SharpBrains

Here you have several recent articles and developments worthy of attention:

1) Boom times for brain training games (CNN)
2) Navigating the brain fitness landscape: do's and don'ts (McKnight's Long Term Care News)
3) USA Hockey and Intelligym (press release)
4) Brain Fitness at New York Public Library (NYPL blog)
5) McDonnell Foundation grant harnesses cognitive science to improve student learning (press release)
6) Health insurance firms offering online cognitive therapy for insomnia (Los Angeles Times)
7) HeadMinder Cognitive Stability Index: Computerized Neurocognitive ... (Press release)
8) THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE (Intelligent Life)
9) Working Later in Life May Facilitate Neural Health (Cerebrum)
10) The Cool Factor: Never Let Them See You Sweat (New York Times)

Links, selected quotes and commentary: Continue Reading »

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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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 »

Over the next weeks we are going to be sharing the Executive Summary of our market report The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008 with members and clients of several partner organizations (the British Columbia Seniors Living Association, where I will be speaking this Thursday, Neurotech Reports, where I will speak on October 24th, and the Health 2.0 conference, where we are sponsoring a panel on gaming for health), so it is only fair that we first share it with our own readers.

Executive Summary

A spate of recent global news coverage on brain fitness and brain training reflects a growing interest in natural, non drug-based interventions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This interest is very timely, given an aging population, increasing prevalence of Alzheimer’s rates, and soaring health care costs in the US that place more emphasis than ever on prevention and lifestyle changes.

US brain fitness market: significant and growing

We estimate the size of the US brain fitness market was $225m in 2007 – more than double what it was in 2005. Whereas K12 school systems were the largest buyers in 2005, consumers were responsible for most of the growth from 2005 to 2007. We estimate that the consumer segment grew from a few million in 2005 to $80m in 2007, and foresee significant market growth driven not only by consumers but also by healthcare and insurance providers.

Market dynamics

As we speak to diverse audiences about this emerging field around the country we are frequently asked the following questions:

- Why are we talking about the brain fitness field at all?

Over the past decade, teams backed by neuroscientists around the world Continue Reading »

Dr. Pascale Michelon recently shared with our readers which brain areas and cognitive functions are engaged as we solve the type of brain teaser known as Spot the Difference, where we have to find the differences between two versions of one image: Continue Reading »

Press release: Here 

-- "Lumos Labs, developer of Lumosity.com, the leading web-based provider of scientifically-tested brain training games, today announced that it has raised $3 million of equity financing from Pequot Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), and existing investors including Michael Dearing. The investor group brings expertise that will catalyze the ongoing development of Lumosity.com and support Lumos Labs’ mission to improve lives by enhancing brain fitness.

-- “Lumos Labs is at the center of a booming interest in cognitive exercise and the emerging science about the remarkable plasticity of the brain, said Amish Jani of Pequot Ventures. Lumosity.com has seen tremendous demand from users and partners alike by leveraging the power of the web to deliver a unique platform for brain fitness.

Great news for the sector. The more tools available for leading mentally stimulating lives, the better we will all be.

Lumosity.com (click Here to get a sense of their games) provides a great user experience at a reasonable cost. From an investor's perspective, we believe Lumos Labs is a very serious contender in the brain fitness space, and it has indeed been executing a very smart online strategy.

Now, I am not sure what "scientifically-tested brain training games" really means. While preparing our Brain Fitness Software Market Report we reviewed all published research on the efficacy behind different programs, and didn't find any for Lumosity (which has some very interesting internal, but not published, data).

We gave Lumosity a score of 2 ouf of 10 in Clinical Validation (with Nintendo Brain Age getting a score of 1, and NovaVision, cleared by the FDA for use with stroke/ TBI patients, getting a 5).

Continue Reading »

For a limited time only: we can offer a 10% Discount and Free shipping for SharpBrains readers who want to buy MindFit brain fitness program. Simply visit this website introduce the Discount Code SB-MF-10 in the Discounts/Coupons field as you check out. 

Note: by clicking here you will visit a different website, unafiliated with us.  Please remember that we have not developed MindFit, but consider it one of the programs with good grades in our 10-Question Evaluation Checklist, so we are glad to have secured this discount.

Below you have some demos, so you get a sense of the types of exercises we are talking about. Have fun!

The "Inside and Outside" task was designed to train your divided attention skills. Divided attention is the ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. Continue Reading »

A year ago we wrote a Glossary where we defined Brain Fitness as "the general state of good, sharp, brain and mind, especially as the result of mental and physical exercise and proper nutrition" and a Brain Fitness Program as a "structured set of brain exercises, usually computer-based, designed to train specific brain areas and functions in targeted ways, and measured by brain fitness assessments."

Now, thanks to this recent article Alvaro and Lisa's Brain Vacation, we can add Brain Fitness Vacation: "A brain fitness vacation is like a regular vacation, only you attend events, do exercises, and arrange for experiences that address the aspects of good brain health: physical exercise, mental exercise, good nutrition, and stress management."

Dave Bunnell, the founder and editor of new magazine ELDR (and previously editor of PC World, PC Magazine, Upside, and many other magazines) met Dr. Goldberg and myself after our speech in SFSU last May. When he showed an interest in writing a story, and I mentioned half-jokingly that it would have to wait a few weeks since my wife and I were about to take a much needed "brain fitness vacation", he said, well, maybe that's the story!. 

You can read the full article here. For the benefit of the attendants to my lectures this week, who may be looking for some additional brain exercises, here go some quotes:

• Guesstimation. Lisa asks Alvaro a question, "How many trees are there in San Francisco?" To come up with an answer, Alvaro first tries to guess how many trees, on average, there are in a city block. He then calculates approximately how many blocks there are in a square mile, followed by how many square miles there are in San Francisco, and so on.

• Number Series. Alvaro says, "Two, three," and Lisa replies, "four, six." Alvaro then says, "Six, nine," and Lisa replies, "Eight, twelve." He says,"Ten, fifteen," and the sequence goes on as long and as fast as you can keep doing it.

• Haiku. During the entire vacation, Alvaro and Lisa composed haiku for each other every morning. The rule was they couldn't write them down. They had to create them in their heads and remember them.

• Sensory training. Lisa puts a piece of chocolate into Alvaro's mouth while his eyes are closed. He lets it melt completely without chewing and without opening his eyes. Next, he puts a grape in Lisa's mouth.

• Visualizations. Alvaro and Lisa sit quietly for about 15 minutes, breathe deeply using their diaphragms, and visualize special moments from their past, such as the most beautiful view they've ever seen, or a loving personal moment.

Enjoy

Pic credit: San Pedro de Alcantara, Spain (Wikipedia)

Very intense week, and very fun. I will be writing more about this week's 3 speaking events, but let me say now that our key messages

1) our brains remain flexible during our lifetimes,

2) we can refine our brains with targeted practice,

3) good brain exercise, or "mental cross-training", requires novelty, variety, and increasing level of challenge (but without creating too much stress),

are being very well accepted from both healthy aging and workplace productivity points of view. We have ONE brain: health and productivity are 2 sides of the same coin.

If you want to make sure we learn more about our brains, you can help fellow blogger Shelley Batts get a college scholarship by voting here. She has a great neuroscience blog, is now finalist in a competition to win a nice scholarship, and needs out help.

Have some more time? You can watch this excellent 90-second video of cognitive neuroscientist Dr Lisa Saksida doing yoga in front of the fire while explaining the nature of Brain and Mind (via MindHacks). Quotes:

"I wish people understood that there is no mind/brain duality. Specifically, I wish people understood that there is no such thing as a purely psychological disorder. Every event in your psychological life, and therefore every psychological change, is reducible in theory to events and changes in your brain. We should therefore not judge people differently, according to whether they are considered to have a 'psychological' as opposed to a 'neurological' problem."

"Of course, a lack of mind/brain split does not mean that we should abandon all talk of psychology. Psychology and neuroscience are two ways of studying the same thing, and both are essential for understanding the human condition."

For more, check the posts in these always great blog carnivals (selected collections of blog posts by a number of bloggers around specific topics)

Tangled Bank (science in general)

Encephalon (neuroscience)

Credit: Photo of Neurons by symphanee via flickr