After many months of work (and we hope many new neu­rons and stronger synapses in our brains), we have just released our inau­gural report on the emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket, the first to define the brain fit­ness and train­ing soft­ware mar­ket and ana­lyze the size and trends of its four cus­tomer seg­ments. We esti­mate the size of the US brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket at $225M in2007, up from $100m in 2005 (50% CAGR). The two seg­ments that fueled the mar­ket growth: con­sumers (grew from $5m to $80m, 300% CAGR) and health­care & insur­ance providers (grew from $36m to $65m, 35% CAGR).

High­lights from The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 report include:

1) 2007 was a sem­i­nal year for the US Brain Fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket, which reached $225 mil­lion in rev­enues – up from an esti­mated $100 mil­lion in 2005.

2) Over 20 com­pa­nies are offer­ing tools to assess and train cog­ni­tive skills to four cus­tomer seg­ments: con­sumers; health­care and insur­ance providers; K12 school sys­tems; and For­tune 1000 com­pa­nies, the mil­i­tary, and sports teams.

3) The Nin­tendo Brain Age/ Brain Train­ing phe­nom­e­non has dri­ven much of the growth. The con­sumer seg­ment grew from a few mil­lion in 2005 to an esti­mated $80 mil­lion in 2007.

4) There is major con­fu­sion in the mar­ket, so edu­ca­tion will be key. Users and buy­ers need help to nav­i­gate the maze of prod­ucts and claims.

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Here’s a quick quiz to test your mem­ory and think­ing skills which should work out your tem­po­ral and frontal lobes. See how you do!

1. - Name the one sport in which nei­ther the spec­ta­tors nor the par­tic­i­pants know the score or the leader until the con­test ends.
2. - What famous North Amer­i­can land­mark is con­stantly mov­ing backward?
3. - Of all veg­eta­bles, only two can live to pro­duce on their own for sev­eral grow­ing sea­sons. All other veg­eta­bles must be replanted every year. What are the only two peren­nial vegetables?
4. - What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
5. - In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bot­tle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bot­tle is gen­uine; it hasn’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?
6. - Only three words in Stan­dard Eng­lish begin with the let­ters “dw” and they are all com­mon words. Name two of them.
7. - There are 14 punc­tu­a­tion marks in Eng­lish gram­mar. Can you name at least half of them?
8. - Name the one veg­etable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.
9. - Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet begin­ning with the let­ter “S.”

Click here for the answers.