Much of health­care deliv­ery has tra­di­tion­ally been set-up to deal with a ‘brain­less body’; yet we con­sis­tently com­plain that we can­not change patient and con­sumer behav­iours and main­tain adher­ence to treat­ment pro­grammes. Health­care sys­tems are now recog­nis­ing the lim­its of this model and that there are major ben­e­fits to bet­ter com­pre­hend­ing and engag­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the lightly edited tran­script of the Jan­u­ary 4th online Q&A ses­sion with Dr. San­dra Chap­man, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at UT-Dallas and author of the new book Make Your Brain Smarter (Free Press; Jan­u­ary 2013). Enjoy!

1:59

AlvaroF: You can start writ­ing ques­tions so we have a few to choose from as we start in a cou­ple of min­utes. Thank you!

2:03
AlvaroF: Just one sec­ond and we’ll be ready. Already get­ting great questions!

2:05
AlvaroF: Let me first thank Dr. San­dra Chap­man for being with us today. She was one of the best speak­ers at our 2012 Sum­mit, and since then we wanted to share her research and think­ing with all Sharp­Brains read­ers. Read the rest of this entry »

In June of this year, Sharp­Brains hosted its third annual online “vir­tual sum­mit” on our evolv­ing under­stand­ing of how the human brain works, and how it can be made to work bet­ter. As read­ers of this blog know, Sharp­Brains is a US-based mar­ket research firm and think tank ded­i­cated to study­ing the sci­en­tific, social, and busi­ness trends asso­ci­ated with brain health and per­for­mance. As always, the sum­mit fea­tured a range of con­tri­bu­tions from sci­en­tists and busi­ness lead­ers whose com­mon inter­est is in gath­er­ing, com­pil­ing and apply­ing knowl­edge about the brain.

The foun­da­tional con­vic­tion of the sum­mit orga­niz­ers and atten­dees is that Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Bayer will dis­cuss Adding Brain to Behav­ioral Health­care, as part of the ses­sion Where will neuroplasticity-based inter­ven­tions be accessed, and how will they be reg­u­lated and paid for? at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (June 7-14th, 2012).

Gre­gory Bayer, new CEO of Brain Resource’s US oper­a­tions, served most recently as the Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions, a divi­sion of Unit­ed­Health Group Read the rest of this entry »

Info­graphic based on 2011 Sharp­Brains Summit’s Meet­ing Report

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-founder and CEO of Sharp­Brains, has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Eco­nomic Forum, an honor rec­og­niz­ing the most dis­tin­guished lead­ers under age 40 from around the world.

Mr. Fer­nan­dez will dis­cuss “How to Retool Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury” via a one-hour vir­tual Q&A ses­sion hosted live at SharpBrains.com on Fri­day, March 16 from 10 to 11a.m. US East­ern Time. The con­ver­sa­tion will be based on the Meet­ing Report from the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, which gath­ered 250+ inno­va­tors worldwide.

“The way we do brain health is essen­tially bro­ken,” he said. “We need a new cul­ture and toolkit to empower sharp brains of all ages to take more proac­tive care of their brain.” Read the rest of this entry »

The recent dis­cov­ery that expe­ri­ence can change brain struc­ture and func­tion at any age has sparked numer­ous health, edu­ca­tion, and pro­duc­tiv­ity appli­ca­tions whose value and lim­i­ta­tions we are only start­ing to grasp.

Brain fit­ness has quickly become a main­stream aspi­ra­tion among baby boomers and elders, pri­mar­ily in North Amer­ica. It has fueled a grow­ing inter­est in brain fit­ness classes, brain fit­ness cen­ters, and brain fit­ness pro­grams, along with atten­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. An increas­ing num­ber of adults want use­ful tools to pro­tect cog­ni­tive health and performance—not nec­es­sar­ily to reverse aging—and what they are find­ing is an expand­ing and noisy mar­ket­place where they (and also pro­fes­sion­als) need to care­fully eval­u­ate their own needs and the avail­able options (Fer­nan­dez and Gold­berg, 2009). Read the rest of this entry »

An impres­sive recent ref­er­ence book on the future of brain care is Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine, edited by Evian Gor­don and Stephen H. Koslow (Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press; $89.95).

Book descrip­tion: 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 from the per­spec­tives of the researchers on the cut­ting edge and those involved in health­care imple­men­ta­tion. The con­tents pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive text suit­able as both a pithy intro­duc­tion to and a clear sum­mary of the “sci­ence to solu­tions” con­tin­uum in this devel­op­ing field of Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine and Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science. The sci­ence includes both mea­sures of genes using whole genome approaches and SNIPS as well as BRAIN­mark­ers of direct brain func­tion such as brain imag­ing, bio­phys­i­cal changes and objec­tive cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral mea­sure­ments. More infor­ma­tion below.

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36-Hour Offer

Dr. Evian Gor­don will speak at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st) and his firm, Brain Resource, is among Sum­mit Spon­sors. Thanks to his sup­port, we are pleased to announce the fol­low­ing offer: TEN pro­fes­sion­als who reg­is­ter to attend the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit over the next 36 hours, from now until Fri­day March 4th, 7pm US Pacific Time, will each receive a com­pli­men­tary hard­copy of the book Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine. If more than ten peo­ple reg­is­ter by then, we will select ten names at random.

We are also pleased to announce the addi­tion of 12 new Speak­ers and Mod­er­a­tors to the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit — the result­ing agenda is turn­ing out to be noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar (in our, yes, a bit biased judgment):

• Alexan­dra More­house, CMO, AAA North California
• Dr. Evian Gor­don, CEO, Brain Resource
• Kath­leen Herath, Asst Vice Pres­i­dent, Nation­wide Insurance
• Dr. David Tal, Direc­tor, A.G.E. Mat­ters Clinic
• Paula Psyl­lakis, Senior Pol­icy Advi­sor, Ontario Min­istry of Research and Innovation
• Veronika Litin­ski, Advi­sor, MaRS Life Sci­ences and Health Care
• Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine
• Dr. Jef­frey Kaye, Direc­tor, NIA — ORCATECH
• Dr. John Rep­pas, Pol­icy Direc­tor, Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Organization
• Dr. Justin Mar­ley, Chair Men­tal Health Infor­mat­ics Group, UK Royal Col­lege of Psychiatrists
• Dr. David Darby, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer, Cogstate
• Dr. John Hart, Med­ical Sci­ence Direc­tor, Cen­ter for Brain Health at UT-Dallas

-> Learn More and Reg­is­ter to Par­tic­i­pate in the Sum­mit Here, and get a chance at get­ting a com­pli­men­tary copy of the book Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine!

Read the rest of this entry »