Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

cognitive-assessments

On Awe, Healthy Eating, Mental Health, Ethical Neurotech, and more

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Time to wrap-up anoth­er very active month with our Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter sum­ma­riz­ing excit­ing devel­op­ments in brain research, health­care and tech­nol­o­gy — plus a cou­ple fun brain teasers to spark curios­i­ty and innovation 🙂

New brain research:

New thinking about brain & mental health:

Emerging neurotech and digital brain health:

Finally, a couple fun brain teasers:

 

Have a excel­lent Halloween…

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Testing and training cognitive ability: Key Neurotech Patent #16

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training cognitive ability
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,632,174

Today we are fea­tur­ing a key 2003 patent assigned to Cog­nifit ltd — fas­ci­nat­ing to reflect how the brain train­ing field has evolved in 14 years! (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 6,632,174: Method and Appa­ra­tus for test­ing and train­ing cog­ni­tive ability

  • Assignee(s): Cog­nifit ltd
  • Inventor(s): Shlo­mo Breznitz
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neu­rocog­ni­tive Training
  • Issue Date: Octo­ber 14, 2003

SharpBrains’ Take:

The Detailed Descrip­tion of the ‘174 patent accu­rate­ly con­tex­tu­alis­es the teach­ings of the patent when it recites “the present inven­tion uti­lizes analy­sis, men­tal exer­cise and inter­ven­tion in an attempt to increase cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, improve speed of reac­tion, and train both func­tion­al cog­ni­tive atten­tion­al, per­cep­tu­al, and lin­guis­tic abil­i­ties and var­i­ous aspects of mem­o­ry.” [Read more…] about Test­ing and train­ing cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty: Key Neu­rotech Patent #16

Witnessing an explosion of consumer-facing neurotechnologies to (potentially) harness lifelong neuroplasticity

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Last week I shared some key sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and invest­ment trends rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Brain Health, based on my par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and promised a sec­ond arti­cle more focused on the tech­nol­o­gy side of things.

Here it is 🙂

Just a few weeks after the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit I also attend­ed CES 2017. While I enjoyed the myr­i­ad emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies –autonomous vehi­cles, robot­ics, drones, aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets, voice acti­vat­ed every­thing– I was most­ly struck by a firm named Halo Neu­ro­science. They have a fas­ci­nat­ing wear­able prod­uct, Halo Sport, claim­ing to accel­er­ate gains in strength, explo­sive­ness, endurance, and mus­cle mem­o­ry, improv­ing the brain’s response to ath­let­ic train­ing. It uses tDCS (tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion), essen­tial­ly prim­ing move­ment-relat­ed cir­cuits of the brain to become more recep­tive to stim­uli, help­ing the brain wire in the prac­tice for improved future response.

The cutting edge of applied neuroplasticity

Both con­fer­ences allowed me to see the cut­ting edge of [Read more…] about Wit­ness­ing an explo­sion of con­sumer-fac­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies to (poten­tial­ly) har­ness life­long neuroplasticity

83% decision-makers, early-adopters would take an “annual mental check-up”

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So the ques­tion we asked our­selves as we spent close to a year prepar­ing our lat­est mar­ket report is, which tech­nol­o­gy plat­form and which com­pa­ny may suc­cess­ful­ly devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize a main­stream assess­ment, and how will it be inte­grat­ed into oth­er health/ medical/ well­ness assess­ments and solu­tions? [Read more…] about 83% deci­sion-mak­ers, ear­ly-adopters would take an “annu­al men­tal check-up”

Protect Your Asset by Being Your Own Brain Fitness Coach

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Last week I had the good for­tune of spend­ing four days in Nue­vo Val­lar­ta, Mex­i­co, with over 300 amaz­ing indi­vid­u­als from 40+ coun­tries who had been named Young Glob­al Lead­ers by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. The sum­mit agen­da was insight­ful and inspir­ing, con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er par­tic­i­pants always proved to be eye-open­ing and stim­u­lat­ing, and the over­all atmos­phere was con­struc­tive. You can read more about some of those con­ver­sa­tions here.

What I’d like to high­light in this arti­cle is the remark­able (and option­al) activ­i­ty that start­ed off every day at 7 in the morn­ing. Called “Pro­tect Your Asset” [Read more…] about Pro­tect Your Asset by Being Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach

Can Brain Fitness Innovation Enhance Cognitive Rehab and Driving Safety?

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Today we share must-read insights from  Kather­ine Sul­li­van, Direc­tor of the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Cen­ter, and Peter Kissinger, Pres­i­dent of the AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safe­ty. Both of them will dis­cuss their ongo­ing work and lessons learned at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (March 30th — April 1st, 2011). The inter­views below were con­duct­ed via email.

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Kather­ine Sul­li­van is the Direc­tor of the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Center.

1. Kather­ine, how would you define “brain fit­ness” vs. “phys­i­cal fitness”?

In our con­text (help­ing active duty ser­vice mem­bers and vet­er­ans recov­er from cog­ni­tive dys­func­tion most asso­ci­at­ed with trau­mat­ic brain injury), I’d say brain fit­ness is the out­come we work towards: the cog­ni­tive resources required to return to duty or rein­te­grate into dai­ly and pro­fes­sion­al lives as much as pos­si­ble. In this sense, [Read more…] about Can Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Enhance Cog­ni­tive Rehab and Dri­ving Safety?