We are proud to release today what we believe is our best mar­ket intel­li­gence report so far, track­ing how fully auto­mated appli­ca­tions designed to assess, mon­i­tor and/ or enhance cog­ni­tion and brain func­tion­ing are trans­form­ing brain health, and health overall.

Here are a few exam­ples of what we mean by Dig­i­tal Brain Health, selected from among the 5 Mar­ket Lead­ers and 10 Com­pa­nies to Watch in 2013/2014 iden­ti­fied through our com­pre­hen­sive analysis.

• A 30-minute online brain health assess­ment and per­son­al­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram used by large com­pa­nies like Nation­wide Insur­ance and Accen­ture to improve employee’s pro­duc­tiv­ity and men­tal wellness
• An online cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram offered by sev­eral large AAA chap­ters to mem­bers age 50+ to improve dri­ving safety
• A com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­apy offered by the NHS in the UK as a first-line inter­ven­tion for anx­i­ety and depression
• A fully dig­i­tal head­set and plat­form that mea­sures basic brain states (such as level of atten­tion) and is being used to help peo­ple med­i­tate bet­ter and reduce ADHD symptoms
• An iPad-based assess­ment that tracks cog­ni­tive per­for­mance over time to help detect con­cus­sions among football/ hockey play­ers and mil­i­tary per­son­nel Read the rest of this entry »

Citi­co­l­ine does not improve func­tional, cog­ni­tive sta­tus in patients with trau­matic brain injury (Out­come Magazine):

“Although approved for use for treat­ing trau­matic brain injury (TBI) in nearly 60 coun­tries, use of citi­co­l­ine in a ran­dom­ized trial that included more than 1,200 par­tic­i­pants with TBI did not result in improve­ment in func­tional and cog­ni­tive sta­tus, accord­ing to a study appear­ing in the Novem­ber 21 issue of JAMA.

“Despite con­sid­er­able advances in emer­gency and crit­i­cal care man­age­ment of TBI as well as decades of research on poten­tial agents for neu­ro­pro­tec­tion or enhanced recov­ery, no effec­tive phar­ma­cother­apy has yet been iden­ti­fied Read the rest of this entry »

Our col­league Kate Sul­li­van, who led a superb Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit work­shop on How to Set Up a Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter to Enhance Cog­ni­tive Retrain­ing and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion, based on her expe­ri­ence at Wal­ter Reed National Mil­i­tary Med­ical Cen­ter, just alerted us of a new study pre­pared by her team: Out­comes from a Pilot Study using Computer-Based Reha­bil­i­ta­tive Tools in a Mil­i­tary Pop­u­la­tion (Stud­ies in Health Tech­nol­ogy and Infor­mat­ics). Read the rest of this entry »

Gif­fords May Get Bet­ter Brain-Injury Care Than Most of Her Con­stituents (ProPublica):

“Despite the need for more research, Gif­fords’ story shows the poten­tial of the treat­ments now avail­able. But accord­ing to Susan Con­nors, the pres­i­dent of the Brain Injury Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica, what treat­ment you receive depends heav­ily on your state, insur­ance plan (or lack of one), hos­pi­tal and the peo­ple advo­cat­ing for you.” Read the rest of this entry »

Test­ing Pro­gram Fails Sol­diers, Leav­ing Brain Injuries Unde­tected (ProPublica):

“In 2007, with road­side bombs explod­ing across Iraq, Con­gress moved to improve care for sol­diers who had suf­fered one of the war’s sig­na­ture wounds, trau­matic brain injury.

Law­mak­ers passed a mea­sure requir­ing the mil­i­tary to test sol­diers’ brain func­tion before they deployed and again when they returned. The test was sup­posed to ensure that sol­diers received proper treatment.

Instead, an inves­ti­ga­tion by ProP­ub­lica and NPR has found, the test­ing pro­gram has failed to deliver on its promise, offer­ing sol­diers the appear­ance of help, but not the real­ity. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are four stud­ies and arti­cles, pub­lished in Jan­u­ary, that report very inter­est­ing find­ings and offer inspir­ing ideas:

• An arti­cle on the role of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords’ recovery.
• A new study that used a blood test able to detect beta amy­loid 42 (the pro­tein frag­ment that makes up Alzheimer’s plaque) and sug­gested that the asso­ci­a­tion between amy­loid and cog­ni­tive decline could be mod­i­fied by cog­ni­tive reserve.
• An arti­cle on a new brain scan tech­nol­ogy to detect Alzheimer’s pathol­ogy in the brain.
• An arti­cle report­ing the answer of Don Tap­scott to the ques­tion “What sci­en­tific con­cept would improve everybody’s cog­ni­tive toolkit?” Read the rest of this entry »

Today we share must-read insights from  Kather­ine Sul­li­van, Direc­tor of the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Cen­ter, and Peter Kissinger, Pres­i­dent of the AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safety. Both of them will dis­cuss their ongo­ing work and lessons learned at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (March 30th — April 1st, 2011). The inter­views below were con­ducted via email.

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Kather­ine Sul­li­van is the Direc­tor of the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Center.

1. Kather­ine, how would you define “brain fit­ness” vs. “phys­i­cal fitness”?

In our con­text (help­ing active duty ser­vice mem­bers and vet­er­ans recover from cog­ni­tive dys­func­tion most asso­ci­ated with trau­matic brain injury), I’d say brain fit­ness is the out­come we work towards: the cog­ni­tive resources required to return to duty or rein­te­grate into daily and pro­fes­sional lives as much as pos­si­ble. In this sense, Read the rest of this entry »