Lessons Learned From Training 101000 Brains
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[Applause]
when our youngest son was in fourth
grade he could not spell his own name
his brain
had a problem
i discovered it standing in his
elementary school hallway one evening
reading a story he had written about my
husband a military officer
at the top of his page he’s written his
full name evan william moore
he spelled william w-i-l-y-u-m
he went on to write my dad is in the air
force people salute my dad s-a-l-o-o-t
our nine-year-old son was spelling
phonetically the way words sound
like the average six-year-old
spells fast forward three years to
seventh grade
and my son who could not spell his own
name was now enrolled in gifted and
talented language arts
and by his freshman year in high school
he took two college-level english
courses and passed both of them with an
a
how did he make that jump
well because of the brain’s amazing
capacity to change with just a little
help
we aren’t stuck with the cognitive cards
we’ve been dealt
and neither was evan
after nine months of brain training
evan had a brand new and improved deck
of cognitive cards
so what do i mean by brain training
well brain training or cognitive
training is a general term for repeated
engagement in targeted mental tasks
that are designed to strengthen
cognitive skills like memory attention
and processing speed
there are brain games everywhere
but brain training is so much more than
a game
if we want to harness the brain’s
ability to change through experience a
phenomenon called neuroplasticity
the brain training experience needs to
be intense
targeted repeated
and i might argue
facilitated by a human
so how do we know that rank training can
do that
well in short data
since 2015 hundreds of studies have been
published on brain training
interventions
and my name is on more than a dozen of
them i’m the research director for a
worldwide network of cognitive training
centers
and our team has worked with more than a
hundred thousand children and adults
that’s about six million brain training
sessions
that look like this
and we’ve amassed
dozens and dozens and dozens of stories
just like evans
stories of overcoming struggles with
thinking and learning through brain
training
so i want to share with you three
lessons that we’ve learned through our
experience and research in this field
so lesson number one
cognition is complex
so brain training also needs to be
complex
what do i mean by that
well according to the most widely
accepted theory of intelligence the
cattell horn carol theory of cognition
there are dozens and dozens of cognitive
skills
skills like working memory long-term
memory processing speed visual and
auditory processing logic and reasoning
and attention
if we want to have the biggest impact on
thinking and learning through brain
training then we have to create
interventions that target more than one
or two cognitive skills
if we give you an intervention for your
brain that only targets working memory
but we also expect that to improve
reasoning skills
that would be like giving you a workout
for your arms in the gym
and expecting you to see results in your
legs as well
so brain training programs that only
target one or two cognitive skills are
missing the opportunity
to impact the entirety of cognition
so i want to do a quick demonstration
just to show you what the complexity of
cognition looks like
in just a second i’m going to ask you to
spell a word backwards and i’m only
going to give you 10 seconds to do it
ready
i want you to spell
the last name
of the first united states president
backwards
ready
go
okay
stop here’s the answer
n-o-t-g-n-i-h-s-a-w
how’d you do
i want to walk you through what your
brain had to do to get there
first you had to remember who the first
united states president was
that’s long-term memory
then you had to decide on a strategy for
actually completing that task that’s
logic and reasoning
most of you probably projected the word
washington in your mind or in the air
that’s visual processing
then you had to decide which letters
went into the word that’s auditory
processing
you had to keep track of which letters
you had already said and which ones were
coming up so that’s working memory
you may have gotten frustrated or
distracted halfway through that task so
you had to engage your attention skills
and i only gave you 10 seconds you had
to work quickly that’s processing speed
so that one seemingly simple task
engaged seven different cognitive skills
and it illustrates how those cognitive
skills work together in order to
to complete a task but that doesn’t just
apply to academic tasks real life tasks
as well
for example to be a good driver
you have to have strong processing speed
attention and visual processing skills
to be good at time management
you also have to have good processing
speed and attention skills
and reasoning
so
cognition is complex
therefore cognitive training should also
be complex
okay lesson number two
cognitive training is a universal
intervention
research is telling us that cognitive
training is applicable to all kinds of
brains
children adults young and old conditions
like adhd learning disabilities
traumatic brain injury and age-related
cognitive decline
and what we see in research are changes
in neuropsychological test scores
changes in the brain that we can see
through neuroimaging and changes in
day-to-day life
so i want to share with you just a few
of the research studies that we’ve
conducted
that demonstrate the universality of
cognitive training
so in this study with children ages 8 to
14 who were struggling in school
we gave the treatment group 60 hours of
complex cognitive training over 12 weeks
and you can see the clear difference
between the treatment group and the
control group on all of the cognitive
skills we tested
in this study on children with adhd
we gave them 60 hours of cognitive
training over 12 weeks
and again you can see the differences
between the brain training group and the
control group including a 26 point
increase in iq score
for the brain training group
in this study on adults over age 50 who
had age-related
attention and memory problems we
compared two different methods of
delivering the same complex human
delivered brain training program
and found statistically significant
changes on every skill tested for both
treatment groups
and in this neuroimaging study of
adolescents and young adults who were
recovering from mild traumatic brain
injury
we were able to document changes in
brain network connectivity using
functional mri
that directly correlated with changes in
their cognitive test scores
and in a study that we conducted with
soldiers who were recovering from
moderate to severe tbi
91 of them achieved overall recovery
and clinically significant change in
their cognitive skills and their over
overall iq score
and these are just a few examples
of the research that’s being conducted
on cognitive training
that demonstrates its applicability for
all kinds of brains
okay
lesson number three
brain training is hard work
so you want to see real life benefits at
the end
in the research studies i just showed
you
we quantified change
with really impressive numbers
numbers that researchers like me dream
about
numbers that help our papers sail
through peer-reviewed publication
with the hopes of changing the world
with our findings
but the changes that really matter
are in the day-to-day lives of the
people that were hoping to help
for evan
he could spell
he could focus
he could relate to other kids
for our research participants
the number one real life change that we
see
is an increase in confidence and
self-esteem
but we’ve also documented
improved motivation
mood outlook on life
better relationships with others
reduced oppositional behaviors
better driving skills better sleep
habits
reduced academic difficulty and
undesirable behavior
and increased performance at school and
at work
brain training is hard work
so you want a big payoff
so speaking of a big payoff i want to
leave you with a story of one of our
research participants who has agreed to
let me share a story with you
jim was a married very successful
engineer
he was riding his bike one evening and
his bike hit a washed out portion of the
path
he crashed into a ditch
hid his head was knocked unconscious
and wasn’t found until the next morning
by a group of hikers
he was in a coma and woke up a week
later in the icu
the damage to his brain was so severe
that he had to learn how to walk and
talk all over again
he was unable to return to work
in his current profession he struggled
to show emotions
his ability to process information
efficiently was severely compromised
and his life as he knew it was over
eight years later
he joined a research study that we were
conducting on cognitive training for
traumatic brain injury
and just like evan he spent nine months
working with a cognitive trainer
doing hands-on
intense complex
training exercises for his brain
and at the end of that nine months we
measured changes on his
neuropsychological test scores
changes in the brain
and changes in real life
his results
he had a 23 point increase in his iq
score
analysis of his brain
functional mri showed that the network
connectivity in his brain had normalized
and he was able to go back to work as an
engineer in the same firm where he was
employed eight years earlier before the
accident
he got his life back
jim was dealt a horrible set of
cognitive cards that night on the bike
path
but he wasn’t stuck with them
even after eight years
his brain
was able to change through cognitive
training
brain training research is such an
exciting field of study
and one that carries this message of
hope
we are not stuck with the cognitive
cards we’ve been dealt
thank you
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