Gif­fords May Get Bet­ter Brain-Injury Care Than Most of Her Con­stituents (ProPublica):

“Despite the need for more research, Gif­fords’ story shows the poten­tial of the treat­ments now avail­able. But accord­ing to Susan Con­nors, the pres­i­dent of the Brain Injury Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica, what treat­ment you receive depends heav­ily on your state, insur­ance plan (or lack of one), hos­pi­tal and the peo­ple advo­cat­ing for you.” Read the rest of this entry »

Test­ing Pro­gram Fails Sol­diers, Leav­ing Brain Injuries Unde­tected (ProPublica):

“In 2007, with road­side bombs explod­ing across Iraq, Con­gress moved to improve care for sol­diers who had suf­fered one of the war’s sig­na­ture wounds, trau­matic brain injury.

Law­mak­ers passed a mea­sure requir­ing the mil­i­tary to test sol­diers’ brain func­tion before they deployed and again when they returned. The test was sup­posed to ensure that sol­diers received proper treatment.

Instead, an inves­ti­ga­tion by ProP­ub­lica and NPR has found, the test­ing pro­gram has failed to deliver on its promise, offer­ing sol­diers the appear­ance of help, but not the real­ity. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s explore some  high-quality new resources, announce­ments and stud­ies in this June edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter. The field is clearly on the move!

Por­traits of the Mind: Sev­eral sharp brains (Rick, Karen, John, thanks!) strongly rec­om­mend the recent book  “Por­traits of the Mind: Visu­al­iz­ing the Brain from Antiq­uity to the 21st Cen­tury” (which includes the image on the left) as great read­ing and as a beau­ti­ful cof­fee table book.

Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involve­ment: The cur­rent issue of Cere­brum includes the excel­lent in-depth arti­cle on the value of vol­un­teer­ing pro­gram Expe­ri­ence Corps to pro­mote healthy and mean­ing­ful aging through social involvement.

Work­ing mem­ory train­ing can improve fluid intel­li­gence: Finally, a pow­er­ful voice of com­mon sense. A new sci­en­tific study con­cludes that “cog­ni­tive train­ing can be effec­tive and long-lasting, but there are lim­it­ing fac­tors that must be con­sid­ered to eval­u­ate the effects of this train­ing, one of which is indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in train­ing per­for­mance. We pro­pose that future research should not inves­ti­gate whether cog­ni­tive train­ing works, but rather should deter­mine what train­ing reg­i­mens and what train­ing con­di­tions result in the best trans­fer effects, inves­ti­gate the under­ly­ing neural and cog­ni­tive mech­a­nisms, and finally, inves­ti­gate for whom cog­ni­tive train­ing is most useful.”

Lumos Labs raises $32.5m: Lumos Labs, the com­pany behind lumosity.com, has just raised the sin­gle largest amount of fund­ing in the space.

Devel­op­ing a Research Agenda for Seri­ous Games: The recent trade book Com­puter Games and Instruc­tion brings together the lead­ing edge per­spec­tives of over a dozen sci­en­tists in the area of videogames and learn­ing, includ­ing this very insight­ful analy­sis by Harvard’s Chris Dede.

In the News: Brief arti­cles in the New York Times and a very pow­er­ful analy­sis in The New York Review of Books pro­vide use­ful clues about Brain Cal­is­then­ics, Bilin­gual Brains, and Debunk­ing Myths on Men­tal Illness.

Emerg­ing Mil­i­tary Appli­ca­tions: 2 recent announce­ments show, in a mil­i­tary con­text, inno­v­a­tive ways to enhance brain func­tion­ing and per­for­mance both to help “nor­mal” and “clin­i­cal” (post-TBI) populations.

We hope you enjoyed this newslet­ter. Please do feel free to share this with friends and col­leagues via Face­book, Twit­ter and LinkedIn, and have a great week­end and month of July!

Yes­ter­day I had the chance to chat with Yaakov Stern, lead­ing Cog­ni­tive Reserve researcher at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, and then with a group of 25 life­long learn­ers in Ari­zona who attended a brain fit­ness class (hello, Robert and friends!) based on our con­sumer guide The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. On reflec­tion, I found both con­ver­sa­tions to be very stim­u­lat­ing for the same rea­son: they were forward-looking, focused not so much on sta­tus quo but on how emerg­ing research, tech­nol­ogy and trends may impact our soci­ety and lives in years to come. Let’s con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion. Let me share the 10 main trends that we analyzed/ fore­casted in our book, and then ask you, sharp read­ers, to add your own 2 cents to the dis­cus­sion. Read the rest of this entry »

We have received many good ques­tions about the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion — below you have some answers.

Ques­tion: We are based in Asia/ Australia/ Europe. Will time dif­fer­ences pre­vent us from par­tic­i­pat­ing in monthly brief­ings and ben­e­fit­ing from the Council?

Answer: We will do our best to facil­i­tate a truly global com­mu­nity and exchange. Please con­sider that…

1. we will sched­ule monthly brief­ings at 2 sep­a­rate times, one at 9am US Pacific Time, the other at 4pm US Pacific Time, both cov­er­ing the same topic (but per­haps with dif­fer­ent guest speak­ers). And brief­ings will be recorded.
2. most activ­i­ties and resources are asyn­chro­nous any­way. Our mar­ket intel­li­gence reports and other mate­ri­als are avail­able via this members-only online com­mu­nity 24/7, same as online dis­cus­sion forums, focused groups to track/ dis­cuss spe­cific top­ics, the abil­ity to ask ques­tions to and con­nect with other members…

Ques­tion: Will some­thing change regard­ing SharpBrains.com blog and monthly newslet­ter, which are great free resources?

Answer: We plan to  main­tain those free resources, focus­ing on con­tent of a gen­eral inter­est for every­one with a brain. The Council’s pur­pose is to cre­ate a new valu­able in-depth resource and com­mu­nity for pro­fes­sion­als and orga­ni­za­tions active with brain fit­ness ini­tia­tives, so we can all learn and share dur­ing the year, and help the field mature. That will include Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s note: this arti­cle belongs to the excel­lent May 2009 spe­cial issue on Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion of sci­en­tific jour­nal Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science, Vol­ume 3, Issue 1. You can order this issue, for 50 euros, here. Highly rec­om­mended for sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cal read­ers inter­ested in the sci­ence. This arti­cle, an indus­try overview, is repro­duced here with autho­riza­tion by the Fron­tiers Research Foun­da­tion).

Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age

- By Alvaro Fernandez

Ground­break­ing cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science research has occurred over the last 20 years — with­out par­al­lel growth of con­sumer aware­ness and appro­pri­ate pro­fes­sional dis­sem­i­na­tion. “Cog­ni­tion” remains an elu­sive con­cept with unclear impli­ca­tions out­side the research community.

Ear­lier this year, I pre­sented a talk to health care pro­fes­sion­als at the New York Acad­emy of Med­i­cine, titled “Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware: Help­ing Con­sumers Sep­a­rate Hope from Hype”. I explained what com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ment and train­ing tools can do (assess/enhance spe­cific cog­ni­tive func­tions), what they can­not do (reduce one’s “brain age”) and the cur­rent uncer­tain­ties about what they can do (i.e., delay Alzheimer’s symp­toms). At the same sym­po­sium, Dr. Gary Kennedy, Direc­tor of Geri­atric Psy­chi­a­try at Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter, pro­vided guid­ance on why and how to screen for exec­u­tive func­tion deficits in the con­text of dementia.

I could per­ceive two emerg­ing trends at the event: 1) “Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion” research is most com­monly framed as a health­care, often phar­ma­co­log­i­cal topic, with the tra­di­tional cog­ni­tive bias in med­i­cine of focus­ing on detec­tion and treat­ment of dis­ease, 2) In addi­tion, there is a grow­ing inter­est in non-invasive enhance­ment options and over­all lifestyle issues. Research find­ings in Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion are only just begin­ning to reach the main­stream mar­ket­place, mostly through health­care chan­nels. The oppor­tu­nity is immense, but we will need to ensure the mar­ket­place matures in a ratio­nal and sus­tain­able man­ner, both through health­care and non-healthcare channels.

In Jan­u­ary 2009, we polled the 21,000 sub­scribers of Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket research eNewslet­ter to iden­tify atti­tudes and behav­iors towards the “brain fit­ness” field (a term we chose in 2006 based on a num­ber of con­sumer sur­veys and focus groups to con­nect with a wider audi­ence). Over 2,000 decision-makers and early adopters responded to the survey.

One of the key ques­tions we asked was, “What is the most impor­tant prob­lem you see in the brain fit­ness field and how do you think it can be solved?”. Some exam­ples of the sur­vey free text answers are quoted here, together with my suggestions.

Most impor­tant prob­lems in the brain fit­ness field

Pub­lic aware­ness (39%): “To get peo­ple to under­stand that hered­ity alone does not decide brain func­tion­ing”. We need to ramp up efforts to build pub­lic aware­ness and enthu­si­asm about brain research, includ­ing estab­lish­ing clear links to daily liv­ing. We can col­lab­o­rate with ini­tia­tives such as the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week and use the recent “Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts” mate­ri­als devel­oped by the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science to give talks at schools, libraries and workplaces.

Claims (21%): “The lack of stan­dards and clear def­i­n­i­tions is very con­fus­ing, and Read the rest of this entry »

Given the whole dis­tract­ing “con­tro­versy” of whether Nin­tendo Brain Age “works” or not, I have started to use the fol­low­ing “brain teasers” in my talks in order to help the audi­ence gain a more use­ful per­spec­tive of what is going on. They worked great both in the Medicare Read­mis­sions Sum­mit in DC a few weeks ago, and at the Games for Heath Con­fer­ence last week.

Q: How many sol­diers in the US Army have gone through com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive test­ing before being deployed, and why?
A: Over 150,000, in order to estab­lish an objec­tive start­ing base­line and iden­tify poten­tial Post Trau­matic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) and Trau­matic Brain Injury (TBI) prob­lems upon their return.

Q: How big is the ongo­ing invest­ment by OptumHealth, a divi­sion of Unit­ed­Health Group (UNH), in devel­op­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ments to inform clin­i­cal decision-making?
A: over $6m.

Q: How many All­state policy-holders over the age of 50 have received a com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram to improve their dri­ving safety?
A: Over 8,000, in the state of Pennsylvania.

Q: How many res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties are offer­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams to their res­i­dents?
A: Over 700, in the US alone, cov­er­ing inde­pen­dent and assisted living.

Q: How much money has the Gov­ern­ment of Ontario invested in set­ting up a new Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness as part of Bay­crest research cen­ter in order to develop and com­mer­cial­ize tech­nolo­gies to assess and enhance cog­ni­tive func­tions?
A: $10m, matched with another 10m from local investors.

For more on our Cog­ni­tive Health Track at Games for Health Con­fer­ence last week, see this USA Today article:

More doctor’s pre­scrip­tions may include brain games to improve men­tal acuity

(pretty good over­all, but please note that Sharp­Brains didn’t orga­nize the whole con­fer­ence, “only” the cog­ni­tive health track, which was a lot of stim­u­lat­ing fun. Ben Sawyer and team did over­all conference).

Sev­eral read­ers, after enjoy­ing my inter­view with Lee Woodruff on the Bob Woodruff Foun­da­tion and help­ing Trau­matic Brain Injury sur­vivors, asked for the address of the Bob Woodruff Foun­da­tion, in order to send a dona­tion via check.

Here is the right address:

Bob Woodruff Foun­da­tion
PO Box 955
Bris­tow, VA 20136

Thank you for your generosity!

Inter­view with Lee Woodruff:  here

Bob Woodruff Foun­da­tion web­site: here

We have just announced an upcom­ing webi­nar to pro­vide a mar­ket update:  Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events of 2008 — A Mar­ket Update.

When: Thurs­day Decem­ber 11th, from 12:00 to 1:00 pm Pacific Time. The same webi­nar will be repeated on Thurs­day Decem­ber 18th, from 9:00 to 10:00 pm Pacific Time.

The Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events that will be dis­cussed include:

1) Feb­ru­ary: Dakim secures a $10.6m invest­ment from Galen Part­ners. Jack LaLanne becomes spokesper­son.
2) April: The Gov­ern­ment of Ontario, Canada, invests $10m in Bay­crest to develop and com­mer­cial­ize cog­ni­tive fit­ness tech­nolo­gies.
3) April: Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan researchers reveal in the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences how com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­ory train­ing can gen­er­al­ize and improve fluid intel­li­gence in healthy adults.
4) May: Humana unveils Games for Health ini­tia­tives, not renew­ing its agree­ment with Posit Sci­ence.
5) June: The US Army launches a new pol­icy requir­ing cog­ni­tive screen­ings of all sol­diers before deploy­ment (in order to Read the rest of this entry »

As you have prob­a­bly seen, the Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness field is rapidly evolv­ing, so let me high­light some of the main recent devel­op­ments affect­ing the field:

1) Pub­lic pol­icy ini­tia­tives:
– The Gov­ern­ment of Ontario, Canada, announced a $10m invest­ment in Bay­crest Research Cen­ter to help develop and com­mer­cial­ize brain fit­ness tech­nolo­gies. This $10m invest­ment was matched with an addi­tional $10m by local investors.
– In the US, The Paul Well­stone and Pete Domenici Men­tal Health Par­ity and Addic­tion Equity Act of 2008 was signed into law, included in the recently-approved eco­nomic bailout bill. The pas­sage of this law has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for health­care providers and tech­nol­ogy ven­dors alike.

2) Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments Used by the US Mil­i­tary:
The US Army launched a new pol­icy requir­ing cog­ni­tive screen­ings of all sol­diers before deploy­ment (in order to bet­ter diag­nose poten­tial prob­lems such as PTSD and TBI upon return). ANAM was the selected com­put­er­ized bat­tery of tests.

3) Ven­ture & Angel Fundrais­ing for Cog­ni­tive Train­ing com­pa­nies:
A num­ber of devel­op­ers have raised money. Cog­niFit received $5m (from Milk Cap­i­tal), Lumos Labs $3m (First­Mark Cap­i­tal –pre­vi­ously called Pequot Ventures-, Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners), Sci­en­tific Brain Train­ing $1.5m (issued shares), Viv­ity Labs $1m (undis­closed angel investors), This is, of course, on top of the Feb­ru­ary $10.6 invest­ment in Dakim (Galen Part­ners) that we already included in our mar­ket report.

4) Major Ini­tia­tives by Insur­ance Com­pa­nies:
– All­state launched a large-scale research project to mea­sure impact of Posit Sci­ence InSight (visual pro­cess­ing train­ing) on dri­ver safety for adults over 50.
– OptumHealth announced a 3-year, $18m agree­ment with Brain Resource to offer web-based cog­ni­tive assess­ments as part of clin­i­cians’ deci­sion sup­port sys­tems.
– Humana decided not to renew its agree­ment with Posit Sci­ence to offer Posit’s audi­tory pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram to Medicare members.

5) New Research:
– In a sig­nif­i­cant new study, a team from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan pub­lished a high-quality paper in the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences show­ing how com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­ory train­ing can gen­er­al­ize and improve fluid intel­li­gence (one of the domains that tends to decline with age).
– Learn­ing and Teach­ing Scot­land released an inter­nal study show­ing how Nin­tendo Brain Train­ing can help children’s math and con­cen­tra­tion skills. The study gained sig­nif­i­cant media atten­tion, despite the fact it hasn’t been pub­lished in a respected journal.

Note: This is an excerpt from the 6-Month Mar­ket Update we will  release later this month, cov­er­ing the many impor­tant devel­op­ments that have occurred since we launched the inau­gural Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report in March this year. This spe­cial report will be avail­able exclu­sively for our Pre­mium Research Spon­sors.