Berkeley

How can we harness digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) to scale up brain research, assessments and interventions?

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How can we har­ness dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) to scale up brain research, assess­ments and inter­ven­tions?  (record­ing requires reg­is­tra­tion; view slid­edeck above or Here)

  • Dr. Oliv­er Har­ri­son. Chief Exec­u­tive of the Health Moon­shot at Tele­fóni­ca Innovation
  • Nan­cy Briefs, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Dig­i­tal Cog­ni­tion Technologies 
  • Emma Yang, 9th grad­er, Cre­ator of Time­less app and MIT Solver
  • Belén Guer­ra-Car­ril­lo, NSF Fel­low and grad­u­ate stu­dent researcher at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­fo­nia, Berkeley
  • Chaired by: Kayt Sukel, sci­ence writer

Slid­edeck above sup­port­ed ses­sion held dur­ing the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Health & Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th). All ses­sion record­ings avail­able for pur­chase (50+ Speak­ers, 15+ Hours, $150).

Meet the 16 Judges of the 2010 Brain Fitness Innovation Awards

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We are hon­ored to count on such a dis­tin­guished, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and for­ward-look­ing Inno­va­tion Awards Judg­ing Pan­el (please judge for your­self!), thanks to the par­tic­i­pa­tion of:

shiv-babaBaba Shiv, Pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Busi­ness School, con­ducts research on con­sumer deci­sion mak­ing and deci­sion neu­ro­science, with spe­cif­ic empha­sis on the neu­ro­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of emo­tion and moti­va­tion in deci­sion mak­ing. His recent work exam­ines the poten­tial for non­con­scious place­bo effects relat­ed to pric­ing. He is cur­rent­ly the edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Con­sumer Research and sits on the edi­to­r­i­al board of the Jour­nal of Con­sumer Psy­chol­o­gy and the Jour­nal of Mar­ket­ing Research.

Bill0828Bill Tuck­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Edu­ca­tion Sec­tor, is a social entre­pre­neur who has found­ed and led both non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions and for-prof­it com­pa­nies. He is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the day-to-day oper­a­tions of Edu­ca­tion Sec­tor, and also leads pol­i­cy work focused on tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion. His involve­ment in edu­ca­tion dates to ear­ly in his career, when he man­aged a middle/high school stu­dent vol­un­teer and ser­vice learn­ing pro­gram, work­ing with 22 schools and over 75 non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, and served as a com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er for an adult lit­er­a­cy pro­gram. He is a grad­u­ate of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty and has both an MBA and a Master’s of Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford University.

murphyBri­an Mur­phy, Pres­i­dent of De Anza Col­lege, has led De Anza Col­lege since 2004 with a key focus on the prepa­ra­tion of stu­dents to be active, involved cit­i­zens com­mit­ted to trans­form­ing their com­mu­ni­ties. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Pres­i­dent Mur­phy served for 12 years as exec­u­tive direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Urban Insti­tute at San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, and was chief con­sul­tant to the Cal­i­for­nia State Legislature’s reviews of the Mas­ter Plan for High­er Edu­ca­tion and the com­mu­ni­ty col­lege reform process in the late 1980s. He has taught polit­i­cal the­o­ry and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty and San Fran­cis­co State University.

jenningsCharles Jen­nings, Direc­tor of the McGov­ern Insti­tute Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram, MIT, became an edi­tor with the sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Nature fol­low­ing post­doc­tor­al stud­ies in devel­op­men­tal biol­o­gy at Har­vard and MIT. He was the found­ing edi­tor of Nature Neu­ro­science, wide­ly con­sid­ered a lead­ing jour­nal in its field. More recent­ly, he was the first exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Har­vard Stem Cell Insti­tute, and he con­tin­ues to serve as an advi­sor to the Con­necti­cut Stem Cell Research Program.

house_for-webChuck House, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford Media X, leads Stan­ford University’s Indus­try Affil­i­ate research pro­gram on media and tech­nol­o­gy, and is a senior research schol­ar in the Human Sci­ences and Tech­nol­o­gy Advanced Research divi­sion at Stan­ford. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was the direc­tor of Soci­etal Impact of Tech­nol­o­gy for Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, and the first Direc­tor of Intel’s Vir­tu­al Research Col­lab­o­ra­to­ry. He recent­ly co-authored The HP Phe­nom­e­non: Inno­va­tion and Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Octo­ber 2009).

colinmilnerCol­in Mil­ner, Founder and CEO of the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Active Aging (ICAA), is one of the world’s vision­ar­ies on the health and well-being of the old­er adult. Mil­ner is a mem­ber of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils ini­tia­tive run by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, the active-aging spokesper­son for the Cana­di­an Asso­ci­a­tion of Fit­ness Pro­fes­sion­als, and the res­i­dent indus­try expert on aging for the Inter­na­tion­al Health, Rac­quet and Sports­club Asso­ci­a­tion. An award-win­ning writer, Mil­ner has authored more than 200 arti­cles on aging-relat­ed issues.

elizabeth_edgerly-head-shot-1Eliz­a­beth Edger­ly, Nation­al Spokesper­son for Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion “Main­tain Your Brain”, is the Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer for the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion and nation­al spokesper­son for the Association’s Main­tain Your Brain pro­gram. She over­sees the many pro­grams of the Asso­ci­a­tion for patients, fam­i­lies and health care pro­fes­sion­als. In addi­tion, she staffs the Med­ical Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­so­ry Coun­cil of the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion – North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. She received her Ph.D. in clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy at the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York and spe­cial­ized in geropsy­chol­o­gy and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. Dr. Edger­ly joined the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion after com­plet­ing a fel­low­ship in clin­i­cal geropsy­chol­o­gy at the Palo Alto VA Hos­pi­tal. [Read more…] about Meet the 16 Judges of the 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards

5 Quotes on Neuroplasticity-Based Healthcare and Innovation for an Aging Society

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marian_diamondMar­i­an Dia­mond, UC-Berke­ley: “Peo­ple fre­quent­ly do the same lev­el of cross­word puz­zles to stim­u­late their brains year after year. They do not chal­lenge their brains with more dif­fi­cult lev­els of puz­zles. In our research, we showed that if we chal­lenged the rats to reach their food cups by hav­ing to climb over many obstruc­tions, their brains increased more than those of rats who could walk unhin­dered to their food cups. Chal­lenge increased brain size.”

tom_pic.thumbnailTom War­den, All­state: “… we see the oppor­tu­ni­ty that cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­vides as just the next evo­lu­tion of things that we can advo­cate and get behind that ulti­mate­ly make for a bet­ter dri­ving expe­ri­ence, a safer dri­ving expe­ri­ence for peo­ple. Not only for our insureds, but to help the roads be safer for everyone…what we did is to attempt to repli­cate the results that were observed in the lab­o­ra­to­ry envi­ron­ment where old­er dri­vers who have com­plet­ed a good amount of train­ing, 10 hours or more of train­ing, had shown that the risk of crash could be reduced by up to about 50%.”

whitehouse_large-150x150David White­house, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions: “Man­aged care has not always been on the fore­front of inno­va­tion and it has been, for us, a chal­lenge and an excite­ment to think about how best to incor­po­rate the lat­est find­ings in neu­ro­science. If I was to give you the major areas that we think are impor­tant, one is the impor­tance of neu­ro­science capa­bilit­ties to improve triage, the sec­ond is the impor­tance that this has on increas­ing access to much bet­ter func­tion­al assess­ments and its rela­tion­ship to safe­ty. The third is in the area of clin­i­cal deci­sion sup­port and the fourth is in brain health. First and fore­most, why is it that in every oth­er organ we have objec­tive data of the organ itself doing its work under var­i­ous loads to help us when we need to make deci­sions about its health and dis­ease state and how best to sup­port it and intervene.”

meet_bill_DrWilliamEReichman_-150x150William Reich­man, Bay­crest: “…we must do for brain health in the 21st cen­tu­ry what we large­ly accom­plished in car­dio­vas­cu­lar health in the past century…that includes an increased focus not only on ter­tiary pre­ven­tion, but on pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary prevention…approximately a year and a half ago the Ontario gov­ern­ment made a deci­sion to invest $10 mil­lion in Canada’s first cen­tre for brain fit­ness to be housed at Bay­crest at the Rot­man Research Institute.…Here in Cana­da I think that we’ve been able to make a com­pelling case main­tain­ing good brain fit­ness needs to be a nation­al pri­or­i­ty for this coun­try and we have been engaged in dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment, both fed­er­al­ly and provin­cial­ly, that brain health pro­grams real­ly need to begin in childhood.”

murali-150x150P Murali Doraiswamy, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty: “… you don’t want to walk into a gro­cery store or into a gas sta­tion and see a brain game claim­ing that they’re a neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty brain game or a bot­tle of water that’s claim­ing it’s a cog­ni­tive reserve enhancer because then I think you’re going to destroy the whole field key…So I think it’s essen­tial for acad­e­mia, for indus­try, for think tanks, for even the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies such as per­haps Eng­land, US, Cana­da, to come togeth­er and form a set of guide­lines that can real­ly guide the prop­er devel­op­ment of a lot of these prod­ucts and by prod­ucts I’m talk­ing about two types of prod­ucts. One is cog­ni­tive screen­ing instru­ments and the sec­ond is inter­ven­tion prod­ucts to either improve sort of nor­mal func­tion­ing or to increase resilience to stress or three, to pre­vent disease.”

(answer­ing to audi­ence ques­tion, “when do you believe that cog­ni­tive screen­ing may become a pret­ty rou­tine part of stan­dard med­ical care”) “I think it’s long overdue…the brain is the most impor­tant organ.”

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In Jan­u­ary of 2010 Sharp­Brains pro­duced the inau­gur­al vir­tu­al, glob­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit on Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Per­for­mance (Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010). The Sum­mit fea­tured a dream team of over 40 speak­ers who are lead­ers in indus­try and research to dis­cuss emerg­ing research, tools and best prac­tices for cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance, and gath­ered over 250 par­tic­i­pants in 16 countries.

Are you inter­est­ed in what over 40 lead­ing sci­en­tists, clin­i­cians, exec­u­tives and tech­nol­o­gists have to say about the lat­est Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Per­for­mance? Want to hear how they respond­ed to more than 200 audi­ence ques­tions? You can Learn more Here (full tran­scripts are now avail­able). Sharp­Brains read­ers can get a 15% dis­count [Read more…] about 5 Quotes on Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-Based Health­care and Inno­va­tion for an Aging Society

Marian C. Diamond to open SharpBrains Summit

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What a bet­ter open­ing for our Jan­u­ary Sharp­Brains Sum­mit than to have Mar­i­an C. Dia­mond, one of the pio­neers of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty research since the 1960s, intro­duce us to the human brain, its anato­my and func­tion, and impli­ca­tions from neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for brain health and per­for­mance at any age.

marian_diamondMar­i­an C. Dia­mond, Ph.D., is Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science and Anato­my at UC-Berke­ley  and one of the world’s fore­most researchers on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and enrich­ment since the 1960s . She is author of more than 100 sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles and three books, includ­ing Enrich­ing Hered­i­ty (Free Press/Simon and Schus­ter, 1988) and The Mag­ic Trees of the Mind (Plume, 1999). In par­tic­u­lar, she is inter­est­ed in study­ing the effects of the exter­nal envi­ron­ment, aging, and immune respons­es on the cere­bral neocortex.

You can read a num­ber of her pub­lic edu­ca­tion essays online:

To learn more sharpbrains_summit_logo_webabout the agen­da of the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit and the incred­i­ble ros­ter of speak­ers who have agreed to par­tic­i­pate in this impor­tant event, click on Sharp­Brains Sum­mit.

Marian Diamond on the brain

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Quotes from a great arti­cle, Pro­fes­sor, 81, proves brain stays young:

- In 1960, Dia­mond became the first female fac­ul­ty mem­ber in Cal’s sci­ence depart­ment, achiev­ing full pro­fes­sor­ship in 1974. She still teach­es anato­my with her 81st birth­day two weeks away.

- Dia­mond, a pro­fes­sor of anato­my at UC Berke­ley, deter­mined that the brain can stay young through stim­u­la­tion, which can be achieved through her five-point plan: diet, exer­cise, chal­lenge, new­ness and ten­der lov­ing care.

- Using her plan, how is she challenged?

- “Every stu­dent who sits in that chair,” she said, point­ing across the desk in her fifth-floor office in the Life Sci­ences Build­ing on cam­pus. “They come in here ask­ing ques­tions, and you bet­ter have the answers.”

- What new­ness, then, is in her life?

- “I have grand­chil­dren,” she said. “What could be bet­ter, decid­ing new things for them, to stim­u­late their brains.”

- She has four chil­dren, four grand­chil­dren and a hus­band, Arnold Schei­del, who teach­es anato­my at UCLA. They see each oth­er on school weekends,

- Dia­mond feels her own brain growing.

Keep read­ing here.

Relat­ed resources

A pre­vi­ous post list­ing a num­ber of her essays: Mar­i­an Dia­mond and the Brain Revolution

Her great book Mag­ic Trees of the Mind: How to Nur­ture Your Child’s Intel­li­gence, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and Healthy Emo­tions from Birth Through Ado­les­cence, by Berke­ley’s Mar­i­an Dia­mond and Janet L. Hopson.

Cognitive Fitness @ UC-Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

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Quick post for my UC-Berke­ley OLLI stu­dents: here are the links I promised.

- Col­lec­tion of 50 Brain Teasers.

- Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series includ­ing in-depth notes of inter­views with lead­ing sci­en­tists and practitioners.

- Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve-Yaakov Stern: which talks about the Cog­ni­tive Reserve and Alzheimer’s symp­toms, and includes a great clip on the famous “nun study”.

- Arti­cles and Papers: a col­lec­tion of good read­ing materials.

- Books: the selec­tion of books we discussed.

- YouTube Chan­nel: some clips you will enjoy to refresh your class memories.

Enjoy!

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