MIT-Media-Lab

Eye-tracking pioneer Smart Eye acquires MIT spin-off Affectiva to augment driver monitoring systems and more

by

Emo­tion-detec­tion soft­ware start-up Affec­ti­va acquired for $73.5M (TechCrunch):

Smart Eye, the pub­licly trad­ed Swedish com­pa­ny that sup­plies dri­ver mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems for a dozen automak­ers, has acquired emo­tion-detec­tion soft­ware start­up Affec­ti­va for $73.5 mil­lion in a cash-and-stock deal. [Read more…] about Eye-track­ing pio­neer Smart Eye acquires MIT spin-off Affec­ti­va to aug­ment dri­ver mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems and more

Cognitive Health Track at Games for Health Conference: Full Schedule Announced!

by

Games for Health and Sharp­Brains have part­nered to bring you the first Cog­ni­tive Games for Health Conference - Cognitive Health TrackHealth Track in a Games for Health Con­fer­ence, June 11–12th in Boston. If you are inter­est­ed, in attend­ing the con­fer­ence, you can learn more and reg­is­ter Here.

To get a 15% off reg­is­tra­tion fees ($379), you can use dis­count code: sharp09, when you reg­is­ter Here.

—

Cog­ni­tive Health Track, Pow­ered by SharpBrains

Thurs­day, June 11th

10.20 (50m) Bird’s Eye View of Cog­ni­tive Health Innovation
Speaker(s): Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains

Sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graph­ic trends have con­verged to cre­ate a new $265m mar­ket in the US alone: seri­ous games, soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions that can help peo­ple of all ages assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will pro­vide a Bird’s Eye View of the sci­ence, mar­ket seg­ments and trends, com­pet­i­tive land­scape, and main chal­lenges ahead, based on The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009 report released in May, which includ­ed Research Exec­u­tive Briefs pre­pared by 12 lead­ing sci­en­tists and a sur­vey of 2,000+ deci­sion-mak­ers and ear­ly adopters.

61% of respon­dents to the sur­vey Strong­ly Agreed with the state­ment “Address­ing cog­ni­tive and brain health should be a health­care pri­or­i­ty.” But, 65% Agreed/Strongly Agreed with “I don’t real­ly know what to expect from prod­ucts mak­ing brain claims.” In this ses­sion, Alvaro will pub­licly unveil the new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, To Keep Your Brain Sharp, co-authored by neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and him­self, aimed at help­ing con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als under­stand and nav­i­gate this grow­ing field.

11.20 (30m) The All­state-Posit Sci­ence Part­ner­ship: Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Safer Driving 
Speaker(s): Tom War­den, All­state; Hen­ry Mah­ncke, Posit Science

Evi­dence-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams have been avail­able in retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties for sev­er­al years. Now, they are reach­ing a younger pop­u­la­tion includ­ing Boomers through inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships, like insurers.

In Octo­ber 2008 auto insur­ance com­pa­ny All­state and brain fit­ness soft­ware devel­op­er Posit Sci­ence announced a research col­lab­o­ra­tion that could lead to “poten­tial­ly the next big break­through in auto­mo­bile safe­ty”. The pur­pose of this ses­sion is to review nov­el ways of get­ting the sci­ence of cog­ni­tive train­ing into the real world where it can help peo­ple. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from All­state and Posit Sci­ence will dis­cuss why these part­ner­ships work for insur­ers, devel­op­ers, and end users. They will also pro­vide a thor­ough review of the eval­u­a­tion process a major part­ner goes through when select­ing a cog­ni­tive train­ing company.

12.00 (30m) What Con­sumers Buy and Why 
Speaker(s): Lind­say Gask­ins, Mar­bles: The Brain Store

Launched in Octo­ber 2008, Mar­bles: The Brain Store is a retail store that [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health Track at Games for Health Con­fer­ence: Full Sched­ule Announced!