June 22nd talk @ Fundacion Edad y Vida (Barcelona) on Health in the XXI century

Last Novem­ber, talk­ing with some Japan­ese col­leagues at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Coun­cil on the Aging Soci­ety, I dis­cov­ered that it is com­mon there to orga­nize research-dri­ven consortia/ learn­ing labs among for-prof­it, non-prof­it and aca­d­e­m­ic orga­ni­za­tions inter­est­ed in the devel­op­ment of “sil­ver indus­tries”, this is, where com­pa­nies devel­op prod­uct and ser­vices spe­cif­ic to the needs of old­er adults.

I just dis­cov­ered ‑hav­ing been invit­ed to speak there, togeth­er with Prof. Shlo­mo Breznitz- that my native Spain counts with a sim­i­lar inno­v­a­tive plat­form. You can see below (in Span­ish) the details of my tak in Barcelona on June 22nd, and here you have how the Fun­da­cion Edad y Vida describes itself:

• The Edad&Vida Foun­da­tion is a plat­form where all the dif­fer­ent agents involved in con­tribut­ing to the qual­i­ty of life of elder­ly peo­ple con­verge. Edad&Vida is an open space to com­pa­nies from dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic sec­tors, social agents and aca­d­e­m­ic entities.
• Edad&Vida is the result of the effort of more than 40 lead­ing com­pa­nies that belong to dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic sec­tors. We can find com­pa­nies direct­ly relat­ed with depen­dence such as san­i­tary cen­tres, care homes, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, prod­ucts sup­pli­ers or elder­ly ser­vices. The mem­bers of the foun­da­tion also include oth­er sec­tors such as finan­cial, insur­ance com­pa­nies, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­pa­nies, tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, leisure and food com­pa­nies. These com­pa­nies give Edad&Vida a trans­verse vision to its speech and activities.
• Also as part of Edad&Vida there are over 30 aca­d­e­m­ic and research insti­tutes, as well as elder­ly peo­ple asso­ci­a­tions, which con­tribute to give sci­en­tif­ic rig­or and legit­i­mate our speech to reach the foundation’s goals and challenges.

We’ll see sim­i­lar groups appear in the US in future years, I am sure.

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Details of the talk — La salud en el siglo XXI — Como com­bat­ir el enve­jec­imien­to cerebral

Martes 22 Junio 2010. Hora: 19:00. Barcelona

El Sr. Hig­inio Raven­t’s, pres­i­dente de Edad & Vida tiene el agra­do de invi­tar­les a la con­fer­en­cia con el Pro­fe­sor Shlo­mo Breznitz y Álvaro Fer­nan­dez Ibez:

Recientes des­cubrim­ien­tos cient­ficos han demostra­do que el cere­bro humano, a cualquier edad, tiene la capaci­dad de cam­biar y reforzar sus cir­cuitos para man­ten­er y mejo­rar las capaci­dades cog­ni­ti­vas crti­cas para la vida y para el tra­ba­jo. Estos des­cubrim­ien­tos unidos a la irrupcin de tecnologías dig­i­tales estn rev­olu­cio­nan­do el cam­po de la salud cere­bral a niv­el mundial.

San­ti­a­go Ramn y Cajal afir­mo que: “Cualquier hom­bre puede, si se lo pro­pone, con­ver­tirse en el escul­tor de su pro­pio cere­bro”, y por fin comen­zamos a con­tar con her­ramien­tas que nos per­miten pre­cisa­mente esculpir nue­stros cere­bros a lo largo de la vida, com­bat­ien­do el enve­jec­imien­to cere­bral para man­ten­er­nos activos y pro­duc­tivos cuan­tos mas aos mejor.

El entre­namien­to de las capaci­dades cog­ni­ti­vas medi­ante ejer­ci­cios per­son­al­iza­dos ser prob­a­ble­mente algo tan habit­u­al como lo es hoy el entre­namien­to de las capaci­dades fsi­cas en los gimnasios.

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Note: If you are intrigued by the men­tion above of neu­ro­science pio­neer Ramon y Cajal, you can learn more about his auto­bi­og­ra­phy Rec­ol­lec­tions of my life