SharpBrains

My presentation to open our Games for Health Conference track is now available via SlideShare:

See Bird's Eye View of Cognitive Health Innovation

Description: Scientific, technological and demographic trends have converged to create a new $265m market in the US alone: serious games, software and online applications that can help people of all ages assess and train cognitive abilities. Alvaro Fernandez will provide a Bird’s Eye View of the science, market segments and trends, competitive landscape, and main challenges ahead, based on The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2009 report released in May, which included Research Executive Briefs prepared by 12 leading scientists and a survey of 2,000+ decision-makers and early adopters.

61% of respondents to the survey Strongly Agreed with the statement “Addressing cognitive and brain health should be a healthcare priority.” But, 65% Agreed/Strongly Agreed with “I don't really know what to expect from products making brain claims.” In this session, Alvaro will publicly unveil the new book The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: 18 Interviews with Scientists, Practical Advice, and Product Reviews, To Keep Your Brain Sharp, co-authored by neuropsychologist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg and himself, aimed at helping consumers and professionals understand and navigate this growing field.

To see slides, check out Bird's Eye View of Cognitive Health Innovation

Enjoy the 4th of July!

You may be reading all about brain fitness and brain training. It seems every week brings a new barrage of articles and studies which often contradict what you read the month before: Does Gingko Biloba help delay Alzheimer’s Disease? Can physical exercise help you stay sharp as you age? Which computer-based “brain fitness programs”, if any, are worth your money?

All this coverage reflects very exciting scientific findings but also poses a key dilemma: How to become an informed lifelong learner and consumer when there are few and contradictory authoritative guidelines?

The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness (to be published in May 2009; $24.95) aims to fill that void. This guide is the result of over a year of extensive research including more than a hundred interviews with scientists, professionals and consumers, and a deep literature review. Below you have some of the main findings from our effort. The guide not only covers these aspects in more depth and offers practical guidance, but also includes 18 interviews with prominent scientists to help you understand the research better.

Can we introduce you to your Brain?

The Guide will start at the obvious starting point: The Human Brain. In order to make informed decisions about brain health, one needs to first understand the basic organization of the human brain and how it tends to change as we get older.

• The brain is composed of a number of regions serving distinct functions. Forget IQ: our life and productivity depend on a variety of brain functions, not just one.

• There is nothing inherently fixed in the trajectory of how brain functions evolve as we age. Your lifestyle, actions, and even thoughts, do matter.

The 4 Pillars of Brain Maintenance

Neuroplasticity is the lifelong capacity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stimulation of learning and experience. The latest scientific research shows that specific lifestyles and actions can, no matter our age, improve the health and level of functioning of our brains.

What factors seem to have the most influence? Continue Reading »

Ben Sawyer and I just agreed to create a new Cognitive Health track -Powered by SharpBrains- at the 5th Annual Games for Health Conference. I will host the 11-session track, covering a variety of cognitive health and brain fitness topics and an overview of SharpBrains' upcoming report The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2009.

When and where: June 11-12th at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston, MA.

Context: The Games for Health Conference is produced by The Serious Games Initiative and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The conference brings together researchers, medical professionals, decision-makers at healthcare and insurance providers, innovators and game developers. I have attended a few times, and have always been impressed by the caliber of both speakers and everyone in the audience. Really a very good crowd.

Some options to participate?

1) Attend: The current price is $379, with a 15% discount if you use code "sharp09" (without quotation) when you register Here. Special price for students is $200.

Please note that the Cognitive Health track is being scheduled now - we will announce the detailed agenda during the month of May.

2) Speak: We are looking for innovators, researchers and decision-makers who would like to speak about their ongoing projects related to the use of games and other computer-based technologies for cognitive health.

If interested, please Contact Us, by May 1st, a couple of paragraphs summarizing a) your project, bio and organization, b) what key lessons learned and impressions you would share if given 20 minutes.

3) Advertise/ Sponsor/ Exhibit: To inquire about options, please contact Beth Bryant, one of the conference organizers, at bbryant at dmill.com

We are proud to collaborate with The Games for Health Conference and expand the Cognitive Health dialogue!

Round-up of recent news with a variety of angles, from the effects of gaming to cognitive training for driving skills and brain fitness classes.

Seniors use brain training software to sharpen their minds (Dallas Morning News)

- "Allstate Insurance has invited some policyholders and other older drivers to try InSight so researchers can evaluate whether the software reduces accidents."

- "Depending on the results, the auto insurer says it may expand the pilot project and offer premium discounts to drivers who take the brain training."

- "Today, only one in seven licensed drivers is 65 or older. But by 2030, when the last of the boomers turn 65, the proportion will be one in four. "

Brain games (Palo Alto Weekly)

- "There is research that justifies the belief that games can aid the brain's health, according to Dr. Walter Bortz II, a Stanford University School of Medicine associate professor and expert on longevity and robust aging. Studies show that stimulating the brain by learning new tasks increases blood factors in the brain that act like steroids, making it possible for the brain to grow even in old age

- "Called "brain plasticity," such growth is the foundation of brain-fitness software research."

Brain Fitness Classes Keep Seniors Mentally And Socially Active (Washington Post)

- "More options for exercising the brain are on the way. Last year, the Ontario government pledged about $8 million to develop a brain fitness center in Toronto. In San Francisco, Jan Zivic, a former executive search consultant, opened a center, vibrantBrains, that offers memory improvement classes and workshops. Zivic was inspired by help she got from brain fitness games she played after being injured in an automobile accident."

The 15 Clearest Benefits of Gaming (Edge Magazine)

-"But Fernandez warns that the gamer generation isn’t automatically guaranteed to have better cognitive health than their grandparents. “Cognitive fitness (having the mental abilities required to thrive in cognitively more complex environments) seems to depend on four major pillars: nutrition, physical exercise, stress management and mental exercise. All these factors have physical effects on our brains (for example, physical exercise contributes to the creation of new neurons, while stress and anxiety prevents and/or reduces the creation of new neurons). The bad news is that we have growing obesity rates and anxiety among young people. So, games are great for mental exercise, but we shouldn't forget the other ‘ingredients’ for cognitive fitness.”

- "Fernandez muses, “Indeed ‘fun’ can be seen as a goal in itself … The problem is that we confuse gaming as a vehicle with gaming as content. Gaming as vehicle is arguably great—it allows for interactivity, engagement. Gaming as content, well, it depends. It is not the same to play a bloody shooter game as it is to Tetris or Rise of Nations, so the field should do a better job at explaining to mainstream society the diversity of games and dispel some myths.”

More Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Fyi, I will be speaking at the following events:

>> March 5th, New York Academy of Medicine, NYC. I will present Brain Fitness Software - Consumers Guide to distinguishing hope from hype, at the Comprehensive Approach to Dementia Symposium sponsored by Montefiore Medical Center and with credit designated by Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

>> March 15-19th, ASA/ NCOA annual conference in Las Vegas. I will be presenting two sessions. Registration is open now at 2009 Aging in America Conference, but there is limited information on the sessions. Will blog when there are detailed abstracts available.

- The State of the Brain Fitness Market, 16-Mar-09, 08:00 PM - 09:30 AM

- Brain Fitness in Senior Housing: 18-Mar-09, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

>> April 8th, University of North Carolina Greensboro: Cognitive Fitness and the Aging Workforce: Opportunities and Challenges, at the Silvering Workforce Summit.

Here are some upcoming events I will participate in - feel free to leave a comment below or contact us if you will be attending too and want to say Hello. I really enjoy meeting SharpBrains readers!

>> January 22nd, Consumer Reports' Blogger Health Summit, NYC.

>> March 5th, New York Academy of Medicine, NYC. I will present Brain Fitness Software - Consumers Guide to distinguishing hope from hype, at the Comprehensive Approach to Dementia Symposium sponsored by Montefiore Medical Center and with credit designated by Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Will blog when their website lists the agenda and allows registration.

>> March 15-19th, ASA/ NCOA annual conference in Las Vegas. I will be presenting two sessions. Registration is open now at 2009 Aging in America Conference, but there is limited information on the sessions. Will blog when there are detailed abstracts available.

- The State of the Brain Fitness Market, 16-Mar-09, 08:00 PM - 09:30 AM

- Brain Fitness in Senior Housing: 18-Mar-09, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Starting this month we will cover interesting new brain fitness products & services on a regular basis, both via this blog and via our monthly newsletter (you can subscribe at the top of the page).

Please note that we do not endorse any products, or make any comment on their validity or supporting research, by covering them in our blog & newsletter.  We will mention whatever we think, from an editorial point of view, is noteworthy from a research, commercial, or innovation perspective, since we have seen that many people rely on SharpBrains to stay abreast of developments in the field.

if you are interested in a deeper exploration on the specific research and business drivers behind different companies and products, we suggest you consider acquiring our Report on the State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008.

Note: We will categorize relevant posts as "Brain Fitness Industry".

Here you have SharpBrains' 30 most popular articles, ranked by the number of people who have read each article in 2008.

Please note that, since the first article already includes most of our most popular brain teasers, we have excluded teasers from the rest of the ranking. (If those 50 are not enough for you, you can also try these brain teasers).

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Continue Reading »

Crisp CNN article:

Boom times for brain training games

Including my final quote "[Brain fitness] is not just some fad. The market is much deeper than Nintendo."

The "brain fitness center" financed by Ontario is Baycrest. Companies mentioned: Mindfit, Posit Science, Nintendo, Allstate, BrainBuilder, MyBrainTrainer.

The reporter and I also discussed in depth the need for better consumer education and professional development, so people can make informed decisions, and for cognitive assessments to serve as independent baseline, help identify priorities and measure results. Please note that our market estimates do include revenues of computerized cognitive assessments, today mostly used in clinical trials, and wthin the military and sports teams.

Have you ever wondered how we can maintain SharpBrains website, blog and newsletter without selling any product and with only limited advertising? People often ask us that question, especially once we explain that we don't sell products (selling products would present a conflict of interest given our mission to "provide individuals, companies and institutions with high-quality, research-based, information and guidance to navigate the growing cognitive and brain fitness market".)

The answer is, we offer proprietary market research and advisory services to organizations such as these. They want to fully understand emerging Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health trends, opportunities and challenges, in order to make better-informed decisions. Examples:

- leading healthcare providers evaluating cognitive assessment and training options.
- universities and research centers trying to bridge brain research and practice.
- developers of technologies that help assess and/ or train cognitive functions who want a better view of market size, trends and the competitive landscape.
- consulting and training companies interested in understanding market trends to scope their own potential offerings.
- venture capital firms looking for investment ideas and due diligence on existing/ potential deals.

We chose to focus our efforts on providing quality market research and advisory services given the growing confusion in the marketplace and the need for an independent and qualified source of information, market data and best practices. The brain fitness software field (defined as software applications that help assess or train cognitive functions) is projected to exceed $2B by 2015, fueled by an increasing amount of applied research on neuroplasticity and cognition; a rapidly evolving marketplace of products making cognitive claims; and growing consumer and institutional demand. Large and small organizations are already taking the first steps to leverage those technologies.

We are now launching a new Premium Research Sponsors program to partner with pioneering organizations who want to collaborate with us to shape the future of Continue Reading »