New Report Finds A Brain Health Revolution in the Making, Driven by Digital Technology and Neuroplasticity Research

In spite of the recent eco­nom­ic down­turn, rev­enues for dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to assess, enhance and treat cog­ni­tion, or dig­i­tal brain health and fit­ness tools, grew 35% in 2009. “The con­ver­gence of demo­graph­ic and pol­i­cy trends with cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science dis­cov­er­ies and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion is giv­ing birth to a nascent mar­ket­place that can fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form what brain health is, how it is mea­sured, and how it is done,” says Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, mem­ber of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Coun­cil on the Aging Soci­ety and Edi­tor-in-Chief of the report. “This ground­break­ing report can help pio­neers shape the emerg­ing toolk­it to ben­e­fit an aging soci­ety that increas­ing­ly seeks new ways to enhance cog­ni­tive func­tion­al­i­ty and men­tal well­ness across the lifespan.”

“As the brain is thrust into the cen­ter of the health­care ecosys­tem, inno­v­a­tive cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness appli­ca­tions will play an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role in defin­ing neu­ro­cen­tric health,” adds Jake Duna­gan, Research Direc­tor at the Insti­tute For The Future.

Report: Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan: The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2010. 

A major­i­ty among the 1,900+ deci­sion-mak­ers and ear­ly-adopters sur­veyed said they trust­ed the effec­tive­ness of non-inva­sive options above inva­sive options to enhance crit­i­cal brain func­tion­al­i­ty. Pro­fes­sion­al and intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges were rat­ed very effec­tive by 61% of respon­dents, aer­o­bic exer­cise and read­ing books by 42%, med­i­ta­tion by 38%, com­put­er­ized brain train­ing by 26%, tak­ing pre­scrip­tion drugs by 13%, tak­ing sup­ple­ments by 12%, and self-med­icat­ing with drugs by 1%.

These are among the key find­ings of a 207-page mar­ket report released today by Sharp­Brains and pre­pared in col­lab­o­ra­tion with 24 lead­ing sci­en­tists and 10 inno­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions — the most com­pre­hen­sive such research study done to ana­lyze emerg­ing research, tech­nolo­gies and marketplace.

“We must do for brain health in the 21st cen­tu­ry what we large­ly accom­plished in car­dio­vas­cu­lar health in the past cen­tu­ry. It’s time to take sci­en­tif­ic insights out of the lab and to iden­ti­fy prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions, mak­ing the main­te­nance of good brain fit­ness a pub­lic health pri­or­i­ty,” indi­cates William Reich­man, MD, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Baycrest.

Oth­er Report High­lights are:

Chap­ter 1. Mar­ket overview: The report esti­mates that the size of the world­wide dig­i­tal brain health and fit­ness mar­ket in 2009 was $295M — 35% growth since 2008, rep­re­sent­ing an annu­al­ized growth rate of 31% since 2005. Healthy aging is the main val­ue propo­si­tion today, but the report iden­ti­fies life­long dri­vers fuel­ing a gen­er­al desire to enhance men­tal well­ness and per­for­mance: aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, sports per­for­mance, work­place pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, dri­ving safe­ty, qual­i­ty of life among old­er adults and clin­i­cal populations.

Chap­ter 2. Mar­ket sur­vey of Pri­or­i­ties, Beliefs and Habits: 1,910 deci­sion-mak­ers and ear­ly-adopters rank the brain func­tions required to thrive per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly in the XXI cen­tu­ry and the options to main­tain and enhance them, includ­ing lev­els of sat­is­fac­tion with cur­rent pop­u­lar products.

Chap­ter 3. Com­pet­i­tive Land­scape: Sharp­Brains’ pro­pri­etary Mar­ket and Research Momen­tum Matrix iden­ti­fies sev­en com­pa­nies, out of over a hun­dred, as Lead­ers: Brain Resource, Cog­niFit, Lumos Labs, Posit Sci­ence, Ultra­sis, Unit­ed BioSource, Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing. The report includes in-depth com­pa­ny pro­files of 32 com­pa­nies: Advanced Brain Tech­nolo­gies, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing, Arrow­smith School, Brain Cen­ter Amer­i­ca, Brain Resource, CNS Vital Signs, Cog­nic­i­ti, Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness and Inno­v­a­tive Ther­a­pies, Cogmed, Cog­niFit, Cogstate, Dakim, E‑Hub, Houghton Mif­flin, Learn­ing Enhance­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, Learn­ingRx, Lex­ia Learn­ing, Lumos Labs, Mar­bles: The Brain Store, Med­In­ter­act, Mem­o­ry Train­ing Cen­ters of Amer­i­ca, Mind360, MyBrain­Train­er, Neo­Cor­ta, Neu­ro­Trax, NovaV­i­sion, Posit Sci­ence, Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Train­ing, Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing, Ultra­sis, Unit­ed BioSource, Telos Inter­na­tion­al, Vibrant­Brains, Vig­or­ous Mind, Viv­i­ty Labs.

Chap­ter 4. Ten inno­va­tion case stud­ies: The ten final­ists in the 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards share how they are apply­ing inno­v­a­tive neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-based tools to enhance brain per­for­mance in the real-world. The ten orga­ni­za­tions are: USA Hock­ey, All­state, Nation­wide, Arrow­smith School, Uni­ver­si­ty Behav­ioral Health­Care, AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safe­ty, Saint Luke’s Brain and Stroke Insti­tute, Oak­land Uni­fied School Dis­trict, Men­tal Health Asso­ci­a­tion of Rock­land Coun­ty, and SCAN Health Plan.

Chap­ter 5. Research & Devel­op­ment: Twen­ty-four lead­ing sci­en­tists exam­ine recent evi­dence on the val­ue and lim­i­ta­tions of a wide vari­ety of non-inva­sive brain health tools, and dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions for mea­sur­ing and enhanc­ing brain fit­ness across the lifes­pan. Those sci­en­tists work at sev­en­teen lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties: Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, City Uni­ver­si­ty, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Ein­stein-Mon­te­fiore, Har­vard Med­ical School, Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute, Mind Research Net­work, Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast, UAB, Uni­ver­si­ty Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign, Uni­ver­si­ty Michigan/ Bern, Uni­ver­si­ty Notre Dame, Uni­ver­si­ty Rochester, USC Davis, Uni­ver­si­ty South Flori­da, Uni­ver­si­ty of Stirling.

Chap­ters 6–10. Mar­ket seg­ments and 2015 Pro­jec­tions: The report includes a detailed trend analy­sis of four main mar­ket seg­ments — Schools, Employ­ers, Con­sumers, Providers — and fore­casts the world­wide mar­ket to grow to $2 — $8 bil­lion USD by 2015 if impor­tant cat­e­go­ry bot­tle­necks are addressed.

You can read the reports 5‑page Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry: Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan: The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2010.