Study Questions Effectiveness Of $80 Million Per Year ‘Brain Exercise Products Industry for Elderly (Science Daily)

- “There is much research on the benefits of cognitive rehabilitation strategies among elderly who already experience mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s disease, as well as on the positive impact of physical exercise. The researchers, however, wanted to evaluate current research that would focus on the impact of cognitive interventions in the healthy elderly population.”

- “…they concluded that there was no evidence indicating that structured cognitive intervention programs had an impact on the progression of dementia in the healthy elderly population”

Comment:  we have not reviewed the analysis yet, so cannot comment in depth. However, just from the press release, we see a few potential problems in how the study was framed, reducing its practical value: Read the rest of this entry »

We just received this quote of how a major health system is using our Brain Fitness Market Report:

“At Sutter Health Partners we recognize the importance of brain health and how much the health of the brain and the body are interdependent.  The market report helped us further target our coaching efforts to integrate brain fitness and upgrade our entire coaching platform.  It is easy to read and gives you the industry perspective in a thorough yet concise manner.  I highly recommend it!”

– Margaret Sabin, CEO of Sutter Health Partners and VP, New Product Development, at Sutter Health.

You may wonder, “what is the link between  wellness coaching and brain fitness”?

In practice, good health and wellness coaches provide excellent brain health advice, given that the areas they focus on (nutrition, physical exercise, stress management) do play an important role in maintaining our brains in top shape.

Additionally, pioneers  such as Sutter Health Partners are adding a Brain “lens” to their work. How?

First, by better understanding and explaining the brain benefits of what they already do, in order to provide additional motivation to stick with healthy behaviors. For example, most people will be able to recite multiple benefits of moderate cardiovascular exercise. But how many know  that it can also contribute to neurogenesis -the creation of new neurons – in adult brains?

Second, by starting to offer brain fitness guidelines to clients who want too go beyond crossword puzzles and sudoku.

I had a great training session with a number of Sutter Health coaches last week – let me summarize some of the main points we covered. Read the rest of this entry »

You have may have seen a few weeks ago the interview between former US presidential contender John Edwards and reporter Bob Woodruff. All the resulting media coverage centered on Edwards’ declarations. However, there is something much more remarkable that surfaced at that interview: Bob Woodruff’s spectacular recovery.

This is the same reporter who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury when a roadside bomb detonated next to his vehicle in January 29th 2006 as he was covering news developments in Iraq.

Today we are fortunate to interview Lee Woodruff, Bob’s wife and pillar throughout his recovery. Lee and Bob co-wrote the fantastic book In an Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing.

Alvaro Fernandez: Lee, many thanks for your time. I was amazed reading your book, where you share your journey, and then watching Bob interview John Edwards, the best display I can imagine of his recovery. Can you please summarize for us what Bob -and you- went through since January 2006?

Lee Woodruff: As you know, Bob suffered a life-threatening traumatic brain injury in Iraq. He was promptly taken under military care and underwent a series of surgeries for head injuries, with a joint Army & Air Force neurosurgical team in Iraq, in a US Army Medical Command hospital in Germany, and at Bethesda Naval Hospital, back here in the US.

During this time, spanning around 4 months, he spent 37 days in coma, and his skull had to be surgically rebuilt. The cognitive rehabilitation process started then, at a medical facility closer home.

Can you please explain what kind of cognitive rehab Bob has gone though-both in a formal way, with a therapist, and informally, on his own?

The first thing I’d like to say is that rehab is a long process. Doctors told me that Bob, despite the severity of his injuries, had better chances to recover than other victims, because of the reserve of neurons and connections he had built thanks to Read the rest of this entry »

Did you read about the recent experiment where young chimps displayed amazing visual working memory capability, beating humans?

- You can watch a short video here.

- Lumos Labs has released a very fun game to test your own skills: try out this Chimp Game!

 

Also, some very good recent news articles:

1) Is it worth going to the mind gym? (New Scientist). This is one of the best articles we have read in a while (unfortunately requires subscription).

- “Birdwatching is the brainchild of San Francisco-based Lumos Labs, just one of the dozens of companies that have sprung up in recent months to cash in on the “brain-training” craze. Like most of its competitors, the theory behind …”

Comments: the article introduces readers to much of the research and scientists we discuss in our blog, such as Torkel Klingberg’s work and recent results from the IMPACT study. The article would have been even better had Daniel Gopher been interviewed on his work improving cognitive performance of military pilots and basketball players.

2) Innovation: Your Brain Needs Just as Much Exercise as Your Body (Fox Business Network)

- “The market, however, is still small. According to Alvaro Fernandez , who co-founded market research and consulting firm SharpBrains, which is focused solely on the field of brain fitness, in 2007 the market was valued at $225 million, which is up from $150 million in 2005. Fernandez thinks there’s potential for it to surge, reaching more than $2 billion by 2016.”

Comments:  Very good article. Those estimates refer to the whole brain fitness software market to assess and train cognitive skills, including Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Katz, a San Diego clinical psychologist with decades of experience helping ADD/ ADHD kids and adults, and former Board Member of CHADD, and I had a very good meeting with a few school superintendents on Saturday.

We discussed the research state-of-the-art, current ADD/ ADHD interventions and the future of prevention-driven interventions.

Some highlights from our talk:

- More and more researchers are coming to see that the label “Attention deficit” was probably not the most fortunate one. Kids and adults with ADD/ ADHD can pay attention, when they are engaged in certain tasks, so the underlying problem is not a deficit of attention.

- ADD/ ADHD is not a problem of knowing, but a problem of doing. The bottleneck may reside in executive functions such as so-called working memory. The problem is execution, internalized behavior, not conceptual knowledge.

- For more information on Executive functions, you can check the excellent review in the American Journal of Psychiatry, of Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg’s book The Executive Brain

- Working memory is the ability to hold different things on line and manipulate them in real time in order to solve a problem, complete a task…

- When asked if “working memory” and “short-term memory” are the same, Mark explained that they refer to similar concepts, if not the same, but that researchers stopped using the term “short-term” memory many years ago, to make it clear that it is an active, not passive, skill.  In fact, he added, maybe it should be called “working attention” rather than “working memory”.

- We discussed the fortunate trend that many schools are migrating towards a public health model in helping kids with learning disabilities and ADD/ ADHD, focusing on more prevention at early ages than on reactive interventions to major problems.

- Working memory can be trained by intensive and targeted Brain Fitness Programs supported by the use of computer-based programs, like RoboMemo, the program that I came to know last year after a great Scientific American article that mentioned their clinical study with kids with ADD/ ADHD, published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (See research here).

You can read more information on the science of Brain Fitness Programs.