Who said, “So for me the most excit­ing take­away from this year’s CES (Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show)  isn’t the smart car or the smart home, it’s the smart per­son…” You can find the answer, and many insights on brain health inno­va­tion, by read­ing Sharp­Brains’ Jan­u­ary 2013 eNewslet­ter. Enjoy!

• Dig­i­tal health meets con­sumer elec­tron­ics and brain train­ing, by Dr. Evian Gor­don and Dr. Gre­gory Bayer
• Retool­ing Brain Care With Low-Cost, Data-Driven Tech­nolo­gies, by Alvaro Fernandez
• A con­ver­sa­tion on ‘The Opti­mism Bias’ with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Tali Sharot, by David Coleiro
• Why sci­en­tific lit­er­acy and learn­ing enhance brain func­tion and neural health, by Hemal Pathak, PhD
• Best brain health fit­ness tip? “Never let sta­tus quo be an option”, with Dr. San­dra Chapman
• 10 pre­dic­tions on how dig­i­tal plat­forms will trans­form brain health in 2013, by Alvaro Fernandez
• Why, to improve mem­ory, we need to think of the brain as a sys­tem, with Alvaro Fernandez
• Quick poll: 71% would take an “annual men­tal check-up”

Note: We’ll host a 90– minute webi­nar on Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 6th, to dis­cuss the main analy­sis and fore­casts from Sharp­Brains’ new mar­ket report “The Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020: Web-based, mobile and biometrics-based tech­nol­ogy to assess, mon­i­tor and enhance cog­ni­tion and brain func­tion­ing,” and to con­nect them with main take aways from CES 2013 and the just fin­ished World Eco­nomic Forum.

–> To learn how to access the webi­nar and the report,  click HERE

Rein­forc­ing the results from the more exten­sive sur­vey included in our new mar­ket report, 71% respon­dents to a quick LinkedIn poll we just run say they would  take a brief assess­ment every year as an “annual men­tal check-up.”

A few sam­ple com­ments: Read the rest of this entry »

82% of respon­dents to a 2012 Sharp­Brains sur­vey (n=3,165) agreed/ strongly agreed with “Adults of all ages should take charge of their own “brain fit­ness” with­out wait­ing for their doc­tors to tell them to,” and 77% agreed/ strongly agreed with “I would per­son­ally take a brief assess­ment every year as an “annual men­tal check-up.” This grow­ing aware­ness demands new ways to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­ity across the lifes­pan to opti­mize health, pro­duc­tiv­ity and qual­ity of life, and high­lights mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties. Click Here to see full Sum­mit agenda, includ­ing 35+ speak­ers, 6 prod­uct presentation/ demos and 5 edu­ca­tional work­shops.

As men­tioned before, the World Eco­nomic Forum asked me to write “an 800 words sum­mary of your most com­pelling action­able idea on the chal­lenges of geron­tol­ogy”, in prepa­ra­tion for the Inau­gural Sum­mit of the Global Agenda that will take place Novem­ber 7 to 9th in Dubai.A good num­ber of Sharp­Brains read­ers and clients offered their insights — and expressed an inter­est in read­ing the draft. So below you have — a pro­posal to cre­ate a Global Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion, build­ing on our exist­ing mar­ket research and advi­sory ser­vices work. Your thoughts?

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The Con­text

Grow­ing Demands on Our Brains: Pic­ture 6.7 bil­lion Prim­i­tive Brains inhab­it­ing a Knowl­edge Soci­ety where life­long learn­ing and mas­ter­ing con­stant change in com­plex envi­ron­ments are crit­i­cal for pro­duc­tive work, health and per­sonal fulfillment.

Wel­come to Planet Earth, 2008.

Fur­ther stretched by increased longevity: Now pic­ture close to 1 bil­lion of those brains over the age of 60 – and please remem­ber that, less than 100 years ago, life expectancy was between 30 to 40 years. The rapidly evolv­ing Knowl­edge Soci­ety is plac­ing new and enor­mous demands on our “prim­i­tive” human brains. And the longer our lifes­pans, the more obvi­ous the “cog­ni­tive gap”. Hence, from a health point of view, the grow­ing Read the rest of this entry »

Just saw a very inter­est­ing press release regard­ing computer-based neu­rocog­ni­tive assess­ments — a crit­i­cal part of the brain fit­ness puz­zle. How long will it take before con­sumers can have access to a reli­able and cred­i­ble annual “men­tal check-up”/ cog­ni­tive baseline?

Head­Min­der Cog­ni­tive Sta­bil­ity Index: Com­put­er­ized Neu­rocog­ni­tive … (Press release)

- “The Head­Min­der web-based Cog­ni­tive Sta­bil­ity Index (CSI) has proven more use­ful for blast-concussion detec­tion than the ANAM com­put­er­ized test bat­tery the DoD cur­rently employs. The CSI pro­vides an imme­di­ate solu­tion to clear the back­log of 400,000 IED-exposed ser­vice mem­bers in less than two years.”

- “The CSI is a 30-minute, Internet-based, com­put­er­ized test that pro­vides auto­mated, objec­tive mea­sures of atten­tion, mem­ory, response speed, and pro­cess­ing speed for ini­tial eval­u­a­tion of cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing. The CSI pro­duces stan­dard­ized reports that enable triage and decision-making appro­pri­ate to a user’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions — from medic to neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist to neu­rol­o­gist and other treat­ment team members.”

We cov­ered this emerg­ing type of assess­ments in the arti­cle Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments: oppor­tu­ni­ties and concerns

- “In fact, one of the Read the rest of this entry »