service to more than 6000 anchor institutions. schools, libraries, hospitals across 35 different states. they install more than 29,000 workstations in public computer centers, and they had produced what is really amazing, 260,000 new broadband subscribers, as we hope many of you here today will become. the top projects are reaching every state and territory across the u.s., and at ntia, we're gratified to watch what this team has accomplished here in san francisco. to the top program overall, this project represents critical investments in the future of our nation, investments that are producing immediate benefits but are also going to pay dividends for years to come. thank you again for inviting us to be a part of today's summit. it is truly an honor, and we look forward to continuing to see more great projects and more wonderful events like this here in san -- in san francisco. thank you. [applause] >> well, as the kids say, that is information you can use. thank you so much. our next speaker is the co- founder and chief scientific officer of post-it science. he heads the company's goal team that has for more than three decades. he has been a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research. in the late 1980's, he was responsible for inventing something that i hope to own on my own, and in plans to approve my hearing. in 1996, he was the founder and ceo of scientific learning corporation, which markets and distributes software that applies principles of brain plasticity to assist children with language learning in reading. we are plowing -- proud to have him join us today to take part in this forum. [applause] >> thank you. i want to one-upping the mayor and say that today is my 70th birthday. [applause] still alive and raising cain. i also want to say that i am a proud citizen of this city and a public servant at the university of california, in this city for more than 45 years. it is wonderful to be here and wonderful to be with you today. i want to say, before i start, that you should understand that i was permitted by the university of california on a leave of absence from the science corporation, and i profit by what they do. at the end, i am going to talk about things that they do that a person can buy and understand that you can regard me as having a conflict of interest when i talk about things that i might profit by. i want you to know that. i also want to say that i will talk about science, because i am a nerd. it is officials. i want you to know that it is a team signs. hundreds of scientists and engineers and professional clinicians of different kinds and other technologists have contributed to it, and i represent them to a large extent is because i am the oldest, and certainly not because i am the smartest. so, i want to talk about your plastic brain. you have a very valuable asset inside your skull, of course, and that is your brain. it is very valuable, especially because it is plastic. i want to tell you what that means a tell you about the signs that shows us that that plasticity is actually result could again drive improvements in our abilities or, alas, it can take us backward into in a negative direction. i want to talk about what controls living in a positive or negative direction, because you sure do want to go in a positive direction. finally, want to talk about how we try to use this science with technology to help you sustain your brain health. i will give you advice about other things you can undo, whether your problem is a disability or you have that comment disability that applies to every one of us, you're simply having another birthday, like i am today. ok? on the path to a better, healthier, say few -- safer, and hopefully happier life. first, what you know that we used to think not very long ago, the predominant scientific view was that the brain grew up in the early life. it was a time of maturation. then it became fixed buying connectivity and wiring. then it was like a computer that was hard wired. and the only way it had to go from a very early point to a life was downhill. because it matured very early, basically there was a mysterious operating system and mysterious algorithms that accounted for your progression of learning, but as a physical and functional machine, it was stabbed in the only thing it did from a very early time in young child was to go south. we now know that is completely false. we now know that the brain is continuously changing. we now know that each time you acquire a new skill or ability, the brain is actually changing its wiring. id is actually changing its functionality. is actually specializing. answer that specialization, your account for the development of the skill or ability in play. we know this occurs throughout life. in fact commit to the end of life, because we know we can improve our ability and we can acquire a new skill to the end of life. here we have an older woman who has acquired a skill in later life, basket weaving. we know that because she has developed a special ability at this point in life, she has remodeled her brain, and that accounts for her developing of this expertise. this is in play in our lives and throughout our lives because our lives are so richly varied from early childhood onward, we create, through billions of moments of brain change, an incredible individuation of ourselves so that through these changes, we have a special ability is shared by no one else in this room in exact form. we have special knowledge and understanding, things that have driven changes in our brain that are unlike anyone else in this room, in fact, anyone else in the world because of this incredible gift, we are unique creatures in the world. unique in the vitiated individuals unlike any other, any other person in detail, whoever it was or whoever it will be. what a gift. i realized as a young scientist that it was a challenge to try to understand how to draw this great power, to drive brains in approving or strengthening your human benefit with a special concern about people who are beginning to be in trouble because of an impairment or disability or because something has happened to them in life, like they were merely getting older. i want to talk about that science and how we try to apply in use it to helping people in need. first of all, i want to say that there is a special thing about this plasticity as it relates to ourselves. that is to say it is constructed on the basis of moment to moment association of things that go together or the things that are expected to occur in the next moment in time. one thing that always goes with everything we feel, everything we do, every act we have had, every thought is a reference to the actor, to the player, to the doer, and that references to ourself. all of that derives massive plastic self-reference. we have to construct and enrich a strongly center itself, a person, in our brain through its changing itself in a powerful, plastic way. we're also constructed through these same processes to attach to the other people, to the other things we are close to in life. that is the basis of the attachment of the mother to the child or the child to the mother. through millions of the events of contact and interaction, all of those counts in ways that actually grow the child into the person that is the mother. we are constructed to build attachments between mother and child, between friends, across our families, and across our communities. this is something that we have to nourish, that we have to keep alive, that we have to keep healthy. we're constricted to do this in a bridge for by the way our brains are constructed, by the way we are constructed and live our lives. i want to say a special thing about plasticity but that is the son of a process -- that is that the processes in place are reversible. we have studied this, and it demonstrated this to be so. these studies begin by looking at something like an animal like a rat that might be any prime of life, upper left, and a rat that might be at the end of life, below. we know this rat is old, because he has white whiskers and white paws. so if you see a red with white paws in a garage, i'd like to say be nice to him, because he is old. of course, we're also even more interested in a younger or older adult human. what we're interested in our differences in the brain operations of the old versus the young. we have looked at this in science. we have looked at it in almost everywhere you can think of of the operational characteristics of old and young brains. what we see on average is that everything we look at is different. you could say, well, how many of those things that are different, physically, functionally, are chemically, really seem to be stronger, releasing to advantage the old brain? the answer is, none of them. alas, old is slower and less precise, less refined. old is slowly deteriorating. but there is good news in a moment, just wait for a moment. ok? [laughter] then we ask, how complex of the way we have to train the rat or how complex what we have to train the human to reverse these characteristics that define them as old? first, let me say something about being old. you could say if we're all deteriorating when we're older, why the heck do young people tolerate us? the answer is simple. something grows in this through life, and that is acknowledged. older people know things. they have lived life. that experience. not only do they have knowledge, they have manipulated that knowledge in complex ways in their brain, and the have come too intelligent conclusions about them. we call it wisdom. if you do not believe that, imagine a world war ii with britain led by a 25-year-old winston churchill. right? you need wisdom. you need wisdom. society's need wisdom and knowledge. they value older people. but operationally, functionally, you know, we slow down. we're less precise. we remember less. we're less effective than we could or should be. we asked the question of how complicated with the training be, and what did these things are reimbursable -- reversible? i will tell you, everything is reversible. everything can be improved. every dimension of the physical, functional brain can be reversed in a positive direction. it is all reversible. we're constructed to be basically reversible. so, first of all, we look at the process of the brain as it relates to the alertness of the brain. look at recovery. we look at the process as it relates to the intentional control of the bravin. we look at the accuracy as to how the brain receives information. is schematically approved by training. we can speed up the brain almost always by two to three-fold in an old animal or human not so far away from the end of life. we look at an animal and dealing with complex information occurring across time, and it has improved. we look to the processes that relate to the flexibility of the operation of the brain and their dramatically improved. we look to the processes that relate to memory or recording information in the brain. everything is approved. physically, functionally, and chemically improved. this is an asset we should use. but how can we use it? before describe that, i want to say -- you know, how do you turn an old brain that appears to be deteriorating into a physically and functioning younger one? the answer is, you train it. you have to train inappropriately. there are certain strategies that have to be applied, obviously. another question is, why does the brain deteriorate to start with? why is it is degrading? the simple answer is, you reach a peak and about the third decade in life, and then slowly, slowly noise ines begins to creep into the process of the brain. you can think of it as growing chatter in the brain. we know that because we can add noise in the brain in various ways, and in science we would not do this in a human, but we could do this in a rat. and over two or three or four weeksa four rat in the prime of life -- four weeks, the brain of the rat looks like the brain at the end of life. we see an interesting thing when we look at the detail. we open up the characteristics of the brain near the end of life if we carried this do it far enough extent so that the brain looks very much like the brain of a child, of a baby that has had literally no experience. if you think of these processes is being reversible, of course that is true. we come out of the noise, you can say, and we refine our processes and get more confident in processing information and more accuracy, and we reach a peak, and then we slowly decline back into the direction with which we came. and the culprit, what is causing this, is the growth of noise in our brain. where does the noise come from? it comes from, in part, because in the early part of our life, where continuously learning and refining. then we reach a point where we are largely operating automatically. we are largely operating on automatic pilot without thinking very much about the details of what we're doing. as an example, think of this guy sitting in the orchestra. a professional violinist. a master at controlling the fingering hand, a master listener. what happens if he stops practicing in his professional career? what he does not practice for a month? everyone around him knows it. they say, why is he if he stoppg for a year? he has probably lost his job. no one will mistaken for a professional. everyone is worried about bill. what if bill didn't practice for 10 years? he would be pretty good from our perspective, he would be bun -- a fun at parties, but no one would really mistake him for being a professional. but what if he decided like to initiate his practice and cover his career? he would improve a lot. there are many instances where people haven't played for a decade or more and recover their abilities. you don't naturally practice in receiving the language that i am delivering to you. you don't practice in the ways that are required to maintain because we don't do it instinctively. one of the reasons that it becomes noisier as we get older because we are, in a sense, not practicing enough. the reason we are here is technology. the technology is all about providing input, a life that we can live that doesn't require living life without the troublesome requirement of having much of a brain. these are wonderful things. the american citizen watches this in the upper left for about seven hours a day. that is information without action. i loved it. but in moderation. on the lower left. we see a topographic map from a satellite. what you see in red is the city of baltimore. places where the sunlight does not hit the ground because it is all paved. it is to make sure that every footfall is secure and you cannot pay a bit of attention to it. many of you have been doing it for quite a few years now. it is not good to sleepwalk through life. that way we don't have to worry about a thing. there is no bond on the floor. it is designed to be controlled and removed our brains of for having to worry about the details. i use google for an hour or two or three every day and my work and in my life. what a wonderful tool. it reduces exercise in thought through the momentary process of looking up information. we don't have to know where we are anymore. we can have someone tell us exactly where we are in the world. and we are also adding noise by the way we live our lives. we can compensate by trading in our brains in recovery direction and we can use technology to do that. how do you reverse age-related cognitive decline? you have to work on the skills and abilities that support accurate vision, balance, and body. you also have to exercise the brains learning machine. if it is slowly dying off. this is really important. it is about reestablishing your ability to operate in the world with all of its gloria's details. we accomplished that in part, or we a help accomplish that by constructing computer-based exorcises that use these basic strategies to try to drive these changes and integrate them with high efficiency. these exercises that are available and computers for you to look at today provide the easiest and the most efficient way to get this tell -- this helps. all the time you spend in training is useful. everyone can operate successfully or effectively with that and they can go as far as it can. it is optimized for rate improvement, you get the most bang for your buck. it is expensive because there is a lot to fix, or you can say a lot to strengthen. you have to get to a lot that relate to receive information. and using it can thought. it is important that the outcome or the benefits of this be confirmed. it is like a gold standard trial the confirm that you do receive the benefit of the program is designed to deliver. everybody doesn't have an equal benefit, the brain is too complex for this. even find that information, and you can also find information for those of you coming to the workshop that my daughter and i are doing this afternoon. it will also provided information on computers here at that meeting. what do we know from the science? you can see the scientific references and see where the studies were done at different research universities, the mayo clinic, harvard, and other places to see what the confirmation is all about. we can see that it improves the basics. , u r her rider, your engagement is stronger. every improvement translates to about 14 years on the average. after they are trained, the improvement would give them the memory level of an average person of about 56. we see faster and sharper thinking and acting. almost everything you do that involves making a decision about what you have seen or heard or acting in a complex behavior. this is certainly important from the point of view of for your sustaining independence. this is kind of interesting thing, right? people see things so much better that they have about half as many driving accidents, it makes a big difference in the safety of driving and also walking. we have seen improvements in health. the person spends about $300 less a year in health-care costs, that is because the brain training confers benefits and also to physical health from the body. we see sustained independence that is critical. they have been confirmed in the scientific experiments in a carefully validated way. remember, these are statistical arguments. some people benefit more, some people that if it lasts. o as i understand that. what else should i be doing? this is a very long last and this is very small writing. who would make a list like this? first of all, it is important that true life, you continue to acquire new skills and abilities. you continue learning, and in a sense, it can be anything. take up the harmonica, develop better expertise in another language. take a learning seriously. seeking new avengers and experiences. how the brain loves it ventures. in love the challenge of the unexpected problem. they can run into trouble, the brain love that and feeds on that. reconnect with the real world, smell of flour. get out there and live life to get as if you were a kid. enjoy it in all of its details. scheduled daily social exercise, some people can't get out. the people. skype them. you don't even have to be outside, but daily social exercise is critical. we are social beings and creatures. whenever you give something to someone in an act of kindness, you get just as much reward in your brain and just as much exercise as when you feel it when somebody does something for you. it is healthy to do that. how about a serious approach to new learning. the brain is smart enough to not change a thing. be serious about changing your brain for the better. and if you can, take a hike, take a walk. go on a bike for 20 or 30 minutes every day. connect yourself with the world. smell it, look at it, check it out. shake hands with it. you will enjoy every moment of it, an