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Brain Fitness News and Events

Upcoming Events: I will be speaking at five Health, Education and Gaming events over the next couple of months to introduce findings from our recent market report. Please introduce yourself if you attend any of these events.

Preventing Memory Loss-Special Issue: Congressional Quarterly Researcher, one of the main publications on Capitol Hill, published an impressive 24-page special issue titled Preventing Memory Loss. Highly recommended if you want to be on top of the latest research trends and their policy implications.

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Very good article in the LA Times today. Like a StairMaster for the brain: Can mental workouts improve the mind’s agility? Baby boomer concerns stimulate an industry expansion.

The reporter, Melissa Healy, reviews the healthy aging segment in the Brain Fitness field. A few selected quotes:

- “There is plausibility, both biological and behavioral, to the claim that these may work,” says Molly Wagster, chief of the National Institute on Aging’s neuropsychology branch. “But it is still a situation of ‘buyer beware.’ ”

- “I see this as a new frontier of fitness overall,” says Alvaro Fernandez, founder and chief executive of the website SharpBrains .com, which tracks the business and science of brain-training. Americans already understand the value of physical fitness as a means of preserving the body’s proper function and preventing age-related diseases, says Fernandez. He predicts that cognitive fitness will become a goal to which Americans equally aspire as we learn more about aging and the brain.
- (Dr. Elkhonon) Goldberg, who provides scientific advice on the website http://www.sharpbrains.com/, says that as neuroscientists use imaging technologies to “see” the cellular changes that come with learning, he grows more confident that well-designed training programs can have discernible everyday effects in preserving or repairing the intellectual function of older adults. “This is shared hardware” that’s being changed in the brain, “and to the extent you somehow enhance it, that will have wide-ranging effects,” Goldberg says. “It provides a much more compelling raison d’être for this whole business.”

The article adds that “Americans this year are expected to invest $225 million in these programs — up from just $70 million in 2003 — in an effort to tune up the brain, strengthen the memory and forestall or reverse the cognitive slippage that often comes with age, psychiatric disease, stroke or medical treatments.”

Our breakdown for those 2007 US predictions are as follows: $80m for the Consumer segment, $60m in K12 Education, $50m in Clinical applications, and $35m in the Corporate segment. The Consumer segment, with a healthy aging value proposition, is the most recent one but the most rapidly growing.

Read the full article: Like a StairMaster for the brain.

PS: the article also says “In the last three years, these brainpower-boosting programs have proliferated, with names like MindFit, Happy Neuron, Brain Fitness and Lumosity.”.. if there are reporters reading this, please avoid future confusion by naming Posit Science’s program “Posit Science Brain Fitness Program 2.0″. Brain Fitness refers to the full category.

Today we interview Dr. Arthur Lavin, Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Case Western School of Medicine, pediatrician in private practice, and one of the first providers of Cogmed Working Memory Training in the US (the program whose research we discussed with Dr. Torkel Klingberg and Dr. Bradley Gibson). Dr. Lavin has a long standing interest in technology-as evidenced by Microsoft’s recognition of his paperless office- and in brain research and applications-he trained with esteemed Mel Levine from All Kinds of Minds-.

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Key take-aways:

- Schools today are not yet in a position to effectively help kids with cognitive issues deal with increasing cognitive demands.

- Working Memory is a cognitive skill fundamental to planning, sequencing, and executing school-related work.

- Working Memory can be trained, as evidenced by Dr. Lavin’s work, based on Cogmed Working Memory Training, with kids who have attention deficits.

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Context on cognitive fitness and schools

AF (Alvaro Fernandez): Dr. Lavin, thanks for being with us. It is not very common for a pediatrician to have such an active interest in brain research and cognitive fitness. Can you explain the source of your interest?

AL (Arthur Lavin): Throughout my life I have been fascinated by how the mind works. Both from the research point of view and the practical one: how can scientists’ increasing knowledge improve kids’ lives? We now live in an truly exciting era in which solid scientific progress in neuroscience is at last creating opportunities to improve people’s actual cognitive function. The progress Cogmed has achieved in creating a program that can make great differences in the lives of children with attention deficits is one of the most exciting recent developments. My colleague Ms. Susan Glaser and I recently published two books: Who’s Boss: Moving Families from Conflict to Collaboration (Collaboration Press, 2006) and Baby & Toddler Sleep Solutions for Dummies (Wiley, 2007), so I not only see myself as a pediatrician but also an educator. I see parents in real need of guidance and support. They usually are both very skeptical, since Read the rest of this entry »