29 Responses

1. Gerry says:

   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 says:

   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. Logic Nest · Carnival of Mathematics #37 says:

   July 25, 2008 at 5:48

   […] Alvaro Fer­nan­dez presents Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends posted at Sharp Brains.This arti­cle dis­cusses the con­cept of “brain train­ing”, or how we keep our brains fit. This is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing given that math­e­mat­ics is com­monly per­ceived as a game for the young, as evi­denced by this XKCD comic. Take care of your brains, people! […]
4. Andreas says:

   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)
5. Alvaro says:

   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!
6. David Harris says:

   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.
7. Brian Jones says:

   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
8. Alvaro says:

   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).
9. iain says:

   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.
10. Mike Kirkeberg says:

    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!!
11. Federico says:

    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
12. Scott says:

    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.
13. Alvaro says:

    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.
14. Patrick Curl’s Top 76 List of Top Ten Lists - If you love lists, you’ll love this! says:

    August 3, 2008 at 5:55

    […] Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends […]
15. Catherine Beman says:

    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?
16. Patrick McHenry says:

    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”.
17. Alvaro says:

    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?
18. Wolf says:

    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!
19. Hourglass II: A carnival of biogerontology « Ouroboros says:

    August 12, 2008 at 10:31

    […] Strongly related to envi­ron­men­tal sur­round­ings are lifestyle choices, includ­ing the sort of exer­cise we choose to do. The ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise of all sorts are already well-documented, but it’s becom­ing increas­ingly clear that men­tal exer­cise will be an essen­tial part of the brain main­te­nance that must accom­pany a suc­cess­ful aging process. At Sharp­Brains, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez dis­cusses the Top Ten Brain Train­ing Future Trends, includ­ing the idea that cre­ative uses of cog­ni­tive train­ing met­rics might some­day be used to allow early detec­tion of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases such as Alzheimer’s. […]
20. » Carnival of the Future #1 Disillusioned Words: atheism, art and politics says:

    August 15, 2008 at 3:55

    […] Third on this inau­gural edi­tion of Car­ni­val of the Future we have Alvaro Fer­nan­dez pre­sent­ing Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends posted at Sharp­Brains. Alvaro intro­duces this piece say­ing: 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. […]
21. john barrella says:

    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
22. Alvaro Fernandez says:

    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!
23. M. A. Greenstein says:

    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?
24. Alvaro Fernandez says:

    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!
25. Vijay says:

    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?
26. M. A. Greenstein says:

    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?
27. Cognitive Design » Blog Archive » Embedding Brain Boosting Effects in Your Design says:

    January 10, 2009 at 8:11

    […] Sharp­Brains, a leader in the emerg­ing field of cog­ni­tive train­ing pub­lished an inter­est report in 2008 on the Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends.  The report pre­dicts we will see brain train­ing emerge in phys­i­cal exer­cise, cor­po­rate well­ness and lead­er­ship pro­grams.   […]
28. Barbara Saunders says:

    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.
29. nick zhang says:

    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.