Train your brain to remember her name: Key patent for cognitive training system using face-name associations

by

face names
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 8,197,258

Today we are shar­ing a 2012 patent by Posit Sci­ence aimed at enhanc­ing cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty using face-name associations.

U.S. Patent No. 8,197,258: Cog­ni­tive train­ing using face-name associations

  • Assignee(s): Posit Sci­ence Corporation
  • Inventor(s): Peter B. Delahunt, Joseph L. Hardy, Hen­ry W. Mah­ncke, Shru­ti Gangadhar
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neu­roCog­ni­tive Training
  • Issue Date: June 12, 2012

SharpBrains’ Take:

The facial recog­ni­tion capac­i­ties of the human brain serves a crit­i­cal func­tion, from when an infant first makes eye-con­tact with its moth­er through­out the span of adult­hood where we must be able to iden­ti­fy and dis­tin­guish oth­er peo­ple in order to nav­i­gate and oper­ate in soci­ety. The ‘258 patent describes approach­es relat­ing to not only facial recog­ni­tion, but face-name asso­ci­a­tions with train­ing meth­ods that may be applied to both real-world faces (e.g., peo­ple in an orga­ni­za­tion to which a user belongs) or unknown faces (i.e., fic­ti­tious or unknown peo­ple pre­sent­ed mere­ly for train­ing pur­pos­es). Sim­i­lar to oth­er Posit patent dis­clo­sures, the ‘258 patent teach­es approach­es that may be applied iter­a­tive­ly to vary the lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty as the user learns and improves in skill. The sys­tem also con­sid­ers vary­ing aspects of facial pre­sen­ta­tion such as view, expres­sion and oth­er vari­a­tions to mod­u­late the dif­fi­cul­ty in mak­ing face-name asso­ci­a­tion. The impor­tant area of human facial recognition/identification, par­tic­u­lar­ly as a fea­ture wor­thy of atten­tion in the aging human brain, along with an exten­sive recita­tion of vari­ables and approach­es for train­ing face-name asso­ci­a­tions, were among the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to deem­ing the ‘258 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

Com­put­er-imple­ment­ed method for enhanc­ing the cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty of a par­tic­i­pant using face-name asso­ci­a­tions. A plu­ral­i­ty of facial images of peo­ple are pro­vid­ed for visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion to the par­tic­i­pant, each per­son hav­ing a name. A learn­ing phase is per­formed, includ­ing con­cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ing a first facial image of a per­son from the plu­ral­i­ty of facial images, and the name of the per­son. A test­ing phase is then per­formed, includ­ing: pre­sent­ing a sec­ond facial image of the per­son from the plu­ral­i­ty of facial images, dis­play­ing a plu­ral­i­ty of names, includ­ing the name of the per­son and one or more dis­tracter names, requir­ing the par­tic­i­pant to select the name of the per­son from the plu­ral­i­ty of names, and deter­min­ing whether the par­tic­i­pant select­ed the name cor­rect­ly. The learn­ing phase and the test­ing phase are repeat­ed one or more times in an iter­a­tive man­ner to improve the par­tic­i­pan­t’s cog­ni­tion, e.g., face-name asso­ci­a­tion skills.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 31. A method for enhanc­ing cog­ni­tion in a par­tic­i­pant, uti­liz­ing a com­put­ing device to present visu­al stim­uli for train­ing, and to record respons­es from the par­tic­i­pant, the method comprising:

pro­vid­ing a plu­ral­i­ty of facial images of peo­ple, each per­son hav­ing a name, where­in the plu­ral­i­ty of facial images are each avail­able for visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion to the participant;

per­form­ing a learn­ing phase, comprising:

  • pre­sent­ing a first facial image of a per­son from the plu­ral­i­ty of facial images; and
  • pre­sent­ing the name of the per­son con­cur­rent­ly with said pre­sent­ing the first facial image;

per­form­ing a test­ing phase, comprising:

  • pre­sent­ing a sec­ond facial image of the per­son, dis­tinct from the first facial image in that the sec­ond facial image com­pris­es a dif­fer­ent view or expres­sion of the per­son, from the plu­ral­i­ty of facial images;
  • dis­play­ing a plu­ral­i­ty of names, includ­ing the name of the per­son and one or more dis­tracter names;
  • requir­ing the par­tic­i­pant to select the name of the per­son from the plu­ral­i­ty of names; and
  • the com­put­ing device deter­min­ing whether the par­tic­i­pant select­ed the name correctly;

repeat­ing said per­form­ing the learn­ing phase and said per­form­ing the test­ing phase one or more times in an iter­a­tive man­ner to improve the par­tic­i­pan­t’s cognition,

where­in the sec­ond facial image is dis­tort­ed in form or shape in order to increase the dif­fi­cul­ty of the testing.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.