January 2010 Summit

In Jan­u­ary of 2010 Sharp­Brains suc­cess­ful­ly orga­nized the inau­gur­al vir­tu­al, glob­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit on Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Per­for­mance (Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010). The Sum­mit fea­tured a dream team of over 40 speak­ers who are lead­ers in indus­try and research to dis­cuss emerg­ing research, tools and best prac­tices for cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance, and gath­ered over 250 par­tic­i­pants in 16 countries.

summit_tutorial_tnailAre you inter­est­ed in what over 40 lead­ing sci­en­tists, clin­i­cians, exec­u­tives and tech­nol­o­gists have to say about the lat­est Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Per­for­mance? Want to hear how they respond­ed to more than 200 audi­ence ques­tions? You can now Order and Down­load the Full Tran­scripts of the Jan­u­ary 2010, Sharp­Brains Sum­mit HERE (300+ page PDF elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment; $195).

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This is what some of the par­tic­i­pants said:
— “Splen­did line-up of speak­ers.” — Jake Duna­gan, Research Direc­tor at the Insti­tute For The Future, USA.
— “Uni­ver­sal kudos from our team. Agen­da worked out extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well.” — Ken Kosik, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CFIT, USA.
— “One of the best con­fer­ences I have ever attend­ed in 4 decades of research & inno­va­tion life.” — Ron Baeck­er, Lab Direc­tor at Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, Canada.
— “Excel­lent con­tent and out­stand­ing admin­is­tra­tion.” — Dan­ny Dankn­er, CEO Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing, Israel.
— “An incred­i­bly stim­u­lat­ing con­fer­ence, with a per­fect bal­ance of sci­ence and appli­ca­tion.” — David Tal, Own­er, A.G.E. Mat­ters Clin­ic, Canada.

Below are a few select­ed Tran­script Excerpts from the first ses­sion “Cog­ni­tion & Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: The New Health & Well­ness Fron­tier”, which occu­pies Pages 1–28 of the Tran­scripts. Full tran­scripts include all talks and Q&A ses­sions over 326 pages. Libraries can con­tact us for spe­cial discounts.

Mar­i­an Dia­mond, UC-Berkeley:


marian_diamond“I have cho­sen for my short intro­duc­tion to our Sum­mit meet­ing to review our research from 1960 to 2009 pro­vid­ing us with infor­ma­tion to main­tain a healthy brain…Number one, diet. Num­ber two, exer­cise. Num­ber three, chal­lenge. Num­ber four, new­ness. Num­ber five, love.”

Third, chal­lenge. Peo­ple fre­quent­ly do the same lev­el of cross­word puz­zles to stim­u­late their brains year after year. They do not chal­lenge their brains with more dif­fi­cult lev­els of puz­zles. In our research, we showed that if we chal­lenged the rats to reach their food cups by hav­ing to climb over many obstruc­tions, their brains increased more than those of rats who could walk unhin­dered to their food cups. Chal­lenge increased brain size.”

Four. New­ness. If we keep the same objects for the rats to explore in the enriched cages for sev­er­al con­sec­u­tive days, the cere­bral cor­tex appeared not to show a response to the enriched con­di­tion. The brain had increased ini­tial­ly but with lack of con­tin­ued stim­u­la­tion, had lost the ben­e­fit of the input. We found it nec­es­sary to change the objects every few days to pro­vide new stim­uli to increase cor­ti­cal dimen­sions. So new­ness is impor­tant to devel­op larg­er brains.”

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Tom War­den, Allstate:


tom_pic.thumbnail“… we see the oppor­tu­ni­ty that cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­vides as just the next evo­lu­tion of things that we can advo­cate and get behind that ulti­mate­ly make for a bet­ter dri­ving expe­ri­ence, a safer dri­ving expe­ri­ence for peo­ple. Not only for our insureds, but to help the roads be safer for everyone.”

Increas­ing­ly, obvi­ous­ly with the baby boom sort of age wave mov­ing through its lat­er years, the safe­ty of senior dri­vers will become a larg­er and larg­er prob­lem that soci­ety and com­pa­nies that insure them will have to face…Then in doing that research we found Posit Sci­ence, who is lever­ag­ing the use­ful field of view tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped by Kar­lene Ball…so what we did is to attempt to repli­cate the results that were observed in the lab­o­ra­to­ry envi­ron­ment where old­er dri­vers who have com­plet­ed a good amount of train­ing, 10 hours or more of train­ing, had shown that the risk of crash could be reduced by up to about 50%.”

…I believe 8% of the folks that we offered the soft­ware to took the soft­ware and installed it and about half of those folks actu­al­ly trained a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of hours. And this was done through a direct mail cam­paign so we didn’t have a lot of inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing of the cam­paign, so we were pret­ty hap­py with the numbers.”

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David White­house, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions:

whitehouse_large-150x150Man­aged care has not always been on the fore­front of inno­va­tion and it has been, for us, a chal­lenge and an excite­ment to think about how best to incor­po­rate the lat­est find­ings in neu­ro­science. If I was to give you the major areas that we think are impor­tant, one is the impor­tance of neu­ro­science capa­bilit­ties to improve triage, the sec­ond is the impor­tance that this has on increas­ing access to much bet­ter func­tion­al assess­ments and its rela­tion­ship to safe­ty. The third is in the area of clin­i­cal deci­sion sup­port and the fourth is in brain health.”

First and fore­most, why is it that in every oth­er organ we have objec­tive data of the organ itself doing its work under var­i­ous loads to help us when we need to make deci­sions about its health and dis­ease state and how best to sup­port it and intervene.”

Much of this has exist­ed in neu­ro­science. Neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing, genet­ic tests, func­tion­al MRI. But in day to day lives of peo­ple, these were not eas­i­ly acces­si­ble and were often fre­quent­ly expen­sive. The solu­tion to this for us has been a devel­op­ing rela­tion­ship with a com­pa­ny in Aus­tralia called Brain Resource who have devel­oped what is now the largest stan­dard­ized inte­grat­ed neu­ro­science data­base in the world on the human brain.”

As we know, it is 17 years from the bench to clin­i­cal prac­tice, and we also know that 50% of guide­lines are obso­lete with­in 6 years. For any clin­i­cian there­fore to keep up to their knowl­edge base on the lev­el of sci­ence that is now com­ing out and inform­ing clin­i­cal deci­sion mak­ing is almost impos­si­ble with­out com­put­er­ized support.”

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William Reich­man, Baycrest:

meet_bill_DrWilliamEReichman_-150x150…there’s an imper­a­tive now for those of us in the field of aging to focus more I believe on pre­ven­tion, well­ness, and cer­tain­ly that sci­ence which will help us to best under­stand how to mod­i­fy chron­ic ill­ness risk fac­tors through­out the entire prac­tice of aging, through­out our entire life span.”

This is cer­tain­ly true not only for phys­i­cal health but it is true for brain health. I often say, and this was allud­ed to in the ear­li­er speak­ers that we must do for brain health in the 21st cen­tu­ry what we large­ly accom­plished in car­dio­vas­cu­lar health in the past century…that includes an increased focus not only on ter­tiary pre­ven­tion, but on pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary prevention.”

…at Bay­crest in the last cou­ple of years, we rec­og­nized that it’s now time to take the sci­en­tif­ic insights out of the lab­o­ra­to­ry and to iden­ti­fy prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions for this science…approximately a year and a half ago the Ontario gov­ern­ment made a deci­sion to invest $10 mil­lion in Canada’s first cen­tre for brain fit­ness to be housed at Bay­crest at the Rot­man Research Institute.”

Here in Cana­da I think that we’ve been able to make a com­pelling case main­tain­ing good brain fit­ness needs to be a nation­al pri­or­i­ty for this coun­try and we have been engaged in dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment, both fed­er­al­ly and provin­cial­ly, that brain health pro­grams real­ly need to begin in childhood.”

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P Murali Doraiswamy, Duke University:

murali-150x150Vir­tu­al­ly in all of the dis­eases that I work with, whether it be depres­sion, whether it be Alzheimer’s, whether it be ADHD, there are sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions to the cur­rent treat­ment modal­i­ties and peo­ple real­ly want to be free of med­ica­tion if pos­si­ble so non-phar­ma­co­log­ic inter­ven­tions such as exer­cise, cog­ni­tive train­ing, dietary inter­ven­tion. I think there’s just a huge need for those kinds of interventions.”

… it’s real­ly essen­tial for the field before they real­ly go to the next lev­el to make sure that they occu­py a space in people’s minds that asso­ciates them with cred­i­ble sci­ence-based claims because you don’t want to walk into a gro­cery store or into a gas sta­tion and see a brain game claim­ing that they’re a neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty brain game or a bot­tle of water that’s claim­ing it’s a cog­ni­tive reserve enhancer because then I think you’re going to destroy the whole field key.”

So I think it’s essen­tial for acad­e­mia, for indus­try, for think tanks, for even the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies such as per­haps Eng­land, US, Cana­da, to come togeth­er and form a set of guide­lines that can real­ly guide the prop­er devel­op­ment of a lot of these prod­ucts and by prod­ucts I’m talk­ing about two types of prod­ucts. One is cog­ni­tive screen­ing instru­ments and the sec­ond is inter­ven­tion prod­ucts to either improve sort of nor­mal func­tion­ing or to increase resilience to stress or three, to pre­vent disease.”

(answer­ing to audi­ence ques­tion, “when do you believe that cog­ni­tive screen­ing may become a pret­ty rou­tine part of stan­dard med­ical care”) I think it’s long overdue…the brain is the most impor­tant organ.

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Inter­est­ed in what over 40 lead­ing sci­en­tists, clin­i­cians, exec­u­tives and tech­nol­o­gists have to say about the lat­est Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Per­for­mance? Want to hear how they respond­ed to more than 200 audi­ence ques­tions? You can now Order and Down­load the Full Tran­scripts of the Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010, Sharp­Brains Sum­mit HERE (300+ page PDF elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment; $195).

You can learn more about the 15 ses­sions and the over 40 Speak­ers below. All talks and Q&A ses­sions are includ­ed in the Full Transcripts.

Agenda:

(Note: all times are US Pacif­ic Time.)

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

8–8.15am: My Con­tin­ued Love Affair with the Brain. Mar­i­an Dia­mond, Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science and Anato­my, UC-Berkeley

8.15–9.15am: Cog­ni­tion & Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: The New Health & Well­ness Frontier
In a world with aging pop­u­la­tions and grow­ing life­long men­tal demands, is it time to con­sid­er cog­ni­tion in its own right as a health out­come, and to incor­po­rate neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty research and tools into main­stream health & wellness?

  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO, SharpBrains
  • Tom War­den, Asst. VP, All­state Research and Plan­ning Center
  • David White­house, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions
  • William Reich­man, Pres­i­dent, Baycrest
  • P Murali Doraiswamy, Bio­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try Divi­sion Head, Duke University
8–8.15am: Inno­va­tion, Peo­ple and Tech­nol­o­gy. Chuck House, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Stan­ford Media X

8.15–9.15am: Neu­rocog­ni­tion & Med­i­cine: Impli­ca­tions for Research, Diag­no­sis, Treatment
In a grow­ing num­ber of clin­i­cal con­di­tions the effec­tive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, reme­di­a­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of asso­ci­at­ed neu­rocog­ni­tive deficits is increas­ing­ly seen as a crit­i­cal dimen­sion of pre­ven­tive and clin­i­cal care. This pan­el will dis­cuss emerg­ing needs, tools, oppor­tu­ni­ties and challenges.

  • Kei­th Wesnes, Prac­tice Leader, Unit­ed BioSource Corporation
  • Adam Gaz­za­ley, Neu­ro­science Imag­ing Cen­ter Direc­tor, UCSF
  • Michel Noir, CEO, SBT / HappyNeuron
  • Lau­rence Hir­sh­berg, Direc­tor, Neu­roDe­vel­op­ment Center
9.30–11am: Tools for Safer Dri­ving: The Oppor­tu­ni­ty with Teenagers and Adults
Safer dri­ving can become the first main­stream appli­ca­tion of cog­ni­tive train­ing, giv­en grow­ing aware­ness of dis­tract­ed dri­ving, valu­able cog­ni­tive research, prod­uct avail­abil­i­ty and chan­nel inter­est. Dri­ving schools in Europe and Cana­da, insur­ers and asso­ci­a­tions in the USA, are already lead­ing the way.
  • Steven Aldrich, CEO, Posit Science
  • Shlo­mo Breznitz, Pres­i­dent, CogniFit
  • Jer­ri Edwards, Assoc. Pro­fes­sor Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida
  • Peter Chris­tian­son, Pres­i­dent of Young Dri­vers of Canada
9.30–11am: How Can Neu­ro­science Inform and  Refine Men­tal Health Care
Neu­rosy­chi­a­try and relat­ed clin­i­cal fields focus on the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and treat­ment of men­tal dys­func­tion. Grow­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and meth­ods sug­gest an alter­na­tive frame­work: mea­sur­ing and help­ing main­tain the brain func­tion­al­i­ty required to thrive in mod­ern soci­ety. How can cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral neu­ro­science inform and refine men­tal health care?
  • Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor, UCSF
  • Torkel Kling­berg, Pro­fes­sor Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science, Karolin­s­ka Institute
  • Joshua Stein­er­man, Asst. Pro­fes­sor, Albert Ein­stein – Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Center
  • Yaakov Stern, Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion Leader, Colum­bia University
Noon‑1.30pm: Baby Boomers and Beyond: Main­tain­ing Cog­ni­tive Vitality
Aging baby boomers and a grow­ing aspi­ra­tion to “brain fit­ness” are real­i­ty today, togeth­er with a media con­tro­ver­sy on whether “brain games” and “brain fit­ness soft­ware” work or are a waste of time and mon­ey. This pan­el will dis­cuss what “work” means and does­n’t mean, and offer light into what con­sumers and insti­tu­tions are buy­ing ‑and why.
  • Kunal Sarkar, CEO, Lumos Labs
  • Eliz­a­beth Zelin­s­ki, Pro­fes­sor at USC Davis School of Gerontology
  • Dan Michel, CEO, Dakim
  • Michael Cole, CEO, Viv­i­ty Labs
  • Elkhonon Gold­berg, NYU/ SharpBrains
Noon‑1.30pm: Inte­grat­ing Cog­ni­tion with Home Health and Med­ical Home Models
Emerg­ing health­care deliv­ery mod­els, such as home health and med­ical homes, bring new urgency to the need for per­son­al­ized and well-inte­grat­ed care process­es that active­ly mon­i­tor and help address cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al prob­lems. Pio­neers in com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, patient-cen­tered care, and home health care will dis­cuss oppor­tu­ni­ties and challenges.
  • Ken­neth Kosik, Co-Direc­tor, UC San­ta Bar­bara Neu­ro­science Research Institute
  • Jonas Jen­di, CEO, Cogmed
  • Hol­ly Jimi­son, Assoc. Pro­fes­sor, Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence University
  • Jesse Wright, Direc­tor Depres­sion Cen­ter, Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisville
1.45–3.15pm: Next Gen­er­a­tion Cog­ni­tive & Emo­tion­al Health Assessments
Scal­able, auto­mat­ed appli­ca­tions can assess and mon­i­tor a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al func­tions, help­ing refine med­ical diag­noses and direct treat­ments in a way that the Mini-Men­tal and sim­i­lar tra­di­tion­al assess­ments can’t. This pan­el will dis­cuss online assess­ments deployed by insur­ers, cog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing via game play­ing, and exper­i­men­tal vir­tu­al-real­i­ty approaches.
  • Evian Gor­don, CEO, Brain Resource
  • Misha Pavel, Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion Head, Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence University
  • Albert “Skip” Riz­zo, Co-Direc­tor VR Psych Lab at USC
1.45–3.15pm: What’s Next: Entre­pre­neur­ial And Fund­ing Perspectives
Demog­ra­phy meets research meets tech­nol­o­gy: a recipe for inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship cross­ing tra­di­tion­al sec­tor lines (neu­rotech, health IT, con­sumer inter­net, soft­ware). What are entre­pre­neurs try­ing, and learn­ing? What are ven­ture groups fund­ing, and why?
  • Tim Chang, Part­ner, Nor­west Ven­ture Partners
  • Lisa Schooner­man, Co-Founder, VibrantBrains
  • Richard Levin­son, Pres­i­dent, Atten­tion Con­trol Systems
  • Veroni­ka Litin­s­ki, Direc­tor, MaRS Ven­ture Group
3.30–4pm: The Future of Cog­ni­tive Health Tech — Intel’s Perspective
Two researchers at Intel Dig­i­tal Health will out­line why and how Intel Cor­po­ra­tion is sup­port­ing R&D ini­tia­tives such as the Tech­nol­o­gy Research for Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing (TRIL) Cen­tre and ORCATECH to help devel­op home-based auto­mat­ed appli­ca­tions to assess, mon­i­tor and help main­tain cog­ni­tion among old­er adults. They will also share key lessons learned so far, and out­line chal­lenges and poten­tial guide­lines for the field at large based on ethno­graph­ic research and first-hand prod­uct development.
  • Mar­garet Mor­ris, Senior Researcher, Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group
  • Muki Hansteen-Izo­ra, Senior Design Researcher and Strate­gist, Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group
3.30–4pm: Future Stan­dards and Chan­nels for Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-based Interventions
Tra­di­tion­al­ly, med­i­cine focus­es on inva­sive inter­ven­tions (drugs, devices), while oth­er sec­tors deal with non-inva­sive ones (exer­cise, learn­ing, med­i­ta­tion, ther­a­py and train­ing). These bound­aries are increas­ing­ly arti­fi­cial, sug­gest­ing the need for new stan­dards, assess­ments and chan­nels to evolve and sup­port mean­ing­ful inno­va­tion in years to come.
  • Charles Jen­nings, Direc­tor of the McGov­ern Insti­tute Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram, MIT
  • Stephen Mack­nik, Direc­tor of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Behav­ioral Neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy, Bar­row Neu­ro­log­i­cal Institute

Expo Day (Wednesday, January 20th)

9am. Baycrest/ Cog­nic­i­ti intro­duced the new Memory@Work work­shop, designed to teach what mem­o­ry is, how lifestyle fac­tors such as dis­trac­tion and stress can affect mem­o­ry, and how to enhance mem­o­ry per­for­mance at work with the use of enabling strategies.

10am. Cog­niFit demoed Cog­niFit Per­son­al Coach and Cog­niFit Senior Dri­ver, two online pro­grams designed to assess and main cog­ni­tive func­tions for healthy liv­ing and safe dri­ving, respectively.

11am. Posit Sci­ence demoed InSight, a soft­ware-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pack­age designed to sharp­en brain’s visu­al sys­tem. This is the pro­gram being test­ed by All­state for safer driving.

Noon. Hap­py Neu­ron intro­duced HAP­PYneu­ron PRO, a new plat­form for pro­fes­sion­als for the effec­tive deliv­ery and man­age­ment of cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams in a patient cen­tric manner.

1pm. Sharp­Brains helped nav­i­gate this grow­ing field by dis­cussing The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware 2009 report and The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness con­sumer guide, and sum­ma­riz­ing key Sum­mit take-aways.

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Speaker Bios:

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

marian_diamondMar­i­an C. Dia­mond, Ph.D., is Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science and Anato­my at UC-Berke­ley and one of the world’s fore­most researchers on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and enrich­ment since the 1960s. She is author of more than 150 sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles and 5 books, includ­ing Enrich­ing Hered­i­ty (Free Press/Simon and Schus­ter, 1988) and The Mag­ic Trees of the Mind (Plume, 1999). In par­tic­u­lar, she is inter­est­ed in study­ing the effects of the exter­nal envi­ron­ment, aging, and immune respons­es on the cere­bral neocortex.

Alvaro 3920Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO, Sharp­Brains. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez is Sharp­Brains’ co-founder and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer. He has been quot­ed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal, CNN, and oth­ers. Alvaro is a mem­ber of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils ini­tia­tive run by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, and recent­ly co-authored The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness. He start­ed his career at McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny and led the launch of sev­er­al pub­lish­ing and edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies in the US and Europe. Alvaro has an MBA and MA in Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and enjoys teach­ing The Sci­ence of Brain Health at UC-Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Institute.

tom_pic.thumbnailThomas M. War­den is Assis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent and Leader of Allstate’s Research and Plan­ning Cen­ter (ARPC). He helps sets ARPC’s research agen­da and man­age its exe­cu­tion by 60-mem­ber ARPC staff, lead­ing the devel­op­ment of sig­nif­i­cant inno­va­tions that con­tribute to Allstate’s prof­itable growth. He is a Char­tered Finan­cial Ana­lyst and has an M.B.A. from Har­vard University.

whitehouse_largeDavid White­house, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions. Dr. White­house serves as OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions’ clin­i­cal lead as well as the com­pa­ny’s prod­uct strate­gist for medical/behavioral/pharmacy inte­gra­tion and future inno­va­tion. His dis­tin­guished career also includes posi­tions as assis­tant clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at both Dart­mouth Med­ical School and Yale Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, chief of psy­chi­a­try at St. Mary’s Hos­pi­tal in Con­necti­cut, and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Charles Riv­er Hos­pi­tal in Mass­a­chu­setts. Dr. White­house holds mas­ter’s degrees from both Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, an M.B.A. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, an M.D. from Dart­mouth Med­ical School, and a doc­tor­ate in the­ol­o­gy from Har­vard University.

meet_bill_DrWilliamEReichman_William Reich­man, Pres­i­dent, Bay­crest. Dr. William E. Reich­man is Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Bay­crest, one of the world’s pre­mier aca­d­e­m­ic health sci­ences cen­tres focused on aging and brain func­tion. Dr. Reich­man, an inter­na­tion­al­ly-known expert in geri­atric men­tal health and demen­tia is also Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try on the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. He is a not­ed author­i­ty on the deliv­ery of men­tal health and demen­tia ser­vices in nurs­ing home set­tings. His pre­vi­ous aca­d­e­m­ic activ­i­ties have focused on the phar­ma­co­log­i­cal treat­ment of Alzheimer’s dis­ease and its asso­ci­at­ed apa­thy and neg­a­tive symp­toms. Dr. Reich­man is a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for Geri­atric Psy­chi­a­try and the Geri­atric Men­tal Health Foundation.

muraliP Murali Doraiswamy, Bio­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try Divi­sion Head, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Dr. Doraiswamy is a renowned expert on brain health, head of Duke University’s Bio­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try divi­sion and a Senior Fel­low at Duke’s Cen­ter for the Study of Aging. The author of more than two hun­dred sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles, Dr. Doraiswamy has served as an advis­er to the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion for Aging Research, the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Aging, and the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, as well as lead­ing Alzheimer’s med­ical jour­nals and advo­ca­cy groups.

aldrichSteven Aldrich, CEO, Posit Sci­ence. Steven Aldrich is Pres­i­dent and CEO of Posit Sci­ence, join­ing the com­pa­ny from Intu­it where he cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant growth over 13 years in many roles. Most recent­ly he was VP of Strat­e­gy and Inno­va­tion of the small busi­ness divi­sion where he accel­er­at­ed growth by solv­ing impor­tant cus­tomer prob­lems through part­ner­ships and acqui­si­tions. He guid­ed the Quick­Books Indus­try Solu­tions and Quick­Books Point of Sale teams to sev­er­al suc­ces­sive years of sig­nif­i­cant employ­ee engage­ment increas­es, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence improve­ments, and rev­enue growth. Steven was Pres­i­dent of Quick­en Insur­ance, a busi­ness he co-found­ed and sold to Intu­it. He has worked in the invest­ment bank­ing divi­sion of Alex. Brown & Sons and for McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny, com­plet­ed his MBA at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, and he holds an AB in Physics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na. Steven is an avid sup­port­er of the arts, and Pres­i­dent of the Board of the Bay Area Glass Institute.

Shlomo Breznitz3Shlo­mo Breznitz, Pres­i­dent, Cog­niFit. Renowned cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist, Pro­fes­sor Shlo­mo Breznitz has been engaged as vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor by numer­ous lead­ing insti­tu­tions includ­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, and the US Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices’ Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health. Author of sev­en books and many sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles, Pro­fes­sor Breznitz is found­ing direc­tor of the Cen­ter for the Study of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Stress at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Haifa, where he also served as Lady Davis Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy, Rec­tor, and Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent. His acclaimed Dri­ve­Fit™ train­ing pro­gram, which was the first Cog­niFit com­mer­cial prod­uct, received the UK Prince Michael Road Safe­ty Award.

j_edwardsJer­ri Edwards, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the School of Aging Stud­ies Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da. Dr. Edwards’ research is aimed toward dis­cov­er­ing how cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties can be main­tained and even enhanced with advanc­ing age. Ulti­mate­ly, the goals of Dr. Edwards’ research are to extend the mobil­i­ty and inde­pen­dence of old­er adults there­by improv­ing their qual­i­ty of life. She is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions may help old­er adults to avoid or at least delay func­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties and there­by main­tain inde­pen­dence. Much of her work has focused upon the func­tion­al abil­i­ty of dri­ving includ­ing assess­ing dri­ving fit­ness among old­er adults and reme­di­a­tion of cog­ni­tive decline that results in dri­ving difficulties.

Peter_Portraits_019[1]Peter Chris­tian­son, Pres­i­dent of Young Dri­vers of Cana­da. Peter joined Young Dri­vers as a YD fran­chise own­er in Hamil­ton in 1975, becom­ing the Direc­tor of Cen­tre Oper­a­tions in 1979 and YD Pres­i­dent in 1984. Young Dri­vers of Cana­da today is Canada’s largest dri­ver train­ing orga­ni­za­tion, hav­ing grown to over 140 class­rooms nation­al­ly and taught over one mil­lion novice dri­vers. Peter has man­aged YD cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment for the past 30 years and in 2003 he acquired the Cana­di­an rights for ‘Cog­niFit’ dri­ving pro­grams that focus on improv­ing the cog­ni­tive skills required to dri­ve safely.

sarkarKunal Sarkar, CEO, Lumos Labs. Kunal is a found­ing mem­ber of Lumos Labs and leads the oper­a­tions and mar­ket­ing team. Pre­vi­ous­ly he was a Vice Pres­i­dent at pri­vate equi­ty fund McCown De Leeuw and Co.(MDC). At MDC Kunal was inte­gral­ly involved in the strat­e­gy, oper­a­tions and the finan­cial recap­i­tal­iza­tion of a num­ber of port­fo­lio com­pa­nies includ­ing serv­ing on the board of On Stage Enter­tain­ment and USBuild, and the IPO of StoneMor (STON). Pri­or to MDC, he worked in the Strate­gic Plan­ning and Devel­op­ment group at the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny. Kunal grad­u­at­ed magna cum laude from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty with a B.A. in Eco­nom­ics with a minor in Finance.

zelinskiProfileEliz­a­beth Zelin­s­ki, Pro­fes­sor at USC Davis School of Geron­tol­ogy. Eliz­a­beth Zelin­s­ki, Ph.D., is a Pro­fes­sor of Geron­tol­ogy and Psy­chol­o­gy at the Leonard Davis School of Geron­tol­ogy. Dr. Zelin­s­ki has joint appoint­ments in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment, Neu­ro­sciences and the Study of Women and Men in Soci­ety (SWMS) Pro­grams. Dr. Zelin­s­ki grad­u­at­ed sum­ma cum laude from Pace Uni­ver­si­ty and received her grad­u­ate degrees in psy­chol­o­gy, with a spe­cial­iza­tion in aging, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Dr. Zelin­s­ki is the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor of the Long Beach Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study.

dan_portraitDan Michel, CEO, Dakim. Dan spent more than 30 years help­ing some of America’s most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies mar­ket and adver­tise their brands. Over the last twen­ty years, he was Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer of BBDO Worldwide/Los Ange­les, Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing of Colum­bia Pic­tures, and Pres­i­dent and Co-Cre­ative Direc­tor of his own cre­ative adver­tis­ing agency, Michel/Russo, Inc. Dan’s father was diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease in 1993. Based upon learn­ing about the dis­ease, and hav­ing gained first­hand expe­ri­ence par­tic­i­pat­ing in activ­i­ties with his father, he rec­og­nized the ther­a­peu­tic and emo­tion­al val­ue of cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties, and the press­ing need for more effec­tive means of pro­vid­ing this line of ther­a­py for suf­fer­ers of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and relat­ed demen­tia. Dan earned a B.A. from Clare­mont Men’s Col­lege (now Clare­mont McKen­na Col­lege) and an M.S. from North­west­ern University.

eg2Elkhonon Gold­berg, Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­sor, Sharp­Brains. Dr. Gold­berg is an author, sci­en­tist, edu­ca­tor and clin­i­cian, inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned for his clin­i­cal work, research, writ­ings and teach­ing in neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science. He is a Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine, and Diplo­mate of The Amer­i­can Board of Pro­fes­sion­al Psy­chol­o­gy in Clin­i­cal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. A stu­dent and close asso­ciate of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria, Dr. Gold­berg has con­tin­ued to advance Luria’s sci­en­tif­ic and clin­i­cal tra­di­tion, and writ­ten pop­u­lar sci­ence books such as The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and The Civ­i­lized Mind, The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Old­er, and recent­ly co-authored The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.

coleMichael Cole, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Viv­i­ty Labs. Mr. Cole is an expe­ri­enced exec­u­tive with a strong back­ground in strate­gic busi­ness devel­op­ment. He is the founder and CEO of Viv­i­ty Labs, the devel­op­er of brain fit­ness des­ti­na­tion Fitbrains.com, fea­tur­ing a large col­lec­tion of top-qual­i­ty casu­al brain games, progress track­ing, awards and com­mu­ni­ty fea­tures. Mr. Cole has more than 12 years of expe­ri­ence launch­ing inno­v­a­tive con­sumer com­pa­nies in the US, Europe and Japan. Mr. Cole received his MBA from EM Lyon in France and his BA from SFU in Van­cou­ver, Canada.

gordonEvian Gor­don, CEO, Brain Resource. Dr Evian Gor­don, PhD, MBBCh, is the Chair­man and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Brain Resource. Dr Gor­don has over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in human brain research. He was the found­ing direc­tor of the Brain Dynam­ics Cen­tre at West­mead Hos­pi­tal and a senior lec­tur­er in the Depart­ment of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney. He edit­ed the first book on “Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science” and has more than 160 publications.

misha.pavelMisha Pavel, Ph.D., Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion Head, Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence Uni­ver­si­ty. Dr. Pavel was born in the for­mer Czecho­slo­va­kia and received his Ph.D. in Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy from New York Uni­ver­si­ty and his M.S. in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. He joined OGI in 1993. Dur­ing a leave of absence, Dr. Pavel was a Tech­nol­o­gy Leader at AT&T Lab­o­ra­to­ries in Men­lo Park, Cal­i­for­nia, where he was devel­op­ing net­worked, wire­less and mobile appli­ca­tions for infor­ma­tion access and con­text-aware inter­ac­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Dr. Pavel was a mem­ber of the Tech­ni­cal Staff at Bell Lab­o­ra­to­ries. Dr. Pavel is the author of more than 80 tech­ni­cal and sci­en­tif­ic papers.

rizzo1Albert “Skip” Riz­zo, Co-Direc­tor VR Psych Lab at USC’s School of Geron­tol­ogy. Dr. Riz­zo is a Research Sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute for Cre­ative Tech­nolo­gies and has a fac­ul­ty appoint­ment with the USC School of Geron­tol­ogy. Dr. Riz­zo con­ducts research on the design, devel­op­ment and eval­u­a­tion of Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty sys­tems tar­get­ing the areas of clin­i­cal assess­ment, treat­ment and reha­bil­i­ta­tion. His cog­ni­tive work has addressed the use of VR appli­ca­tions to test and train atten­tion, mem­o­ry, visu­ospa­tial abil­i­ties and exec­u­tive func­tion. He received his Ph.D. in Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy from the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Binghamton.

Muki Hansteen-IzoraMuki Hansteen-Izo­ra, Senior Design Researcher and Strate­gist with Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group. Muki is also the Intel lead and co-PI for the Tech­nol­o­gy Research for Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing (TRIL) Cen­tre’s Cog­ni­tive Func­tion research strand, which is inves­ti­gat­ing how inter­ac­tive media and gam­ing tech­nolo­gies can sup­port cog­ni­tion in old­er pop­u­la­tions. Pri­or to join­ing Intel, Muki served as a lead researcher at Philips Research Labs. He holds a degree in Cul­tur­al Anthro­pol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San­ta Cruz, and com­plet­ed his grad­u­ate train­ing in Learn­ing, Design, and Tech­nol­o­gy at Stan­ford University.

Margaret MorrisMar­garet Mor­ris, Senior Researcher in Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group. Mar­garet stud­ies the ways that emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies can enhance men­tal and phys­i­cal well­be­ing. She con­ducts ethno­graph­ic research to iden­ti­fy needs and works with engi­neers to devel­op and eval­u­ate explorato­ry pro­to­types. Pri­or to join­ing Intel in 2002, she stud­ied tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion in Sapi­en­t’s Expe­ri­ence Mod­el­ling group. Margie com­plet­ed her Ph.D. in Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy with a minor in Behav­iour­al Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co, her clin­i­cal intern­ship at the San Fran­cis­co VA Med­ical Cen­tre, and her post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ship at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. She has a B.A. in Eng­lish from Haver­ford College.

house_for-webCharles (Chuck) House is the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Media X, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s Indus­try Affil­i­ate research pro­gram on media and tech­nol­o­gy, and a senior research schol­ar in the Human Sci­ences and Tech­nol­o­gy Advanced Research divi­sion at Stan­ford. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was the direc­tor of Soci­etal Impact of Tech­nol­o­gy for Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, and the first Direc­tor of Intel’s Vir­tu­al Research Col­lab­o­ra­to­ry. He recent­ly co-authored The HP Phe­nom­e­non: Inno­va­tion and Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Octo­ber 2009).

wesnesKei­th Wesnes, Prac­tice Leader, Unit­ed BioSource Cor­po­ra­tion. In 1986 Pro­fes­sor Wesnes found­ed Cog­ni­tive Drug Research (acquired in 2009 by Unit­ed BioSource) to offer this sys­tem as a ser­vice in clin­i­cal tri­als. Pro­fes­sor Wesnes has pub­lished over 270 peer-reviewed research arti­cles as well as more than 20 chap­ters and lit­er­a­ture reviews. He holds Pro­fes­sor­ships at the Human Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Unit at Northum­bria Uni­ver­si­ty, New­cas­tle, UK and the Brain Sci­ences Insti­tute at Swin­burne Uni­ver­si­ty, Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. Pro­fes­sor Wesnes was made Fel­low of the British Psy­cho­log­i­cal Soci­ety in 1989 and Fel­low of the Roy­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Soci­ety in 1983. He earned his BSc from Read­ing Uni­ver­si­ty in 1973 with a First Class Hon­ors in exper­i­men­tal psychology.

GazzaleyAdam Gaz­za­ley, Direc­tor of the Neu­ro­science Imag­ing Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co. Dr. Gaz­za­ley is a fac­ul­ty mem­ber in the Neu­rol­o­gy, Phys­i­ol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try depart­ments, and prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor of a cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science lab­o­ra­to­ry that con­ducts research on the neur­al mech­a­nisms of atten­tion and mem­o­ry. A major focus of his research has been to expand our under­stand­ing of the alter­ations in the aging brain that lead to cog­ni­tive decline. His most recent stud­ies explore how we can pre­serve and improve atten­tion and mem­o­ry as we get old­er. He has received many awards and hon­ors for his research, includ­ing the 1997 Cor­ti­cal Schol­ar Award, Pfizer/AFAR Inno­va­tions in Aging Award and the Elli­son Foun­da­tion New Schol­ar Award in Aging.

NoirMichel Noir, CEO, Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Training/ Hap­pyNeu­ron. Dr. Noir received his Ph.D. in Edu­ca­tion­al Sci­ence and post grad­u­ate diplo­ma in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lyon, France. He received his Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma, Advanced Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma, and Mas­ter’s in Pub­lic Law from Paris Law Fac­ul­ty. He also holds an Advanced Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Polit­i­cal Sci­ence.. Mr. Noir has authored over 15 books on a vari­ety of edu­ca­tion­al and brain train­ing top­ics and games.

lmh_face-inwhite_resizedDr. Lau­rence Hir­sh­berg directs the Neu­roDe­vel­op­ment Cen­ter and serves on the fac­ul­ty of the Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try and Human Behav­ior of the Brown Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical School as Clin­i­cal Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor. The Neu­roDe­vel­op­ment Cen­ter is one of the 20 research sites world­wide par­tic­i­pat­ing in the largest study of neu­ro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal mark­ers for depres­sion. Dr. Hir­sh­berg is a licensed clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist and cer­ti­fied in EEG biofeed­back by the Biofeed­back Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Insti­tute of Amer­i­ca, and recent­ly served as Guest Edi­tor and con­trib­u­tor to a spe­cial issue of Child and Ado­les­cent Psy­chi­atric Clin­ics of North Amer­i­ca devot­ed to emerg­ing inter­ven­tions in applied neu­ro­science, includ­ing neu­ro­feed­back and oth­er brain based interventions.

drmerzenich Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor, UCSF. For more than three decades, Dr. Merzenich has been a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant, now dis­trib­uted by Advanced Bion­ics. In 1996, Dr. Merzenich was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (Nas­daq: SCIL), and in 2004 became co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer of Posit Sci­ence. Dr. Merzenich has pub­lished more than 200 arti­cles, received numer­ous awards and prizes, and been grant­ed more than 50 patents for his work. His work was fea­tured on the PBS spe­cials “The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram” and “Brain Fit­ness 2: Sight and Sound.” Dr. Merzenich earned his BS degree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Port­land and his PhD at Johns Hop­kins. He retired from his long career 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. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1999 and will be inau­gu­rat­ed into the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine this year.

Klingberg_right_sizeTorkel Kling­berg, Pro­fes­sor Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science, Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute. Dr. Kling­berg is a pro­fes­sor of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science at the Stock­holm Brain Insti­tute, which is part of Sweden’s Karolin­s­ka Institute.In 2001, Kling­berg found­ed Cogmed to devel­op and pro­duce work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing pro­grams based on his break­through research demon­strat­ing that the work­ing mem­o­ry can be improved through train­ing. Kling­berg has gained recog­ni­tion in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty and the inter­na­tion­al media. He has received dis­tinc­tions from the Inter­na­tion­al Neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion and has been named “Future Research Leader” by the Swedish Foun­da­tion for Strate­gic Research. In 2006, he was award­ed the Philip’s Nordic Prize for out­stand­ing research in the field of Neu­ropsy­chi­a­try. Kling­berg also holds a research posi­tion at the Roy­al Swedish Acad­e­my of Sciences.

JoshuaRSteinerman-resizedJoshua Stein­er­man, Asst. Pro­fes­sor, Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Med­i­cine – Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter. Edu­cat­ed and trained at Har­vard, Yale, Colum­bia, and the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, Dr. Stein­er­man is a behav­ioral neu­rol­o­gist and neu­ropsy­chi­a­trist who com­bines patient care with clin­i­cal research in brain aging and cog­ni­tion. Dr. Stein­er­man co-directs the Ein­stein-Mon­te­fiore Cen­ter for Healthy Brain Aging and is the sci­en­tif­ic founder of ProG­evi­ty Neuroscience.

stern_sYaakov Stern, Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion Leader, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. Dr. Stern directs the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter and is Direc­tor of Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy for the Mem­o­ry Dis­or­ders Clin­ic at the New York State Psy­chi­atric Insti­tute. He also directs the post-doc­tor­al train­ing pro­gram Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy and Cog­ni­tion in Aging, and is a Pro­fes­sor of Clin­i­cal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy in the Depart­ments of Neu­rol­o­gy, Psy­chi­a­try, and Psy­chol­o­gy, as well as the in Sergievsky Cen­ter and the Taub Insti­tute for the Research on Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and the Aging Brain, at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Physi­cians and Surgeons.

150px-Kenneth_KosikKen­neth Kosik, Co-Direc­tor, UC San­ta Bar­bara Neu­ro­science Research Insti­tute. Dr. Kosik received his M.D. degree in 1976 from the Med­ical Col­lege of Penn­syl­va­nia and com­plet­ed a neu­rol­o­gy res­i­den­cy from Tufts New Eng­land Med­ical Cen­ter where he served as chief res­i­dent in 1979. From 1980 until 2005 he held var­i­ous appoint­ments at the Har­vard Med­ical School where he became Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science in 1996. In the fall of 2004 he assumed the co-direc­tor­ship of the Neu­ro­science Research Insti­tute and the Har­ri­man Chair in the Depart­ment of Mol­e­c­u­lar, Cel­lu­lar and Devel­op­men­tal Biol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San­ta Bar­bara. He has received mul­ti­ple awards, includ­ing a Whitak­er Health Sci­ences Award from Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, the Derek Den­ny-Brown Neu­ro­log­i­cal Schol­ar Award from the Amer­i­can Neu­ro­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, the Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion, and a NASA Group Achieve­ment Award to the Neu­ro­lab Sci­ence Team.

jonas_jendi2Jonas Jen­di, CEO, Cogmed. Jonas Jen­di joined Cogmed in 2001 as its chief exec­u­tive offi­cer. In 2007, Jen­di opened Cogmed’s North Amer­i­can head­quar­ters in Naperville, IL, where he is now based. Pri­or to Cogmed, Jen­di pro­vid­ed strate­gic con­sult­ing for the Boston Con­sult­ing Group in Stock­holm and Paris, and held man­age­ment and con­sult­ing roles for var­i­ous tech­nol­o­gy start-ups. He holds a MS from the Stock­holm School of Economics.

jimisonHol­ly Jimi­son, Assoc. Pro­fes­sor, Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence Uni­ver­si­ty. Dr. Jimi­son is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Med­ical Infor­mat­ics and Clin­i­cal Epi­demi­ol­o­gy at Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence Uni­ver­si­ty. She teach­es cours­es in Con­sumer Health Infor­mat­ics and Ethics, Legal, and Social Issues in Med­ical Infor­mat­ics. Hol­ly received her doc­tor­ate in Med­ical Infor­ma­tion Sci­ences from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, with dis­ser­ta­tion work on using com­put­er deci­sion mod­els to tai­lor patient edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als. Her research inter­ests include tech­nol­o­gy for suc­cess­ful aging, home health mon­i­tor­ing, user mod­els for adap­tive inter­faces for con­sumer health infor­ma­tion, and cog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing through com­put­er interactions.

jesse-wrightJesse Wright, Direc­tor Depres­sion Cen­ter, Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisville. Jesse H. Wright, M.D., Ph.D., is a pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisville, where he also serves as asso­ciate chair­man for Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs and direc­tor of the Depres­sion Cen­ter. Addi­tion­al­ly, he is the med­ical direc­tor of the Nor­ton Psy­chi­atric Cen­ter and a pol­i­cy advi­sor for the Depres­sion and Bipo­lar Sup­port Alliance (DBSA). Dr. Wright is the prin­ci­pal author of “Good Days Ahead: The Inter­ac­tive Pro­gram for Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety,” the first mul­ti­me­dia com­put­er pro­gram for treat­ment of depres­sion. Dr. Wright was the found­ing pres­i­dent of the Acad­e­my of Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py and is a past pres­i­dent of the Ken­tucky Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion. He also is a fel­low of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Psy­chi­a­trists. He grad­u­at­ed from Jef­fer­son Med­ical Col­lege in Philadel­phia and com­plet­ed his res­i­den­cy train­ing in psy­chi­a­try at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michigan.

tim_chang_norwestTim Chang, Part­ner, Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners. Tim brings a com­bi­na­tion of oper­a­tional, tech­ni­cal and inter­na­tion­al busi­ness expe­ri­ence to Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners. Tim focus­es on invest­ments in mobile, gam­ing, dig­i­tal media, and also leads NVP’s invest­ment prac­tice in Chi­na and Asia-Pacif­ic. Tim led NVP’s invest­ments in and joined the boards of direc­tors of ngmo­co, Lumos Labs, Brite Semi­con­duc­tor and 3jam. Tim spent more than five years work­ing in Japan. He was a prod­uct man­ag­er at Gate­way Inc and a devel­op­ment engi­neer for Gen­er­al Motors. Tim holds an MBA from Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, and an MS in elec­tri­cal engineering/system engi­neer­ing as well as a BS in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michigan.

lisa_vb.thumbnailLisa Schooner­man, Co-founder, vibrant­Brains. Lisa held a vari­ety of tech­ni­cal and edi­to­r­i­al posi­tions with the Thom­son Cor­po­ra­tion in the Legal Pub­lish­ing divi­sion (now Thom­son­Reuters), begin­ning in Rochester, NY and then com­ing to San Fran­cis­co to work for what was then Ban­croft Whit­ney. Lisa’s work for Thom­son includ­ed a 3‑year assign­ment in the UK, where she was Edi­to­r­i­al Direc­tor of the group pro­vid­ing con­tent for West­law UK, the first inter­na­tion­al appli­ca­tion of the West­law database.

Richard Levin­son, Pres­i­dent, Atten­tion Con­trol Sys­tems. In the ear­ly 1990s, as a robot­ics researcher at NASA-Ames Research Cen­ter in Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia, Mr. Levin­son began study­ing the neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy of human plan­ning in order to increase auton­o­my for NASA robots. In 1995, he pro­posed a com­put­er mod­el of human frontal lobe func­tion in an arti­cle pub­lished in the Annals of the New York Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. That com­put­er mod­el of exec­u­tive func­tions led to the devel­op­ment of PEAT, a pow­er­ful cuing and sched­ul­ing treat­ment cur­rent­ly avail­able to peo­ple with a wide range of cog­ni­tive and atten­tion dis­or­ders. Levin­son has pub­li­ca­tions relat­ed to PEAT in both com­put­er sci­ence and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy jour­nals, and has pio­neered an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach to cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion that has drawn wide­spread attention.

litinski-vVeroni­ka Litin­s­ki, Direc­tor, MaRS Ven­ture Group. Veroni­ka Litin­s­ki coor­di­nates the MaRS ven­ture ser­vices pro­grams deliv­ered to entre­pre­neurs, investors and high-growth com­pa­nies. She also pro­vides advi­so­ry ser­vices to entre­pre­neurs and high growth com­pa­nies, with a spe­cial focus on life sci­ences mar­kets, spe­cial­iz­ing in cor­po­rate finance and busi­ness devel­op­ment. Veroni­ka start­ed her career as a research sci­en­tist at Lawrence Liv­er­more Lab in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. Tran­si­tion­ing to the busi­ness world, Veroni­ka found­ed a med­ical jour­nal, earned her MBA (Finance) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Fran­cis­co, and worked in cor­po­rate finance with Union Bank and GATX Finan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion. Veroni­ka is a mem­ber of Finan­cial Women Asso­ci­a­tion (FWA) and Finan­cial Exec­u­tives Inter­na­tion­al (FEI).

jenningsCharles Jen­nings, Direc­tor of the new McGov­ern Insti­tute Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy (MINT) Pro­gram, MIT. Fol­low­ing post­doc­tor­al stud­ies in devel­op­men­tal biol­o­gy at Har­vard and MIT, he became an edi­tor with the sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Nature. He was the found­ing edi­tor of Nature Neu­ro­science, wide­ly con­sid­ered a lead­ing jour­nal in its field. More recent­ly, he was the first exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Har­vard Stem Cell Insti­tute, and he con­tin­ues to serve as an advi­sor to the Con­necti­cut Stem Cell Research Program.

DrMacknikStephen Mack­nik, Direc­tor of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Behav­ioral Neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy, Bar­row Neu­ro­log­i­cal Insti­tute. Dr. Mack­nik’s research and sci­en­tif­ic out­reach activ­i­ties have been fea­tured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,The Chica­go Tri­bune, The Boston Globe, NPR, and Der Spiegel, among hun­dreds of media sto­ries. He is board mem­ber of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, where he has pub­lished sev­er­al fea­ture arti­cles and for which he pub­lished a free month­ly online col­umn on the neu­ro­science of illusions.

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Spon­sors

We want to thank the Spon­sors who made the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit possible.

Bay­crest, locat­ed in Toron­to, is one of the world’s pre­mier aca­d­e­m­ic health sci­ences cen­ters focused on aging. Through its strengths in research and edu­ca­tion, Bay­crest is using the pow­er of inquiry and dis­cov­ery to improve the health of tomor­row’s elder­ly while at the same time care for and enhance the qual­i­ty of life of the elder­ly today. Bay­crest runs a Geri­atric Health Care Sys­tem, a Research Cen­tre for Aging and the Brain, and a Cen­tre for Edu­ca­tion on Aging. Ful­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, Bay­crest is play­ing a unique and impor­tant role in train­ing and enlight­en­ing future pro­fes­sion­als who will have the respon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ing for our aging pop­u­la­tion. We also have link­ages, part­ner­ships and appoint­ments at oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic cen­tres across the coun­try, con­ti­nent and beyond.

The Insti­tute For the Future is an inde­pen­dent, non­prof­it strate­gic research group with more than 40 years of fore­cast­ing expe­ri­ence. The core of our work is iden­ti­fy­ing emerg­ing trends and dis­con­ti­nu­ities that will trans­form glob­al soci­ety and the glob­al mar­ket­place. We pro­vide our mem­bers with insights into busi­ness strat­e­gy, design process, inno­va­tion, and social dilem­mas. Our research spans a broad ter­ri­to­ry of deeply trans­for­ma­tive trends, from health and health care to tech­nol­o­gy, the work­place, and human iden­ti­ty. The Insti­tute for the Future is locat­ed in Palo Alto, California.

The EDGE Inno­va­tion Net­work was formed in Decem­ber 2006 as a col­lab­o­ra­tive, open-envi­ron­ment ini­tia­tive enabling mem­bers and sup­port­ers to work togeth­er to enhance the deliv­ery cycle of tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion to the warfight­er. Over the past 18 months, EDGE mem­ber­ship has grown from 15 to 58 mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing U.S. and inter­na­tion­al mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment agen­cies, high-tech indus­tries and five U.S.-based uni­ver­si­ties. Spon­sored by Gen­er­al Dynam­ics C4 Sys­tems, the EDGE pro­vides sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise, advanced prod­uct port­fo­lios and equip­ment, facil­i­ties and lab­o­ra­to­ries for devel­op­ing and test­ing tech­nolo­gies, prod­ucts and sys­tems at faster cycle times than are cur­rent­ly pos­si­ble on fund­ed pro­grams while enhanc­ing the effec­tive­ness, agili­ty and sur­viv­abil­i­ty of users worldwide.

Cog­niFit brain fit­ness pro­grams pro­vide an ini­tial base­line assess­ment of the cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties that are most affect­ed by aging, before cre­at­ing per­son­al­ized train­ing pro­grams. No two train­ing pro­grams are the same. Based on more than 30 years of neu­ro-sci­en­tif­ic research, Cog­niFit’s sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed, patent­ed brain fit­ness pro­grams are per­son­al­ized to each user’s skills and needs to help enhance their cog­ni­tive per­for­mance and health.

Posit Sci­ence is the leader in deliv­er­ing clin­i­cal­ly proven brain fit­ness soft­ware that brings brain sci­ence from the lab to the peo­ple, improv­ing every­day lives. The com­pa­ny com­bines break­through research and a focus on great cus­tomer expe­ri­ences to cre­ate prod­ucts that are engag­ing and help users think faster, focus bet­ter and remem­ber more. Staff neu­ro­sci­en­tists col­lab­o­rate with more than 50 sci­en­tists from lead­ing research insti­tu­tions such as Mayo Clin­ic and Johns Hop­kins as well as engi­neers and prod­uct mar­keters to design, build and test our com­put­er-based pro­grams. Posit Sci­ence prod­ucts are avail­able online and through health, long-term care and auto insur­ers. Posit Sci­ence is also fea­tured in the PBS doc­u­men­tary “The Brain Fit­ness Program.”

HAP­PYneu­ron is a pio­neer in brain train­ing and reha­bil­i­ta­tion, pro­vid­ing sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous and evi­dence based cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion pro­grams to indi­vid­u­als, clin­i­cian and researchers world­wide to pro­mote healthy brain aging and the treat­ment of a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive impair­ment con­di­tions. In doing so, the com­pa­ny strives to real­ize the vision of improved brain func­tion, health and vital­i­ty, and to make a pos­i­tive impact in the lives of pro­gram par­tic­i­pants. HAP­PYneu­ron Inc. is a major­i­ty owned sub­sidiary of Sci­en­tif­ic Brain Train­ing (NYSE Euronext: MLSBT).

A.G.E. Mat­ters is a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Adult and Geri­atric Eval­u­a­tion Clin­ic in Toron­to, Ontario, Cana­da, with a mis­sion to pro­vide swift and con­tin­u­al­ly upgrad­ed access to com­mu­ni­ty-based, com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of cog­ni­tion, func­tion and behav­ior;  per­son­al­ized pro­grams of pre­ven­tion, coun­sel­ing, edu­ca­tion and treat­ment; and nutri­tion­al and lifestyle rec­om­men­da­tions, cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams, and med­ica­tions of proven benefit.

The Arrow­smith Pro­gram is a com­pre­hen­sive suite of cog­ni­tive pro­grams for stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties that tar­gets 19 areas of the brain that are most com­mon­ly involved in learn­ing.  It inte­grates two lines of neu­ro­science research, that of Russ­ian neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, A.R. Luria and the Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist, Mark Rosen­zweig, into a method­ol­o­gy with a mul­ti­tude of prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions for address­ing learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties.  The Arrow­smith Pro­gram iden­ti­fies and strength­ens the weak cog­ni­tive areas that affect learn­ing and each stu­dent works on cog­ni­tive pro­grams that are indi­vid­u­al­ly designed for his or her areas of learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ty.  The Arrow­smith Pro­gram was devel­oped at Arrow­smith School in Toron­to where it has been offered since 1979 and is avail­able in pub­lic and pri­vate schools in Cana­da and the U.S.

9am. Baycrest/ Cog­nic­i­ti will intro­duce the new Memory@Work work­shop, designed to teach what mem­o­ry is, how lifestyle fac­tors such as dis­trac­tion and stress can affect mem­o­ry, and how to enhance mem­o­ry per­for­mance at work with the use of enabling strategies.

10am. Cog­niFit will demo Cog­niFit Per­son­al Coach and Cog­niFit Senior Dri­ver, two online pro­grams designed to assess and main cog­ni­tive func­tions for healthy liv­ing and safe dri­ving, respectively.

11am. Posit Sci­ence will demo InSight, a soft­ware-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pack­age designed to sharp­en brain’s visu­al sys­tem. This is the pro­gram being test­ed by All­state for safer driving.

Noon. Hap­py Neu­ron will intro­duce HAP­PYneu­ron PRO, a new plat­form for pro­fes­sion­als for the effec­tive deliv­ery and man­age­ment of cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams in a patient cen­tric manner.

1pm. Sharp­Brains will help nav­i­gate this grow­ing field by dis­cussing The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware 2009 report and The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness con­sumer guide, and sum­ma­riz­ing key Sum­mit take-aways.

Part­ners

The fol­low­ing Part­ners made the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit possible:

Media X at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty is a col­lab­o­ra­tion of Stan­ford and indus­try that brings togeth­er Stan­ford’s lead­ing inter­ac­tive tech­nol­o­gy research with com­pa­nies com­mit­ted to tech­ni­cal advance­ment and inno­va­tion. Media X is affil­i­at­ed with the H‑STAR Insti­tute (Human-Sci­ences and Tech­nolo­gies Advanced Research Institute).

The Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO) is a non-prof­it trade asso­ci­a­tion that rep­re­sents com­pa­nies involved in neu­ro­science, aca­d­e­m­ic neu­ro­science research cen­ters, and brain-ill­ness advo­ca­cy groups across the Unit­ed States and through­out the world.

MaRS Dis­cov­ery Dis­trict is a large scale, mis­sion dri­ven inno­va­tion cen­tre locat­ed in Toron­to and net­worked across Ontario, focused on build­ing Canada’s next gen­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. MaRS works close­ly with entre­pre­neurs to grow and scale their ven­tures into glob­al mar­ket lead­ers in life sci­ences and health care, infor­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and dig­i­tal media tech­nolo­gies, clean­tech and advanced mate­ri­als, as well as inno­v­a­tive social pur­pose business.

Games for Health by the Seri­ous Games Ini­tia­tive devel­ops a com­mu­ni­ty and best prac­tices plat­form for the numer­ous games being built for health care applications.

The Cen­ter for Tech­nol­o­gy and Aging is a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion with a pur­pose to advance the dif­fu­sion of tech­nolo­gies that help old­er adults lead health­i­er lives and main­tain inde­pen­dence. It was found­ed in 2009 with a grant from The SCAN Foun­da­tion and is affil­i­at­ed with the Pub­lic Health Institute.

The Brain Injury Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca (BIAA), found­ed in 1980, is the lead­ing nation­al orga­ni­za­tion serv­ing and rep­re­sent­ing indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and pro­fes­sion­als who are touched by a life-alter­ing, often dev­as­tat­ing, trau­mat­ic brain injury (TBI). Togeth­er with its net­work of more than 40 char­tered state affil­i­ates, as well as hun­dreds of local chap­ters and sup­port groups across the coun­try, the BIAA pro­vides infor­ma­tion, edu­ca­tion and sup­port to assist the 3.17 mil­lion Amer­i­cans cur­rent­ly liv­ing with trau­mat­ic brain injury and their families.

The USC Davis School of Geron­tol­ogy has con­sis­tent­ly pio­neered inno­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams includ­ing the world’s first Ph.D. in Geron­tol­ogy, the first joint Mas­ter’s degree in Geron­tol­ogy and Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion, and the first under­grad­u­ate Health Sci­ence Track in Geron­tol­ogy. Research in mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, demog­ra­phy, psy­chol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy and pub­lic pol­i­cy is con­duct­ed under the aus­pices of the Ethel Per­cy Andrus Geron­tol­ogy Cen­ter, found­ed in 1964.

The Alzheimer’s Drug Dis­cov­ery Foun­da­tion was estab­lished in 2004 as a pub­lic char­i­ty to sup­port the advance­ment of drugs to pre­vent, treat, and cure Alzheimer’s dis­ease, relat­ed demen­tias, and cog­ni­tive aging. Our strat­e­gy of ven­ture phil­an­thropy is based on the idea that our research grant recip­i­ents are engaged in projects that are poten­tial­ly viable in the mar­ket­place with a pos­si­ble return on investment.

The Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Active Aging® (ICAA) was found­ed in the belief that uni­fy­ing the efforts of the orga­ni­za­tions focused on old­er adults ben­e­fits both the peo­ple they reach and the orga­ni­za­tions them­selves. Today, the vision is shared by over 8,000 orga­ni­za­tions con­nect­ed to the ICAA network.

The UC-San­ta Bar­bara Neu­ro­science Research Insti­tute has a mis­sion to pro­mote and facil­i­tate inter­dis­ci­pli­nary neu­ro­science research. Work in the insti­tute inte­grates the tools and strate­gies of mod­ern mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy, genet­ics, cell biol­o­gy, devel­op­men­tal biol­o­gy, biopsy­chol­o­gy, bio­chem­istry, phys­i­ol­o­gy, bio­physics and bioengineering.

The Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF), estab­lished in 1993, is ded­i­cat­ed to reduc­ing the inci­dence of Alzheimer’s dis­ease by con­duct­ing clin­i­cal research and pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion­al out­reach. Our mis­sion is to make avail­able infor­ma­tion, from con­ven­tion­al and com­ple­men­tary med­i­cine, that will empow­er peo­ple to build healthy brains.

OLLI @ Berke­ley is one of the 121 Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes on uni­ver­si­ty and col­lege cam­pus­es in 48 states (plus the Dis­trict of Colum­bia) sup­port­ed by the Bernard Osh­er Foun­da­tion. OLLI @ Berke­ley pro­vides old­er adults an intel­lec­tu­al, cul­tur­al and cre­ative con­nec­tion to Berke­ley as well as a place for Berke­ley’s dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty and oth­ers to share their research and inter­ests in an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary exchange of ideas.

The Knowl­edge Media Design Insti­tute (KMDI) is a leader in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research and teach­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. Our work spans the sci­en­tif­ic study of the ways in which media and media tech­nolo­gies shape, and are shaped by, human activ­i­ty, and the prac­ti­cal work of found­ing an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary nexus for the design of such media. Adopt­ing a human-cen­tred and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry approach to design, our goal is to enhance human skill rather than dimin­ish it, and to encour­age cre­ativ­i­ty and innovation.

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