Very inter­est­ing new mar­ket devel­op­ment:

The Marker, Israel - Oct 28, 2008, Sharp­Brains,

In other words, Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing (ACE) and USA Hockey have part­nered to bring to mar­ket a cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tion game to improve the per­for­mance of ice hockey play­ers — sim­i­lar to what  ACE has been offer­ing to pro­fes­sional and ama­teur bas­ket­ball players.

ACE has raised $2.5M, and ACE and USA Hockey have received a joint $800k devel­op­ment grant from the BIRD Foun­da­tion for the co-development of a train­ing sys­tem for Ice Hockey play­ers. (The arti­cle men­tions Sharp­Brains’ Mar­ket Report as a sign of how the mar­ket is grow­ing, since we cover ACE).

For more con­text on cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions, you will enjoy this Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher:

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Tell us a bit about your over­all research interests.

Daniel Gopher: My main inter­est has been how to expand the lim­its of human atten­tion, infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing and response capa­bil­i­ties which are crit­i­cal in com­plex, real-time decision-making, high-demand tasks such as fly­ing a mil­i­tary jet or play­ing pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball. Using a ten­nis anal­ogy, my goal has been, and is, how to help develop many “Wimbledon-like cham­pi­ons. Each with their own styles, but per­form­ing to their max­i­mum capac­ity to suc­ceed in their environments.

What research over the last 15–20 years has shown is that cog­ni­tion, or what we call think­ing and per­for­mance, is really a set of skills that we can train sys­tem­at­i­cally. And Read the rest of this entry »

There were a few inter­est­ing research papers pre­sented at the last  Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion con­ven­tions around the theme:

Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Stud­ies
– Skills Trans­fer to Class­room, Sur­gi­cal Pro­ce­dures, Sci­en­tific Think­ing (press release).

Prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing study was that of 303 laparo­scopic sur­geons, which “showed that sur­geons who played video games requir­ing spa­tial skills and hand dex­ter­ity and then per­formed a drill test­ing these skills were sig­nif­i­cantly faster at their first attempt and across all 10 tri­als than the sur­geons who did not the play video games first.”

The note goes fur­ther to explain the impli­ca­tions from this research:

“The big pic­ture is that there are sev­eral dimen­sions on which games have effects, includ­ing the amount they are played, the con­tent of each game, what you have to pay atten­tion to on the screen, and how you con­trol the motions,” said Gen­tile. “This means that games are not “good’ or bad,’ but are pow­er­ful edu­ca­tional tools and have many effects we might not have expected they could.”

Very thought­ful quote. Please note a few ele­ments about Read the rest of this entry »

The arti­cle Clumsy kids more likely to become obese adults: study (CBC)…

- “The study was based on tests of about 11,000 peo­ple in Britain who were tested for hand con­trol, co-ordination and clum­si­ness at age seven and 11, and were then fol­lowed until age 33.”

- “Prof. Scott Mont­gomery of the Karolin­ska Insti­tutet in Stock­holm and his col­leagues at Impe­r­ial Col­lege Lon­don in Eng­land said they pur­posely chose mea­sure­ments of fine hand con­trol such as pick­ing up matches, rather than those likely to be influ­enced by par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports, such as catch­ing balls.”

- “While it is often assumed that the cog­ni­tive impair­ments seen in adult obe­sity are a con­se­quence of excess weight, that could be putting the chicken before the egg, the researchers say”

…reminds me of Judith Beck’s words on how to “Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person”

- “The main mes­sage of cog­ni­tive ther­apy over­all, and its appli­ca­tion in the diet world, is straight-forward: prob­lems los­ing weight are not one’s fault. Prob­lems sim­ply reflect lack of skills–skills that can be acquired and mas­tered through prac­tice. Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the 30th edi­tion of Med­i­cine 2.0, the blog car­ni­val devoted to arti­cles that ana­lyze the cur­rent and poten­tial impact of web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies on med­i­cine and healthcare.

“Med­i­cine 2.0″ 101

The first ques­tion is, of course, “What exactly is Med­i­cine 2.0?”. The sec­ond, “Who cares?”. The third, “Why?”

Anthro­pol­o­gists are here to help. Who bet­ter to help under­stand emerg­ing arti­facts of the health and med­ical tribe, as evi­denced by the fan­tas­tic lec­ture An Anthro­po­log­i­cal Intro­duc­tion To Youtube given to the Library of Con­gress by Pro­fes­sor Michael Wesch. As Open Think­ing sug­gests, the video which is 55 min­utes long pro­vides an “excel­lent back­grounder on social media, user-generated con­tent, and online com­mu­ni­ties through the lens of anthropology.”

If you are more the Pow­er­Point type, you can access the great slide pre­sen­ta­tion and list of web­sites pro­vided by eHealth: see Web 2.0 in Clin­i­cal Research.

The Future of Med­i­cine and Health 2.0

Admit­tedly, the Med­i­cine 2.0 field is still small and emerg­ing. But, how will it grow? What new health­care out­comes will it enable and sup­port? What may be the trade-offs to con­sider, if any? Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our 10 most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Our first Brain Training/ Fit­ness Webi­nar Series was a suc­cess with sev­eral hun­dred par­tic­i­pants and great feed­back. If you could not par­tic­i­pate, you can still review the pre­sen­ta­tion slides by click­ing Here. A key mes­sage from the series: it is excit­ing that our brains remain more flex­i­ble, at all ages, than was once thought pos­si­ble. The impli­ca­tions? Every sin­gle owner of a brain can ben­e­fit from learn­ing more about how to main­tain the “It” in “Use It or Lose It.” And which tools, if any, can be help­ful. But, remember,there are no magic pills for cog­ni­tive health and performance.

Mar­ket News

National Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Ini­tia­tive: Neu­rotech lead­ers ask for help to sup­port a pend­ing bill on fund­ing for appli­ca­tions of brain research.

Lumos Labs raises $3 m in ven­ture cap­i­tal:  This web­site pro­vides a stim­u­lat­ing Read the rest of this entry »

As noted in our Mar­ket Report, we expect the field of cog­ni­tive train­ing (or “brain fit­ness”) soft­ware to grow in a vari­ety of edu­ca­tion and health-related areas over the next years. One of the most promis­ing areas in our view: help­ing chil­dren and adults with atten­tion deficits improve brain func­tion to reduce ADHD symptoms.

I am glad to present this in-depth dis­cus­sion on the results of two recent high-quality sci­en­tific stud­ies. Let me start with Dr. Rabiner’s conclusion:

“Results from these two cog­ni­tive train­ing stud­ies high­light that cog­ni­tive train­ing inter­ven­tions may pro­vide an impor­tant com­ple­ment to tra­di­tional med­ica­tion treat­ment and behav­ior ther­apy. Both stud­ies included appro­pri­ate con­trol groups, employed ran­dom assign­ment, and had out­come mea­sures pro­vided by indi­vid­u­als who were “blind” to which con­di­tion chil­dren were assigned to. They are thus well-designed stud­ies from which sci­en­tif­i­cally sound con­clu­sions can be drawn. They add to the grow­ing research base that inten­sive prac­tice and train­ing focused of key cog­ni­tive skills can have pos­i­tive effects that extend beyond the train­ing sit­u­a­tion itself.”

With­out futher ado…enjoy the article!

- Alvaro

——————

Two New Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Stud­ies for ADHD Yield Promis­ing Findings

– By Dr. David Rabiner

Although med­ica­tion treat­ment is effec­tive for many chil­dren with ADHD, there remains an impor­tant need to explore and develop inter­ven­tions that can com­ple­ment or even sub­sti­tute for med­ica­tion. This is true for a vari­ety of rea­sons including:

Read the rest of this entry »

A few quick updates:

1)  Yes­ter­day we had a fun webi­nar with John Med­ina, author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School.

You may enjoy check­ing out the slides we dis­cussed.

2) Please remem­ber that there is another webi­nar com­ing, next Tues­day. I hope you can join us!

Webi­nar: In “The Sci­ence and Prac­tice of Brain Fit­ness, I will pro­vide an overview of the Brain 101, lat­est research find­ings and impli­ca­tions for how to improve brain health and per­for­mance based on my class at UC-Berkeley Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute and speak­ing engage­ments.
– Tar­get audi­ence: Any­one who wants to learn more about brain health and per­for­mance. This is designed to be not a tech­ni­cal ses­sion, but a fun, stim­u­lat­ing hour.
– Date and time: Tues­day June 10th, 2pm EDT/ 11am PDT
Reg­is­ter: Here

Read the rest of this entry »

Phys­i­cal fit­ness. Cognitive/ brain fit­ness. Both require nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge. Pro­fes­sor Schlomo Breznitz, a sci­en­tific and busi­ness leader in the cog­ni­tive fit­ness field, explains why, elo­quently, below. Per­haps “we want change” really means “we need change”. Enjoy!

————————

Why are every­day life chal­lenges not suf­fi­cient to keep our brains fit?

– By Prof. Shlomo Breznitz

Often, when describ­ing the ben­e­fits of Mind­Fit to brain health, I am asked by peo­ple in the audi­ence whether this soft­ware is really needed. After all, so they argue, life pro­vides con­tin­ues cog­ni­tive chal­lenges, which should suf­fice for ensur­ing brain fit­ness. From the moment we wake up until we go to sleep our brains have to attend to com­plex stim­uli, plan many activ­i­ties, some of them quite com­plex, and carry us through what­ever the day offers. These tasks should pro­vide suf­fi­cient “brain exer­cise” with­out the need to engage in spe­cific men­tal workout.

This line of argu­ment sounds oddly famil­iar, since it is an exact dupli­ca­tion of claims made in the recent past against the need for phys­i­cal exer­cise. One jumps into the car and from the car and per­haps even climbs a few stairs before sit­ting in the chair, which should be enough to burn the calo­ries and keep fit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

We are glad to wel­come you to our blog car­ni­val. After a short hia­tus, Encephalon is back and gath­er­ing steam. We have pre­pared this “revival” edi­tion just for you, so you can be well informed and impress us all dur­ing the upcom­ing Sci­encede­bate 2008.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the ques­tions posed by 24 blog­gers on neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy issues. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Big Ques­tions

Do I deserve to vote even if I don’t have Free Will? (Marc at Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Challenged).

If cul­ture sculpts our brains, what can our brains do to refine our cul­ture first? (Stephanie at Brains On Purpose).

Is God more than a fly­ing brain? (Jes­sica at bioephemera).

Is Your brain really read­ing This? (Pete at Brain Hammer).

A Few Intru­sive Questions

Do you play any musi­cal instru­ment? (Megan at SharpBrains).

Read the rest of this entry »