Adam Gazzaley

FDA clears first videogame to be prescribed to kids with ADHD: EndeavorRx by Akili Interactive Labs

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Screen­shot of EndeavorRx

In a land­mark deci­sion, FDA green­lights a video game for kids with ADHD (STAT):

The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion on Mon­day for the first time gave a green light to a game-based ther­a­peu­tic: a video game meant to be pre­scribed to kids with ADHD.

The game, known as Endeav­or­Rx and devel­oped by Boston-based Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs, can now be mar­ket­ed as a way to improve atten­tion func­tion in kids with ADHD as mea­sured by com­put­er­ized test­ing. Physi­cians can pre­scribe it to chil­dren between the ages of 8 and 12 who have an ADHD diag­no­sis and have demon­strat­ed an issue with attention.

The FDA’s move is a land­mark deci­sion in the emerg­ing dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics sec­tor: In addi­tion to being the first game to be mar­ket­ed as a ther­a­py for any type of con­di­tion, Endeav­or­Rx is the first dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic meant to improve symp­toms asso­ci­at­ed with ADHD, the FDA’s announce­ment said…The game was born in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co lab of neu­ro­sci­en­tist Adam Gaz­za­ley, and was licensed out by Akili, which pol­ished and test­ed the game in clin­i­cal tri­als. Akili spent the past two years wait­ing on a reg­u­la­to­ry deci­sion from the FDA.

[Read more…] about FDA clears first videogame to be pre­scribed to kids with ADHD: Endeav­or­Rx by Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs

Fast Forward to 2040: How to prepare for the new era in brain enhancement that will change the way we think, work, and heal

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Decades from now when our aug­ment­ed brains have enhanced our cog­ni­tive func­tion and trans­formed near­ly every aspect of our lives, many of us will look back and won­der why we didn’t do more to pre­pare for these inevitable changes. Gov­ern­ment lead­ers may grap­ple with the run­away effects of AI and brain enhance­ment on geopol­i­tics. Com­pa­nies that fail to incor­po­rate neu­rotech­nolo­gies and BCI into their oper­a­tional flow could lose sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket share and be forced to scram­ble in an attempt to regain a foothold in an indus­try they once dominated.

Work­ers who don’t heed the warn­ings to re-skill or upskill may find them­selves out of a job as entire indus­tries dis­ap­pear. Grad­u­at­ing col­lege stu­dents may dis­cov­er their field of study is no longer rel­e­vant in the busi­ness world, leav­ing them unpre­pared for the chang­ing job mar­ket. Tech inno­va­tors could be caught up in fierce com­pe­ti­tion to snap up employ­ees from a very lim­it­ed tal­ent pool, dri­ving up the cost of inno­va­tion and ham­per­ing its devel­op­ment. And every­day cit­i­zens may be wrestling with the unex­pect­ed con­se­quences of unin­ten­tion­al­ly giv­ing away the rights to their neur­al data.

Rest assured, it doesn’t have to be this way. [Read more…] about Fast For­ward to 2040: How to pre­pare for the new era in brain enhance­ment that will change the way we think, work, and heal

Meet 40 Experts and Innovators shaping Brain Health & Enhancement on December 5–7th, at the 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit

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We are proud to announce these 40 con­firmed Sum­mit Speak­ers, Chairs and Judges at the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit on Decem­ber 5–7th. What an incred­i­ble brain trust shap­ing the future of brain health and enhancement!

Here are just a few:

Dr. Adam Gazzaley, Professor of Neurology and Founding Director of Neuroscape at UCSF

Dr. Gaz­za­ley is a fac­ul­ty mem­ber in the Neu­rol­o­gy, Phys­i­ol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try depart­ments, and Direc­tor of a cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science lab­o­ra­to­ry con­duct­ing research on the neur­al mech­a­nisms of atten­tion and mem­o­ry. Dr. Gaz­za­ley is also co-founder and Chief Sci­ence Advi­sor of Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs, a com­pa­ny devel­op­ing ther­a­peu­tic video games, and co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tist of JAZZ Ven­ture Part­ners, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm invest­ing in expe­ri­en­tial tech­nol­o­gy to improve human performance.

Dr. Adam Haim, Chief of the Clinical Trials Operations and
Biostatistics Branch at the NIMH

Dr. Haim over­sees the Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) and Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) Pro­grams at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH). Both pro­grams help small busi­ness­es fund R&D with strong poten­tial for tech­nol­o­gy com­mer­cial­iza­tion, and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their cur­rent grant port­fo­lio is focused on the devel­op­ment and eval­u­a­tion of mHealth inter­ven­tions and dig­i­tal health technology.
Alexandra Morehouse

Alexandra Morehouse, CMO of Banner Health

Alexan­dra M. More­house is Senior Vice Pres­i­dent & Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer for Ban­ner Health, one of the nation’s largest non­prof­it health sys­tems. Pri­or to Ban­ner Health, she was the Vice Pres­i­dent of Brand Man­age­ment at Kaiser Per­ma­nente, and CMO of AAA. She has served on the boards of the Har­vard Busi­ness School Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ners, Snap­Fish, Yer­ba Bue­na Cen­ter for the Arts, ODC Dance, and UC Davis.

Dr. Alison Fenney, Executive Director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO)

Dr. Fen­ney runs the Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion, a glob­al trade asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing com­pa­nies involved in neu­ro­science, brain research insti­tutes and patient advo­ca­cy groups. Pri­or to NIO, Ali­son was Man­ag­er of Indus­try Rela­tions at the Ontario Brain Insti­tute (OBI) in Cana­da, and also worked in Equi­ty Research at Bloom Bur­ton & Co.

Álvaro Fernández, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of SharpBrains

Álvaro Fer­nán­dez, a mem­ber of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Coun­cil on the Future of Human Enhance­ment, runs Sharp­Brains, an inde­pen­dent mar­ket research firm track­ing health and per­for­mance appli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence. Mr. Fer­nan­dez is the co-author of “The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age”, and the Edi­tor-in-chief of Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report on Per­va­sive Neurotechnology.

 

For more, here you can Meet 40 Experts and Inno­va­tors at the fron­tier of Brain Health & Enhance­ment.

 

Raising awareness about the distracted mind (PBS special)

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DistractedMindI feel it is crit­i­cal that sci­en­tists make an effort to trans­late their research dis­cov­er­ies into a for­mat that is under­stand­able and mean­ing­ful to the gen­er­al pub­lic. They should also, at least on occa­sion, step beyond detailed descrip­tions of lab­o­ra­to­ry results and spec­u­late on how their find­ings inform the big­ger pic­ture and impact people’s lives. This has nev­er been more impor­tant than it is it right now, in this time of dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced sci­ence fund­ing. In the PBS-spon­sored spe­cial, The Dis­tract­ed Mind, I try to accom­plish this by inte­grat­ing mate­r­i­al from dozens of [Read more…] about Rais­ing aware­ness about the dis­tract­ed mind (PBS special)

Brain fitness meets HRV and EEG biometrics and neuroinformatics

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As an active par­tic­i­pant in the Open­ViBE project (a soft­ware plat­form to design, test and use Brain-Com­put­er Inter­faces), in sci­en­tif­ic as well as tech­ni­cal capac­i­ties, I have long been focused on ways to process, ana­lyze and put brain sig­nals to prac­ti­cal use. When I start­ed read­ing on the sub­ject of brain fit­ness a few years ago, I rec­og­nized the poten­tial to enhance a vari­ety of brain train­ing approach­es, from med­i­ta­tion to cog­ni­tive train­ing, by deploy­ing [Read more…] about Brain fit­ness meets HRV and EEG bio­met­rics and neuroinformatics

Invitation to SharpBrains Summit — Technology for Cognitive Health and Performance

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We are excit­ed to invite you to the first vir­tu­al, glob­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010). The Sharp­Brains Sum­mit will fea­ture a sharpbrains_summit_logo_webdream team of over 25 speak­ers who are lead­ers in indus­try and research from 7 coun­tries, to dis­cuss emerg­ing research, tools and best prac­tices for cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance. This inau­gur­al event will expose health and insur­ance providers, devel­op­ers, inno­va­tors at For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, investors and researchers, to the oppor­tu­ni­ties, part­ner­ships, trends, and stan­dards of the rapid­ly evolv­ing cog­ni­tive fit­ness field.

Reg­is­ter Today

Learn more and reg­is­ter Here today, at dis­count­ed ear­ly-bird rates, to receive these benefits:

  • Learn: Full access to all Con­fer­ence live ses­sions, and Down­load­able Record­ings and Handouts
  • See: lat­est tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts dur­ing Expo Day
  • Con­nect and Dis­cuss: become a mem­ber of the Sharp­Brains Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion (mem­bers-only LinkedIn Group) through the end of 2010, access online chats dur­ing the sum­mit, meet oth­er reg­is­trants in your city
  • Under­stand the Big Pic­ture: access 10 Research Exec­u­tive Briefs pre­pared by lead­ing scientists

On top of those ear­ly-bird dis­counts, we offer an addi­tion­al 15% dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers who want Reg­u­lar Admis­sion. Dis­count code: sharp2010. You can reg­is­ter Here.

Agenda/ Speak­ers

Monday, January 18th, 2010:

(Pre­lim­i­nary sched­ule, US Pacif­ic Time)

8–9.15am. Cog­ni­tion & Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: The New Health­care Frontier

  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains
  • David White­house, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions
  • William Reich­man, Baycrest
  • P Murali Doraiswamy, Duke University

9.30–11am. Tools for Safer Dri­ving: The Oppor­tu­ni­ty with Teenagers and Adults

  • Steven Aldrich, Posit Science
  • Shlo­mo Breznitz, CogniFit
  • Jer­ri Edwards, Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida
  • Peter Chris­tian­son, Young Dri­vers of Canada

Noon‑1.30pm. Baby Boomers and Beyond: Main­tain­ing Cog­ni­tive Vitality