Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Neuroplasticity, Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Training the Brains of Fighter Pilots and Basketball Players

We are a brain fit­ness cen­ter because we want to offer the best infor­ma­tion, tools and sup­port on how to exer­cise our brains. Same way you join the gym to stay in shape and find the best machines and per­sonal trainers.

One of the “tools” or “machines” we offer was designed under the sci­en­tific super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sor Daniel Gopher and his team for bas­ket­ball play­ers: click here to read our inter­view with him. And here for a fun clip with the Mem­phis Tigers.

Our part­ner ACE just issued this press release:

Fighter Pilots Help Pur­due and Long Beach State Reach the Tournament

The Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym Improves Decision-Making

STUDIO CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The same tech­nol­ogy ini­tially devel­oped to train Israeli fighter pilots on the cog­ni­tive, brain level has been an inte­gral part of the train­ing reg­i­men for both Long Beach State and Pur­due, two teams earn­ing their first NCAA tour­na­ment births since 1995 and 2003 respectively.

The inno­v­a­tive Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym soft­ware pro­gram has been proven to improve real-time decision-making and exe­cu­tion for thou­sands of bas­ket­ball play­ers world­wide and play­ers on more than a dozen col­lege bas­ket­ball teams.

Fea­tur­ing a computer-game facade, the Intel­li­Gym trains the part of the brain con­trol­ling com­plex bas­ket­ball related tasks includ­ing; deci­sion mak­ing; pat­tern recog­ni­tion; tac­tics adap­ta­tion and switch­ing; periph­eral vision; atten­tion con­trol; sit­u­a­tional aware­ness; team­work, and spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion. It strength­ens the brain, just like the weight room builds mus­cles. What it means to play­ers is more assists, blocks and steals, less turnovers and bet­ter shot selection.

Pur­due (21–11), back in the tour­ney for the first time since 2003, earned the #9 seed in the Mid­west Region and will play #8 Ari­zona. The Boil­er­mak­ers have won eight of their last 12 games, with three of the losses to top-ranked Ohio State. The improve­ment since last sea­son under sec­ond year head coach Matt Painter is reflected in three key sta­tis­tics that involve decision-making. Their aver­age steals and assists increased from 5.39 to 7.68 and 13.1 to 13.75 per game respec­tively and turnovers decreased from 17.6 to 14.2 per game.

In 2005, LBSU head coach Larry Reynolds became one of the first to use the Intel­li­Gym. The team has improved each sea­son, and this year won its first Big West title and tour­na­ment bid since 1995. The 49ers (24–7) are a #12 seed and face #5 Ten­nessee. LBSU com­mit­ted fewer turnovers than its oppo­nent 22 times and over the past 23 games they have had fewer turnovers than their oppo­nents 19 times.

Bas­ket­ball is not about who runs faster or jumps higher, but who makes bet­ter deci­sions and fewer mis­takes, explains long-time NBA coach Hubie Brown. I’m in the busi­ness for 50 years and the Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym is the first train­ing tool I have seen to actu­ally improve game intel­li­gence skills.

The Intel­li­Gym is avail­able in a per­sonal edi­tion for play­ers of all ages and abilities.

If any reporter is read­ing this: You can con­tact Drew Avril, 718–871-7117, davril@coactivepr.com (for Brain Fit­ness in gen­eral and Sharp­Brains) or Doug Drot­man, 631–462-1198, doug@drotmanpr.com (for the pro­gram itself).



Print This Article Print This Article Email This Post Email This Post

Categories: Peak Performance, Technology

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2 Responses

  1. Hi Alvaro!
    Many thanks for stop­ping by Future-Making Seri­ous Games and shar­ing your insights on brain “fit­ness”.
    I’ve been to Sharp­Brains before, and I must con­fess I’m deeply impressed by both its value propo­si­tion and def­i­nitely by the “About Us” sum­mary.
    After all, “brains pre­ceed games”.

    Take care.

  2. Alvaro says:

    Hello Eliane: I was very impressed by your blog, too. you pro­vide a great overview of Seri­ous Games trends-have added you to our blogroll. Well, “brains pre­ceed games” but also “seri­ous games help sharpen brains”…

Welcome to SharpBrains!

As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal, CNN and more, Sharp­Brains is an inde­pen­dent mar­ket research and pub­lish­ing firm track­ing brain fit­ness and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­ity research and mar­ket­place. AARP recently named The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness a Best Book on the subject.

UPCOMING ONLINE COURSE: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012 (March 2012).

NEWS: How to Sub­mit a Guest Post to SharpBrains.com.

Sponsored Ad

Top 30 Articles

  1. Top 50 Brain Teasers, by Sharp­Brains Team
  2. The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains, by Alvaro Fernandez
  3. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?, by Car­o­line Latham
  4. Brain Plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain, by Pas­cale Michelon
  5. Top 10 Brain Fit­ness Future Trends, by Alvaro Fernandez
  6. 7 FAQs on Men­tal Exer­cise, by Alvaro Fernandez
  7. It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101, by Alvaro Fernandez
  8. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness prod­ucts and games, by Alvaro Fernandez
  9. MIT Event on Brain Games: Con­text, Trends, Ques­tions, by Alvaro Fernandez
  10. Stress Man­age­ment Work­shop for Inter­na­tional Women’s Day, by Alvaro Fernandez
  11. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Man­age­ment, by Jill Sutie
  12. Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle, by Gre­gory Kellet
  13. How can I improve my short term mem­ory?, by Car­o­line Latham
  14. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Devel­op­ment Through Play, by David Elkind
  15. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son, by Alvaro Fernandez
  16. Easy Steps to Improve Brain Health, by Car­o­line Latham
  17. Info­graphic: State of the Mar­ket 2009, by Paul Van Slembrouck
  18. Improve Mem­ory with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Test­ing, by Bill Klemm
  19. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn, by Lau­rie Bartels
  20. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness, by Alvaro Fernandez
  21. Max­i­mize the Cog­ni­tive Value of Your Men­tal Work­out, by Schlomo Breznitz
  22. Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram and Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity @ PBS, by Alvaro Fernandez
  23. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD, by David Rabiner
  24. Can Intel­li­gence Be Trained? Mar­tin Buschkuehl shows how, by Alvaro Fernandez
  25. How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?, by David Rabiner
  26. Exer­cis­ing the body is exer­cis­ing the mind, by Adrian Preda
  27. Brain Evo­lu­tion and Why it is Mean­ing­ful Today to Improve Our Brain Health, by Larry McCleary
  28. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health, by Pas­cale Michelon
  29. Posit Sci­ence, Nin­tendo Brain Age, and Brain Train­ing Top­ics, by Alvaro Fernandez
  30. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­ory and the Brain, by Shan­non Moffet

Sponsored Ads

Enter Your Email and Sub­scribe to our free Monthly eNewslet­ter:
Join more than 40,000 Sub­scribers and stay informed and engaged.

Sponsored Ad

Engage and Discuss via

twitter_logo_header

Monthly Blog Archives