aging-workforce

Centre for Brain Fitness at Baycrest: Interview with Dr. William Reichman

by

In April 2008, Bay­crest, a lead­ing research insti­tute focused on aging and brain func­tion, received $10-mil­lion from the Ontario Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a ground­break­ing Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness. Its stat­ed goal was to “devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize a range of prod­ucts designed to improve the brain health of aging Ontar­i­ans and oth­ers around the world”.

“Our gov­ern­ment is proud to sup­port Bay­crest and its invalu­able work, which is already lead­ing to the dis­cov­ery of impor­tant new tools and approach­es to treat­ing brain dis­eases asso­ci­at­ed with aging,” said Min­is­ter of Research and Inno­va­tion, John Wilkinson.

We have Baycrest’s CEO with us today, to explore why Ontario and Bay­crest chose to Bill Reichman Baycrestbecome pio­neers in this area, and dis­cuss some of the main oppor­tu­ni­ties, and chal­lenges. Dr. William E. Reich­man is Pres­i­dent and CEO of Bay­crest. Dr. Reich­man, an inter­na­tion­al­ly-known expert in geri­atric men­tal health and demen­tia, is also Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try on the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Bill, thank you for your time. Let me start by ask­ing, giv­en that you just spoke at the recent Con­sumer Elec­tron­ic Show, what do you make of the grow­ing brain fit­ness field?

Bill Reich­man: it looks like a clas­sic exam­ple of a very promis­ing but still ear­ly stage field – a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty and enthu­si­asm, but also a lot of prod­uct claims that are not backed by sol­id research. Think about the phys­i­cal fit­ness anal­o­gy: even today, after decades of progress, you still see peo­ple buy­ing research-based prod­ucts such as tread­mills but also all types of ran­dom machines they see on TV and have not been sub­ject to any val­i­da­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, con­sumers today do not know what to make of grow­ing brain fit­ness claims. As anoth­er speak­er point­ed out, for the indus­try to ful­fill its promise, it will need to be care­ful with research and claims, not to end up like the nutraceu­ti­cals category.

By the way, let me rec­og­nize that the work you are doing with Sharp­Brains reports and your web­site is very impor­tant to offer qual­i­ty information.

Thank you. Let’s step back for a moment. Tak­ing a, say, 10 years view, what is the main oppor­tu­ni­ty that tech­nol­o­gy-based brain fit­ness can offer to society?

First of all, let me say that I think we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make major progress in Brain Health in the XXI cen­tu­ry, sim­i­lar to what hap­pened with Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Health in the XX, and tech­nol­o­gy will play a cru­cial role.

Giv­en the rapid advances we are wit­ness­ing today in the research and tech­nol­o­gy are­nas, I feel con­fi­dent in say­ing that in less than 10 years we will have both valid and reli­able assess­ments of cog­ni­tive func­tions, that will be used both by [Read more…] about Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness at Bay­crest: Inter­view with Dr. William Reichman

Upcoming events

by

Fyi, I will be speak­ing at the fol­low­ing events:

» March 5th, New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine, NYC. I will present Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware — Con­sumers Guide to dis­tin­guish­ing hope from hype, at the Com­pre­hen­sive Approach to Demen­tia Sym­po­sium spon­sored by Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter and with cred­it des­ig­nat­ed by Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine.

» March 15–19th, ASA/ NCOA annu­al con­fer­ence in Las Vegas. I will be pre­sent­ing two ses­sions. Reg­is­tra­tion is open now at 2009 Aging in Amer­i­ca Con­fer­ence, but there is lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion on the ses­sions. Will blog when there are detailed abstracts available.

- The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket, 16-Mar-09, 08:00 PM — 09:30 AM

- Brain Fit­ness in Senior Hous­ing: 18-Mar-09, 11:30 AM — 12:30 PM

» April 8th, Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na Greens­boro: Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness and the Aging Work­force: Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Chal­lenges, at the Sil­ver­ing Work­force Summit.

Brain Training Games: Context, Trends, Questions

by

A spate of recent news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and “brain train­ing” reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ur­al, non-drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very time­ly, giv­en the aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and chang­ing lifestyle.

This past Tues­day, the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, and Smart­Sil­vers spon­sored an event on The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket: Build­ing Bet­ter Brains to explore the real­i­ties and myths of this grow­ing field. The pan­el was mod­er­at­ed by Zack Lynch, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion, and com­posed of a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and 3 CEOs of pro­gram devel­op­ers in the field. Before the pan­el, I had the chance to present an overview of the state of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket based on our upcom­ing report to be released on March 4th.

Why are we talk­ing about this field at all? Well, for one, an increas­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies are achiev­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial suc­cess in pack­ag­ing “brain exer­cise”. An exam­ple is the line of Nin­ten­do games, such as Brain Age and Brain Train­ing, that have shipped over 15 mil­lion units world­wide despite lim­it­ed sci­en­tif­ic sup­port, since 2005. What is less vis­i­ble is that a num­ber of com­pa­nies and sci­en­tists are [Read more…] about Brain Train­ing Games: Con­text, Trends, Questions

Improving Driving Skills and Brain Functioning- Interview with ACTIVE’s Jerri Edwards

by

Jerri Edwards- Active trialToday we are for­tu­nate to inter­view Dr. Jer­ri Edwards, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da’s School of Aging Stud­ies and Co-Inves­ti­ga­tor of the influ­en­cial ACTIVE study. Dr. Edwards was trained by Dr. Kar­lene K. Ball, and her research is aimed toward dis­cov­er­ing how cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties can be main­tained and even enhanced with advanc­ing age.

Main focus of research

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Please explain to our read­ers your main research areas 

Jer­ri Edwards: I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions may help old­er adults to avoid or at least delay func­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties and there­by main­tain their inde­pen­dence longer. Much of my work has focused on the func­tion­al abil­i­ty of dri­ving includ­ing assess­ing dri­ving fit­ness among old­er adults and reme­di­a­tion of cog­ni­tive decline that results in dri­ving difficulties.

Some research ques­tions that inter­est me include, how can we main­tain health­i­er lives longer? How can train­ing improve cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, both to improve those abil­i­ties and also to slow-down, or delay, cog­ni­tive decline? The spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty that I have stud­ied the most is pro­cess­ing speed, which is one of the cog­ni­tive skills that decline ear­ly on as we age.

ACTIVE results

Can you explain what cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing speed is, and why it is rel­e­vant to our dai­ly lives? 

Pro­cess­ing speed is men­tal quick­ness. Just like a com­put­er with a 486 proces­sor can do a lot of the same things as a com­put­er with a Pen­tium 4 proces­sor, but it takes much longer, our minds tend to slow down with age as com­pared to when we were younger. We can do the same tasks, but it takes more time. Quick speed of pro­cess­ing is impor­tant for [Read more…] about Improv­ing Dri­ving Skills and Brain Func­tion­ing- Inter­view with ACTIVE’s Jer­ri Edwards

Cognitive Health and Baby Boomers: 6 Points to Keep in Mind

by

BrainVery inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of recent news…let’s con­nect some dots

1) Great arti­cle titled Boom time for retirees (Finan­cial Times)

- “By 2015, boomers will have a net worth of some $26,000bn (£12,750bn, ¬17,670bn)  equiv­a­lent to a year’s gross domes­tic prod­uct for the US and euro­zone com­bined. They will con­trol a larg­er pro­por­tion of wealth, income and con­sump­tion than any oth­er gen­er­a­tion in the coun­try  the first time that con­sumers over 50 have held such sway over the world’s largest economy.”

- “But as the boomers aged by 2015 they will all be out­side the fabled under-49 cohort  cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca failed to grow old with them. Mar­ket­ing experts argue that the con­tin­ued focus of large com­pa­nies such as P&G and Gap on the youth of  “gen­er­a­tion and “gen­er­a­tion” over­looks a sim­ple sta­tis­tic: the 18–49 age group will grow by only 1m peo­ple in the next 10 years, com­pared with the 22.5m Amer­i­cans set to enter the 50-plus bracket.”

- “The last thing the [boomer] gen­er­a­tion needs is a com­pa­ny that tells them they need tools to address their lack of dex­ter­i­ty, he says. “They don’t want geri­atric tools, they want cool stuff.

Main take-way: baby boomers are always “awake” and rein­vent­ing things…companies, adver­tis­ers, time to wake-up!

Full arti­cle: Boom time for retirees

2) The arti­cle is based upon this excel­lent McK­in­sey report [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health and Baby Boomers: 6 Points to Keep in Mind

Growing Super Athletes (each of our students)

by

(Thanks for the lead, Tom!)

David Brooks writes a great col­umn (requires sub­scrip­tion) in the NYT titled A Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son. He expands the usu­al restrict­ed under­stand­ing of “edu­ca­tion” to incor­po­rate a wider sense of “learn­ing”, by discussing

1. Where

  • “The cre­ative ones (politi­cians) will final­ly absorb the truth found in decades of research: the rela­tion­ships chil­dren have out­side school shape their per­for­mance inside the school.”
Each of us has one and same brain, for school (or work) and for “real” life. Labels such as “for­mal” or “infor­mal” learn­ing are quite irrel­e­vant from a neur­al devel­op­ment point of view. What hap­pens at home is as impor­tant as what hap­pens in school.
2. What
  • “They will under­stand that schools filled with stu­dents who can’t con­trol their impuls­es, who can’t focus their atten­tion and who can’t reg­u­late their emo­tions will not suc­ceed, no mat­ter how many reforms are made by gov­er­nors, super­in­ten­dents or presidents.”
Skills in that list, that usu­al­ly don’t get explic­it atten­tion, and they should, since they are both crit­i­cal and train­able: [Read more…] about Grow­ing Super Ath­letes (each of our students)