There’s such a flood of very sig­nif­i­cant research stud­ies, edu­ca­tional resources and arti­cles related to brain health, it’s hard to keep track — even for us!

Let me intro­duce and quote some of the top Brain Health Stud­ies, Arti­cles and Resources pub­lished in March:

1) Cog­ni­tive Decline Begins In Late 20s, Study Sug­gests (Sci­ence Daily)

- “These pat­terns sug­gest that some types of men­tal flex­i­bil­ity decrease rel­a­tively early in adult­hood, but that how much knowl­edge one has, and the effec­tive­ness of inte­grat­ing it with one’s abil­i­ties, may increase through­out all of adult­hood if there are no patho­log­i­cal dis­eases,” Salt­house said.

- How­ever, Salt­house points out that there is a great deal of vari­ance from per­son to person

2) Cere­brum 2009: Emerg­ing Ideas in Brain Sci­ence — new book by the Dana Foun­da­tion that “explores the cut­ting edge of brain research and its impli­ca­tions in our every­day lives, in lan­guage under­stand­able to the gen­eral reader.”

A cou­ple of excel­lent chap­ters of direct rel­e­vance to everyone’s brain health are:
– Chap­ter 4: A Road Paved by Rea­son, by Eliz­a­beth Nor­ton Lasley

- Chap­ter 10: Neural Health: Is It Facil­i­tated by Work Force Par­tic­i­pa­tion?, by Denise Park, Ph.D

3) Stay­ing Sharp DVD Pro­gram: “Dr. Jor­dan Graf­man, chief of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Sec­tion at the National Insti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders and Stroke out­side of Wash­ing­ton, DC, and a mem­ber of the Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives, is your guide as we cover what to expect from the aging brain and what we can do to ‘stay sharp.’

For a free DVD of this pro­gram you can con­tact stayingsharp@dana.org. (they say free in their web­site, I don’t know if that includes ship­ping & handling)

4) Dri­vers to be tested on cog­ni­tive abil­ity start­ing at age 75 (Japan Times)

The out­line of a cog­ni­tive test that dri­vers aged 75 or over will be required to take from June when renew­ing their licenses was released Thursday…The test is intended to reduce the num­ber of traf­fic acci­dents involv­ing elderly dri­vers by mea­sur­ing their cog­ni­tive level.

5) Phys­i­cal Fit­ness Improves Spa­tial Mem­ory, Increases Size Of Brain Struc­ture (Sci­ence Daily)

- “Now researchers have found that elderly adults who are more phys­i­cally fit tend to have big­ger hip­pocampi and bet­ter spa­tial mem­ory than those who are less fit.”

6) Brain Train­ers: A Work­out for the Mind (Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Mind)

“I recently tried out eight of the lat­est brain fit­ness pro­grams, train­ing with each for a week. The pro­grams ranged widely in focus, qual­ity and how fun they were to use. “Like phys­i­cal exer­cise equip­ment, a brain exer­cise pro­gram doesn’t do you any good if you don’t use it, says Andrew J. Carle, direc­tor of the Pro­gram in Assisted Living/Senior Hous­ing Admin­is­tra­tion at George Mason Uni­ver­sity. And peo­ple tend not to use bor­ing equip­ment. “I remem­ber when Nor­dic­Track was the biggest thing out there. Every­one ran out and bought one, and 90 per­cent of them ended up as a clothes rack in the back of your bedroom.

The reporter used: Posit Science’s Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram Clas­sic, Hap­pyNeu­ron, Nin­tendo BrainAge, CogniFit’s MindFit/ Cog­niFit Per­sonal Coach, Lumos­ity, MyBrain­Trainer, Brain­Twister, Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Training.

7) The Lat­est in Men­tal Health: Work­ing Out at the ‘Brain Gym’ (Wall Street Journal)

- “Mar­shall Kahn, an 82-year-old fam­ily doc­tor in Fuller­ton, Calif., says he got such a boost from brain exer­cises he started doing at a “Nifty after Fifty” club that he decided to start see­ing patients again part-time. “Doing all the men­tal exer­cise,” he says, “I real­ized I’ve still got it.”

Debate Over Drugs For ADHD Reignites (Wash­ing­ton Post)

- “New data from a large fed­eral study have reignited a debate over the effec­tive­ness of long-term drug treat­ment of chil­dren with hyper­ac­tiv­ity or attention-deficit dis­or­der, and have drawn accu­sa­tions that some mem­bers of the research team have sought to play down evi­dence that med­ica­tions do lit­tle good beyond 24 months.”

- “The study also indi­cated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children’s growth.”

Adap­tive train­ing leads to sus­tained enhance­ment of poor work­ing mem­ory in chil­dren (Devel­op­men­tal Science)

Abstract: Work­ing mem­ory plays a cru­cial role in sup­port­ing learn­ing, with poor progress in read­ing and math­e­mat­ics char­ac­ter­iz­ing chil­dren with low mem­ory skills. This study inves­ti­gated whether these prob­lems can be over­come by a train­ing pro­gram designed to boost work­ing mem­ory. Chil­dren with low work­ing mem­ory skills were assessed on mea­sures of work­ing mem­ory, IQ and aca­d­e­mic attain­ment before and after train­ing on either adap­tive or non-adaptive ver­sions of the pro­gram. Adap­tive train­ing that taxed work­ing mem­ory to its lim­its was asso­ci­ated with sub­stan­tial and sus­tained gains in work­ing mem­ory, with age-appropriate lev­els achieved by the major­ity of chil­dren. Math­e­mat­i­cal abil­ity also improved sig­nif­i­cantly 6 months fol­low­ing adap­tive train­ing. These find­ings indi­cate that com­mon impair­ments in work­ing mem­ory and asso­ci­ated learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties may be over­come with this behav­ioral treatment.

9) Brain cor­tex thin­ning linked to inher­ited depres­sion (Los Ange­les Times)

- “On aver­age, peo­ple with a fam­ily his­tory of depres­sion appear to have brains that are 28% thin­ner in the right cor­tex — the out­er­most layer of the brain — than those with no known fam­ily his­tory of the dis­ease. That cor­ti­cal thin­ning, said the researchers, is on a scale sim­i­lar to that seen in patients with Alzheimer’s dis­ease or schizophrenia.”

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 »

Press release: Here

– “Lumos Labs, devel­oper of Lumosity.com, the lead­ing web-based provider of scientifically-tested brain train­ing games, today announced that it has raised $3 mil­lion of equity financ­ing from Pequot Ven­tures, Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners (NVP), and exist­ing investors includ­ing Michael Dear­ing. The investor group brings exper­tise that will cat­alyze the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of Lumosity.com and sup­port Lumos Labs mis­sion to improve lives by enhanc­ing brain fitness.

– “Lumos Labs is at the cen­ter of a boom­ing inter­est in cog­ni­tive exer­cise and the emerg­ing sci­ence about the remark­able plas­tic­ity of the brain, said Amish Jani of Pequot Ven­tures. Lumosity.com has seen tremen­dous demand from users and part­ners alike by lever­ag­ing the power of the web to deliver a unique plat­form for brain fitness.

Great news for the sec­tor. The more tools avail­able for lead­ing men­tally stim­u­lat­ing lives, the bet­ter we will all be.

Lumosity.com (click Here to get a sense of their games) pro­vides a great user expe­ri­ence at a rea­son­able cost. From an investor’s per­spec­tive, we believe Lumos Labs is a very seri­ous con­tender in the brain fit­ness space, and it has indeed been exe­cut­ing a very smart online strategy.

Now, I am not sure what “scientifically-tested brain train­ing games” really means. While prepar­ing our Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report we reviewed all pub­lished research on the effi­cacy behind dif­fer­ent pro­grams, and didn’t find any for Lumos­ity (which has some very inter­est­ing inter­nal, but not pub­lished, data).

We gave Lumos­ity a score of 2 ouf of 10 in Clin­i­cal Val­i­da­tion (with Nin­tendo Brain Age get­ting a score of 1, and NovaV­i­sion, cleared by the FDA for use with stroke/ TBI patients, get­ting a 5).

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last few days we have seen an engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion going on. In a cou­ple of posts, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Posit Sci­ence brain fit­ness gym have left com­ments that have prompted me to ask a series of detailed ques­tions. I will present those ques­tions in a post, so they are eas­ier to find.

Eric, Henry: please address these ques­tions, so we all con­tribute to help­ing con­sumers and insti­tu­tions nav­i­gate through this emerg­ing land­scape of “brain fit­ness gyms” and sep­a­rate what is real today from what is promis­ing and may be real tomor­row. Read the rest of this entry »

This is an event you may be inter­ested in, if you are based in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area.

The MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, The Busi­ness Forum on Aging and Smart­Sil­vers presents:

The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket:  Build­ing Bet­ter Brains (Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here)

Date: 02/12/2008 Tues­day
Time: 6:00pm
Venue: Wil­son Son­sini
Loca­tion: 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto
Cost: $20 online, $25 walk-in

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Here is the buzz  Sci­en­tific, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graphic trends have con­verged to cre­ate an excit­ing new mar­ket in brain fit­ness, where soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions can assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. That equates to a sharper mind and bet­ter mem­ory reten­tion con­tribut­ing to health­ier aging.  There is cur­rently a $400m world­wide mar­ket with high growth ahead predicted.

Join us in lively and infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions as Alvaro Fer­nan­dez; CEO of SharpBrains.com sum­ma­rizes the sci­ence, key mar­ket seg­ments, play­ers and trends, based on the first Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report, pre­sented in this event.  He will dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions with sev­eral neuro-technology, gam­ing experts and investors.”  Mod­er­ated by Zack Lynch, the speaker and panel will dis­cuss: Read the rest of this entry »

Did you read about the recent exper­i­ment where young chimps dis­played amaz­ing visual work­ing mem­ory capa­bil­ity, beat­ing humans?

- You can watch a short video here.

- Lumos Labs has released a very fun game to test your own skills: try out this Chimp Game!

Also, some very good recent news articles:

1) Is it worth going to the mind gym? (New Sci­en­tist). This is one of the best arti­cles we have read in a while (unfor­tu­nately requires subscription).

- “Bird­watch­ing is the brain­child of San Francisco-based Lumos Labs, just one of the dozens of com­pa­nies that have sprung up in recent months to cash in on the “brain-training” craze. Like most of its com­peti­tors, the the­ory behind …”

Com­ments: the arti­cle intro­duces read­ers to much of the research and sci­en­tists we dis­cuss in our blog, such as Torkel Kling­berg’s work and recent results from the IMPACT study. The arti­cle would have been even bet­ter had Daniel Gopher been inter­viewed on his work improv­ing cog­ni­tive per­for­mance of mil­i­tary pilots and bas­ket­ball players.

2) Inno­va­tion: Your Brain Needs Just as Much Exer­cise as Your Body (Fox Busi­ness Network)

- “The mar­ket, how­ever, is still small. Accord­ing to Alvaro Fer­nan­dez , who co-founded mar­ket research and con­sult­ing firm Sharp­Brains, which is focused solely on the field of brain fit­ness, in 2007 the mar­ket was val­ued at $225 mil­lion, which is up from $150 mil­lion in 2005. Fer­nan­dez thinks there is poten­tial for it to surge, reach­ing more than $2 bil­lion by 2016.”

Com­ments:  Very good arti­cle. Those esti­mates refer to the whole brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket to assess and train cog­ni­tive skills, includ­ing Read the rest of this entry »

The hol­i­days are approach­ing and you can expect many soft­ware and game devel­op­ers to adver­tise their prod­ucts aggres­sively, try­ing to get you buy their “brain train­ing” prod­ucts for you or as a gift for a loved one.

The good news is that there are more and more tools we can use to keep men­tally stim­u­lated and even train and improve spe­cific cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties (like pro­cess­ing speed, short-term mem­ory…). You may be read­ing about Nin­tendo Brain Age, Posit Sci­ence, Fast For­Word, Mind­Fit, Lumos­ity, Happy Neu­ron, MyBrain­Trainer, emWave, StressEraser and more. And, of course, there are also non-technology based interventions.

The bad news is that it is dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate mar­ket­ing from sci­en­tific claims, and to under­stand which one, if any, may be a good com­ple­ment to other healthy lifestyle choices.

To help you nav­i­gate this process, we are pub­lish­ing the Sharp­Brains Check­list below, based on dozens of inter­views with sci­en­tists, experts and consumers:

10 Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for You (and a brief expla­na­tion of why each ques­tion is important)

* 1. Are there sci­en­tists, ide­ally neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, and a sci­en­tific advi­sory board Read the rest of this entry »

A col­lec­tion of recent announce­ment in the “brain games” or “brain train­ing games” space:

The Wii sets new gen­er­a­tional stan­dards for the videogame industry

• “The age­ing of the Japan­ese pop­u­la­tion com­pelled gamemaker Nin­tendo to widen its audi­ence. Now, the Wii is lead­ing the indus­try stan­dards. But hard­core gamers are still too impor­tant to be neglected.”

Strain your brain the smart way

• “George Har­ri­son, Nintendo’s senior vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has said that more than half of the company’s mar­ket­ing for Wii is aimed at adults. And the sys­tem has been pre­sented at con­ven­tions for the aging “gray gamer” pop­u­la­tion.” and talks about sudoku, Brain Age, Big Brain Acad­emy, and more.

SBT Announces the Acqui­si­tion of Quixit

• “Sci­en­tific Brain Train­ing (“SBT”), based in Lyon, France, today has announced that Read the rest of this entry »

Here is ques­tion 22 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions.

Ques­tion:

Are there spe­cific brain fit­ness pro­grams for kids? My kids have prob­lems with math-why should they do these things that may dis­tract them?

Key Points:

• Learn­ing stress man­age­ment skills can reduce test anx­i­ety and improve learn­ing readiness.
• If stress lev­els are too high, con­cen­tra­tion and focus are neg­a­tively impacted.

Answer:

Read the rest of this entry »

We wrote yes­ter­day about Grow­ing Super Ath­letes (each of our stu­dents) and how “Learn­ing” goes beyond what we typ­i­cally call “Edu­ca­tion”. One of the skills needed for suc­cess at school and life is emo­tional self-regulation, and a recent arti­cle on Sharp­Brains in La Opin­ion (main US-based Spanish-language news­pa­per) touched pre­cisely on that.

Below you have the link, and quotes, in Span­ish. The gist of the arti­cle is sim­i­lar to this pre­vi­ous arti­cle in Tech­nol­ogy & Learn­ing mag­a­zine: Take a Deep Breath: Biofeed­back soft­ware is help­ing stu­dents calm down for bet­ter test performance.

La Opin­ion arti­cle, by Lucero Amador: Secreto para tri­un­far en los exámenes

• “Cuando una per­sona está muy eno­jada o tensa, el lóbulo frontal del cere­bro resulta afec­tado por Read the rest of this entry »