computer-game

Method for adaptive training of short term memory and auditory/visual discrimination within a computer game: Key Neurotech Patent #13

by

adaptive-training
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,599,129

Today we are shar­ing a 2003 cog­ni­tive train­ing patent assigned to Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Corp.

U.S. Patent No. 6,599,129: Method for adap­tive train­ing of short term mem­o­ry and auditory/visual dis­crim­i­na­tion with­in a com­put­er game

  • Assignee(s): Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Corp.
  • Inventor(s): William M. Jenk­ins, Michael M. Merzenich, Steven L. Miller, Bret E. Peter­son, Paula Tallal
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neu­roCog­ni­tive Training
  • Issue Date: July 29, 2003

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘129 patent builds on Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing’s port­fo­lio relat­ing to lan­guage train­ing and devel­op­ment.   [Read more…] about Method for adap­tive train­ing of short term mem­o­ry and auditory/visual dis­crim­i­na­tion with­in a com­put­er game: Key Neu­rotech Patent #13

Study: Brain training game helps resist unhealthy snack foods

by

brain_snacks

.

Online game ‘may con­trol snack­ing’ (BBC News):

“A com­put­er game may help some peo­ple con­trol their unhealthy snack­ing habits, sug­gests a small study from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter.

The online game, devel­oped by psy­chol­o­gists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter and Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty, used “brain train­ing” tech­niques to change behav­iour — in this case, to resist unhealthy snack foods.  [Read more…] about Study: Brain train­ing game helps resist unhealthy snack foods

Can Brain Training and Biofeedback Help Prevent Depression

by

In two inno­v­a­tive pilot stud­ies, Ian Gotlib and his col­leagues at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, Cal­i­for­nia, showed that brain train­ing can be used to help elim­i­nate depres­sion, even before it starts. They stud­ied young girls (10 to 14 year old) whose moth­ers were depressed and who thus were at high­er risk of devel­op­ing depres­sion them­selves lat­er-on. The girls had not expe­ri­enced depres­sion per se but already showed behav­iors typ­i­cal of depressed brains, such as over­re­ac­tion to neg­a­tive stim­uli. [Read more…] about Can Brain Train­ing and Biofeed­back Help Pre­vent Depression

Nintendo Brain Training and Math in UK Schools

by

Com­put­er game boosts maths scores (BBC):

- “It also found improve­ments in pupils’ con­cen­tra­tion and behaviour.”

- “The study involved more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scot­land using the Brain Train­ing from Dr Kawashima game on the Nin­ten­do DS every day.”

- “Researchers found that while all groups had improved their scores, the group using the game had improved by a fur­ther 50%.”

- “Less able chil­dren were found to be more like­ly to improve than the high­est attain­ers and almost all pupils had an increased per­cep­tion of their own ability.”

Com­ment:  fas­ci­nat­ing results sup­port­ing the poten­tial role for “Seri­ous Games” in edu­ca­tion. Now, please take the results with a grain of salt, since the study does­n’t seem to have been pub­lished yet in any top-tier peer-reviewed jour­nal.. The infor­ma­tion pub­licly avail­able seems to sim­ply con­sist of a press release by Learn­ing and Teach­ing Scot­land. We hope to see an in-depth report to answer many open ques­tions on the study. In any case, wel­come news!

Brain and Mind News and Articles

by

BrainHere you have a col­lec­tion of recent news cov­er­age on brain heath, fit­ness and train­ing topics:

1- Great Mem­o­ry Spe­cial in Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, including

- Inter­ac­tive 3D map of the brain

- Mem­o­ry Game

2- Fas­ci­nat­ing What the Bea­t­les Gave Sci­ence, by Sharon Beg­ley at Newsweek

- “Even in novices, med­i­ta­tion leaves its mark. An eight-week course in com­pas­sion med­i­ta­tion, in which vol­un­teers focus on the wish that all beings be free from suf­fer­ing, shift­ed brain activ­i­ty from the right pre­frontal cor­tex to the left, a pat­tern asso­ci­at­ed with a greater sense of well-being.”

3- One of the best edi­tions of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can Mind

- Solv­ing the IQ Puz­zle “The 20th cen­tu­ry saw the Fly­nn effect: mas­sive gains in IQ from one gen­er­a­tion to anoth­er. Now Fly­nn explains why”

- Anx­i­ety and Alzheimer- A life­time of stress could lead to mem­o­ry prob­lems and dis­ease: “Over a peri­od of up to 12 years, vol­un­teers who were anx­i­ety-prone had a 40 per­cent high­er risk of devel­op­ing mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment than more easy­go­ing indi­vid­u­als did. Mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment is thought to be a pre­cur­sor for Alzheimer’s.”

4- Exer­cise builds strong brains, too — USATODAY.com

- “Phillip Tom­porows­ki, a study co-author and exer­cise psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia in Athens, says exer­cise “may well improve the under­ly­ing men­tal process­es that are involved in a lot of behav­iors and aca­d­e­m­ic tasks.”

5- Dai­ly com­put­er game boosts maths- BBC, report­ing pre­lim­i­nary results from a small pilot

- “Play­ing a dai­ly com­put­er game has helped a class of pri­ma­ry school chil­dren improve their maths and con­cen­tra­tion, a study says.”

6- ADHD and Brain Devel­op­ment- Wash­ing­ton Post

- “Devel­op­ing more slow­ly in ADHD young­sters — the lag can be as much as three years — are brain regions that sup­press inap­pro­pri­ate actions and thoughts, focus atten­tion, remem­ber things from moment to moment, work for reward, and con­trol movement.”

Cognitive Neuroscience @ MIT OpenCourseWare

by

The great MIT Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive offers a lot of free mate­ri­als on Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences. You can browse lec­ture notes, read­ings, and more on a vari­ety of psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science courses.

  • “The human brain is the most com­plex, sophis­ti­cat­ed, and pow­er­ful infor­ma­tion-pro­cess­ing device known. To study its com­plex­i­ties, the Depart­ment of Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy com­bines the exper­i­men­tal tech­nolo­gies of neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, and psy­chol­o­gy, with the the­o­ret­i­cal pow­er that comes from the fields of com­pu­ta­tion­al neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive science.”
  • “The Depart­ment was found­ed by Hans-Lukas Teu­ber in 1964 as a Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy, with the then-rad­i­cal vision that the study of brain and mind are insep­a­ra­ble. Today, at a time of increas­ing spe­cial­iza­tion and frag­men­ta­tion, our goal remains to under­stand cog­ni­tion- its process­es, and its mech­a­nisms at the lev­el of mol­e­cules, neu­rons, net­works of neu­rons, and cog­ni­tive mod­ules. We are unique among neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive sci­ence depart­ments in our breadth, and in the scope of our ambi­tion. We span a very large range of inquiry into the brain and mind, and our work bridges many dif­fer­ent lev­els of analy­sis includ­ing mol­e­c­u­lar, cel­lu­lar, sys­tems, com­pu­ta­tion­al and cog­ni­tive approaches.”

There is a fas­ci­nat­ing new course titled A Clin­i­cal Approach to the Human Brain, Fall 2006, includ­ing Top­ics and Lec­ture Sum­maries such as

  • “Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis: Teach­ing Old Dogs New Tricks. A sur­pris­ing dis­cov­ery in the last few years in neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy has been that neu­rons are born, neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, in the adult mam­malian brain. Ini­tial­ly, this had been shown in ani­mals and, more recent­ly, in the humans hip­pocam­pus, the site of declar­a­tive mem­o­ry for­ma­tion. (See Gree­nough). Fur­ther­more, the rate of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis in ani­mals has been enhanced by expe­ri­ence, both phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and liv­ing in enriched envi­ron­ments (See [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science @ MIT OpenCourseWare