Lessons Learned From Training 101000 Brains

[Music]

[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

[Music]