We are proud to con­firm six addi­tional excel­lent Speak­ers at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (remem­ber, this is a fully vir­tual event so it requires no travel). Three Speak­ers are based in the US, two in the UK, one in Aus­tralia, and they truly rep­re­sent a range of per­spec­tives and exper­tise to dis­cuss, as the Sum­mit tagline promises, Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we are prepar­ing our 2010 mar­ket report we are ana­lyz­ing in depth a num­ber of impor­tant recent devel­op­ments. A major one, whose impli­ca­tions haven’t yet been prop­erly digested, was the pub­li­ca­tion in the UK of a fan­tas­tic series of pol­icy, sci­en­tific and tech­nol­ogy reports by the Fore­sight Project on Men­tal Cap­i­tal and Well­be­ing. If you want to have a stim­u­lat­ing and sub­stan­tial read, you can down­load the Exec­u­tive Sum­mary (and most other reports) for free.

I was think­ing about their main rec­om­men­da­tion (the need to focus more atten­tion, as a soci­ety and as indi­vid­u­als, on build­ing men­tal cap­i­tal and well­be­ing tra­jec­to­ries along the life­course), as I came across these appar­ently com­pletely sep­a­rate news. Doesn’t the life­long men­tal cap­i­tal frame­work add new light on these articles?

Study Sees Gains In Good Child Care (Wall Street Journal)

A study released Fri­day found that ben­e­fits asso­ci­ated with child-care providers and preschool pro­grams that encour­age such activ­i­ties as lan­guage, read­ing and game-playing last well into ado­les­cence. In par­tic­u­lar, teenagers who had such child-care per­formed sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter aca­d­e­m­i­cally than those given low-quality or no care out­side the home.

High-quality care was defined as an envi­ron­ment in which care-givers or teach­ers were warm, engaged and sen­si­tive to a child’s needs, and pro­vided cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion through activ­i­ties that would pro­mote lan­guage, such as read­ing, con­ver­sa­tion and game-playing.

Time to Review Work­place Reviews? (New York Times)

The focus on work­place health comes as worker sat­is­fac­tion in the United States appears to be at an all-time low. The Con­fer­ence Board reported recently that just 45 per­cent of work­ers are sat­is­fied with their jobs, down from 61 per­cent in 1987. The find­ings, based on a sur­vey of 5,000 house­holds, show that the decline goes well beyond con­cerns about job secu­rity. Employ­ees are unhappy about the design of their jobs, the health of their orga­ni­za­tions and the qual­ity of their managers.

Dr. Sut­ton, whose new book “Good Boss, Bad Boss” (com­ing from Busi­ness Plus) argues that good bosses are essen­tial to work­place suc­cess, said sky­rock­et­ing health care costs should moti­vate busi­nesses to focus on ways to lower stress.

Alzheimer’s Pre­ven­tion or Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment (blog post based on NIH inde­pen­dent panel)

“Firm con­clu­sions can­not be drawn about the asso­ci­a­tion of mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors with cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

(Note: which is true, but, as we dis­cussed pre­vi­ously, this is being mis­un­der­stood to mean “there is noth­ing we can do to main­tain if not enhance our cog­ni­tive and self-regulation capac­i­ties,” which couldn’t be fur­ther from truth, based on the very sim­ple facts of life­long neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and neuroplasticity.)

We just announced a new ses­sion at upcom­ing Sharp­Brains Sum­mit:

Mon­day Jan­u­ary 18th, 2010, 3.30-4pm: The Future of Cog­ni­tive Health Tech – Intel’s Per­spec­tive
Two researchers at Intel Cor­po­ra­tion and the Tech­nol­ogy Research for Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing (TRIL) Cen­tre will pro­vide an overview of why and how Intel Cor­po­ra­tion is sup­port­ing R&D ini­tia­tives to help develop home-based auto­mated appli­ca­tions to assess, mon­i­tor and help main­tain cog­ni­tion among older adults. They will also share key lessons learned so far, and out­line chal­lenges and poten­tial guide­lines for the field at large based on ethno­graphic research and first-hand prod­uct development.

* Mar­garet Mor­ris, Senior Researcher, Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group
* Muki Hansteen-Izora, Prod­uct Research and Incu­ba­tion Divi­sion Strate­gist, Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group

Muki Hansteen-Izora, Senior Design Researcher and Strate­gist with the Prod­uct Research and Incu­ba­tion divi­sion of Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group. Muki is also the Intel lead and co-PI for the Tech­nol­ogy Research for Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing (TRIL) Centre’s Cog­ni­tive Func­tion research strand, which is inves­ti­gat­ing how inter­ac­tive media and gam­ing tech­nolo­gies can sup­port cog­ni­tion in older pop­u­la­tions. Prior to join­ing Intel, Muki served as a lead researcher at Philips Research Labs. He holds a degree in Cul­tural Anthro­pol­ogy from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Santa Cruz, and com­pleted his grad­u­ate train­ing in Learn­ing, Design, and Tech­nol­ogy at Stan­ford University.

Mar­garet Mor­ris, Senior Researcher in Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group. Mar­garet stud­ies the ways that emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies can enhance men­tal and phys­i­cal well­be­ing. She con­ducts ethno­graphic research to iden­tify needs and works with engi­neers to develop and eval­u­ate exploratory pro­to­types. Prior to join­ing Intel in 2002, she stud­ied tech­nol­ogy adop­tion in Sapient’s Expe­ri­ence Mod­el­ling group. Margie com­pleted her Ph.D. in Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­ogy with a minor in Behav­ioural Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, her clin­i­cal intern­ship at the San Fran­cisco VA Med­ical Cen­tre, and her post­doc­toral fel­low­ship at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. She has a B.A. in Eng­lish from Haver­ford College.

To learn more and reg­is­ter: click on Sharp­Brains Sum­mit.