Our Mar­ket Report has received some recent addi­tional accolades:

“In a widely scat­tered and unreg­u­lated field, this clear, cred­i­ble doc­u­ment
is a first-class, pio­neer­ing com­pendium that’s likely to become industry-standard
for all of us in this field. Well done!“
– Eric Jensen, Founder of Jensen Learn­ing Corporation.

“This is the first clear, con­cise and com­pre­hen­sive overview and analy­sis I have seen of the emerg­ing Brain-Training mar­ket­place. It is a great mar­ket research for every investor, entre­pre­neur, man­ager, researcher and oth­ers who seek an under­stand­ing of the sub­ject. Per­son­ally, I was wait­ing such a review for quite a while. The Sharp­Brains staff, led by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, really did a great job here.”

– Danny Dankner, CEO, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing (ACE).

“Neu­ro­science is at a cross­roads, and The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 by Sharp­Brains, points the way for­ward. Our under­stand­ing of how the brain works is just begin­ning to yield real fruit in the form of prod­ucts that truly improve the func­tion of the brain. This reports gives any­one inter­ested in how to under­stand which prod­ucts are truly in a posi­tion to make a dif­fer­ence in brain func­tion, and which mar­kets will be inter­ested and prof­itable for such prod­ucts an invalu­able guide. We found the analy­sis clear, pre­cise, loaded with sub­stan­tive insight. One would be fool­hardy not to use this pub­li­ca­tion as the best guide to this mar­ket.”

– Dr. Arthur Lavin, Asso­ciate Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Pedi­atrics, Case Med­ical School, and Med­ical Direc­tor of A Work­ing Mind.

“As we begin the task of devel­op­ing a Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at our Sun­rise Senior Liv­ing Com­mu­nity, this Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report is prov­ing Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Adrian Preda, our newest Expert Con­trib­u­tor, writes today the first in a series of thought-provoking arti­cles, chal­leng­ing us to think about phys­i­cal exer­cise as the best and most unap­pre­ci­ated form of “brain exer­cise”. A superb article.

And one thing is clear, he points out: “the brain really likes it when it’s asked to be “active”. Pas­sive audi­ences, which are spoon fed infor­ma­tion, score less well when tested on reten­tion and under­stand­ing of the pre­sented mate­r­ial than audi­ences that were kept engaged through the process.”

So, will you write a com­ment below and con­tribute to an engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion? Thoughts? reac­tions? ques­tions?
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Don’t ignore plain old com­mon sense.

Brain Lessons Part 1

– By Adrian Preda, M.D.

Let me start with a list of com­mon biases: expen­sive is bet­ter than cheap, free is of dubi­ous value (why would then be free?), rare is likely to be valu­able, and while new is bet­ter than old, ancient is always best. Which explains a com­mon sce­nario that is reen­acted about twice a week in my office. It starts like this: a patient shows me a fancy look­ing bot­tle of the brain sup­ple­ment of the week: ancient roots with obscure names mixed together in another novel com­bi­na­tion which you can exclu­sively find in that one and only store (rar­ity oblige!). And not to for­get: it ain’t cheap either! Of course, there it is, the per­fect the recipe for suc­cess: ancient yet new, rare and expen­sive. It got to be good! But is it, really?

Read the rest of this entry »

A fun arti­cle from the BBC high­lights some of the lat­est entries to the 2.5 billion-word data­base of words in the Collins Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, 9th edition.

We were of course biased and happy to see “brain­food” as a newly minted word. Accord­ing to Webster’s New Mil­len­nium™ Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish, they define “brain food”:

Part of Speech: n
Def­i­n­i­tion: any food that is con­sid­ered to aid intel­li­gence, mem­ory, or cre­ativ­ity; by exten­sion, any intel­lec­tual sustenance

We’d like to add Sharp­Brains to the list of brain foods! If you need some puz­zles to pick up your men­tal metab­o­lism, see how you do on these. Or maybe delve into some sci­ence and see if that expands your men­tal waist­line a bit. Just save room for dessert!