Over the last year we have inter­viewed a num­ber of lead­ing brain health and fit­ness sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers world­wide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report.

What can we say today that we couldn’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neu­ro­science pio­neer San­ti­ago Ramon y Cajal claimed in the XX cen­tury, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor his own brain”, may well become real­ity in the XXI. And influ­ence Edu­ca­tion, Health, Train­ing, and Gam­ing in the process.

We have only scratched the sur­face of what science-based struc­tured cog­ni­tive (i.e., men­tal) exer­cise can do for brain health and pro­duc­tiv­ity. We are now wit­ness­ing the birth of a new indus­try that crosses tra­di­tional sec­tor bound­aries and that may help us under­stand, assess and train our brains, har­ness­ing the grow­ing research about neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis (the cre­ation of new neu­rons), neu­ro­plas­tic­ity (the abil­ity of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence), cog­ni­tive train­ing and emo­tional regulation.

Let’s now debunk 10 myths, still too preva­lent, that may pre­vent us from see­ing the full poten­tial of this emerg­ing field:

Myth 1: It’s all in our genes.

Real­ity: A big com­po­nent of our life­long brain health and devel­op­ment depends on what we do with our brains. Our own actions, not only our genes, influ­ence our lives to a large extent. Genes pre­dis­pose us, not deter­mine our fates.

“Indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tally stim­u­lat­ing lives, through edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion and leisure activ­i­ties, have reduced risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s. Stud­ies sug­gest that they have 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing the dis­ease” — Dr. Yaakov Stern, Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at Colum­bia University.

Myth 2: The field of Cognitive/ Brain Fit­ness is too new to be credible.

Real­ity: The field rests on solid foun­da­tions dat­ing back more decades — what is new is the num­ber and range of tools that are now start­ing to be avail­able for healthy individuals.

“Rig­or­ous and tar­geted cog­ni­tive train­ing has been used in clin­i­cal prac­tice for many years. Exer­cis­ing our brains sys­tem­at­i­cally is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies.” — Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, and dis­ci­ple of Alexan­der Luria.

“Today, thanks to fMRI and other neu­roimag­ing tech­niques, we are start­ing to under­stand the impact our actions can have on spe­cific parts of the brain.” — Dr. Judith Beck, Direc­tor of the Beck Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive Ther­apy and Research.

Myth 3: Med­ica­tion is and will remain the only evidence-based inter­ven­tion for a num­ber of brain-related problems.

Real­ity: Cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams are start­ing to Read the rest of this entry »

Eliane writes a great post esti­mat­ing the size of the Seri­ous Games Mar­ket, build­ing on the over­all Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers report that seemed to indi­cate that the Global Video Game Mar­ket is Set to Explode.

Some quotes

• “The over­all gam­ing audi­ence con­tin­ues to expand and become some­what more female and older than in the past thanks to casual games and games becom­ing an “impor­tant part of cul­ture” — which in my view would embed the Seri­ous Games segment.”
• “Whereas the mil­i­tary was one of the first cus­tomers of Seri­ous Games, it has been joined by a long line of users, includ­ing other gov­ern­ment agen­cies, health­care providers, schools (both K-12 and uni­ver­si­ties) and For­tune 500 com­pa­nies (for team build­ing, lead­er­ship train­ing, sales train­ing and prod­uct edu­ca­tion, among others).”
• “This is my con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate: the Seri­ous Games mar­ket would be rang­ing between $200 — 400 mil­lion per year only in US, in 2007. ”
• “There is now an emer­gent sup­ply chain for Cor­po­rate Seri­ous Games, with a num­ber of cor­po­ra­tions tak­ing Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many Sharp Brains around, who is up to date of every­thing related to brain health and fit­ness (yes, Jeanne, that’s you! thanks for being such a great bureau chief!) has sent us a very inter­est­ing press note on how brain fit­ness and train­ing can be applied in the sports per­for­mance world. I haven’t been able to track down the research behind the spe­cific pro­grams men­tioned in the arti­cle, but the the­o­ret­i­cal ratio­nale makes sense based on sim­i­lar pro­grams we are famil­iar with: you can see below a sum­mary of our inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher, sci­en­tific mind behind computer-based cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions for mil­i­tary pilots and for bas­ket­ball play­ers.

The note Sports Vision Train­ing Takes Ath­letes to New Fron­tiers explains how

• “Spe­cialty sports vision facil­i­ties are help­ing ath­letes train skills that many believed were “untrain­able”; skills like antic­i­pa­tion, field vision, tim­ing, sport intel­li­gence, game tempo, reac­tion speed, focus and concentration.”
• “What has every­one all worked up is the knowl­edge that they can actu­ally train ath­letic skills that many believed were “untrain­able.” We’re talk­ing about intan­gi­bles like antic­i­pa­tion, field vision, tim­ing, sport intel­li­gence, game tempo, reac­tion speed, focus and con­cen­tra­tion. “One of the worst mis­takes an ath­lete can make is to believe that you’re either born with or with­out these kinds of skills, and that they’re con­se­quently not train­able, says Brian Stam­mer, edi­tor of SportsVi­sion Mag­a­zine. “If you want to be the best ath­lete you can be, you must do exer­cises to con­di­tion and sharpen your sen­sory sys­tem, includ­ing visual, audi­tory and brain-processing speed.
• This is the link to the mag­a­zine they men­tion: SportsVi­sion Magazine

And here is the sum­mary of my (AF) inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher (DG) on Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions and cog­ni­tive training:

• “AF: …Can you sum­ma­rize your research find­ings across all these exam­ples and fields, and how you see the field evolving?
• DG: In short, I’d sum­ma­rize by say­ing that
• - Cog­ni­tive per­for­mance can be sub­stan­tially improved with proper train­ing. Read the rest of this entry »

We are a brain fit­ness cen­ter because we want to offer the best infor­ma­tion, tools and sup­port on how to exer­cise our brains. Same way you join the gym to stay in shape and find the best machines and per­sonal trainers.

One of the “tools” or “machines” we offer was designed under the sci­en­tific super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sor Daniel Gopher and his team for bas­ket­ball play­ers: click here to read our inter­view with him. And here for a fun clip with the Mem­phis Tigers.

Our part­ner ACE just issued this press release:

Fighter Pilots Help Pur­due and Long Beach State Reach the Tournament

The Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym Improves Decision-Making

STUDIO CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The same tech­nol­ogy ini­tially devel­oped to train Israeli fighter pilots on the cog­ni­tive, brain level has been an inte­gral part of the train­ing reg­i­men for both Long Beach State and Pur­due, two teams earn­ing their first NCAA tour­na­ment births since 1995 and 2003 respectively.

The inno­v­a­tive Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym soft­ware pro­gram has been proven to improve real-time decision-making and exe­cu­tion for thou­sands of bas­ket­ball play­ers world­wide and play­ers on more than a dozen col­lege bas­ket­ball teams. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »