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Brain fitness could be next big thing Casey Newton, Chronicle Staff Writer San Francisco Chronicle May 1, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Monday, May 2, 2011 
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More BusinessOil drops to $113 as traders eye dollar, bin Laden 05.02.11Asian stocks lower as bin Laden euphoria fades 05.02.11Canada's Conservatives win coveted majority 05.02.11Honda expands recall to check 833,000 air bags 05.02.11Years after graduating from college, Jason Blair noticed he had trouble focusing.
The 30-year-old musician's ability to concentrate on his work, or switch quickly between tasks, was slipping. He wondered whether his brain was out of shape.
"Being out of school for a while, you realize how much you used to exercise your mind," said Blair, who lives in San Francisco. "I like to go to the gym. I thought I'd like to find something for my mind, too."
That was in September, shortly before Blair joined Lumosity - a 4-year-old subscription-based website where users play a series of increasingly challenging games to sharpen their mental acuity. He now plays for 20 to 30 minutes five times a week, and credits the site for improving his focus and creative abilities.
Blair is one of 12 million people registered for the fast-growing site, where the number of users more than doubled in the past year. Now the backers of Lumos Labs, the San Francisco startup behind Lumosity, say they are on the brink of taking "brain training" mainstream.
"It really feels like an inflection point," said Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners and a member of Lumos Labs' board. The number of monthly visitors to the site over the past year hit 2 million, according to research firm Quantcast, and Lumosity.com now ranks in the top 1,000 websites globally.
Rooted in scienceThe company was founded in 2005 by Kunal Sarkar, Michael Scanlan and David Drescher. Scanlan was a graduate student in neuroscience at Stanford University, studying how the brain adapts to different demands, when he began to wonder whether there might be demand for brain training rooted in science.
He took a leave of absence from graduate school and began developing a Web-based training program with his co-founders. For two years the company developed prototypes and tried to improve the user experience. Lumosity went online in 2007, and has since raised more than $3 million in venture capital.
Earlier attempts by companies making products for mental fitness focused on serving an older generation, promising to help Baby Boomers stave off memory loss as they age. Lumos' founders saw the potential for a broader market, and created a site where users pay up to $15 a month for access to games and data about their performance.
The founders were inspired by fitness clubs, which grew rapidly in popularity during the 1980s as more people began to focus on staying in shape. Sarkar, who worked in private equity before co-founding Lumos Labs, previously managed an investment in 24 Hour Fitness.
"People of all sorts want to use a gym," Sarkar said, citing his own experiences. In his 20s, he would train for events. Now in his 30s, he trains to stay fit. And his 71-year-old father still goes to the gym regularly to stay healthy.
Sarkar and his co-founders hope that some day, mental fitness will be as much a part of the average person's routine as physical fitness.
Tapping a trend"It's tapping that same trend of people taking care of themselves more and investing in themselves more," he said. "We are the beneficiaries of that same trend that 24 Hour Fitness was."
On that point, even rivals agree.
"I don't have any doubt that five, 10 or 15 years from now we're going to look back to where we are right now as the Dark Ages," said Henry Mahncke, a neuroscientist and the CEO of San Francisco's Posit Labs. "We're going to be embarrassed and horrified about how we left people to get older without taking care of their brains."
Like Lumosity, Posit is a startup focused on mental fitness. The company produces software that helps people improve their cognitive abilities. The company also participates in research projects, and its clinical team has worked to create therapeutic programs for soldiers returning from war and people with mental illnesses.
"We let people get old - they watch TV, they retreat into their homes, and that's just kind of it," Mahncke said. "We accept that that's the way aging is. ... Well, that's actually not the way it is. We can take the science we know about the brain and create programs that can be clinically shown to arrest and prevent" cognitive decline.
Not everyone is convinced that games and other cognitive exercises produce lasting benefits. In 2009, the British consumer watchdog Which? surveyed researchers and found that there was little scientific evidence to back up claims of lasting benefits.
Technology improvesBut since then, supporters say, an increasing body of research published in peer-reviewed journals has supported the idea that brain training has benefits. Posit cites more than 60 peer-reviewed studies supporting mental exercise.
And the technology is still improving.
"We're only on the tip of the iceberg in terms of the possibilities of training," said Lumosity's Scanlan.
Brain training companies need to improve their marketing efforts if they want to gain wider adoption, said Erin Matlock, CEO of the Brain Pages Inc., an industry group that promotes mental fitness. Matlock said the industry can grow significantly by serving people with autism and brain injuries, among other conditions.
Those markets "are full of highly educated consumers who desperately need easily accessible help," Matlock said in an e-mail.
Blair, the San Francisco musician, is among those convinced of the benefits. While working at a toy store, he was constantly asked to switch between tasks - helping multiple customers, retrieving items from the stock room, and so on. Brain training helped him concentrate, he said.
Blair also found that training helped him create his electronic music.
"It helped me connect to my creative source," he said. "When I go to work, I feel like I can concentrate better."
E-mail Casey Newton at cnewton@sfchronicle.com.This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco ChroniclePrintE-maildel.icio.usDiggTechnoratiRedditLinkedInFacebookSlashdotFarkNewsvineGoogle BookmarksTwitterShare#sfg_object_view .socialtools .facebookcontainer, #sfg_object_view .socialtools .diggcontainer, #sfg_blog .socialtools .facebookcontainer, #sfg_blog .socialtools .diggcontainer{margin-top:2px;}#sfg_object_view .socialtools img, #sfg_blog .socialtools img {margin-top:2px;} 0
Subscribe to the San Francisco Chronicle and get a gift:Sunday + a $15 gift cardFri-Sun + a $15 gift cardMon-Sun + a $25 gift card Brain fitness could be next big thing Articles Years after graduating from college, Jason Blair noticed he had trouble focusing. The 30-year-old musician's ability to concentrate on his work, or switch quickly between tasks, was slipping. He wondered whether his... 
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