36-Hour Offer: Integrative Neuroscience, Personalized Medicine and the 2011 SharpBrains Summit

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 3, 2011

An impres­sive recent ref­er­ence book on the future of brain care is Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine, edit­ed by Evian Gor­don and Stephen H. Koslow (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press; $89.95). Book descrip­tion: This book takes an in depth and hard look at the cur­rent sta­tus and future direc­tion of treat­ment pre­dic­tive mark­ers in Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine for…

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Four New Speakers Confirmed — 2011 SharpBrains Summit

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 22, 2010

We are hon­ored to announce four new con­firmed Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Speak­ers: Nigel Smith at AARP, Peter Kissinger at the AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safe­ty, Kei­th Wesnes at Unit­ed BioSource, and Ken Kosik at UCSB Neu­ro­science Research Insti­tute. Nigel Smith, AARP Strat­e­gy and Inno­va­tion Direc­tor, is respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing decen­tral­ized inno­va­tion mod­els for AARP and for…

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Michael Merzenich on Brain Training, Assessments, and Personal Brain Trainers

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 17, 2009 |

Inter­view with Dr. Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at UCSF, a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant. In 1996, he was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (Nas­daq: SCIL), and in 2004 became co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer of Posit Sci­ence. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1999 and to the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine this year. He retired as Fran­cis A. Sooy Pro­fes­sor and Co-Direc­tor of the Keck Cen­ter for Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Fran­cis­co in 2007. You may have learned about his work in one of PBS TV spe­cials, mul­ti­ple media appear­ances, or neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-relat­ed books.

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AAA to deploy Brain Fitness Software DriveSharp to Assess and Train Older Driver’s Brains

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 14, 2009

The AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safe­ty just start­ed to rec­om­mend a new dri­ver safe­ty pro­gram called Dri­ve­Sharp (see AAA and Posit Release Pro­gram to Improve Dri­vers’ Minds), devel­oped by Posit Sci­ence. Dri­ve­Sharp is a com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ment and train­ing tool based on Kar­lene Bal­l’s research on old­er adults’ cog­ni­tive fit­ness and dri­ving. In the press…

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