Michael Merzenich on Brain Training, Assessments, and Personal Brain Trainers

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 17, 2009 |

Inter­view with Dr. Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at UCSF, a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant. In 1996, he was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (Nas­daq: SCIL), and in 2004 became co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer of Posit Sci­ence. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1999 and to the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine this year. He retired as Fran­cis A. Sooy Pro­fes­sor and Co-Direc­tor of the Keck Cen­ter for Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Fran­cis­co in 2007. You may have learned about his work in one of PBS TV spe­cials, mul­ti­ple media appear­ances, or neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-relat­ed books.

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The Brain Fitness/ Training Market: An Executive Summary

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 7, 2008

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…

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Mobile Brain Training, Scientific Learning, and More News

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 30, 2008

Some recent brain train­ing and health news:  1) A Promis­ing Debut for Com­put­er­ized Ther­a­pies 2) Fit­ness pro­tects brain in Alzheimer’s patients 3) Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram Clas­sic comes to Mac 4) Posit Sci­ence gains own­er­ship of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing (NSDQ: SCIL) Brain­Con­nec­tion. 5) Brain train­ing on your mobile 6) You must remem­ber this: how the mind works Here you…

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Brain Fitness Software Trends

By Alvaro Fernandez | January 3, 2008

Some very inter­est­ing brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket news: 1) Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing To Buy Out Solil­o­quy — “Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Corp. has announced that it will acquire Solil­o­quy Learn­ing from JTT Hold­ings. Both Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing and Solil­o­quy pro­vide tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions for edu­ca­tion. The acqui­si­tion will cost SLC about $11 mil­lion and is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed this month.” -…

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Exercise and The Brain in Newsweek

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 18, 2007 |

The new edi­tion of Newsweek brings us a great cov­er sto­ry titled Stronger, Faster, Smarter. “Exer­cise does more than build mus­cles and help pre­vent heart dis­ease. New sci­ence shows that it also boosts brainpower—and may offer hope in the bat­tle against Alzheimer’s.” Check it out! We addressed the ques­tion Is phys­i­cal fit­ness impor­tant to your brain…

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