NIA

28 Confirmed Speakers: Optimizing Health through Neuroplasticity & Digital Innovation

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The 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (June 7–8th 2012, no trav­el required since event takes place ful­ly online) is plung­ing ahead, with 28 Con­firmed Speak­ers so far:

Intel Corporation and Lumos Labs Become Gold Sponsors of 2011 SharpBrains Summit

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We are pleased to make eleven impor­tant announce­ments about the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit…eleven addi­tion­al rea­sons to con­sid­er reg­is­ter­ing and join­ing our event and com­mu­ni­ty next week.

  1. Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, the “Spon­sors of Tomor­row™”, and Lumos Labs have become Sum­mit Gold Sponsors.
  2. Sharp­Brains will issue a Cer­tifi­cate of Atten­dance to par­tic­i­pants (20 hours of con­tin­u­ing education).
  3. Jamie Wil­son shares 20 rea­sons why vir­tu­al con­fer­ences are the future.
  4. NIH/ NIA Pro­gram Chief Mol­ly Wag­ster will dis­cuss the new NIH Tool­box for Assess­ment of Neu­ro­log­i­cal and Behav­ioral Function.
  5. Yaakov Stern (Colum­bia), David Dar­by (CogState), Kei­th Wesnes (Unit­ed BioSource) and Jef­frey Kaye (Orcat­e­ch) will explore The Role of Cog­ni­tive Health Mon­i­tor­ing Systems.
  6. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (Sharp­Brains) and Muki Hansteen-Izo­ra (Intel Cor­po­ra­tion) will ana­lyze The State of Inno­va­tion and Emerg­ing Marketplace.
  7. You can still Reg­is­ter and obtain a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2010 (which includes mar­ket data, ven­dor analy­sis, inno­va­tion case stud­ies, research briefs, and more.)
  8. Michael Merzenich (UCSF), Alvaro Pas­cual-Leone (Har­vard), Wal­ter Green­leaf (Vir­tu­ally­Bet­ter) and Kate Sul­li­van (Wal­ter Reed) will dis­cuss how Inno­va­tion gets From Lab to Marketplace.
  9. Lumos Labs, Brain Resource, Cogmed, Bay­crest, Cog­niFit, and Posit Sci­ence will present their lat­est tools and solu­tions dur­ing Expo Day.
  10. A total of 19 excel­lent Sum­mit Part­ners help us expand Sum­mit’s reach and influence.
  11. We are plan­ning April/ May social gath­er­ings for Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants in 5 cities: San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les, Wash­ing­ton DC, NYC, and Toron­to, and will help facil­i­tate gath­er­ings in any city/ region with at least 10 Sum­mit participants.

Please vis­it the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit web­site to Learn More and Reg­is­ter.

Also, please fol­low us via Twit­ter and spread the word about the Sum­mit using hash­tag #svs11

We look for­ward to “meet­ing” many of you next week! Please remem­ber you can enter dis­count code sharp2011 in order to get 15% off reg­is­tra­tion fees.

36-Hour Offer: Integrative Neuroscience, Personalized Medicine and the 2011 SharpBrains Summit

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An impres­sive recent ref­er­ence book on the future of brain care is Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine, edit­ed by Evian Gor­don and Stephen H. Koslow (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press; $89.95).

Book descrip­tion: This book takes an in depth and hard look at the cur­rent sta­tus and future direc­tion of treat­ment pre­dic­tive mark­ers in Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine for the brain from the per­spec­tives of the researchers on the cut­ting edge and those involved in health­care imple­men­ta­tion. The con­tents pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive text suit­able as both a pithy intro­duc­tion to and a clear sum­ma­ry of the “sci­ence to solu­tions” con­tin­u­um in this devel­op­ing field of Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine and Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science. The sci­ence includes both mea­sures of genes using whole genome approach­es and SNIPS as well as BRAIN­mark­ers of direct brain func­tion such as brain imag­ing, bio­phys­i­cal changes and objec­tive cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral mea­sure­ments. More infor­ma­tion below.

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36-Hour Offer

Dr. Evian Gor­don will speak at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tu­ry (March 30th — April 1st) and his firm, Brain Resource, is among Sum­mit Spon­sors. Thanks to his sup­port, we are pleased to announce the fol­low­ing offer: TEN pro­fes­sion­als who reg­is­ter to attend the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit over the next 36 hours, from now until Fri­day March 4th, 7pm US Pacif­ic Time, will each receive a com­pli­men­ta­ry hard­copy of the book Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine. If more than ten peo­ple reg­is­ter by then, we will select ten names at random.

We are also pleased to announce the addi­tion of 12 new Speak­ers and Mod­er­a­tors to the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit — the result­ing agen­da is turn­ing out to be noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar (in our, yes, a bit biased judgment):

  • Alexan­dra More­house, CMO, AAA North California
  • Dr. Evian Gor­don, CEO, Brain Resource
  • Kath­leen Herath, Asst Vice Pres­i­dent, Nation­wide Insurance
  • Dr. David Tal, Direc­tor, A.G.E. Mat­ters Clinic
  • Paula Psyl­lakis, Senior Pol­icy Advi­sor, Ontario Min­istry of Research and Innovation
  • Veroni­ka Litin­ski, Advi­sor, MaRS Life Sci­ences and Health Care
  • Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine
  • Dr. Jef­frey Kaye, Direc­tor, NIA — ORCATECH
  • Dr. John Rep­pas, Pol­icy Direc­tor, Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Organization
  • Dr. Justin Mar­ley, Chair Men­tal Health Infor­mat­ics Group, UK Roy­al Col­lege of Psychiatrists
  • Dr. David Dar­by, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer, Cogstate
  • Dr. John Hart, Med­ical Sci­ence Direc­tor, Cen­ter for Brain Health at UT-Dallas

-> Learn More and Reg­is­ter to Par­tic­i­pate in the Sum­mit Here, and get a chance at get­ting a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of the book Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine!

[Read more…] about 36-Hour Offer: Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science, Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine and the 2011 Sharp­Brains Summit

Mental Floss at Military Officer magazine

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Good arti­cle on the August edi­tion of Mil­i­tary Offi­cer magazine:

Men­tal Floss (August 2008) (link opens a PDF-life doc­u­ment, you can read the text by Zoom­ing In).

My 2 favorite quotes, both by Dr. Mol­ly Wag­ster, chief of the Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy of Aging Branch, Nation­al Insti­tute on Aging (NIA) in Bethes­da, Md:

- “Cer­tain­ly as we age there are declines with brain func­tions and cog­ni­tion. But there’s evi­dence that the aging brain can adapt and change more than we ever thought”.

- “We don’t know how it hap­pens or how long changes last, but even in the face of these unan­swered ques­tions, there is the chance to main­tain our cog­ni­tive function”.

Let me add a  reflec­tion: who among us won’t be tomor­row one day old­er than he/she is today? The good news about the “aging brain” does­n’t only refer to adults over 70!

To explore these con­cepts in more depth, you may enjoy vis­it­ing our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series.