Cogmed’s Working Memory Training in CHADD (ADD/ ADHD)

Am get­ting ready for CHADD con­fer­ence in Chica­go lat­er this week. Will get to meet the Cogmed team, includ­ing Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, com­ing from Swe­den for the ocassion.

A num­ber of peo­ple have asked me for some pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion from the repli­ca­tion stud­ies done based on Cogmed’s Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing Pro­gram. Here you have a cou­ple of uni­veristy arti­cles (peer-reviewed jour­nal papers take longer to appear):

- Uni­ver­si­ty’s of Notre Dame’s New ADHD inter­ven­tion yields promis­ing results: “ADHD is thought to be an impair­ment of the brain’s exec­u­tive func­tion­ing, pos­si­bly the work­ing mem­o­ry,” Gib­son says. “For peo­ple with ADHD, the abil­i­ty to hold infor­ma­tion tem­porar­i­ly in mind is espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to dis­trac­tion. So orga­niz­ing behav­ior across time–like remem­ber­ing the series of things to do in order to get ready in the morning–requires the abil­i­ty to sup­press dis­trac­tion, and kids with ADHD have trou­ble with that.”. “After this train­ing, the major­i­ty of stu­dents did report improve­ments in behav­ior and symp­toms of their ADHD, are doing more and can han­dle more. Their par­ents also noticed changes and improvements.”

Gib­son reports that areas like read­ing com­pre­hen­sion also improved, allow­ing stu­dents to work at high­er lev­els and main­tain their new-found abilities.”

- Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s RoboMemo remo­bi­lizes work­ing mem­o­ry: “Com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing effec­tive­ly improved reg­u­lar stu­dents’ short-term mem­o­ry and abil­i­ty to con­trol cog­ni­tive tasks in a school set­ting,” Yuan says. “Fur­ther stud­ies are war­rant­ed to exam­ine the train­ing’s impact on stu­dents’ flu­id intel­li­gence and sci­ence achievement.”

In short: good results for kids with ADD/ ADHD, which has been the core focus of the research and pro­gram so far. More research is need­ed to assess the ben­e­fits for every­one’s sci­ence (and math) skills.

2 Comments

  1. The neurophilosopher on October 24, 2006 at 3:37

    Alvaro, in answer to your ques­tion regard­ing neu­ro­science car­ni­vals, there are two — Encephalon and The Synapse. They were both start­ed at around the same time, in June this year. Encephalon was start­ed by me, and The Synapse by Jake at Pure Pedantry.

    Sub­mis­sions to both these car­ni­vals have been dwin­dling late­ly, so please do con­tribute to both of them. You can find more details on their respec­tive host blogs, and they’re both are list­ed at BlogCarnival.com.



  2. Alvaro on October 24, 2006 at 10:28

    Thanks. Will hap­pi­ly contribute.



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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