The hol­i­days can be won­der­ful and ter­ri­ble all at the same time. There is so much fun and good in the sea­son, but we know how stress­ful sit­u­a­tions can really bring out the Grinch at times.

For­tu­nately, there are many tech­niques that help restore peace and good­will to all.

Here are a few strate­gies to try:
Read the rest of this entry »

What an event yes­ter­day night. My wife and I were for­tu­nate to visit the Google Cam­pus and attend the Sixth Annual North Amer­i­can Fel­low­ship Induc­tion Pro­gram of Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Pub­lic, a social ven­ture fund where we have been involved for a num­ber of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and I met in the first place.

18 new Ashoka Fellows/ social entre­pre­neurs were elected, and after a fun cock­tail recep­tion the cer­e­mony began. Sergei Brin (Google Co-founder), Sheryl Sand­berg (who helped launch Google Foun­da­tion and google.org), Salar Kaman­gar (the mind behind AdWords) gave intro­duc­tory remarks. Salar explained how he first heard of Ashoka (through the book How to Change the World, by David Born­stein) and how he saw tremen­dous sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ashoka and Google: both Read the rest of this entry »

Landed in Chicago a few hours ago, and will write a longer update dur­ing the week­end on what is going on here with Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing, RoboMemo, one of the most solid (but demand­ing) Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams we have come across. Read the rest of this entry »

Landed in Chicago a few hours ago, and will write a longer update dur­ing the week­end on what is going on here with Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing, RoboMemo, one of the most solid (but demanding) Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams we have come across. Read the rest of this entry »

For any­one in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area, we are offer­ing a cou­ple of lectures through the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute, titled: Exer­cis­ing Our Brains: New Brain Research and Impli­ca­tions for our Lives.

Descrip­tion: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have finally shown that, at any age, our men­tal activ­ity can influ­ence the gen­er­a­tion of new neu­rons and their con­nec­tions, with clear guide­lines to fol­low. You have prob­a­bly heard “Use it or lose it”. Lat­est research indi­cates, “Use it and improve it!”. In this lecture-class, we will com­bine both research and fun group activities.

1) Mon­day, Novem­ber 6, 6:30–8:00pm
SFSU Down­town Cen­ter, 425 Mar­ket at Fremont

2) Thurs­day, Novem­ber 16, 6:30–8:00pm
St. James Epis­co­pal Church
4620 Cal­i­for­nia Street (between 8th and 9th Avenue)
Here you have more infor­ma­tion on our Sem­i­nars for orga­ni­za­tions and our new The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Fit­ness class at UC-Berkeley OLLI.

The dis­counted reg­is­tra­tion for the Seri­ous Games Sum­mit in DC, Octo­ber 30-31st, is about to end. If inter­ested, hurry up!

I will be pre­sent­ing lessons from Cogmed’s Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing Pro­gram for kids with ADD/ ADHD, devel­oped by the team at Karolin­ska Insti­tute, led by Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, and by Cogmed. The pro­gram is called RoboMemo, and is one of the Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams with more solid research we have found for peo­ple with seri­ous con­cen­tra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties like ADD/ ADHD.

Panel: Teach­ing Skills or Chang­ing Behaviors

“Speak­ers: Tom Hunter (CEO, Com­pass Rose Games), Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Sharp­Brains, Inc,), Kevin McNulty (Part­ner, Terris-Hill Pro­duc­tions)
Date/Time: Tues­day (Octo­ber 31, 2006) 11:00am — 12:00pm

Ses­sion Descrip­tion: Games can teach skills, such as fly­ing a plane or med­ical triage, and games can help peo­ple change behav­iors. Both are valu­able, but they have very dif­fer­ent design impli­ca­tions. This ses­sion will look at dif­fer­ent ways of teach­ing skills and caus­ing behav­ior change. We will focus on med­ical and cor­po­rate games with goals rang­ing from improv­ing qual­ity of life for peo­ple with med­ical prob­lems to teach­ing spe­cific job skills.

Idea Take­away
Some games are more about teach­ing a spe­cific skill, other games are about chang­ing the way you think, act or behave. At the end of this panel the audi­ence will under­stand how games are designed to achieve these goals.

Intended Audi­ence
This panel is intended for peo­ple who are either design­ing games, or who are com­mis­sion­ing games and want to under­stand how games can be designed for skills train­ing or behav­ior change.”

If any of you is attend­ing the con­fer­ence, please let me know.

The dis­counted reg­is­tra­tion for the Seri­ous Games Sum­mit in DC, Octo­ber 30-31st, is about to end. If inter­ested, hurry up!
Read the rest of this entry »

Sec­ond and last day of the 6th Annual Neu­rotech Lead­ers Forum.

High­lights
– Deeper review into the chal­lenges the sec­tor (mainly neu­rode­vices) face, such as com­plex­ity of reim­burse­ment process, and lack of rea­son­able agree­ment as to what “sci­en­tific evi­dence” means (Medicare and Med­ic­aid require ran­dom­ized double-blind pro­to­cols, which is tough, if pos­si­ble in ensure in some cases)

- The Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion, to be for­mally pre­sented at the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science Con­fer­ence could fill an impor­tant role there.

- Dr. Michael Merzenich was among the recip­i­ents of the Gold Elec­trode Award 2006. Dr. Merzenich is one of the pio­neers in this field and Co-Founder and Chief Sci­en­tific Offi­cer of two lead­ing com­pa­nies in this sec­tor: Sci­en­tific Learn­ing .
and Posit Sci­ence .

- We pre­sented our view of the Brain Fit­ness mar­ket, with the fol­low­ing Exec­u­tive Summary:

1) The computer-based Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams field is a new and grow­ing field, dri­ven by recent major sci­en­tific find­ings, the first pro­grams with clear clin­i­cal data and the emer­gence of wide pub­lic aware­ness of the need for “brain exercise”

2) Sharp­Brains brings to mar­ket computer-based, proven, best-of-breed cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science appli­ca­tions to present a full “brain gym”. The pro­grams are devel­oped by research insti­tu­tions and/ or affil­i­ated com­pa­nies worldwide

3) Some pro­grams we have iden­ti­fied are tar­geted at
– Over­all brain main­te­nance
– Bio-feedback based stress man­age­ment
– Work­ing mem­ory train­ing for peo­ple with ADD/ ADHD
– Basketball-specific “game-intelligence”. Yes, this can be trained too!

Enjoy the weekend

The first day of the 6th Annual Neu­rotech Lead­ers Forum took place today. Good group, with con­tent focused on

a) the basic sci­en­tific under­pin­nings of the neu­rotech­nol­ogy sec­tor, deliv­ered by War­ren Grill, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Bio­Med­ical Engi­neer­ing at Duke Uni­ver­sity, and

b) mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion and trends, by Neu­rotech Reports’ founder James Cavuoto.

James defines the neu­rotech­nol­ogy mar­ket as “the appli­ca­tion of elec­tron­ics and engi­neer­ing to the ner­vous sys­tem”, and cat­e­go­rizes it into 4 seg­ments: neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion, neu­rore­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, neu­rosens­ing and neural prostheses.

How is this rel­e­vant to the Brain Fit­ness Revolution?

For one, both fields share a com­mon prob­lem today: the need for larger pub­lic and clin­i­cian edu­ca­tion, so that there is more under­stand­ing on recent research find­ings and their impli­ca­tions for our lives and health care.

More impor­tantly, James did a good job at defin­ing Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams as “nat­ural stim­u­la­tion”, mean­ing that the inter­ven­tion to train/ improve one’s neural cir­cuits does not require an inva­sive treat­ment. Fit­ness is not about pro­ce­dures such as deep brain stim­u­la­tion. Yet, he added, com­pa­nies such as Posit Sci­ence have designed their prod­ucts in a way that stim­u­late the pre­cise parts of the brain that need that stim­u­la­tion and re-wiring.

Sharp­Brains is pre­sent­ing tomorrow.

Zack Lynch has posted a cal­en­dar of key Fall 2006 Neu­rotech­nol­ogy events.

Next one: 6th Annual Neu­rotech Lead­ers Forum, Sep­tem­ber 28–29, San Fran­cisco. Zack writes “If you want to stay on the cut­ting edge of advance­ments in neu­rode­vices, then don’t miss Cavuoto’s con­fer­ence now in its’ sixth year.”

James Cavuoto has been kind enough to extend me an invi­ta­tion, and I will blog the high­lights of the event.

You can check more infor­ma­tion on other con­fer­ences in his post, includ­ing the mas­sive Neu­ro­science 2006 in Octo­ber where The Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion will be for­mally launched.

Zack also announces, for early birds, the Neu­rotech Indus­try Invest­ing and Busi­ness con­fer­ence on May 17–18, 2007 in San Fran­cisco, put together by Neu­roIn­sights.

Highly rec­om­mended con­fer­ence for any­one work­ing on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, med­ical devices, diag­nos­tics and neu­rotech­nol­ogy in gen­eral, and with added value for any­one inter­ested in see­ing me mod­er­ate what I hope will be a ground­break­ing panel:

Title: Brain Fit­ness Through Soft­ware and Neurofeedback

Descrip­tion: Spurred by the dis­cov­ery of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, the aging baby boomer pop­u­la­tion and demand for safe treat­ments for child­hood ADHD, soft­ware com­pa­nies, large and small, are ven­tur­ing into the realm of ther­apy and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Ven­ture investors are drawn by the poten­tial of the large mar­kets, lack of FDA involve­ment, and scal­a­bil­ity of the soft­ware model. What chal­lenges are com­pa­nies fac­ing? What effi­cacy para­me­ters are required for success?