Dr.-Kawashima

Nintendo Brain Training and Math in UK Schools

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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!

Mobile Brain Training, Scientific Learning, and More News

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Some recent brain train­ing and health news: Monkey memory

1) A Promis­ing Debut for Com­put­er­ized Therapies

2) Fit­ness pro­tects brain in Alzheimer’s patients

3) Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram Clas­sic comes to Mac

4) Posit Sci­ence gains own­er­ship of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing (NSDQ: SCIL) BrainConnection.

5) Brain train­ing on your mobile

6) You must remem­ber this: how the mind works

Here you have the links and my com­men­tary for these news: [Read more…] about Mobile Brain Train­ing, Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing, and More News

Posit Science, Nintendo Brain Age, and Brain Training Topics

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A few col­leagues referred me over the week­end to a very nice arti­cle at busi­ness pub­li­ca­tion Port­fo­lio.

While the arti­cle does an excel­lent job at intro­duc­ing the read­er to the con­cept and promise of com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ments, it also con­tributes to the mythol­o­gy of “Brain Age”. MRI scan neuroimaging

Let’s first take a look at the arti­cle How Smart Are You: The busi­ness of assess­ing cog­ni­tion and mem­o­ry is mov­ing from test­ing brain-impaired patients to assess­ing healthy peo­ples’ brains online.

A cou­ple of quotes:

- “Cog­ni­tive Drug Research is one a hand­ful of busi­ness­es, most of them out­side of the U.S., that work with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to test how new drugs for every­thing from nico­tine addic­tion to Alzheimer’s dis­ease affect the mind’s abil­i­ty to remem­ber things, make deci­sions, and ana­lyze information.”

- “Cog­ni­tive tests have been around for a cen­tu­ry as exam­i­na­tions tak­en with paper and pen­cil. In the 1970s and ’80s the tests shift­ed to com­put­ers, Cog­ni­tive Drug Research founder Kei­th Wesnes says.

So far, so good. In fact, one of the key high­lights from the mar­ket report we released in March was that “Large-scale, ful­ly-auto­mat­ed cog­ni­tive assess­ments are being used in a grow­ing num­ber of clin­i­cal tri­als. This opens the way for the devel­op­ment of inex­pen­sive con­sumer-fac­ing, base­line cog­ni­tive assess­ments.” And we pro­filed a few lead­ing com­pa­nies in the space: Brain Resource Com­pa­ny, Cog­ni­tive Drug Research, CNS Vital Signs and CogState.

Now, the arti­cle is accom­pa­nied by a 5–7 minute quick test that promis­es to give us our “Brain Age”. And this does­n’t come from Nin­ten­do, but from Cog­ni­tive Drug Research, a respect­ed sci­ence-based company.

You can check it out [Read more…] about Posit Sci­ence, Nin­ten­do Brain Age, and Brain Train­ing Topics

Brain Teasers with a Neuroscience angle

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Stroop Test Quick! say aloud the col­or you see in every word, DON“T sim­ply read the word.
The Stroop test is used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure men­tal vital­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty, since per­form­ing well requires strong impulse-con­trol capability.

This is one of the Top 10 Brain Teasers and Games we pro­file here.

Want more teasers? You can check our col­lec­tion here.

Enjoy.