In late April 2010, an inde­pen­dent expert panel orga­nized by the NIH released a thought­ful report on the state of the sci­ence for pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and cog­ni­tive decline*. The report sum­ma­rizes the panel’s review of the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture by saying:

“Firm con­clu­sions can­not be drawn about the asso­ci­a­tion of mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors with cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

Which was basi­cally reported as “noth­ing can pre­vent Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Which is very true. And also very dif­fer­ent from what most read­ers may assume it means.

Note: You can keep read­ing the arti­cle What the recent NIH Expert Panel on Alzheimer’s Pre­ven­tion Means – and Doesn’t Mean in the web­site of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Aging (arti­cle link opens PDF). ASA recently asked me to write a cou­ple of arti­cles on lat­est brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health trends for their Min­dAlert ini­tia­tive, and this is the first of two.

Now that we are prepar­ing our 2010 mar­ket report we are ana­lyz­ing in depth a num­ber of impor­tant recent devel­op­ments. A major one, whose impli­ca­tions haven’t yet been prop­erly digested, was the pub­li­ca­tion in the UK of a fan­tas­tic series of pol­icy, sci­en­tific and tech­nol­ogy reports by the Fore­sight Project on Men­tal Cap­i­tal and Well­be­ing. If you want to have a stim­u­lat­ing and sub­stan­tial read, you can down­load the Exec­u­tive Sum­mary (and most other reports) for free.

I was think­ing about their main rec­om­men­da­tion (the need to focus more atten­tion, as a soci­ety and as indi­vid­u­als, on build­ing men­tal cap­i­tal and well­be­ing tra­jec­to­ries along the life­course), as I came across these appar­ently com­pletely sep­a­rate news. Doesn’t the life­long men­tal cap­i­tal frame­work add new light on these articles?

Study Sees Gains In Good Child Care (Wall Street Journal)

A study released Fri­day found that ben­e­fits asso­ci­ated with child-care providers and preschool pro­grams that encour­age such activ­i­ties as lan­guage, read­ing and game-playing last well into ado­les­cence. In par­tic­u­lar, teenagers who had such child-care per­formed sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter aca­d­e­m­i­cally than those given low-quality or no care out­side the home.

High-quality care was defined as an envi­ron­ment in which care-givers or teach­ers were warm, engaged and sen­si­tive to a child’s needs, and pro­vided cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion through activ­i­ties that would pro­mote lan­guage, such as read­ing, con­ver­sa­tion and game-playing.

Time to Review Work­place Reviews? (New York Times)

The focus on work­place health comes as worker sat­is­fac­tion in the United States appears to be at an all-time low. The Con­fer­ence Board reported recently that just 45 per­cent of work­ers are sat­is­fied with their jobs, down from 61 per­cent in 1987. The find­ings, based on a sur­vey of 5,000 house­holds, show that the decline goes well beyond con­cerns about job secu­rity. Employ­ees are unhappy about the design of their jobs, the health of their orga­ni­za­tions and the qual­ity of their managers.

Dr. Sut­ton, whose new book “Good Boss, Bad Boss” (com­ing from Busi­ness Plus) argues that good bosses are essen­tial to work­place suc­cess, said sky­rock­et­ing health care costs should moti­vate busi­nesses to focus on ways to lower stress.

Alzheimer’s Pre­ven­tion or Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment (blog post based on NIH inde­pen­dent panel)

“Firm con­clu­sions can­not be drawn about the asso­ci­a­tion of mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors with cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

(Note: which is true, but, as we dis­cussed pre­vi­ously, this is being mis­un­der­stood to mean “there is noth­ing we can do to main­tain if not enhance our cog­ni­tive and self-regulation capac­i­ties,” which couldn’t be fur­ther from truth, based on the very sim­ple facts of life­long neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and neuroplasticity.)

(Editor’s note: Sharp­Brains Sum­mit attendee Steve Zanon wrote a very insight­ful com­ment to our pre­vi­ous post regard­ing the NIH inde­pen­dent panel on Alzheimer’s/ cog­ni­tive decline pre­ven­tion. We repub­lish com­ment here for eas­ier access.)

In the intro­duc­tions on day one of the NIH con­fer­ence Jenifer Croswell from OMAR out­lined three dif­fer­ent frames of ref­er­ence and deci­sion mak­ing in this con­text. She men­tioned (1) the indi­vid­ual and fam­ily based on per­sonal val­ues, (2) com­mu­nity doc­tors affect­ing their patients, and (3) rec­om­men­da­tions for an entire pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple which should only con­tain strong evi­den­tiary based infor­ma­tion. She indi­cated that this con­fer­ence would pro­duce a state­ment based on the third con­text and in that respect the panel has done a great job in high­light­ing the gaps that gov­ern­ment, indus­try & research need to focus on in order to most effec­tively move forward.

How­ever some good news for indi­vid­u­als did come out of the con­fer­ence. Pages 7 & 8 of the “Sys­tem­atic Evi­dence Review” (link opens new win­dow where you can down­load report as PDF) pro­vides a great snap­shot of all the asso­ci­ated fac­tors con­sid­ered at the con­fer­ence and their cur­rent sta­tus in terms of level of evi­dence. This doc­u­ment sum­marises the research from 25 sys­tem­atic reviews and 250 pri­mary research stud­ies which were fil­tered from searches that located 6907 cita­tions. The stud­ies were eval­u­ated for eli­gi­bil­ity and qual­ity, and data were abstracted on study design, demo­graph­ics, inter­ven­tion or pre­dic­tor fac­tor, and cog­ni­tive out­comes. The final report was peer reviewed. In terms of inde­pen­dence and weight of evi­dence this doc­u­ment is likely to pro­vide the strongest posi­tion on the sub­ject that we have today.

If we under­stand that all this evi­dence is still build­ing but clearly has strong direc­tion then I believe it is a good base­line (as of today) from which indi­vid­u­als may begin to make lifestyle choices. Of course as research pro­gresses the base­line will change but for now I think it is a solid foun­da­tion from which to work. Per­sonal pref­er­ences would guide choices but where the direc­tion of asso­ci­a­tion is cat­e­gorised as …..

• “no evi­dence” we should prob­a­bly con­sider ignoring
• “inad­e­quate evi­dence” we should prob­a­bly con­sider treat­ing as suspicious
• “increas­ing or decreas­ing risk” we should prob­a­bly con­sider to be strongly asso­ci­ated (but not defin­i­tive) and there­fore offer­ing promis­ing (but not cer­tain) lifestyle choices

So with any good risk man­age­ment strat­egy our best bet is to diver­sify risk across sev­eral of the most likely fac­tors. The “Sys­tem­atic Evi­dence Review” clearly iden­ti­fies the most likely risk fac­tors. We don’t have cer­tainty but we do have direc­tion and I think that is an encour­ag­ing mes­sage for the public.

The good news for those inter­ested in brain train­ing is that in the find­ings for cog­ni­tive decline (page 8), cog­ni­tive train­ing has the high­est level of evidence.

—

Rec­om­mended read­ing:  “Sys­tem­atic Evi­dence Review” of fac­tors that can decrease or increase risk of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and cog­ni­tive decline, by NIH inde­pen­dent panel

Here you have the March edi­tion of our monthly eNewslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this free Brain Fit­ness eNewslet­ter by email, using the box in the right column.

Designed to fos­ter inno­va­tion and best prac­tice shar­ing by cel­e­brat­ing out­stand­ing pio­neers who apply neuroplasticity-based research and tools in the “real world”, the new Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards are accept­ing entries until April 15th. You can sub­mit an entry, and learn about the Judges, Prizes and Fre­quently Asked Ques­tions, by click­ing on 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards. Win­ners will be announced on May 24th dur­ing the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit on the State of The Brain Fit­ness Market.

The Big Picture

A Decade After the Decade of the Brain:  “Dur­ing the past two decades, neu­ro­sci­en­tists have steadily built the case that the human brain, even when fully mature, is far more plastic—changing and malleable—than we orig­i­nally thought. It turns out that the brain (at all ages) is highly respon­sive to envi­ron­men­tal stim­uli and that con­nec­tions between neu­rons are dynamic and can rapidly change within min­utes of stim­u­la­tion”, says Dr. Nora Volkow, Direc­tor of one of the National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH), while dis­cussing the med­ical and edu­ca­tional impli­ca­tions of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in this arti­cle pre­pared for Dana Foundation’s Cere­brum.

Improv­ing Care through Pol­icy, Stan­dards, and Tech­nol­ogy: Patrick Dono­hue, founder of the Sarah Jane Brain Project, granted Sharp­Brains an extended inter­view to dis­cuss the PABI Plan in front of Con­gress, which may pass soon and help develop a model sys­tem for Pedi­atric Acquired Brain Injuries (PABI) which is the lead­ing cause of death and dis­abil­ity for chil­dren and young adults from birth through 25 years of age in the United States. This plan has the poten­tial to fun­da­men­tally trans­form brain care through the use of neu­roin­for­mat­ics and stan­darized sys­tems of care. As Patrick points out, “tech­nol­ogy is a very strong com­po­nent to ensure scal­a­bil­ity and fos­ter inno­va­tion. Our expec­ta­tion is that some genius stu­dent at MIT will find a way to ana­lyze all the med­ical records, find pat­terns and pre­dict poten­tial solu­tions that can help spe­cific patients.”

News

Cog­ni­tive therapy’s grow­ing adop­tion in the UK: Since the UK’s National Insti­tute for Health and Clin­i­cal Excel­lence (NICE) said that cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­apy (CBT) should be the first-line treat­ment for mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion –fol­lowed by drugs only if it proves unsuc­cess­ful– this type of men­tal train­ing is gain­ing wider pro­mo­tion by the National Health Ser­vice. We see US-based insur­ance com­pa­nies tak­ing good note.

Research Part­ner­ship on Cog­ni­tive Aging: The National Insti­tute on Aging and McK­night Foun­da­tion part­ner to invest $28m in research given that “emerg­ing evi­dence sug­gests that cer­tain inter­ven­tions — such as exer­cise, envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment, diet, social engage­ment, cog­ni­tive train­ing and stress reduc­tion — should be stud­ied more inten­sively to deter­mine if they might pre­vent or reduce declines in cog­ni­tive health”. We laud the ini­tia­tive, and fur­ther ask: Why $28 mil­lion and not, say, $300m (one dol­lar per liv­ing Amer­i­can who tomor­row will be one day older than he or she is today)?, Why the empha­sis on “pre­vent, reduce or reverse decline” and not on “develop, improve, main­tain brain func­tion­al­ity for qual­ity of life and productivity”?

Mind Stretch­ing

10 Mitos sobre el Cere­bro y el Entre­namiento Men­tal: By pop­u­lar demand, we trans­lated the arti­cle Debunk­ing 10 Brain and Brain Fit­ness Myths to Span­ish. Can you give it a try in Span­ish first and see how it goes? If you are look­ing for added men­tal exer­cise and want to help us trans­late it to other lan­guages, please let us know!

Brain Fit­ness Sur­vey: please spare 5–10 min­utes with us, answer­ing a few stim­u­lat­ing ques­tions such as “How impor­tant do you believe are the fol­low­ing brain func­tions to thrive per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally in the XXI century”?

Finally, a quick note. I am going to travel exten­sively in Europe between June and Novem­ber 2010. If you want to pro­pose speak­ing or con­sult­ing engage­ments there, please Con­tact Us.

Have a stim­u­lat­ing Spring!

We are receiv­ing many good ques­tions about the new Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards; below you have a few Fre­quently Asked Ques­tions. Please let us know if you have any more questions!

Is there a for­mal nom­i­na­tion process?
No. Any orga­ni­za­tion can sub­mit an entry, and/ or encour­age oth­ers to do so.

Can a ven­dor and a client orga­ni­za­tion sub­mit a joint entry? if not, who sub­mits the entry, and who wins the Award?
The Awards are designed to directly rec­og­nize Users, not Ven­dors. The pri­mary orga­ni­za­tion to sub­mit an entry and receive the Award is the one using lat­est tools and pro­grams (technology-based on not) to take care of the brain fit­ness of their own clients/ patients/ employ­ees. Now, the tools and pro­grams used will be pub­licly rec­og­nized as part of Award Winner’s entry and case study.

Your eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria include “Value of Lessons Learned” (20%). What you mean by ‘lessons learned”?
Pio­neers are will­ing to learn by doing and to share insights from their expe­ri­ence with other orga­ni­za­tions which may be con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives. For exam­ple, what were some dif­fi­cul­ties in imple­ment­ing and grow­ing the pro­gram? what was end user response? how were results mea­sured? what tool/s were selected and why?

Will the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the sub­mit­ted Entries be shared? They may be great case stud­ies
Full 3 Win­ning Entries will be shared pub­licly, while full Final­ist Entries will only be shared with Sum­mit participants.

For more infor­ma­tion, check out the Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards page.

We are pleased to announce the new annual Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards, designed to fos­ter inno­va­tion and best prac­tice shar­ing by cel­e­brat­ing out­stand­ing pio­neers who apply neuroplasticity-based research and tools in the “real world”. The awards will rec­og­nize orga­ni­za­tions that are devis­ing and imple­ment­ing results-oriented and scal­able ini­tia­tives that demon­strate their com­mit­ment to the brain fit­ness of their clients, mem­bers, patients, stu­dents or employ­ees, and show­case inno­v­a­tive uses of non-invasive tools to improve cog­ni­tive and emo­tional func­tions and “real-world” outcomes.

Prizes

1 Grand Prize Win­ner will receive: $2,500 check, con­sult­ing ses­sion with Sharp­Brains staff, 2 tick­ets for each Sharp­Brains Sum­mit in 2011; 10 signed copies of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness.

2 Sil­ver Prize Win­ners will each receive: $1,000 check, con­sult­ing ses­sion with Sharp­Brains staff, 2 tick­ets for each Sharp­Brains Sum­mit in 2011, 10 signed copies of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness.

7 Final­ists will each receive: $250 check, 1 ticket for each Sharp­Brains Sum­mit in 2011, 10 signed copies of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness.

How to Enter

Orga­ni­za­tions can use this Entry Form to sub­mit entries by end of Thurs­day, April 15th, 2010.

The 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards will rec­og­nize unique ini­tia­tives that not only bring mea­sur­able ben­e­fits to end users but also are closely con­nected to fur­ther­ing the objec­tives of the orga­ni­za­tion in which they oper­ate, via (for exam­ple) increased customer/ patient sat­is­fac­tion, employee engage­ment, brand­ing ben­e­fits, pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment gains, and oth­ers. All eli­gi­ble sub­mis­sions will be eval­u­ated based on the fol­low­ing criteria:

• 20%: Mea­sur­able Ben­e­fits for end users
• 20%: Mea­sur­able Ben­e­fits for organization
• 20%: Cre­ativ­ity and Inno­va­tion of approach
• 20%: Scal­a­bil­ity of initiative
• 20%: Value of Lessons Learned

Process

March 10th: Awards announced
By April 15th: All entries col­lected
By April 30th: Sharp­Brains staff selects 10 final­ists
By May 15th: judges score final­ists and select 1 Grand Prize Win­ner and 2 Sil­ver Prize Win­ners
May 24th: Win­ners will be announced on Mon­day, May 24th, at the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit — The State of the Brain Fit­ness Market

Con­firmed Judges

• Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Co-Founder of SharpBrains
• Baba Shiv, Pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Busi­ness School
• Bill Tucker, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Edu­ca­tion Sector
• Brian Mur­phy, Pres­i­dent of De Anza College
• Charles Jen­nings, Direc­tor of the McGov­ern Insti­tute Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Pro­gram, MIT
• Chuck House, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford Media X
• Colin Mil­ner, CEO of the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil on Active Aging
• Eliz­a­beth Edgerly, National Spokesper­son for Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion “Main­tain Your Brain”
• Glo­ria Cavanaugh, For­mer Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging
• Ken­neth Kosik, Co-Director of UC-Santa Bar­bara Neu­ro­science Research Institute
• Mar­garet Mor­ris, Senior Researcher at Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group
• Nigel Smith, AARP Strat­egy and Plan­ning Director
• P Murali Doraiswamy, Head of Bio­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try at Duke University
• Rod Fal­con, Direc­tor of Health Hori­zons Pro­gram at the Insti­tute For The Future
• Stephen Mack­nik, Lab Direc­tor at Bar­row Neu­ro­log­i­cal Institute
• Susan Hoff­man, Direc­tor of OLLI @ Berkeley

May 24th Summit

2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Award Win­ners will be announced dur­ing the Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit on the State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket, to be held on Mon­day, May 24th, 2010, from 8am to 4pm US Pacific Time. Reg­is­tered atten­dees will receive an elec­tronic copy of Sharp­Brains’ annual report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2010, the most com­pre­hen­sive report on the cat­e­gory, to be released and dis­cussed dur­ing the Summit.

Sum­mit Agenda

8am. Bird’s-Eye View: Top Events, Indi­ca­tors, Trends

8.30am. Mar­ket Sur­vey on Beliefs, Atti­tudes, Pur­chase Habits
9am. Com­pet­i­tive Land­scape: Lead­ing Assess­ments and Train­ing Tools
9.30am. State-of-the-Art Research and Devel­op­ment
10am. Water­cooler Chat

10.30am. Con­sumer Data and Trends
11am. Health­care, Insur­ance, Senior Liv­ing Data and Trends
11.30am. Lunch Break

12.30pm. K12 Data and Trends
1pm. Mil­i­tary, Cor­po­rate, Sports Data and Trends
1.30pm. Future Direc­tions — Pro­jec­tions, Themes and Risks
2pm. Water­cooler Chat

2.30pm. 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards
3.30-4pm. Water­cooler Chat and Wrap-Up

Past Sum­mit attendees/annual report buy­ers include:  AARP, Aber­dare Ven­tures, Abing­ton Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal, Agility Group, Ale­gent Health, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing, Aspyr Media, Bay­crest, BCM Tech­nolo­gies, Bel­mont Vil­lage, Bin­na­cle Cap­i­tal, BKIN Tech­nolo­gies, Bon Sec­ours New York Health Sys­tem, Brain Resource, Brook­dale Senior Liv­ing, Camp­bell Soup Com­pany, Care One, Chor­at­ech, Clin­ton Global Ini­tia­tive, Club One, CNS Vital Signs, Cogmed, Cog­ni­tive Media, CogState, CORE Health, Credit Suisse, Dakim, Easter Seals, EDGE Inno­va­tion Net­work, Eric­s­son, Ernst & Young, FDA, First Cur­rency R &D, Fit­Brains, Fonterra, Hap­pyNeu­ron, Insti­tute for Behav­ioral Health Infor­mat­ics, Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, Inter­na­tional Mas­ters Pub­lish­ers, Inver­ness Med­ical Inno­va­tions, John­son & John­son, John­son & John­son Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, Kaiser Per­ma­nente, LEAF, Learn­ingRx, Lumos Labs, Medi­s­olve, Merit Enter­tain­ment, Neu­ro­Care Net­work, Mind­ware Lab, Neu­roim­age, NovaV­i­sion, One Lap­top Per Child, Ontario Long Term Care Asso­ci­a­tion, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions, Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence Uni­ver­sity, Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes, Osmium Part­ners, Pfizer, Pied­mont Gar­dens, Posit Sci­ence, Proac­tive Aging, Proc­ter & Gam­ble, Sci­en­tific Learn­ing, Sov­er­eign Health, Sun Microsys­tems, Sun­rise Senior Liv­ing, Sut­ter Health, The Well­ness Alliance, Unilever, USAA, US Army Research Lab, Tech­nol­ogy Part­ners, vibrant­Brains, Vis­it­ing Angels, West­min­ster Communities.

You can Learn More about Inno­va­tion Awards and May 24th Sum­mit Here.

Very inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant recent study on the impact of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion (noticed thanks to heads up by Sharp­Brains reader John):

Build­ing Fit Minds Under Stress (Sci­ence Daily)

• “high-stress U.S. mil­i­tary group prepar­ing for deploy­ment to Iraq has demon­strated a pos­i­tive link between mind­ful­ness train­ing, or MT, and improve­ments in mood and work­ing memory”
• The study also sug­gests that suf­fi­cient mind­ful­ness train­ing (MT) prac­tice may pro­tect against func­tional impair­ments asso­ci­ated with high-stress chal­lenges that require a tremen­dous amount of cog­ni­tive con­trol, self-awareness, sit­u­a­tional aware­ness and emo­tional regulation

Please note that this wasn’t a prop­erly ran­dom­ized study, so in fact much/ most of the effect may be due to the placebo effect, but still the find­ings seem to be con­sis­tent with a grow­ing body of evi­dence on the brain-based effects of struc­tured men­tal train­ing in the form of med­i­ta­tion (usu­ally mind­ful­ness meditation).

Full study Here (opens PDF).

Related arti­cles:

• Med­i­ta­tion on the Brain — a Con­ver­sa­tion with Andrew New­berg: “What is hap­pen­ing is that spe­cific prac­tices that have tra­di­tion­ally been asso­ci­ated with reli­gious and spir­i­tual con­texts may also be very use­ful from a main­stream, sec­u­lar, health point of view, beyond those contexts.”
• Mind­ful Kids, Peace­ful Schools: With eyes closed and deep breaths, stu­dents are learn­ing a new method to reduce anx­i­ety, con­flict, and atten­tion dis­or­ders. But don’t call it meditation.
• Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with Atten­tion Deficits: David Rabiner com­ments on a recent pub­lished study, say­ing that “although this is clearly a pre­lim­i­nary study, the results are both inter­est­ing and encouraging”

Sharp­Brains Sum­mit par­tic­i­pant Peter Reiner, from the National Core for Neu­roethics at the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia, shares his main Sum­mit take-aways on the poten­tial and chal­lenges of non-invasive tech­nolo­gies for brain fitness.

He syn­the­sizes the oppor­tu­nity well: 1) Cog­ni­tion is not mono­lithic 2) Soft­ware is adap­tive 3) and seems safe, elab­o­rat­ing that:

“Will brain fit­ness soft­ware dom­i­nate the world of cog­ni­tive enhance­ment? Prior to this con­fer­ence I was quite skep­ti­cal, but the over­all impres­sion that I was left with was that brain fit­ness soft­ware may turn out to have some dis­tinct advan­tages over phar­ma­co­log­i­cal approaches.

1. Cog­ni­tion is not mono­lithic: there are mul­ti­ple domains of cog­ni­tion to be tar­geted, and the deficits that indi­vid­u­als have as they age vary. The soft­ware lends itself to both assess­ing which domain an indi­vid­ual is in need of ‘tun­ing up’ and then direct­ing them to a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct that is best capa­ble of improv­ing that domain of cog­ni­tion. Phar­ma­co­log­i­cal cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, even as it matures, may include drugs that tar­get par­tic­u­lar domains. How­ever, the devel­op­ment costs for each drug are so great that it seems unlikely to me that there will be as many domains of cog­ni­tion tar­geted with drugs as with brain fit­ness software.
2. Brain fit­ness soft­ware is pro­gres­sive: as one becomes more pro­fi­cient at the task, it becomes dif­fi­cult. Such indi­vid­ual tai­lor­ing is dif­fi­cult to achieve with phar­ma­co­log­i­cal agents.
3. Using soft­ware is prob­a­bly safe. I say prob­a­bly, because as Mike Merz­er­nich pointed out, nobody has sys­tem­at­i­cally inves­ti­gate the poten­tial side effects of using this soft­ware. There may be some, but the like­li­hood of side effects is rel­a­tively low.

Prob­a­bly the biggest dis­ad­van­tage with brain fit­ness soft­ware is that you have to do it; just like phys­i­cal exer­cise, if you don’t reg­u­larly ‘exer­cise’ your brain, you won’t improve. The soft­ware now needs to move from being use­ful to being com­pelling. Tak­ing a cue from the gam­ing industry’s suc­cess might be an idea whose time has come.”

You can read his whole blog post click­ing on Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Update.

Based on what we see, I’d say that top-down and bottom-up approaches are com­ple­men­tary, so the ques­tion will be when and how to use each on its own vs. combined.

Given the fact I love Kin­dle, and some of our Twit­ter friends had been ask­ing for a Kin­dle ver­sion of our new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness…well, here it is:
Amazon.com: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (Kin­dle Edi­tion, $9.99)

The book has also received two excel­lent new endorsements:

“Kudos for an excel­lent resource! This Sharp­Brains Guide is full of top notch infor­ma­tion, pro­vides prac­ti­cal tips and helps sep­a­rate hype from hope in the brain health arena.“
— Eliz­a­beth Edgerly, Ph.D., Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer, Alzheimer’s Association

“The Sharp­Brains’ Guide to Brain Fit­ness helped answer many of my ques­tions on the impor­tance of both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise to stay sharp as we age, as they act in syn­ergy on one another. The Guide also pro­vided guide­lines and spe­cific calls to action to expand what we tra­di­tion­ally do in our fit­ness clubs. This is an impor­tant book for any­one in the fit­ness indus­try, and, for that mat­ter, for any­one with a brain.“
— Robin Klaus, Chair­man, Club One Fit­ness Centers

More infor­ma­tion on the book: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness

Also: Book Club Dis­cus­sion Guide

Think about this: How can any­one take care of his or her brain when every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which seem to con­tra­dict each other?

Do sup­ple­ments improve mem­ory? Do you need both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise or is one of them enough? Which brain train­ing approach, if any, is worth one’s time and money?

We tried to address these ques­tions, and many oth­ers, in our recent book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (182 pages, $24.95), that we pre­sented at Games for Health Con­fer­ence last week. The book is the result of over two years of exten­sive research includ­ing more than a hun­dred inter­views with sci­en­tists, pro­fes­sion­als and con­sumers, and a deep review of the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture, led by neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Elkhonon Gold­berg and myself with the help of cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist Pas­cale Mich­e­lon. As we wrote in the Intro­duc­tion, what we wanted to do first of all was to debunks these 10 myths on brain health and brain training:

Myth 1. Genes deter­mine the fate of our brains.
Facts: Life­long neu­ro­plas­tic­ity allows our lifestyles and actions to play a mean­ing­ful role in how our brains phys­i­cally evolve, espe­cially given longer life expectancy.

Myth 2. Aging means auto­matic decline.
Facts: There is noth­ing inher­ently fixed in the pre­cise tra­jec­tory of how brain func­tions evolve as we age.

Myth 3. Med­ica­tion is the main hope for cog­ni­tive enhance­ment.
Facts: Non-invasive inter­ven­tions can have com­pa­ra­ble and more durable effects, side effect-free.

Myth 4. We will soon have a Magic Pill or Gen­eral Solu­tion to solve all our cog­ni­tive chal­lenges.
Facts: A multi-pronged approach is rec­om­mended, cen­tered around nutri­tion, stress man­age­ment, and both phys­i­cal and men­tal exercise.

Myth 5. There is only one “Use It or Lose it”.
Facts: The brain is com­posed of a num­ber of spe­cial­ized units. Our life and pro­duc­tiv­ity depend on a vari­ety of brain func­tions, not just one.

Myth 6. All brain activ­i­ties or exer­cises are equal.
Facts: Var­ied and tar­geted exer­cises are the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents in brain train­ing so that a wide range of brain func­tions can be stimulated.

Myth 7. There is only one way to train your brain.
Facts: Brain func­tions can be impacted in a num­ber of ways: through med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­apy, cog­ni­tive training.

Myth 8. We all have some­thing called “Brain Age”.
Facts: Brain age is a fic­tion. No two indi­vid­u­als have the same brain or expres­sion of brain functions.

Myth 9. That “brain age”‚ can be reversed by 10, 20, 30 years.
Facts: Brain train­ing can improve spe­cific brain func­tions, but, with research avail­able today, can­not be said to roll back one “brain age”‚ by a num­ber of years.

Myth 10. All human brains need the same brain train­ing.
Facts: As in phys­i­cal fit­ness, users must ask them­selves: What func­tions do I need to improve on? In what time­frame? What is my budget?

Do you have other myths in mind you would like  us to address?

We have started to receive great feed­back from the health­care com­mu­nity, such as this email from a neu­ro­sur­geon in Texas:

“I really like the book, it is com­pre­hen­sive with­out being too tech­ni­cal. I have rec­om­mended it to sev­eral patients. There are some other books that I expected would be greeted with enthu­si­asm, but were too com­plex for most of my patients. I think this book is right in the sweet spot”.

A short, sweet, enter­tain­ing read of a com­plex topic, with timely (writ­ten in 1/09) reviews of 21 top tech­nol­ogy prod­ucts, as well as informed and expert pre­dic­tions of where this bur­geon­ing brain-fitness field is headed. More impor­tantly, after you read it, you’ll have a good, detailed sense of where you, per­son­ally, can act to improve your own couch-potato brain — and how to keep it fit and flex­i­ble your whole life. The Sharp­Brains Guide To Brain Fit­ness reminds of us all why books (and not just googling a topic) can be well worth your time and money. Two Stetho­scopes Up — check it out. life.”

And this great book review by an Internist Physi­cian and Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion Fel­low, titled Is Your Brain A Couch Potato?:

Doc Gur­ley, book review for SFGate.com (06/08/09)

The book:  The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (avail­able via Amazon.com Here, review copies avail­able upon request).

Descrip­tion: While most of us have heard the phrase “use it or lose it,” very few under­stand what it means, or how to prop­erly ‚“use it”‚¬ in order to main­tain brain func­tion and fit­ness. The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness is an invalu­able guide that helps read­ers nav­i­gate grow­ing brain research and iden­tify the lifestyle fac­tors and prod­ucts that con­tribute to brain health and fit­ness. By gath­er­ing insights from eigh­teen of the world’s top sci­en­tists and offer­ing tools and detailed descrip­tions of over twenty prod­ucts, this book is an essen­tial guide to the field of brain fit­ness, neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and cog­ni­tive health. An acces­si­ble and thought-provoking read, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness edu­cates life­long learn­ers and pro­fes­sion­als in health­care, edu­ca­tion, busi­ness, etc., on emerg­ing trends and fore­casts of what the future will hold.

Prod­ucts Reviewed (we reviewed sci­en­tific stud­ies pub­lished before Jan­u­ary 2009, when the man­u­script text was closed):

– Over­all brain main­te­nance: Brain Age series (Nin­tendo), Brain­Ware Safari (Learn­ing Enhance­ment Cor­po­ra­tion), FitBrains.com (Viv­ity Labs), Happy-Neuron.com (Sci­en­tific Brain Train­ing), Lumosity.com (Lumos Labs), Mind­Fit (Cog­niFit), (m)Power (Dakim)

– Tar­geted brain work­out: Clas­sic and InSight (Posit Sci­ence), Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing JM and RM (Cogmed), Dri­ve­Fit (Cog­niFit), Earo­bics (Houghton Mif­flin), Fast For­Word (Sci­en­tific Learn­ing), Intel­li­Gym (Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing), Vision Rest­pra­tion Ther­apy (NovaVision)

– Emo­tional self-regulation: emWave PC and Per­sonal Stress Reliever (Heart­Math), Jour­ney to the Wild Divine (Wild Divine), RES­PeR­ATE (Inter­Cure), StressEraser (Helicor)