Zack Lynch asks for sup­port to Write Con­gress Today in Sup­port of the National Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Ini­tia­tive Act, explain­ing:

“With the recent intro­duc­tion of the National Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Ini­tia­tive (NNTI) Act in the House (H.R. 5989) and the Sen­ate (S.2989) ear­lier this month, the time has come to ramp up a national grass­roots cam­paign in sup­port of the NNTI and I would like to ask for your help. It is imper­a­tive that we get a sub­stan­tive amount of Con­gres­sional sup­port as quickly as pos­si­ble as we are tar­get­ing Con­gres­sional hear­ings prior to the August break.

Take action: We need to flood Con­gres­sional fax machines and mail boxes with indi­vid­ual let­ters of sup­port from key con­stituents like you over the next four weeks. I urge you to visit NIO’s Take Action web­page.

Read the rest of this entry »

A spate of recent 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 the aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and chang­ing lifestyle.

This past Tues­day, the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, and Smart­Sil­vers spon­sored an event on The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket: Build­ing Bet­ter Brains to explore the real­i­ties and myths of this grow­ing field. The panel was mod­er­ated by Zack Lynch, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion, and com­posed of a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and 3 CEOs of pro­gram devel­op­ers in the field. Before the panel, I had the chance to present an overview of the state of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket based on our upcom­ing report to be released on March 4th.

Why are we talk­ing about this field at all? Well, for one, an increas­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies are achiev­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial suc­cess in pack­ag­ing “brain exer­cise”. An exam­ple is the line of Nin­tendo games, such as Brain Age and Brain Train­ing, that have shipped over 15 mil­lion units world­wide despite lim­ited sci­en­tific sup­port, since 2005. What is less vis­i­ble is that a num­ber of com­pa­nies and sci­en­tists are Read the rest of this entry »

This is an event you may be inter­ested in, if you are based in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area.

The MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, The Busi­ness Forum on Aging and Smart­Sil­vers presents:

The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket:  Build­ing Bet­ter Brains (Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here)

Date: 02/12/2008 Tues­day
Time: 6:00pm
Venue: Wil­son Son­sini
Loca­tion: 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto
Cost: $20 online, $25 walk-in

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Here is the buzz  Sci­en­tific, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graphic trends have con­verged to cre­ate an excit­ing new mar­ket in brain fit­ness, where soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions can assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. That equates to a sharper mind and bet­ter mem­ory reten­tion con­tribut­ing to health­ier aging.  There is cur­rently a $400m world­wide mar­ket with high growth ahead predicted.

Join us in lively and infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions as Alvaro Fer­nan­dez; CEO of SharpBrains.com sum­ma­rizes the sci­ence, key mar­ket seg­ments, play­ers and trends, based on the first Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report, pre­sented in this event.  He will dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions with sev­eral neuro-technology, gam­ing experts and investors.”  Mod­er­ated by Zack Lynch, the speaker and panel will dis­cuss: Read the rest of this entry »

Motto Mag­a­zine brings a great inter­view between Anita Sharpe and Michael Ray, on How To Reach Your High­est Goal. Very fun week­end read­ing mate­r­ial, includ­ing plenty of quotes and reflec­tions on how cre­ativ­ity can be trained/ enhanced by one of my favorite Stan­ford MBA pro­fes­sors. Some quotes:

• “But as the 1980s began, Ray and Myers kicked off more than two decades teach­ing one of the most influ­en­tial and talked about courses at Stan­ford University’s Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness — a class on cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion. They taught MBA stu­dents who would go on to become some of the great­est cre­ators in the world of busi­ness, includ­ing eBay’s first pres­i­dent, Jef­frey Skoll, and Good to Great author Jim Collins.”
• “When (Apple co-founder) Steve Jobs came to our class, every­body was say­ing we have to get into the com­puter busi­ness. He said, you don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to do that. He said, go into San Fran­cisco and get a job as a waiter and find out what comes out of that.”
• MOTTO: You have had a num­ber of renowned and suc­cess­ful stu­dents. How would you sum­ma­rize the char­ac­ter­is­tics that they share that con­tribute to their inner and outer success?
• RAY: A sense of open­ness of con­scious­ness. Those peo­ple who are Read the rest of this entry »