What is brain fit¬ness really? 

 

What will hap¬pen in terms of brain fit¬ness inno¬va¬tion in the next decade? 

 

What’s the biggest challenge?

 

.1. How would you define “brain fit¬ness” vs. “phys¬i¬cal fit¬ness”?

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Har¬vard Med¬ical School: Phys¬i¬cal fit¬ness can refer to an over¬all or gen¬eral state of health and well-being. How¬ever, it is also often used more specif¬i¬cally to refer to the abil-ity to per¬form a given activ¬ity, occu¬pa¬tion, or sport. Sim¬i¬larly brain fit¬ness might be used to refer to a gen¬eral state of healthy, opti¬mized brain func¬tion, or a more spe¬cific brain-based abil¬ity to process cer¬tain, spe¬cific infor¬ma¬tion, enable cer¬tain motor actions, or sup¬port cer¬tain cog¬ni¬tive abil¬i¬ties. Impor¬tantly though, I would argue that phys¬i¬cal fit¬ness REQUIRES brain fit¬ness, while brain fit¬ness ben¬e¬fits from, but does not require phys¬i¬cal fitness.

 

2. Where do you see a sig¬nif¬i¬cant oppor¬tu¬nity for brain fit¬ness inno¬va¬tion to improve the lives of a large num¬ber of peo¬ple in the next decade?

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Har¬vard Med¬ical School: A) Edu¬ca¬tion; B) Access to sup¬port; C) Individually-tailored pro¬grams that can be truly deployed as ther¬a¬pies and can be appro¬pri¬ately mon¬i¬tored in their efficacy.

 

3. What is the one big chal¬lenge to the innovation?

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Har¬vard Med¬ical School: The estab¬lish¬ment of a reli¬able screen¬ing test to assess indi¬vid¬ual brain health that might be used to opti¬mize inter¬ven-tions and assess their efficacy.

 

4. What are your main activ¬i¬ties in the field and where can peo¬ple learn more?

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Direc¬tor of the Berenson-Allen Cen¬ter for Non-Invasive Brain Stim¬u¬la¬tion at Har¬vard Med¬ical School.

Con¬duct¬ing research, clin¬i¬cal pro¬grams, devel¬op¬ing edu¬ca¬tional pro¬grams. Our main web¬site is: Berenson-Allen Cen¬ter for Non-Invasive Brain Stim¬u¬la¬tion.