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aging-society

February Update: Retooling Brain Health for the 21st Century

February 28, 2011 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary edi­tion of Sharp­Brains month­ly eNewslet­ter:

First Report of the Coun­cil on the Age­ing Soci­ety: Glob­al Pol­i­cy jour­nal pub­lish­es the full Pol­i­cy Prin­ci­ples and call to action out­lined by the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Age­ing Soci­ety, an ini­tia­tive run by the World Eco­nomic Forum which our CEO Alvaro Fer­nan­dez was hon­ored to join in 2008.

Love Your Brain:  Did you remem­ber to love your brain on St. Valen­tine’s Day? Let Dr. Mar­i­an Dia­mond show why we bet­ter do so –and how.

Assessments

Who will Ben­e­fit From Train­ing?  New research shows that mea­sur­ing brain activ­i­ty pat­terns can pre­dict who may ben­e­fit most from tran­ing inter­ven­tions ‑and who may not. Please note that the Kramer lab involved in this research is now offer­ing a post­doc­tor­al fellowship.

A Quick Test to Detect Ath­letes’ Con­cus­sions:  This new test can be per­formed at the side­line of sport­ing events to help detect con­cus­sions by look­ing at dif­fer­ent types of eye movements.

The Best Way to Learn: Tak­ing a test in which you recall what you have read seems to be a much bet­ter strat­e­gy than either study­ing the mate­r­ial repeat­edly or draw­ing detailed dia­grams of what you are learning.

Interventions

Brain Train­ing Games for Seniors: Don­al O’Brien, from Queens Uni­ver­si­ty at Belfast, tells us about what moti­vates seniors to use a brain train­ing app.

Do Cross­word Puz­zles Help to Coun­ter­act the Aging Process? If so, Which Ones and How? Researcher Nick Almond com­pares the stim­u­la­tion poten­tial of two dif­fer­ent types of cross­words: gen­er­al knowl­edge and cryptic.

Vit­a­min D and Cog­ni­tive Decline: This study sup­ports that patients with vit­a­min D defi­ciency show an increased risk of cog­ni­tive decline.

Baby Sleeps and Brain Devel­op­ment: How much sleep a 12 month old baby gets can influ­ence the devel­op­ment of his/her exec­u­tive functions.

PTSD: Can we Dis­rupt the Recon­sol­i­da­tion of Trau­mat­ic Mem­o­ries? A dis­cus­sion of the dif­fer­ent tech­niques used/ under research that can help PTSD patients.

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Books and Summit Updates

Visu­al Illu­sions in Art and Sci­ence: These sur­pris­ing clas­sic illu­sions illus­trate how art and mag­ic can help sci­ence in under­tans­ing how we per­ceive the world around us.

2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Agen­da: You can now view the lat­est Agen­da for the whole Sum­mit and a 3‑minute clip to learn how the Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tu­ry (March 30th — April 1st) will work.

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Brain Teaser


Mea­sure your Men­tal Speed and Flex­i­bil­i­ty: Final­ly, let us chal­lenge you to try this fun and inter­ac­tive ver­sion of the famous Stroop test.

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter Tagged With: aging-society, athletes-concussions, brain-development, brain-teaser, Brain-Training, brain-training-app, cognitive-decline, Council-on-the-Ageing-Society, crossword-puzzles, crosswords-brain-training, detect-concussions, innovation-case-sudies, learning-strategies, LinkedIn, love-brain, PTSD-memories, PTSD-treatment, SharpBrains Summit, sleep, visual-illusions, vitamin-D, World-Economic-Forum

Council on the Ageing Society, at the Summit of the Global Agenda

November 18, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

Head­ing to Dubai today (a 15-hour direct flight!), com­ing back to San Fran­cis­co next Monday.

Last year I wrote about this remark­able new ini­tia­tive by the imagesWorld Eco­nom­ic Forum here (pro­pos­al) and here (reflec­tions, emerg­ing dis­cus­sion). This year’s update:

  • Overview: Net­work of Glob­al Agen­da Councils
  • List of Coun­cils: Here
  • List of Mem­bers: Here
  • Mem­bers of Age­ing Soci­ety Coun­cil: Here
  • Info on 2009 Sum­mit: Here
  • Report from 2008 Sum­mit: Here (opens PDF in new window)

Twit­ter: #WEF­Dubai. Will tweet dur­ing the event, and blog about it next week.

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: ageing, ageing society, aging, aging-society, Dubai, Summit of the Global Agenda, World-Economic-Forum

Preparing Society for the Cognitive Age (Frontiers in Neuroscience article)

August 7, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

Frontiers in Neuroscience Augmenting Cognition(Edi­tor’s note: this arti­cle belongs to the excel­lent May 2009 spe­cial issue on Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion at sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science. The arti­cle, an indus­try overview, is repro­duced here with autho­riza­tion by the Fron­tiers Research Foun­da­tion)

Preparing Society for the Cognitive Age

By Alvaro Fernandez

Ground­break­ing cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science research has occurred over the last 20 years — with­out par­al­lel growth of con­sumer aware­ness and appro­pri­ate pro­fes­sion­al dis­sem­i­na­tion. “Cog­ni­tion” remains an elu­sive con­cept with unclear impli­ca­tions out­side the research community.

Ear­li­er this year, I pre­sent­ed a talk to health care pro­fes­sion­als at the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine, titled “Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware: Help­ing Con­sumers Sep­a­rate Hope from Hype”. I explained what com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ment and train­ing tools can do (assess/enhance spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive func­tions), what they can­not do (reduce one’s “brain age”) and the cur­rent uncer­tain­ties about what they can do (i.e., delay Alzheimer’s symp­toms). At the same sym­po­sium, Dr. Gary Kennedy, Direc­tor of Geri­atric Psy­chi­a­try at Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter, pro­vid­ed guid­ance on why and how to screen for exec­u­tive func­tion deficits in the con­text of dementia.

I could per­ceive two emerg­ing trends at the event: 1) “Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion” research is most com­mon­ly framed as a health­care, often phar­ma­co­log­i­cal top­ic, with the tra­di­tion­al cog­ni­tive bias in med­i­cine of focus­ing on detec­tion and treat­ment of dis­ease, 2) In addi­tion, there is a grow­ing inter­est in non-inva­sive enhance­ment options and over­all lifestyle issues. Research find­ings in Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion are only just begin­ning to reach the main­stream mar­ket­place, most­ly through health­care chan­nels. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is immense, but we will need to ensure the mar­ket­place matures in a ratio­nal and sus­tain­able man­ner, both through health­care and non-health­care channels.

In Jan­u­ary 2009, we polled the 21,000 sub­scribers of Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket research eNewslet­ter to iden­ti­fy atti­tudes and behav­iors towards the “brain fit­ness” field (a term we chose in 2006 based on a num­ber of con­sumer sur­veys and focus groups to con­nect with a wider audi­ence). Over 2,000 deci­sion-mak­ers and ear­ly adopters respond­ed to the survey.

One of the key ques­tions we asked was, “What is the most impor­tant prob­lem you see in the brain fit­ness field and how do you think it can be solved?”. Some exam­ples of the sur­vey free text answers are quot­ed here, togeth­er with my suggestions.

Most impor­tant prob­lems in the brain fit­ness field

Pub­lic aware­ness (39%): “To get peo­ple to under­stand that hered­i­ty alone does not decide brain func­tion­ing”. We need to ramp up efforts to build pub­lic aware­ness and enthu­si­asm about brain research, includ­ing estab­lish­ing clear links to dai­ly liv­ing. We can col­lab­o­rate with ini­tia­tives such as the Dana Foundation’s Brain Aware­ness Week and use the recent “Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts” mate­ri­als devel­oped by the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science to give talks at schools, libraries and workplaces.

Claims (21%): “The lack of stan­dards and clear def­i­n­i­tions is very con­fus­ing, and [Read more…] about Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age (Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science article)

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Filed Under: Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging, aging-society, augmented-cognition, augmenting-cognition, Baycrest, Bill-Reichman, brain-age, brain-awareness-week, brain-fitness-software, Brain-health, cognition, cognitive, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive-Age, cognitive-assessments, cognitive-bias, Cognitive-Training, dana-foundation, dementia, frontiers, Global-Agenda-Councils, healthcare, libraries, lifestyle, MATRICS-Cognitive-Battery, neurocognitive, neuroscience, pharmacological, schizophrenia, schools, Society-for-Neuroscience, Stanford-University, TBI, Torkel-Klingberg, treatment, workplaces, World-Economic-Forum

Ever heard of the Longevity Dividend? Perhaps Gray is the New Gold

May 27, 2009 by Kronos Longevity Research Institute

The Longevi­ty Div­i­dend is a the­o­ry that says we hope to inter­vene sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly to slow the aging process, which will also delay the onset of age-relat­ed dis­eases. Delay­ing aging just sev­en years would slash rates of con­di­tions like can­cer, dia­betes, Alzheimer’s dis­ease and heart dis­ease in half. That’s the longevi­ty part.

The div­i­dend comes from the social, eco­nom­ic, and health bonus­es that would then be avail­able to spend on schools, ener­gy, jobs, infra­struc­ture tril­lions of dol­lars that today we spend on health­care ser­vices. In fact, at the rate we’re going, by the year 2020 one out of every $5 spent in this coun­try will be spent on health­care. Obvi­ous­ly, some­thing has to change.

Enter the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend. The Longevi­ty Div­i­dend does­n’t sug­gest that we live longer; instead, it calls for liv­ing bet­ter. The idea is that if we use sci­ence to increase healthspan, not lifes­pan. In oth­er words, tomor­rows 50-year-old would have the health pro­file of a 43-year-old.

It might sound like sci­ence fic­tion, but, in fact, it’s quite pos­si­ble. We’re already doing it in some ani­mal mod­els using genet­ic and dietary inter­ven­tions, tech­niques relat­ed to what sci­en­tists call “the biol­o­gy of aging.”

Get­ting there in humans, how­ev­er, means embrac­ing an entire­ly new approach to our think­ing about dis­ease and aging, and how we con­duct sci­en­tif­ic research into the two.

Get­ting Sci­en­tists’ Attention 

A group of emi­nent researchers first pro­posed the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend in a 2006 arti­cle pub­lished in The Sci­en­tist. The authors, S. Jay Olshan­sky, PhD, pro­fes­sor of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and bio­sta­t­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois in Chica­go, Daniel P. Per­ry, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Alliance for Aging Research in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Richard A. Miller, MD, PhD, pro­fes­sor of pathol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan in Ann Arbor, and Robert N. But­ler, MD, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Inter­na­tion­al Longevi­ty Cen­ter in New York, intend­ed their essay to be a “gen­er­al state­ment to sci­en­tists about the need for a par­a­digm shift in the way we think about aging and disease.

The researchers also met with U.S. sen­a­tors who served on the Sen­ate com­mit­tee that over­saw the bud­get for the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH). “We told them we believed [Read more…] about Ever heard of the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend? Per­haps Gray is the New Gold

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: aging-society, Alzheimer’s-disease, cancer, Daniel-Perry, diabetes, healthcare, healthcare-services, healthspan, heart-disease, Jay-Olshansky, KLRI, Kronos-Longevity-Research-Institute, longevity, Longevity-Dividend, National-Institute-on-Aging, National-Institutes-of-Health, neurocognitive, prevention, Richard-Miller, Robert-Butler, The-Scientist, vitality

Making Healthy Choices: Primare Care and Prevention

February 17, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

Hiroshi Komiya­ma, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo and Chair­per­son of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy I am a mem­ber of, just pro­vid­ed coun­cil mem­bers with a brief update of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the recent World Eco­nom­ic Forum.

Part of the pro­ceed­ings are pub­lic — you may enjoy read­ing this pan­el write-up of the ses­sion Health­care under Stress:

- “Japan has the world’s old­est pop­u­la­tion. Health and longevi­ty cre­ate wealth and, thus, “health begets wealth”. It is doc­u­ment­ed that nations that devel­op a five-year life expectan­cy advan­tage also cre­ate a larg­er GDP. A healthy child­hood and adult­hood con­tribute to a more pro­duc­tive old age. New mar­kets and indus­tries are aris­ing – “sil­ver indus­tries” such as finan­cial ser­vices, health, hous­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty geared to senior cit­i­zens. Longevi­ty needs to be linked to health – includ­ing cog­ni­tive health – and lifestyle choic­es play a major role in health.”

- “The pub­lic health focus is shift­ing from infec­tions to car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases. Com­plex new mod­els are nec­es­sary to devel­op bet­ter respons­es and improved health – with the pri­ma­ry empha­sis on “real­ly good pri­ma­ry health­care” and pre­ven­tion – to low­er costs. Pre­ven­tion increas­es the healthy years of a person’s life. The chal­lenge is cre­at­ing the incen­tive for pre­ven­tion: how can peo­ple be encour­aged to make healthy choic­es? Mobi­lized pop­u­la­tions can dri­ve the change. Fin­land has an 80% low­er inci­dence of heart dis­ease than 30 years ago due to such incentives.”

Full write-up: Health­care under Stress

Relat­ed articles:

- The Future of the Aging Soci­ety: Bur­den or Human Capital?

- Update: Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Innovation

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging-society, cardiovascular, cognitive-health, gerontology, Global-Agenda-Council, healthcare, Hiroshi-Komiyama, human-capital, innovation, Japan, lifestyle-choices, longevity, neurocognitive, oldest-population, prevention, silver industries, slver-industries, Stress, World-Economic-Forum

Brain fitness & training heads towards its tipping point

January 19, 2009 by Dr. Gerard Finnemore

How do you know when some­thing is fast mov­ing towards a Glad­wellian tip­ping point? When health insur­ance com­pa­nies and pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers launch sig­nif­i­cant initiatives.

For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment of Ontario recent­ly announced a $10 mil­lion invest­ment with Bay­crest Research Cen­tre who will part­ner with MaRS Ven­ture Group to devel­op and com­mer­cialise brain fit­ness tech­nolo­gies. The invest­ment was matched by an addi­tion­al $10 mil­lion from pri­vate sources.

Anoth­er impor­tant devel­op­ment was the $18 mil­lion agree­ment between the Aus­tralian-based Brain Resource Com­pa­ny (ASX:BRC) and OptumHealth in the US. This will allow for the pro­vi­sion of web-based cog­ni­tive assess­ments as part of a clin­i­cian’s deci­sion sup­port systems.

These are some ini­tia­tives cov­ered in a webi­nar Top Ten Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events of 2008 pre­sent­ed in Decem­ber for Sharp­Brains’ clients. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez described the state of play and main dri­vers behind the growth of the bur­geon­ing brain fit­ness mar­ket — which I will try and sum­ma­rize here.

The key dri­vers seem to be [Read more…] about Brain fit­ness & train­ing heads towards its tip­ping point

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: ACE, aging-society, Allstate, baby-boomer, Baycrest, Brain-Fitness, Brain-health, Brain-Resource-Company, Brain-Training, cognifit, cognitive-assessments, cognitive-deficits, cognitive-enhancement, cognitive-fitness, cognitive-screenings, Dakim, FirstMark-Capital, fitbrains, Galen-Partners, ginkgo-biloba, Gladwell, health-insurance, intelligym, luminosity, lumos-labs, Lumosity, MaRS, Martin-Buschkuehl, mental-sharpness, Milk-Capital, neurobabble, neuroplasticity, Norman-Doidge, Norwest, Ontario, OptumHealth, Physical-Exercise, Posit-Science, public-policy, tipping-point, USA-Hockey, venture-capital, Vivity-Labs

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