One of the com­pa­nies pre­sent­ing at our panel on Brain Fit­ness at Neu­rotech Indus­try Con­fer­ence, May 17th in San Fran­cisco, was Cogmed. They offer a work­ing mem­ory train­ing pro­gram focused now on kids with atten­tion deficits. What was excit­ing in the panel was to hear how Cogmed is help­ing kids train work­ing mem­ory, Posit Sci­ence is help­ing (mostly) seniors train audi­tory pro­cess­ing, and there is a grow­ing field start­ing to pro­vide struc­tured brain exer­cise to peo­ple of all ages with dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties and needs.

The Chicago Tri­bune has an arti­cle today titled Giv­ing a child a bet­ter mind. Quotes:

• “Work­ing mem­ory is the abil­ity to store infor­ma­tion in the brain for a short time, typ­i­cally a few sec­onds. In daily life, work­ing mem­ory helps peo­ple remem­ber instruc­tions, solve prob­lems, con­trol impulses and focus attention.”
• “Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing, devel­oped by Swedish brain researcher Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, fea­tures video game soft­ware on an engag­ing robot inter­face. The research-validated pro­gram has been suc­cess­ful in Europe, and now is being offered in the United States.”
• “The pro­gram may not apply to every­one with atten­tion deficit, accord­ing to Gra­ham, because not all peo­ple with ADD have a deficit in work­ing mem­ory. Schools or psy­chol­o­gists can deter­mine whether chil­dren are can­di­dates for Cogmed.”
• “The way Becky remem­bers how things should be done has trans­lated into math and spelling,” Debby said. “Becky has also devel­oped a tremen­dous sense of patience when tak­ing a test. She takes her time. She doesn’t allow any­body to intim­i­date her if oth­ers are done first.”
• Because Becky’s pro­cess­ing has become much clearer, her bed­room is neater too, Debby added. “She remem­bers where she puts things. She now has an innate sense of organization.”

For more infor­ma­tion, you can check out Cogmed web­site and our inter­views with

• Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, pro­fes­sor at Karolin­ska Insti­tute, and direc­tor of the Devel­op­men­tal Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Lab, part of the Stock­holm Brain Institute.
• Dr. Bradley Gib­son, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame.
• Prof. David Rabiner, Senior Research Sci­en­tist and the Direc­tor of Psy­chol­ogy and Neu­ro­science Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke University.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

•