Brain Training Top 10 Future Trends

In an emerg­ing, dynam­ic, high growth mar­ket, like brain train­ing, it is dif­fi­cult to make pre­cise pro­jec­tions. But, we can observe a num­ber of trends that exec­u­tives, con­sumers, pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers, and the media should watch close­ly in the com­ing years, as brain fit­ness and train­ing becomes main­stream, new tools appear, and an ecosys­tem grows around it.

1. We pre­dict an increased empha­sis on brain main­te­nance in loca­tions rang­ing from retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties to gyms. As a com­put­er-savvy baby boomer pop­u­la­tion looks for ways to stay men­tal­ly fit, brain fit­ness, or brain train­ing, is becom­ing part of their vocab­u­lary and concern.

2. Phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise will be bet­ter inte­grat­ed. Phys­i­cal exer­cise has been shown to increase the rate of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, where­as men­tal exer­cise helps ensure the sur­vival of any new­ly cre­at­ed neu­rons. Today both activ­i­ties usu­al­ly take place in very dif­fer­ent set­tings: the for­mer, in health clubs, the lat­er, in uni­ver­si­ties. We pre­dict that the bor­ders between them will become more dif­fuse. Expect new pro­grams such as brain fit­ness pod­casts that allow us to train work­ing mem­o­ry as we jog or exer­cise bikes with built-in brain games.

3. Watch for a broad gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive, sim­i­lar to the one JFK led, to increase the pub­lic aware­ness of the need for brain fit­ness. It is becom­ing more wide­ly under­stood by the med­ical and pol­i­cy com­mu­ni­ty that a com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal exer­cise, nutri­tion, men­tal exer­cise and stress man­age­ment can help us main­tain our brain health as we age. As politi­cians and pol­i­cy mak­ers look for ways to delay the onset of Alzheimer-relat­ed symp­toms of our aging pop­u­la­tion, new ini­tia­tives may be launched.

4. Bet­ter and more wide­ly avail­able assess­ments of cog­ni­tive func­tion will serve as objec­tive base­lines to mea­sure the impact of cog­ni­tive train­ing inter­ven­tions. There will also like­ly be bet­ter diag­nos­tic tests to iden­ti­fy ear­ly Alzheimer’s symp­toms, for exam­ple. Reli­able diag­nos­tic assess­ments of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties will help move this field for­ward just as jump­ing on a scale tells you if your phys­i­cal fit­ness and diet pro­gram is working.

5. Improved com­put­er-based tools will come to mar­ket. The grow­ing pipeline of research stud­ies will enable the mar­ket lead­ers and new entrants to refine exist­ing tools and devise new ones. More clin­i­cal stud­ies will show the ben­e­fits of brain fit­ness pro­grams to address spe­cif­ic clin­i­cal con­di­tions and learn­ing disabilities.

6. Low tech options will play an increas­ing role in the brain fit­ness field. Already, increas­ing research is show­ing the cog­ni­tive val­ue and brain plas­tic­i­ty impact of inter­ven­tions such as med­i­ta­tion and cog­ni­tive ther­a­py. More research and wider appli­ca­tions will help refine our under­stand­ing of when and how they can be most helpful.

7. Doc­tors and phar­ma­cists will help patients nav­i­gate through the over­whelm­ing range of avail­able prod­ucts and inter­pret the results of cog­ni­tive assess­ments. This will require sig­nif­i­cant pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment efforts, giv­en that most doc­tors today were trained under a very dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of the brain than the one we have today.

8. Insur­ance com­pa­nies will intro­duce incen­tives for mem­bers to encour­age healthy aging. Many insur­ance plans today include rewards for mem­bers who, for exam­ple, vol­un­tar­i­ly take health-relat­ed ques­tion­naires that enable them to iden­ti­fy steps to take to improve health. Increas­ing­ly, brain-relat­ed lifestyle fac­tors will become part of these incen­tivized interventions.

9. Invest­ments in new cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions for the U.S. mil­i­tary will be com­mer­cial­ized. As the mil­i­tary increas­ing­ly funds research to improve the diag­nos­tic and treat­ment of prob­lems such as PTSD and TBI, the result­ing prod­ucts will ulti­mate­ly find com­mer­cial uses.

10. Brain train­ing will be added to cor­po­rate well­ness and lead­er­ship ini­tia­tives. Large employ­ers with exist­ing cor­po­rate well­ness and lead­er­ship pro­grams will intro­duce brain fit­ness spe­cif­ic pro­grams aimed not only at improved health out­comes but also at increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and cog­ni­tive per­for­mance in the workplace.

These pre­dic­tions come from mar­ket research we con­duct­ed in 2008. Three more recent resources are:

  • 2012 Mar­ket Report on Dig­i­tal Brain Health
  • 2009 Con­sumer-ori­ent­ed Guide, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: Here
  • Annu­al vir­tu­al con­fer­ence gath­er­ing 250+ Inno­va­tors and Experts: Here

 

24 Comments

  1. Gerry on July 24, 2008 at 3:37

    Two pos­si­ble trends that I think could hap­pen in the future are:
    1) Are the use of brain train­ing in sport. A com­mon cliche used with sport is that 90% of the game is played between the ears. If this is the case, then using brain friend­ly coach­ing tech­niques could be a real bonus.
    2) Teacher train­ing. Imag­ine using brain-friend­ly tech­niques whilst train­ing teach­ers. Incred­i­ble idea. That might mean that those teach­ers may use them with their class­es. Amaz­ing. One can only hope.



  2. Martin on July 24, 2008 at 6:05

    These seem to be very rea­son­able and far­sight­ed pre­dic­tions, Alvaro.

    I won­der whether high schools will incor­po­rate brain train­ing as they incor­po­rates phys­i­cal exer­cise today?

    The idea that a com­pa­ny could invest in brain train­ing for its employ­ees is fas­ci­nat­ing. It would be a bold step, and per­haps give the ear­ly adopters a sig­nif­i­cant com­pet­i­tive edge.



  3. Andreas on July 25, 2008 at 6:09

    Alvaro,

    Great sum­ma­ry.

    I curi­ous to see the effects of key point #3, which is of huge importance.

    Rough­ly, 2/3s of the total risk for Alzheimers and cog­ni­tive decay is thought to be pre­cip­i­tat­ed by mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors, such as degree of social and intel­lec­tu­al engage­ment, phys­i­cal exer­cise and diet. This is one of many key mes­sages about pre­ven­tive brain health that all peo­ple should be aware of.

    Through gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives you’re able to reach a broad­er range of the pop­u­la­tion. In gen­er­al I believe ini­tia­tives by gov­ern­ments can have huge impact on brain health aware­ness, but it must be done prop­er­ly. Today, soci­ety invests far too lit­tle in pre­ven­tion, only 1% to 3% of health care expen­di­tures (Woolf SH. The big answer: redis­cov­er­ing pre­ven­tion at a time of cri­sis in health care. Harv Health Pol­i­cy Rev. 2006;7:5–20)!

    I’m inter­est­ed to see whether your gov­ern­ment are able to do some­thing to turn this around and invest more in pre­ven­tive med­i­cine, such as brain health initiatives.

    Regards,
    Andreas (Nor­way)



  4. Alvaro on July 27, 2008 at 12:06

    Hel­lo Ger­ry and Mar­tin, thank you for the great suggestions.

    Andreas: great point, and we could­n’t agree more!



  5. David Harris on July 27, 2008 at 7:44

    Hi, I real­ly enjoyed this arti­cle and would like to cross post it to my site with your per­mis­sion. I am also going to shoot for the ‘best sug­ges­tion’ prize…

    Come join us in Hong Kong this Decem­ber for the Ultra­Fu­ture Expo :)

    Please email me.



  6. Brian Jones on July 27, 2008 at 7:55

    This is a good read. I agree with a num­ber of the ones list­ed. How­ev­er, I am not sure if the doc­tors will be push­ing brain train­ing. Although I believe there will be an increase in pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine, I think that brain train­ing is not real­ly some­thing doc­tors will be real­ly inter­est­ed in sup­port­ing because there will be no mon­ey in it for them. This is not to say they are against it, but it is to say that they do not have a strong finan­cial incen­tive to sup­port it.

    Best,
    Bri­an Jones



  7. Alvaro on July 28, 2008 at 1:57

    David, hap­py to learn more about your orga­ni­za­tion and Expo, will email you.

    Bri­an: two thoughts, a) many doc­tors do a num­ber of things for their patients´health with­out hav­ing a direct finan­cial incen­tive, so we believe this will hap­pen here as well as appro­pri­ate (not “push­ing” brain train­ing, but sug­gest­ing qual­i­ty resources at a min­i­mum); b) maybe this will become a new type of con­sul­ta­tion, reim­bursed by insur­ance. (these pre­dic­tions include the peri­od 2007–2015…so things may change more than we expect).



  8. iain on July 30, 2008 at 4:25

    Fas­ci­nat­ing stuff.

    I can defin­i­tive­ly see advances in elite sports per­for­mance. Real­ly only now start­ing to play with biofeed­back sys­tems. The tra­di­tion­al sport psych gen­er­al­ly has prob­a­bly per­formed under­whelm­ing­ly in terms of demand and objec­tive results (in my opin­ion). The belief is still very strong that the brain can be tapped much more to enhance ath­let­ic per­for­mance. A recent research arti­cle show­ing place­bo per­formed bet­ter than sub­jects on Human Growth Hor­mone. So much has gone into research­ing the phys­i­ol­o­gy of per­for­mance and rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle into neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. Cog­ni­tive train­ing break­throughs I believe are the next legal break­through area for elite sport.



  9. Mike Kirkeberg on July 31, 2008 at 8:53

    I have been fas­ci­nat­ed by all things brain ori­ent­ed, from think­ing (cog) sci­ence to neu­ropsych. As a coach, I won­der how a brain coach would function!!



  10. Federico on July 31, 2008 at 9:15

    Hola real­mente dis­frute la lec­tura de este artic­u­lo. Creo que la feli­ci­dad como meta estara cada vez mas pre­sente en el entre­namien­to mental.

    Salu­dos
    Federico



  11. Scott on July 31, 2008 at 9:36

    I am a retired pub­lic schools super­in­ten­dent, and would add the fol­low­ing prediction:

    Pre­dic­tion 11: The notion of school­ing will be struc­tural­ly dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered through the use of diag­nos­tics relat­ed to the acqui­si­tion and improve­ment of basic cog­ni­tive skills (such as brain pro­cess­ing speed, atten­tion, mem­o­ry, and sequenc­ing), along with pre­scrip­tions employ­ing emerg­ing brain fit­ness soft­ware exer­cis­es, begin­ning in the ear­li­est grades and pro­gress­ing through high school. Schools will be struc­tured around the acqui­si­tion of foun­da­tion­al cog­ni­tive skills, relat­ed phys­i­cal fit­ness to sup­port brain fit­ness, stu­dent aware­ness and knowl­edge of brain func­tion and respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s own fit­ness. Schools will be much more organ­i­cal­ly struc­tured along the learn­ing needs of indi­vid­u­als, will be a com­mu­ni­ty repos­i­to­ry and asset for access to con­tin­u­ing brain and phys­i­cal fit­ness pro­gram­ming, and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide impor­tant con­tent knowl­edge acqui­si­tion expe­ri­ences deliv­ered through inte­grat­ed expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing, cus­tom-designed for the indi­vid­ual learn­er, and vary­ing by time and place as need­ed. Group learn­ing gaps will close as the play­ing field lev­els in the acqui­si­tion of the basic cog­ni­tive skills required for high lev­els of suc­cess and learn­ing. “Spe­cial edu­ca­tion” as such will first dis­ap­pear in the mid­dle and lat­er grades as stu­dents receive ear­ly inter­ven­tion for cog­ni­tive skill devel­op­ment and as the pletho­ra of cur­rent­ly diag­nosed men­tal dis­or­ders are bet­ter under­stood as brain func­tion issues that can either be pre­vent­ed or reme­di­at­ed through neu­ro­science-based inter­ven­tions, and will final­ly entire­ly dis­ap­pear as a func­tion of the design of indi­vid­ual learn­ing plans for every stu­dent. The nature of school­ing is thus lib­er­at­ed from the cur­rent mod­el of empha­sis on con­tent acqui­si­tion to become more focused on the teacher-stu­dent inter­face of inter­est-direct­ed learn­ing under­gird­ed by the skills nec­es­sary for high-order think­ing and learning.



  12. Alvaro on August 1, 2008 at 8:48

    iain, Mike, Fed­eri­co, Scott, thank you for the great comments.

    iain and Scott, I couldn´t agree more with your respec­tive suggestions!

    Mike: the best anal­o­gy I can think of is a per­son­al “brain” train­er with enough knowl­edge of coach­ing and applied cog­ni­tive science…who will fill those shoes? we´ll see.



  13. Catherine Beman on August 4, 2008 at 11:13

    Like Mike Kirke­burg, I am inter­est­ed in the idea of a brain coach. I feel there is a mar­ket for such a ser­vice amongst baby boomers who wor­ry more about demen­tia etc than a lack of phys­i­cal health. Just how much applied cog­ni­tive sci­ence relat­ing to peo­ple in their 50s & 60s does one need to know and where do you find that knowledge?



  14. Patrick McHenry on August 5, 2008 at 11:59

    Three of the biggest obsta­cles fac­ing our nation’s youth today are Obe­si­ty; Math and Sci­ence scores. The NIH has report­ed that “…one-third of our chil­dren our over­weight and at the risk of being obese” (1). The Shape of the Nation Report stat­ed: “The per­cent­age of young peo­ple has more then tripled since 1980” (2). Health and well­ness has been iden­ti­fied in the top five “… skills and con­tent areas will be grow­ing in impor­tance in the next five years?” accord­ing to 21st Cen­tu­ry Skills: What Can School Prin­ci­pals Do? (3)

    Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion is the one class that can cov­er all three areas at the same time. Your research, #2 & #3 could help estab­lish an inte­grat­ed cur­ricu­lum that would have stu­dents “apply­ing” the “the­o­ries” they have learned in math and sci­ence class. 

    Stu­dents could take the data from their per­for­mance test­ing in PE and then ana­lyze it in their sta­tis­tics class. 

    Stu­dents could learn about “pow­er” in sci­ence class and then go to the weight room to per­form ver­ti­cal jumps. With their weight, jump height and time the stu­dents could cal­cu­late who is the most pow­er per­son in class. 

    By inte­grat­ing the class­es more phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion time would be need­ed to per­form the exper­i­ments. Stu­dents would have more phys­i­cal activ­i­ty which would also lead to an “increase the rate of neurogenesis”.



  15. Alvaro on August 6, 2008 at 5:52

    Hel­lo Cather­ine, we do see that need too. The dif­fi­cul­ty is that, giv­en how fast the research and the field are mov­ing, you real­ly need some­one well versed on cog­ni­tive sci­ence and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy to do a cred­i­ble job beyond using 3 or 4 sim­plis­tic for­mu­las (which are bet­ter than noth­ing, per­haps based on a 4‑pillar approach, cov­er­ing nutri­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise, stress man­age­ment and men­tal exer­cise). It will require a sol­id train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion effort, close­ly linked to research and rapid­ly evolving. 

    Hel­lo Patrick, thank you for the sug­ges­tions. Per­haps schools could also add a Brain 101 class, for stu­dents to under­stand for them­selves the ratio­nale and val­ue of PE, good nutri­tion, crit­i­cal think­ing, math, and oth­er activ­i­ties than often get neglected?



  16. Wolf on August 7, 2008 at 2:40

    Train­ing of our brains can be quite sim­ple and straight for­ward, if we only
    think about the most ele­men­tary and most ancient uses of our brains: Think
    about ball games, where we fre­quent­ly need to catch or hit the ball in ever
    chang­ing cir­cum­stances! Sim­i­lar­ly hors­es excel in speed by quick­ly using
    ele­men­tary steps plus the minor adop­tions called syn­copes due to the ever
    chang­ing sur­faces. The ele­gance and pow­er of rac­ing hors­es are amaz­ing while
    the dull­ness of con­stant­ly repeat­ing work at the pre­vi­ous pro­duc­tion lines
    came from their prim­i­tive and mechan­i­cal means of con­trol def­i­nite­ly missing
    evo­lu­tion’s ele­gant and flex­i­ble designs.

    Much of our per­cep­tion uncon­scious­ly “runs (semi-) auto­mat­i­cal­ly in the
    back­ground” and deliv­ers the build­ing blocks for our deci­sions. In order to
    rec­og­nize cru­cial aspects we need “to fac­tor out the recurring
    pat­terns”
    as the “Prin­ci­ple of Abstrac­tion” sug­gests. To
    opti­mal­ly sup­port our intu­ition and cre­ativ­i­ty expe­ri­enced train­ers therefore
    tell us what ele­men­tary actions to exer­cise in order to get accus­tomed to new
    fields and suc­cess­ful­ly cope with a broad range of situations.

    For con­crete brain train­ing projects the wealth of infor­ma­tion commonly
    avail­able today needs to be trans­formed and mold­ed into suit­able forms. In
    this prepara­to­ry phase of analy­sis we need to cre­ate a good cog­ni­tive mod­el of
    the field to be dealt with. In the next step this design is bro­ken up again
    so we can fig­ure out the cru­cial pat­terns our per­cep­tion needs to be trained
    with. Final­ly we have to pro­vide sound and cre­ative means of com­bi­na­tions so
    that even periph­ery sit­u­a­tion can be dealt with in an ad hoc fashion.
    Addi­tion­al feed­back cycles final­ly pro­vide an even bet­ter adop­tion to the
    things real­ly needed.

    All this sounds like an awful lot of work. But the crux lies in the
    rich­ness our evo­lu­tion pro­vid­ed us with. So a thor­ough analy­sis and a solid
    train­ing phase quick­ly leads to often excel­lent results. — The return of
    invest­ment could not be better! :-)



  17. john barrella on August 26, 2008 at 3:34

    Many years ago I receive a treat­ment called cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion in the Rusk Insti­tute in Man­hat­tan. Very sim­ple, sys­tem­at­ic, at time tedious as it worked on rep­e­ti­tion. 3 years lat­er I was aware as to the full extent of my injury. I am ful­ly aware of my deficits…BUT…througout my trav­els in the med­ical sys­tem I have nev­er seen this treat­ment. So some­thing is wrong. It is very effec­tive and it does allow me to live my life now that I have had it. I hope one of these days it sur­faces and oth­ers will be giv­en the same oppor­tu­ni­ty. I guess the biggest prob­lem with these treat­ment is that it would require a small class­room set­ting with var­i­ous head injured mem­bers. That would prob­a­bly take away from the doc­tor’s poten­tial to make money…Ninuccio



  18. Alvaro Fernandez on August 26, 2008 at 9:24

    John, the Rusk Insti­tute does indeed have a very fine rep­u­ta­tion for cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy, and I am hap­py to see you saw its ben­e­fits. The good news is that the val­ue of struc­tured cog­ni­tive rehab, com­put­er­ized and not, is becom­ing more wide­ly rec­og­nized. But, as many things in med­i­cine, progress is slow­er than we would like…all our efforts to raise aware­ness are much need­ed, so I wel­come your com­ment, and invite you to leave sim­i­lar com­ments in oth­er sci­ence and health blogs.

    thank you!



  19. M. A. Greenstein on September 2, 2008 at 10:17

    Alvaro and community,

    A pre­scient list ground­ed in empir­i­cal review. With van­guard research hit­ting crit­i­cal mass, I can imag­ine brain train­ing becom­ing the next hot trend like “yoga,” kick-box­ing, or Kab­bal­ah. Pick the celebri­ty and get ready to market!

    A few oth­er thoughts: 

    The Knowl­edge, Health and Cor­po­rate Cul­tures will run with this as brain train­ing is a pow­er­ful addi­tion to any skill set for high per­for­mance e.g.

    1. Doc­tors and P.A.‘s will take respon­si­bil­i­ty for brain train­ing only if med schools start intro­duc­ing Brain 101. I sus­pect the train­ing will run more eas­i­ly through team based holis­tic centers.

    2. Schools A‑K and post-sec­ondary will incor­po­rate low tech cours­es for age appro­pri­ate pop­u­la­tions. The Yoga Alliance has already start­ed to work on the A‑K demo­graph­ic; the Cen­ter for Con­tem­pla­tive Stud­ies has start­ed mak­ing inroads into the uni­ver­si­ty and col­lege sector.

    And uni’s like UCLA are find­ing ways to include neu­ro-train­ing in their lead­er­ship and man­age­ment degree and exten­sion programs.

    3. With the U.S. gov­ern­ment now offer­ing large grants for low tech inter­ven­tion into the PSTD cri­sis, I sus­pect we will see more of this, espe­cial­ly as war seems to be an inevitable con­di­tion of cre­at­ing eco­nom­ic growth (C.F. Gore Vidal).

    4. Social Net­work­ing Gen­er­a­tion: Informed, inter­ac­tive and engaged, the mindshare/facebook gen­er­a­tion is a pow­er­ful group for mov­ing brain tech­nolo­gies to the fore. Youth cul­ture is already tapped into low and high tech means of entrain­ing the brain. The neu­ro-coach­es will grow out of this gen­er­a­tion and join the ranks who start­ed years ago, sit­ting and chant­i­ng for uni­ty of consciousness!

    On that note, the resound­ing effects of the Jill Bolte Tay­lor talk at TED this year, leads me to sug­gest that we should not under­es­ti­mate the efforts made by spir­i­tu­al lead­ers and com­mu­ni­ties, e.g. Art of Liv­ing and the descen­dents of the T.M., who car­ry the low tech prac­tices of breath­ing and mantra med­i­ta­tion across the globe and for­ward into the 21st c.

    I pre­dict The Mind Life Insti­tute will con­tin­ue to help bridge the science/religion gap.

    5. Brain Tech­nol­o­gy advanced by Indi­an and Chi­nese cul­tures: con­sid­er the demo­graph­ics alone. Then think about the great mind/body philoso­phies to grow out of each civ­i­liza­tion: Pranayana; Tai Chi Ch’uan. The youth of Asia will return to their roots. I’ve lived there and seen the evidence.

    6. Final­ly, Brain Tech­nol­o­gy as Sus­tain­able Design?
    I look for­ward to the new “green” gen­er­a­tion of biofeed­back toys to come from the enlight­ened ranks of bio-engineering.

    Would­n’t it be a blast if every­one’s pre­dic­tion came through?



  20. Alvaro Fernandez on September 3, 2008 at 10:00

    M.A.: thank you for the many good thoughts. Yes, it is going to be fun to see how all this evolves!



  21. Vijay on September 3, 2008 at 3:03

    What is brain fit­ness and how it is mea­sured? Is it the same as mind fit­ness which seeks to achieve bal­ance in life?



  22. M. A. Greenstein on September 3, 2008 at 9:46

    Alvaro and Vijay — two thoughts:

    Alvaro: Re: pre­dic­tions: one more mus­ing car­ried over from attend­ing the Anti-Aging con­fer­ence at UCLA this sum­mer — pro­duced by Aubrey de Grey’s Methuse­lah Foun­da­tion: As sev­er­al here­in have not­ed, pub­lic pol­i­cy and broad pub­lic edu­ca­tion through mar­ket­ing may make a huge dif­fer­ence. An entire after­noon of the Anti — Aging con­fer­ence was spent dis­cus­sion mar­ket­ing issues, e.g., how to entrain the polit­i­cal cul­ture to put anti-aging research and edu­ca­tion at the top of its agenda!

    (P.S. Wish I could join you at the brain and anti aging con­fer­ence in S.F. tomor­row.… the aca­d­e­m­ic year is just starting!)

    Vijay: Great ques­tion, as the term fit­ness pre­sumes the log­ics of com­par­i­son and rel­a­tivism. As well, it is a word that car­ries with it the pre­sump­tions of 19th cen­tu­ry Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion. It might be worth sit­u­at­ing the ques­tion with­in a sys­tems frame­work such that the inquiry is made rel­e­vant to the con­text. Fit­ness in what time and space? For what task? Rel­a­tive to what neur­al func­tions of the brain?

    Neu­ro­sci­en­tists, what say you?



  23. Barbara Saunders on January 10, 2009 at 1:10

    My recent expe­ri­ence in a pub­lic school was that phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion was dis­ap­pear­ing, and its brain ben­e­fits dis­ap­pear­ing with it. I tend to believe that aca­d­e­m­ic prob­lems and phys­i­cal coor­di­na­tion prob­lems at the ele­men­tary lev­el are often related.



  24. nick zhang on March 7, 2009 at 5:01

    my pre­dic­tion: brain train­ing tech­nol­o­gy will make learn­ing sec­ond lan­guage much more effec­tive than any of the cour­rent method­ol­o­gy to the point that one will be able to speak a sec­ond lau­guage as well as hit/her native lau­guage. In anther word the techol­o­gy will iden­ti­fy the part of brain that process the native lan­guages and engage it for sec­ond lau­guage learning.



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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