Soft­ware engi­neer Kel­ly Cash­ion (right) adjusts a wire­less EEG head­set on research engi­neer Nilesh Powar. Cred­it: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton Research Insti­tute

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Bat­tling Addic­tion With Brain­pow­er (Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton press release):

“The Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton Research Insti­tute has won a $10,000 Ohio Opi­oid Tech­nol­o­gy Chal­lenge award for a pro­gram that will teach peo­ple with opi­oid addic­tions how to reduce their crav­ings by regain­ing con­trol of their brains.

“Using neu­ro­feed­back, we’ll work with our vol­un­teers to help them learn to reg­u­late activ­i­ty in the part of their brain asso­ci­at­ed with crav­ings and rewire some of those path­ways, allow­ing them to reduce their crav­ings and expe­ri­ence a more ‘nor­mal’ state even with­out opi­oids.” Read the rest of this entry »

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A Hard­ware Update for the Human Brain (The Wall Street Jour­nal):

“The field that gave Emi­ly her life back is known as neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, or sim­ply neurotech—a mar­riage of neu­rol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, neu­ro­surgery and the kind of hard­ware that goes into smart­phones. Today, most neu­rotech com­pa­nies are focused on med­ical appli­ca­tions, which Read the rest of this entry »

Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Could Lead to Thought-Con­trolled Devices (BizTech):

“To inter­act with a com­put­er, users gen­er­al­ly type on a key­board, swipe their fin­gers across a screen or speak a voice com­mand. What if, instead, the machine sim­ply respond­ed to their thoughts? Read the rest of this entry »

The Sil­ver Econ­o­my: Brain train­ing fired up by hard evi­dence (Finan­cial Times):

“Not so long ago, peo­ple kept age­ing brains active through read­ing and writ­ing, talk­ing with friends and fam­i­ly, and per­haps play­ing cards or doing puz­zles. Now a rapid­ly grow­ing num­ber are tak­ing a high-tech approach to cog­ni­tive main­te­nance, through com­put­er pro­grams designed to stim­u­late the brain… Read the rest of this entry »

Dur­ing the research phase before the pub­li­ca­tion of the spe­cial report Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Seniors Hous­ing — A Field in the Mak­ing, pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA), we real­ized that there were equal amounts of inter­est and con­fu­sion among exec­u­tives and pro­fes­sion­als think­ing about adding com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive exer­cise prod­ucts to their mix of health & well­ness activ­i­ties, so we includ­ed the Eval­u­a­tion Check­list that fol­lows.

The real-life expe­ri­ences at lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions such as Senior Star Liv­ing, Bel­mont Vil­lage Senior Liv­ing, Erick­son Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties and oth­ers were instru­men­tal in the devel­op­ment of the Check­list. We hope it is use­ful.

Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams For Seniors Hous­ing, Health­care and Insur­ance Providers: Eval­u­a­tion Check­list

Over the next sev­er­al years, it is like­ly that many seniors hous­ing oper­a­tors will begin to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate a grow­ing num­ber of options to include “brain fit­ness cen­ters” in their com­mu­ni­ties.

Some options will require pur­chas­ing a device, such as Nin­ten­do prod­ucts, or the Dakim touch-screen sys­tem. Oth­ers will require installing soft­ware in PCs in exist­ing or new com­put­er labs, such as Posit Sci­ence, Cogmed or CogniFit’s pro­grams. Oth­ers will be ful­ly avail­able online, such as those offered by Lumos Labs, Hap­py Neu­ron and My Vig­or­ous Mind. And still oth­ers may be tech­nol­o­gy-free, promis­ing engag­ing com­bi­na­tions of inter­ac­tive, group-based, activ­i­ties with pen-and-paper exer­cis­es.

Cre­at­ing a sol­id busi­ness case will help com­mu­ni­ties nav­i­gate through this grow­ing array of options. We sug­gest com­mu­ni­ties con­sid­er this Sharp­Brains Check­list for Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters:

1. Ear­ly Users: Who among our res­i­dents is ready and will­ing to do the pro­gram? How are they react­ing to the pilot test­ing of the pro­gram?

2. Cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits: What are the spe­cif­ic ben­e­fits claimed for using this pro­gram? Under what sce­nario of use (how many hours/week, how many weeks)? What spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive skill(s) does the pro­gram train? How will we mea­sure progress? Read the rest of this entry »