Lumos Labs Raises $31.5 mil­lion (press release): “Lumos­ity has raised $31.5 mil­lion in Series D financ­ing led by pub­licly traded Dis­cov­ery Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Exist­ing investors First­Mark Cap­i­tal, Har­ri­son Metal, Menlo Ven­tures and Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners also con­tributed. Lumos­ity, which makes online and mobile learn­ing pro­grams, has received a total of over $70 mil­lion in fund­ing to date…“As Dis­cov­ery focuses its dig­i­tal strat­egy around strength­en­ing its posi­tion as the #1 non­fic­tion media com­pany across all screens, we also see strate­gic growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in select invest­ments in the next gen­er­a­tion knowl­edge space,” said JB Per­rette, Chief Dig­i­tal Offi­cer, Dis­cov­ery Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. “Discovery’s com­mit­ment to ignit­ing people’s curios­ity and pas­sion for learn­ing is a nat­ural fit with Lumosity’s suc­cess in brain train­ing. We are proud to take the lead­er­ship posi­tion in this round of financ­ing and look for­ward to sup­port­ing Lumosity’s expan­sion around the world.”

To Learn More:

• Brain Train­ing Top 10 Future Trends

Employ­ees, Mea­sure Your­selves (Wall Street Journal):

- “For exam­ple, there’s Lumos­ity, from Lumos Labs Inc., an online sys­tem that serves up games employ­ees can play dur­ing down­time at work. … The dif­fer­ence is track­ing. The games offer a score­card of your per­for­mance and let Read the rest of this entry »

As part of our ongo­ing mar­ket research we’d like to ask past and cur­rent users of Lumos Labs prod­ucts to share their expe­ri­ence with us via this 3-question anony­mous sur­vey. Please take this sur­vey if you have used a Lumos Labs prod­uct your­self or have seen some­one else use it. Read the rest of this entry »

We just came across a new sci­en­tific study on the value and lim­i­ta­tions of cog­ni­tive train­ing in Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI), based on a pro­gram of cog­ni­tive exer­cises pro­vided by Lumos Labs (devel­op­ers of lumosity.com).

Study: Com­put­erised Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Older Per­sons With Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment: A Pilot Study Using a Ran­domised Con­trolled Trial Design (Brain Impair­ment): 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!

A cou­ple of very inter­est­ing recent announce­ments show (in a mil­i­tary con­text) how well-targeted brain train­ing can com­ple­ment and aug­ment exist­ing approaches, both to help “nor­mal” and “clin­i­cal” pop­u­la­tions, in ways that silo-based, rear-mirror think­ing often misses: 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 »