The 150-page report finds promising research and initiatives to drive significant growth, combined with increased consumer confusion given aggressive marketing claims and lack of education and standards. The report includes:
- The complete results of an exclusive January 2009 Survey with 2,000+ respondents
- A proprietary Market & Research Momentum Matrix to categorize 21 key vendors into four categories
- 10 Research Executive Briefs written by leading scientists at prominent research labs
- An analysis of the level of clinical validation per product and cognitive domain

Top 10 Highlights from the report:

1) Consumers, seniors’ communities and insurance providers drove year on year sustained growth, from $225m in 2007 to $265m in 2008. Revenues may reach between $1 billion to $5 billion by 2015, depending on how important problems (Public Awareness, Navigating Claims, Research, Health Culture, Lack of Assessment) are addressed.

2) Increased interest and confusion: 61% of respondents Strongly Agree with the statement “Addressing cognitive and brain health should be a healthcare priority.” But, 65% Agree/Strongly Agree “I don’t really know what to expect from products making brain claims.”

3) Investment in R&D seeds future growth: Landmark investments by insurance providers and government-funded research institutes testing new brain fitness applications planted new seeds for future growth.

4) Becoming standard in residential facilities: Over 700 residential facilities – mostly Independent and Assisted Living facilities and CCRCs – have installed computerized cognitive training programs.

5) Customer satisfaction: Consumers seem more satisfied with computer-based products than paper-based options. But, satisfaction differs by product. When asked “I got real value for my money”, results were as follows: Lumosity.com (65% Agree), Puzzle Books (60%), Posit Science (52%), Nintendo (51%) agreed. Posit Science (53% Agree) and Lumosity.com (51%) do better than Puzzle Books (39%) and Nintendo (38%) at “I have seen the results I wanted.”

6) Assessments: Increasing adoption of computer-based cognitive assessments to baseline and track cognitive functions over time in military, sports, and clinical contexts. The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America now advocates for widespread cognitive screenings after 65-75.

7) Specific computerized cognitive training and videogames have been shown to improve brain functions, but the key questions are, “Which ones”, and “Who needs what when?”

Aggressive marketing claims are creating confusion and skepticism, resulting in a distracting controversy between two misleading extremes: (a) “buying product XYZ can rejuvenate your brain Y years” or (b) “those products don’t work; just do one more crossword puzzle.” The upcoming book The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness aims to help consumers navigate these claims.

9) Developers can be classified into four groups, based on a proprietary Market and Research Momentum Matrix: SharpBrains finds 4 Leaders, 8 High Potentials, 3 Crosswords 2.0, and 6 Wait & See companies.

10) Increased differentiation: Leading companies are better defining their value proposition and distribution channels to reach specific segments such as retirement communities, schools, or healthcare providers.

Leading researchers prepared 10 Research Executive Briefs:
- Dr. Joshua Steinerman (Einstein-Montefiore): Neuroprotection via cognitive activities
- Dr. Jerri Edwards (South Florida): Assessments of driving fitness
- Dr. Susanne Jaeggi and Dr. Martin Buschkuehl (Bern, Michigan): Working memory training and fluid intelligence
- Dr. Torkel Klingberg (Karolinska): Working memory training, dopamine, and math
- Dr. Liz Zelinski (UC Davis): Auditory processing training
- Dr. David Vance (UAB): Speed-of-processing training
- Dr. Jerri Edwards (South Florida): Cognitive training for healthy aging
- Dr. Daphne Bavelier & Dr. Shawn Green (Rochester): Action videogames and attentional skills
- Dr. Arthur Kramer (Illinois): Strategy videogames and executive functions
- Dr. Yaakov Stern (Columbia): The cognitive reserve and neuroimaging
- Dr. David Rabiner (Duke): Objective assessments for ADHD

Table of Contents

Editorial
Executive Summary
Chapter 1. Bird’s-Eye View of the Growing Field
Chapter 2. Market Survey on Beliefs, Attitudes, Purchase Habits
Chapter 3. The Emerging Competitive Landscape
Chapter 4. The Science for Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health
Chapter 5. Consumers – Adopting Crosswords 2.0?
Chapter 6: Healthcare and Insurance Providers – A Culture of Cognitive Health
Chapter 7: K12 School Systems- Ready for Change?
Chapter 8: Military, Sports Teams, Companies – Brain-Performance Link
Chapter 9: Future Directions – Projections and Bottlenecks

Companies profiled include: Advanced Brain Technologies, Applied Cognitive Engineering, Brain Center America, Brain Resource, CNS Vital Signs, Cogmed, Cogstate, CogniFit, Cognitive Drug Research, Dakim, Houghton Mifflin, Learning Enhancement Corporation, LearningRx, Lumos Labs, Marbles: The Brain Store, Nintendo, NovaVision, Posit Science, Scientific Brain Training, Scientific Learning, TransAnalytics, vibrantBrains, Vigorous Mind, Vivity Labs.

More on the report by clicking on The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2009.

Comments: as we have said before, Nintendo Brain Age and Brain Training should be seen as what they are: a game. And the construct of one’s having a  “brain age” makes no sense.

Having said that, the researcher quoted then offers, out of the blue, a highly inaccurate statement:

“The study tested Nintendo’s claims on 67 ten-year-olds. “That’s the age where you have the best chance of improvement,” Professor Lieury said. “If it doesn’t work on children, it won’t work on adults.”

That assertion (that something won’t “work” on adults because it won’t “work” on kids) makes even less sense than having a “brain age”. The Cognitive Reserve research shows the need for lifelong mental stimulation – and the reality is that kids are more exposed to novelty and challenge all the time, whereas older adults may not be. Further, that claim (something that doesn’t “work” on kids won’t “work” on adults) has already been tested and proven wrong:

In a couple of recent trials, discussed here, the same strategy game (Rise of Nations, a complex challenge for executive functions), played for the same number of hours (23)  showed quite impressive (untrained) cognitive benefits in people over 60 – and no benefits in people in their 20s.

How can this be? Well, we often say that our brains need novelty, variety and challenge – and it should be obvious that those ingredients depend on who we are/ what we do. A crossword may well be new and challenging for a kid, but not for an older adult who has done a million already. A videogame can provide good challenge to an older adult – and probably not to the kid who already spends 5 hours a day playing them.

Further, it is not Nintendo that offers a science-based cognitive training product. A variety of computerized products have been shown to work on enhancing cognitive abilities for specific groups of people and for specific purposes (there is no magic cure or general solution) – something that crossword puzzles never have.

A few months back I interviewed Martin Buschkuehl, after his team published a study showing how computerized working memory training can enhance fluid intelligence. A question I asked was “How are computerized programs like the one you used fundamentally different from, say, simply doing many crossword puzzles?”.

His answer:

“In terms of why our program worked, I could say that the program has some inherent properties that are at least in this combination unique to our training approach. Our program is:
- Fully adaptive in real-time: The person using the program is truly pushed to his or her peak level all the time, thereby “stretching” the targeted ability.
- Complex: We present a very complex task, mixing different forms of stimuli (auditory, visual) under time pressure.
- Designed for Transferability: The tasks can be designed in a way that do not allow for the development of task-specific “strategies” to beat the game. One needs to truly expand capacity, and this helps ensure the transfer of to non-trained tasks.”

Dr. Klingberg has just published a very stimulating popular science book, The Overflowing Brain, that should help in precisely that direction. Given the importance of the topic, and the quality of the book, we have named  The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory  The SharpBrains Most Important Book of 2008, and asked Dr. Klingberg to write a brief article to introduce his research and book to you. Below you have. Enjoy!

—

Research and Tools to Thrive in the Cognitive Age

By Dr. Torkel Klingberg

Do we all have attention deficits?

The information age has provided us with high technology which fills our days with an ever increasing amount of information and distraction. We are constantly flooded with on-the-go emails, phone calls, advertisements and text-messages and we try to cope with the increasing pace by multi tasking. A survey of workplaces in the United States found that the personnel were interrupted and distracted roughly every three minutes and that people working on a computer had on average eight windows open at the same time. There is no tendency for this to slow down; the amount and complexity of information continually increases

The most pressing concerns with this environment are: how do we deal with the daily influx of information that our inundated mental capacities are faced with? At what point does our stone-age brain become insufficient? Will we be able to train our brains effectively to increase brain capacity in order to stay in-step with our inexorable lifestyles? Or will we be stricken with attention deficits because of brain overload?

In his article “Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform,” psychiatrist Edward Hallowell coins the term “attention deficit trait” to characterize the situation in which so many of us find ourselves. This is not a new diagnosis of any use to doctors, but rather a description of the mental state that information technology, a faster pace, and changing work patterns have induced. Some would call it a lifestyle.

The point of Hallowell’s term is that it illustrates how the modern work situation, with its pace and simultaneous demands, often gives us the feeling of having attention difficulties and of not quite having the capacity to do our jobs. Our brains are being flooded. But is it really the case that the information society generally impairs people’s attentional abilities? What are attentional abilities, anyway, and exactly what in our complex work situations is mentally demanding?

Cognitive Demands in the Information Age

In my book “The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory” I try to pinpoint the nature of the cognitive demands of modern life and the psychological and neural basis of our capacity limitations. One demand factor in our working lives is the incessant distractions: all the impressions that buzz around us like mosquitoes and make it hard for us to concentrate on what we’re doing. The torrent of information increases not only the volume of data we’re expected to take in but also the volume we need to shut out.

Another important demand factor is multitasking, which is the quick and easy solution for all those who want to get more done in less time. However, doing (or at least trying to do) several tasks simultaneously is one of our most demanding everyday activities. Running on a treadmill while watching TV usually isn’t too taxing, nor is chewing gum while walking in a straight line. But even such a mundane situation as talking on a cell phone while driving is not as easy as we’d like to think. Apart from the fact that it’s difficult to hold the wheel and shift gears with the same hand, or to keep our eyes on the road and on the phone’s display at the same time, there’s something in the mentally demanding task of telephoning that makes us worse drivers.

Information overload, distractions and multitasking are probably the most important factors in making the information age so cognitively demanding are.

The Role of Working Memory: challenges and opportunities

There are plenty of indications that those three factors are loading on our working memory capacity, which is our capacity to hold on to relevant information for short periods of time. The problem is that our working memory capacity is a scarce resource. The increase in information load thus meets a biological constraint in how much we can handle. A question that has always fascinated me is how this capacity constraint is wired in our brain, and if we can in some way increase this capacity, and this question is a thread that I follow throughout the book.

In the research that my colleagues and I have done at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, we have shown that training on working memory tasks, close or above the limit of our capacity, can improve our working memory. This improvement is not only confined to the trained tasks, but generalizes to other cognitive tasks requiring working memory and control of attention. We have also shown that this training improves the ability to focus in everyday life. The working memory capacity limitation is not immutable, but actually possible to stretch.

Furthermore, it is possible that the increasing information load not only is harmless, but might actually improve our cognitive abilities through improvement of working memory. The now well known Flynn effect tells us that fluid intelligence is increasing, presumably due to environmental demands on cognition. The most important cognitive demands of modern life relates to working memory, and the most important cognitive function underlying fluid intelligence is working memory capacity. The way environmental demands improves fluid intelligence might thus be through improvement on working memory capacity.

In other words, modern life itself may help make us more cognitively able. And emerging tools may enhance our abilities and better prepare us for the demands of the Information Age.

Reflections for the Future

Training our brains might thus be a way to keep up with the increasing demands of the information age. This might be especially relevant for those of us that are over 25 years of age, when working memory capacity starts to decline year by year, at the same time as the demands increase. In my book I, half jokingly, suggested that in the future we might see company-funded cognitive fitness training for employees. It was with a certain satisfaction that I recently read in SharpBrains blog about a new initiative by the USA Ice Hockey league to provide computerized cognitive training -focused on important perception and decision-making skills- to its players.

In the future we might be as aware of cognitive function as we know are obsessed with calories, diets, glycemic index and cardiovascular training, and brain training might be a part of our every day life.

– Dr. Torkel Klingberg leads the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the Karolinska Institute, which is part of the Stockholm Brain Institute. He has recently written The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory (Oxford University Press, November 2008).

When: Thursday December 11th, from 12:00 to 1:00 pm Pacific Time. The same webinar will be repeated on Thursday December 18th, from 9:00 to 10:00 pm Pacific Time.

The Top 10 Cognitive Fitness Events that will be discussed include:

1) February: Dakim secures a $10.6m investment from Galen Partners. Jack LaLanne becomes spokesperson.
2) April: The Government of Ontario, Canada, invests $10m in Baycrest to develop and commercialize cognitive fitness technologies.
3) April: University of Michigan researchers reveal in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences how computerized working memory training can generalize and improve fluid intelligence in healthy adults.
4) May: Humana unveils Games for Health initiatives, not renewing its agreement with Posit Science.
5) June: The US Army launches a new policy requiring cognitive screenings of all soldiers before deployment (in order to better diagnose potential brain-based disorders such as PTSD and TBI upon return).
6) June: Lumos Labs secures $3m investment from FirstMark Capital and Norwest Venture Partners.
7) July: health insurer OptumHealth announces a 3-year, $18m agreement with Brain Resource to offer web-based cognitive assessments to inform clinical diagnostics and treatments.
August: CogniFit secures $5m from Milk Capital.
9) September: The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 is signed into law.
10) October: Allstate launches a large-scale research project to measure the impact of Posit Science InSight on driver safety for adults aged 50-75.

Context: The market for software applications that can help assess and enhance cognitive functions (Cognitive Fitness) is rapidly growing, as outlined in SharpBrains’ report The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008 (see Market Report). Published in March of this year, the report estimates that Brain Fitness market revenues grew from $100m in 2005 to $225m in 2007, in the US alone. Important developments during 2008 underscore the solid fundamentals for the continued growth of this category: public policy initiatives, wide scale cognitive assessments, multiple venture capital investments, major initiatives by insurance companies, and new published research. SharpBrains forecasts the market to grow above $2b by 2015.

Fees: This webinar costs $350. You can click Here to learn more and register. Free for SharpBrains’ contributors, Premium Research Circle members, reporters and fellow bloggers.

1) Public policy initiatives:
- The Government of Ontario, Canada, announced a $10m investment in Baycrest Research Center to help develop and commercialize brain fitness technologies. This $10m investment was matched with an additional $10m by local investors.
- In the US, The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 was signed into law, included in the recently-approved economic bailout bill. The passage of this law has significant implications for healthcare providers and technology vendors alike.

2) Computerized Cognitive Assessments Used by the US Military:
The US Army launched a new policy requiring cognitive screenings of all soldiers before deployment (in order to better diagnose potential problems such as PTSD and TBI upon return). ANAM was the selected computerized battery of tests.

3) Venture & Angel Fundraising for Cognitive Training companies:
A number of developers have raised money. CogniFit received $5m (from Milk Capital), Lumos Labs $3m (FirstMark Capital -previously called Pequot Ventures-, Norwest Venture Partners), Scientific Brain Training $1.5m (issued shares), Vivity Labs $1m (undisclosed angel investors), This is, of course, on top of the February $10.6 investment in Dakim (Galen Partners) that we already included in our market report.

4) Major Initiatives by Insurance Companies:
- Allstate launched a large-scale research project to measure impact of Posit Science InSight (visual processing training) on driver safety for adults over 50.
- OptumHealth announced a 3-year, $18m agreement with Brain Resource to offer web-based cognitive assessments as part of clinicians’ decision support systems.
- Humana decided not to renew its agreement with Posit Science to offer Posit’s auditory processing training program to Medicare members.

5) New Research:
- In a significant new study, a team from the University of Michigan published a high-quality paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing how computerized working memory training can generalize and improve fluid intelligence (one of the domains that tends to decline with age).
- Learning and Teaching Scotland released an internal study showing how Nintendo Brain Training can help children’s math and concentration skills. The study gained significant media attention, despite the fact it hasn’t been published in a respected journal.

Note: This is an excerpt from the 6-Month Market Update we will  release later this month, covering the many important developments that have occurred since we launched the inaugural Brain Fitness Market Report in March this year. This special report will be available exclusively for our Premium Research Sponsors.

Reference: Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving Fluid Intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(19), 6829-6833

——————

What is intelligence?

Intelligence is a concept difficult to define as it seems to cover many different types of abilities.

One definition dissociates between crystallized intelligence or abilities and fluid intelligence. Crystallized intelligence refers to the knowledge acquired throughout life such as vocabulary. Fluid intelligence is the ability that allows us to adapt to new situations or problems.

Age does not affect crystallized and fluid intelligence the same way. In 2004, Schaie and colleagues published the results of the Seattle study. In this study, the researchers collected information on participants over 7 testing cycles (from 1956 to 1998). The results showed that fluid abilities tend to decline earlier than crystallized abilities. In 2004, Lovden and colleagues published the results of the Berlin Aging Study, which included 516 participants assessed 5 times over a period of 13 years. The results show a steady decline in fluid abilities. In contrast, crystallized abilities were quite stable over time and even tended to increase.

Can we train intelligence?

There a lot of drugs that supposedly increase intelligence and makes one smarter. However there is no scientific evidence showing that these drugs have any measurable effects on performance.

In terms of training, several studies have shown that practicing specific tasks will indeed increase performance in these tasks. Problematically, transfer of the training benefits to a different task (not practiced) has been rarely shown.

However, in a very recent 2008 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jaeggi and her colleagues were able to shown that fluid intelligence could be improved by training on working memory. In other words they showed that training young adults using a working memory task induced performance benefits that transferred to fluid intelligence tasks.

Jaeggi and her colleagues trained four groups of young adults using a complex working memory task, called a dual n-back task (Working memory is the ability to hold information for a short while in memory and use that information to solve a problem). In the task participants had to hold in memory both the locations of squares shown on a computer screen and consonants heard through headphones. A response was required whenever one of the presented stimuli matched the one presented n positions back in the sequence. Quite complex as you can see!

Participants (approximately 16 per group) were trained for 25 minutes per day for 8 days, 12 days, 17 days or 19 days. Fluid intelligence was assessed before the training and after the training using standardized tests (consisting in visual analogy problems).

Control groups, who did not receive any training, were also tested for fluid intelligence at the same intervals as the trained groups.

Results showed that the trained groups did better in the fluid intelligence tasks after the training than before the training. Importantly, this gain was greater than the gain seen in the control groups.

Why would the control groups also improve when they did not get any training? They merely had some practice taking the intelligence test given that the test was administered twice (this is why it is crucial to show that the trained groups shows more benefit than the control groups).

This result is one of the rare ones showing that transfer of training gains exists. Here the benefits from being trained on a complex working memory task transferred to a test of fluid intelligence. This is probably possible because working memory and fluid intelligence are related in several ways. First, both require to use attentional and control processes. Second, they both rely on similar neural networks: lateral prefrontal and parietal cortices.

Note that the effect of the training on the intelligence task became significant only after 17 days of training and not before. However, given the small number of participants in each group, one would need more research including more participants to know for sure how many days of training are needed to get a benefit. It would also be interesting to learn how long these effects last…

In conclusion it looks like one can use training to boost one’s fluid intelligence.

Transfer of training effects are really a must, especially in this domain, because new situations come up all the time and you cannot train yourself on all possible situations.

The same argument applies to computerized brain games: playing the same game over and over will increase your performance in that game. But what you really want to see is a transfer of the benefits induced by playing that game to other everyday tasks. More research is needed then!

— This article was written by Pascale Michelon, Ph. D., for SharpBrains.com. Copyright 2008. Dr. Michelon has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and has worked as a Research Scientist at Washington University in Saint Louis, in the Psychology Department. She conducted several research projects to understand how the brain makes use of visual information and memorizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Faculty at Washington University, and teaches Memory Workshops in numerous retirement communities in the St Louis area.

Reference: Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving Fluid Intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(19), 6829-6833 (You can read it here, with subscription).

Before you keep reading, let me clarify a couple of terms:

- “Working Memory” is the ability to hold several units of information in our minds and manipulate them in real time. For example, imagine I ask you to remember, and then say backwards, the 7 digits of my phone number.

- “Fluid intelligence” can be described as the ability to deal with new challenges and new problems, those that we encounter for the first time.

Dr. Buschkuehl, nice to talk to you. Can you first provide us with some context on your research?

My collaborator Susanne Jaeggi and I started our training work four years ago in the Lab of Prof. Walter Perrig at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Now we are both Post Docs in Prof. John Joindes’ Lab at the University of Michigan. We developed a complex computerized task and have tried it in a number of studies. We reported our results in two unpublished dissertations, but this is the first time it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Could you please explain the training involved in this particular study?

We recruited 70 students aged around 26 years and set half of them on a challenging computer-based cognitive training regimen, based on the so-called “n-back task.” This is a very complex working memory task that involves the simultaneous presentation of visual and auditory stimuli. The experimental group watched a series of screens on their computers, where a blue square appeared in various positions on a black background. Each screen appeared for half a second, with a 2.5 second gap before the next one appeared. While this happened, the trainees also heard a series of letters that were read out at the same rate.

At first, students had to say if either the screen or the letter matched those that popped up two cycles ago. The number of cycles increased or decreased depending on how well the students performed the task. The students sat through about twenty-five minutes of training per day for either 8, 12, 17 or 19 days, and were tested on their fluid intelligence before and after the regimen using the Bochumer-Matrizen Test (this is a problem-solving task based on the same principle as the very well known Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices. However, it is more difficult and therefore especially suited for academic samples).

What were the results?

Participants in the experimental group did significantly better on the fluid intelligence test (which was not directly trained) than participants in the control group. Those in the control group hadn’t gone through any training. The control group did improve slightly, but real “trainees” outperformed them (see Figure Xa). Furthermore, we found that the improvement was dose-dependent: the more they trained, the larger the gain on fluid intelligence.

Images: PNAS.

We just published a market report to cover the growing brain fitness software market. A common question we get is, “How are computerized programs like the one you used fundamentally different from, say, simply doing many crossword puzzles?”

First, thank you for sending the report along. Fascinating to see what is starting to happen in this field.

In terms of why our program worked, I could say that the program has some inherent properties that are at least in this combination unique to our training approach. Our program is:
- Fully adaptive in real-time: The person using the program is truly pushed to his or her peak level all the time, thereby “stretching” the targeted ability.
- Complex: We present a very complex task, mixing different forms of stimuli (auditory, visual) under time pressure.
- Designed for Transferability: The tasks can be designed in a way that do not allow for the development of task-specific “strategies” to beat the game. One needs to truly expand capacity, and this helps ensure the transfer of to non-trained tasks.

This is very different from enhancing task-specific capacities, such as memorizing lists of 100 numbers, which have been shown not to necessarily transfer to related domains.

Can you give an example of the lack of transferability of other training methods?

In Ericsson’s classic paper (Ericsson, K. A., & Delaney, P. F. (1998). Working memory and expert performance. In R. H. Logie & K. J. Gilhooly (Eds.), Working Memory and Thinking (pp. 93-114). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum), people who could memorize 100 numbers, using a variety of mnemotecnic techniques, could not get even close to 100 letters. Remembering numbers didn’t translate into remembering other things, so it wasn’t a general memory capacity that had been improved.

What are the particular aspects of the University of Michigan study that surprised you the most?

First, the clear transfer into fluid intelligence, that many researchers and psychologists take as fixed.

Second, I was surprised to see that the more training the better the outcome. The improvements did not seem to peak early.

Third, that all trained groups improved, no matter their respective starting points. In fact, students with lowest fluid intelligence seemed to improve the most. But that was not the main focus of our study, so we can not say much more about it.

How did participants describe the experience, and their benefits?

Many liked the training. They saw the challenge, and tried hard to push themselves through the training to see how far they could go.

We did not analyze how the fluid intelligence gains transferred into real life. But from an anecdotal point of view, many participants have shared stories of how they perceive a major benefit. Now they can follow lectures more easily, understand math better etc…

There is a degree of artificial controversy these days in the media and the scientific community on the respective benefits of physical or mental exercise. Your thoughts?

We obviously need both. Physical exercise keeps the body in a good shape but especially in older people also leads to cognitive benefits. Mental exercise, like the one we used, can enhance important abilities and is most likely the most efficient way to improve a specific cognitive process but also generalizes to a broader range of skills, as we showed.

Research will need to help clarify who needs what type of exercise more. Some people may get enough mental exercise through very complex jobs and what they need is physical exercise. For others, it may be the opposite.

What are your plans now?

First, to conduct follow-up research to analyze the neural basis of the improvement via neuroimaging studies and try to measure benefits in real life.

But our main hope is to be able to investigate and develop applications for people who need it most: children with development problems, stroke/ TBI rehab, and older adults.

Also, let me note that there is a cross-platform application available (Note: Here), that allows to train with the dual n-back task and several other training tasks that we developed for other studies. Although the application is available in English, the Manual and the BrainTwister Website are not at the moment. We are about to release an English version, but unfortunately I cannot give you a release date right now. If the training program is used for research (i.e. a training study), it is provided free of charge.

Martin, many thanks for sharing your time and insights with us. Please keep us informed of new developments.

My pleasure. We will.

—————————-

Reference: Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving Fluid Intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(19), 6829-6833 (You can read it here, with subscription). 

For related interviews on working memory training, see

Memory training and attention deficits: interview with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gibson

Working Memory Training: Interview with Dr. Torkel Klingberg

Working Memory Training from a pediatrician perspective 

And, if you want to try the task yourself before the official website mentioned above is ready (and we’ll keep you updated), you can do so Here.

The Neuron, The Brain, and Thinking Smarter

New Neurons: Good News, Bad News: Dr. Bill Klemm, a professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, summarizes the research on how new neurons are born and what they need to live long happy lives.

Interviews with 16 Leading Scientists: Compilation of interviews with prominent neuroscientists and psychologists conducted by SharpBrains over the past year. “Use It and Improve It” not only applies to the neuron unit, but also to a variety of cognitive and emotional skills, as you will discover in these interviews.

The Science of Thinking Smarter: Harvard Business Review publishes a great interview with biologist John Medina, author of Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School.

Brain and Research News

Cognitive News RoundUp: articles covering epigenetics (how our environments and experiences can contribute to turning genes on or off, thereby putting in better context genetic influences), mental problems among returning veterans, and the cognitive effects of medications and aging.

Memory Training and Fluid Intelligence: according to a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the “researchers did not find the upper-limit for improvement, suggesting that more training could yield even better mental performance gains.” Which shows how well-directed brain exercise can work, and not only for people with aging or disease-specific problems.

Working Memory Training for Adults: Dr. David Rabiner discusses the initial results, presented in the April 2008 Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting, of a controlled trial of working memory training conducted with 55 younger (20-30 years old) and 45 older (60-70 years old) adults. Similar results to the ones reported above, and more durable. We are looking forward to seeing when and where the study will be published.

Pump up those little grey cells: great article in the UK’s Sunday Times listing a variety of free or inexpensive brain health-related resources.

Reflections

Peace Among Primates (Part 3): “Anyone who says peace is not part of human nature knows too little about primates, including ourselves”, concludes neuroscientist Dr. Robert Sapolsky in his third and final installment in this series.