I’ve seen an increasing number of articles about the broader aspects of cognitive training, of various pieces of software, start ups, and ideas about the future of this new business sector. There are plenty of studies showing that many to most of us could benefit in developing better working memory, more clarity of thought, sharper decision abilities, and seemingly newly quantified pieces of intelligence every week.
When seen in this light, the idea of a ‘brain gym’ would seem to be as valuable as going to a fitness center (something millions now do, but was considered outré only a few decades ago).
Why "Brain Gyms" May Be the Next Big Business
http://www.fastcompany.com/1760312/are-brain-gyms-the-next-big-business
Four years ago, investors gingerly handed over seed money to Lumosity, a startup creating brain games. Today they’re happily tossing the same company $32 million. What changed?
Back in 2007, Lumosity was a scrappy startup scrounging for seed money. Today, the San Francisco-based company that creates games to make your brain work better is announcing it’s landed over $32 million in new funding.
What a difference four years make.
“When we first invested, we were concerned this was just a niche area for people with Alzheimer’s or other cognitive problems,” Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners tells Fast Company. “But Lumosity has proved there’s universal demand for this among all demographics.”
Indeed, today, over 14 million people in 180 countries either subscribe to Lumosity’s website or have downloaded one of its iPhone apps. And revenues have grown 25% every quarter since its launch.
Other companies, like CogniFit and Posit Science, also compete in this space, though none has received as large a round of funding as Lumosity. Sharp Brains, a market research firm tracking the brain fitness space, estimates that the size of the market for digital products was just under $300 million in 2009 and will grow to at least $2 billion by 2015.
Lumosity’s website offers 40 games designed to sharpen a wide range of cognitive skills. The signup process walks you through a series of questions to figure out whether you want, for example, to improve your ability to remember names, get better at problem solving, or develop better concentration at work or while driving. It then designs a series of “courses” tailored to your particular interests.
Lumosity Raises $32.5 Million for Brain Fitness Games
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/16/lumosity-raises-32-5-million-for-brain-games
Created by neuroscientists from Stanford University, Lumosity develops games and exercises that aim to improve core cognitive abilities and enable users to remember more, think faster, and perform better at work and school.
On average, Lumosity users experienced a greater than 10% improvement in working memory and greater than 20% improvement in divided attention after 10 hours of playing the brain games.
In the last four years over 14 million people have joined Lumosity, with 8 million joining in the last year alone. The company has paying subscribers from over 180 countries, has expanded to mobile with an iPhone app, and revenues have grown 25% quarter-over-quarter since its launch in 2007.
Brain training boosts working memory, but only in some people
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/06/brain-training-games-may-help-a-subset-of-users.ars
When last we tackled the topic of brain training software, the prognosis did not look good. Although proponents of this software claim that it results in a general boost in mental performance, detailed testing failed to show this general effect, and for some topics, the software was bested by a trivia quiz. Now, a new study has revisited the topic, with its authors finding that some brain training can boost general performance—but only a specific type of exercise, and only among a subset of users.
The study builds off a well-established relationship between general reasoning and spatial memory. The ability to perform abstract reasoning and solve problems you’ve never seen before is termed fluid intelligence. It’s not clear what provides the basic mental horsepower for this ability, but a number of studies have shown that performance in tests that stress fluid intelligence is related to a testee’s working memory, which stores basic information for use without committing it to long-term memory. Working memory, for example, is where you hold intermediate sums when you’re adding a large column of numbers.
Although we don’t know whether it’s possible to improve general reasoning, some studies have indicated that it is possible to boost working memory by taxing the system. So the authors created a set of simple games that emphasized working memory, and set a group of nine-year-old children on them.
These games forced the children to solve what the authors term "n-back" problems. In one example, the children were shown a pond in which a frog would appear at random on a number of lily pads. As the frog vanished and reappeared, the kids would have to recall where it was had been previously. So, for example, the third time the frog showed up, the children would need to remember where it had been the first time. Continued exposure to these games should boost working memory performance. And, on average, it did, with scores improving over time.
On its own, however, this seemed to have a very limited impact on the performance of the children when they were given a test of fluid intelligence, with no statistically significant trend in performance. By this measure, brain training had failed.
But it hadn’t, at least not entirely. The authors noted that the children who had undergone training saw variable boosts to their working memory, so they split the trained children into high- and low-improvement groups and reran the numbers. Now, a significant effect appeared: fluid intelligence improvements had occurred among the children who saw the biggest changes in working memory. Their lead over their control peers (who had played a vocabulary-focused game) persisted even after three months, although it shrank a bit over that time. In contrast, the ones who saw little improvement in working memory lagged both their trained peers and the control population.
"Furthermore, there was a significant positive correlation between improvement on the training task and improvement on [fluid intelligence]," the authors note, "suggesting that the greater the training gain, the greater the transfer."
What drove the difference between the two groups? The authors asked the children how they felt about the game, and found that both groups considered it enjoyable. But the ones who saw a boost considered it a fun challenge, while the ones who improved less tended to find it far too difficult, and ended up frustrated by it. Separating out cause and effect there would seem to be a nightmare—were they frustrated because they simply couldn’t keep up with something beyond their abilities, or did their abilities not ramp up because of a general lack of interest?
Study: Working memory training can improve fluid intelligence
http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2011/06/14/study-working-memory-training-can-improve-fluid-intelligence
Very interesting new study on computerized cognitive training (or brain training), well summarized in LA Times article Memory training improves intelligence in some children, report says. Quote:
The training program used by Jaeggi and coworkers focused on ramping up working memory: the ability to hold in mind a handful of information bits briefly and to update them as needed. Cognitive scientists consider working memory a key component of intelligence. But they have long debated whether strengthening short-term memory capacity will boost a person’s overall intellectual function, and will do so even after the brain-training sessions are over.
It can, and it does, according to this new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The full study, Short-term and long-term benefits of cognitive training, is available here, and includes this crucial and often overlooked analysis:
We conclude that cognitive training can be effective and long-lasting, but that there are limiting factors that must be considered to evaluate the effects of this training, one of which is individual differences in training performance. We propose that future research should not investigate whether cognitive training works, but rather should determine what training regimens and what training conditions result in the best transfer effects, investigate the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms, and finally, investigate for whom cognitive training is most useful.
