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Can you train your brain to dri­ve longer into your gold­en years? (CTV News):

“For the elder­ly, the loss of a driver’s licence could mean the end of inde­pen­dence and the begin­ning of a decline in health, with far-reach­ing con­se­quences in their dai­ly lives…New assis­tive dri­ving tech­nolo­gies seem like an obvi­ous solu­tion in the years to come, but buy­ing new vehi­cles can be too expen­sive; while options like going for adult dri­ving lessons can be too great a blow to some seniors’ pride. Now, sci­en­tists claim that there’s anoth­er option avail­able to help old­er dri­vers main­tain their abil­i­ties on the road. Read the rest of this entry »

– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 7,773,097

Today we high­light a 2010 patent assigned to Posit Sci­ence Cor­po­ra­tion, the devel­op­er of Brain­HQ brain train­ing sys­tem. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patents, from old­er to new­er by issue date, to get a bet­ter glimpse into emerg­ing trends)

U.S. Patent No. 7,773,097: Visu­al empha­sis for cog­ni­tive train­ing exer­cis­es

• Assignee(s): Posit Sci­ence Cor­po­ra­tion
• Inventor(s): Michael M. Merzenich, Peter B. Delahunt, Joseph L. Hardy, Hen­ry W. Mah­ncke, Don­ald Richard
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neu­rocog­ni­tive train­ing
• Issue Date: August 10, 2010

SharpBrains’ Take:

In a sim­i­lar yet unique approach to the ‘961 patent (anoth­er note­wor­thy non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent assigned to Posit Sci­ence), the ‘097 patent dis­clos­es meth­ods for iter­a­tive­ly test­ing and train­ing a user’s abil­i­ty to dis­cern between pre­sent­ed stim­uli. Read the rest of this entry »

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If the media is your main source of infor­ma­tion about brain train­ing and cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, you will prob­a­bly believe the fol­low­ing:

1) All brain train­ing is the same…

2) …and it sim­ply does­n’t work.

3) Com­mer­cial brain train­ing pro­grams, espe­cial­ly, don’t work.

4) How could they work? Genet­ics is des­tiny, aging is a pre­de­ter­mined process…so by age 60 or 70 or 80, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

If you tracked and ana­lyzed the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture around cog­ni­tive train­ing, cog­ni­tive ther­a­pies, biofeed­back, med­i­ta­tion, brain reserve and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in gen­er­al, you’d know those 4 beliefs are wrong. They are myths that pre­vent a more nuanced con­ver­sa­tion about brain-enhanc­ing lifestyles and about the emerg­ing brain train­ing and neu­rotech­nol­o­gy toolk­it.

Good news is, a just-pub­lished study should help debunk those myths–especially with regards to com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive training–and pro­vide a bet­ter Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week I shared some key sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and invest­ment trends rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Brain Health, based on my par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and promised a sec­ond arti­cle more focused on the tech­nol­o­gy side of things.

Here it is 🙂

Just a few weeks after the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit I also attend­ed CES 2017. While I enjoyed the myr­i­ad emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies –autonomous vehi­cles, robot­ics, drones, aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets, voice acti­vat­ed every­thing– I was most­ly struck by a firm named Halo Neu­ro­science. They have a fas­ci­nat­ing wear­able prod­uct, Halo Sport, claim­ing to accel­er­ate gains in strength, explo­sive­ness, endurance, and mus­cle mem­o­ry, improv­ing the brain’s response to ath­let­ic train­ing. It uses tDCS (tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion), essen­tial­ly prim­ing move­ment-relat­ed cir­cuits of the brain to become more recep­tive to stim­uli, help­ing the brain wire in the prac­tice for improved future response.

The cutting edge of applied neuroplasticity

Both con­fer­ences allowed me to see the cut­ting edge of Read the rest of this entry »

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We are proud to share that Dr. Michael Merzenich, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at UCSF, co-devel­op­er of the first cochlear implants, pio­neer of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty research, co-founder of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing and Posit Sci­ence, and win­ner of the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neu­ro­science, will speak at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Rein­vent­ing Brain Health in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 6–8th). You can check out the Pre­lim­i­nary Agen­da here.