Quick note: I will be speak­ing at the UCLA Tech­nol­ogy & Aging Con­fer­ence on Fri­day, Octo­ber 29th, in Los Ange­les. Please drop me a line or intro­duce your­self if you are plan­ning to attend.

The Sched­ule fea­tures many good ses­sions, includ­ing one on Brain Fitness:

• Descrip­tion: Grow­ing sci­en­tific evi­dence sug­gests that such strate­gies as phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise can improve brain health and cog­ni­tive per­for­mance. This ses­sion will review the lat­est research sup­port­ing brain fit­ness meth­ods, high­light new cog­ni­tive train­ing devices, and dis­cuss the chal­lenge of deter­min­ing the effec­tive­ness of these technologies.
• Speak­ers: Bill Reich­man (Bay­crest), Steven Aldrich (Posit Sci­ence), Gary & Rita Con­si­dine (Garri Pro­duc­tions), Alvaro Fer­nan­dez of (SharpBrains).
• Mod­er­a­tor: Gary Small (UCLA Cen­ter on Aging).

To learn more and reg­is­ter: click Here.

MaRS (a Toronto-based inno­va­tion cen­ter) has just announced the Ontario Inno­va­tion Sum­mit: The Busi­ness of Aging to “fea­ture some of the world’s top experts focused on the many issues that the aging of the global pop­u­la­tion poses for com­mu­ni­ties, gov­ern­ments, aca­d­e­mic and health­care insti­tu­tions, and businesses.”

Top­ics:

- Inno­va­tion in an Age Friendly Soci­ety: Inter­con­nected Chal­lenges and Oppor­tu­ni­ties
– Rethink­ing Tech­nol­ogy & Com­mu­nity: Opti­miz­ing our Eco­nomic Con­tri­bu­tions and Enhanc­ing Qual­ity of Life
– Main­tain­ing Auton­omy: The Brain Fit­ness Move­ment
– Pub­lic Pol­icy Impact: Putting Inno­va­tion to Work across the Con­tin­uum of Aging
– Com­mit­ment to Action

The con­fer­ence will host spe­cial keynote appear­ances by the Hon. Dal­ton McGuinty, Pre­mier of Ontario, and Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 Astro­naut. Other con­firmed speakers:

- Dr. Jane Bar­ratt, Sec­re­tary Gen­eral, Inter­na­tional Fed­er­a­tion on Age­ing
– Dr. John Beard, Direc­tor, Depart­ment of Aging and Life Course, World Health Orga­ni­za­tion
– Dr. Adal­steinn (Steini) Brown, Assis­tant Deputy Min­is­ter, Health Sys­tem Strat­egy Divi­sion, Ontario Min­istry of Health
– Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Co-Founder, Sharp­Brains
– Saul Kaplan, Chief Cat­a­lyst, Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Fac­tory
– Dr. David Nay­lor, Pres­i­dent, Uni­ver­sity of Toronto
– Dr. Bill Reich­man, Pres­i­dent and CEO, Baycrest

To learn more, click Here.

Will make sure to blog about the event — what Ontario is doing, includ­ing its $10m invest­ment in Bay­crest last year (see my inter­view with Bay­crest CEO, Bill Reich­man), is truly enlight­ened and stimulating.

(Editor’s note: this arti­cle belongs to the excel­lent May 2009 spe­cial issue on Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion of sci­en­tific jour­nal Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science, Vol­ume 3, Issue 1. You can order this issue, for 50 euros, here. Highly rec­om­mended for sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cal read­ers inter­ested in the sci­ence. This arti­cle, an indus­try overview, is repro­duced here with autho­riza­tion by the Fron­tiers Research Foun­da­tion).

Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age

- By Alvaro Fernandez

Ground­break­ing cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science research has occurred over the last 20 years — with­out par­al­lel growth of con­sumer aware­ness and appro­pri­ate pro­fes­sional dis­sem­i­na­tion. “Cog­ni­tion” remains an elu­sive con­cept with unclear impli­ca­tions out­side the research community.

Ear­lier this year, I pre­sented a talk to health care pro­fes­sion­als at the New York Acad­emy of Med­i­cine, titled “Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware: Help­ing Con­sumers Sep­a­rate Hope from Hype”. I explained what com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ment and train­ing tools can do (assess/enhance spe­cific cog­ni­tive func­tions), what they can­not do (reduce one’s “brain age”) and the cur­rent uncer­tain­ties about what they can do (i.e., delay Alzheimer’s symp­toms). At the same sym­po­sium, Dr. Gary Kennedy, Direc­tor of Geri­atric Psy­chi­a­try at Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter, pro­vided guid­ance on why and how to screen for exec­u­tive func­tion deficits in the con­text of dementia.

I could per­ceive two emerg­ing trends at the event: 1) “Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion” research is most com­monly framed as a health­care, often phar­ma­co­log­i­cal topic, with the tra­di­tional cog­ni­tive bias in med­i­cine of focus­ing on detec­tion and treat­ment of dis­ease, 2) In addi­tion, there is a grow­ing inter­est in non-invasive enhance­ment options and over­all lifestyle issues. Research find­ings in Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion are only just begin­ning to reach the main­stream mar­ket­place, mostly through health­care chan­nels. The oppor­tu­nity is immense, but we will need to ensure the mar­ket­place matures in a ratio­nal and sus­tain­able man­ner, both through health­care and non-healthcare channels.

In Jan­u­ary 2009, we polled the 21,000 sub­scribers of Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket research eNewslet­ter to iden­tify atti­tudes and behav­iors towards the “brain fit­ness” field (a term we chose in 2006 based on a num­ber of con­sumer sur­veys and focus groups to con­nect with a wider audi­ence). Over 2,000 decision-makers and early adopters responded to the survey.

One of the key ques­tions we asked was, “What is the most impor­tant prob­lem you see in the brain fit­ness field and how do you think it can be solved?”. Some exam­ples of the sur­vey free text answers are quoted here, together with my suggestions.

Most impor­tant prob­lems in the brain fit­ness field

Pub­lic aware­ness (39%): “To get peo­ple to under­stand that hered­ity alone does not decide brain func­tion­ing”. We need to ramp up efforts to build pub­lic aware­ness and enthu­si­asm about brain research, includ­ing estab­lish­ing clear links to daily liv­ing. We can col­lab­o­rate with ini­tia­tives such as the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week and use the recent “Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts” mate­ri­als devel­oped by the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science to give talks at schools, libraries and workplaces.

Claims (21%): “The lack of stan­dards and clear def­i­n­i­tions is very con­fus­ing, and Read the rest of this entry »