MindFit

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

Lumos Labs (Lumosity) Brain Training Games

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Press release: Here

– “Lumos Labs, devel­op­er of Lumosity.com, the lead­ing web-based provider of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-test­ed brain train­ing games, today announced that it has raised $3 mil­lion of equi­ty financ­ing from Pequot Ven­tures, Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners (NVP), and exist­ing investors includ­ing Michael Dear­ing. The investor group brings exper­tise that will cat­alyze the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of Lumosity.com and sup­port Lumos Labs mis­sion to improve lives by enhanc­ing brain fitness.

– “Lumos Labs is at the cen­ter of a boom­ing inter­est in cog­ni­tive exer­cise and the emerg­ing sci­ence about the remark­able plas­tic­i­ty of the brain, said Amish Jani of Pequot Ven­tures. Lumosity.com has seen tremen­dous demand from users and part­ners alike by lever­ag­ing the pow­er of the web to deliv­er a unique plat­form for brain fitness.

Great news for the sec­tor. The more tools avail­able for lead­ing men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing lives, the bet­ter we will all be.Rubik's Cube brain exercise

Lumosity.com (click Here to get a sense of their games) pro­vides a great user expe­ri­ence at a rea­son­able cost. From an investor’s per­spec­tive, we believe Lumos Labs is a very seri­ous con­tender in the brain fit­ness space, and it has indeed been exe­cut­ing a very smart online strategy.

Now, I am not sure what “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-test­ed brain train­ing games” real­ly means. While prepar­ing our Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report we reviewed all pub­lished research on the effi­ca­cy behind dif­fer­ent pro­grams, and did­n’t find any for Lumos­i­ty (which has some very inter­est­ing inter­nal, but not pub­lished, data).

We gave Lumos­i­ty a score of 2 ouf of 10 in Clin­i­cal Val­i­da­tion (with Nin­ten­do Brain Age get­ting a score of 1, and NovaV­i­sion, cleared by the FDA for use with stroke/ TBI patients, get­ting a 5).

[Read more…] about Lumos Labs (Lumos­i­ty) Brain Train­ing Games

DriveFit (CogniFit); Brain Fitness Program for Driving

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Dri­ving as Next Brain Fit­ness Application? 

Last month, at the MIT/ Smart­Sil­vers event where we pre­sent­ed our Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report, we dis­cussed what spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions, beyond the cur­rent empha­sis on healthy Two In One Taskaging, might take com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing to a new level.  

Assess­ing and improv­ing dri­ving skills would be a top can­di­date, giv­en both the well-defined nature of the need and the appear­ance of pro­grams with grow­ing evi­dence (both sci­en­tif­ic and real-world) behind.

The New York Times Asks… 

Along these lines, the New York Times just published this arti­cle: Are You a Good Dri­ver? Here’s How to Find Out. A few quotes:

- “COULD a video game make you a bet­ter dri­ver? More impor­tant, could com­put­er soft­ware pre­vent teenagers from mak­ing fatal mis­takes or even weed out old­er dri­vers whose debil­i­ties make them crash-prone?”

[Read more…] about Dri­ve­Fit (Cog­niFit); Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Driving

Maximize the Cognitive Value of Your Mental Workout

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Phys­i­cal fit­ness. Cognitive/ brain fit­ness. Both require nov­el­ty, vari­ety and chal­lenge. Pro­fes­sor Schlo­mo Breznitz, a sci­en­tif­ic and busi­ness leader in the cog­ni­tive fit­ness field, explains why, elo­quent­ly, below. Per­haps “we want change” real­ly means “we need change”. Enjoy!

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Why are every­day life chal­lenges not suf­fi­cient to keep our brains fit?

– By Prof. Shlo­mo Breznitz

Often, when describ­ing the ben­e­fits of Mind­Fit to brain health, I am asked by peo­ple in the audi­ence whether this soft­ware is real­ly need­ed. After all, so they argue, life pro­vides con­tin­ues cog­ni­tive chal­lenges, which should suf­fice for ensur­ing brain fit­ness. From the moment we wake up until we go to sleep our brains have to attend to com­plex stim­uli, plan many activ­i­ties, some of them quite com­plex, and car­ry us through what­ev­er the day offers. These tasks should pro­vide suf­fi­cient “brain exer­cise” with­out the need to engage in spe­cif­ic men­tal workout.

This line of argu­ment sounds odd­ly famil­iar, since it is an exact dupli­ca­tion of claims made in the recent past against the need for phys­i­cal exer­cise. One jumps into the car and from the car and per­haps even climbs a few stairs before sit­ting in the chair, which should be enough to burn the calo­ries and keep fit.

[Read more…] about Max­i­mize the Cog­ni­tive Val­ue of Your Men­tal Workout

Brain Fitness Program: How to Evaluate and Choose One

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The hol­i­days are approach­ing and you can expect many soft­ware and game devel­op­ers to adver­tise their prod­ucts SharpBrains Checklistaggres­sive­ly, try­ing to get you buy their “brain train­ing” prod­ucts for you or as a gift for a loved one.

The good news is that there are more and more tools we can use to keep men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ed and even train and improve spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties (like pro­cess­ing speed, short-term mem­o­ry…). You may be read­ing about Nin­ten­do Brain Age, Posit Sci­ence, Fast For­Word, Mind­Fit, Lumos­i­ty, Hap­py Neu­ron, MyBrain­Train­er, emWave, StressEras­er and more. And, of course, there are also non-tech­nol­o­gy based interventions.

The bad news is that it is dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate mar­ket­ing from sci­en­tif­ic claims, and to under­stand which one, if any, may be a good com­ple­ment to oth­er healthy lifestyle choices.

To help you nav­i­gate this process, we are pub­lish­ing the Sharp­Brains Check­list below, based on dozens of inter­views with sci­en­tists, experts and consumers:

10 Ques­tions to Choose the Right Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for You (and a brief expla­na­tion of why each ques­tion is important)

* 1. Are there sci­en­tists, ide­al­ly neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, and a sci­en­tif­ic advi­so­ry board [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram: How to Eval­u­ate and Choose One

Brain Training: MindFit workout

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Just released in Sci­en­tif­ic American:
Mem­o­ry work­outs beat oth­er com­put­er games in study

Some quotes

  • “Train­ing the brain with a com­put­er work­out pro­gram may be bet­ter than clas­sic com­put­er games at staving off age-relat­ed men­tal decline, sci­en­tists report­ed on Friday.”
  • “Researchers in Israel com­pared how one brain-train­ing pro­gram, Mind­Fit, fared ver­sus a work­out with a sam­pling of clas­sic com­put­er games, such as the puz­zle game Tetris.”
  • “The study, fund­ed by a grant from game mak­er Cog­niFit Ltd., involved 121 vol­un­teers over 50 who used the Mind­Fit train­ing pro­gram or a sam­pling of com­put­er games for three months.”
  • “Both groups ben­e­fit­ed, but the group using the Mind­Fit pro­gram showed a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in spa­tial short-term mem­o­ry, spa­tial learn­ing and focused attention.”
  • “Improve­ment was espe­cial­ly pro­nounced in users who start­ed out with some form of cog­ni­tive decline.
  • The find­ings, which were pre­sent­ed on Fri­day at an Alzheimer’s con­fer­ence in Salzburg, Aus­tria, were sim­i­lar to a small­er study done at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia last year.”

Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­it­ed time, you can receive a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of our Brain Fit­ness 101 e‑Guide: Answers to your Top 25 Ques­tions, writ­ten by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, by sub­scrib­ing to our month­ly newslet­ter. You can sub­scribe Here.

Relat­ed blog posts

- Brain Fit­ness: Novem­ber Month­ly Digest: a col­lec­tion of arti­cles and links includ­ing news, resources, brain teasers, and more.

- Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty 101 and Brain Fit­ness Glos­sary: an overview of the emerg­ing sci­ence and some key con­cepts to under­stand it.

- Brain Train­ing Games and “Games”: a 10-Ques­tion Check­list on how to eval­u­ate pro­grams that make brain-relat­ed claims.

- Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and Psy­chol­o­gy Inter­view Series: in-depth inter­views with 11 sci­en­tists and experts in cog­ni­tive train­ing and brain fitness.

- Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and mem­o­ry train­ing: reviews of Train Your Brain, Change Your Mind, by Sharon Beg­ley, and The Brain That Changes Itself, by Nor­man Doidge. Both books are fas­ci­nat­ing and pow­er­ful; each would have mer­it­ed appear­ing in the 2007 New York Times List of 100 Notable Books.