October 20, 2009 BY kris
A new report published by research organization Ambient Insight shows that demand for technology-based brain training products are on the rise in the US market. The growth rate is a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of as high as 32.4%. The annual expenditure of consumers on these products and services is expected to reach as much as $61.1 million in 2009.
The report, which has been named “The US Consumer Market for Technology-based Cognitive Learning Products: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis,” gives a forecast that revenues collected by four types of brain training products are on the rise, namely, cognitive assessments, mobile brain games, cognitive and intelligent tutors, and brain fitness games.
Sam S. Adkins, Chief Research Officer at Ambient, commented “It’s all about value and brand now. The cognitive fitness industry has left the early adoption phase and entered the wide adoption phase. The customer base for brain games is growing fast and new suppliers are entering the market at a rapid pace.”
October 20, 2009 BY kris
Research has proved that people who are musically trained could have substantially improved hearing abilities over their non musical peers. A research carried out by neuroscientists at the Northwestern University found that trained musicians, compared to non musicians, have better ability to filter out unwanted noise from conversations going on in a noisy room.
The researchers suggested that this could be due to the fact that musicians learn to isolate particular notes from music being played using several instruments at once. With prolonged training, this seems to rewire the brain in a different manner than the usual. The rewired neural network is then able to block out other noises in the background, focusing instead on to a single sound and analyze it into speech.
October 19, 2009 BY kris
Senior citizens can stave off age related psychological disorders like dementia by surfing the internet for as little as one hour a day, research has shown. The research was carried out by Gary Small, Professor of human behavior and neuroscience at University of California, Los Angeles, over 24 people aged between 55 and 78. 12 people among them were regular users of the internet, while the others spent most of the leisure time reading books.
The research, carried out with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging, revealed that the brain worked harder while surfing the internet instead of reading. The flow of blood, as revealed by the FMRI tests, is also increased when Googling for some topic.
Half of the participants, who surfed internet, were told to do so for an hour every day, while the other half were given books to read as per their preferences. Small commented that the improvements were seen almost immediately, just after a few days of work. Teena Moody, who was Small’s partner for the research, commented, “Searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults.”
October 16, 2009 BY kris
BBC, in collaboration with The Alzheimer’s Society in England is going to run tests to verify whether brain training can help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and improve “mental fitness”. The two organizations will be jointly running the program in order to assess the benefits that patients of these ailments can gain from mind training sessions using hand held electronic devices.
The test has also launched a program on the BBC1 channel as part of the test regime, on a show named “Bang Goes the Theory”. The results observed initially by the researchers of the program, who are from Cambridge University and King’s College, London, will be released to the public early next year. However, tests will continue for about nine months after that, just to ensure the effects last for a long enough time period to be of any real significance.
Richard McCourt, a popular presenter of Children’s TV and an Alzheimer’s Society ambassador, told the Daily Express, “I always wondered if any of these brain-training gadgets and games really work. I’m looking forward to being trained up and finding out more about how our brains function. The more we know about the brain, the nearer we’ll come to finding a cure for dementia – and that’s the reason why I want to be involved”.
October 15, 2009 BY kris
According to a recent study carried out by neuroscientists, and published in Nature Neuroscience magazine, the human brain can rewire itself at almost any age, making it more efficient. The study showed that juggling balls or small objects seem to have the best therapeutic effect on a person’s neural network.
Neuroscientists scanned the white matter of the brain (which comprises the axons) using MRI technique, which showed that juggling objects for even short intervals regularly increased blood flow to the axons and brought about some discernible changes to the wiring of the brain. “We tend to think of the brain as being static, or even beginning to degenerate, once we reach adulthood…. In fact we find the structure of the brain is ripe for change. We’ve shown that it is possible for the brain to condition its own wiring system to operate more efficiently”, commented Heidi Johansen-Berg, lead researcher of the project.
One more interesting discovery that the researchers noted was that the improvement in brain performance was not linked to the skill level of the test subject, but rather on the time spent on the activity. Thus, a person may not be good at juggling, but if he spends an hour or so every day with the activity, his brain should perform better during the later years of his life.
