After many many months of men­tal stim­u­la­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise and the cer­tain need for stress man­age­ment… we have just announced the release of the The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009 report, our sec­ond annual com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket analy­sis of the US mar­ket for com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ment and train­ing tools. In this report we esti­mate the size of the US brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket at $265M in 2008, up from $225M in 2007 (18% annual growth), and from $100m in 2005. Two seg­ments fuelled the mar­ket growth from 2007 to 2008: con­sumers (grew from $80m to $95m) and health­care & insur­ance providers (grew from $65m to $80m).

The 150-page report finds promis­ing research and ini­tia­tives to drive sig­nif­i­cant growth, com­bined with increased con­sumer con­fu­sion given aggres­sive mar­ket­ing claims and lack of edu­ca­tion and stan­dards. The report includes:
– The com­plete results of an exclu­sive Jan­u­ary 2009 Sur­vey with 2,000+ respon­dents
– A pro­pri­etary Mar­ket & Research Momen­tum Matrix to cat­e­go­rize 21 key ven­dors into four cat­e­gories
– 10 Research Exec­u­tive Briefs writ­ten by lead­ing sci­en­tists at promi­nent research labs
– An analy­sis of the level of clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion per prod­uct and cog­ni­tive domain

Top 10 High­lights from the report:

1) Con­sumers, seniors, com­mu­ni­ties and insur­ance providers drove year on year sus­tained growth, from $225m in 2007 to $265m in 2008. Rev­enues may reach between $1 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion by 2015, depend­ing on how impor­tant prob­lems (Pub­lic Aware­ness, Nav­i­gat­ing Claims, Research, Health Cul­ture, Lack of Assess­ment) are addressed.

2) Increased inter­est and con­fu­sion: 61% of respon­dents Strongly Agree with the state­ment Address­ing cog­ni­tive and brain health should be a health­care pri­or­ity. But, 65% Agree/Strongly Agree. I don’t really know what to expect from prod­ucts mak­ing brain claims.

3) Invest­ment in R&D seeds future growth: Land­mark invest­ments by insur­ance providers and government-funded research insti­tutes test­ing new brain fit­ness appli­ca­tions planted new seeds for future growth.

4) Becom­ing stan­dard in res­i­den­tial facil­i­ties: Over 700 res­i­den­tial facil­i­ties mostly Inde­pen­dent and Assisted Liv­ing facil­i­ties and CCRCs have installed com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing programs.

5) Cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion: Con­sumers seem more sat­is­fied with computer-based prod­ucts than paper-based options. But, sat­is­fac­tion dif­fers by prod­uct. When asked I got real value for my money, results were as fol­lows: Lumosity.com (65% Agree), Puz­zle Books (60%), Posit Sci­ence (52%), Nin­tendo (51%) agreed. Posit Sci­ence (53% Agree) and Lumosity.com (51%) do bet­ter than Puz­zle Books (39%) and Nin­tendo (38%) at I have seen the results I wanted.

6) Assess­ments: Increas­ing adop­tion of computer-based cog­ni­tive assess­ments to base­line and track cog­ni­tive func­tions over time in mil­i­tary, sports, and clin­i­cal con­texts. The Alzheimer’s Foun­da­tion of Amer­ica now advo­cates for wide­spread cog­ni­tive screen­ings after 65–75.

7) Spe­cific com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing and videogames have been shown to improve brain func­tions, but the key ques­tions are, Which ones, and Who needs what when?

Aggres­sive mar­ket­ing claims are cre­at­ing con­fu­sion and skep­ti­cism, result­ing in a dis­tract­ing con­tro­versy between two mis­lead­ing extremes: (a) buy­ing prod­uct XYZ can reju­ve­nate your brain Y years or (b) those prod­ucts don’t work; just do one more cross­word puz­zle. The upcom­ing book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness aims to help con­sumers nav­i­gate these claims.

9) Devel­op­ers can be clas­si­fied into four groups, based on a pro­pri­etary Mar­ket and Research Momen­tum Matrix: Sharp­Brains finds 4 Lead­ers, 8 High Poten­tials, 3 Cross­words 2.0, and 6 Wait & See companies.

10) Increased dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion: Lead­ing com­pa­nies are bet­ter defin­ing their value propo­si­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels to reach spe­cific seg­ments such as retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, schools, or health­care providers.

Lead­ing researchers pre­pared 10 Research Exec­u­tive Briefs:
- Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man (Einstein-Monteore): Neu­ro­pro­tec­tion via cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties
– Dr. Jerri Edwards (South Florida): Assess­ments of dri­ving fit­ness
– Dr. Susanne Jaeggi and Dr. Mar­tin Buschkuehl (Bern, Michi­gan): Work­ing mem­ory train­ing and  intel­li­gence
– Dr. Torkel Kling­berg (Karolin­ska): Work­ing mem­ory train­ing, dopamine, and math
– Dr. Liz Zelin­ski (UC Davis): Audi­tory pro­cess­ing train­ing
– Dr. David Vance (UAB): Speed-of-processing train­ing
– Dr. Jerri Edwards (South Florida): Cog­ni­tive train­ing for healthy aging
– Dr. Daphne Bave­lier & Dr. Shawn Green (Rochester): Action videogames and atten­tional skills
– Dr. Arthur Kramer (Illi­nois): Strat­egy videogames and exec­u­tive func­tions
– Dr. Yaakov Stern (Colum­bia): The cog­ni­tive reserve and neu­roimag­ing
– Dr. David Rabiner (Duke): Objec­tive assess­ments for ADHD

Table of Contents

Edi­to­r­ial
Exec­u­tive Sum­mary
Chap­ter 1. Bird-Eye View of the Grow­ing Field
Chap­ter 2. Mar­ket Sur­vey on Beliefs, Atti­tudes, Pur­chase Habits
Chap­ter 3. The Emerg­ing Com­pet­i­tive Land­scape
Chap­ter 4. The Sci­ence for Brain Fit­ness and Cog­ni­tive Health
Chap­ter 5. Con­sumers  Adopt­ing Cross­words 2.0?
Chap­ter 6: Health­care and Insur­ance Providers — A Cul­ture of Cog­ni­tive Health
Chap­ter 7: K12 School Sys­tems– Ready for Change?
Chap­ter 8: Mil­i­tary, Sports Teams, Com­pa­nies,  Brain-Performance Link
Chap­ter 9: Future Direc­tions‚ Pro­jec­tions and Bottlenecks

Com­pa­nies pro­filed include: Advanced Brain Tech­nolo­gies, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing, Brain Cen­ter Amer­ica, Brain Resource, CNS Vital Signs, Cogmed, Cogstate, Cog­niFit, Cog­ni­tive Drug Research, Dakim, Houghton Mif­flin, Learn­ing Enhance­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, Learn­ingRx, Lumos Labs, Mar­bles: The Brain Store, Nin­tendo, NovaV­i­sion, Posit Sci­ence, Sci­en­tific Brain Train­ing, Sci­en­tific Learn­ing, Trans­An­a­lyt­ics, vibrant­Brains, Vig­or­ous Mind, Viv­ity Labs.

More on the report by click­ing on The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009.

Nin­tendo brain-trainer ‘no bet­ter than pen­cil and paper’ (The Times):
“The sur­vey of ten-year-old chil­dren found no evi­dence to sup­port claims in Nintendo’s adver­tis­ing cam­paign, fea­tur­ing Nicole Kid­man, that users can test and reju­ve­nate their grey cells. The Nin­tendo DS is a tech­no­log­i­cal jewel. As a game it’s fine, said Alain Lieury, pro­fes­sor of cog­ni­tive psy­chol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes, Brit­tany, who con­ducted the sur­vey. But it is char­la­tanism to claim that it is a sci­en­tific test.

Com­ments: as we have said before, Nin­tendo Brain Age and Brain Train­ing should be seen as what they are: a game. And the con­struct of one’s hav­ing a  “brain age” makes no sense.

Hav­ing said that, the researcher quoted then offers, out of the blue, a highly inac­cu­rate statement:

“The study tested Nintendo’s claims on 67 ten-year-olds. “That’s the age where you have the best chance of improve­ment,” Pro­fes­sor Lieury said. “If it doesn’t work on chil­dren, it won’t work on adults.”

That asser­tion (that some­thing won’t “work” on adults because it won’t “work” on kids) makes even less sense than hav­ing a “brain age”. The Cog­ni­tive Reserve research shows the need for life­long men­tal stim­u­la­tion — and the real­ity is that kids are more exposed to nov­elty and chal­lenge all the time, whereas older adults may not be. Fur­ther, that claim (some­thing that doesn’t “work” on kids won’t “work” on adults) has already been tested and proven wrong:

In a cou­ple of recent tri­als, dis­cussed here, the same strat­egy game (Rise of Nations, a com­plex chal­lenge for exec­u­tive func­tions), played for the same num­ber of hours (23)  showed quite impres­sive (untrained) cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits in peo­ple over 60 — and no ben­e­fits in peo­ple in their 20s.

How can this be? Well, we often say that our brains need nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge — and it should be obvi­ous that those ingre­di­ents depend on who we are Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have sev­eral recent arti­cles and devel­op­ments wor­thy of attention:

1) Boom times for brain train­ing games (CNN)
2) Nav­i­gat­ing the brain fit­ness land­scape: do’s and don’ts (McKnight’s Long Term Care News)
3) USA Hockey and Intel­li­gym (press release)
4) Brain Fit­ness at New York Pub­lic Library (NYPL blog)
5) McDon­nell Foun­da­tion grant har­nesses cog­ni­tive sci­ence to improve stu­dent learn­ing (press release)
6) Health insur­ance firms offer­ing online cog­ni­tive ther­apy for insom­nia (Los Ange­les Times)
7) Head­Min­der Cog­ni­tive Sta­bil­ity Index: Com­put­er­ized Neu­rocog­ni­tive … (Press release)
THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE (Intel­li­gent Life)
9) Work­ing Later in Life May Facil­i­tate Neural Health (Cere­brum)
10) The Cool Fac­tor: Never Let Them See You Sweat (New York Times)

Links, selected quotes and com­men­tary: Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Over the next weeks we are going to be shar­ing the Exec­u­tive Sum­mary of our mar­ket report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 with mem­bers and clients of sev­eral part­ner orga­ni­za­tions (the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, where I will be speak­ing this Thurs­day, Neu­rotech Reports, where I will speak on Octo­ber 24th, and the Health 2.0 con­fer­ence, where we are spon­sor­ing a panel on gam­ing for health), so it is only fair that we first share it with our own readers.

Exec­u­tive Summary

A spate of recent global news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and brain train­ing reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ural, non drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very timely, given an aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing preva­lence of Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs in the US that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and lifestyle changes.

US brain fit­ness mar­ket: sig­nif­i­cant and growing

We esti­mate the size of the US brain fit­ness mar­ket was $225m in 2007 – more than dou­ble what it was in 2005. Whereas K12 school sys­tems were the largest buy­ers in 2005, con­sumers were respon­si­ble for most of the growth from 2005 to 2007. We esti­mate that the con­sumer seg­ment grew from a few mil­lion in 2005 to $80m in 2007, and fore­see sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket growth dri­ven not only by con­sumers but also by health­care and insur­ance providers.

Mar­ket dynamics

As we speak to diverse audi­ences about this emerg­ing field around the coun­try we are fre­quently asked the fol­low­ing questions:

- Why are we talk­ing about the brain fit­ness field at all?

Over the past decade, teams backed by neu­ro­sci­en­tists around the world Read the rest of this entry »

Com­puter game boosts maths scores (BBC):

- “It also found improve­ments in pupils’ con­cen­tra­tion and behaviour.”

- “The study involved more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scot­land using the Brain Train­ing from Dr Kawashima game on the Nin­tendo DS every day.”

- “Researchers found that while all groups had improved their scores, the group using the game had improved by a fur­ther 50%.”

- “Less able chil­dren were found to be more likely to improve than the high­est attain­ers and almost all pupils had an increased per­cep­tion of their own ability.”

Com­ment:  fas­ci­nat­ing results sup­port­ing the poten­tial role for “Seri­ous Games” in edu­ca­tion. Now, please take the results with a grain of salt, since the study doesn’t seem to have been pub­lished yet in any top-tier peer-reviewed jour­nal.. The infor­ma­tion pub­licly avail­able seems to sim­ply con­sist of a press release by Learn­ing and Teach­ing Scot­land. We hope to see an in-depth report to answer many open ques­tions on the study. In any case, wel­come news!

Dur­ing the research phase before the pub­li­ca­tion of the spe­cial report Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Seniors Hous­ing — A Field in the Mak­ing, pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA), we real­ized that there were equal amounts of inter­est and con­fu­sion among exec­u­tives and pro­fes­sion­als think­ing about adding computer-based cog­ni­tive exer­cise prod­ucts to their mix of health & well­ness activ­i­ties, so we included the Eval­u­a­tion Check­list that follows.

The real-life expe­ri­ences at lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions such as Senior Star Liv­ing, Bel­mont Vil­lage Senior Liv­ing, Erick­son Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties and oth­ers were instru­men­tal in the devel­op­ment of the Check­list. We hope it is useful.

Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams For Seniors Hous­ing, Health­care and Insur­ance Providers: Eval­u­a­tion Checklist

Over the next sev­eral years, it is likely that many seniors hous­ing oper­a­tors will begin to care­fully eval­u­ate a grow­ing num­ber of options to include “brain fit­ness cen­ters” in their communities.

Some options will require pur­chas­ing a device, such as Nin­tendo prod­ucts, or the Dakim touch-screen sys­tem. Oth­ers will require installing soft­ware in PCs in exist­ing or new com­puter labs, such as Posit Sci­ence, Cogmed or CogniFit’s pro­grams. Oth­ers will be fully avail­able online, such as those offered by Lumos Labs, Happy Neu­ron and My Vig­or­ous Mind. And still oth­ers may be technology-free, promis­ing engag­ing com­bi­na­tions of inter­ac­tive, group-based, activ­i­ties with pen-and-paper exercises.

Cre­at­ing a solid busi­ness case will help com­mu­ni­ties nav­i­gate through this grow­ing array of options. We sug­gest com­mu­ni­ties con­sider this Sharp­Brains Check­list for Brain Fit­ness Centers:

1. Early Users: Who among our res­i­dents is ready and will­ing to do the pro­gram? How are they react­ing to the pilot test­ing of the program?

2. Cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits: What are the spe­cific ben­e­fits claimed for using this pro­gram? Under what sce­nario of use (how many hours/week, how many weeks)? What spe­cific cog­ni­tive skill(s) does the pro­gram train? How will we mea­sure progress? Read the rest of this entry »

The Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA) has just released an Spe­cial Issue Brief, titled Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Senior Hous­ing — A Field in the Mak­ing. We pre­pared it for their mem­bers, and it is now avail­able for pur­chase (You can click here for pur­chase and down­load. $25.)

It was a plea­sure to learn more about emerg­ing trends there and dis­cuss best prac­tices and impli­ca­tions with some of the pio­neers at Senior Star Liv­ing, Bel­mont Vil­lage, Erick­son, and more, who have been lead­ing inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tives and con­duct­ing their own pilot stud­ies. I hope you enjoy the report.

This 15-page Spe­cial Report describes Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Major Impli­ca­tions from Brain Research

Should Social-Emotional Learn­ing Be Part of Aca­d­e­mic Cur­ricu­lum?: It is clear by now that our brains are more than cog­ni­tive machines. For exam­ple, emo­tions can either enhance or inhibit our abil­ity to learn. Daniel Gole­man explores the impli­ca­tions of “new stud­ies that reveal how teach­ing kids to be emo­tion­ally and socially com­pe­tent boost their aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment.” Brought to you in part­ner­ship with Greater Good Magazine.

Retain older work­ers beyond retire­ment: Busi­ness­Week cov­ers a best prac­tice in a topic of grow­ing impor­tance: how large com­pa­nies, such as Amer­i­can Express, can retain older work­ers in pro­duc­tive ways beyond a set arbi­trary retire­ment age. As Dr. Art Kramer told us recently, “as a soci­ety, it is a mas­sive waste of tal­ent not to ensure older adults remain active and productive.”

Brain­Tech and Sus­tain­able Brains: Build­ing on a recent quote by John Doerr about clean tech­nol­ogy trends, we won­der… “If Energy is the mother of all markets…who would be the father of all mar­kets?” The Human Brain, perhaps?

Health and Research

What You Can do to Improve Mem­ory (and Why It Dete­ri­o­rates in Old Age): Is there any­thing we can do besides “exer­cise like crazy, eat healthy foods that you don’t like all that much, pop your statin pills, and take up yoga?” Yes: focus, focus, focus, sug­gests Dr. Bill Klemm.

News and Events

Cog­ni­tive Health News August 2008: This is a roundup of recent brain health news and our com­men­tary, includ­ing the grow­ing adop­tion of Dakim and Nin­tendo prod­ucts, the cog­ni­tive impact of videogames, and the cog­ni­tive dimen­sion of the obe­sity crisis.

Exer­cise your brain at these events: Alvaro will present the main find­ings from our mar­ket research at mul­ti­ple con­fer­ences in the US, Canada and Dubai dur­ing the rest of  the year.

Where does the “Feel­ing of Know­ing” comes from?: Dr. Gin­ger Camp­bell shares some insights from her recent inter­view with neu­rol­o­gist Robert Bur­ton (author of On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not).“While it might be true that one can learn to become more aware of the emo­tional sig­nals com­ing from ones body, Dr. Bur­ton argues that “gut feel­ings” or intu­ition should not be assumed to be true with­out testing.”

Resources for Brain Health Across the Lifes­pan: Lau­rie Bar­tels shares a list of inter­views, video, arti­cles, and books that go hand-in-hand with the brain-related top­ics we cover.

Brain teaser

Can you use men­tal self rota­tion to read a map?: please check out this teaser by Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, one of our favorites so far.

We hope you have enjoyed this newslet­ter. We encour­age you to stay tuned for our Sep­tem­ber edi­tions, since great con­tent is com­ing. We will soon pub­lish an inter­view with Lee Woodruff, co-author of the book In An Instant: A Family’s Jour­ney of Love and Heal­ing, and dis­cuss the spec­tac­u­lar cog­ni­tive recov­ery of her hus­band, ABC reporter Bob Woodruff, who expe­ri­enced a trau­matic brain injury in Iraq in 2006. We will also inter­view Dr. Mike Pos­ner, emi­nent cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist, to explore recent find­ings on atten­tion and atten­tion train­ing and their implications.

Here you have a roundup of inter­est­ing recent news on cog­ni­tive health top­ics and my commentary:

1) Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Studies

2) Men­tal Floss at Mil­i­tary Offi­cer Magazine

3) Brain Train­ing dom­i­nates ’08 Euro sales (CVG Online)

4) Dakim’s [m]Power Adopted by 150 Senior Liv­ing Com­mu­ni­ties … (Busi­ness Wire)

5) Clumsy kids more likely to become obese adults: study (CBC)

——————-
1) There were a few inter­est­ing research papers pre­sented at the last  Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion con­ven­tions around the theme:

Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Stud­ies
–Skills Trans­fer to Class­room, Sur­gi­cal Pro­ce­dures, Sci­en­tific Think­ing (press release).

Prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing study was that of 303 laparo­scopic sur­geons, which “showed that sur­geons who played video games requir­ing spa­tial skills and hand dex­ter­ity and then per­formed a drill test­ing these skills were sig­nif­i­cantly faster at Read the rest of this entry »