Duke-University

The State of the Brain Fitness Movement: demographic, scientific, and market trends, explained

by

glass-brain—

That will be the focus of the first ses­sion at the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th, 2014). We hope you can join us!

The State of the Brain Fit­ness Move­ment: demo­graphic, sci­en­tific, and mar­ket trends, explained

  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO of SharpBrains
  • Dr. Adam Gaz­za­ley, Direc­tor of UCSF Neu­ro­science Imag­ing Cen­ter and Co-founder of Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs
  • Jack Young, Head of Qual­comm Life Fund
  • Dr. David Rabin­er, Asso­ciate Dean of Trin­ity Col­lege at Duke University
  • Chair: Patri­cia Marx, Staff Writer at The New Yorker

[Read more…] about The State of the Brain Fit­ness Move­ment: demo­graph­ic, sci­en­tif­ic, and mar­ket trends, explained

Invitation to SharpBrains Summit — Technology for Cognitive Health and Performance

by

We are excit­ed to invite you to the first vir­tu­al, glob­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010). The Sharp­Brains Sum­mit will fea­ture a sharpbrains_summit_logo_webdream team of over 25 speak­ers who are lead­ers in indus­try and research from 7 coun­tries, to dis­cuss emerg­ing research, tools and best prac­tices for cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance. This inau­gur­al event will expose health and insur­ance providers, devel­op­ers, inno­va­tors at For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, investors and researchers, to the oppor­tu­ni­ties, part­ner­ships, trends, and stan­dards of the rapid­ly evolv­ing cog­ni­tive fit­ness field.

Reg­is­ter Today

Learn more and reg­is­ter Here today, at dis­count­ed ear­ly-bird rates, to receive these benefits:

  • Learn: Full access to all Con­fer­ence live ses­sions, and Down­load­able Record­ings and Handouts
  • See: lat­est tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts dur­ing Expo Day
  • Con­nect and Dis­cuss: become a mem­ber of the Sharp­Brains Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion (mem­bers-only LinkedIn Group) through the end of 2010, access online chats dur­ing the sum­mit, meet oth­er reg­is­trants in your city
  • Under­stand the Big Pic­ture: access 10 Research Exec­u­tive Briefs pre­pared by lead­ing scientists

On top of those ear­ly-bird dis­counts, we offer an addi­tion­al 15% dis­count for Sharp­Brains read­ers who want Reg­u­lar Admis­sion. Dis­count code: sharp2010. You can reg­is­ter Here.

Agenda/ Speak­ers

Monday, January 18th, 2010:

(Pre­lim­i­nary sched­ule, US Pacif­ic Time)

8–9.15am. Cog­ni­tion & Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: The New Health­care Frontier

  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains
  • David White­house, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions
  • William Reich­man, Baycrest
  • P Murali Doraiswamy, Duke University

9.30–11am. Tools for Safer Dri­ving: The Oppor­tu­ni­ty with Teenagers and Adults

  • Steven Aldrich, Posit Science
  • Shlo­mo Breznitz, CogniFit
  • Jer­ri Edwards, Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida
  • Peter Chris­tian­son, Young Dri­vers of Canada

Noon‑1.30pm. Baby Boomers and Beyond: Main­tain­ing Cog­ni­tive Vitality

Save the Date: SharpBrains Summit, Technology for Cognitive Health and Performance

by

We are very excit­ed to announce the first Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence to take place Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010.  Over 30 lead­ing speak­ers and a pro­fes­sion­al audi­ence will dis­cuss emerg­ing inno­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy for life­long cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance. The Sum­mit will high­light the con­ver­gence of neu­rocog­ni­tive research, non-inva­sive tech­nol­o­gy and health­care, dis­cuss emerg­ing best prac­tices, and help pre­dict how a grow­ing range of tools may pro­vide solu­tions to cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance-relat­ed issues.

sharpbrains_summit_logo_webYou can see speak­ers and agen­da by click­ing on Sharp­Brains Sum­mit. Please reg­is­ter if you are inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing: Jan­u­ary 18–20th 2010 (Pacif­ic Time).

  • Con­fer­ence: Jan­u­ary 18–19th. 9–10 pan­els to dis­cuss Mar­ket and Research Insights,  togeth­er with online discussions.
  • Expo Day: Jan­u­ary 20th. Prod­uct demos by Sponsors.

Con­firmed speak­ers and themes:

Monday, January 18th, 2010:

Cog­ni­tion and Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: The New Health­care Frontier

  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO, SharpBrains
  • David White­house, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions
  • William Reich­man, Pres­i­dent, Baycrest
  • P Murali Doraiswamy, Bio­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try Divi­sion Head, Duke University

Tools for Safer Dri­ving: Teenagers and Old­er Adults

  • Steven Aldrich, CEO, Posit Science
  • Peter Chris­tian­son, Pres­i­dent of Young Dri­vers of Canada
  • Jer­ri Edwards, Assoc. Pro­fes­sor Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida

Clin­i­cal Appli­ca­tions: Research­ing, Iden­ti­fy­ing, Treat­ing Cog­ni­tive Deficits

  • Kei­th Wesnes, Prac­tice Leader, Unit­ed BioSource Corporation
  • Jonas Jen­di, CEO, Cogmed
  • Michel Noir, Pres­i­dent, Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Training
  • Elkhonon Gold­berg, Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­sor, SharpBrains

[Read more…] about Save the Date: Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Performance

Brain and Cognition Expert Contributors

by

As you have prob­a­bly noticed, a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors are writ­ing in our blog, so that we can col­lec­tive­ly dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and brain health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­er­al for our every­day lives. 

If you haven’t done so already, make sure to sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).

Below you have the pro­files of some of our Con­trib­u­tors and links to their best arti­cles with us so far. Enjoy!

[Read more…] about Brain and Cog­ni­tion Expert Contributors

Self-Regulation and Barkley’s Theory of ADHD

by

A CDC report esti­mat­ed that, in 2003, 4.4 mil­lion youth ages 4–17 lived with diag­nosed ADHD, and 2.5 mil­lion of them were receiv­ing med­ica­tion treat­ment. Now, which is the core deficit under­ly­ing ADHD-so that treat­ments real­ly address it? and how are ADHD and brain devel­op­ment relat­ed? Keep reading…

ADHD & the Nature of Self-Con­trol — Revis­it­ing Barkley’s The­o­ry of ADHD

— By David Rabin­er, Ph.D

As implied in the title of his book, ADHD and the Nature of Self-Con­trol, Dr. Barkley argues that the fun­da­men­tal deficit in indi­vid­u­als with ADHD is one of self-con­trol, and that prob­lems with atten­tion are a sec­ondary char­ac­ter­is­tic of the disorder.

Dr. Barkley empha­sizes that dur­ing the course of devel­op­ment, con­trol over a child’s behav­ior grad­u­al­ly shifts from exter­nal sources to being increas­ing­ly gov­erned by inter­nal rules and stan­dards. Con­trol­ling one’s behav­ior by inter­nal rules and stan­dards is what is meant by the term “self-con­trol”.

[Read more…] about Self-Reg­u­la­tion and Barkley’s The­o­ry of ADHD

Some pearls of wisdom from Stanford alumni

by

What a busy week, last one. We will be writ­ing dur­ing the week about some of the Sharp­Brains events that occured. 

The May/June Issue of Stan­ford Mag­a­zine has a nice sec­tion titled Just One Ques­tion, where a num­ber of Stan­ford alum­ni answer the ques­tion “What do peo­ple in your pro­fes­sion know that you wish every­one knew?”

Some of our favorite answers:

  • Zoe Lof­gren, ’70, rep­re­sents California’s 16th dis­trict in Con­gress. “When all is said and done, the Amer­i­can peo­ple decide the kind of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment they get. It’s large­ly a myth that elect­ed offi­cials dis­re­gard the view­points of their con­stituents. That only hap­pens when vot­ers for­go the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their point of view or when an elect­ed offi­cial (know­ing­ly or not) is prepar­ing to leave his or her elect­ed office. A dozen unscript­ed, indi­vid­ual let­ters on a sub­ject are enough to gal­va­nize a mem­ber of Con­gress rep­re­sent­ing 670,000 people.”
  • Doug Osheroff, the J.G. Jack­son and C.J. Wood Pro­fes­sor of Physics, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1996. “I wish that more peo­ple had an under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of how sci­ence is done. That is, how sci­en­tists are able to expand the bound­aries of our knowl­edge and at the same time devel­op new tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies that real­ly do ben­e­fit mankind.”
  • Spencer Sher­man, MA ’69, PhD ’71, is a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist in San­ta Bar­bara, Calif. “Psy­chother­a­pists know that it’s okay to be not okay. That every­one suf­fers some­times. That suf­fer­ing is not unend­ing, unen­durable or with­out val­ue. That con­fu­sion and despair have mean­ing, and that out of them wis­dom and com­pas­sion emerge. That help exists and that it is sage to ask for it. That strength can be built and hap­pi­ness learned. That tri­als and mis­takes are nec­es­sary parts of that learn­ing. That there is no life free from pain. That it is the pain that dri­ves the growth. That flow­ers thank the soil from which they rise.”
  • (we are biased here) Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, MBA ’01, MA ’02, is CEO and co-founder of Sharp­Brains, Inc. “Many cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists wish that more peo­ple knew how flex­i­ble our brains are through­out our whole lives and what a big dif­fer­ence we can make to ensure a healthy, fit, brain and mind. We can exer­cise our brains—not just our biceps.”

You can check more answers to Just One Ques­tion.