• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

Pequot-Ventures

The Cognitive Health and Fitness Market On The Move

October 10, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

As you have prob­a­bly seen, the Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness field is rapid­ly evolv­ing, so let me high­light some of the main recent devel­op­ments affect­ing the field:

1) Pub­lic pol­i­cy initiatives: 
— The Gov­ern­ment of Ontario, Cana­da, announced a $10m invest­ment in Bay­crest Research Cen­ter to help devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize brain fit­ness tech­nolo­gies. This $10m invest­ment was matched with an addi­tion­al $10m by local investors.
— In the US, The Paul Well­stone and Pete Domeni­ci Men­tal Health Par­i­ty and Addic­tion Equi­ty Act of 2008 was signed into law, includ­ed in the recent­ly-approved eco­nom­ic bailout bill. The pas­sage of this law has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for health­care providers and tech­nol­o­gy ven­dors alike.

2) Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments Used by the US Military: 
The US Army launched a new pol­i­cy requir­ing cog­ni­tive screen­ings of all sol­diers before deploy­ment (in order to bet­ter diag­nose poten­tial prob­lems such as PTSD and TBI upon return). ANAM was the select­ed com­put­er­ized bat­tery of tests.

3) Ven­ture & Angel Fundrais­ing for Cog­ni­tive Train­ing companies: 
A num­ber of devel­op­ers have raised mon­ey. Cog­niFit received $5m (from Milk Cap­i­tal), Lumos Labs $3m (First­Mark Cap­i­tal ‑pre­vi­ous­ly called Pequot Ventures‑, Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners), Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Train­ing $1.5m (issued shares), Viv­i­ty Labs $1m (undis­closed angel investors), This is, of course, on top of the Feb­ru­ary $10.6 invest­ment in Dakim (Galen Part­ners) that we already includ­ed in our mar­ket report.

4) Major Ini­tia­tives by Insur­ance Companies: 
— All­state launched a large-scale research project to mea­sure impact of Posit Sci­ence InSight (visu­al pro­cess­ing train­ing) on dri­ver safe­ty for adults over 50.
— OptumHealth announced a 3‑year, $18m agree­ment with Brain Resource to offer web-based cog­ni­tive assess­ments as part of clin­i­cians’ deci­sion sup­port systems.
— Humana decid­ed not to renew its agree­ment with Posit Sci­ence to offer Posit’s audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram to Medicare members.

5) New Research:
— In a sig­nif­i­cant new study, a team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan pub­lished a high-qual­i­ty paper in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences show­ing how com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing can gen­er­al­ize and improve flu­id intel­li­gence (one of the domains that tends to decline with age).
— Learn­ing and Teach­ing Scot­land released an inter­nal study show­ing how Nin­ten­do Brain Train­ing can help children’s math and con­cen­tra­tion skills. The study gained sig­nif­i­cant media atten­tion, despite the fact it hasn’t been pub­lished in a respect­ed journal.

Note: This is an excerpt from the 6‑Month Mar­ket Update we will  release lat­er this month, cov­er­ing the many impor­tant devel­op­ments that have occurred since we launched the inau­gur­al Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report in March this year. This spe­cial report will be avail­able exclu­sive­ly for our Pre­mi­um Research Spon­sors.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Allstate, anam, Baycrest, Brain-Fitness, brain-fitness-tools, Brain-health, Brain-Resource, Brain-Training, Canada, Clinicians, cognifit, cognitive-assessments, cognitive-health, Cognitive-Training, Dakim, FirstMark-Capital, fitbrains, fluid-intelligence, Galen-Partners, healthcare, Humana, insurance, lumos-labs, Medicare, mental-health-parity, military, Milk-Capital, nintendo-brain-training, Norwest-Venture-Partners, Ontario, OptumHealth, Pequot-Ventures, Posit-Science, Posit-Science-Insight, PTSD, public-policy, scientific-brain-training, TBI, US-Army, venture-capital, venture-funding, Vivity-Labs, working-memory-training

Lumos Labs (Lumosity) Brain Training Games

June 3, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Press release: Here

– “Lumos Labs, devel­op­er of Lumosity.com, the lead­ing web-based provider of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-test­ed brain train­ing games, today announced that it has raised $3 mil­lion of equi­ty financ­ing from Pequot Ven­tures, Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners (NVP), and exist­ing investors includ­ing Michael Dear­ing. The investor group brings exper­tise that will cat­alyze the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of Lumosity.com and sup­port Lumos Labs mis­sion to improve lives by enhanc­ing brain fitness.

– “Lumos Labs is at the cen­ter of a boom­ing inter­est in cog­ni­tive exer­cise and the emerg­ing sci­ence about the remark­able plas­tic­i­ty of the brain, said Amish Jani of Pequot Ven­tures. Lumosity.com has seen tremen­dous demand from users and part­ners alike by lever­ag­ing the pow­er of the web to deliv­er a unique plat­form for brain fitness.

Great news for the sec­tor. The more tools avail­able for lead­ing men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing lives, the bet­ter we will all be.Rubik's Cube brain exercise

Lumosity.com (click Here to get a sense of their games) pro­vides a great user expe­ri­ence at a rea­son­able cost. From an investor’s per­spec­tive, we believe Lumos Labs is a very seri­ous con­tender in the brain fit­ness space, and it has indeed been exe­cut­ing a very smart online strategy.

Now, I am not sure what “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-test­ed brain train­ing games” real­ly means. While prepar­ing our Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report we reviewed all pub­lished research on the effi­ca­cy behind dif­fer­ent pro­grams, and did­n’t find any for Lumos­i­ty (which has some very inter­est­ing inter­nal, but not pub­lished, data).

We gave Lumos­i­ty a score of 2 ouf of 10 in Clin­i­cal Val­i­da­tion (with Nin­ten­do Brain Age get­ting a score of 1, and NovaV­i­sion, cleared by the FDA for use with stroke/ TBI patients, get­ting a 5).

[Read more…] about Lumos Labs (Lumos­i­ty) Brain Train­ing Games

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain-fitness-program, brain-training-games, cogmed, cognitive-exercise, Dakim, educators, Fast-ForWord, fitbrains, Happy-Neuron, health-professionals, lumos-labs, Lumosity, MindFit, MyBrainTrainer, neuropsychologists, Nintendo-Brain-Age, Norwest-Venture-Partners, NovaVision, Pequot-Ventures, Posit-Science

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 12,620 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2022 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy