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Alvaro Fernandez is the CEO of SharpBrains, a market research firm that track brain training software and neuroplasticity research and applications. Alvaro is a member of the World Economic Forum's Council on The Future of the Aging Society, and teaches at UC-Berkeley Lifelong Learning Institute. He has an MBA. and an MA in Education from Stanford University. To learn more, visit
I recently had the fortune to interview Dr. Michael Merzenich, a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research, in his office at UCSF. You may have learned about his work in one of PBS TV specials, multiple media appearances, or neuroplasticity-related books. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999 and to the Institute of Medicine this year.
AF (Alvaro Fernandez): Dear Michael, thank you very much for your time today. What are, in your mind, the likely implications of your work? specifically, given that there are many different technology-free approaches to harnessing neuroplasticity, what is the unique value of technology?
MM (Michael Merzenich): It's all about efficiency, scalability, personalization, and assured effectiveness. Technology supports the implementation of near-optimally-efficient brain-training strategies. Through [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] the Internet, it enables the low-cost distribution of these new tools, anywhere out in the world. Technology also enables the personalization of brain health training, by providing simple ways to measure and address individual needs in each person's brain-health training experience. It enables assessments of your abilities that can affirm that your own brain health issues have been [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] effectively addressed.
Of course substantial gains could also be achieved by organizing your everyday activities that grow your neurological abilities and sustain your brain health. Still, if the ordinary citizen is to have any real chance of maintaining their brain fitness, they're going to have to spend considerable time at the brain gym!
Having said this, there are obvious obstacles. One main one, in my mind, is the lack of understanding of what these new tools can do. Cognitive training programs, for example, seem counterintuitive to consumers and many professionals - why would one try to improve speed-of-processing if all one cares about is "memory"? A second obvious problem is to get individuals to buy into the effort required to really change their brains for the better. That buy-in has been achieved for many individuals as it applies to their physical health, but we haven't gotten that far yet in educating the average older person that brain fitness training is an equally effortful business!
AF: Safe driving seems to be one area where the benefits are more intuitive, which [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] may explain why.
MM: Yes, we see great potential and interest among insurers for improving driving safety, both for seniors and teens. Appropriate cognitive training can lower at-fault accident rates. You can measure clear benefits in relatively short time frames, so it won't take long for insurers to see an economic rationale to not only offer programs at low cost or for free but to incentivize drivers to complete them. Allstate, State Farm and other insurers are beginning to realize this potential. It is important to note that typical accidents among teens and seniors are different, so that training methodologies will need to be different for different high-risk populations.
Yet, most driving safety initiatives today still focus on educating drivers, rather that training them neurologically. We measure vision, for example, but completely ignore attentional control abilities, or a driver's useful field of view. I expect this to change significantly over the next few years.
Long-term care and health insurance companies will ultimately see similar benefits, and we believe that they will follow a similar course of action. In fact, many senior living communities are among the pioneers in this field.
AF: Mainstream media is covering this emerging category with thousands of [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] stories. But most coverage seems still focused on "does it work?" more than "how do we define It", "what does work mean?" or "work for whom, and for what?" Can you summarize what recent research suggests?
MM: We have seen clear patterns in the application of our training programs, some published (like IMPACT), some unpublished, some with healthy adults, and some with people with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimers Disease (AD). What we see in every case: 1) [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] despite one's age, brain functioning can be improved, often with pretty impressive improvement in a short-time frame and limited time invested (10 or 20 or 30 or 40 hours over a period of a few weeks up to 2 or 3 months). 2) Basic neurological abilities in 60-90 year olds that are directly subject to training (for example, processing accuracy or processing speed) can be improved to the performance level of the average 20 or 30 or 40 year old through 3-10 hours of training at that specific ability. 3) Improvements generalize to broader cognitive measures, and to indices of quality of life. 4) Improvements are sustained over time (in different controlled studies, documented at all post-training benchmarks set between 3 to 72 months after training completion).
A major obstacle is that there [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] is not enough research funding for appropriate trials to address all of these issues, especially as they apply for the mildly cognitively impaired (pre-AD) or the AD populations. We'd welcome not only more research dollars but also more FDA involvement, to help clarify the claims being made.
AF: A key element for the maturity of the field will be the widespread use of objective assessments. What do you see in that area?
MM: Unfortunately, most researchers and policy initiatives are still wedded to relatively rudimentary assessments. For example, I recently participated in meetings designed to help define a very-well-supported EU initiative on how cognitive science can contribute to drug development, in which most applied assessments and most assessments development were still paper-based. This is a major [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] missed opportunity, given the rapidly growing development and availability of automated assessments.
AF: This has been a fascinating conversation. What else do you think will happen over the next few years?
MM: First, I believe we'll need to focus on public education, for people to understand the value of tools with limited "face value". [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] One important aspect of this [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] is the need to find balance between what is "fun" and what has value as a cognitive enhancer - which requires the activities to be very targeted, repetitive and slowly progressive. Not always the most fun - people need to think "fitness" as much or more than "games."
Second, I believe the role of providing supervision, coaching, support, will emerge to be a critical one. Think about the need for having a piano teacher, if you want to learn how to play the piano and improve [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] over time. Technology may help fill this role, or empower and richly support real "coaches" who do so.
My dream in all of this is to have standardized and credible tools to train [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] the 5-6 main neurocognitive domains for cognitive health and performance through life, coupled with the right assessments to identify one's individual needs and measure progress. For example, I'd like to know what the 10 things are that I need [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] to fix, and where to start.
AF: Mike, thank you very much once more for your time and insights.
MM: My pleasure.

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