Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Brain Fitness Software Trends

Some very interesting brain fitness software market news:

1) Scientific Learning To Buy Out Soliloquy

- “Scientific Learning Corp. has announced that it will acquire Soliloquy Learning from JTT Holdings. Both Scientific Learning and Soliloquy provide technology solutions for education. The acquisition will cost SLC about $11 million and is expected to be completed this month.”

- “Scientific Learning is the developer of Fast ForWord, a family of reading intervention tools targeted toward students who are characterized as struggling learners and designed to develop the required “neurocognitive skills” for reading and learning in general. Soliloquy is also a reading intervention developer.”

Comment: this acquisition consolidates Scientific Learning (NSDQ: SCIL) as the leading company in the education segment of the brain fitness market. It will be interesting to track what research gets done on the neural and cognitive effects of Soliloquy, since Scientific Learning’s Fast Forword is backed by extensive literature.

2) Technomedia Partners With SBT to Accelerate Its International Expansion

- “Technomedia, a Canadian provider of talent management and human capital development solutions, announced its partnership with the SBT (Scientific Brain Training) group, a European provider of training and evaluation of cognitive functions.” Read the rest of this entry »

Stress Management Workshop for International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day 2007.

Global consulting company Accenture organized a series of events, and I was fortunate to lead a fun workshop on The Neuroscience of Stress and Stress Management in their San Francisco office, helping over 125 accomplished women (and a few men) learn what stress is, its implications for our brain functioning, performance and health, and of course some tips and techniques to develop our “stress management” muscles. It was an honor to be able to wrap up a great event that included District Attorney Kamala D. Harris, two of the co-authors of This is Not the Life I Ordered, a video by Senator Dianne Feinstein, and some great Accenture women.

We discussed how stress is the emotional and physiological reaction to a threat, whether real or imagined, that results in a series of adaptations by our bodies. And how stress management can bring a variety of benefits: sustained peak performance, cognitive flexibility, memory, decision making, and even longevity. 
You can see a very interesting example of the relationship between attention, memory and stress with this experiment: Attention and working memory

Let me share some key take-aways from the workshop, together with some exercises we used to illustrate key points:

1) Stress can be a major roadblock for peak performance and health

 

2) Some tips and techniques to better manage stress:
a) Pick your battles Read the rest of this entry »

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