SharpBrains

My apologies for not writing in a few days...the Global Agenda Summit in Dubai has required all my attention - I will summarize the great experience when I land back in San Francisco tomorrow night.

The concepts of night and day do become challenging when working for a few days in a place with a 12-hour time difference with one's home base. Sleep is indeed very important to maintain top cognitive shape...which leads me to a fascinating news announcement:

Health insurance firms offering online cognitive therapy for insomnia (Los Angeles Times)

- "helping consumers get a good night's sleep has become a priority for most of the top-tier U.S. health insurance companies, including WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente and several Blue Cross plans. Their new programs don't involve sleeping pills. Instead, insurers are advocating the use of cognitive behavior therapy. Traditionally, the therapy has been done largely through face-to-face sessions, but many of the programs are now available online."

- "And use of sleeping pills has skyrocketed. A study this year Continue Reading »

Very interesting new market development:
עסקה חדשה בקנדה לסטארט-אפ הישראלי אייס; עשוי לרשום הכנסות של עשרות ...
The Marker, Israel - Oct 28, 2008
מנתונים שפירסמה באחרונה חברת המחקר SharpBrains, עולה כי שוק התוכנות לאימון המוח הכפיל עצמו בתוך פחות משנתיים. ההצלחה הבולטת בתחום היא של חברת נינטנדו ...

In other words, Applied Cognitive Engineering (ACE) and USA Hockey have partnered to bring to market a cognitive simulation game to improve the performance of ice hockey players - similar to what  ACE has been offering to professional and amateur basketball players.

ACE has raised $2.5M, and ACE and USA Hockey have received a joint $800k development grant from the BIRD Foundation for the co-development of a training system for Ice Hockey players. (The article mentions SharpBrains' Market Report as a sign of how the market is growing, since we cover ACE).

For more context on cognitive simulations, you will enjoy this Interview with Prof. Daniel Gopher:

Alvaro Fernandez: Tell us a bit about your overall research interests.

Daniel Gopher: My main interest has been how to expand the limits of human attention, information processing and response capabilities which are critical in complex, real-time decision-making, high-demand tasks such as flying a military jet or playing professional basketball. Using a tennis analogy, my goal has been, and is, how to help develop many “Wimbledon”-like champions. Each with their own styles, but performing to their maximum capacity to succeed in their environments.

What research over the last 15-20 years has shown is that cognition, or what we call thinking and performance, is really a set of skills that we can train systematically. And Continue Reading »

Where does our “Feeling of Knowing” come from? Have you ever felt certain that you knew an answer even though you couldn’t think of it right off? Where does that “feeling of knowing” come from? The answer to this question is the focus of neurologist Robert Burton’s new book On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not.

I recently reviewed Dr. Burton’s book on the Brain Science Podcast and last week I had the opportunity to interview him for the show. He explained that one of the origins for his book was his experience with patients with conditions like Cotard’s syndrome (where the patient thinks he is dead or does not exist). What Dr. Burton calls the “feeling of knowing” is so strong that people consistently trust it even when their beliefs contradict the evidence. At first it might seem surprising that this feeling is generated at an unconscious level in our brain, yet the same sort of processing creates the world we see and hear. It is well-known that what we see is not what enters our eyes, but Continue Reading »

Should Hamlet be living with us now and reading bestsellers, he might be wondering: 

To Blink or not to Blink?

To Think or not to Think?

We are pleased to present, as part of our ongoing Author Speaks Series, an article by Madeleine Van Hecke, author of Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things. In it, she offers the "on the other hand" to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink argument. 

To Think or to Blink?

- By Madeleine Van Hecke, PhD

Is thoughtful reflection necessarily better than hasty judgments?

Not according to Malcolm Gladwell who argued in his best-selling book, Blink, that the decisions people make in a blink are often not only just as accurate, but MORE accurate, than the conclusions they draw after painstaking analysis.

So, should we blink, or think?

When we make judgments based on a thin slice of time – a few minutes talking with someone in a speed dating situation, for example – are our judgments really as accurate as when we analyze endless reams of data?

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We have all heard about children who have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). Indeed, this condition seems to affect 5 to 8% of school age children. Have you ever wondered what happen to these children? As many as 60% of them become adults presenting AD/HD symptoms! Ron de Graaf and colleagues recently published a study in which they found that an average of 3.5% of workers (in ten countries) meet the criteria for adult ADHD. As you can imagine, being an adult with AD/HD can be a challenge at work.

Before we explore this issue let’s start by describing the symptoms of ADHD.

What is adult AD/HD?

AD/HD is a disorder of the brain. Research clearly indicates that AD/HD is to a large extent genetic, that is it tends to run in families. However, AD/HD is a complex disorder and other causal factors may be at play.

Typically, the symptoms arise in early childhood, unless they are associated with some type of brain injury later in life. Some people have mild AD/HD with only a few symptoms while others have more serious AD/HD with more symptoms.

Symptoms of inattention (adapted from the DSM-IV)

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You know your weight. And your physical fitness. And a variety of health-related metrics.

What about your brain fitness?

Two recent announcements bring out how the assessment of cognitive abilities, or brain functions, is increasingly being done thanks to new computerized options:

1) Last week, OptumHealth announced an exclusive 3-year agreement (estimated at $18m) with the Australian company Brain Resource. OptumHealth will be embedding the Brain Resource platform into their overall Behavioral Solutions program.

- OptumHealth Behavioral Solutions will work with Brain Resource to provide clinicians with a Web-based assessment that measures general cognition (how people process information) and social cognition (how people manage their emotions). This 40-minute assessment is based on well-known and validated tests of memory, attention, executive function, and response speed, and mood, social skills and emotional resilience.

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Dr. Arthur Kramer is a Professor in the University of Illinois Department of Psychology, the Campus Neuroscience Program, the Beckman Institute, and the Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at the University of Illinois.

I am honored to interview him today.

Dr. Kramer, thank you for your time. Let’s start by trying to clarify some existing misconceptions and controversies. Based on what we know today, and your recent Nature piece (Note: referenced below), what are the 2-3 key lifestyle habits would you suggest to a person who wants to delay Alzheimer’s symptoms and improve overall brain health?

First, Be Active. Do physical exercise. Aerobic exercise, 30 to 60 minutes per day 3 days per week, has been shown to have an impact in a variety of experiments. And you don’t need to do something strenuous: even walking has shown that effect. There are many open questions in terms of specific types of exercise, duration, magnitude of effect…but, as we wrote in our recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience article, there is little doubt that leading a sedentary life is bad for our cognitive health. Cardiovascular exercise seems to have a positive effect.

Second, Maintain Lifelong Intellectual Engagement. There is abundant prospective observational research showing that doing more mentally stimulating activities reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s symptoms.

Let me add, given all media hype, that no “brain game” in particular has been shown to have a long-term impact on Alzheimer’s or the maintenance of cognition across extended periods of time. It is too early for that-and consumers should be aware of that fact. It is true that some companies are being more science-based than others but, in my view, the consumer-oriented field is growing faster than the research is.

Ideally, combine both physical and mental stimulation along with social interactions. Why not take a good walk with friends to discuss a book? We lead very busy lives, so the more integrated and interesting activities are, the more likely we will do them.

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We had the fortune to interview Dr. Brett Steenbarger on Enhancing Trader Performance and The Psychology of Trading as we launched our Neuroscience Interview Series.

Below, Expert Contributor Dr. Janice Dorn provides an in-depth brain-based discussion of the topic, concluding that "The brain is the most powerful structure in the known universe and the only trading tool that the trader needs to become an expert."

No matter whether you are a Pro or Amateur Trader...this will certainly exercise your brain! (Dr. Dorn is preparing more articles on trading performance and the brain...so stay tuned).

This is Your Brain On Trading

-- By Dr. Janice Dorn 

The opening bell sounds, and sixty million traders enter the greatest arena in the world to do battle with each other. They put their money, beliefs and skills on the line as they make decisions to buy and sell. Welcome to the financial markets where billions of dollars are won and lost every day. Volatility compels all to engage their brains in the continuous process of decision making. What separates the winning from losing traders is the way they use their most powerful trading tool—the human brain.

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Cognitive training is showing a tremendous potential to expand working memory, a capacity once thought limited and untrainable.

If you have enough working memory to both be processing this information and developing your own thoughts, you may be thinking now, a) what exactly is Working Memory?, and b) why do we even care?. Well, Dr. Bill Klemm answers those questions, and more, below. Please enjoy one of the most insightful articles on the subject we have seen in a long while, which we are proud to bring to SharpBrains readers.

- Alvaro

How Well People Think Depends On Working Memory

- By  Dr. Bill Klemm

Imagine dialing a phone number by having to look up each digit one at a time in the phone book. Normally, you look up the number and remember all seven digits long enough to get it dialed. Even with one digit at a time, you would have to remember each digit long enough to get it dialed. What if your brain could not even do that! We call this kind of remembering, “working memory,” because that is what the brain works with. Working memory is critical to everyday living. 

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(Hat tip: Boing Boing)

The CIA has posted the full text of one of its guidebooks, "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis", published in 1999 by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence.

Haven't had time to play with it yet, but these quotes sound fascinating:

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