Mind­ful­ness train­ing is an approach for enhanc­ing men­tal health and alle­vi­at­ing men­tal health dif­fi­cul­ties that is based on east­ern med­i­ta­tion tech­niques. The focus of mind­ful­ness train­ing is to increase one’s aware­ness of the present moment, enhance the non-judgmental obser­va­tion of one’s sur­round­ings, and decrease impul­sive and Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick note: we’ll host a webi­nar on Jan­u­ary 30th to dis­cuss key mar­ket pre­dic­tions based on “The Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020: Web-based, mobile and biometrics-based tech­nol­ogy to assess, mon­i­tor and enhance cog­ni­tion and brain func­tion­ing”, our new mar­ket report.

Here are 10 pre­dic­tions, many of which will likely be real­ized before the end of 2013: Read the rest of this entry »

 We’re hav­ing a good con­ver­sa­tion among Sharp­Brains Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants, prompted by the blog post Life­long brain well­ness and performance–not med­ical disease–drives grow­ing demand for dig­i­tal brain health solu­tions. In what is a beau­ti­ful exam­ple of the need to see both the for­est and the trees Read the rest of this entry »

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Novem­ber 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing lat­est sci­ence, tools and think­ing to upgrade brain health. Before we start, do you believe these 32 neu­romyths? Do we only use 10% of our brain?

New Sci­ence:

• Fast cycling can help Parkinson’s Dis­ease patients strengthen brain con­nec­tiv­ity for motor ability
• There’s no sin­gle sil­ver bul­let to treat depres­sion (not even aer­o­bic exercise)
• The cog­ni­tive and brain fit­ness ben­e­fits of being bilingual
• New­born neu­rons in the adult brain are crit­i­cal for learn­ing and memory
• Call­ing high school students/ teach­ers to design cre­ative exper­i­ments on the human brain

New Tools:

• Brain health cen­ters adding cog­ni­tive coach­ing services
• Study: Emerg­ing brain com­puter inter­face can mon­i­tor and train atten­tion in unmed­icated ADHD children
• 10–12 hours of med­i­ta­tion train­ing can improve daily-life emo­tional regulation
• On the lim­its of Citi­co­l­ine and the need for com­pre­hen­sive brain injury rehabilitation

New Think­ing:

• Do you believe these neu­romyths? Do we only use 10% of our brain?
• Smart pills as cog­ni­tive enhance­ment? Let’s first mon­i­tor neg­a­tive cog­ni­tive side-effects of com­mon medications
• Brains shape tech­nol­ogy as tech­nol­ogy shapes brains

Finally, a request to  reporters, ana­lysts and blog­gers read­ing this. As we’re prepar­ing to release a major mar­ket report, we’d like to ensure you are in our Media List. If you’re inter­ested in brain health & inno­va­tion and want to be noti­fied as soon as the report becomes avail­able, please Fill This Form and let us know a bit about the publication/s you are writ­ing for. Thank you!

Med­i­ta­tion Appears to Pro­duce Endur­ing Changes in Emo­tional Pro­cess­ing in the Brain (Sci­ence Daily):

“A new study has found that par­tic­i­pat­ing in an 8-week med­i­ta­tion train­ing pro­gram can have mea­sur­able effects on how the brain func­tions even when some­one is not actively meditating…While neu­roimag­ing stud­ies have found that med­i­ta­tion train­ing appeared to decrease acti­va­tion of the amyg­dala — a struc­ture at the base of the brain that is known to have a role in pro­cess­ing mem­ory and emo­tion — those changes were Read the rest of this entry »

As an active par­tic­i­pant in the Open­ViBE project (a soft­ware plat­form to design, test and use Brain-Computer Inter­faces), in sci­en­tific as well as tech­ni­cal capac­i­ties, I have long been focused on ways to process, ana­lyze and put brain sig­nals to prac­ti­cal use. When I started read­ing on the sub­ject of brain fit­ness a few years ago, I rec­og­nized the poten­tial to enhance a vari­ety of brain train­ing approaches, from med­i­ta­tion to cog­ni­tive train­ing, by deploy­ing Read the rest of this entry »

In an increas­ingly knowledge-based and innovation-driven econ­omy, human brains—not finan­cial capital—are becom­ing the pri­mary dri­vers of busi­ness suc­cess. Engaged, cre­ative cit­i­zens and work­ers mean the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure at the orga­ni­za­tional and soci­etal levels.

Look­ing at the prob­lem from the per­spec­tive of brain health, there are Read the rest of this entry »