Digital Brain Health vs Brain Training vs Brain Games

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The Dig­i­tal Brain Health mar­ket can be bro­ken down into two main tech­nol­o­gy segments:

  • Soft­ware — refers to ful­ly dig­i­tal and online appli­ca­tions (accessed via com­put­ers, tablets or smart­phones) designed to mon­i­tor, assess, enhance, or repair neu­rocog­ni­tive functions.
  • Bio­met­rics — refers to appli­ca­tions which require a hard­ware com­po­nent to mea­sure a phys­i­o­log­i­cal response linked to neu­rocog­ni­tive out­comes, pri­mar­i­ly heart rate vari­abil­i­ty (HRV) and elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG).

And here are a few exam­ples of what we mean by Dig­i­tal Brain Health (ful­ly auto­mated appli­ca­tions designed to assess, mon­i­tor and/ or enhance cog­ni­tion and brain func­tion­ing), select­ed from among the 5 Mar­ket Lead­ers and 10 Com­pa­nies to Watch in 2013/2014:

  • A 30-minute online brain health assess­ment and per­son­al­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram used by large com­pa­nies like Nation­wide Insur­ance and Accen­ture to improve employee’s pro­duc­tiv­ity and men­tal wellness
  • An online cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram offered by sev­eral large AAA chap­ters to mem­bers age 50+ to improve dri­ving safety
  • A com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­apy offered by the NHS in the UK as a first-line inter­ven­tion for anx­i­ety and depression
  • A ful­ly dig­i­tal head­set and plat­form that mea­sures basic brain states (such as lev­el of atten­tion) and is being used to help peo­ple med­i­tate bet­ter and reduce ADHD symptoms
  • An iPad-based assess­ment that tracks cog­ni­tive per­for­mance over time to help detect con­cus­sions among football/ hock­ey play­ers and mil­i­tary personnel

These exam­ples are crit­i­cal to under­stand the mar­ket­place and real trans­for­ma­tion under­way — which has not been prop­er­ly report­ed yet by the media, giv­en the super­fi­cial con­tro­ver­sy over Nin­ten­do brain train­ing and sim­i­lar “brain games.”

To Learn More about the report Trans­form­ing Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Mon­i­tor and Enhance Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan: The Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020: