neurorehabilitation

May “industry review boards” contribute to the wider adoption of virtual and augmented reality for physical and mental health?

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Indus­try review boards are need­ed to pro­tect VR user pri­va­cy (World Eco­nom­ic Forum blog):

“It seemed like a game when Riley first start­ed the vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) maze … A month after play­ing the game, Riley was turned down for a new life-insur­ance pol­i­cy. Giv­en his excel­lent health, he couldn’t under­stand why. Sev­er­al appeals lat­er, the insur­ance com­pa­ny dis­closed that Riley’s track­ing data from the VR maze game revealed behav­ioral move­ment pat­terns often seen among peo­ple in the very ear­ly stages of demen­tia [Read more…] about May “indus­try review boards” con­tribute to the wider adop­tion of vir­tu­al and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty for phys­i­cal and men­tal health?

Trend: The more prostheses the higher the need for intuitive interfaces and design

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CDT-Neu­ro stu­dent leads team to win £10K Robot­ics & Inno­va­tion prize (Impe­r­i­al Col­lege London):

“Irene Mendez Guer­ra (CDT Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy), Ben Lakey (Mitt and Impe­r­i­al alum­ni), Ivan Vujak­li­ja (Prof. Aal­to Uni­ver­si­ty and for­mer Impe­r­i­al asso­ciate) and Dario Fari­na (Chair Neu­rore­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Engi­neer­ing, Impe­r­i­al) have cre­at­ed Nav­i­ga, which is devel­op­ing intu­itive, user friend­ly con­trols for pros­the­ses … Naviga’s con­trol sys­tem elim­i­nates the long train­ing ses­sions and improves the cur­rent con­trol approach­es to increase the accep­tance, usage, and func­tion­al­i­ty of cur­rent prostheses.”

To Learn More:

FDA clears MindMaze GO neurorehabilitation platform, easing access to continued outpatient therapy

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Mind­Maze Con­sol­i­dates First-ever FDA Approval for Inpa­tient and Out­pa­tient Neu­rore­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Ther­a­py (press release):

“Mind­Maze, a leader in brain­tech, has today announced that it has obtained FDA clear­ance to launch its portable neu­rore­ha­bil­i­ta­tion prod­uct, Mind­Mo­tion™ GO, in the Unit­ed States. Togeth­er with Mind­Mo­tion PRO (which received FDA clear­ance in 2017), Mind­Mo­tion GO is the next offer­ing in the company’s con­tin­u­um of care, pro­vid­ing gam­i­fied neu­rore­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ther­a­py. [Read more…] about FDA clears Mind­Maze GO neu­rore­ha­bil­i­ta­tion plat­form, eas­ing access to con­tin­ued out­pa­tient therapy

10 Solvers selected @ MIT Solve’s Brain Health Challenge

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Win­ners of the 2017 Brain Health Chal­lenge by MIT Solve, select­ed on Sep­tem­ber 17th, 2017

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Yes­ter­day, after a day of great pitch­es and tough deci­sions, the Judges @ MIT Solve’s Brain Health Chal­lenge select­ed 10 Win­ners (called “Solvers”) devel­op­ing scal­able tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions that [Read more…] about 10 Solvers select­ed @ MIT Solve’s Brain Health Challenge

Exploring the latest in cognitive rehabilitation and brain health

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Dur­ing Expo Day select­ed Sum­mit Part­ners and Spon­sors show­cased their lat­est ini­tia­tives and solutions.

  • Dr. Daniel Perez-Mar­cos, Senior Sci­en­tist at Mind­Maze, pre­sent­ed the Mind­Mo­tion platform–a series of med­ical-grade vir­tu­al real­i­ty solu­tions for neurorehabilitation.
  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez. Sharp­Brains‘ CEO & Edi­tor-in-Chief dis­cussed The State of Brain Health Innovation.
  • Mark Wat­son, Co-Direc­tor of the Wat­son Cen­tre for Brain Health, explored lat­est research and pro­grams for cog­ni­tive rehabilitation.

These pre­sen­ta­tions took place at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Rein­vent­ing Brain Health in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 6–8th, 2016).

Centre for Brain Fitness at Baycrest: Interview with Dr. William Reichman

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In April 2008, Bay­crest, a lead­ing research insti­tute focused on aging and brain func­tion, received $10-mil­lion from the Ontario Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a ground­break­ing Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness. Its stat­ed goal was to “devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize a range of prod­ucts designed to improve the brain health of aging Ontar­i­ans and oth­ers around the world”.

“Our gov­ern­ment is proud to sup­port Bay­crest and its invalu­able work, which is already lead­ing to the dis­cov­ery of impor­tant new tools and approach­es to treat­ing brain dis­eases asso­ci­at­ed with aging,” said Min­is­ter of Research and Inno­va­tion, John Wilkinson.

We have Baycrest’s CEO with us today, to explore why Ontario and Bay­crest chose to Bill Reichman Baycrestbecome pio­neers in this area, and dis­cuss some of the main oppor­tu­ni­ties, and chal­lenges. Dr. William E. Reich­man is Pres­i­dent and CEO of Bay­crest. Dr. Reich­man, an inter­na­tion­al­ly-known expert in geri­atric men­tal health and demen­tia, is also Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try on the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Bill, thank you for your time. Let me start by ask­ing, giv­en that you just spoke at the recent Con­sumer Elec­tron­ic Show, what do you make of the grow­ing brain fit­ness field?

Bill Reich­man: it looks like a clas­sic exam­ple of a very promis­ing but still ear­ly stage field – a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty and enthu­si­asm, but also a lot of prod­uct claims that are not backed by sol­id research. Think about the phys­i­cal fit­ness anal­o­gy: even today, after decades of progress, you still see peo­ple buy­ing research-based prod­ucts such as tread­mills but also all types of ran­dom machines they see on TV and have not been sub­ject to any val­i­da­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, con­sumers today do not know what to make of grow­ing brain fit­ness claims. As anoth­er speak­er point­ed out, for the indus­try to ful­fill its promise, it will need to be care­ful with research and claims, not to end up like the nutraceu­ti­cals category.

By the way, let me rec­og­nize that the work you are doing with Sharp­Brains reports and your web­site is very impor­tant to offer qual­i­ty information.

Thank you. Let’s step back for a moment. Tak­ing a, say, 10 years view, what is the main oppor­tu­ni­ty that tech­nol­o­gy-based brain fit­ness can offer to society?

First of all, let me say that I think we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make major progress in Brain Health in the XXI cen­tu­ry, sim­i­lar to what hap­pened with Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Health in the XX, and tech­nol­o­gy will play a cru­cial role.

Giv­en the rapid advances we are wit­ness­ing today in the research and tech­nol­o­gy are­nas, I feel con­fi­dent in say­ing that in less than 10 years we will have both valid and reli­able assess­ments of cog­ni­tive func­tions, that will be used both by [Read more…] about Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness at Bay­crest: Inter­view with Dr. William Reichman