edge’s Ques­tion of the Year is,

“What will change every­thing? What game-changing sci­en­tific ideas and devel­op­ments do you expect to live to see?”

A cou­ple of sci­en­tists respond on areas close to our field:

- Con­trol­ling Brain Plas­tic­ity (by Leo Chalupa)
– The first major upgrade of the human brain and the mind it gen­er­ates since the Pleis­tocene (by Gre­gory Paul)

You can read those and many other fas­ci­nat­ing answers at Edge’s Ques­tion of the Year.

Here you have The 10 Most Pop­u­lar Brain Fit­ness & Cog­ni­tive Health Books, based on book pur­chases by Sharp­Brains’ read­ers dur­ing 2008.

Enjoy!

	1. Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School (Pear Press, March 2008) - Dr. John Med­ina, Direc­tor of the Brain Cen­ter for Applied Learn­ing Research at Seat­tle Pacific Uni­ver­sity, writes an engag­ing and com­pre­hen­sive intro­duc­tion to the many daily impli­ca­tions of recent brain research. He wrote the arti­cle Brain Rules: sci­ence and prac­tice for Sharp­Brains readers.
	2. The Beck Diet Solu­tion: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son (Oxmoor House, March 2007) - Dr. Judith Beck, Direc­tor of the Beck Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive Ther­apy and Research, con­nects the world of research-based cog­ni­tive ther­apy with a main­stream appli­ca­tion: main­tain­ing weight-loss. Inter­view notes here.
	3. The Brain That Changes Itself: Sto­ries of Per­sonal Tri­umph from the Fron­tiers of Brain Sci­ence (Viking, March 2007) - Dr. Nor­man Doidge, psy­chi­a­trist and author of this New York Times best­seller, brings us “a com­pelling col­lec­tion of tales about the amaz­ing abil­i­ties of the brain to rewire, read­just and relearn”. Lau­rie Bar­tels reviews the book review here.
	4. Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Exer­cise and the Brain(Lit­tle, Brown and Com­pany, Jan­u­ary 2008) - Dr. John Ratey, an asso­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Har­vard Med­ical School, sum­ma­rizes the grow­ing research on the brain ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise. Lau­rie Bar­tels puts this research in per­spec­tive here.

	5. The Art of Chang­ing the Brain: Enrich­ing the Prac­tice of Teach­ing by Explor­ing the Biol­ogy of Learn­ing (Sty­lus Pub­lish­ing, Octo­ber 2002) - Dr. James Zull, Direc­tor Emer­i­tus of the Uni­ver­sity Cen­ter for Inno­va­tion in Teach­ing and Edu­ca­tion at Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­sity, writes a must-read for edu­ca­tors and life­long learn­ers. Inter­view notes here.
	6. Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Sci­ence Reveals Our Extra­or­di­nary Poten­tial to Trans­form Our­selves (Bal­lan­tine Books, Jan­u­ary 2007) - Sharon Beg­ley, Newsweek’ excel­lent sci­ence writer, pro­vides an in-depth intro­duc­tion to the research on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity based on a Mind & Life Insti­tute event.
	7. Thanks: How the New Sci­ence of Grat­i­tude Can Make You Hap­pier (Houghton Mif­flin, August 2007) - Prof. Robert Emmons, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy at UC Davis and Editor-In-Chief of the Jour­nal of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­ogy, writes a solid book that com­bines a research-based syn­the­sis of the topic as well as prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions. Inter­view notes here.
	8. The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civ­i­lized Mind (Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, Jan­u­ary 2001) - Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing per­spec­tive on the role of the frontal roles and exec­u­tive func­tions through the lifes­pan. Inter­view notes here.
	9. The Brain Trust Pro­gram: A Sci­en­tif­i­cally Based Three-Part Plan to Improve Mem­ory (Perigee Trade, Sep­tem­ber 2007) - Dr. Larry McCleary, for­mer act­ing Chief of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­surgery at Den­ver Children’s Hos­pi­tal, cov­ers many lifestyle rec­om­men­da­tions for brain health in this prac­ti­cal book. He wrote the arti­cle Brain Evo­lu­tion and Health for SharpBrains.
	10. A User’s Guide to the Brain: Per­cep­tion, Atten­tion, and the Four The­aters of the Brain (Pan­theon, Jan­u­ary 2001) – In this book (pre­vi­ous to Spark), Dr. John Ratey pro­vides a stim­u­lat­ing descrip­tion of how the brain works. An excel­lent Brain 101 book to any­one new to the field.