Eight brain tech insights and a special offer to honor Brain Awareness Week 2020

by

__

Every March, Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) unites hun­dreds of orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Activ­i­ties typ­i­cal­ly include open days at neu­ro­science labs, exhi­bi­tions about the brain, lec­tures on brain-relat­ed top­ics, dis­plays at libraries and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, class­room work­shops, and more.

Brain Aware­ness Week 2020 starts today, Mon­day March 16th.

To con­tribute to such a glob­al edu­ca­tion­al cam­paign, espe­cial­ly now that many phys­i­cal events have been can­celled, we are offer­ing our best edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al resources at a 90% dis­count from today till Sun­day, March 22th.

–> To ben­e­fit from this oppor­tu­ni­ty, use this dis­count code: Brain­Week

 

Stay Healthy, Stay Warm, let’s Har­ness this oppor­tu­ni­ty to Sharp­en our Minds and Explore the lat­est on brain health and neurotechnology!

 

Our core edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al resources offered at a 90% dis­count this week:

1) Full Recordings from the 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit (12+ hours, 40+ experts):

The 2019 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (May 7–9th, 2019) fea­tured over forty of the world’s top experts and inno­va­tors work­ing to improve brain health for all in light of grow­ing neu­ro­science and dig­i­tal tech. Below are some of our favorite moments and take-aways, so that you know what to expect from the 12+ hours of record­ings with 40+ experts (pur­chase gives 1‑year online access to all record­ings; the cor­re­spond­ing pre­sen­ta­tion slides are free and avail­able to all):

1. Dr. Tom Insel –for­mer Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH) turned Google exec­u­tive turned entre­pre­neur turned cur­rent “men­tal health czar” of Cal­i­for­nia– pro­vid­ed a spec­tac­u­lar overview of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in brain health and men­tal health. While we have his­tor­i­cal­ly failed to bend the curve as well as in oth­er areas of health, since “you can’t man­age what you can’t mea­sure”, new dig­i­tal and neu­ro­log­i­cal mon­i­tor­ing tech­nolo­gies are final­ly allow­ing us to rem­e­dy that fun­da­men­tal issue so we can iden­ti­fy prob­lems ear­ly and inter­vene ear­ly. Mul­ti­ple Speak­ers dur­ing the Sum­mit like Dr. Sri­jan Sen, Jan Samzelius and Louis Gagnon built upon Insel’s remarks with much research, tech and examples.

2. Richard Han­bury won the 2019 Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test by pre­sent­ing a nov­el com­bi­na­tion of audio-visu­al stim­u­la­tion and neu­ro­feed­back train­ing to  alle­vi­ate chron­ic pain–his com­pa­ny Sana Health lat­er raised $3.6 mil­lion and gained much media atten­tion. Our “Sharp Tank” Judges were very impressed by Kate Sharadin work too, who came in as close sec­ond thanks to her dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics startup.

3. Dr. Anna Wexler, Dr. Karen Rom­melfanger and Jacque­line Stud­er shared fas­ci­nat­ing insights on pri­va­cy, ethics, and indus­try stan­dards for neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, dis­cussing key ongo­ing ini­tia­tives to antic­i­pate and address the chal­lenges and  encour­ag­ing us all to be aspi­ra­tional rather than “legal­is­tic” — we can enable ben­e­fi­cial inno­va­tion in ways that reg­u­la­tion alone, as impor­tant as it is, prob­a­bly can­not if we con­sid­er cross-sec­tor per­spec­tives, strive for the widest ben­e­fit with the min­i­mum risks, and edu­cate users. You can check our their slides here:

4. Sev­er­al pre­sen­ters includ­ing Dr. Lew Lim, Ana Maiques and Nick­o­lai Vysokov dis­cussed the grow­ing field of adap­tive and per­son­al­ized neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion meth­ods. This emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy class deserves atten­tion and research, as it could mean a non-inva­sive, non-phar­ma­co­log­ic treat­ment for a vari­ety of conditions.

5. The theme of per­son­al­iza­tion was also dis­cussed by pre­sen­ters work­ing on an array of brain-based and cog­ni­tive ther­a­pies in schools, the work­place and con­sumer tech. Speak­ers like David Klein, Ariel Garten, and Dr. Gre­go­ry Rose dis­cussed emerg­ing find­ings and best prac­tices in the “real word” out­side of research labs and clin­i­cal settings.

6. Explor­ing the fron­tiers of research, Dr. Nir Gross­man and Dr. Reza Zomor­ro­di unveiled excit­ing advances in non-inva­sive brain stim­u­la­tion while Dr. Peter White­house remind­ed us of the crit­i­cal impor­tance of soci­etal fac­tors which impact the indi­vid­ual brain and of com­mu­ni­ty-based inter­ven­tions that can help pro­mote brain health. Dr. Hag­it Alon dis­cussed fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to advance the “Neu­ro-Well­ness” field.

7. Dr. Dean­na Bel­sky, Dr. Tony Chang, Avery Bedows, Elan Tye and oth­er ven­ture investors through­out the Sum­mit dis­cussed the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges for a suc­cess­ful mar­riage of research and com­mer­cial­iza­tion,  nav­i­gat­ing the com­bi­na­tion of reli­able sci­ence and tech, fea­si­bil­i­ty, and mar­ket need.

8. Dr. Margie Mor­ris pre­sent­ed Left to Our Own Devices (MIT Press; 2018), a great book pro­vid­ing mul­ti­ple sto­ries and exam­ples on how to out­smart our smart­phones,  and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez pre­sent­ed his lat­est book El Cere­bro Que Cura (“The Brain That Heals;” Platafor­ma Edi­to­r­i­al; 2019), co-authored with Dr. Alvaro Pas­cual-Leone, which pro­pos­es a sim­ple but rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea — a healthy mind/brain is both the prod­uct and the dri­ver of over­all phys­i­cal health.

__

2) Market Report on Pervasive Neurotechnology: A Groundbreaking Analysis of 10,000+ Patent Filings Transforming Medicine, Health, Entertainment and Business

This first-of-a-kind 206-page mar­ket report, pub­lished in 2015 and very rel­e­vant today giv­en recent major invest­ments, FDA clear­ances and busi­ness part­ner­ships, explores in detail key trends and key play­ers and their emerg­ing and future offer­ings in the grow­ing space of non-inva­sive, per­va­sive neurotechnology.

3) Consumer guide to navigate latest brain health research and advice

Mod­ern life places extra­or­di­nary demands on our brains. Not only do we live longer than ever before, but we must con­stant­ly adapt to com­plex and rapid­ly evolv­ing per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al real­i­ties. Yet, we often ignore our most pre­cious resource to do so: our brain.

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness cuts through the clut­ter of mis­con­cep­tions, super­fi­cial and con­flict­ing media cov­er­age, and aggres­sive mar­ket­ing claims, to help read­ers dis­cov­er what real­ly works, and what doesn’t, to improve brain health and per­for­mance at any age, to delay or pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline, and become smarter con­sumers of both media cov­er­age and sci­en­tif­ic research in the process.

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age

4) Fun brain teasers for teens and adults of any age (free):

Final­ly, we can also cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week this week by chal­leng­ing our minds safe­ly at home or at a san­i­tized office with one brain teas­er per day or, why not, try­ing them all at once ?

Here’s a selec­tion of sev­en fun brain teasers, puz­zles & games that Sharp­Brains read­ers (pri­mar­i­ly adults, but younger minds too) have enjoyed the most since 2010:

Sev­en fun brain teasers to hon­or our unique Brains and Minds dur­ing Brain Aware­ness Week 2020

 

Stay Healthy, Mind­ful and Vig­i­lant until this health cri­sis is over, please.

Reader Interactions

Comments