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brain-fitness-tools

Brain Fitness Update: Man is a Tool-Making Animal

February 22, 2010 by Alvaro Fernandez

Here you have the Feb­ru­ary107px-gray1197thumbnail edi­tion of our month­lye­Newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box in the right column.

The recent Sharp­Brains Sum­mit wit­nessed the con­ver­gence of Ben­jamin Franklin’s words (“Man is a Tool-Mak­ing Ani­mal”)  with neu­ro­sci­en­tist San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal’s  (“Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor of his own brain.”) The neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion that may well trans­form edu­ca­tion, train­ing, health­care, aging, is under way.

New Tools

Will the Apple iPad Be Good for your Brain: Prof. Luc Beau­doin lays out key cri­te­ria to assess Apple iPad’s poten­tial val­ue for our cog­ni­tive fit­ness, and judges the iPad against a com­pre­hen­sive check­list.  His ver­dict? Thumbs-up.

Is Work­ing Mem­o­ry a bet­ter pre­dic­tor of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess than IQ?: Dr. Tra­cy Alloway sum­ma­rizes  a recent land­mark study, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Child Psy­chol­o­gy, which tracked chil­dren over a six-year peri­od. Key find­ing: Work­ing mem­o­ry can be a more pow­er­ful pre­dic­tor of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess than IQ scores.

Old Tools

Build­ing Fit Minds Under Stress: Accord­ing to Sci­ence Dai­ly’s take on a just pub­lished study, “a high-stress U.S. mil­i­tary group prepar­ing for deploy­ment to Iraq has demon­strat­ed a pos­i­tive link between mind­ful­ness train­ing, or MT, and improve­ments in mood and work­ing memory”.

The Evo­lu­tion of Empa­thy: Empa­thy is not a unique­ly human trait, explains pri­ma­tol­o­gist Frans de Waal in this Greater Good Mag­a­zine arti­cle. Apes and oth­er ani­mals feel it as well, sug­gest­ing that empa­thy is tru­ly an essen­tial part of who we are.

Reflec­tions

Reflec­tions on Cre­ativ­i­ty — Inter­view with Daniel Tam­met:  Scott Bar­ry Kauf­man recent­ly inter­viewed Daniel Tam­met, known for vivid­ly describ­ing autis­tic savan­tism from the inside. Their in-depth con­ver­sa­tion made Scott reflect that “Daniel Tammet’s feel­ing of a great lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion grow­ing up spoke to me, for sure. But I’m sure it also spoke to a great many peo­ple read­ing the interview.”

Sum­mit Reactions

The Sharp­Brains Sum­mit took place Jan­u­ary 18–20th, help­ing engage over 250 par­tic­i­pants in 15 coun­tries. Here are a cou­ple of reac­tions from participants:

5 Key Reflec­tions on “Neu­ro­cen­tric Health”: Insti­tute For The Future researcher Jake Duna­gan sum­ma­rizes his main take-aways, includ­ing this over­all assess­ment — “Although the con­fer­ence was vir­tu­al, aside from the rig­ors of trav­el and a bas­ket of bagels on the hall­way table, my lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion (and fatigue) mir­rored most of my face-to-face con­fer­ence expe­ri­ences. It was a tech­ni­cal suc­cess and the con­tent was first-rate.” (Thanks, Jake!)

The Future of Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment: Neu­roethics researcher Peter Rein­er pon­ders,  “Will brain fit­ness soft­ware dom­i­nate the world of cog­ni­tive enhance­ment?”.  His take: “Pri­or to this con­fer­ence I was quite skep­ti­cal, but the over­all impres­sion that I was left with was that brain fit­ness soft­ware may turn out to have some dis­tinct advan­tages over phar­ma­co­log­i­cal approach­es.” Read his arti­cle to dis­cov­er why.

Com­mu­ni­ty

Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion (pri­vate LinkedIn group):  Mem­bers are engag­ing in many good dis­cus­sions, includ­ing most sur­pris­ing things learned dur­ing the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, how to deal with con­flicts of inter­est in indus­try and acad­e­mia, resources and con­fer­ences rel­e­vant to edu­ca­tion and chil­dren, and ways to elic­it a wider inter­est in brain health.

Look­ing for Speak­ers: We are always look­ing for best prac­tices and research-based inno­va­tion. If you are inter­est­ed in speak­ing at future Sharp­Brains events (includ­ing Games for Health brain tracks), please Con­tact Us and tell us about 1) your inno­va­tion or research, 2) its mea­sured and/ or poten­tial impact, 3) recent cov­er­age in gen­er­al, trade, or sci­en­tif­ic media, 4) the typ­i­cal audi­ence you talk to, and a cou­ple of descrip­tions of recent talks, 5) what you pro­pose talk­ing about.

Offer

Brain Fit­ness Infor­ma­tion Pack­age for Libraries:  libraries of all kinds can now  order a copy of our main report, The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009, at 50% off price.  Using dis­count code sharpli­brary leaves this pre­mi­um report at $645 (offer valid until March 31st, 2010). Offer is  valid for indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions who com­mit to donat­ing their copy to a library, in good shape, after con­sult­ing it.

Final­ly, a reminder that Brain Aware­ness Week (March 15–21, 2010) is approach­ing soon!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter Tagged With: brain fitness toolkit, brain health toolkit, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-tools

The Cognitive Health and Fitness Market On The Move

October 10, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

As you have prob­a­bly seen, the Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness field is rapid­ly evolv­ing, so let me high­light some of the main recent devel­op­ments affect­ing the field:

1) Pub­lic pol­i­cy initiatives: 
— The Gov­ern­ment of Ontario, Cana­da, announced a $10m invest­ment in Bay­crest Research Cen­ter to help devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize brain fit­ness tech­nolo­gies. This $10m invest­ment was matched with an addi­tion­al $10m by local investors.
— In the US, The Paul Well­stone and Pete Domeni­ci Men­tal Health Par­i­ty and Addic­tion Equi­ty Act of 2008 was signed into law, includ­ed in the recent­ly-approved eco­nom­ic bailout bill. The pas­sage of this law has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for health­care providers and tech­nol­o­gy ven­dors alike.

2) Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments Used by the US Military: 
The US Army launched a new pol­i­cy requir­ing cog­ni­tive screen­ings of all sol­diers before deploy­ment (in order to bet­ter diag­nose poten­tial prob­lems such as PTSD and TBI upon return). ANAM was the select­ed com­put­er­ized bat­tery of tests.

3) Ven­ture & Angel Fundrais­ing for Cog­ni­tive Train­ing companies: 
A num­ber of devel­op­ers have raised mon­ey. Cog­niFit received $5m (from Milk Cap­i­tal), Lumos Labs $3m (First­Mark Cap­i­tal ‑pre­vi­ous­ly called Pequot Ventures‑, Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners), Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Train­ing $1.5m (issued shares), Viv­i­ty Labs $1m (undis­closed angel investors), This is, of course, on top of the Feb­ru­ary $10.6 invest­ment in Dakim (Galen Part­ners) that we already includ­ed in our mar­ket report.

4) Major Ini­tia­tives by Insur­ance Companies: 
— All­state launched a large-scale research project to mea­sure impact of Posit Sci­ence InSight (visu­al pro­cess­ing train­ing) on dri­ver safe­ty for adults over 50.
— OptumHealth announced a 3‑year, $18m agree­ment with Brain Resource to offer web-based cog­ni­tive assess­ments as part of clin­i­cians’ deci­sion sup­port systems.
— Humana decid­ed not to renew its agree­ment with Posit Sci­ence to offer Posit’s audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram to Medicare members.

5) New Research:
— In a sig­nif­i­cant new study, a team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan pub­lished a high-qual­i­ty paper in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences show­ing how com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing can gen­er­al­ize and improve flu­id intel­li­gence (one of the domains that tends to decline with age).
— Learn­ing and Teach­ing Scot­land released an inter­nal study show­ing how Nin­ten­do Brain Train­ing can help children’s math and con­cen­tra­tion skills. The study gained sig­nif­i­cant media atten­tion, despite the fact it hasn’t been pub­lished in a respect­ed journal.

Note: This is an excerpt from the 6‑Month Mar­ket Update we will  release lat­er this month, cov­er­ing the many impor­tant devel­op­ments that have occurred since we launched the inau­gur­al Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report in March this year. This spe­cial report will be avail­able exclu­sive­ly for our Pre­mi­um Research Spon­sors.

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Allstate, anam, Baycrest, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-tools, Brain-health, Brain-Resource, Brain-Training, Canada, Clinicians, cognifit, cognitive-assessments, cognitive-health, Cognitive-Training, Dakim, FirstMark-Capital, fitbrains, fluid-intelligence, Galen-Partners, healthcare, Humana, insurance, lumos-labs, Medicare, mental-health-parity, military, Milk-Capital, nintendo-brain-training, Norwest-Venture-Partners, Ontario, OptumHealth, Pequot-Ventures, Posit-Science, Posit-Science-Insight, PTSD, public-policy, scientific-brain-training, TBI, US-Army, venture-capital, venture-funding, Vivity-Labs, working-memory-training

Brain Fitness around the Globe

September 19, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

A few days ago, Rajen­dra, an Indi­an read­er of our newslet­ter, told us that ASHA (the acronym for the Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, for whom we pre­pared this spe­cial report), means Hope in Hindi.

Asha, every­one!

Then, we saw a few excel­lent arti­cles on Brain Fit­ness and Sharp­Brains in mul­ti­ple lan­guages and con­ti­nents-time to prac­tice our lan­guage skills!:

Train your brain (Finan­cial Times Germany):

“Ob Gehirn­train­ing etwas ntzt ist nicht bewiesen. Aber in den USA boomt der Markt, Her­steller kooperieren mit Krankenkassen und Senioren­heimen. In Deutsch­land fassen die Spiele ger­ade erst Fu.”

Toman auge ejer­ci­cios que adies­tran la mente (Mile­nio, Mexico):

“La clave est¡ en encon­trar activi­dades que estim­ulen m¡s nues­tra memoria.”

Trois nou­velles tudes IDATE : Seri­ous Games (Pub­li-News, France):

“A tra­vers une analyse dtaille des car­ac­tris­tiques, des usages et des diffrentes familles de seri­ous games, cette tude met en vidence les enjeux asso­cis aux phas­es de con­cep­tion, de devel­oppe­ment et de dif­fu­sion des diffrents types de seri­ous games.”

Eng­lish-speak­ers were rep­re­sent­ed too:
An idea whose time has (final­ly) come (McK­night’s Long Term Care News):

“Like many rev­o­lu­tions, long-term care’s recent embrace of tech­nol­o­gy-based brain fit­ness tools began qui­et­ly. Then it exploded.”

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: asha, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-tools, Financial-Times, France, Germany, hope, long-term-care, longterm-care, McKnights, memoria, Mexico, revolution, senior-housing, seniors-housing, Serious-Games, sharpbrains, technology-based-brain-fitness, train-your-brain

Brain Fitness Centers in Senior Housing — A Field in the Making

September 8, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Brain Fitness Centers in Seniors Housing - A Field in the MakingThe Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA) has just released an Spe­cial Issue Brief, titled Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Senior Hous­ing — A Field in the Mak­ing. We pre­pared it for their mem­bers, and it is now avail­able for pur­chase (You can click here for pur­chase and down­load. $25.)

It was a plea­sure to learn more about emerg­ing trends there and dis­cuss best prac­tices and impli­ca­tions with some of the pio­neers at Senior Star Liv­ing, Bel­mont Vil­lage, Erick­son, and more, who have been lead­ing inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tives and con­duct­ing their own pilot stud­ies. I hope you enjoy the report.

This 15-page Spe­cial Report describes [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Senior Hous­ing — A Field in the Making

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: American-Seniors-Housing-Association, Belmont-Village, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-centers, brain-fitness-program, brain-fitness-tools, CCRC, cogmed, cognifit, cognitive-fitness, Dakim, Erickson, Happy-Neuron, lumos-labs, My-Vigorous-Mind, nintendo, Posit-Science, Senior-Star-Living, seniors-housing, seniors-housing-residents, UCLA-Memory-Fitness

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