neurocentric

On Jan­u­ary 18–20, 2010 Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and his team at Sharp­Brains put togeth­er a splen­did line-up of speak­ers on a wide range of top­ics relat­ed to emerg­ing brain fit­ness research, tech­nolo­gies, and mar­kets, and clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive and men­tal health issues. IFTF was proud to be a spon­sor of this event.

Although the con­fer­ence was vir­tu­al, aside from the rig­ors of trav­el and a bas­ket of bagels on the hall­way table, my lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion (and fatigue) mir­rored most of my face-to-face con­fer­ence expe­ri­ences. It was a tech­ni­cal suc­cess and the con­tent was first-rate.

The con­fer­ence was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for us at IFTF to gath­er data and map the research land­scape in cog­ni­tive fit­ness, espe­cial­ly as it relates to our 2010 Health Hori­zons research project around “Neu­ro­cen­tric Health.”

I’d like to share a small sam­ple of the obser­va­tions, shifts, and points of inter­est we took from the conference.

1. The fore­cast of Dr. Michael Merzenich, an expert in brain plas­tic­i­ty, that clin­i­cal prac­tice and treat­ment will move from drug/­surgery-based inter­ven­tions to non-inva­sive tech­niques, prac­tices, and pre­ven­ta­tive coach­ing is pro­found. This would change the tim­ing, lev­el, and qual­i­ty of treat­ment inter­ven­tions, and could be a sig­nif­i­cant cat­a­lyst to the (arguably) need­ed change in medical/clinical point of care and cul­ture that Dr. P Murali Doraiswamy of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty men­tioned as well. This shift would impact the insur­ance indus­try and risk pro­files, pay­ment mech­a­nisms, and, most impor­tant­ly, might be bet­ter for patients as well.

2. I am always wary of reduc­tion­ist mod­els and the ten­den­cy to focus our atten­tion on cer­tain organs or meth­ods at the expense of the whole sys­tem. This hes­i­ta­tion is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when the focus is on the brain. I was very hap­py to hear [Read more…] about Pump­ing up the Brain: Reflec­tions on the Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Summit