BrainHealth Bulletin July 2013 Produced by Valirie Morgan and Kelsey Schmitt

Staff Member Spotlight: Eric Bennett

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This summer, interns from around the world are working at the Center for BrainHealth.

Learn more about some of them on page 2.

Turn to page 4 to check out pictures from the summer

picnic on June

19th.

One staff member got Google Glass before its public release.

See what it’s all about and how he’s using it on page 5.

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I sat down with Eric Bennett, who recently became Executive Director of the Brain Performance Institute, to talk about his new job, discuss our shared love of Mizzou, and to get to know a few fun things about him!

What is your background? After college, I spent 25 years in the money management business. Managing money for wealthy people was my niche from day one. Fifteen years ago, one of my clients hired me to manage his money full-time. Three years after that, we started a business managing money for other people. I joined the Board at BrainHealth in 2005. One of my clients made a significant contribution to this building, which is how I got to know the Center. When I heard about the Brain Performance Institute (BPI) and vision from Sandi, I decided to do something totally different with my career, so I sold out of my business and joined the BrainHealth team.

Without a background in science, was it intimidating to try and get involved here? Not really, because I knew that what I brought was the business experience, not the science. My job is to build, run and grow the BPI, and the science is going to come from everyone that’s already here. To me, it’s a learning opportunity.

Tell us about your family. I’ve been married to my wife, Robin, for 22 years. I have two kids: Samuel, 17, and Emily, 14.

How are you adjusting to your new position? I had high expectations coming in, and everything has exceeded my expectations. This is a pretty big life event for me, so the only hard part is that it’s a big change.

What are you most excited about regarding the BPI? I really feel like the Brain Performance Institute has

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something unique, and we’ve got a vision and the ability to make it happen. The idea is so powerful that just the scale of what it could become is incredible. We’re at the infancy of brain

health, and to be a part of something that’s so close to its beginning is exciting, and I think it’s going to be

huge.

What are your hobbies? I like to ride my bicycle, and I like music a lot. I play the guitar to relax. I used to be in a garage band in high school and college. We only played in front of people twice. We were called “Z Band,” because we were in ZBT (Zeta Beta Tau) fraternity.

Describe yourself in three words. Ambitious, curious and impatient.

What are your favorite TV shows or movies? For fun, I like any movie with a former Saturday

Night Live cast member. I love stupid comedies. I like more intense stuff on television, like Dexter and Homeland.

What’s the best advice you’ve received? The best advice I’ve ever been given in a business setting was how important communication is. I was advised that when you’re a leader, you have to be very proactive in communication. From a personal perspective, I’m highly influenced by my wife and daughter. They’re big on how everything goes back to love. If you use that as your foundation, you’ll be in good shape.

What’s something most people don’t know about you? I’m not as calm on the inside as I appear on the outside. Also, I’ve ridden my bike from Austin to Dallas. I’m in a group that does it for charity.

What is your favorite thing about working here? All the creative energy and excitement.

by Valirie Morgan

Get to know some of the BrainHealth summer interns!

Q&A with the Chief Director

Congratulations to the following BrainHealth staff members on their new degrees and titles!

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What inspired you to write and publish your book, “Make Your Brain Smarter”? I have been inspired for a long time because so many of the discoveries that we make at the Center can benefit people. I thought a book would be the best way to quickly get the word out and reach as many people as possible. It helped me

organize and determine exactly how to communicate the procedures and steps people need to know to make their brains healthier. If we’re going to start a brain movement, a good place to start is a book. You recently gave a TED talk. What was that experience like, and what did

you learn in the process? Giving my TED talk was the first time in my life I’d ever written out a speech word for word, and I realized that I couldn’t be an actress because I had so much trouble memorizing it! One thing I learned was how to spend time preparing for the talk. I used to spend so much time thinking about my message but not the presentation and delivery, which is just as important. If you don’t deliver the message in a way that can make people understand or be inspired by it, the message is meaningless. That was a very important lesson for me to learn. As Chief Director, you make many media appearances on the Center’s behalf. Have you gotten used to the spotlight? What’s the best part of making those appearances? Media appearances require a lot of flexibility, because what

Amanda Coleman – Ph.D. in Leadership for Higher Education Joseph Dunlop – Ph.D. in Cognition and Neuroscience Francesca Filbey, Ph.D. – Now an Associate Professor

Luis Gutierrez – MS in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience Penelope Jones – MS in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience

Brittany Kuhn – MS in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience Leilah Meek – MS in Human Development and Early Childhood Disorders

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you think the segment is going to be about and the questions that you expect are rarely what it turns out to be! The key is figuring out the message that you want to deliver and finding a clever way to get it out. I have a lot of fun making appearances because every time I do one, I feel like a person we’ve helped at the Center is inside my heart. It’s not so much about me as it is the cause. Looking at it as another opportunity to spread the message of what we can do really helped me build the courage and confidence to say yes to media requests. As a scientist, I used to always focus on

publications, and I didn’t really see the importance of media. But if you have a message that can

change lives and allow people to realize their full potential, that’s the best way to get it out there. The media has helped me to realize that the more I can make my discoveries understandable and relatable to everyday people, the more important the findings are.

What are you looking forward to about BrainHealth’s future? The Brain Performance Institute! The discoveries of what can be done to strengthen the brain in health, injury and disease is a

cause that touches everybody. People everywhere will be able to have access to it, whether they’re in Dallas or across Texas in the most rural area, even South Dakota or Timbuktu or Africa. People need brain health wherever they are; it’s our greatest asset and a precious resource. BrainHealth is going to be global. That’s my vision!

Dr. Sandi Chapman

by Valirie Morgan

Celebrating summer at the Staff Picnic

Dr. Francesca Filbey and Brittany

Kuhn share a laugh.

Bruce Jones performs with his

band, Limbic Recoil. Members of the Community Relations team & their interns take a picture.

Nellie Evenson gets into the luau spirit by hula hooping outside.

BrainHealth staff members go through the barbeque lunch line.

Al Abundo prepares to join a

game of soccer.

Veronica Scruggs shows off her skills with a hula hoop.

Gil Ramos cools off with a frozen drink.

Specks with specs: Google Glass makes its digital debut at the Center for BrainHealth

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One sentence was all it took for Carl Lutz to gain exclusive first access to one of the most highly anticipated tech tools in recent years. Google Glass, a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display, was unveiled last year and created quite a buzz in the tech world. In February, Google opened a contest called #IfIHadGlass, which challenged individuals to come up with a short statement of their intended use for the product. Winners could purchase the developer edition of Glass. Lutz, who works as the Center’s creative director and is involved with the social cognition/virtual reality research team, used Twitter to post his entry, writing that he would use Glass to help individuals with autism connect with others by providing feedback during social interactions. About a month later, Google sent him a response. “It was just, ‘Hey, we’d like to invite you to join the Glass Explorers program, we’ll be sending you a message in the future,’” Lutz said. “I didn’t hear anything from them until late May, so I still had to wait another two months to find out what was going to happen.” On June 17, Lutz traveled to Google’s California headquarters to pick up his device, which cost $1,500. During the visit he was added to the Google Mirror API (an app-building interface for developers) and given assistance with setup. “[Glass] is pretty awesome,” Lutz said. “All the information of Google is right there, strapped to your head at all times.” With this new technology come new opportunities for its use at the Center for BrainHealth. Glass is not being used in a research capacity as of yet, but the device is helping to promote the work being done at the Center. “Everybody’s watching to see what the first adopters of this new technology do,” Lutz said. “I’ve only got a few months with this audience before the headset is available to everyone, so there’s a limited amount of time to capitalize on this sort of temporary celebrity status in the geek world.” Lutz has been using Glass to make videos, take photos and document things

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that are going on around the Center, which he then posts online, helping drive traffic to the website and educating people in the process.

Just as he suggested in his winning post to Google, Lutz’s “dream app” for Glass would provide feedback to people with autism during social interactions by analyzing the other person’s body language, facial expressions and vocal inflection. “Those are the kinds of contextual clues that they really struggle with, but all the technology now exists to give them

that feedback. It’s just a matter of putting the pieces together into a solid user experience,” he said.

The app could also serve to reinforce an individual’s ideas about a social encounter. “If you think someone’s getting impatient but you’re not sure, Glass could confirm that for you,” Lutz said. “It would help you learn to trust your instincts more, if that’s a weakness you have.” Lutz believes his dream app could become a reality sometime in the near future.

“In order to make it happen, I think we need a few more resources, some more bandwidth,” he said. “I think it’s something we’ll see somewhat soon, it’s just a matter of whether we’re the ones who build it first or if someone else does.”

by Valirie Morgan

Carl Lutz demonstrates the device’s camera function, which

he used to take this picture. (Courtesy photo)

This diagram shows the location of the components on the Google Glass headset. (Graphic: Valirie Morgan. Source: Google)

Battery Speaker Microphone Prism (Visual)

Computer Camera

This is Lutz’s winning tweet.

The Center for BrainHealth Ice Cream Social

Friday, July 26th 3:30 to 5:00 PM Reception Hall

Mark your calendars!

Announcements & Updates