evolution

Cognitive training research: MindFit, Lumosity, Posit Science, Cogmed

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The field of com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing (part of what we call “Brain Fit­ness”) is start­ing to get trac­tion in the media and becom­ing an emerg­ing indus­try, and we are hap­py to see how a grow­ing num­ber of researchers and sci­ence-based com­pa­nies are lead­ing stud­ies that will allow to bet­ter mea­sure results and refine the brain exer­cise soft­ware available.

Pub­lished new research

  • Com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing after stroke‑A pilot study. A pub­lished study on how Cogmed work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing may help stroke patients. See the ref­er­ence at Cogmed Research page (and full arti­cle here)
  • The Jour­nals of Geron­tol­ogy pub­lished a series of relat­ed papers in their June issue, includ­ing this by Kar­lene Ball, Jer­ri D. Edwards, and Les­ley A. Ross on The Impact of Speed of Pro­cess­ing Train­ing on Cog­ni­tive and Every­day Func­tions, J Geron­tol B Psy­chol Sci Soc Sci 2007 62: 19–31.  Abstract: “We com­bined data from six stud­ies, all using the same speed of pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram, to exam­ine the mech­a­nisms of train­ing gain and the impact of train­ing on cog­ni­tive and every­day abil­i­ties of old­er adults. Results indi­cat­ed that train­ing pro­duces imme­di­ate improve­ments across all sub­tests of the Use­ful Field of View test, par­tic­u­lar­ly for old­er adults with ini­tial speed of pro­cess­ing deficits. Age and edu­ca­tion had lit­tle to no impact on train­ing gain. Par­tic­i­pants main­tained ben­e­fits of train­ing for at least 2 years, which trans­lat­ed to improve­ments in every­day abil­i­ties, includ­ing effi­cient per­for­mance of instru­men­tal activ­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing and safer dri­ving per­for­mance.”

Ongoing/ start­ing research

Working Memory Training from a pediatrician perspective, focused on attention deficits

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Arthur Lavin Today we inter­view Dr. Arthur Lavin, Asso­ciate Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor of Pedi­atrics at Case West­ern School of Med­i­cine, pedi­a­tri­cian in pri­vate prac­tice, and one of the first providers of Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing in the US (the pro­gram whose research we dis­cussed with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg and Dr. Bradley Gib­son). Dr. Lavin has a long stand­ing inter­est in tech­nol­o­gy-as evi­denced by Microsoft­’s recog­ni­tion of his paper­less office- and in brain research and appli­ca­tions-he trained with esteemed Mel Levine from All Kinds of Minds-.

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Key take-aways:

- Schools today are not yet in a posi­tion to effec­tive­ly help kids with cog­ni­tive issues deal with increas­ing cog­ni­tive demands.

- Work­ing Mem­o­ry is a cog­ni­tive skill fun­da­men­tal to plan­ning, sequenc­ing, and exe­cut­ing school-relat­ed work.

- Work­ing Mem­o­ry can be trained, as evi­denced by Dr. Lav­in’s work, based on Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing, with kids who have atten­tion deficits.

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Con­text on cog­ni­tive fit­ness and schools

AF (Alvaro Fer­nan­dez): Dr. Lavin, thanks for being with us. It is not very com­mon for a pedi­a­tri­cian to have such an active inter­est in brain research and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Can you explain the source of your interest?

AL (Arthur Lavin): Through­out my life I have been fas­ci­nat­ed by how the mind works. Both from the research point of view and the prac­ti­cal one: how can sci­en­tists’ increas­ing knowl­edge improve kids’ lives? We now live in an tru­ly excit­ing era in which sol­id sci­en­tif­ic progress in neu­ro­science is at last cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve peo­ple’s actu­al cog­ni­tive func­tion. The progress Cogmed has achieved in cre­at­ing a pro­gram that can make great dif­fer­ences in the lives of chil­dren with atten­tion deficits is one of the most excit­ing recent devel­op­ments. My col­league Ms. Susan Glaser and I recent­ly pub­lished two books: Who’s Boss: Mov­ing Fam­i­lies from Con­flict to Col­lab­o­ra­tion (Col­lab­o­ra­tion Press, 2006) and Baby & Tod­dler Sleep Solu­tions for Dum­mies (Wiley, 2007), so I not only see myself as a pedi­a­tri­cian but also an edu­ca­tor. I see par­ents in real need of guid­ance and sup­port. They usu­al­ly are both very skep­ti­cal, since [Read more…] about Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing from a pedi­a­tri­cian per­spec­tive, focused on atten­tion deficits

Alzheimer’s Disease: too serious to play with headlines

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Featured Website, Scientific American Mind, June/July 2007

We just came across an arti­cle titled Best Com­put­er Brain Games for Senior Cit­i­zens to Delay Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. The head­line makes lit­tle sci­en­tif­ic sense-and we observe this con­fu­sion often. The arti­cle men­tions a few pro­grams we have dis­cussed often in this blog, such as Posit Sci­ence and Mind­Fit, and oth­ers we haven’t because we haven’t found any pub­lished sci­ence behind, such as Dakim and MyBrain­Train­er. And there are more pro­grams: what about Hap­py Neu­ron, Lumos­i­ty, Spry Learn­ing and Cap­tain’s Log. Not to talk about Nin­ten­do Brain Age, of course.

Some of those pro­grams have real sci­ence that, at best, shows how some spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive skills (like mem­o­ry, or atten­tion, or pro­cess­ing) can be trained and improved-no mat­ter the age. This is a very impor­tant mes­sage that has­n’t yet per­co­lat­ed through many brains out there: we know today that com­put­er-based soft­ware pro­grams can be very use­ful to train some cog­ni­tive skills, bet­ter than alter­na­tive meth­ods (paper and pen­cil, class­room-based, just “dai­ly living”).

Now, no sin­gle pro­gram can make ANY claim that it specif­i­cal­ly delays/ pre­vents Alzheimer’s Dis­ease beyond gen­er­al state­ments such as that Learn­ing Slows Phys­i­cal Pro­gres­sion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease (hence the imper­a­tive for life­long learn­ing) and that men­tal stim­u­la­tion-togeth­er with oth­er lifestyle fac­tors such as nutri­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress man­age­ment, as out­lined in these Steps to Improve Your Brain Health- may con­tribute to build a Cog­ni­tive Reserve that may reduce the prob­a­bil­i­ty of prob­lems. Pro­grams may be able to [Read more…] about Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: too seri­ous to play with headlines

Cogmed in the Chicago Tribune

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One of the com­pa­nies pre­sent­ing at our pan­el on Brain Fit­ness at Neu­rotech Indus­try Con­fer­ence, May 17th in San Fran­cis­co, was Cogmed. They offer a work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing pro­gram focused now on kids with atten­tion deficits. What was excit­ing in the pan­el was to hear how Cogmed is help­ing kids train work­ing mem­o­ry, Posit Sci­ence is help­ing (most­ly) seniors train audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing, and there is a grow­ing field start­ing to pro­vide struc­tured brain exer­cise to peo­ple of all ages with dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties and needs.

The Chicago Tri­bune has an arti­cle today titled Giv­ing a child a bet­ter mind. Quotes:

  • “Work­ing mem­o­ry is the abil­i­ty to store infor­ma­tion in the brain for a short time, typ­i­cal­ly a few sec­onds. In dai­ly life, work­ing mem­o­ry helps peo­ple remem­ber instruc­tions, solve prob­lems, con­trol impuls­es and focus attention.”
  • “Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing, devel­oped by Swedish brain researcher Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, fea­tures video game soft­ware on an engag­ing robot inter­face. The research-val­i­dat­ed pro­gram has been suc­cess­ful in Europe, and now is being offered in the Unit­ed States.”
  • “The pro­gram may not apply to every­one with atten­tion deficit, accord­ing to Gra­ham, because not all peo­ple with ADD have a deficit in work­ing mem­o­ry. Schools or psy­chol­o­gists can deter­mine whether [Read more…] about Cogmed in the Chica­go Tribune

Brain Fitness at Neurotech Industry Conference

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Zack Lynch from Neu­roIn­sights reminds us that the early­bird reg­is­tra­tion for the Neu­rotech Indus­try Invest­ing and Busi­ness con­fer­ence is about to expire. You can reg­is­ter by April 13th to save $300.

Con­fer­ence Details:

Date: May 17 — 18, 2007
Loca­tion: West­in San Fran­cis­co, Mill­brae, CA

High­ly rec­om­mend­ed con­fer­ence for any­one work­ing on biotech, med­ical devices, diag­nos­tics and neu­rotech­nol­o­gy in gen­er­al, and with added val­ue for any­one inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about sci­ence-based Brain Fit­ness thanks to what we hope will be a ground­break­ing panel:

Title: Brain Fit­ness Through Soft­ware and Neurofeedback

Thurs­day May 17th, 4.45–5.30pm

Descrip­tion: Spurred by the dis­cov­ery of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, the aging baby boomer pop­u­la­tion and demand for safe treat­ments for child­hood ADHD, soft­ware com­pa­nies, large and small, are ven­tur­ing into the realm of [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness at Neu­rotech Indus­try Conference

Sharpen Your Wits With This Special Offer!

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We are offer­ing a lim­it­ed-time deal for the rest of Feb­ru­ary 2007.

You will get Brain Fitness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 QuestionsBrain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions includ­ed for free! (an $11.95 savings!)

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez answer in plain Eng­lish the most com­mon ques­tions around why and how to exer­cise our brains.

…when you buy any of the fol­low­ing brain exer­cise programs:

Exercise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Implications

Exer­cise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Impli­ca­tions DVD

This one-hour and 20 minute class intro­duces you to the sci­ence of brain fit­ness and includes many engag­ing brain exer­cis­es you can do on your own or in a group set­ting. You will learn about basic neu­roanato­my and phys­i­ol­o­gy, as well as hear about the ground­break­ing pub­li­ca­tions that launched this field. Then, get you will prac­tice how to exer­cise your own brain and flex all your men­tal mus­cles. Per­fect intro­duc­tion to Brain Fitness! 
[Read more…] about Sharp­en Your Wits With This Spe­cial Offer!