An incredible long-term NIH study of Posit Science’s brain training […]

An incredible long-term NIH study of Posit Science’s brain training games found that 12 hours of BrainHQ.com cuts the incidence of dementia in half, even 10 years after ending the program. It also slashes the incidence of depression and car crashes.

Here is the Today Show segment: http://www.today.com/video/this-brain-fitness-program-could-be-a-game-changer-731624515546

Snake oil? The New Yorker summarizes 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers: “Even as dozens of researchers… continued to insist that the field was not the neuroscientific equivalent of desktop fusion or coffee colonics, the fact remained that no brain game, nor any drug, dietary supplement, or lifestyle intervention, had ever been shown in a large, randomized trial to prevent dementia. That was the case until today, when surprising new results were announced at the Alzheimer’s Association annual meeting” — http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/could-brain-training-prevent-dementia

We have been working with the company since the beginning when they had results from just 4 patients. Their focus on neural plasticity and sharpening the sensory cortex has been a long-term quest, and an approach that generalized to broader cognitive function in those first four people.

Improving processing speed “changes fundamental processes in the brain,” said Henry Mahncke, CEO of Posit Science Corporation. “It’s not that one particular link in the brain gets improved, but that the whole brain is rejuvenated,” he said. From https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/24/brain-training-cuts-dementia-risk/

Company site: http://www.brainhq.com/active-study-results

And my blog posts, starting with our Series A investment, 12 years ago… http://jurvetson.blogspot.com/2004/10/celebrate-child-like-mind.html
http://jurvetson.blogspot.com/2005/10/keep-on-booming.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/7096966099

And this not just for the elderly. For those of us over the age of 30, we are already in the long dive of cognitive decline (there was no evolutionary selection pressure for a life extended much beyond the breeding years, and our healthcare advances have done more for the body than the mind).

By almost every physical measure of brain function, the slope of cognitive decline is the same in the 30’s as in the 80’s. We just notice more accumulated decline as we get older, especially when we cross the threshold of forgetting most of what we try to remember.

But we can affect this progression. Prof. Merzenich at UCSF (the Posit founder I met at a brain conference) has found that neural plasticity does not disappear in adults. It just requires mental exercise. We will look back to the current day and marvel that we thought we could stay mentally fit without exercise. We will look at it like we do physical fitness. Few modern careers offer the degree of physical and mental exercise required to remain fit.

Mental exercise is eclectic. Do something new.

Lifelong learning is not just about enlightenment; it may become an economic imperative.

Here’s my short Harvard Business Review article on this, rationalizing rocket photography, of course =) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/3220668891/lightbox