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.”

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.

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.”