Transcript: Online Q&A on the Future of Brain Health with Alvaro Fernandez

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today, Fri­day March 16th, on brain sus­tain­abil­i­ty, retool­ing brain health, and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Sharp­Brains’ Co-Founder who’s just been named a Young Glob­al Leader by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. You can learn more about the top­ic by read­ing this 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Meet­ing Report and this Info­graph­ic.

10:04
Great, we are ready to start! 

10:04
Com­ment From Carol
First, con­grats on the WEF recog­ni­tion! What is it, exactly?

10:06
Thank you Car­ol and every­one! The World Eco­nom­ic Forum does many things oth­er than orga­niz­ing the annu­al big event at Davos. A great pro­gram they have is the Forum of Young Glob­al Lead­ers, where they select around 200 peo­ple under 40 from around the world to help iden­ti­fy and solve big problems.

10:07
It was an hon­or to be select­ed, and it will be a great com­mu­ni­ty and plat­form to dri­ve change — it is a 5‑year program‑, hope­ful­ly help­ing bring more atten­tion and resources to Brain, Brain Health, Brain Fitness.

10:07
Com­ment From Peter Whitehouse
Con­grat­u­la­tions Alvaro. So how does the future of brain health inter­face with the con­cern­ing trends in envi­ron­men­tal health asso­ci­at­ed with glob­al cli­mate change?

10:08
It is great news to see so many peo­ple focused now on sus­tain­abil­i­ty. I would love to see the same ener­gy behind Brain Sus­tain­abil­i­ty — the brain is our most pre­cious nat­ur­al asset, and often overlooked.

10:08
Com­ment From Denis Socarrás‑E. (UAH)
I would like to know how new knowl­edge on the brain will help us instruc­tors devel­op curricula/training for our uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, such as lan­guage interpreters.

10:10
It is going to be a rev­o­lu­tion, but of course it won’t hap­pen in 2 weeks. The way we con­ceive of Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing will change from content/ info trans­fer to Devel­op­ment of Brain-based Capac­i­ties. How exact­ly? well, we need to engage inno­va­tors from many domains in inter­nal­iz­ing and apply­ing emerg­ing sci­ence and tools, that’s what we want to encour­age via our blog, vir­tu­al sum­mit, book…

10:10
Com­ment From Para
Can we con­sid­er Brain Health in isolation?

10:12
No, we can’t. But it is one key bottleneck/ step that is often for­got­ten. It is a core piece of many puz­zles, from edu­ca­tion to men­tal health to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at work.

10:12
Com­ment From Carol
What is the main mes­sage from last year’s sharp­brains sum­mit that you’d like to highlight?

10:13
Two core mes­sages (and Peter W is one of the co-authors). One, we need to focus on build­ing brain capac­i­ty across whole lifes­pan. Two, we need bet­ter, inex­pen­sive, acces­si­ble assess­ments of brain func­tion to bet­ter dri­ve pre­ven­tion and inter­ven­tion, and good news is that it won’t take long for those to be available.

10:14
Com­ment From Jim Muckle
If there an effec­tive way, from your per­spec­tive, for peo­ple who are speak­ing, train­ing, lead­ing, teach­ing, facil­i­tat­ing, coach­ing, (etc) with the brain in mind to be in touch with each oth­er? I know there are many LinkedIn groups and oth­er net­works. But is there one, or a short list, that stand(s) out in your mind? Thank you.

10:15
Well, I am biased by our own efforts, but I believe sharpbrains.com is a great place to start, take a look at eNewsletter/ blog/ LinkedIn group and, above all, upcom­ing vir­tu­al sum­mit in June.

10:15
Com­ment From Keith
Giv­en what we know about the brain now, what would be your ide­al sce­nario — say, the top 4 tan­gi­ble things that people/companies/institutions can do or ser­vices they can pro­vide that would make the biggest dif­fer­ence in brain health? And which providers, if any, are clos­est to where we need to be — and why?

10:18
Big ques­tion, need to pro­vide con­cise answers here…I’d say, first, we’d have a clear base­line of brain func­tion of every­one, so every­one can be more proac­tive about what they do and mea­sure impact. Sec­ond, I’d spend a lot of time in edu­ca­tion­al cur­ric­u­la on how our brains work and how to man­age them prop­er­ly. Third, I’d tweak exist­ing well­ness pro­grams so they tru­ly incor­po­rate brain-based knowl­edge. Fourth, I’d inte­grate brain train­ing tools, from cog­ni­tive train­ing to biofeed­back to meditation.

10:18
Com­ment From Para
What about Brain illhealth.

10:20
Great ques­tion. Thomas Insel at NIMH is dri­ving pre­cise­ly that, how can we lever­age neu­ro­science to inform men­tal health diag­no­sis and treat­ment. Please fol­low what is hap­pen­ing with schiz­o­phre­nia, can be a good mod­el for oth­er dis­or­ders to follow.

10:20
Com­ment From Peter Whitehouse
The whole con­cept of dis­ease is changing

10:21
Indeed. I think a core frame­work to keep in mind is to move from dis­ease-based think­ing to capac­i­ty-based think­ing and tools. The high­er the capac­i­ty, the more we can enhance well­ness and health and delay problems/ diseases.

10:21
Com­ment From Keith
Going back to that big question…which brain train­ing tools have the biggest effect?

10:23
Effect on what, pre­cise­ly? Brain train­ing is show­ing great promise when appro­pri­ate­ly used, it is a tar­get­ed inter­ven­tion not a gen­er­al solution/ mag­ic pill. When we reviewed mul­ti­ple types of brain train­ing tech­niques as part of work for The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, we iden­ti­fied four most promis­ing: med­i­ta­tion, biofeed­back, cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, cog­ni­tive train­ing (espe­cial­ly, but not only, work­ing mem­o­ry training)

10:23
Com­ment From Colleen C.
Can we put pol­i­tics and reli­gion aside as we con­firm the best prac­tices for brain health? (Western/Eastern prac­tices and the mul­ti­tude of religious/political ideals)

10:25
Yes, of course, biol­o­gy knows no frontiers…what we are talk­ing about is more fun­da­men­tal than politics/ religion…it is about what being human means, what assets, poten­tial, capa­bil­i­ties we all have, sim­ply for hav­ing a human brain, how to enhance and main­tain it.

10:26
A big obsta­cle is that peo­ple have a bil­lion myths about the brain inside their minds…and it is going to take a while to replace those myths with more sol­id foundations.

10:26
Com­ment From Nigel Smith
Are there any exam­ples of com­mu­ni­ties or coun­tries that have tak­en the lead in sys­tem­i­cal­ly pro­mot­ing prac­tices or pro­vid­ing the right infra­struc­ture to sup­port cog­ni­tive fitness/ good neuroplasticity?

10:27
Just start­ing to hap­pen, but at the pol­i­cy lev­el we see coun­tries like UK, Cana­da and Sin­ga­pore pay­ing real atten­tion to what the oppor­tu­ni­ty means and how to best lever­age it. No coun­try has yet imple­ment­ed any­thing significant/ systematic.

10:29
I believe the process will be sim­i­lar to what hap­pened with phys­i­cal exer­cise. First, con­tro­ver­sy and pio­neers tak­ing the lead. Then, lit­tle by lit­tle, clear rules of the road, bet­ter evi­dence and tools, and large pub­lic cam­paigns. But this time will hap­pen faster, giv­en impor­tance of prob­lem, demands from con­sumers, and the con­nect­ed soci­ety we live in.

10:30
Com­ment From Jim Muckle
Anoth­er option to make a dif­fer­ence would be for deci­sion-mak­ers at all lev­els to begin to ask the ques­tion, when­ev­er resources are being allo­cat­ed (e.g. via busi­ness plan­ning, bud­get plan­ning, project plan­ning, and so on), “How will this resource/allocation/project (etc) encour­age liv­ing, learn­ing and work­ing with the brain in mind?”

10:31
Great point. Much of the oppor­tu­ni­ty is not so much about doing rad­i­cal­ly new things, but about refin­ing what we already are doing, and not doing any­more the things that make no sense. As you sug­gest, incor­po­rat­ing brain fit­ness con­sid­er­a­tions into gen­er­al decision-making.

10:33
And let me make a point. We often miss clear oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve real­i­ty because we eval­u­ate inno­va­tion and sta­tus quo with dou­ble stan­dards. We expect per­fec­tion in order to incor­po­rate inno­va­tion, which might make sense if sta­tus quo was evi­dence-based, but in much of brain health the real­i­ty is that sta­tus quo does­n’t make sense and is not evi­dence-based to start with, so inno­va­tion should’t be judged on whether it reflects perfection.

10:33
Com­ment From Peter Whitehouse
I think one key is tru­ly inte­grat­ing with K‑12 sys­tems of edu­ca­tion. But IT in schools has had a mixed track record so far.

10:36
Yes, because there is a big divide between tech folks and sci­ence folks. Inno­va­tion requires true shared under­stand­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion, what we want to build through our vir­tu­al sum­mit and every­thing else we do. Much of what has been/ is hap­pen­ing in K12 does­n’t make much sense, either, it still reflects an old-fash­ioned con­tent-trans­fer pre-neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty framework.

10:36
Com­ment From Teri
We also need to edu­cate par­ents of young chil­dren so they can help their chil­dren devel­op good brain health i.e. diet exer­cise, cog­ni­tive chal­lenge and stress reduction.

10:37
Indeed! From a per­son­al point of view, a key pri­or­i­ty for my wife and I, that has even deter­mined where we live, is to make sure our daugh­ter becomes tru­ly bilin­gual if not trilingual.

10:38
Teri, you raise a great point about stress reduc­tion. Every­one liv­ing in today’s soci­ety needs help to learn how to mas­ter stress and emo­tions, and we are all rein­vent­ing the wheel when we could be much more sys­tem­at­ic and data-dri­ven about this.

10:38
Com­ment From Keith
Regard­ing which train­ing tools have the biggest effect…what has the biggest effect on longer-term brain health — not, for instance, the abil­i­ty to improve at par­tic­u­lar skills or puz­zles but to have mea­sur­able changes in blood flow and health involv­ing, say, the frontal lobe? The myths you ref­er­ence are many — draw­ing from the research, what are the most high-impact things a per­son can do?

10:41
The key is to think about “active ingre­di­ents” before we think about “tools”. The active ingre­di­ents for good men­tal exer­cise are: nov­el­ty, vari­ety, and increas­ing lev­el of chal­lenge, and you can get those in many ways. Now, what tech­nol­o­gy helps is to pinpoint/ personalize/ deliv­er tar­get­ed stim­uli in effi­cient ways. But again, the key is, can I engi­neer my life and lifestyle to make sure it con­stant­ly incor­po­rates nov­el­ty, vari­ety and chal­lenge? That’s what mat­ters, not 10 puz­zles or games.

10:41
Com­ment From Nigel Smith
Build­ing on Ter­i’s point, giv­en every­thing we now know about brain fit­ness, is there a crit­i­cal age or age range across the life span where the pil­lars of good neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty are espe­cial­ly crit­i­cal (diet, stress mgmt, men­tal stim­u­la­tion, phys­i­cal exercise)?

10:43
Those pil­lars are uni­ver­sal, what changes is the rel­a­tive pri­or­i­ty of each based on one’s start­ing point. For exam­ple, kids have a lot of men­tal stim­u­la­tion any­way, giv­en they are learn­ing sponges, so per­haps pri­or­i­ty is to ensure the oth­er ones are in place. As we get old­er often the reverse hap­pens, and what we need is much more true men­tal stim­u­la­tion. But it depends per per­son, not per age.

10:45
Let me extend my answer my say­ing: a) we need to build brain fit­ness and health on sol­id pil­lars (as dis­cussed above), b) addi­tion­al­ly, we can build tar­get­ed capac­i­ties such as work­ing mem­o­ry, infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing, emo­tion­al regulation…and for these there is a more clear case that dif­fer­ent age groups have dif­fer­ent priorities.

10:46
Com­ment From Peter Whitehouse
For elders the key is to build on their expe­ri­ence to help cre­ate col­lec­tive com­mu­ni­ty wis­dom. Nov­el­ty is impor­tant but reflec­tion and rou­tines are too.

10:48
Indeed, pat­tern recog­ni­tion is crit­i­cal for wis­dom, and ran­dom novelty/ sen­sa­tion seek­ing is not what we’re talk­ing about. But a com­mon ten­den­cy is to rely too much on pat­tern recog­ni­tion, which made sense centuries/ mil­len­nia ago when our envi­ron­ments were more sta­ble, but today we have to be care­ful and mind­ful to adapt to evolv­ing patterns.

10:48
Com­ment From Colleen C.
In my expe­ri­ence, deliv­er­ing infor­ma­tion is most effec­tive expe­ri­en­tial­ly. What can that look like in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem? I have intro­duced “Brain Gym” exer­cis­es with suc­cess. But we need the sci­ence behind “exer­cis­es” to val­i­date use more widely.

10:51
Good point, peo­ple learn to ride a bike by, well, rid­ing a bike. In the edu­ca­tion sys­tem we have seen some inno­v­a­tive uses of heart rate vari­abil­i­ty biofeed­back to help stu­dents bet­ter man­age stress. We’d love to see more of that. Anoth­er inter­est­ing sig­nal is that Pear­son, the pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny, acquired Cogmed work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing and is now approach­ing schools. We’ll see how that goes. Anoth­er good exam­ple is a start-up called Brain­ol­o­gy, focused more of self-edu­ca­tion and self-awareness.

10:51
Com­ment From Peter Whitehouse
Evi­dence is good but there are many kinds. Too much empha­sis on RCTs can be bad. Enhanc­ing pat­tern recog­ni­tion is key, through sys­tems think­ing for exam­ple. Peter

10:54
Agreed. But ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­als present a won­der­ful start­ing point to fil­ter inno­va­tion through, and the NIH evi­dence review of 2 years ago, whose real find­ings are still ignored today, are to be tak­en into account. For exam­ple, the BBC show orga­niz­ing a “brain train­ing” study claimed it did­n’t work, and only a few weeks lat­er the NIH study, based on high­est evi­dence RCTs, said cog­ni­tive train­ing was one of the pro­tec­tive fac­tors against cog­ni­tive decline, so RCTs are a great place to start and to con­tex­tu­al­ize and under­stand many of the things reported/ mis­re­port­ed by the media and in our over­all culture.

10:54
And we have only five min­utes left — will make sure to incor­po­rate new voic­es to the dis­cus­sion, so please ask a good ques­tion if you haven’t already!

10:55
Com­ment From Keith
Colleen C. implies an intrigu­ing ques­tion: Based on what we know now, what, exact­ly, should a sci­ence-based, high­est pos­si­ble impact “Brain Gym” look like?

10:57
Sor­ry, impos­si­ble to cred­i­bly answer that here…I encour­age you to read our book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, and to par­tic­i­pate in 2012 Sharp­Brains Summit.

10:57
Com­ment From Denis Socarrás‑E. (UAH)
Would you give us an advance on the upcom­ing vir­tu­al sum­mit? What rel­e­vant top­ics will be presented/discused there?

10:59
If you go to sharpbrains.com, you can click on 2012 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit sec­tion, and see 10 lead­ing ques­tions we want to address and speak­ers so far. We’ll have a more defined agen­da in a week. For exam­ple, first ques­tion is, By the year 2015, how will con­sumers self-mon­i­tor their brain health? We’ll bring mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, from sci­en­tists to tech­nol­o­gists to health inno­va­tors, to answer that question.

10:59
Com­ment From Teri
Is there an effort to bring Edu­ca­tors, Sci­en­tists, Tech peo­ple and Drs. togeth­er to talk about brain health?

11:00
2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit 🙂 (which we make vir­tu­al pre­cise­ly to make it eas­i­er for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent domains to participate)

11:00
Com­ment From Trisha
Do you see a place for “brain train­ing coach­es” in schools, social ser­vice agen­cies, etc., like fit­ness train­ers in gyms?

11:02
Sure, that will be huge (prob­a­bly broad­er than “brain train­ing” to incor­po­rate all “brain fit­ness” pil­lars dis­cussed above, more focused on out­put than on input) and we already see inter­est there, the ques­tion is how to ensure those pro­fes­sion­als are qualified/ objective/ pro­vid­ing real value…challenge right now is that many peo­ple try­ing to do that now are mar­ried to a par­tic­u­lar technique/ prod­uct, not real­ly start­ing with the client in mind.

11:02
We’ll talk a lot about that in the Sum­mit too.

11:03
And we are beyond the hour…so thank you every­one for an excel­lent con­ver­sa­tion! We’ll make the tran­script avail­able by the end of the day via sharpbrains.com

Have a nice weekend!

11:04
Com­ment From Teri
Great. Con­grat­u­la­tions again, and thanks.

11:04
Thank you Teri and every­one. We are end­ing the Q&A ses­sion now.

—

 

Resources ref­er­enced in the Q&A:

• Book: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness
• 2011 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Meet­ing Report
• Upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Opti­miz­ing Health through Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, Inno­va­tion and Data