Zack-Lynch

How to harness videogames and big data to personalize cognitive training

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BrainTraining—

That will be the focus of the sec­ond ses­sion at the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th, 2014). We hope you can join us!

How to har­ness videogames and big data to deliv­er per­son­al­ized cog­ni­tive training

  • Dr. Joe Hardy, ?VP of R&D at Lumos Labs
  • Dr. Daphne Bave­lier, Head of the Bave­lier Brain & Learn­ing Lab at the Uni­ver­sity of Geneva
  • Ita­mar Lesu­isse, CEO of Peak
  • Aki Niko­laidis, NSF Fel­low at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois Cham­paign Urbana
  • Chair: Zack Lynch, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Organization

[Read more…] about How to har­ness videogames and big data to per­son­al­ize cog­ni­tive training

Meet these 25+ Summit Speakers at the forefront of Brain, Health and Innovation

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2014_SharpBrains_Virtual_Summit_Shaping the Practice and the Future of Brain FitnessWe are proud to share the world-class and expand­ing ros­ter of experts and inno­va­tors who will speak at the upcom­ing 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th, 2014). Please check out their spec­tac­u­lar bios, the pre­lim­i­nary agen­da, and con­sid­er join­ing us! As of today, we are count­ing on:

  • Dr. Adam Gaz­za­ley, Direc­tor of the Neu­ro­science Imag­ing Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Francisco
  • Aki Niko­laidis, NSF Fel­low at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois Cham­paign Urbana
  • Alex Doman, Co-founder of Sleep Genius
  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO of SharpBrains
  • Ariel Garten, CEO and co-founder of InteraXon
  • Bill Pren­ovitz, Glob­al Prod­uct and Ser­vice Man­age­ment at Philips Healthcare’s Aging-in-Place Program

[Read more…] about Meet these 25+ Sum­mit Speak­ers at the fore­front of Brain, Health and Innovation

National Neurotechnology Initiative

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Zack Lynch asks for sup­port to Write Con­gress Today in Sup­port of the Nation­al Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Ini­tia­tive Act, explain­ing:

“With the recent intro­duc­tion of the Nation­al Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Ini­tia­tive (NNTI) Act in the House (H.R. 5989) and the Sen­ate (S.2989) ear­li­er this month, the time has come to ramp up a nation­al grass­roots cam­paign in sup­port of the NNTI and I would like to ask for your help. It is imper­a­tive that we get a sub­stan­tive amount of Con­gres­sion­al sup­port as quick­ly as pos­si­ble as we are tar­get­ing Con­gres­sion­al hear­ings pri­or to the August break.

Take action: We need to flood Con­gres­sion­al fax machines and mail box­es with indi­vid­ual let­ters of sup­port from key con­stituents like you over the next four weeks. I urge you to vis­it NIO’s Take Action web­page.

[Read more…] about Nation­al Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Initiative

Brain Training Games: Context, Trends, Questions

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A spate of recent 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 the aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and chang­ing lifestyle.

This past Tues­day, the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, and Smart­Sil­vers spon­sored an event on The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket: Build­ing Bet­ter Brains to explore the real­i­ties and myths of this grow­ing field. The pan­el was mod­er­at­ed by Zack Lynch, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion, and com­posed of a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and 3 CEOs of pro­gram devel­op­ers in the field. Before the pan­el, I had the chance to present an overview of the state of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket based on our upcom­ing report to be released on March 4th.

Why are we talk­ing about this field at all? Well, for one, an increas­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies are achiev­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial suc­cess in pack­ag­ing “brain exer­cise”. An exam­ple is the line of Nin­ten­do games, such as Brain Age and Brain Train­ing, that have shipped over 15 mil­lion units world­wide despite lim­it­ed sci­en­tif­ic sup­port, since 2005. What is less vis­i­ble is that a num­ber of com­pa­nies and sci­en­tists are [Read more…] about Brain Train­ing Games: Con­text, Trends, Questions

The Emerging Brain Fitness Software Market: Building Better Brains

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This is an event you may be inter­est­ed in, if you are based in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

The MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, The Busi­ness Forum on Aging and Smart­Sil­vers presents:

The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket:  Build­ing Bet­ter Brains (Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here)

Date: 02/12/2008 Tuesday
Time: 6:00pm
Venue: Wil­son Sonsini
Loca­tion: 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto
Cost: $20 online, $25 walk-in

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Here is the buzz  Sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graph­ic trends have con­verged to cre­ate an excit­ing new mar­ket in brain fit­ness, where soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions can assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. That equates to a sharp­er mind and bet­ter mem­o­ry reten­tion con­tribut­ing to health­i­er aging.  There is cur­rent­ly a $400m world­wide mar­ket with high growth ahead predicted.

Join us in live­ly and infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions as Alvaro Fer­nan­dez; CEO of SharpBrains.com sum­ma­rizes the sci­ence, key mar­ket seg­ments, play­ers and trends, based on the first Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report, pre­sent­ed in this event.  He will dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions with sev­er­al neu­ro-tech­nol­o­gy, gam­ing experts and investors.”  Mod­er­at­ed by Zack Lynch, the speak­er and pan­el will dis­cuss: [Read more…] about The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket: Build­ing Bet­ter Brains

Creativity, Michael Ray and Motto

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Mot­to Mag­a­zine brings a great inter­view between Ani­ta Sharpe and Michael Ray, on How To Reach Your High­est Goal. Very fun week­end read­ing mate­r­i­al, includ­ing plen­ty of quotes and reflec­tions on how cre­ativ­i­ty can be trained/ enhanced by one of my favorite Stan­ford MBA pro­fes­sors. Some quotes:

  • “But as the 1980s began, Ray and Myers kicked off more than two decades teach­ing one of the most influ­en­tial and talked about cours­es at Stan­ford University’s Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness — a class on cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion. They taught MBA stu­dents who would go on to become some of the great­est cre­ators in the world of busi­ness, includ­ing eBay’s first pres­i­dent, Jef­frey Skoll, and Good to Great author Jim Collins.”
  • “When (Apple co-founder) Steve Jobs came to our class, every­body was say­ing we have to get into the com­put­er busi­ness. He said, you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to do that. He said, go into San Fran­cis­co and get a job as a wait­er and find out what comes out of that.”
  • MOTTO: You have had a num­ber of renowned and suc­cess­ful stu­dents. How would you sum­ma­rize the char­ac­ter­is­tics that they share that con­tribute to their inner and out­er success?
  • RAY: A sense of open­ness of con­scious­ness. Those peo­ple who are [Read more…] about Cre­ativ­i­ty, Michael Ray and Motto