Centre-for-Brain-Fitness

Brain Teasers on Brain Training/ Games for Health Conference

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Giv­en the whole dis­tract­ing “con­tro­ver­sy” of whether Nin­ten­do Brain Age “works” or not, I have start­ed to use the fol­low­ing “brain teasers” in my talks in order to help the audi­ence gain a more use­ful per­spec­tive of what is going on. They worked great both in the Medicare Read­mis­sions Sum­mit in DC a few weeks ago, and at the Games for Heath Con­fer­ence last week.

Q: How many sol­diers in the US Army have gone through com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive test­ing before being deployed, and why?
A: Over 150,000, in order to estab­lish an objec­tive start­ing base­line and iden­ti­fy poten­tial Post Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) and Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury (TBI) prob­lems upon their return.

Q: How big is the ongo­ing invest­ment by OptumHealth, a divi­sion of Unit­ed­Health Group (UNH), in devel­op­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ments to inform clin­i­cal decision-making?
A: over $6m.

Q: How many All­state pol­i­cy-hold­ers over the age of 50 have received a com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram to improve their dri­ving safety?
A: Over 8,000, in the state of Pennsylvania.

Q: How many res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties are offer­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams to their residents?
A: Over 700, in the US alone, cov­er­ing inde­pen­dent and assist­ed living.

Q: How much mon­ey has the Gov­ern­ment of Ontario invest­ed in set­ting up a new Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness as part of Bay­crest research cen­ter in order to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize tech­nolo­gies to assess and enhance cog­ni­tive functions?
A: $10m, matched with anoth­er 10m from local investors.

For more on our Cog­ni­tive Health Track at Games for Health Con­fer­ence last week, see this USA Today article:

More doc­tor’s pre­scrip­tions may include brain games to improve men­tal acuity

(pret­ty good over­all, but please note that Sharp­Brains did­n’t orga­nize the whole con­fer­ence, “only” the cog­ni­tive health track, which was a lot of stim­u­lat­ing fun. Ben Sawyer and team did over­all conference).

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

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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

Bi-Weekly Update: Preventing Memory Loss and Public Policy

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Here you are have the bi-month­ly Digest of our most Pop­u­lar blog posts. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this digest by email).Crossword Puzzles Brain fitness

Brain Fit­ness News and Events

Upcom­ing Events: I will be speak­ing at five Health, Edu­ca­tion and Gam­ing events over the next cou­ple of months to intro­duce find­ings from our recent mar­ket report. Please intro­duce your­self if you attend any of these events.

Pre­vent­ing Mem­o­ry Loss-Spe­cial Issue: Con­gres­sion­al Quar­ter­ly Researcher, one of the main pub­li­ca­tions on Capi­tol Hill, pub­lished an impres­sive 24-page spe­cial issue titled Pre­vent­ing Mem­o­ry Loss. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed if you want to be on top of the lat­est research trends and their pol­i­cy implications.

[Read more…] about Bi-Week­ly Update: Pre­vent­ing Mem­o­ry Loss and Pub­lic Policy

Cognitive Health News Round-Up

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Round-up of inter­est­ing recent news on cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness: the field is in motion.

1) Bay­crest cre­ates Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness with $10-mil­lion Invest­ment from Ontario Gov­ern­ment (Cana­da NewsWire)

2) Cog­ni­tive tests are the best way to select med­ical stu­dents (EurekAlert)

3) High blood pres­sure hard on the aging brain (Reuters)

4) Alzheimer’s tests ben­e­fi­cial for seniors (Atlanta-Jour­nal Constitutional)

5) Demen­tia-Dread­ing Baby Boomers Spur Race to Invent Brain Games (Bloomberg)

6) Viv­i­ty Labs launch­es Fit Brains brain-train­ing game site (VentureBeat) 

7) Depres­sion and Alzheimer’s (NHS Choices)

For select­ed quotes and com­ments, [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health News Round-Up

Brain class at UC-Berkeley Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

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If you are based in North Cal­i­for­nia, you may be inter­est­ed in the class­es just announced by the UC Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. “Berke­ley OLLI is an inquir­ing and stim­u­lat­ing com­mu­ni­ty of adults, age 50 and above, explor­ing new areas of knowl­edge and tra­di­tion­al dis­ci­plines, chal­leng­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing sub­jects.” If you are not in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you can check the clos­est Life­long Learn­ing Cen­ter to you in either the Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute net­work or the Elder­hos­tel one.

You can see a list­ing of their class­es for the Fall 2007 ses­sion, on a fas­ci­nat­ing vari­ety of top­ics. Keep­ing our edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties since 2005 (first deliv­ered in SFSU), I will be teach­ing the fol­low­ing class

The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here)

Octo­ber 9–30th, 4 class­es, 6.30–8.30pm

Loca­tion: Uni­ver­si­ty Hall, UC Berkeley

Descrip­tion: Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown how the human brain retains neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty (the abil­i­ty to rewire itself) and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (cre­ation of new neu­rons) dur­ing its full life­time, lead­ing to a new under­stand­ing of what aging means. In this class, we will review the sci­ence behind some of key con­cepts in this field and explore their impli­ca­tions on our lifestyles: neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, the Cog­ni­tive Reserve the­o­ry for healthy aging, com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams, emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­tion, and the 4 pil­lars for life­long Brain Health. We have all heard “Use it or lose it”. Lat­est research sug­gests, “Use it and improve it”.

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the class­es, you can attend the open House on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 18, 10:00 am to 12:00 noon, at the Berke­ley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berke­ley. I can only say that the SFSU class­es were a lot of fun and I am sure the Berke­ley ones will be as compelling.