“Behav­ioral train­ing inter­ven­tions have received much inter­est as poten­tially effi­cient and cost-effective ways to main­tain brain fit­ness or enhance skilled per­for­mance with impact rang­ing from health and fit­ness to edu­ca­tion and job train­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, neu­ro­science research has doc­u­mented the impor­tance of explic­itly train­ing (i) atten­tional con­trol, in order to enhance per­cep­tual and cog­ni­tive fit­ness as well as (ii) kind­ness and com­pas­sion, to Read the rest of this entry »

Let us share below a list of 40 com­mon brain fit­ness, brain health, brain train­ing ques­tions that we will make sure to address dur­ing the upcom­ing online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012 (starts March 7th). The ques­tions are sequenced by their approx­i­mate order of appear­ance in the syl­labus. We look for­ward to an engag­ing, inter­ac­tive and valu­able expe­ri­ence! ***Please remem­ber that course reg­is­tra­tion ends on Sun­day, March 4th.***

Top 40 Brain Fit­ness & Train­ing Questions

1. How can one define brain fitness
2. What is link between stress, focus and memory
3. Does “brain age” even exist
4. How to enhance over­all men­tal pro­duc­tiv­ity, vs just IQ
5. Is there some “ceil­ing” to my improve­ment or can I always try more things
6. How brain func­tions evolve with age. What improves, what declines, what should I be pay­ing atten­tion to Read the rest of this entry »

Reminder: Join Live Q&A with Dr. Paul Nuss­baum by click­ing HERE, today Novem­ber 22nd at 11am Pacific Time/ 2pm East­ern Time. Chat about about a holis­tic approach to brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain, recently named a Best Book on Brain Fit­ness by AARP. You can also learn more about the Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series.

Tran­scripts of pre­vi­ous Q&A Sessions:

• Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­ory and the Brain
• Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on “Men­tal Cap­i­tal­ism” and Cog­ni­tive Fitness

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­ated by Harry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Affairs at AARP.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lumos Labs, the com­pany behind lumosity.com, has raised $32.5 mil­lion dol­lars in a Series C round from Menlo Ven­tures, First­Mark Cap­i­tal, Har­ri­son Metal and Nor­west Ven­ture Partners.

In our 2010 mar­ket report Lumos Labs came up as one of the cat­e­gory Lead­ers given its mar­ket and research momen­tum (not easy for a startup to get clear momen­tum in either of those dimen­sions, much less in both of them), so our con­grat­u­la­tions to them for now adding such invest­ment trac­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Con­fer­ences have long been a sta­ple of the pro­fes­sional cal­en­dar. Now, after a reces­sion that has slashed travel expen­di­ture, the land­scape for events is chang­ing. Sophis­ti­cated dig­i­tal plat­forms are enabling vir­tual envi­ron­ments that sim­u­late the ben­e­fits of real events, and atten­dees are begin­ning to shift to access­ing sub­ject mat­ter experts and indus­try net­work­ing online.

But can the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment really dis­place brick and mor­tar events, where eye to eye meet­ings and chance con­nec­tions can jus­tify the often costly reg­is­tra­tion fees and travel costs? Read the rest of this entry »