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 »

39% We had sev­eral read­ers high­light this strik­ing sta­tis­tic from yesterday’s blog post, Is ADHD over­diag­nosed? Find­ings from a new study in Germany

This is but another exam­ple on the grow­ing need to base behavioral/ men­tal health pre­ven­tion, diag­nos­tic and treat­ment not on symp­toms alone, but to mea­sure and incor­po­rate objec­tive mark­ers of brain func­tion, as dis­cussed in our pre­vi­ous arti­cle Neurofeedback/ Quan­ti­ta­tive EEG for ADHD diag­no­sis and in Thomas Insel’s blog post on big data.

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today, Fri­day March 16th, on brain sus­tain­abil­ity, retool­ing brain health, and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Sharp­Brains’ Co-Founder who’s just been named a Young Global Leader by the World Eco­nomic Forum. You can learn more about the topic by read­ing this 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Meet­ing Report and this Info­graphic.

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Great, we are ready to start!  Read the rest of this entry »

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Feb­ru­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple and com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives on how to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: with enthu­si­asm, BOTH phys­i­cal AND cog­ni­tive exer­cise, and (once tools become bet­ter stan­dard­ized and widely avail­able) brain-based per­son­al­ized medicine.

Fea­tured Per­spec­tives:

• To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Start with Enthu­si­asm, by Dr. Helena Popovic
• Q&A with Dr. Yaakov Stern on Brain Reserve, Exer­cise, Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, Angry Birds, YMCA and more
• 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don to sum­ma­rize and build on the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress 2012:
1. The State of Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine: The Role of Biomarkers
2. Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine in Psy­chi­a­try: from DSM to brain-based RDoC, iSPOT-D and biomarkers
3. Work­ing with Health­care Stake­hold­ers towards Brain-Based Per­son­al­ized Medicine

• To Be (Your Con­nec­tome), or Not to Be (Your Genome), by Dr. Sebas­t­ian Seung
• Enhance Metacog­ni­tion and Problem-Solving by Talk­ing Out Loud to Your­self, by Dr. Judith Tingley
• Final Meet­ing Report @ 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Dr. Luc Beau­doin, Muki Hansteen-Izora, Mar­garet Mor­ris, Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, Dr. Peter Whitehouse.
• (Want to con­tribute arti­cles like these? Learn details here)

What’s New and Mean­ing­ful:

• Learn­ing to Cope with Google/ Infor­ma­tion Overload
• An Emerg­ing Era of Big Data (in Men­tal Health too)
• When and Why Should Dri­vers with Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment Stop Driving
• Diag­nos­ing early Alzheimer’s and Mild Cog­ni­tive Impairment
• Global Pop­u­la­tion Age­ing: Peril or Promise? (New WEF eBook)
• Luria Con­gress on Mod­ern Neuropsychology

Sharp­Brains News:

• Syl­labus for online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach (starts March 7th)
• Save The Date (June 7-8th, 2012), 28 Con­firmed Speak­ers: 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit — Opti­miz­ing Health through Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity & Dig­i­tal Innovation

Finally, let us men­tion that Brain Aware­ness Week is approach­ing (March 12-18th, 2012), and that you can now add com­ments to Sharp­Brains arti­cles via Face­book (see below). Look­ing for­ward to a great month of March!

We just came accross an excel­lent arti­cle by Dr. Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the National Insti­tute for Men­tal Health (NIMH), titled An Emerg­ing Era of Big Data. The arti­cle is brief and worth read­ing. Here are two quotes:

- “Every era has its tech­no­log­i­cal icons. In the early 20th cen­tury, it was the air­plane and the auto­mo­bile. In the mid-20th cen­tury, it was the tele­vi­sion and the tele­phone. Now in the early 21st cen­tury, the smart phone and social net­work­ing appear to be the defin­ing tech­nolo­gies. And increas­ingly, the cur­rent era is begin­ning to look like the era of “big data” — a term that Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 1 of the new 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-related con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mately 50% of patients. But which 50%?

Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine seeks to move away from the cur­rent “1 size fits all, trial and error” approach that has been nec­es­sary because of a lack of evi­dence. Instead, it focuses on Read the rest of this entry »

“On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-related con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mately 50% of patients.  But which 50%?.”

“We need unam­bigu­ous bio­mark­ers that are clin­i­cally rel­e­vant and scal­able at rea­son­able cost. They already exist in Can­cer.   But they do not yet exist in the Brain.” What may change that? Read the rest of this entry »