How do you know when some­thing is fast mov­ing towards a Glad­wellian tip­ping point? When health insur­ance com­pa­nies and pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers launch sig­nif­i­cant initiatives.

For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment of Ontario recently announced a $10 mil­lion invest­ment with Bay­crest Research Cen­tre who will part­ner with MaRS Ven­ture Group to develop and com­mer­cialise brain fit­ness tech­nolo­gies. The invest­ment was matched by an addi­tional $10 mil­lion from pri­vate sources.

Another impor­tant devel­op­ment was the $18 mil­lion agree­ment between the Australian-based Brain Resource Com­pany (ASX:BRC) and OptumHealth in the US. This will allow for the pro­vi­sion of web-based cog­ni­tive assess­ments as part of a clinician’s deci­sion sup­port systems.

These are some ini­tia­tives cov­ered in a webi­nar Top Ten Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events of 2008 pre­sented in Decem­ber for Sharp­Brains’ clients. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez described the state of play and main dri­vers behind the growth of the bur­geon­ing brain fit­ness mar­ket — which I will try and sum­ma­rize here.

The key dri­vers seem to be Read the rest of this entry »

“USA Hockey Inc., is the national gov­ern­ing body for the sport of ice hockey in the United States. As such, its mis­sion is to pro­mote the growth of hockey and pro­vide the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence for all par­tic­i­pants by encour­ag­ing, devel­op­ing, advanc­ing and admin­is­ter­ing the sport.”

Why do we talk about ice hockey in a  brain fit­ness blog?

Well, we recently announced this very inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tive, and now can offer more context:

USA Hockey and Intelligym:

- “USA Hockey, with part­ners ACE (Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing) and the BIRD (Bina­tional Indus­trial Research and Devel­op­ment) Foun­da­tion, have announced plans to develop a rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­uct that will, for the first time ever, pro­vide play­ers a train­ing tool to develop “hockey sense.”

- “To be called Hockey Intel­li­Gym, the software-based prod­uct will fur­nish play­ers with a highly effec­tive train­ing tool to develop per­cep­tion and decision-making skills. Fur­ther, it will Read the rest of this entry »

Very inter­est­ing new mar­ket devel­op­ment:

The Marker, Israel - Oct 28, 2008, Sharp­Brains,

In other words, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing (ACE) and USA Hockey have part­nered to bring to mar­ket a cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tion game to improve the per­for­mance of ice hockey play­ers — sim­i­lar to what  ACE has been offer­ing to pro­fes­sional and ama­teur bas­ket­ball players.

ACE has raised $2.5M, and ACE and USA Hockey have received a joint $800k devel­op­ment grant from the BIRD Foun­da­tion for the co-development of a train­ing sys­tem for Ice Hockey play­ers. (The arti­cle men­tions Sharp­Brains’ Mar­ket Report as a sign of how the mar­ket is grow­ing, since we cover ACE).

For more con­text on cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions, you will enjoy this Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher:

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Tell us a bit about your over­all research interests.

Daniel Gopher: My main inter­est has been how to expand the lim­its of human atten­tion, infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing and response capa­bil­i­ties which are crit­i­cal in com­plex, real-time decision-making, high-demand tasks such as fly­ing a mil­i­tary jet or play­ing pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball. Using a ten­nis anal­ogy, my goal has been, and is, how to help develop many “Wimbledon-like cham­pi­ons. Each with their own styles, but per­form­ing to their max­i­mum capac­ity to suc­ceed in their environments.

What research over the last 15–20 years has shown is that cog­ni­tion, or what we call think­ing and per­for­mance, is really a set of skills that we can train sys­tem­at­i­cally. And Read the rest of this entry »

Our Mar­ket Report has received some recent addi­tional accolades:

“In a widely scat­tered and unreg­u­lated field, this clear, cred­i­ble doc­u­ment
is a first-class, pio­neer­ing com­pendium that’s likely to become industry-standard
for all of us in this field. Well done!“
– Eric Jensen, Founder of Jensen Learn­ing Corporation.

“This is the first clear, con­cise and com­pre­hen­sive overview and analy­sis I have seen of the emerg­ing Brain-Training mar­ket­place. It is a great mar­ket research for every investor, entre­pre­neur, man­ager, researcher and oth­ers who seek an under­stand­ing of the sub­ject. Per­son­ally, I was wait­ing such a review for quite a while. The Sharp­Brains staff, led by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, really did a great job here.”

– Danny Dankner, CEO, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing (ACE).

“Neu­ro­science is at a cross­roads, and The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 by Sharp­Brains, points the way for­ward. Our under­stand­ing of how the brain works is just begin­ning to yield real fruit in the form of prod­ucts that truly improve the func­tion of the brain. This reports gives any­one inter­ested in how to under­stand which prod­ucts are truly in a posi­tion to make a dif­fer­ence in brain func­tion, and which mar­kets will be inter­ested and prof­itable for such prod­ucts an invalu­able guide. We found the analy­sis clear, pre­cise, loaded with sub­stan­tive insight. One would be fool­hardy not to use this pub­li­ca­tion as the best guide to this mar­ket.”

– Dr. Arthur Lavin, Asso­ciate Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Pedi­atrics, Case Med­ical School, and Med­ical Direc­tor of A Work­ing Mind.

“As we begin the task of devel­op­ing a Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at our Sun­rise Senior Liv­ing Com­mu­nity, this Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report is prov­ing Read the rest of this entry »