Dur­ing a debrief­ing after the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, Rick Moody, Direc­tor of the Office of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP, sug­gested that I con­tribute a thought-leadership piece to a spe­cial issue on brain health for one of their pro­fes­sional pub­li­ca­tions by the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging. You can now read the result, over 3,000 words on “The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom”:

• Tomor­row, Jan­u­ary 5th: Part 1 — The Business
• This Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 6th: Part 2 — The Ethics
• Next Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 9th: Part 3 — The Real Need
• Next Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 10th: Part 4 — The Future

You can track and dis­cuss each part as it becomes avail­able via my Twit­ter account, our Face­book page, LinkedIn group, and RSS feed. Enjoy, and please add your 2 cents!

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 pleased to announce that full record­ings for all pre­sen­ta­tions deliv­ered dur­ing the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30 — April 1, 2011) are now avail­able both to Sum­mit Par­tic­i­pants and to non-Participants.

You can Learn More Here and Access 40+ Talks and 20+ hours of up-to-date infor­ma­tion and analy­sis of brain sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion, deliv­ered by noth­ing short of a world-class faculty.

–> Reg­is­tered Sum­mit Par­tic­i­pants can access all Ses­sion Record­ings by click­ing on the ses­sion titles in the Agenda page and using the same User­name and Pass­word they used to par­tic­i­pate in the Summit.

–> Didn’t Reg­is­ter to Par­tic­i­pate in the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit but want to access all Ses­sion Record­ings (20+ hours, 40+ speak­ers) Now? You can secure your log-in here.

We hope the infor­ma­tion and analy­sis pro­vided by these 40+ world-class speak­ers address­ing this 3-day agenda pro­vide excel­lent value to you: Read the rest of this entry »

What is brain fit­ness really? What will hap­pen in terms of brain fit­ness inno­va­tion in the next decade? What’s the biggest challenge?

Who could answer these ques­tions bet­ter than the expert Sharp­Brains 2011 Sum­mit speak­ers? Dis­cover below the answers of 7 of them.

.1. How would you define “brain fit­ness” vs. “phys­i­cal fit­ness”?
Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Har­vard Med­ical School: Phys­i­cal fit­ness can refer to an over­all or gen­eral state of health and well-being. How­ever, it is also often used more specif­i­cally to refer to the abil­ity to per­form a given activ­ity, occu­pa­tion, or sport. Sim­i­larly brain fit­ness might be used to refer to a gen­eral state of healthy, opti­mized brain func­tion, or a more spe­cific brain-based abil­ity to process cer­tain, spe­cific infor­ma­tion, enable cer­tain motor actions, or sup­port cer­tain cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Impor­tantly though, I would argue that phys­i­cal fit­ness REQUIRES brain fit­ness, while brain fit­ness ben­e­fits from, but does not require phys­i­cal fitness.

Ken­neth Kosik, UC Santa Bar­bara: The brain is sim­ply an organ in the body with all the health require­ments of any other organ. There­fore, I am trou­bled by the “ver­sus” in your ques­tion. Why set up an unnec­es­sary dual­ism? Read the rest of this entry »

The 2011 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (March 30th — April 1st) gath­ered more than 260 research and indus­try lead­ers from 16 coun­tries for 3 days to dis­cuss the chang­ing land­scape of Brain Health and Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness. It was a great suc­cess! Find the key lessons and take-home points from the Sum­mit in these 2 arti­cles by Drs. Jamie Wil­son and Luc Beau­doin, respec­tively: 10 Emerg­ing Themes:  Why Brain Health Sta­tus Quo is Not an Option and 7 Key Lessons from the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit.

Con­sider this: “Col­lab­o­ra­tion is emerg­ing in ways that were unthink­able only a few years ago. Researchers are open­ing up their data and method­olo­gies to gain insights from one another. Com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions are part­ner­ing via dig­i­tal chan­nels, con­tent syn­di­ca­tion and other areas of best prac­tice. Social entre­pre­neurs and local prac­ti­tion­ers are shar­ing  moti­va­tional tips and edu­ca­tional resources in their efforts to build pro­grams from the bot­tom up.  Open inno­va­tion is dri­ving a bet­ter mar­ket­place for con­sumers. All these col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts are the seeds of suc­cess­ful inno­va­tion, and despite still being in the foothills, it would seem bet­ter to go hand in hand, than tak­ing a lonely road.”

We hope the arti­cles of this free newslet­ter will help you think about the future and your own role in shap­ing it as a pro­fes­sional and/ or a life­long learner.

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Brain and Neu­ro­plas­ticity

Med­i­ta­tion and the Brain: This arti­cle by Greater Good Mag­a­zine dis­cusses how med­i­tat­ing can increase the den­sity of gray mat­ter in brain regions asso­ci­ated with mem­ory, stress, and empathy. 

The Ben­e­fits of a One-Time Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Pro­gram: They last but wane over time as shown in the 3-month follow-up results of the IMPACT study.

Can Direct Brain Stim­u­la­tion Boost Per­for­mance? The answer seems to be yes, accord­ing to three stud­ies using dif­fer­ent types of electrical/magnetic brain stimulation.

How the Brain of a Blind Per­son Rewires Itself: The brain areas devoted to vision in peo­ple with eye sight turn out to be respond­ing to speech in blind people.

How are Young Brains Affected by Stress? An inter­est­ing arti­cle from the Dana Foun­da­tion on the con­se­quences of early life stress.

Can weight loss boost mem­ory? The mem­ory of obese patients under­go­ing gastric-bypass surgery is shown to improve 12 weeks after surgery.

The Inner Savant In All of Us: Scott Kauf­man inter­views Dr. Tre­f­fert, expect on savan­tism and autism, tech­ni­cal con­sul­tant to the award-winning movie Rain Man, to dis­cuss the hid­den brain poten­tials that may lie dor­mant in all of us.

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Assess­ments and Remediation

Dri­ving Safely after a Stroke: Scores for 3 sim­ple cog­ni­tive tests were found to pre­dict the actual dri­ving eval­u­a­tion out­come of many peo­ple after a stroke.

Schiz­o­phre­nia Research is Lead­ing the Way: An inter­est­ing review of the dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion tech­niques used with peo­ple suf­fer­ing from schizophrenia.

Vir­tual Real­ity Games for Stroke Patients: Promis­ing results show that vir­tual real­ity and other video games involv­ing motion can enhance motor improve­ment after a stroke.

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Books

Children’s Self Con­trol and Cre­ativ­ity: Two Seeds of Intel­li­gence: An excerpt from the book Brain Rules for Baby, by John Med­ina, that pro­vides a good sum­mary of the cog­ni­tive sci­ence find­ings shed­ding light on how a baby’s brain grows from 0 to 5.

Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science, Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine: This book takes an in depth and hard look at the cur­rent sta­tus and future direc­tion of treat­ment pre­dic­tive mark­ers in Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine for the brain.

The Longevity Project: UC-Riverside researchers Howard Fried­man and Leslie Mar­tin draw key lessons from an eight-decade-long Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity Ter­man study of 1,500 people.

Exploit­ing Tech­nol­ogy and Col­lab­o­ra­tion to Enable Qual­ity Aging. In this essay, extracted from the book Longevity Rules, Joseph Cough­lin explores the role that tech­nol­ogy can play in aging well.

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Brain Teaser

Brain Games to Test Your Mem­ory: Dis­cover how well you can remem­ber ran­dom words and names.

We hope you enjoyed this edi­tion of the Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter. Please do feel free to share this with friends and col­leagues. The more, the merrier!

The 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit gath­ered  more than 260 research and indus­try lead­ers in 16 coun­tries for 3 days to dis­cuss the chang­ing land­scape. Held online, par­tic­i­pants from all over the globe  attended to hear more than 40 thought lead­ers, sci­en­tists, entre­pre­neurs and pol­icy mak­ers out­line the evolv­ing mar­ket­place. Dis­cus­sion moved from cog­ni­tive fit­ness to neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, across reg­u­la­tory and pol­icy trends, and new prod­uct launches by new and estab­lished play­ers  What did we take home from the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit? Was it novel con­sumer insights aris­ing from a new retail land­scape? What of pol­icy ini­tia­tives from inno­va­tion clus­ters around the globe? Do you see a future pop­u­lated by neu­ro­science toolk­its, dri­ven by the inex­orable demo­graphic changes set to occur in the com­ing decades? Or was it a look “under the hood” of tech­nol­ogy plat­forms devel­oped by cat­e­gory lead­ers that sharp­ened our insight? Here are 10 emerg­ing themes:

1. The Need for Stan­dard­iza­tion of methodologies

A pro­fu­sion of cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health tests, bat­ter­ies and new tech­nolo­gies are crowd­ing the research envi­ron­ment. The NIH tool­box for the assess­ment of a broad range of cog­ni­tive domains Read the rest of this entry »

Reg­is­tra­tion to par­tic­i­pate in 2011 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit closes tomor­row Tues­day, March 29th, at 1pm US Pacific Time/ 4pm US East­ern Time. If you are plan­ning to attend, please Reg­is­ter Now.

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We are hon­ored to announce that Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier, US Depart­ment of Education’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Voca­tional and Adult Edu­ca­tion, will open 2011 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit on Wednes­day, March 30th, shar­ing her Wel­come Remarks with 220+ reg­is­tered participants.

Brenda Dann-Messier was nom­i­nated by Pres­i­dent Obama as assis­tant sec­re­tary for voca­tional and adult edu­ca­tion on July 14, 2009. On Oct. 5, 2009 she was con­firmed by the U.S. Sen­ate and began her offi­cial duties on Oct. 13, 2009. More infor­ma­tion on Dr. Dann-Messier’s bio Here.

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Sum­mit Agenda: 80% of the 38,000 adults over 50 sur­veyed in the 2010 AARP Mem­ber Opin­ion Sur­vey indi­cated “Stay­ing Men­tally Sharp” as their top ranked inter­est and con­cern. This consumer-fueled inter­est, com­bined with grow­ing research on life­long neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and the cog­ni­tive reserve and with a grow­ing mar­ket­place of “brain fit­ness” prod­ucts and ser­vices, con­sti­tutes a call to action to expand the brain health toolkit to meet grow­ing needs across the lifes­pan. Intel CEO Paul Otellini is quoted as say­ing, “You have to start by think­ing about what peo­ple want to do…and work back­ward,” and the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury will do so by show­cas­ing the lat­est trends tak­ing place among con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als, in indus­try, research, tech­nol­ogy, and care, to iden­tify crit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges to develop a valu­able inno­va­tion ecosys­tem which may exceed $2B world­wide in 2015.

To Learn More About Final Agenda and Speaker Ros­ter, click HERE. Please note all times in the agenda indi­cate US Pacific Time.

You can Learn More and Reg­is­ter HERE, and get a 15% dis­count by enter­ing dis­count code: sharp2011

We are hon­ored to announce that Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier, US Depart­ment of Education’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Voca­tional and Adult Edu­ca­tion, will open 2011 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit next Wednes­day, March 30th, shar­ing Wel­come Remarks with all participants.

Brenda Dann-Messier was nom­i­nated by Pres­i­dent Obama as assis­tant sec­re­tary for voca­tional and adult edu­ca­tion on July 14, 2009. On Oct. 5, 2009 she was con­firmed by the U.S. Sen­ate and began her offi­cial duties on Oct. 13, 2009.

As the first assis­tant sec­re­tary for the Office of Voca­tional and Adult Edu­ca­tion (OVAE) who is also an adult edu­ca­tor, Dann-Messier leads the Department’s efforts in adult edu­ca­tion and career and tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion, as well as efforts sup­port­ing com­mu­nity col­leges and cor­rec­tional edu­ca­tion. She over­sees the admin­is­tra­tion of 11 grant pro­grams in these areas, total­ing approx­i­mately $1.9 bil­lion annu­ally. Dann-Messier is com­mit­ted to col­lab­o­ra­tion, both within the Depart­ment and across fed­eral agen­cies, includ­ing work­ing with the U.S. Depart­ments of Labor, Agri­cul­ture, Health and Human Ser­vices, Home­land Secu­rity and Commerce.

OVAE’s vision is for all youths and adults to have mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to obtain life­long edu­ca­tion and train­ing in order to achieve reward­ing careers and fam­ily lives, par­tic­i­pate in their com­mu­ni­ties, and attain their per­sonal goals. OVAE is devoted to Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to make eleven impor­tant announce­ments about the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit…eleven addi­tional rea­sons to con­sider reg­is­ter­ing and join­ing our event and com­mu­nity next week.

1. Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, the “Spon­sors of Tomor­row™”, and Lumos Labs have become Sum­mit Gold Sponsors.
2. Sharp­Brains will issue a Cer­tifi­cate of Atten­dance to par­tic­i­pants (20 hours of con­tin­u­ing education).
3. Jamie Wil­son shares 20 rea­sons why vir­tual con­fer­ences are the future.
4. NIH/ NIA Pro­gram Chief Molly Wag­ster will dis­cuss the new NIH Tool­box for Assess­ment of Neu­ro­log­i­cal and Behav­ioral Function.
5. Yaakov Stern (Colum­bia), David Darby (CogState), Keith Wesnes (United BioSource) and Jef­frey Kaye (Orcat­ech) will explore The Role of Cog­ni­tive Health Mon­i­tor­ing Systems.
6. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (Sharp­Brains) and Muki Hansteen-Izora (Intel Cor­po­ra­tion) will ana­lyze The State of Inno­va­tion and Emerg­ing Marketplace.
7. You can still Reg­is­ter and obtain a com­pli­men­tary copy of Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2010 (which includes mar­ket data, ven­dor analy­sis, inno­va­tion case stud­ies, research briefs, and more.)
8. Michael Merzenich (UCSF), Alvaro Pascual-Leone (Har­vard), Wal­ter Green­leaf (Vir­tu­ally­Bet­ter) and Kate Sul­li­van (Wal­ter Reed) will dis­cuss how Inno­va­tion gets From Lab to Marketplace.
9. Lumos Labs, Brain Resource, Cogmed, Bay­crest, Cog­niFit, and Posit Sci­ence will present their lat­est tools and solu­tions dur­ing Expo Day.
10. A total of 19 excel­lent Sum­mit Part­ners help us expand Summit’s reach and influence.
11. We are plan­ning April/ May social gath­er­ings for Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants in 5 cities: San Fran­cisco, Los Ange­les, Wash­ing­ton DC, NYC, and Toronto, and will help facil­i­tate gath­er­ings in any city/ region with at least 10 Sum­mit participants.

Please visit the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit web­site to Learn More and Reg­is­ter.

Also, please fol­low us via Twit­ter and spread the word about the Sum­mit using hash­tag #svs11

We look for­ward to “meet­ing” many of you next week! Please remem­ber you can enter dis­count code sharp2011 in order to get 15% off reg­is­tra­tion fees.

Who will Ben­e­fit From Train­ing?  New research shows that mea­sur­ing brain activ­ity pat­terns can pre­dict who may ben­e­fit most from tran­ing inter­ven­tions –and who may not. Please note that the Kramer lab involved in this research is now offer­ing a post­doc­toral fellowship.

A Quick Test to Detect Ath­letes’ Con­cus­sions:  This new test can be per­formed at the side­line of sport­ing events to help detect con­cus­sions by look­ing at dif­fer­ent types of eye movements.

The Best Way to Learn: Tak­ing a test in which you recall what you have read seems to be a much bet­ter strat­egy than either study­ing the mate­r­ial repeat­edly or draw­ing detailed dia­grams of what you are learning.

Inter­ven­tions

Brain Train­ing Games for Seniors: Donal O’Brien, from Queens Uni­ver­sity at Belfast, tells us about what moti­vates seniors to use a brain train­ing app.

Vit­a­min D and Cog­ni­tive Decline: This study sup­ports that patients with vit­a­min D defi­ciency show an increased risk of cog­ni­tive decline.

Baby Sleeps and Brain Devel­op­ment: How much sleep a 12 month old baby gets can influ­ence the devel­op­ment of his/her exec­u­tive functions.

PTSD: Can we Dis­rupt the Recon­sol­i­da­tion of Trau­matic Mem­o­ries? A dis­cus­sion of the dif­fer­ent tech­niques used/ under research that can help PTSD patients.

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Books and Sum­mit Updates

Visual Illu­sions in Art and Sci­ence: These sur­pris­ing clas­sic illu­sions illus­trate how art and magic can help sci­ence in under­tans­ing how we per­ceive the world around us.

2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Agenda: You can now view the lat­est Agenda for the whole Sum­mit and a 3-minute clip to learn how the Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st) will work.

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Brain Teaser