Co-Adaptive Learning: Adaptive Technology for the Aging

My apolo­gies for not hav­ing blogged in a few days. I land­ed back in San Fran­cis­co today after speak­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a very stim­u­lat­ing event put togeth­er by the Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Adap­tive Neur­al Sys­tems Cen­ter with fund­ing from the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion.

The 2‑day sym­po­sium was titled Co-Adap­tive Learn­ing: Adap­tive Tech­nol­o­gy for the Aging (link opens a PDF with the agen­da), fea­tured impres­sive speak­ers and a high­ly qual­i­fied audi­ence, and cov­ered a wide array of cur­rent and future health­care and aging appli­ca­tions of neu­ro­science. The one aspect that was very mean­ing­ful for me to observe how often we dis­cussed cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, cog­ni­tive deficits, cog­ni­tive assess­ments, cog­ni­tive enhance­ment tools (both inva­sive and non-inva­sive) in a vari­ety of healthy aging and clin­i­cal contexts.

I will share more about the event in the next few days, includ­ing links to the fas­ci­nat­ing work pre­sent­ed by speak­ers, but let me know sim­ply thank the two gra­cious orga­niz­ers and hosts of the event by quot­ing the goal of their cen­ter and work:

- Jim­my Abbas, PhD: “One of the hall­marks of bio­log­i­cal sys­tems is the abil­i­ty to adapt. In our work, we mim­ic neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal sys­tems in order to endow tech­nol­o­gy with the abil­i­ty to adapt, and we use tech­nol­o­gy to max­i­mize adap­ta­tions in neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal sys­tems. With these approach­es, we aim to pro­mote func­tion­al adap­ta­tion after disability.”

- Ranu Jung, PhD: “Our goal is to improve the qual­i­ty of life of indi­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties by design­ing tech­niques to inves­ti­gate, replace and repair dam­aged neur­al sys­tems to enhance mobil­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty. Whether a per­son has spinal cord injury, limb loss or Parkin­son’s dis­ease, mobil­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty mean independence.”

Links:

Cen­ter: Adap­tive Neur­al Sys­tems Center. 

Agen­da (PDF): Co-Adap­tive Learn­ing: Adap­tive Tech­nol­o­gy for the Aging