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Training the Brains of Fighter Pilots and Basketball Players

March 17, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

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.

Fea­tur­ing a com­put­er-game facade, the Intel­li­Gym trains the part of the brain con­trol­ling com­plex bas­ket­ball relat­ed tasks includ­ing; deci­sion mak­ing; pat­tern recog­ni­tion; tac­tics adap­ta­tion and switch­ing; periph­er­al vision; atten­tion con­trol; sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness; team­work, and spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion. It strength­ens the brain, just like the weight room builds mus­cles. What it means to play­ers is more assists, blocks and steals, less turnovers and bet­ter shot selection.

Pur­due (21–11), back in the tour­ney for the first time since 2003, earned the #9 seed in the Mid­west Region and will play #8 Ari­zona. The Boil­er­mak­ers have won eight of their last 12 games, with three of the loss­es to top-ranked Ohio State. The improve­ment since last sea­son under sec­ond year head coach Matt Painter is reflect­ed in three key sta­tis­tics that involve deci­sion-mak­ing. Their aver­age steals and assists increased from 5.39 to 7.68 and 13.1 to 13.75 per game respec­tive­ly and turnovers decreased from 17.6 to 14.2 per game.

In 2005, LBSU head coach Lar­ry Reynolds became one of the first to use the Intel­li­Gym. The team has improved each sea­son, and this year won its first Big West title and tour­na­ment bid since 1995. The 49ers (24–7) are a #12 seed and face #5 Ten­nessee. LBSU com­mit­ted few­er turnovers than its oppo­nent 22 times and over the past 23 games they have had few­er turnovers than their oppo­nents 19 times.

“Bas­ket­ball is not about who runs faster or jumps high­er, but who makes bet­ter deci­sions and few­er mis­takes, explains long-time NBA coach Hubie Brown. I’m in the busi­ness for 50 years and the Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym is the first train­ing tool I have seen to actu­al­ly improve game intel­li­gence skills.

The Intel­li­Gym is avail­able in a per­son­al edi­tion for play­ers of all ages and abilities.

If any reporter is read­ing this: You can con­tact Drew Avril, 718–871-7117, davril@coactivepr.com (for Brain Fit­ness in gen­er­al and Sharp­Brains) or Doug Drot­man, 631–462-1198, doug@drotmanpr.com (for the pro­gram itself).



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Filed Under: Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain, Brain-Training, cognitive-psychology, cognitive-science, competencies, Dawkins, frontal-lobe, Gaming, mentoring, mind, Parenting, schools, Science-and-technology, scientist, Serious-Games, staff-turnover, strategic-consulting, teaching

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Eliane Alhadeff says

    March 17, 2007 at 8:45

    Hi Alvaro!
    Many thanks for stop­ping by Future-Mak­ing Seri­ous Games and shar­ing your insights on brain “fit­ness”.
    I’ve been to Sharp­Brains before, and I must con­fess I’m deeply impressed by both its val­ue propo­si­tion and def­i­nite­ly by the “About Us” summary.
    After all, “brains pre­ceed games”.

    Take care.

  2. Alvaro says

    March 19, 2007 at 10:10

    Hel­lo Eliane: I was very impressed by your blog, too. you pro­vide a great overview of Seri­ous Games trends-have added you to our blogroll. Well, “brains pre­ceed games” but also “seri­ous games help sharp­en brains”…

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