UCSF

Update: Humankind’s evolving quest to enhance the brain and the mind

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Time for the first Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter in the new decade, fea­tur­ing a range of inspir­ing and (most­ly) promis­ing news about humankind’s evolv­ing quest to enhance the brain and the mind, and a few fun brain teasers 🙂

New thinking:

New research:

New tools:

A few quick brain teasers to workout your prefrontal cortex:

 

Have a great February,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

 

UCSF to open innovative neurology clinic to address “diagnostic odyssey”

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The new UCSF Jan Shrem and Maria Manet­ti Shrem Neu­rol­o­gy Clin­ic will be housed in the Joan and San­ford I. Weill Neu­ro­sciences Building.

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UCSF to Launch Unique Neu­rol­o­gy Clin­ic Spe­cial­iz­ing in Dif­fi­cult-to-Diag­nose Cas­es (press release):

“A pro­posed neu­rol­o­gy clin­ic at UCSF Med­ical Cen­ter at Mis­sion Bay aims to short­cut the “diag­nos­tic odyssey” faced by many patients with baf­fling brain symp­toms that do not meet the stan­dard cri­te­ria for any spe­cif­ic condition.

Patients with ambigu­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal symp­toms, but no diag­no­sis, fre­quent­ly [Read more…] about UCSF to open inno­v­a­tive neu­rol­o­gy clin­ic to address “diag­nos­tic odyssey”

UCSF, Stanford, VieLight & Lumos Labs at the frontier of brain health & enhancement

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On Decem­ber 7th select­ed Sum­mit Spon­sors and Part­ners show­cased their most promis­ing brain health & enhance­ment ini­tia­tives and solutions.

At the fron­tier with Neu­roscape, VR/ AR and Pho­to­bio­mod­u­la­tion (record­ings require reg­is­tra­tion; view slid­edeck for all am ses­sions Here)

  • Adam Gaz­za­ley, UCSF Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­o­gy, presents Neu­roscape
  • Dr. Wal­ter Green­leaf, Med­ical VR/ AR Expert at Stan­ford Vir­tu­al Human Inter­ac­tion Lab, pro­vides an overview of health appli­ca­tions of vir­tu­al & aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (VR/AR)
  • Dr. Lew Lim, Founder & CEO of Vielight, dis­cuss­es pho­to­bio­mod­u­la­tion as a new way to enhance brain function

Dr. Bob Schafer, Direc­tor of Research at Lumos Labs, presents their expand­ing vision for brain train­ing, includ­ing mindfulness.

Slid­edeck sup­port­ing ses­sion held dur­ing the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Health & Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th). All ses­sion record­ings avail­able for pur­chase (50+ Speak­ers, 15+ Hours, $150).

Meet 40 Experts and Innovators shaping Brain Health & Enhancement on December 5–7th, at the 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit

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We are proud to announce these 40 con­firmed Sum­mit Speak­ers, Chairs and Judges at the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit on Decem­ber 5–7th. What an incred­i­ble brain trust shap­ing the future of brain health and enhancement!

Here are just a few:

Dr. Adam Gazzaley, Professor of Neurology and Founding Director of Neuroscape at UCSF

Dr. Gaz­za­ley is a fac­ul­ty mem­ber in the Neu­rol­o­gy, Phys­i­ol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try depart­ments, and Direc­tor of a cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science lab­o­ra­to­ry con­duct­ing research on the neur­al mech­a­nisms of atten­tion and mem­o­ry. Dr. Gaz­za­ley is also co-founder and Chief Sci­ence Advi­sor of Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs, a com­pa­ny devel­op­ing ther­a­peu­tic video games, and co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tist of JAZZ Ven­ture Part­ners, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm invest­ing in expe­ri­en­tial tech­nol­o­gy to improve human performance.

Dr. Adam Haim, Chief of the Clinical Trials Operations and
Biostatistics Branch at the NIMH

Dr. Haim over­sees the Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) and Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) Pro­grams at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH). Both pro­grams help small busi­ness­es fund R&D with strong poten­tial for tech­nol­o­gy com­mer­cial­iza­tion, and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their cur­rent grant port­fo­lio is focused on the devel­op­ment and eval­u­a­tion of mHealth inter­ven­tions and dig­i­tal health technology.
Alexandra Morehouse

Alexandra Morehouse, CMO of Banner Health

Alexan­dra M. More­house is Senior Vice Pres­i­dent & Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer for Ban­ner Health, one of the nation’s largest non­prof­it health sys­tems. Pri­or to Ban­ner Health, she was the Vice Pres­i­dent of Brand Man­age­ment at Kaiser Per­ma­nente, and CMO of AAA. She has served on the boards of the Har­vard Busi­ness School Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ners, Snap­Fish, Yer­ba Bue­na Cen­ter for the Arts, ODC Dance, and UC Davis.

Dr. Alison Fenney, Executive Director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO)

Dr. Fen­ney runs the Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion, a glob­al trade asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing com­pa­nies involved in neu­ro­science, brain research insti­tutes and patient advo­ca­cy groups. Pri­or to NIO, Ali­son was Man­ag­er of Indus­try Rela­tions at the Ontario Brain Insti­tute (OBI) in Cana­da, and also worked in Equi­ty Research at Bloom Bur­ton & Co.

Álvaro Fernández, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of SharpBrains

Álvaro Fer­nán­dez, a mem­ber of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Coun­cil on the Future of Human Enhance­ment, runs Sharp­Brains, an inde­pen­dent mar­ket research firm track­ing health and per­for­mance appli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence. Mr. Fer­nan­dez is the co-author of “The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age”, and the Edi­tor-in-chief of Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report on Per­va­sive Neurotechnology.

 

For more, here you can Meet 40 Experts and Inno­va­tors at the fron­tier of Brain Health & Enhance­ment.

 

Witnessing an explosion of consumer-facing neurotechnologies to (potentially) harness lifelong neuroplasticity

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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 more…] about Wit­ness­ing an explo­sion of con­sumer-fac­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies to (poten­tial­ly) har­ness life­long neuroplasticity

Dr. Michael Merzenich, winner of the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, to speak at the 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit

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Michael-Merzenich———-

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.