Brain Health Blog

Introducing Speed Brain for Palm® Pre™

June 9, 2009

Palm selects Lumosity to bring the first brain training game to the Palm Pre.

Designed to improve your processing speed and reaction time, Speed Brain exercises your ability to quickly understand information and react to it. You can also connect to your Lumosity account on your Palm Pre, which will allow you to track your Lumosity Brain Profile.

As with other Lumosity games, Speed Brain for webOS was created with heavy involvement from doctors, neuroscientists, and psychologists at universities worldwide.

Search for “Speed Brain” in the Palm Pre App Catalog.

We hope our Palm Pre users will enjoy their brain training on the go!

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By admin | Posted in Brain Games | Comments (1)

Working memory training changes the brain

May 29, 2009

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and science writer for Lumos Labs .

It seems that working memory training may work by physically altering the brain. Stockholm Brain Institute researchers put healthy people through working memory exercises for 35 minutes per day over a period of 5 weeks. Changes in dopamine receptor density were measured with positron emission tomography (PET) before and after the training.

Following working memory training, they found:

  • An increase in the density of dopamine receptors.
  • An improvement in working memory performance.

The neurotransmitter dopamine plays a central role in working memory. This research implies that improving working memory performance through several weeks of training might work by increasing the quantity of dopamine receptors in the brain.

References:
Buschkuehl, M., Jaeggi, S. M., Hutchison, S., Perrig-Chiello, P., Däpp, C., Müller, M., et al. (2008). Impact of working memory training on memory performance in old-old adults. Psychology and Aging, 23(4), 743-53.

Dahlin, E., Neely, A. S., Larsson, A., Bäckman, L., & Nyberg, L. (2008). Transfer of learning after updating training mediated by the striatum. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5882), 1510-2.

McNab, F., Varrone, A., Farde, L., Jucaite, A., Bystritsky, P., Forssberg, H., et al. (2009). Changes in cortical dopamine D1 receptor binding associated with cognitive training. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5915), 800-2.

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By Gregory Kellett | Posted in Brain Games, Brain Research, Cognitive Performance, Lumos Labs, Memory, Neuroscience | Comments (0)

New on Lumosity: Friends and User Profiles

May 15, 2009

Today the Lumosity team launched a couple of new features that mark the beginning of a more social Lumosity experience: Lumosity Friends and user profiles.

Now, you can see what your friends and family are doing on Lumosity and what their best cognitive attributes are. If they aren’t already on Lumosity, invite them to join so you can add them as Lumosity Friends.

Also, check out your new Lumosity profile and personalize it with a photo.

There’s a lot more to come; stay tuned in the coming weeks for more ways to communicate and coordinate with the Lumosity community.

As always, let us know what you think by commenting on this post or by sending a note to feedback@lumosity.com.

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By Juliette Melton | Posted in Lumos Labs | Comments (2)

Improving Memory with Magnets?

March 30, 2009

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and UCSF, and science writer for Lumos Labs.

Scientists at the university of Sydney in Australia have recently claimed to be able to make people’s memory more accurate by reducing the occurrence of false memories… via magnets.

Although it is often possible to increase the precision of memory by paying better attention at the time of an event, little till now has been able to help improve remembrance after the fact.

The experimenters used electro-magnetic pulses via a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation to decrease brain activity in such a way as to mimic the minds of people with anterior temporal lobe dementia and autism.  The logic behind this being that one of the common characteristics of these conditions is a more literal memory with greater accuracy for details.

Participants were given a list of words to memorize and then either actual magnetic brain manipulation, a sham manipulation or no treatment at all.

Those who actually had their brains magnetically pulsed after seeing the list of words showed a 36% decrease in false memories, meaning thinking a word was initially presented when it was not, over those whose brains were left untouched.

Although this leaves us with more questions than answers, the authors point to a possible future application in the courtroom, where memories frequently get a little too creative.

Reference:

Gallate, J., Chi, R., Ellwood, S., & Snyder, A. (2009). Reducing false memories by magnetic pulse stimulation. Neuroscience Letters, 449(3), 151-154. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2008.11.021.

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By Gregory Kellett | Posted in Cognitive Performance, Memory | Comments (2)

Staying Sharp by Keeping Fit

March 18, 2009

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and science writer for Lumos Labs.

It turns out there may be a link between cardiovascular fitness and the size of one’s hippocampus, a portion of the brain important for the formation of new memories.

Researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Pittsburgh, looked at the cardiovascular fitness of 165 adults between the ages of 59 and 81. They also measured (via MRI) the size of each participant’s hippocampus and tested for spatial reasoning abilities.

What they found:

  • Elderly adults who are physically fit tend to have larger hippocampi than those who are less fit.
  • Having a larger hippocampus is correlated with better performance on spatial memory tasks.

Exercise has been linked to hippocampus size and spatial memory in rodents, but this is the first study to demonstrate a similar relationship in humans.

This is good news because although variable between individuals, it is well established that the hippocampus typically shrinks with age and that this shrinkage is associated with subtle but definite declines in memory and spatial orientation.

References:

Erickson, K. I., Prakash, R. S., Voss, M. W., Chaddock, L., Hu, L., Morris, K. S., et al. (2009). Aerobic fitness is associated with hippocampal volume in elderly humans. Hippocampus.

Kitabatake, Y., Sailor, K. A., Ming, G., & Song, H. (2007). Adult neurogenesis and hippocampal memory function: new cells, more plasticity, new memories? Neurosurgery Clinics of North America, 18(1), 105-13, x.

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By Gregory Kellett | Posted in Brain Health, Cognitive Performance, Memory | Comments (0)

New iPhone Brain Game Announcement – Memory Matrix

February 26, 2009

Train your memory while on the go with our latest iPhone and iPod Touch brain game — Memory Matrix!  This game trains your ability to recall locations and patterns.  If you’ve ever struggled with remembering where you put your car keys or what you needed to buy at the grocery store, then this is the game for you.

And because we’re so eager for you to play Memory Matrix, it’s going to be FREE — for a limited time — so take advantage of this offer and download it today!

Also, for those of you who downloaded our first mobile game (Speed Brain), you’ll notice that we’ve added new features to our mobile games, including the ability to sync to your lumosity.com account.  Now you can take your brain profile with you wherever you go!  Track your progress from anywhere and show your friends and family how much you’ve improved.

We hope you give Memory Matrix a whirl.  We think you’ll find it challenging and fun!

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By Joshua Duyan | Posted in Brain Games | Comments (3)

Work your Memory with the New Familiar Faces Game

February 23, 2009

You know those awkward moments when you’re supposed to know someone’s name but don’t… or where you have to ask someone to repeat themselves because you weren’t paying attention?

Well Lumos Labs has devised a new brain game to help you avoid those embarrassing situations. Its called Familiar Faces, and as the title implies, it involves remembering people’s faces, along with their names and food orders. Big tips and job promotions are the goal, and those are achieved by improving your service with practice.

Keeping in mind who ordered what will exercise both your working memory and attention, while possibly helping to make your social life a tad more comfortable. Check it out, and as always, feel free to give us your feedback.

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By Gregory Kellett | Posted in Brain Games, Neuroscience | Comments (0)

Trying too hard to focus

February 20, 2009

By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and science writer for Lumos Labs .

A new study indicates that focusing too much might actually diminish your ability to pay attention. The researchers, based out of Carnegie Mellon University, used a phenomenon called the attentional blink as the center of their investigation.

An attentional blink is a deficit in visual attention which often occurs 200-500 milliseconds after the first of two visual items are presented during an experiment. The study looked at the ability of participants to detect that second visual item in the presence of visual distractions (moving grey dots).

Surprisingly, the distractors enhanced the ability of people to detect items often obscured by attentional blinks.

The authors hypothesize that the attentional blink phenomenon is due to an overexertion of control happening when target detection and memory consolidation overlap.

They surmise that the adding of distractors dissipates this overexertion of control, thereby enhancing performance.

So the next time you’re playing Speed Match you may want to try day dreaming a bit…it just might improve your score.

References:
Taatgen, N. A., Juvina, I., Schipper, M., Borst, J. P., & Martens, S. (n.d.). Too much control can hurt: A threaded cognition model of the attentional blink. Cognitive Psychology, In Press, Corrected Proof.

Salvucci, D. D., & Taatgen, N. A. (2008). Threaded cognition: An integrated theory of concurrent multitasking. Psychological
Review, 115(1), 101–130.

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By Gregory Kellett | Posted in Brain Games, Brain Research, Cognitive Performance | Comments (2)