• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

The Business and Ethics of the Brain Fitness Boom — Part 3: The Real Need

January 9, 2012 by Alvaro Fernandez

Engag­ing peo­ple where they are in the life-course

Eighty per­cent of the 38,000 adults over age 50 who were respon­ders in the 2010 AARP Mem­ber Opin­ion Sur­vey indi­cat­ed “stay­ing men­tal­ly sharp” was their top ranked inter­est and con­cern (Dinger, 2010). What exact­ly does this phrase mean? And what role can tech­nol­o­gy play in “stay­ing men­tal­ly sharp”? Intel CEO Paul Otelli­ni has said, “You have to start by think­ing about what peo­ple want to do… and work backward.”

The grow­ing inter­est in brain fit­ness presents a sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ty to build men­tal cap­i­tal, enhance men­tal well­ness, and delay symp­toms of brain-based decline and disease.

In March 2008, AARP ran their Healthy@Home Sur­vey (Bar­ret, 2008) ask­ing just under 1,000 respon­ders, ages 65 and over (mean age of 74 years), and their care­givers about their per­cep­tions of suc­cess­ful aging and tech­nolo­gies for suc­cess­ful aging. In a nut­shell, the survey’s main find­ings were that old­er adults pri­or­i­tize health and inde­pen­dence, that their obsta­cles have a strong cog­ni­tive or per­cep­tu­al com­po­nent, and that they are open to dig­i­tal health technology.

In oth­er words, the top pri­or­i­ty for old­er adults is not anti-aging—it is about main­tain­ing capac­i­ties to func­tion inde­pen­dent­ly. This is where recent cog­ni­tive sci­ence and dig­i­tal tools can add more val­ue: man­ag­ing and enhanc­ing “brain fit­ness” in the present and the near future—not just pre­vent­ing or treat­ing Alzheimer’s Dis­ease thir­ty years from now.

What are some of the areas where peo­ple want more help with brain fit­ness? To answer this ques­tion, Sharp­Brains (www.sharpbrains.com) con­duct­ed a sur­vey in March 2010 of our month­ly newslet­ter sub­scribers (a group not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pop­u­la­tion at large, but indica­tive of ear­ly adopters and deci­sion mak­ers). We received near­ly 1,700 respons­es from respon­dents who were ages 40 and older.

When asked what were the most impor­tant brain func­tions nec­es­sary to thrive per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, respon­dents’ pri­or­i­ties cov­ered a range of cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al, and self-reg­u­la­tion func­tions, sug­gest­ing that brain fit­ness solu­tions will need to inte­grate all these domains—or at least be able to link their spe­cif­ic func­tion­al ben­e­fits to spe­cif­ic user pri­or­i­ties. It was inter­est­ing to con­trast the top two ranked func­tions (“abil­i­ty to man­age stress­ful sit­u­a­tions”; “con­cen­tra­tion pow­er to avoid dis­trac­tions”) with the bot­tom two (“abil­i­ty to mul­ti­task”; remem­ber­ing faces and names”), which may debunk many myths about our assump­tions of what peo­ple actu­al­ly want and need. When asked for their beliefs about the effec­tive­ness of cer­tain habits and tools, respon­dents named intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges, aer­o­bic exer­cise, and read­ing books as most effec­tive, close­ly fol­lowed by meditation.

Sim­ply stat­ed: what peo­ple seem to want is help to enhance and pro­long their func­tion­al men­tal capac­i­ty. The next step is to deter­mine how old­er adults can best nav­i­gate through the brain fit­ness marketplace.

Empow­er­ing Pro­fes­sion­als to Empow­er Consumers

Insti­tu­tions and pro­fes­sion­als in the field of aging have the dai­ly task of help­ing con­sumers, patients, and care­givers nav­i­gate the avail­able non-inva­sive options. Per­son­al­ized assess­ments and advice are crit­i­cal, since improve­ments expe­ri­enced in ther­a­py and train­ing pro­grams seem more like­ly to trans­fer to real life when a per­son tar­gets the brain function(s) that are specif­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant to their unique con­text and its bot­tle­necks or deficits (Sharp­Brains, 2011).

Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent needs and pri­or­i­ties, have vary­ing lifestyles, and reside in par­tic­u­lar cog­ni­tive envi­ron­ments: one size does not fit all.

I pro­pose that insti­tu­tions and pro­fes­sion­als who must tra­verse this still-emerg­ing, com­plex land­scape first iden­ti­fy an individual’s par­tic­u­lar bot­tle­necks or deficits, then seek the lev­el of clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion for options (tech­nol­o­gy-based or not) that tar­get those spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al, or self-reg­u­la­tion func­tions. (See the list on page 68 that can help pro­fes­sion­als eval­u­ate brain fit­ness options.)

The oth­er role pro­fes­sion­als play is in edu­cat­ing and empow­er­ing con­sumers, patients, and care­givers to enhance their self-effi­ca­cy by mak­ing their own deci­sions. (Our Sharp­Brains 2009 con­sumer guide includ­ed a pro­gram eval­u­a­tion check­list, excerpt­ed in the box on this page; the full check­list is avail­able at www.SharpBrains.com.)

In the absence of per­fect answers—and we won’t have per­fect answers for a while, if ever—today’s best course is to pro­vide edu­ca­tion and resources that facil­i­tate informed deci­sion mak­ing. Pro­fes­sion­als in the field of aging are in a unique posi­tion to help parse the offer­ings in the rapid­ly evolv­ing field of brain fitness.

How to Eval­u­ate Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams: A Con­sumer Checklist

Are there sci­en­tists and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, and a sci­en­tif­ic advi­so­ry board behind the program?

  • Are there pub­lished, peer-reviewed sci­en­tif­ic papers in main­stream sci­en­tif­ic and pro­fes­sion­al jour­nals writ­ten by those sci­en­tists? How many?
  • Does the pro­gram tell me what part of my brain or which cog­ni­tive skill I am exercising?
  • Is there an inde­pen­dent assess­ment tool to mea­sure my progress?
  • Is it a struc­tured pro­gram, with guid­ance on how many hours per week and days per week to use it?
  • Do the exer­cis­es vary and teach me some­thing new?
  • Does the pro­gram chal­lenge and moti­vate me, or does it feel like it would become easy once I learned it?
  • Does the pro­gram fit my per­son­al goals?
  • Does the pro­gram fit my lifestyle?
  • Am I ready and will­ing to do the pro­gram, or would it be too stressful?

To Be Continued…

  • Tomor­row, Jan­u­ary 10th: Part 4 — The Future

You can track and dis­cuss each part as it becomes avail­able via my Twit­ter account, our Face­book page, LinkedIn group, and RSS feed. Enjoy, and please add your 2 cents!

Note: This is an excerpt from the Gen­er­a­tions arti­cle  The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez. Copy­right © 2011 Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging; all rights reserved. This arti­cle may not be dupli­cat­ed, reprint­ed or dis­trib­uted in any form with­out writ­ten per­mis­sion from the pub­lish­er: Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, 71 Steven­son St., Suite 1450, San Francisco,CA 94105–2938; e‑mail: info@asaging.org.

Read pre­vi­ous arti­cles here:

  • The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom — Part 1: The Business
  • The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom — Part 2: The Ethics

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Attention & ADD/ADHD, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: AARP, Alzheimers-disease, anti-aging, baby-boomers, brain-age, Brain-Fitness, Brain-games, Brain-health, Brain-Training, business, cognitive engagement, cognitive-health, cognitive-science, Cognitive-Training, emotion, emotional-health, ethics, innovation, Intel, life long learning, mental capital, mental well being, mental-disorder, social integration, social-skills, stress-management

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 12,620 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2022 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy