we have a really interesting who had a perfect idea to help people especially all of the people to maintain their brain and even their body now he will tell us all about his background and who is helping him and what he is planning to do you well now you say what do you want to hear thank you katie it's a pleasure to be here and i appreciate the invitation so my background is computer science economics and business but i have been an entrepreneur for my entire career but over the last seventeen years i have been focusing iology and then about twelve years ago brain related to me that's even more important without the brain here nothing exactly without the brain we can do nothing and the most interesting thing about the brain is that there is so much that we still don't know but he more now and we are learning new things but there is a lot that we still don't know and that's why it makes it so interesting because we're discovering new things all the time a little bit more about my background i also talk graduate courses at northeastern university about emerging technologies and health care and i was a mentor to both students and professors at mit who were interested in starting their own business for about five y new tin based company and what we try to do is help seniors maintain their brain wellness what was very important to me from the beginning was that everything that we do will be based on science this is very important because there's so much out there that's baloney let's face it and i know you would think it is all based on fact nath fiction that's very important and we did from the beginning have a scientific advisory board with leading researchers in alzheimer's in aging and in neuropsychology the members who are very knowledgeable and helpful in what we're doing now the reason why we started vigorous mind now in why there is this whole trend of maintaining brain wellness is because of discoveries that took place about thirty years ago until ago i thought and well it takes time a lot of these things to get recognized so about thirty years ago elizabeth gould a researcher discovered that our brain can grow new neurons until then it was believed that we peaked at nineteen and that's and then it's down that hill lacking for us exactly what the knowledge was what was thought until then was that we lose between ten thousand one hundred thousand neurons every day now to calm people down we each have about eighty six billion with a b neurons but nevertheless the fact that we are losing them was something that was of concern so was able to prove that the same thing happens with humans we can actually grow new neurons in our brain and interestingly similarly to the rats there are two areas where we can grow grow those neurons one of them is the hippocampus which is an area in the brain which is very important for memory for made the other area is the all factory area which is responsible for smell but most of the neurons can be grown in the campus but only if you challenge exactly what they notice in those studies was that you have to be challenge in order to make good on the brain grow those movies don't do it nothing will happen so you idea was to help it along exactly our idea was to see if we could help people by challenging them challenging their brains and thereby helping them regenerate new neurons another important discovery which was made in the late eighty's was the discovery that our brain can change the functioning of  and neuroplasticity which is the changing of neurons functioning this is the basis for what we're doing now when we started we started just by doing brain exercise we ha what we claim is that we make you feel good we want to improve the quality of life of seniors if at the end and i will talk about some studies that we're doing we can prove that we can to go you know but don't think too cautious because i think it probably works ok i hope so too in any case with the help of our scientific advisory board and working with seniors in a lot of  senior centers and assisted living facilities and retirement communities we discovered that in addition to exercising the brain there are other things which are very important there are other things which are very important for maintaining brain wellness and all of them are known for michael logical we are not interested in meraz yeah that to their cognitive exercises stimulating your brain which is very important is to reduce stress stress is very damaging to our brain especially in the same area that we talked about hippocampus so if you can reduce stress and there are many ways to do it whether it's music haitian meditation or looking at pictures that make you feel good maybe music i said absolutely so reducing stress is very important another important thing is dealing with happiness very important to engage in activities that make you happy music again can change your mood but also seeing people that you like can make you feel better and absolutely there are comedies that can make you laugh and feel good so there are many things that you can do and this is very important because people who are depressed are more likely to develop at intel simers the fourth thing which is very important socializing there are studies that show that people that and gauge in social activity can engage in social activity you're stimulating your brain many areas in your brain are stimulated you're also walking to where you're engaging with people which is physical activity which is important and the social activity itself is something which can reduce stress and be pleasing another important component of our comprehensive approach is a sense of purpose there is a study that shows that finding a sense of purpose there are many ways to do that you can volunteer for many activities you can decide that you're going to learn spanish and you're going to learn ten words every week two words a day and then you have a about physical exercise about when we talk about our study we should talk about your games and we will get again we will we will get to the games shortly physical exercise is very important for our brain it's very important for our heart and for our entire body but for our brain as well our brain is just two to three percent of our body mass but it consumes more than twenty percent of its energy how do you get this energy to the brain through blood flow which carries oxygen and nutrients and that's something that you accomplish blood flow when you are engaging and the physical exercise if you sit there near bo to happen exactly now there's a very interesting study that will i think surprise people it shows this is a study that was done by patricia boyle and barbells physical exercise how do you get your muscles to be stronger it's all about physical exercise and by the way physical exercise can be done seated there are lots of exercises will talk about but anyway then too much sugar right you know we have to eat in moderation but there is actually a diet which is called the mind diet which is a combination of the  hypertension and that's a combination and it's a very interesting diet which has shown to reduce the risk of alzheimer's by fifty three percent that's a lot that is a lot and it's a diet which is very manageable you eat fish once a week you eat poultry twice a week you eat green leafy vegetables every day if possible correct in terms of fruits the most important fruits are olive oil for what you eat and the good news about this is that you can also eat sweets and i have a sweet tooth so that's very important dark shop so you can eat effect well maybe so this was component number seven and the eighth one is sleep and here if you engage in physical activity which is tiring and if you engage in brain exercises which are tiring if you're more relaxed less stressed and feeling happier you're probably going to sleep better so all those things are combined that's what is behind what we're doing and now i would like to show you the fun right so the games are one part what you're seeing here is what a user would be seeing ye that's what i see exactly and we have the choice exactly you can choose from many things you can play brain exercises you can do all kinds of fun and musing reminiscence accretive adiz and trivia and all kinds of other word games related to different topics which will talk about you can communicate with family and friends and you don't have to type anything this is an e mail where you record your messages and you can listen to messages that are sent to you and you can also manage your daily activities with reminders so let's look at some of the games here and you told me that one of the games that you like is is the big babies there so beat exactly so that is them exactly what you do this is like the game concentration where you have to match pairs and in this case we allow you to peek at the pairs for and the pairs are pairs of babies so you have to try and memorize where where are those babies are so you see these two are the same and they're this one and this one are the same and so on and then we hide it and we ask you to try and memorize it so there was a pair of babies here and there was another pier here and i think that there was another p here and where was this one and at the time exactly the system tracks the time that it takes you to do  it see i made a mistake these two are here and finally we have those two girls here and then i don't know if you can hear but but it is a fun one yes and what you have to do here is fill in the blank so we give you a proverb that you probably are familiar with change something in mid stream is a change cars boat the captain or horses so i think the expression is horses yes field is it field animals field rat field day or field crop so that would be field day he is as something as the day is long he is as focused he is as tall as honest or he is as tired so this is on early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy something and wise is it angry wealthy tired or happy so it's wealthy come hell or something water high water easy come something go easy go easy go exactly and new something sweeps clean is it a new work or a new maid a new cleaner or a new broom  you want to try it word jumble is a game where we give you letters we start with three but i'll start with four letters and then you have to try and figure out what word is moe moth exactly so this is a very good exercise what it does is a trains your working memory or can hang in fashion after the letters yeah and then in your working memory you're trying to figure out what the word is so this is boot ok let me show you another game here which i know is very popular and this is called guess what this is this is a game where we show you a fraction of a picture and you have to try i think it is a tricky one it looks easier than it or what are we seeing here scarves and i can show you more what do you think this is and i'll show you even more correction angle so it's a little bit more difficult now what are we seeing here a frame a handbag a belt or shoes shoes yes very good now this is a little tricky are we seeing here blueberries gems black berries or  many yes there are lots of games and i want also to show you some of the other things that you can do other than the games but just to show you games this is a game where you have to try and recreate a picture which we break into pieces and shuffle oh never played that and you see where it says numbers you put the numbers and then you try to move into the empty area till you have it complete until you complete the picture and it talk about the study i want to talk about the study i just want to show one other quick thing here there are many many games but there are also a lot of other activities that you can do here so for example if you have favorite music or favorite comedy you can tell the system and it will bring it to you really i guess you know that so for example if you like the i love lucy you can go in and here you have four hours of good no other scenes and if you like music like oklahoma musicals it will bring you the movie oklahoma really hadn't known that yeah so that is really a lot of fun but as of now you still have to talk about the start something very important  study that we're doing with colleagues from northeastern university professor holly jamison and professor michel pawel and what we're doing there is we're trying through vigorous mind to encourage people to engage in physical exercise at home that are important so those of you who are not interested in going to a club you can still engage in physical exercise which as we said is very important and is much easier than having to drag yourself off exactly and you can do it when you wanted exactly you choose when you choose when and you choose how the are exercises which you can do standing there exercises which you can do saving and the way that this works is that you go to the software and we have a coach that helps you in choosing those exercises and then it brings you the exercises and you play them on the software and you follow the instructions of the coach too  and this is something that we really encourage you to join and there is going to be a phone number that you can call and join and we already have thirteen participants most of them are from belmont through the senior center and we hope that many other people can join where i am a say you while you really told us a a lot about the brain and what to do i hope you guys will follow that and not just sit around and do not think this is very important and please join us that he is very important because we want to show that things do work and