Over 50 insight­ful and fun mem­bers of the world­wide Sharp­Brains com­mu­nity had the oppor­tu­nity to gather in DC, New York and San Fran­cisco last month in order to meet in per­son –often for the first time!- and to dis­cuss next steps to drive mean­ing­ful inno­va­tion in the brain health and fit­ness space.

It is our plea­sure to invite Sharp­Brains Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants to con­tribute to, and to learn from, this grow­ing net­work, by ask­ing them to please: Read the rest of this entry »

We are hon­ored to announce the fol­low­ing Spon­sors and Part­ners of the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st, 2011). And we are look­ing for more, so please con­tact us if inter­ested! Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the XL edi­tion of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­lica (or, since we are try­ing to speak Eng­lish, the 40th edi­tion of “Sci­ence for the Peo­ple”), the rotat­ing blog car­ni­val that show­cases the finest sci­ence, med­ical and envi­ron­ment writ­ing pub­lished in the blogosphere.

Quick now — ask a ques­tion, any ques­tion, that comes to mind. Chances are some­one in this excel­lent ros­ter of sci­ence blog­gers has antic­i­pated it and pro­vided an answer below. Enjoy!

About our­selves

1. Why do I feel bet­ter after I exer­cise (pic: brainblogger)
2. Can thought­ful blog­ging and read­ing build brain reserve and delay dementia
3. What’s the bor­der­line between high and low func­tion­ing — autism research examples
4. Can we learn to multi-task more effectively
5. Should you mind your brain

About our bod­ies Read the rest of this entry »

We often hear inter­est from peo­ple of all ages in being par­tic­i­pants in the cog­ni­tive research we are doing in our UCSF lab. How­ever, all of our exper­i­ments to date have been focused on under 20 year olds and the over 60 age group, and many peo­ple fall in between. Well, we have just launched our first exper­i­ment aimed at explor­ing the impact of dis­trac­tion and mul­ti­task­ing on per­for­mance across the lifes­pan, with a large enough num­ber of par­tic­i­pants to allow for gen­der com­par­isons. So, we are reach­ing to peo­ple of all ages with the oppor­tu­nity to be par­tic­i­pate in this cool new experiment.

This is a behav­ioral study using a video game that we cre­ated and devel­oped to eval­u­ate these skills. It sets the stage for both a brain train­ing and brain record­ing exper­i­ment to fol­low. Tak­ing part requires an approx­i­mately two-hour study at our lab at the UCSF Mis­sion Bay cam­pus (mul­ti­ple days/times avail­able for the test­ing). We are look­ing for right handed indi­vid­u­als that are not col­or­blind, and not on any med­ica­tion for a neurological/psychiatric dis­or­der. Read the rest of this entry »

via Press release:

The Research Part­ner­ship in Cog­ni­tive Aging, a public-private effort to pro­mote the study of brain func­tion with age, will award up to $28 mil­lion over five years to 17 research grants to exam­ine the neural and behav­ioral pro­files of healthy cog­ni­tive aging and explore inter­ven­tions that may pre­vent, reduce or reverse cog­ni­tive decline in older people.

The part­ner­ship, led by the National Insti­tute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Insti­tutes of Health, and the McK­night Brain Research Foun­da­tion (MBRF), is seek­ing ways to main­tain cog­ni­tive health — the abil­ity to think, learn and remem­ber — into old age.

Hodes pointed out that emerg­ing evi­dence sug­gests that cer­tain inter­ven­tions — such as exer­cise, envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment, diet, social engage­ment, cog­ni­tive train­ing and stress reduc­tion — should be stud­ied more inten­sively to deter­mine if they might pre­vent or reduce declines in cog­ni­tive health.

All the stud­ies are fas­ci­nat­ing, and a few of them may have sig­nif­i­cant impact in the near-term given mar­ket trends:

• Ellen F. Binder, M.D., and Mark A. McDaniel, Ph.D., Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, St. Louis: Com­bin­ing Exer­cise and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing to Improve Every­day Func­tion. A pilot trial in 90 older adults will eval­u­ate whether cog­ni­tion improves when aer­o­bic exer­cise is com­bined with cog­ni­tive enrich­ment pro­vided by a spe­cific research-based video game. The ran­dom­ized trial is aimed at find­ing an inter­ven­tion to improve day-to-day cog­ni­tive function.
• Mark D’Esposito, M.D., Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley: A Brain-Based Approach to Enhanc­ing Exec­u­tive Con­trol Func­tions in Healthy Aging
• Patri­cia A. Boyle, Ph.D., Rush Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Cen­ter, Chicago: Char­ac­ter­iz­ing the Behav­ior Pro­file of Healthy Cog­ni­tive Aging
• Randy L. Buck­ner, Ph.D., Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal, Boston: Neural Processes Under­ly­ing Cog­ni­tive Aging
• Joe Z. Tsien, Ph.D., Med­ical Col­lege of Geor­gia, Augusta: Hip­pocam­pal Net­work Pro­files of Mem­ory Aging.
• Yaakov Stern, Ph.D., Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, New York: Com­bined Exer­cise and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Inter­ven­tion in Nor­mal Aging

For more information

• Press release: Here
• Web­site: Research Part­ner­ship in Cog­ni­tive Aging

My two cents:

• Why $28 mil­lion and not, say, $300m (one dol­lar per liv­ing Amer­i­can who tomor­row will be one day older than he or she is today)?
• Why the main empha­sis on “pre­vent, reduce or reverse decline” and not on “develop, build, main­tain functionality”?

Here you have the pre­sen­ta­tion I deliv­ered on Tues­day at ETech 2009 (this year’s O’Reilly Emerg­ing Tech­nol­ogy Conference):

Emerg­ing Research and Tech­nol­ogy for Life Hacking/ Brain Training

(click to open pre­sen­ta­tion in new window)

Descrip­tion: Life hack­ing. Brain train­ing. They are one and the same. The brain’s frontal lobes enable our goal-oriented behav­ior, sup­port­ing exec­u­tive func­tions, such as decision-making, atten­tion, emo­tional self-regulation, goal-setting, and work­ing mem­ory. These func­tions can be enhanced with tar­geted prac­tice  such as life hack­ing. This ses­sion will pro­vide an overview of the cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science under­pin­ning life hack­ing, and review the state-of-the-art of non-invasive tools for brain train­ing: neu­ro­feed­back, biofeed­back, soft­ware appli­ca­tions, cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions, Tran­scra­nial Mag­netic Stim­u­la­tion, and plain-old meditation.

It was great to meet fel­low blog­gers and pre­sen­ters, such as Shel­ley Batts of Of Two Minds and Chris Patil of Ouroboros, and very inquisite and through­ful audi­ence mem­bers. Get­ting ready to speak at ASA/ NCOA and IHRSA next week!

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.

Have you ever won­dered how we can main­tain Sharp­Brains’ web­site, blog and newslet­ter with­out sell­ing any prod­ucts and with only lim­ited adver­tis­ing? The answer is, we offer mar­ket research to orga­ni­za­tions such as health­care providers, research cen­ters, tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ers, ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, con­sult­ing and train­ing com­pa­nies, and more.

Our new Pre­mium Research Spon­sors pro­gram will allow pio­neer­ing orga­ni­za­tions to col­lab­o­rate with us to shape the future of the brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health field, by spon­sor­ing and access­ing the most up-to-date infor­ma­tion on the sci­ence and best prac­tices to assess and improve cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing across the lifes­pan. You can learn more about the Pre­mium Research Spon­sors pro­gram Here.

Mar­ket News

The Cog­ni­tive Health and Fit­ness Mar­ket On The Move: As you have prob­a­bly seen, the Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness field is rapidly evolv­ing. Here we high­light some of the main devel­op­ments affect­ing the field over the last 6-months: pub­lic pol­icy ini­tia­tives in Canada and the US, the grow­ing role of com­put­er­ized assess­ments, sev­eral ven­ture cap­i­tal rounds, major ini­tia­tives by insur­ance com­pa­nies, and sig­nif­i­cant research findings.

The Big Picture

Exec­u­tive Sum­mary of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket: Let’s step back and ask our­selves, “Why is the field evolv­ing in such a fast way? What is hope, what is hype, what is real­ity?” 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, the increased preva­lence of Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs in the US that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and lifestyle changes. This arti­cle sum­ma­rizes the main mar­ket dynam­ics, open ques­tions, and top trends to watch for.

Nour­ish­ing Our Brains and Minds

Phi­los­o­phy as the Miss­ing Link in School Cur­ric­ula: Kim­berly Wick­ham answers pro­vides some good answers to the ques­tion, “Why would any­one want to teach phi­los­o­phy to pre-adolescent chil­dren? that will engage your crit­i­cal think­ing skills.

A User’s Guide to Life­long Brain Health: Drs Simon Evans and Paul Burghardt hope (as we do) that the emerg­ing empha­sis on cog­ni­tive exer­cise and fit­ness helps com­ple­ment –not sub­sti­tute– other lifestyle fac­tors impor­tant for the “phys­i­cal health of the brain and all the sys­tems it com­mu­ni­cates with”. Think: nutri­tion, exer­cise, sleep.

Excel­lent Reader Com­ments: Our last newslet­ter gen­er­ated a round of excel­lent  com­ments by read­ers on cog­ni­tive train­ing, Posit Sci­ence and Alzheimer’s Aus­tralia, geron­tol­ogy and the brain, and the value of videogames. Come enjoy this col­lec­tive wis­dom and par­tic­i­pate as you wish.

Brainy Haikus:
river with haikus
flow­ing in since the sum­mer
keep­ing  us afloat

The Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy?: The World Eco­nomic Forum has asked me, as one of the 16 mem­bers of the Global Agenda Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy, for “an 800 word sum­mary of your most com­pelling action­able idea on the chal­lenges of geron­tol­ogy.” Feel free to help me out by offer­ing your own action­able ideas, either related to the dis­ci­pline of geron­tol­ogy itself or on ways to best engage the grow­ing num­ber of brains over the age of 60 in our planet.

Enjoy!