Pro­fes­sor Bradley Gib­son is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy at Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame, and Direc­tor of the Per­cep­tion and Atten­tion Lab there. He is a cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist with research inter­ests in per­cep­tion, atten­tion, and visual cog­ni­tion. Gibson’s research has been pub­lished in a vari­ety of jour­nals, includ­ing Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­ogy, Human Per­cep­tion and Per­for­mance, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, and Per­cep­tion & Psychophysics.

In 2006 he con­ducted the first inde­pen­dent repli­ca­tion study based on the Cogmed Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing pro­gram we dis­cussed with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg.

A local news­pa­per intro­duced some pre­lim­i­nary results of the study Atten­tion, please: Mem­ory exer­cises reduce symp­toms of ADHD. Some quotes from the articles:

- “The com­puter game has been shown to reduce ADHD symp­toms in chil­dren in exper­i­ments con­ducted in Swe­den, where it was devel­oped, and more recently in a Granger school, where it was tested by psy­chol­o­gists from the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame.

- Fif­teen stu­dents at Dis­cov­ery Mid­dle School tried RoboMemo dur­ing a five-week period in Feb­ru­ary and March, said lead researcher Brad Gibson

- As a result of that expe­ri­ence, symp­toms of inat­ten­tion and hyper­ac­tiv­ity were both reduced, accord­ing to reports by teach­ers and par­ents, Gib­son said.

- Other tests found sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in “work­ing mem­ory”, a short-term mem­ory func­tion that’s con­sid­ered key to focus­ing atten­tion and con­trol­ling impulses.

- RoboMemo’s effec­tive­ness is not as well estab­lished as med­ica­tions, and it’s a lot more work than pop­ping a pill.

- Gib­son said Notre Dame’s study is con­sid­ered pre­lim­i­nary because it involved a small num­ber of stu­dents. Another lim­i­ta­tion is that the study did not have a con­trol group of stu­dents receiv­ing a placebo treatment.

We feel for­tu­nate to inter­view Dr. Gib­son today.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (AF): Dr. Gib­son, thanks for being with us. Could you first tell us about your over­all research interests?

Dr. Bradley Gib­son (BG): Thanks for giv­ing me this oppor­tu­nity. My pri­mary research Read the rest of this entry »

See our sec­ond press release below, and visit our Press Room for the great press we are start­ing to get about our brain fit­ness gym.

Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­ited time, you can receive a com­pli­men­tary copy of our Brain Fit­ness 101 e-Guide: Answers to your Top 25 Ques­tions, writ­ten by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, by sub­scrib­ing to our monthly newslet­ter. You can sub­scribe Here.

Sharp­Brains intro­duces First Online Brain Fit­ness Center

– Unique, Full-Service, Science-Based Fit­ness Cen­ter Ush­ers in the Next Work­out Rev­o­lu­tion: Men­tal Exer­cise –

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Thirty years after the emer­gence of the exer­cise boom, the fit­ness rev­o­lu­tion has finally gone to people’s heads: SharpBrains.com has launched the first online brain fit­ness cen­ter. Com­plete with a vari­ety of science-based men­tal exer­cise equip­ment, per­sonal brain train­ers, and nearly 200 arti­cles, inter­ac­tive blog post­ings and inter­views with indus­try experts, Sharp­Brains is spear­head­ing the evo­lu­tion of the fit­ness indus­try to include a sound mind as well as a healthy body.

The new men­tal exer­cise move­ment is founded on using struc­tured, computer-based brain fit­ness rou­tines tai­lored to each member’s spe­cific needs and level of abil­ity. Just as crunches and kick-boxing tone abs and increase car­dio strength, Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Katz, a San Diego clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist with decades of expe­ri­ence help­ing ADD/ ADHD kids and adults, and for­mer Board Mem­ber of CHADD, and I had a very good meet­ing with a few school super­in­ten­dents on Saturday.

We dis­cussed the research state-of-the-art, cur­rent ADD/ ADHD inter­ven­tions and the future of prevention-driven interventions.

Some high­lights from our talk:

- More and more researchers are com­ing to see that the label “Atten­tion deficit” was prob­a­bly not the most for­tu­nate one. Kids and adults with ADD/ ADHD can pay atten­tion, when they are engaged in cer­tain tasks, so the under­ly­ing prob­lem is not a deficit of attention.

- ADD/ ADHD is not a prob­lem of know­ing, but a prob­lem of doing. The bot­tle­neck may reside in exec­u­tive func­tions such as so-called work­ing mem­ory. The prob­lem is exe­cu­tion, inter­nal­ized behav­ior, not con­cep­tual knowledge.

- For more infor­ma­tion on Exec­u­tive func­tions, you can check the excel­lent review in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psy­chi­a­try, of Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg’s book The Exec­u­tive Brain

- Work­ing mem­ory is the abil­ity to hold dif­fer­ent things on line and manip­u­late them in real time in order to solve a prob­lem, com­plete a task…

- When asked if “work­ing mem­ory” and “short-term mem­ory” are the same, Mark explained that they refer to sim­i­lar con­cepts, if not the same, but that researchers stopped using the term “short-term” mem­ory many years ago, to make it clear that it is an active, not pas­sive, skill. In fact, he added, maybe it should be called “work­ing atten­tion” rather than “work­ing memory”.

- We dis­cussed the for­tu­nate trend that many schools are migrat­ing towards a pub­lic health model in help­ing kids with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and ADD/ ADHD, focus­ing on more pre­ven­tion at early ages than on reac­tive inter­ven­tions to major problems.

- Work­ing mem­ory can be trained by inten­sive and tar­geted Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams sup­ported by the use of computer-based pro­grams, like RoboMemo, the pro­gram that I came to know last year after a great Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can arti­cle that men­tioned their clin­i­cal study with kids with ADD/ ADHD, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Child and Ado­les­cent Psy­chi­a­try (See research here).

You can read more infor­ma­tion on the sci­ence of Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams.