Daphne-Bavelier

Neuroscientists: Develop digital games to improve brain function and well-being

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interactivemediaAuthors: Devel­op dig­i­tal games to improve brain func­tion and well-being (UW-Madi­son News):

“Neu­ro­sci­en­tists should help to devel­op com­pelling dig­i­tal games that boost brain func­tion and improve well-being, say two pro­fes­sors spe­cial­iz­ing in the field in a com­men­tary arti­cle pub­lished in the sci­ence jour­nal Nature. In the Feb. 28 issue, the two — Daphne Bave­li­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester and Richard J. David­son of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son — urge game design­ers and brain sci­en­tists to work togeth­er to design new games that train the brain, pro­duc­ing pos­i­tive effects on behav­ior, such as decreas­ing anx­i­ety, sharp­en­ing atten­tion and improv­ing empathy.”

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Gaming Your Way to Better Vision (Research Executive Brief)

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(Edi­tor’s Note: this puzzleis one of the Research Exec­u­tive Briefs that includ­ed in Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report. We asked lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists to share find­ings and impli­ca­tions from their own recent pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies in order to bet­ter fore­cast the devel­op­ment tra­jec­to­ry of emerg­ing appli­ca­tions for cog­ni­tive health and brain fitness.)

Brief pre­pared by: Bjron Hubert-Wal­lan­der, Bjorn & Daphne Bave­li­er, Bave­li­er Brain & Vision Lab, Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester.

1. Main findings:

Over the past ten years, research con­duct­ed by our lab and oth­ers has shown that play­ing fast-paced, action-packed videogames can lead to sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits in how well one pays atten­tion and how well one sees. Specif­i­cal­ly, our stud­ies have shown that train­ing for as lit­tle as ten hours on action video games (like Medal of Hon­or, Call of Duty, and Unre­al Tour­na­ment) can lead to mea­sur­able enhance­ments in our abil­i­ty to spread our atten­tion around the visu­al field, our abil­i­ty to keep track of mul­ti­ple mov­ing objects, and our abil­i­ty to pick out rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion from a rapid sequence of visu­al events. Most recent­ly though, we have shown that action videogame train­ing can also pos­i­tive­ly affect more basic aspects of vision such as our abil­i­ty to resolve small details or see faint patterns.

Pub­lished in the jour­nal Nature Neu­ro­science in 2009, one of our stud­ies com­pared two groups of col­lege-aged males, those who had a his­to­ry of play­ing action videogames and those who had very rarely or had nev­er played videogames at all. By ana­lyz­ing both groups’ per­for­mance on a task designed to [Read more…] about Gam­ing Your Way to Bet­ter Vision (Research Exec­u­tive Brief)

Cognitive Health Track at Games for Health Conference: Full Schedule Announced!

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Games for Health and Sharp­Brains have part­nered to bring you the first Cog­ni­tive Games for Health Conference - Cognitive Health TrackHealth Track in a Games for Health Con­fer­ence, June 11–12th in Boston. If you are inter­est­ed, in attend­ing the con­fer­ence, you can learn more and reg­is­ter Here.

To get a 15% off reg­is­tra­tion fees ($379), you can use dis­count code: sharp09, when you reg­is­ter Here.

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Cog­ni­tive Health Track, Pow­ered by SharpBrains

Thurs­day, June 11th

10.20 (50m) Bird’s Eye View of Cog­ni­tive Health Innovation
Speaker(s): Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains

Sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graph­ic trends have con­verged to cre­ate a new $265m mar­ket in the US alone: seri­ous games, soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions that can help peo­ple of all ages assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will pro­vide a Bird’s Eye View of the sci­ence, mar­ket seg­ments and trends, com­pet­i­tive land­scape, and main chal­lenges ahead, based on The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009 report released in May, which includ­ed Research Exec­u­tive Briefs pre­pared by 12 lead­ing sci­en­tists and a sur­vey of 2,000+ deci­sion-mak­ers and ear­ly adopters.

61% of respon­dents to the sur­vey Strong­ly Agreed with the state­ment “Address­ing cog­ni­tive and brain health should be a health­care pri­or­i­ty.” But, 65% Agreed/Strongly Agreed with “I don’t real­ly know what to expect from prod­ucts mak­ing brain claims.” In this ses­sion, Alvaro will pub­licly unveil the new book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, To Keep Your Brain Sharp, co-authored by neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and him­self, aimed at help­ing con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als under­stand and nav­i­gate this grow­ing field.

11.20 (30m) The All­state-Posit Sci­ence Part­ner­ship: Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Safer Driving 
Speaker(s): Tom War­den, All­state; Hen­ry Mah­ncke, Posit Science

Evi­dence-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams have been avail­able in retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties for sev­er­al years. Now, they are reach­ing a younger pop­u­la­tion includ­ing Boomers through inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships, like insurers.

In Octo­ber 2008 auto insur­ance com­pa­ny All­state and brain fit­ness soft­ware devel­op­er Posit Sci­ence announced a research col­lab­o­ra­tion that could lead to “poten­tial­ly the next big break­through in auto­mo­bile safe­ty”. The pur­pose of this ses­sion is to review nov­el ways of get­ting the sci­ence of cog­ni­tive train­ing into the real world where it can help peo­ple. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from All­state and Posit Sci­ence will dis­cuss why these part­ner­ships work for insur­ers, devel­op­ers, and end users. They will also pro­vide a thor­ough review of the eval­u­a­tion process a major part­ner goes through when select­ing a cog­ni­tive train­ing company.

12.00 (30m) What Con­sumers Buy and Why 
Speaker(s): Lind­say Gask­ins, Mar­bles: The Brain Store

Launched in Octo­ber 2008, Mar­bles: The Brain Store is a retail store that [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health Track at Games for Health Con­fer­ence: Full Sched­ule Announced!