Brain Training New Frontier: Ice Hockey!

USA Hock­ey Inc., is the nation­al gov­ern­ing body for the sport of ice hock­ey in the Unit­ed States. As such, its mis­sion is to pro­mote the growth of hock­ey and pro­vide the best Ice Hockeypos­si­ble expe­ri­ence for all par­tic­i­pants by encour­ag­ing, devel­op­ing, advanc­ing and admin­is­ter­ing the sport.”

Why do we talk about ice hock­ey in a  brain fit­ness blog?

Well, we recent­ly announced this very inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tive, and now can offer more context:

USA Hock­ey and Intelligym:

- “USA Hock­ey, with part­ners ACE (Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing) and the BIRD (Bina­tion­al Indus­tri­al Research and Devel­op­ment) Foun­da­tion, have announced plans to devel­op a rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­uct that will, for the first time ever, pro­vide play­ers a train­ing tool to devel­op “hock­ey sense.”

- “To be called Hock­ey Intel­li­Gym, the soft­ware-based prod­uct will fur­nish play­ers with a high­ly effec­tive train­ing tool to devel­op per­cep­tion and deci­sion-mak­ing skills. Fur­ther, it will enable coach­es to fine-tune the train­ing pro­gram and fol­low-up on the progress of their players.”

- We’re real­ly into unchar­tered ter­ri­to­ry with the devel­op­ment of Hock­ey Intel­li­Gym, said Dave Ogre­an, exec­u­tive direc­tor of USA Hock­ey. “With the exper­tise of ACE and the sup­port of the BIRD Foun­da­tion, we’ll be able to pro­duce a prod­uct that will give our play­ers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve in areas that train­ing has nev­er before been available.

- “It is antic­i­pat­ed that the prod­uct will be avail­able in Decem­ber 2010”

Full release: here

Com­ment:  this ini­tia­tive is very mean­ing­ful for two rea­sons: first, it shows how the Brain Fit­ness field is com­posed of sev­er­al mar­ket seg­ments (we cov­er ACE as one of the com­pa­nies in the Cor­po­rate, Mil­i­tary & Sports seg­ment) beyond what we can call “healthy aging”. Sec­ond, it beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trates the poten­tial to enhance cog­ni­tive per­for­mance at all ages — to improve qual­i­ty of life, dri­ving skills, job-relat­ed skills…

For more con­text, read: Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intel­li­gence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher

2 Comments

  1. M. A. Greenstein, Ph.D. on December 19, 2008 at 1:35

    Alvaro, I agree. A great boon to mod­el how neu­ro­science and neu­rotech enhances ath­let­ic train­ing. This takes Olympic meth­ods of men­tal prac­tice to a new level!

    By the way, tonite at mindshare.la I got to wit­ness young entre­pre­neurs com­pet­ing in com­put­er vol­ley­ball and com­put­er soccer.
    Yet anoth­er instance of software/gaming devel­op­ing the neur­al net­works of Hand-Eye coordination!

    The future of brain tech is emergent!

    M. A. Green­stein, Ph.D., R.Y.T.
    The George Green­stein Insti­tute , cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future by coach­ing bod­ies, brains and minds!



  2. Ralph Howard on December 23, 2008 at 5:13

    Alvaro — this is a great news. When I kept read­ing about brain train­ing appli­ca­tions, it was clear that it is only a mat­ter of time before the fastest sport ever — ice hock­ey — is addressed. Regard­ing Dr. Green­stein com­ment — there are stud­ies that show that high fideli­ty sim­u­la­tion actu­al­ly hin­der per­for­mance, so I’m not sure about those video games. I read the stuff about the Intel­li­Gym and it seems that these guys took a very effec­tive and promis­ing direction.
    Good luck guys!



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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