Given the whole dis­tract­ing “con­tro­versy” of whether Nin­tendo Brain Age “works” or not, I have started to use the fol­low­ing “brain teasers” in my talks in order to help the audi­ence gain a more use­ful per­spec­tive of what is going on. They worked great both in the Medicare Read­mis­sions Sum­mit in DC a few weeks ago, and at the Games for Heath Con­fer­ence last week.

Q: How many sol­diers in the US Army have gone through com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive test­ing before being deployed, and why?
A: Over 150,000, in order to estab­lish an objec­tive start­ing base­line and iden­tify poten­tial Post Trau­matic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) and Trau­matic Brain Injury (TBI) prob­lems upon their return.

Q: How big is the ongo­ing invest­ment by OptumHealth, a divi­sion of Unit­ed­Health Group (UNH), in devel­op­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ments to inform clin­i­cal decision-making?
A: over $6m.

Q: How many All­state policy-holders over the age of 50 have received a com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram to improve their dri­ving safety?
A: Over 8,000, in the state of Pennsylvania.

Q: How many res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties are offer­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams to their res­i­dents?
A: Over 700, in the US alone, cov­er­ing inde­pen­dent and assisted living.

Q: How much money has the Gov­ern­ment of Ontario invested in set­ting up a new Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness as part of Bay­crest research cen­ter in order to develop and com­mer­cial­ize tech­nolo­gies to assess and enhance cog­ni­tive func­tions?
A: $10m, matched with another 10m from local investors.

For more on our Cog­ni­tive Health Track at Games for Health Con­fer­ence last week, see this USA Today article:

More doctor’s pre­scrip­tions may include brain games to improve men­tal acuity

(pretty good over­all, but please note that Sharp­Brains didn’t orga­nize the whole con­fer­ence, “only” the cog­ni­tive health track, which was a lot of stim­u­lat­ing fun. Ben Sawyer and team did over­all conference).

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 within 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 Read the rest of this entry »

You know your weight. And your phys­i­cal fit­ness. And a vari­ety of health-related metrics.

What about your brain fitness?

Two recent announce­ments bring out how the assess­ment of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, or brain func­tions, is increas­ingly being done thanks to new com­put­er­ized options:

1) Last week, OptumHealth announced an exclu­sive 3-year agree­ment (esti­mated at $18m) with the Aus­tralian com­pany Brain Resource. OptumHealth will be embed­ding the Brain Resource plat­form into their over­all Behav­ioral Solu­tions program.

- OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions will work with Brain Resource to pro­vide clin­i­cians with a Web-based assess­ment that mea­sures gen­eral cog­ni­tion (how peo­ple process infor­ma­tion) and social cog­ni­tion (how peo­ple man­age their emo­tions). This 40-minute assess­ment is based on well-known and val­i­dated tests of mem­ory, atten­tion, exec­u­tive func­tion, and response speed, and mood, social skills and emo­tional resilience.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few col­leagues referred me over the week­end to a very nice arti­cle at busi­ness pub­li­ca­tion Port­fo­lio.

While the arti­cle does an excel­lent job at intro­duc­ing the reader to the con­cept and promise of com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ments, it also con­tributes to the mythol­ogy of “Brain Age”.

Let’s first take a look at the arti­cle How Smart Are You: The busi­ness of assess­ing cog­ni­tion and mem­ory is mov­ing from test­ing brain-impaired patients to assess­ing healthy peo­ples’ brains online.

A cou­ple of quotes:

- “Cog­ni­tive Drug Research is one a hand­ful of busi­nesses, most of them out­side of the U.S., that work with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to test how new drugs for every­thing from nico­tine addic­tion to Alzheimer’s dis­ease affect the mind’s abil­ity to remem­ber things, make deci­sions, and ana­lyze information.”

- “Cog­ni­tive tests have been around for a cen­tury as exam­i­na­tions taken with paper and pen­cil. In the 1970s and ‘80s the tests shifted to com­put­ers, Cog­ni­tive Drug Research founder Keith Wesnes says.

So far, so good. In fact, one of the key high­lights from the mar­ket report we released in March was that “Large-scale, fully-automated cog­ni­tive assess­ments are being used in a grow­ing num­ber of clin­i­cal tri­als. This opens the way for the devel­op­ment of inex­pen­sive consumer-facing, base­line cog­ni­tive assess­ments.” And we pro­filed a few lead­ing com­pa­nies in the space: Brain Resource Com­pany, Cog­ni­tive Drug Research, CNS Vital Signs and CogState.

Now, the arti­cle is accom­pa­nied by a 5–7 minute quick test that promises to give us our “Brain Age”. And this doesn’t come from Nin­tendo, but from Cog­ni­tive Drug Research, a respected science-based company.

You can check it out Read the rest of this entry »

Grow­ing media atten­tion on the brain fit­ness field. At least on the “Healthy Aging” seg­ment (I pre­dict the media with catch up soon with devel­op­ments in other areas, from cog­ni­tive train­ing for kids and adults with ADD/ ADHD to stroke and TBI reha­bil­i­ta­tion, to peak per­for­mance for cor­po­rate training).

First, a superb arti­cle by Leslie Walker at the Wash­ing­ton Post: Cross-Training Your Brain to Main­tain Its Strength

Quotes:  “A grow­ing body of research sug­gests that men­tal activ­ity in mid­dle age and ear­lier can help later in life. As a result, Web sites such as HappyNeuron.com are spring­ing up to offer online games to peo­ple of all ages, while blogs like SharpBrains.com pro­vide com­men­tary on the fledg­ling indus­try.” (Note: we can also pro­vide com­men­tary on the commentary!)

“Peo­ple who engage in very chal­leng­ing tasks — not just in work but dur­ing leisure activ­i­ties such as read­ing, cross­word puz­zles, bridge, chess and travel — tend to slow down their men­tal aging process very sig­nif­i­cantly,” says Breznitz, who is also a mem­ber of Israel’s leg­is­la­ture and has devel­oped a brain-training pro­gram called MindFit.”

“Also con­tribut­ing to the brain work­out boom are state-of-the-art imag­ing tech­niques that have allowed sci­en­tists to val­i­date a the­ory devel­oped decades ago. By tak­ing detailed pic­tures of brain neu­rons, sci­en­tists watch parts of the brain that had seemed dor­mant light up and assume new respon­si­bil­i­ties in response to stim­uli. The­o­ret­i­cally, this means brain decay can be halted or even reversed.”

“The brain is con­stantly rewiring and recal­i­brat­ing itself in response to what you do,” says Henry Mah­ncke, who holds a PhD in neu­ro­science and is vice pres­i­dent of Posit Sci­ence, the San Fran­cisco devel­oper of the Brain Fit­ness soft­ware. “It remakes itself into a more effi­cient oper­a­tion to do the things you ask it to do.”

Com­ments: the arti­cle touches many key points. I espe­cially enjoy the quote “To be effec­tive, sci­en­tists say men­tal activ­ity must become pro­gres­sively more chal­leng­ing. Oth­er­wise, the brain adjusts and learns to per­form repet­i­tive tasks with less effort”, a key mes­sage I make often in my lec­tures to explain why well-designed pro­grams can be more effec­tive than doing cross­word puz­zle num­ber 512,789. The arti­cle also relates how many retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties and senior cen­ters and indi­vid­u­als are try­ing out the new brain fit­ness pro­grams com­ing to mar­ket, and shows some healthy skep­ti­cism on the state of the research. Now, this is an invi­ta­tion to the reporter to inter­view neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg to get the full pic­ture of the sci­ence behind the field, since these pro­grams haven’t appeared in a vac­uum. Our 10-Question Eval­u­a­tion Check­list can pro­vide use­ful guid­ance to any­one con­sid­er­ing a program.

Boomers use online brain games to stave off demen­tia (AccountingWeb)

Quotes: “The Inter­net offers a plethora of brain games for those who don’t sub­scribe to a daily news­pa­per or don’t want to pur­chase games. AARP, for exam­ple, offers plenty of free games on its site. More games appear at SharpBrains.com, includ­ing a page that con­tains the Top Ten Neu­ro­science Brain­teasers, and you can sign up to have the Col­lege Board e-mail you the SAT ques­tion of the day.”

“The gen­er­a­tion that refuses to age is not going to sit back and wait for Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and other signs of demen­tia to take hold. Instead, savvy Baby Boomers are expand­ing their minds (no, not the way they did in the 60s) with the aid of the com­puter, puz­zles, and games. A brain health move­ment is sweep­ing Read the rest of this entry »