Posit Science Corporation announced today, at the annual International Long Term Care Insurance Conference, the launch of a new program called  InSight(TM) for visual processing training.

We have not yet had the chance to analyze the program, but several pertinent open questions posed by Alvaro last month to Posit Science representatives (see Posit Science Brain Fitness Program 2.0: Open Questions) haven’t yet been addressed. Specifically:

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Over the last few days we have seen an engaging conversation going on. In a couple of posts, representatives from Posit Science brain fitness gym have left comments that have prompted me to ask a series of detailed questions. I will present those questions in a post, so they are easier to find.

Eric, Henry: please address these questions, so we all contribute to helping consumers and institutions navigate through this emerging landscape of “brain fitness gyms” and separate what is real today from what is promising and may be real tomorrow. Read the rest of this entry »

That is the goal of Stanford University Media X: to foster deep collaborations between industry and academia, as highlighted in Business Week’s recent article The Virtual Meeting Room. The 5th Annual Media X Conference on Research, Collaboration, Innovation and Productivity served its purpose well for the last couple of days: very fun and insightful presentations by Stanford researchers (and a few external experts) and a great list of participants to get to know.

No doubt, a great source of mental stimulation for all of us. Charles House, Media X’s Executive Director, framed the dialogue as an effort to generate the right questions and then engage the best minds in answering them.

Some of (my) main take-aways

• “The world does not come to us as neat disciplinary problems, but as complex interdisciplinary challenges” (great quote by Dean John Hennessy)
• Personal Robotics is poised to explode soon-and software will be key (predicted by Paul Saffo)
• An inconvenient truth: Al Gore had to be convinced to bring his presentation into a movie, since he was very attached to each and every of his X hundred slides. We are happy it happened!
• Neuroscientists know what patterns in the brain indicate certain intentions-and are starting to use technologies to help immobilized patients communicate with external devices based merely on their thoughts
• We need to learn to embrace change- a lot of it is coming!

Now, some key points from several presentations (there were more than these, but I couldn’t attend all). I encourage you to visit the website of each presenter if you are interested in learning more about that topic.

a. Paul Saffo on Innovation

• It usually takes 20 years since basic science until applications reach inflection point and take the world by storm
• Next big thing: personal robotics. Indicators: Read the rest of this entry »