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The Brain Fitness/ Training Market: An Executive Summary

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Over the next weeks we are going to be shar­ing the Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry of our mar­ket report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 with mem­bers and clients of sev­er­al part­ner orga­ni­za­tions (the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, where I will be speak­ing this Thurs­day, Neu­rotech Reports, where I will speak on Octo­ber 24th, and the Health 2.0 con­fer­ence, where we are spon­sor­ing a pan­el on gam­ing for health), so it is only fair that we first share it with our own readers.

Exec­u­tive Summary

A spate of recent glob­al news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and brain train­ing reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ur­al, non drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very time­ly, giv­en an aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing preva­lence of Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs in the US that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and lifestyle changes.

US brain fit­ness mar­ket: sig­nif­i­cant and growing

We esti­mate the size of the US brain fit­ness mar­ket was $225m in 2007 – more than dou­ble what it was in 2005. Where­as K12 school sys­tems were the largest buy­ers in 2005, con­sumers were respon­si­ble for most of the growth from 2005 to 2007. We esti­mate that the con­sumer seg­ment grew from a few mil­lion in 2005 to $80m in 2007, and fore­see sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket growth dri­ven not only by con­sumers but also by health­care and insur­ance providers.

Mar­ket dynamics

As we speak to diverse audi­ences about this emerg­ing field around the coun­try we are fre­quent­ly asked the fol­low­ing questions:

- Why are we talk­ing about the brain fit­ness field at all?

Over the past decade, teams backed by neu­ro­sci­en­tists around the world [Read more…] about The Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Mar­ket: An Exec­u­tive Summary

Nintendo Brain Training and Math in UK Schools

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Com­put­er game boosts maths scores (BBC):

- “It also found improve­ments in pupils’ con­cen­tra­tion and behaviour.”

- “The study involved more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scot­land using the Brain Train­ing from Dr Kawashima game on the Nin­ten­do DS every day.”

- “Researchers found that while all groups had improved their scores, the group using the game had improved by a fur­ther 50%.”

- “Less able chil­dren were found to be more like­ly to improve than the high­est attain­ers and almost all pupils had an increased per­cep­tion of their own ability.”

Com­ment:  fas­ci­nat­ing results sup­port­ing the poten­tial role for “Seri­ous Games” in edu­ca­tion. Now, please take the results with a grain of salt, since the study does­n’t seem to have been pub­lished yet in any top-tier peer-reviewed jour­nal.. The infor­ma­tion pub­licly avail­able seems to sim­ply con­sist of a press release by Learn­ing and Teach­ing Scot­land. We hope to see an in-depth report to answer many open ques­tions on the study. In any case, wel­come news!

Brain Fitness Programs For Seniors Housing, Healthcare and Insurance Providers: Evaluation Checklist

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Dur­ing the research phase before the pub­li­ca­tion of the spe­cial report Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Seniors Hous­ing — A Field in the Mak­ing, pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA), we real­ized that there were equal amounts of inter­est and con­fu­sion among exec­u­tives and pro­fes­sion­als think­ing about adding com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive exer­cise prod­ucts to their mix of health & well­ness activ­i­ties, so we includ­ed the Eval­u­a­tion Check­list that follows.

The real-life expe­ri­ences at lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions such as Senior Star Liv­ing, Bel­mont Vil­lage Senior Liv­ing, Erick­son Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties and oth­ers were instru­men­tal in the devel­op­ment of the Check­list. We hope it is useful.

Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams For Seniors Hous­ing, Health­care and Insur­ance Providers: Eval­u­a­tion Checklist

Over the next sev­er­al years, it is like­ly that many seniors hous­ing oper­a­tors will begin to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate a grow­ing num­ber of options to include “brain fit­ness cen­ters” in their communities.

Some options will require pur­chas­ing a device, such as Nin­ten­do prod­ucts, or the Dakim touch-screen sys­tem. Oth­ers will require installing soft­ware in PCs in exist­ing or new com­put­er labs, such as Posit Sci­ence, Cogmed or Cog­niFit’s pro­grams. Oth­ers will be ful­ly avail­able online, such as those offered by Lumos Labs, Hap­py Neu­ron and My Vig­or­ous Mind. And still oth­ers may be tech­nol­o­gy-free, promis­ing engag­ing com­bi­na­tions of inter­ac­tive, group-based, activ­i­ties with pen-and-paper exercises.

Cre­at­ing a sol­id busi­ness case will help com­mu­ni­ties nav­i­gate through this grow­ing array of options. We sug­gest com­mu­ni­ties con­sid­er this Sharp­Brains Check­list for Brain Fit­ness Centers:

1. Ear­ly Users: Who among our res­i­dents is ready and will­ing to do the pro­gram? How are they react­ing to the pilot test­ing of the program?

2. Cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits: What are the spe­cif­ic ben­e­fits claimed for using this pro­gram? Under what sce­nario of use (how many hours/week, how many weeks)? What spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive skill(s) does the pro­gram train? How will we mea­sure progress? [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams For Seniors Hous­ing, Health­care and Insur­ance Providers: Eval­u­a­tion Checklist

Brain Fitness Centers in Senior Housing — A Field in the Making

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Brain Fitness Centers in Seniors Housing - A Field in the MakingThe Amer­i­can Seniors Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA) has just released an Spe­cial Issue Brief, titled Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Senior Hous­ing — A Field in the Mak­ing. We pre­pared it for their mem­bers, and it is now avail­able for pur­chase (You can click here for pur­chase and down­load. $25.)

It was a plea­sure to learn more about emerg­ing trends there and dis­cuss best prac­tices and impli­ca­tions with some of the pio­neers at Senior Star Liv­ing, Bel­mont Vil­lage, Erick­son, and more, who have been lead­ing inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tives and con­duct­ing their own pilot stud­ies. I hope you enjoy the report.

This 15-page Spe­cial Report describes [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Cen­ters in Senior Hous­ing — A Field in the Making

Update: Major Implications from Brain Research

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Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please brainremem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Major Impli­ca­tions from Brain Research

Should Social-Emo­tion­al Learn­ing Be Part of Aca­d­e­m­ic Cur­ricu­lum?: It is clear by now that our brains are more than cog­ni­tive machines. For exam­ple, emo­tions can either enhance or inhib­it our abil­i­ty to learn. Daniel Gole­man explores the impli­ca­tions of “new stud­ies that reveal how teach­ing kids to be emo­tion­al­ly and social­ly com­pe­tent boost their aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.” Brought to you in part­ner­ship with Greater Good Magazine.

Retain old­er work­ers beyond retire­ment: Busi­ness­Week cov­ers a best prac­tice in a top­ic of grow­ing impor­tance: how large com­pa­nies, such as Amer­i­can Express, can retain old­er work­ers in pro­duc­tive ways beyond a set arbi­trary retire­ment age. As Dr. Art Kramer told us recent­ly, “as a soci­ety, it is a mas­sive waste of tal­ent not to ensure old­er adults remain active and productive.”

Brain­Tech and Sus­tain­able Brains: Build­ing on a recent quote by John Doerr about clean tech­nol­o­gy trends, we won­der… “If Ener­gy is the moth­er of all markets…who would be the father of all mar­kets?” The Human Brain, perhaps?

Health and Research 

Exer­cis­ing the body is exer­cis­ing the mind: Dr. Adri­an Pre­da explains research con­duct­ed at Gage lab­o­ra­to­ry that sup­ports the mer­its for phys­i­cal exer­cise to be rec­og­nized as a form of brain exer­cise too.

What You Can do to Improve Mem­o­ry (and Why It Dete­ri­o­rates in Old Age): Is there any­thing we can do besides “exer­cise like crazy, eat healthy foods that you don’t like all that much, pop your statin pills, and take up yoga?” Yes: focus, focus, focus, sug­gests Dr. Bill Klemm.

News and Events 

Cog­ni­tive Health News August 2008: This is a roundup of recent brain health news and our com­men­tary, includ­ing the grow­ing adop­tion of Dakim and Nin­ten­do prod­ucts, the cog­ni­tive impact of videogames, and the cog­ni­tive dimen­sion of the obe­si­ty crisis.

Exer­cise your brain at these events: Alvaro will present the main find­ings from our mar­ket research at mul­ti­ple con­fer­ences in the US, Cana­da and Dubai dur­ing the rest of  the year.

Edu­ca­tion­al Resources

Where does the “Feel­ing of Know­ing” comes from?: Dr. Gin­ger Camp­bell shares some insights from her recent inter­view with neu­rol­o­gist Robert Bur­ton (author of On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not).“While it might be true that one can learn to become more aware of the emo­tion­al sig­nals com­ing from ones body, Dr. Bur­ton argues that “gut feel­ings” or intu­ition should not be assumed to be true with­out testing.”

Resources for Brain Health Across the Lifes­pan: Lau­rie Bar­tels shares a list of inter­views, video, arti­cles, and books that go hand-in-hand with the brain-relat­ed top­ics we cover.

Brain teas­er

Can you use men­tal self rota­tion to read a map?: please check out this teas­er by Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, one of our favorites so far.

We hope you have enjoyed this newslet­ter. We encour­age you to stay tuned for our Sep­tem­ber edi­tions, since great con­tent is com­ing. We will soon pub­lish an inter­view with Lee Woodruff, co-author of the book In An Instant: A Fam­i­ly’s Jour­ney of Love and Heal­ing, and dis­cuss the spec­tac­u­lar cog­ni­tive recov­ery of her hus­band, ABC reporter Bob Woodruff, who expe­ri­enced a trau­mat­ic brain injury in Iraq in 2006. We will also inter­view Dr. Mike Pos­ner, emi­nent cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist, to explore recent find­ings on atten­tion and atten­tion train­ing and their implications.

Cognitive Health News: August 2008

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Here you have a roundup of inter­est­ing recent news on cog­ni­tive health top­ics and my commentary:

1) Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Studies

2) Men­tal Floss at Mil­i­tary Offi­cer Magazine

3) Brain Train­ing dom­i­nates ’08 Euro sales (CVG Online)

4) Dakim’s [m]Power Adopt­ed by 150 Senior Liv­ing Com­mu­ni­ties … (Busi­ness Wire)

5) Clum­sy kids more like­ly to become obese adults: study (CBC)

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1) There were a few inter­est­ing research papers pre­sent­ed at the last  Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion con­ven­tions around the theme:

Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Studies
–Skills Trans­fer to Class­room, Sur­gi­cal Pro­ce­dures, Sci­en­tif­ic Think­ing (press release).

Prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing study was that of 303 laparo­scop­ic sur­geons, which “showed that sur­geons who played video games requir­ing spa­tial skills and hand dex­ter­i­ty and then per­formed a drill test­ing these skills were sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster at [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health News: August 2008