Software as Medicine

If the improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) is the signature weapon of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, then traumatic brain injury (T.B.I.) is the emblematic malady. It's exhausting, controversial, vaguely defined, hard to treat, and expensive. And shock waves of human suffering emanate from each case. Even its mildest form can cause memory, sleep,  and concentration problems, depression, alienation, and often PTSD-like anxiety attacks. Suicide rates among T.B.I. patients are high. Epilepsy is much more common among patients with even mild brain injuries. So too are unemployment, divorce, and domestic violence.

Posit Science's Mike Merzenich has long thought that brain training software programs could be ideal tools not only for sharpening aging brains, but also for fixing damaged ones. They get into the brain through the senses and engage it to make incremental changes in neuronal structure that cumulatively amount to a  medical intervention. That's the idea anyway.  A story of mine in today's New York Times looks at a new Department of Defense study of Posit's software to try to help veterans with traumatic brain injury to recover lost cognitive function.  Posit's software is also being studied by Sophia Vinogradov at UCSF for its effectiveness treating schizophrenia. More about that story soon. 

A Safer, Sexier Approach to Brain Fitness

While brain fitness software might help some to recover lost cognitive function and memory power-- especially the stuff with serious research behind it like Posit Science's--there are a few things that neuroscientists pretty much all agree are good for your brain. I focused research for my story about brain training at the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience at UCSF, where I asked some of the world's top neuroscientists what they did to keep their own brains humming. Not a single one (except Michael Merzenich, the founder and president of Posit) said they used brain fitness software. Instead, they cited exercise, challenging their minds by mastering new skills (memorize a poem, learn to tango, study a new language, publish another paper), eating well (foods with lots of antioxidants such as blueberries and walnuts, and foods with Omega-3 fatty acids), and engaging in stress relieving activities (hiking, music, meditation, sex). All the researchers also agreed that meaningful work helps a lot; the attention that comes from caring about what you’re trying to do is key to engaging your brain’s learning and memory functions. It's a small survey of scientists, not science, but, assuming they are rational, it's probably good advice. Anyway, their approach is not only good for the brain, it’s what someone with a good head would probably want to do anyway.

Brain Fitness Software: Hype or Bologna?

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, KQED Radio, the biggest local NPR station, is well into its Fall fund-raising drive. Once again, it’s promoting--as a gift to big donors--“brain fitness” products from Posit Science in San Francisco. I’ve used the software, which is supposed to stimulate users' brains to make new connections and fortify important ones, and I don’t think its going to hurt anyone. It might well even help. But the KQED announcers’ repeated promise that it is “scientifically proven to make you smarter and help you recover lost brain function” is bunk, as I found researching this skeptical article about the burgeoning brain fitness movement for San Francisco Magazine. It’s notoriously hard to test this kind of software scientifically, the placebo effect alone blows the current studies out of the water, and the efforts to do so have produced ambiguous results, at best. Take a look at this buyer beware statement from the Stanford Center on Longevity.