For Immediate Release
Media Contact:
Sara Brewster, Easter Seals
P: 312.551.7141 or sbrewster@easterseals.com
www.easterseals.com/media
Join Easter Seals Train Your Brain Challenge with Posit Science
Posit Science offers BrainHQ at easterseals.com
(Chicago, March 25, 2013) -- New research in how our brains work shows that we can improve our memory, speed up how we process information, and achieve many other gains by training our brains. The online exercises from Posit Science’s BrainHQ are provided in Easter Seals Train Your Brain Challenge and give a useful and fun way to train our brains.
As a trusted resource for people with disabilities and special needs, Easter Seals is teaming up with Posit Science to offer four of their scientifically proven, online cognitive exercises for free. We invite people to come to our website, click on the link and try these fun, new brain-challenging exercises.
Posit Science’s BrainHQ exercises have been the subject of multiple, independent, university-based studies resulting in more than 70 published articles in peer-reviewed journals that clearly note the broad array of benefits both in cognition and quality of life for people who take the time to regularly use these compelling online exercises. These benefits include significant gains in brain processing speed, attention, and memory, as well as improvements in standard measures of health-related quality of life, functional independence, mood and confidence. Brain training tools also show real promise for people living with neurological conditions, illness and other disabilities.
“Imagine a world where people could protect, rehabilitate, improve or enhance brain function and better manage or address chronic conditions like attention deficit disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression, addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, autism and many more,” says James E. Williams, Jr., president and chief executive officer, Easter Seals. “This is the vision behind Easter Seals' new partnership with Posit Science.”
"We spent the last eight years showing through rigorous scientific studies that we can build brain training exercises that improve cognitive performance," said Henry Mahncke, PhD, CEO of Posit Science. "With BrainHQ, we're making these exercises available to a much wider audience, with new game-like and social features, as well as a number of exercises that are free to use. Our goal is to make brain training as common and useful as brushing your teeth -- something everyone does every day for long-term health."
Easter Seals Train Your Brain Challenge is the first of many online offerings at Easter Seals Brain Health Center. Easter Seals new Brain Health Center offers tools, assessments and information for people living with neurological conditions– and for people who just want to think and remember more clearly. Easter Seals Brain Health Center is becoming a focal point for taking brain health research into practice through Easter Seals’ national network of 500+ service centers, public education, and community-based practitioners.
Why Easter Seals?
For nearly 100 years, Easter Seals has helped children and adults with disabilities achieve better health and improve their ability to live inclusively in the communities of their choice. With promising new discoveries in brain research and train your brain programs, Easter Seals is adding new services to advance the health, function, and independence of children and adults with neurologically-based cognitive and other disabilities. Today this group also includes service members and veterans and a growing number of youth and professional athletes who sustain sports related injuries and seniors.
“A hallmark of Easter Seals longevity is our passion for finding and introducing new and innovative ways to help millions more people improve their health and function,” adds Williams. “With pioneering advancements in brain research and the promising work of partners like Posit Science and the Brain Plasticity Institute, Easter Seals is poised to expand our portfolio of services for people affected by neurological conditions.”
###
About Easter Seals
Easter Seals is the leading non-profit provider of services for individuals with autism, developmental disabilities, physical disabilities and other special needs. For nearly 100 years, we have been offering help and hope to children and adults living with disabilities, and to the families who love them. Through therapy, training, education and support services, Easter Seals creates life-changing solutions so that people with disabilities can live, learn, work and play. Support children and adults with disabilities at www.easterseals.com.
About Posit Science
Posit Science is the leading provider of clinically proven brain fitness training. Its BrainHQ exercises have been shown to significantly improve brain speed, attention, memory and numerous standard measures of quality of life in multiple studies published in more than 70 peer-reviewed articles in leading science and medical journals. Three public television documentaries as well as many stories on news programs, in national magazines, and in major newspapers have featured Posit Science’s work. The company’s science team is led by renowned neuroscientist Dr. Michael Merzenich.
About Brain Plasticity Inc.
Brain Plasticity, Inc. is a technology incubator dedicated to the discovery and development of novel technologies that harness the basic principles of brain plasticity based to improve the lives of people with neurological and psychiatric disorders with non-invasive, safe, clinically effective treatments. BPI is initially focused on applying this technology to schizophrenia, brain injury, and movement disorders, and works with a worldwide network of researchers to design and evaluate novel treatments.
