1. BrainHealth BulletinJuly 2013 Produced by Valirie Morgan and Kelsey Schmitt
Staff Member Spotlight: Eric Bennett
Inthisissue:
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.
1
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
2
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

2. Get to know some of the
BrainHealth summer interns!

3. Q&A with the
Chief Director
Congratulations to the following BrainHealth staff
members on their new degrees and titles!
1
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
2
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

4. 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 herskills with a hula hoop.
Gil Ramos cools off with a
frozen drink.

5. Specks with specs: Google Glass makes its
digital debut at the Center for BrainHealth
1
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
2
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.

6. The Center for BrainHealth
Ice Cream Social
Friday, July 26th
3:30 to 5:00 PM
Reception Hall
Mark your
calendars!
Announcements
& Updates