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 »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 3 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.)

Work­ing with Health Care Indus­try Stake­hold­ers: Clin­i­cians, Pharma/Biotech, Pay­ers, PBMs, Lawyers, Medicare, FDA

Clin­i­cians seek clear val­i­dated “rules of thumb” that can be eas­ily imple­mented and fit into their work­flow and reim­burse­ment regime. Many are explor­ing “Clin­i­cal Deci­sion Sup­port (CDS)” tools on the web and solu­tions linked to “Elec­tronic Health Records” (EHR’s). CDC and EHR’s are seed­ing the ground for clin­i­cians to adopt robust Bio­mark­ers that are shown to be unam­bigu­ously clin­i­cally relevant.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 2 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.)

Most Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine research in Psy­chi­a­try using mol­e­c­u­lar mea­sures alone have failed to repli­cate. Whilst dis­ap­point­ing, this is not sur­pris­ing, since 80% of human 25,000 genes have some effect on the brain.

There are there­fore grow­ing efforts expand­ing Genomic Bio­mark­ers in Psy­chi­a­try to Neu­roimag­ing (all Brain-based bio­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive mea­sures). Some approaches tar­get Read the rest of this entry »

NIH-funded study finds dyslexia not tied to IQ (NIH press release):

At left, brain areas active in typ­i­cally devel­op­ing read­ers engaged in a rhyming task. Shown at right is the brain area acti­vated in poor read­ers involved in the same task.

- “Regard­less of high or low over­all scores on an IQ test, chil­dren with dyslexia show sim­i­lar pat­terns of brain activ­ity, accord­ing to researchers sup­ported by the National Insti­tutes of Health. The results call into ques­tion the dis­crep­ancy model — the prac­tice of clas­si­fy­ing a child as dyslexic on the basis of a lag between read­ing abil­ity and over­all IQ scores.”

- “In many school sys­tems, the dis­crep­ancy model is the cri­te­rion for Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple weeks ago I attended the Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Con­fer­ence, ESCoNS, at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia San Fran­cisco. The speak­ers’ talks were insight­ful, sur­pris­ing, and inspir­ing in many regards. The pur­pose of this meet­ing was to bring together great minds in a vari­ety of fields from neu­ro­science to game design and to come up with some ideas how to make game based cog­ni­tive train­ing a real­ity as an effec­tive ther­apy for many of today’s most chal­leng­ing dis­or­ders and deficits. Many of the sci­en­tists also thought that game based ther­a­pies for cog­ni­tive deficits could be used as enhance­ment tools for healthy indi­vid­u­als as well. Read the rest of this entry »

We are proud to con­firm six addi­tional excel­lent Speak­ers at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (remem­ber, this is a fully vir­tual event so it requires no travel). Three Speak­ers are based in the US, two in the UK, one in Aus­tralia, and they truly rep­re­sent a range of per­spec­tives and exper­tise to dis­cuss, as the Sum­mit tagline promises, Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury. Read the rest of this entry »

Let us first announce an upcom­ing Vir­tual Book Club Dis­cus­sion focused on Brain Fit­ness, to take place on Mon­day March 14th in honor of Brain Aware­ness Week 2011 (March 14-20th). Let’s dis­cuss burn­ing issues together: Why care about neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and the pos­si­bil­i­ties it offers to enrich our qual­ity of life? What does cog­ni­tive reserve research mean to the way we learn, work, play, live? What is Brain Train­ing — and what is not? All the con­ver­sa­tion be vir­tual, via social media tools. You can learn more here.

This edi­tion of Sharp­Brains monthly eNewslet­ter brings many arti­cles on those top­ics. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »