driving

SharpBrains Council Monthly Insights: How will we assess, enhance and repair cognition across the lifespan?

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When you think of how the PC has altered the fab­ric of soci­ety, per­mit­ting instant access to infor­ma­tion and automat­ing process­es beyond our wildest dreams, it is instruc­tive to con­sid­er that much of this progress was dri­ven by Moore’s law. Halv­ing the size of semi­con­duc­tor every 18 months catal­ysed an expo­nen­tial accel­er­a­tion in performance.

Why is this sto­ry rel­e­vant to mod­ern neu­ro­science and the work­ings of the brain? Because trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­log­i­cal progress aris­es out of choice and the actions of indi­vid­u­als who see poten­tial for change, and we may well be on the verge of such progress. [Read more…] about Sharp­Brains Coun­cil Month­ly Insights: How will we assess, enhance and repair cog­ni­tion across the lifespan?

News: DriveSharp, Cognitive Health, Posit Science and CogniFit

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Round-up of recent news on cog­ni­tive health and brain fitness:

1) Impres­sive coup by Posit Sci­ence: Wal­ter Moss­berg reviews DriveSharp:

A Review of Dri­ve­Sharp (Wall Street Journal)

- “My ver­dict is that it was easy to use, and it did indeed work on my abil­i­ty to rapid­ly recall the col­or and posi­tion of mul­ti­ple mov­ing objects and of objects on the periph­ery of my vision. It intel­li­gent­ly adjust­ed to my per­for­mance, and grad­u­al­ly pre­sent­ed me with tougher tasks.”

- “How­ev­er, two major caveats are in order. First, I am nei­ther a sci­en­tist nor a doc­tor, so I can’t vouch for the com­pa­ny’s claims about Dri­ve­Sharp’s ben­e­fits or even the under­ly­ing prob­lem it aims to alle­vi­ate. Sec­ond­ly, I was­n’t able to test Dri­ve­Sharp long enough to know if it actu­al­ly made me a bet­ter driver.”

2) Now, is the poten­tial lim­it­ed to old­er dri­vers? not real­ly, as not­ed in this Seat­tle Times article:

Brain-fit­ness com­pa­nies apply­ing neu­ro­science to make safer dri­vers (Seat­tle Times)

- “Cog­niFit Pres­i­dent Shlo­mo Breznitz says pre­vi­ous ver­sions of this soft­ware have been in use by the largest dri­ving schools in the U.K. and Canada.”

- “The brains of new dri­vers have to acquire new skills that take time to devel­op,” he said. “Typ­i­cal­ly, they take about two years of dri­ving, as wit­nessed by acci­dent records all over the world. By active­ly train­ing these skills the time need­ed for the brain to achieve the same lev­el of exper­tise is short­ened. This short­ens the extreme­ly high risk peri­od of new drivers.”

3) Chal­lenge — do peo­ple under­stand what we are talk­ing about? not always, as report­ed in this great spe­cial issue of The Gerontologist:

GSA — Pop­u­la­tion Seg­ments Dif­fer on Per­cep­tions of Cog­ni­tive Health

- “All demo­graph­ic groups stud­ied believed that cog­ni­tive health is influ­enced by phys­i­cal, men­tal, and social activ­i­ty; how­ev­er, they dif­fered in opin­ions of the ben­e­fits of spe­cif­ic activ­i­ties, nutri­tion, and genet­ics. The respon­dents also indi­cat­ed that that media mes­sages about cog­ni­tive health are lim­it­ed and con­fus­ing. Fur­ther­more, many agreed that health mes­sages that incor­po­rate spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty val­ues and are deliv­ered with­in pre-exist­ing social groups by com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers may be par­tic­u­lar­ly effective.”
— “Fund­ing for the spe­cial issue, titled “Pro­mot­ing Cog­ni­tive Health in Diverse Pop­u­la­tions of Old­er Adults: Atti­tudes, Per­cep­tions, Behav­iors, and their Impli­ca­tions for Com­mu­ni­ty-Based Inter­ven­tions,” was pro­vid­ed by the CDC’s Healthy Aging Program.”

All in all, very rel­e­vant data points that sug­gest the field is quick­ly approach­ing mainstream.

References on Cognitive Health/ Brain Fitness

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This is a par­tial list of the lit­er­a­ture we reviewed dur­ing the research phase of our new book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.  We know many friends of Sharp­Brains are researchers, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, graduate/ Ph.D. stu­dents, who want have direct access to the ref­er­ences (per­haps PubMed should pro­mote itself as a nev­er end­ing source of men­tal stim­u­la­tion?), so here you have this list, orga­nized by rel­e­vant chap­ter. Please note that the list below appears in the book — whose man­u­script we had to close in Jan­u­ary 2009.

Intro­duc­tion

Basak, C. et al. (2008). Can train­ing in a real-time strat­e­gy video game atten­u­ate cog­ni­tive decline in old­er adults? Psy­chol­o­gy and Aging.
Beg­ley, S. (2007). Train your mind, change your brain: How a new sci­ence reveals our extra­or­di­nary poten­tial to trans­form our­selves. Bal­lan­tine Books.
DeKosky, S. T., et al. (2008). Gink­go bilo­ba for pre­ven­tion of demen­tia: a ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al. Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, 300, 2253–2262.
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain that changes itself: Sto­ries of per­son­al tri­umph from the fron­tiers of brain sci­ence. Viking Adult.

Chap­ter 1. The Brain and Brain Fit­ness 101 

Bunge, S. A., & Wright, S. B. (2007). Neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal changes in work­ing mem­o­ry and cog­ni­tive con­trol. Cur­rent Opin­ion In Neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy, 17(2), 243–50.
Dama­sio, A. (1995). Descartes error: Emo­tion, rea­son, and the human brain. Pen­guin Press.
David Kolb, D. (1983). Expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing: Expe­ri­ence as the source of learn­ing and devel­op­ment. FT Press.
Dra­gan­s­ki, B., Gas­er, C., Kem­per­mann, G., Kuhn, H. G., Win­kler, J., Buchel, C., & May A. (2006). Tem­po­ral and spa­tial dynam­ics of brain struc­ture changes dur­ing exten­sive learn­ing. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 261231, 6314–6317.
Gage, F. H., Kem­per­mann, G., & Song, H. (2007). Adult Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis. Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­to­ry Press, NY.
Gard­ner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The the­o­ry of mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences. New York: Basic Books.
Gas­er, C. & Schlaug, G. (2003). Brain struc­tures dif­fer between musi­cians and non-musi­cians. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 23, 9240–9245. [Read more…] about Ref­er­ences on Cog­ni­tive Health/ Brain Fitness

CogniFit (MindFit, DriveFit) raises USD 5 million

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From the web­site of the invest­ing ven­ture cap­i­tal firm, Milk Capital:

Milk Cap­i­tal invests USD 5 mil­lion in CogniFit

-July 31st, 2008. “Milk Cap­i­tal invest USD 5M in Cog­nifit, a com­pa­ny spe­cial­ized in cog­ni­tive and brain soft­ware The solu­tions devel­oped by Cog­niFit are designed to be applied to a large num­ber of fields, such as health­care, dri­ving, edu­ca­tion, sport and many oth­ers. The field of appli­ca­tions is almost unlim­it­ed as it is only restrict­ed by the capac­i­ties of the brain.” 

-“Since its estab­lish­ment in 1999, as a start-up in the Ofer Group’s Incu­ba­tor, Naiot, Cog­niFit attract­ed 4.2M$. The com­pa­ny has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly and today, its soft­ware is dis­trib­uted in a large num­ber of coun­tries, from the Unit­ed States through France to New Zealand, and has been trans­lat­ed into ten lan­guages. This 5M$ invest­ment of MILK CAPITAL should dri­ve the devel­op­ment of Cog­niFit all the more than the com­pa­ny intends to con­quer new mar­kets by means of new prod­ucts and appli­ca­tions all over the world.”

Pre­vi­ous post on one of Cog­niFit’s prod­ucts, Dri­ve­Fit: Dri­ve­Fit; Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Dri­ving.

Oth­er recent ven­ture rounds in the brain fit­ness soft­ware space:

- Feb­ru­ary 2008: Dakim rais­es $10,6 million
— June 2008: Lumos Labs (Lumos­i­ty) rais­es $3 millions

I spoke at the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia in Feb­ru­ary to pro­vide an overview of the fas­ci­nat­ing land­scape. The write-up: Brain Train­ing Games: Con­text, Trends, Ques­tions.

For in-depth infor­ma­tion on the whole cat­e­go­ry ‑size, cus­tomer seg­ments, play­er land­scape, clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion, trends- you may enjoy our Mar­ket Report.

Encephalon: Briefing the Next US President on Neuroscience & Psychology

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Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

We are glad to wel­come you to our blog car­ni­val. After a short hia­tus, Encephalon is backScience Debate 2008 and gath­er­ing steam. We have pre­pared this “revival” edi­tion just for you, so you can be well informed and impress us all dur­ing the upcom­ing Sci­encede­bate 2008.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the ques­tions posed by 24 blog­gers on neu­ro­science and psy­chol­o­gy issues. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Big Ques­tions

Do I deserve to vote even if I don’t have Free Will? (Marc at Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Challenged).

If cul­ture sculpts our brains, what can our brains do to refine our cul­ture first? (Stephanie at Brains On Purpose).

Is God more than a fly­ing brain? (Jes­si­ca at bioephemera).

Is Your brain real­ly read­ing This? (Pete at Brain Hammer).

A Few Intru­sive Questions 

Do you play any musi­cal instru­ment? (Megan at SharpBrains).

[Read more…] about Encephalon: Brief­ing the Next US Pres­i­dent on Neu­ro­science & Psychology

Keep Your Brain Nimble as You Age and Brain Fitness Events

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Some good links today:

1) Keep Your Brain Nim­ble as You Age
MSNBC — May 13, 2007
“If using your com­put­er as a men­tal gym sounds good to you, SharpBrains.com’s Fer­nan­dez sug­gests ask­ing a few ques­tions first to deter­mine a product’s…”

2) Great blog by Stan­ford Busi­ness School’s Jack­son library, includ­ing an announce­ment of an upcom­ing lec­ture there by our very own Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez Pump­ing I.Q., not Iron

3) Some blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cif­ic topics)