You can now enjoy the slide deck from this ses­sion, which took place at the 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Sep­tem­ber 19–20th). Read the rest of this entry »

Misha Pavel, PhD, is the Pro­gram Direc­tor in charge of the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion’s Smart and Con­nected Health port­fo­lio, designed to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment and use of inno­v­a­tive health­care approach­es that are pre­ven­tive, proac­tive, evi­dence-based, per­son-cen­tered and focused on well-being rather than dis­ease. Con­cur­rently, he has an appoint­ment as a Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing, and a joint appoint­ment in the Depart­ment of Med­ical Infor­mat­ics and Clin­i­cal Epi­demi­ol­ogy, at Ore­gon Health and Sci­ence Uni­ver­sity. Pri­or to his aca­d­e­mic career, he was a mem­ber of the tech­ni­cal staff at Bell Lab­o­ra­to­ries, where his research includ­ed net­work analy­sis and mod­el­ing. Misha Pavel is a Senior Mem­ber of IEEE.

–> To Learn More and Reg­is­ter, click on 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Sep­tem­ber 19–20th, 2013

Syn­op­sis of the Smart and Con­nect­ed Health Pro­gram: Read the rest of this entry »

We are excit­ed to invite you to the first vir­tu­al, glob­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010). The Sharp­Brains Sum­mit will fea­ture a dream 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

• Kunal Sarkar, Lumos Labs
• Eliz­a­beth Zelin­s­ki, USC Davis School of Geron­tol­ogy Read the rest of this entry »

You 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 the rest of this entry »

Let me sum­ma­rize ten high­lights and reflec­tions from stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sions on cog­ni­tive health and assess­ments I have had this month so far.

Jan­u­ary 8–9th: Sym­po­sium on Co-Adap­tive Learn­ing: Adap­tive Tech­nol­o­gy for the Aging (details Here), orga­nized by the Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for Adap­tive Neur­al Sys­tems:

1. Cog­ni­tive health is a crit­i­cal fac­tor in over­all health­care, but is often approached in a frag­ment­ed, non-sys­tem­at­ic way. Most speak­ers in the sym­po­sium did men­tion how cog­ni­tive health issues inter­act with their spe­cif­ic areas of focus (aging, Parkin­son’s Dis­ease, trau­mat­ic brain injury, Alzheimer’s…) but there was a lack of a com­mon frame­work and tax­on­o­my to define the prob­lem and iden­ti­fy solu­tions and inter­ven­tions to mea­sure and help main­tain cog­ni­tive health across the lifes­pan.

2. For exam­ple, Parkin­son’s Dis­ease. Did you know (I did­n’t) that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of Parkin­son’s patients have well-iden­ti­fied cog­ni­tive impair­ments, most­ly in their exec­u­tive func­tions but also per­cep­tu­al prob­lems?

3. We tru­ly need a Cul­ture of Cog­ni­tive Health, as Ran­dal Koene point­ed out.

4. May online cog­ni­tive games serve as ongo­ing, real-time assess­ment of cog­ni­tive func­tion? Misha Pavel thought so. He also added we may well see “cog­ni­tive exer­cise coach­es” some­time in the hori­zon.

5. Skip Riz­zo pre­sent­ed how vir­tu­al real­i­ty can help address Post Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) and even to admin­is­ter inno­v­a­tive cog­ni­tive assess­ments.

6. My pre­sen­ta­tion, titled The Emerg­ing Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Mar­ket: Sta­tus, Trends and Chal­lenges, is avail­able Here

7. Jan­u­ary 22nd: Con­sumer Reports orga­nized a health sum­mit titled Read the rest of this entry »