Latest Blogs

1. Wear Proper Equipment

Wearing the proper equipment when participating in a sport is crucial to avoiding a concussion. Helmets (and mouth guards!) are important.

2. Avoid Using the Head to Strike

If you are tackling an opponent, use proper technique. Never dive in head first or target the head as a way to make a big hit.

3.Strengthen Neck Muscles

Many studies have shown that working on your neck muscles can improve your natural resistance to concussions; it helps stabilize your head and spine.

4. Practice Proper Techniques

In sports such as soccer, it is sometimes necessary to use your head to direct the ball. But make sure that you use the proper technique and aren’t just blindly smacking it with your head.

5. Increase Awareness

A better vision on the field and heightened awareness can help you see and react to players attempting to tackle you. Avoiding the big hits that snap your head backwards is key.

6. Buckle Your Seatbelt

Most of the non-sports related concussions occur in automobile accidents. Frequently it is from heads hitting the dashboard or steering wheel.

7. Exercise More

Studies have shown that people who lead a more active lifestyle will have better balance and reaction times, possibly preventing falls and accidents that lead to a concussion.

8. Keep the Stairs Clean

The other big place for a non-sports related concussion is on the stairs. Too frequently, people trip on clutter they leave on the stairs and fall down them, risking concussions and worse.

9. Education

Education on what happens during a concussion, the dangers of getting a second concussion while healing from the first, and proper ways to avoid concussions is incredibly important.

10. Diagnose Properly

Use neurological baselines to judge if a person is suffering from a concussion. Properly diagnosing a first concussion, and tracking recovery, will allow coaches and trainers to make a responsible decision on when a player is ready to return to play.

Too frequently, sideline protocols rely on subjective questions and basic physiological tests. But it is widely accepted that these protocols are very weak. One cannot diagnose a concussion in 5 minutes, especially not by asking a player if they are feeling OK and believe they’re ready to get back into the game. They have an incentive to say yes.

‍

It is an unavoidable fact of life that the natural aging process has a negative effect on the mind. Mental processes begin slowing down in the golden years, and frequently skills like driving and navigating large crowds can begin to decline. But that isn’t a guarantee.

With NeuroTracker, elderly citizens can attempt to combat the effects of active aging. With mental training programs that are custom-tailored to the individual needs of the client, helping retirees with pursue their goal of driving more safely and confidently.

How NeuroTracker Works

NeuroTracker is designed to be a fun and interactive means for training the mind’s focus, biological motion tracking, and ability to process and prioritize multiple stimuli at once. The training procedure asks participants to track select objects in a field of many as they move through a three dimensional projection.

Simulations start off slow, with the speed based on the participant, and gradually build in speed over the course of the training. Eventually, the participant easily tracks various objects without losing focus.

This practice helps sharpen a participant’s distributed focus, which is generally defined as the ability to keep track of multiple stimuli at one time. Think of it as perfecting your brain’s ability to juggle. Training with NeuroTracker helps you keep track of all the balls without “dropping” one of them.

NeuroTracker training has been demonstrated to improve with selective attention. It helps you train your mind to quickly process and prioritize a large number of stimuli at once, then weed out the ones that aren’t important to the task at hand.

How NeuroTracker Fights Aging Effects

After a completing a training program with NeuroTracker, older participants have been typically shown to able to perform at the same level on NeuroTracker as young adults in their mental prime without NeuroTracker training. This means that NeuroTracker may not only reverse some of the effects of healthy aging, but may even be able to allow a participant to feel they are reclaiming part of the mental agility of their youth.

One of the biggest benefits elderly participants could look for is their ability to drive in stressful situations without being overwhelmed. Because their minds are being trained to track visual stimuli and prioritize the important inputs, they they can be expect to be calmer making the correct decision under pressure, even at high speeds.

Also expected is a great improvement our elderly participants’ ability to navigate through large crowds of people without any problems. It can be dangerous for older citizens to walk through a big crowd of people - the ever shifting sea of bodies can knock over a bystander and cause a dangerous fall.

NeuroTracker was designed in part to help professional athletes track moving bodies and predict their movements in fast-paced sport situations. This translates naturally to helping non-athletes in real-life situations like walking down a crowded street or wheeling a cart through a busy grocery store.

‍

Serious athletes push their minds and bodies to the limit of human performance. Some achieve feats that defy expectations for our species: Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile in 1958; Benedikt Magnusson deadlifted over 1,000 pounds in 2011.

On the surface, these achievements are physical in nature. In fact, it is the mental agility of athletes that leads to their success on the field. Indeed, professional athletes vary day-to-day in their performance, and clearly this is not rooted in daily physical variance but mental attention and focus. Top teams will lose a few matches every year, often to bottom-of-the-league teams, showing how being 'in the zone’, or not, can determine the outcome. Sometimes the exceptional performance of one key player will be the difference.

One important mental skill, when competing in high-level sports, is reading body movements. Being able to perceive the movement of a competing runner or a teammate is key to making good decisions in real time. Biological motion is key to every sport, from hockey to football, from soccer to baseball, from track-and-field to wrestling.

It has been proven in multiple scientific experiments that professional athletes are better than average at perceiving biological motion. This capacity further translates into many advantages. Their reaction times, decision-making, and accuracy in delivering passes are all directly linked to their biological perception abilities. Their predictive power is greatly increased, enabling them to better understand future positions of teammates, defenders, and goaltenders, which clearly will improve performance. Many of the world’s best team-sport athletes are said to have ‘eyes in the back of their heads’, which is actually about predictive power.

In a study released in September of 2015, Thomas Romeas and Dr. Jocelyn Faubert of the Visual Psycophysics and Perception Laboratory in Montreal found that athletes who are experts at biological motion perception had superior results in predicting passes in soccer and had quicker reaction times. Non-athletes who did not have the expertise in motion tracking were less proficient at nearly every task.

So how does an athlete train this part of their game? Most training time for competitive athletes is aimed at keeping the body in shape. But the brain needs to 'go to the gym' as much as the muscles. Mental training is most often only an implicit part of other training, such as game-paced motion tracking practice during a scrimmage.

That’s where targeted cognitive training comes in. NeuroTracker is one example, where science has shown it improves the ability to read biological motion. It was already known that elite athletes were able to better predict where defenders and teammates would move. Crucially, it was shown that these underlying skills can be positively influenced using NeuroTracker training, and this influence on improving sports action predictions are now being specifically studied.

Professional sports teams are now increasingly allocating precious training time to biological motion perception training. Specialized sports training and sports vision centers are also emerging, which now offer such leading-edge sports training to other serious athletes who do not have access to such facilities through sports clubs. As this practice grows, one can predict that this will lead to better on-field performance and the sprouting of more ‘eyes in the back of the head'.

‍

Hockey is one of the fastest-moving sports on earth. Players need to follow lightning-fast puck movement and predict where their teammates and opponents will go as play develops. This requires complex calculations of speed and strategy on the fly.

So how can you improve your ability to see plays as they develop and predict the next play? That’s where cognitive training comes in. It’s important to stay in peak physical shape so that you can compete at your highest potential. The same is true for your brain. The human brain is capable of considerable feats, and training it to adapt to the complicated needs of hockey is one way to up your game considerably.

Historically, coaches have relied on scrimmages to reproduce game situations and improve cognitive ability for in-game performance. Now, there’s a gym for your brain, too. NeuroTracker uses cutting-edge 3D environment, multiple object tracking software to increase athletes’ focus and decision-making. Typically in sessions of under 10 minutes and as little as twice per week. The training efficiency is astounding, taking advantage of ‘brain plasticity’, or the ability of the brain to learn and adapt. (See Research Here)

By better processing visual information, you can make better decisions. Training with NeuroTracker can be expected to help you hone in on the puck better while keeping up with the players around you.

Practicing in the new Tactical Awareness Mode provides even bigger increases to visual input perception. With images of real-life game situations moving around, you can easily translate the simulations of NeuroTracker to actual in-game skills. This important 'translational benefit' has been demonstrated in recent scientific research.

In basic NeuroTracker training, one is asked to follow specific targets within a group, typically four spheres out of eight. In tactical awareness mode, the cognitive load is raised substantially by presenting complex situations and requiring the subject to make a strategic decision, all while the subject follows the base-level targets. It’s mentally exhausting, even in short sessions, but that feeling is the result of your brain working hard to assimilate the new learning. This not only brings about very rapid improvement, but is a theoretically ideal approach for building mental stamina too, which is essential for avoiding those late goals-against so commonly seen in hockey or soccer, linked to player fatigue.

Training the brain to quickly respond to such visual stimuli is quickly becoming a regular feature of major professional organizations all over the world. Knowing where to be and when to be there, based on visual cues and a better understanding of where the play is moving, is a signature of stand-out players.

Whether you are a defender or goalie, processing the on-coming storm of an odd-man rush is vital. As a center or winger, being able to see the patterns developing in a high-pressure forecheck is crucial to cracking open the counter-attack.

Tactical Awareness Mode in NeuroTracker is designed for just that. This integration of more fundamental abstract cognitive training with decision-making specific scenarios provides a comprehensive approach to performance training.

‍

by Eric Niiler - WIRED Magazine

17 December 2015

THE CONTROVERSIAL IDEA that you can “train” a human brain to get smarter or faster has spread through the worlds of elite athletics and brain-trauma recovery. Now it’s going to boot camp. Military leaders, aware that troops face ever-more complicated threats and ever-more complicated gear, are starting to think that brain training might be just as important as pushups.

At the recent “Mad Scientist” talks at Fort Leavenworth, and in white papers like the Army’s Human Dimensions Concept report (PDF), psychologists and neuroscientists who work with the military are starting to borrow the sports/trauma playbook. Right now, most of the work is still only in the lab, but researchers predict that soon army bases will have “cognitive gyms” where off-duty fighters can flex their gray matter with a test designed to increase short-term memory, boost their ability to deal with multiple things at once—that’s called “cognitive load”—and maybe even get better at shooting their weapons.

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE‍

Heading into my fourth week of NeuroTracker training, I was very interested, if not anxious, to see improvements. I had seen some small movement in my scores, and was curious to see how that might continue to ramp up. Also important was to observe any changes on the playing field, having felt that my passing decision-making had declined in the last couple of years, leading to needless losses of possession.

Once again I sat in front of the screen, and my training partner Jake fired up the system. We debated adding some additional challenges into the mix, like standing or balancing (check out this video about the stages of NeuroTracker training for more on this). We decided not to, particularly since I wanted to work my way up the performance curve a bit more before shifting. This is partly due to the last session where I was distracted by my six-year-old. This time I really wanted to focus and perform!

NeuroTracker automatically starts at a lower speed than your current baseline, so it started at a speed of 1.2, which by now I find very slow, I never ever miss at that speed. Each time you get a series right, it speeds up. For the first time, I got 5 series in a row. The fifth series was at 3.4, and that’s the first time I successfully got one at that level. I finally broke my streak at a speed of 4.0, which was crazy fast for me - I got three out of four wrong! Basically I lost the balls right away so I was only guessing.

From then on, the system triangulated down to what I could handle, and for the first time I ended up over 2, at 2.08.

One very interesting phenomenon is that 1.9 was routinely achievable for me, whereas when I first did the training a month ago it felt extremely fast. So not only could I see the improvement in my scores this time, I truly felt the difference too. There is a sensation alternately ranging from mastery to being on a freefall, and at 1.9 I now felt the same mastery I had at 1.5 a couple of weeks earlier.

The next night I had my indoor soccer, and Jake came along to play with the group, and to observe, as he had done in previous weeks. Jake himself has been very constant with his NeuroTracker training, now scoring over 3.0, and he asserts that it has helped his ice hockey face-offs go from under 20% to over 80%. I was keen to see if I could make less give-away passes and ideally more assists and even goals.

Well I can tell you it was my best game in 2 years! Jake and I laughed our way through the game, as I made a string of crazy assists into space and some memorable solo runs capped by goals. This one guy Mike on my team and I connected numerous times, me putting it right on his foot as he passed in front of the net, which is something we had never connected on before.

Physically I am in worse shape than two years ago, with a bad left knee and a torn right calf, so the difference had to be in the mind, not the body. While one game and one person is not a scientific, statistically meaningful experience, it was anecdotally a very interesting experience. I was on fire for real! I will report back after next Wednesday’s game, but it’s looking good!

‍

Professional, collegiate, and high school sports teams have been instituting sideline concussion protocols. With the increased exposure in the media, at least at the professional level, these teams have hurriedly pushed out procedures for diagnosing concussions in the middle of a game.

Coaches, players, medical personnel, and fans have all complained about these protocols. Medical personnel frequently see them as not being complete enough to be useful, while players, fans, and coaches see them as being an inconvenience at best and a punishment for players at worst.

Regardless of which side of the aisle your opinion lands, one thing most people agree on is that, in the state that they are in today, sideline concussion protocols are a joke. We’ve compiled a list of the more prevalent reasons that current sideline concussion protocols are not working.

1. Inconsistency

Let’s face it. The NFL could do better to enforce the sideline concussion protocols. There have been several instances of players violating the protocol by returning to the game for big plays in the middle of their evaluation. This doesn’t protect the players and it doesn’t help the medical staff get the diagnostic information they need. And what does the league do about it? A strongly worded reprimand.‍

2. Selectivity

Star players are frequently pushed through the evaluation in a matter of minutes - most famously when Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger went through three plays of “evaluation” during a crucial 4th-quarter drive against the Baltimore Ravens in the 2014-2015 season’s AFC Championship Game. It simply isn’t possible for a medical team to honestly evaluate a concussion in a few minutes, and yet big players get rushed back onto the field in a short-sighted move that could put the player’s career in jeopardy.

3. Inconvenience

It is necessary to protect players from concussions, especially the devastating results of a second concussion suffered immediately after a first. However, in light of their ineffectiveness, the current protocol is little more than an inconvenience for everyone. Some symptoms of a concussion can take hours to show, so it is absurd to assume that an accurate diagnosis can be made within a few minutes.

4. Players Hide Symptoms

In the 2015 Women’s Soccer World Cup match between USA and Germany, US midfielder Morgan Brian and German striker Alexandra Popp smacked heads in a sickening collision that left the entire world holding their breath. Within 5 minutes, both players were back in the game. After the game, Brian commented “As a player, you want to keep playing. So you’re going to tell yourself in the moment, with all the adrenaline, that nothing is wrong.”

5. There Are No Baselines

It’s hard to make an accurate diagnosis of a concussion when you have no neurological baseline off of which to base a decision. Frequently, the diagnosis is driven by a basic physical examination and the player's answers to subjective questions.

Most people agree that sideline concussion protocols are a joke. Something needs to be done to protect athlete, using objective medical diagnoses, instead of what amounts to a rubber stamp.

In order to successfully achieve results at NeuroTracker and improve your sports performance, incorporating different skills is essential. We also call this, dual-tasking, in which the brain is asked to conduct different tasks. Each case is different and it is always recommended to conduct sessions with the help of a specialist or a trainer, but the following is a sample of some of the dual-tasks or stages that be incorporated with a NeuroTracker training program:

1. Sitting

This is the first stage of NeuroTracker training and the most basic NeuroTracker training. This stage also includes the initial baseline phase and the consolidation phase. In the initial baseline phase, the user conducts 3 sessions and the average score represents their baseline. Following correct training protocols, and after going through a number of sessions, users are not expected to go below their initial baseline except in cases due to something affecting neuro-performance. For example, a sleep-deprived individual, or someone suffering from a hangover or a concussion might get a score below their initial baseline. With that being said, if let's say in Session 4 you receive a score below your initial baseline, there is no reason to worry, with more time, and more sessions, you will blow past your initial baseline.

The consolidation phase represents the following 12 sessions. During the consolidation phase, many users show rapid improvement, even when changing modes from Core to Dynamic or other modes.

2. Standing

The next stage of NeuroTracker includes incorporating a very basic skill. Just like any stage in which a new skill is introduced, users usually display a drop of speed threshold in the beginning. During this stage, the user is asked to stand up and just by standing, the user's brain has to use some of the resources it has to stand. This is partly to the fact that every brain has a certain mental capacity, and therefore, each added task takes away a portion of their mental capacity.

3. Balancing

The third stage is balancing; the user is asked to use a balancing ball or a balancing board therefore dual-tasking by engaging their motor skills. This also incorporates a slight amount of movement therefore forcing the brain to quickly process a change in the viewing angle. Each time your eyes move, the brain has to reprocess the information it is receiving, which again takes a part of your mental capacity.

4. Optic Flow

Optic flow is an optional stage that with the use of HD high-speed cameras can measure subtle movements in a person while doing NeuroTracker. During Optic flow, there is constant back-and-forth movement on the screen and that forces the user to subconsciously sway back-and-forth. A perfectly healthy individual should have some movement, but barely noticeable without the camera. It is almost impossible to stay completely still in this mode.

5. Sport-Specific Task (Stick handling, dribbling...etc)

In this stage, it is recommended for a user to add a sport-specific task that includes an element of control, rather than movement. Think of stick handling; you are relatively staying in your position, but this includes a very specific controlling ability. In the video, the two users doing NeuroTracker are focused on control while tracking. Usually, this represents an essential aspect of the sport, such as dribbling in basketball or puck handling in hockey.

6. Advanced Sport-Specific Task (Skating, moving, juking)

The next level of sport-specific training should include a movement task. Just as in the video, the user is forced to adjust their viewing angle on a constant basis, which really adds a complex task to their cognitive ability. Not only they are using their motor skills in a more difficult manner than standing or balancing, but they are changing their position in a more extreme way.

7. Strength Training

The 7th stage of NeuroTracker training includes a very physical element to the training. This introduces a high element of fatigue into the training. Users who are fatigued have constantly shown lower scores at NeuroTracker, so with strength training, fatigue is almost guaranteed to happen as the user is progressing within the session.

8. Tactical Awareness

The ultimate holy grail of NeuroTracker training, tactical awareness is the most mentally-tasking stage. During tactical awareness, the user is asked to identify and react to a complex, sport-specific element. For example, a football quarterback would be doing NeuroTracker, but at the same time, an image of the defensive formation of the opposing team is viewed. The quarterback would then have to identify the formation, call an audible based on his own offensive formation, and of course keep tracking of the moving targets. This can also apply to the military when a soldier could be provided with different images of different elements and he has to identify if they are a threat or not, react to the threat if applicable, also while tracking the moving targets.

Conclusion

All these stages are suggestions set out by the NeuroTracker team in order to achieve the best results possible. However, as stated in the beginning, the main resource that any user should use is a specialist or a trainer that is fully aware of their goals, objectives and situation, including any circumstances that might affect their performance. Just like physiotherapy, there are some regular exercises that any injured person can follow, but at the same time, ideally, they would use a physiotherapist in order to achieve the best results.

‍

Equestrian competition is among the most ancient of competitive sports. Going back to before the legendary Olympic games, through Roman times, and of course in the modern Olympics, equestrian competition elicits passion and excitement from fans of all types. There are many kinds of equestrian events, from racing to jumping to dressage to polo, all with different followings. The events vary greatly, and this of course means a wide range of training routines across these sports. Much like figure skating or ice hockey, the horsey set are also famous for the entire family getting into the competitive spirit. The energy - and ice - of competition can be felt as much in the arena as in the stands. And as with other sports, parents and athletes seek out every possible advantage. In this light, horseback riding is experiencing a similar revolution as with other sports, where mental training is integral to athlete development, and increasingly an explicit part of programmes.

How can mental training help?

Horseback riding is one of the toughest mental sports. Mental training allows the rider to improve their focus in order to be ready for the challenge of horseback riding. Just like technique and muscles have their training regimens and routines, brains need similar training as well.

Another factor is visual information processing speed. Riders have to interpret the situation and the surrounding environment in a fraction of a second, while also maintaining the dual-task of controlling the horse. Mental training improves visual information processing speed and increases the rider's ability to be fully aware of the environment.

How About Injuries in Equestrian?

Injury avoidance and assessment for return-to-play are of crucial importance in equestrian as concussions are very present. A rider's head when mounted in the saddle can be up to 3m above the ground. Add the speed that the horse is moving at, and any fall becomes extremely dangerous. Injury avoidance can a lot of times depend on decision-making and awareness. If the rider is fully aware of their surroundings, they are able to avoid the spots that might result in a fall. In addition, dual-tasking is very important. The rider has to focus on both controlling the horse and planning the next move. Expanding the brain's ability to dual task allows for better injury avoidance.

Even with full preparations and training, the risk of concussion remains high. So in the case that a rider suffers a concussion, they need to have the ability to conduct an objective assessment of their ability to return-to-play. It happens way too often that an athlete returns to play after suffering a concussion before being ready. Athletes often have the incentive to misidentify their symptoms in order to return sooner. Athletes are naturally competitive, and part of that competitive spirit is to try to be back as soon as possible.

How can NeuroTracker help?

The new revolution in sports vision and mental training is perceptual-cognitive training. NeuroTracker has shown direct results on improving focus. It allows athletes to be "in the zone" for longer periods of time. This specifically applies to NeuroTracker Attention Stamina mode in which the user is asked to maintain their focus by tracking the 4 moving targets in the 3D environment for a longer period of time.

3D multiple-object tracking also allows the user to increase their visual information processing speed. In other words, the user is able to interpret visual clues faster and better. This becomes vital in horseback riding as even the smallest of bumps in the road can be of great danger to the horse and the rider. It also allows the user to interpret the horse's own body language, which is known in scientific terms as biological motion, better and quicker. In a controlled study, NeuroTracker has shown a capacity to improve the ability of reading biological motion. As a direct result of improving visual information processing speed, the rider is able to be more aware of their surroundings and therefore avoid injuries.

The other factor that NeuroTracker helps with is cognitive performance baselining. If a baseline is established with a user, then it is fully expected for the athlete to be able to get back to their baseline as an aspect of their recovery. If the athlete is performing well-below their baseline, which is the case with any user that had a concussion who used NeuroTracker, then they are not ready to return to play. Doing so would put them at extra risk of not performing well, or even worse, sustaining a more significant injury or simply worsening their existing one.

‍

Sports Vision and Elite Athletes

During the last few years, awareness surrounding the importance of sports vision training has risen exponentially. High-level athletes are now used to the idea that just like going to the gym, their brains need training programs as well. However, the challenge is in finding a training software that has scientific backing behind it and directly seeing results on the field, in a reasonable timeframe. In addition, a big concern is the amount of time each training session takes away from their busy schedules.

Braden Holtby, an NHL star goaltender playing for the Washington Capitals, has incorporated sports vision training into his routine. Sports Vision training allows athletes to grow their abilities to perform better on- and off-the-field. Athletes have to make decisions in fractions of a second, and the ability of their brain to process information, in other words visual information processing speed, is essential to success. NeuroTracker has directly shown an impact on improving visual information processing speed.

Why are some players better than others?

Another area that NeuroTracker helps in, is situational awareness. As an athlete, you need to quickly process the situation around you in order to identify the opportunities and the threats. Consider for example, the last 8 Norris Trophy winners, the award given to the best defensemen in the NHL. They are Nicklas Lidstrom (2 times), Duncan Keith (2 times), Erik Karlsson (2 times) and P.K. Subban and Zdeno Chara, one time each. All of them share one thing in common, they are as reliable defensively as they are electric offensively. This is a great example of how important situational awareness is. You need to be in the right time, at the right place. By doing perceptual-cognitive training, your situational awareness will increase. As Wayne Gretzky once said: "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be." NeuroTracker not only allows you to maintain sharpness and focus, but it also helps you anticipate where the play will happen, before it actually happens.

Other things that differentiate star goaltenders in the NHL from the others is consistency. Inconsistency can be attributed to lack of focus, or in other times to fatigue. Imagine the days in which you had very little sleep, the next day you would not be performing at peak level as you normally would. NeuroTracker has shown great effects on cognitive stamina and being able to maintain the top level performance that is needed for elite athletes.

As more awareness is being built around the importance of sport vision training, the main challenge becomes understanding the scientific backing of each product. What differentiates scientifically-backed products from the ones that have no basis is transferability. Transferability means that conducting the training program will translate to better results in other areas that share the same elements, even if they are not an identical situation. In other words, a reliable and proven sports vision program would allow the athlete to perform better in their sport, and in other areas, as a direct result of their training. NeuroTracker conducted a study with a soccer team that showed significant observed improvement in their passing accuracy. You can download the study and find out more about transferability HERE.

How can you become the next Vezina Trophy winner (Best Goaltender in the league)?

Think about the best goaltenders in the NHL, what differentiates them is the ability to anticipate the play before it happens. Whether it's Henrik Lundqvist, Carey Price, Braden Holtby or Pekka Rinne, it's about being at the right place at the right time, and knowing where the play is going to happen before it happens.

Sports vision is now a prerequisite for elite-level performance. Just ask Braden Holtby and his 16-4-0 record (Most wins in the league), 1.96 GAA (3rd best in the league), and .927 Save Percentage.

You can read more about NHL goaltenders using sports vision training here: Unmasked - Vision training a new tool for goaltenders

‍

For a few years now I had admired from a distance the Neurotracker training tool. I've heard about the vast benefits it provides, but I never got to try it. Today I finally got my chance to get up close and personal with it. This blog series is about my experience doing NeuroTracker and following a program that is designed to help me improve my focus and attention. I’m going to share my experience over the coming weeks, and to see if I can observe a difference in my soccer play, not to mention other intense activities like driving or just other day-to-day activities. I hope that you will enjoy the series and perhaps get to try NeuroTracker yourself in the future. - JLJ

Yesterday I had my second NeuroTracker session, but with an unexpected twist. My six-year-old daughter Juliet joined me, as she had a day off. She has taken a strong interest in rugby because her sister plays it, so having her do NeuroTracker training seemed like a good idea. In rugby, there are 30 players on the field, so a lot of moving objects, plus passes and kicks and funny bounces, not to mention aggressive tacklers coming at you. It's like being a ball inside that NeuroTracker box but with concussion risk!

Juliet went first, with the very patient Lisa on the controls. Lisa explained how it worked, and started Juju out with 1 ball to track, among 8. It took a couple of rounds for Juju to fully understand, for instance she was initially confused that a ball could change its number from one round to the next. But once she got that, within about three minutes, it was smooth sailing.

She completed a full session with one ball, and did super well, figuring it all out and registering a speed of just over 1.4. Lisa then upped her to 2 balls out of 8, and did another full session. Juju improvised her own approach, pointing to the two balls with her two hands, index fingers tracking the balls carefully. A cool tactic but harder with four balls! We joked about that, and she pointed her feet at the screen, simulating the technique she might use. All this underlined the light mood - while her brain was getting a serious workout, she was having lots of fun.

‍

‍

She went all the way through the second session, and ended up with a 2.08 on 2 balls. She had upped her score despite the higher difficulty, clearly improving within that short time. It set the stage for future sessions.

I then took the chair, and Lisa fired up my profile. I willed myself to get off to a strong start, aiming to take advantage of how the program starts relatively slow and then speeds up. I did OK at first, getting a few right in a row, catching up to where I left off. Juliet was watching me do it, seated just within my field of vision to my right. She started doing her tracking technique again, the full hands-and-feet version as meant for four balls. I could see her little hands and feet in my peripheral vision, which was quite distracting. I tried to shut her out but I had a number of passes where I missed a ball or two, so I eventually had to ask her to go sit behind me.

I had tried super hard, but even a very small distraction, like a moving foot at the edge of my peripheral vision, proved to be enough to drag down my performance. This was due to both the visual distraction, where I would take my eye off the screen, however briefly, but clearly also the cognitive distraction in terms of active memory, especially at high speeds - you can see 'em but you can't stay with 'em, you're not focused enough.

It remained somewhat tricky going, as Juliet was making comments or otherwise was audible back there. It still had impact on my focus. I pushed ahead however, doing my best, and capped out at 1.71, close to my previous peak.

Juju was delighted that her score was higher than Papa's, though she did internalize that I had a tougher challenge with four falls to follow to her two. She recounted this story over lunch and dinner to whoever would listen, she was very amused. She was also up for more, bugging me through the day and again today to the next session.

As for me, I did not see an improvement this round, but I learned a lesson about focus. I did not get to that state of focus where my brain was literally buzzing like last time. But I'm reconciled to believing the distraction challenge contributed to a good training. And ready for Round 3!

For a few years now I had admired from a distance the Neurotracker training tool. I've heard about the vast benefits it provides, but I never got to try it. Today I finally got my chance to get up close and personal with it. This blog series is about my experience doing NeuroTracker and following a program that is designed to help me improve my focus and attention. I’m going to share my experience over the coming weeks, and to see if I can observe a difference in my soccer play, not to mention other intense activities like driving or just other day-to-day activities. I hope that you will enjoy the series and perhaps get to try NeuroTracker yourself in the future. - JLJ

Knowing that teams like Manchester United, the New England Patriots, and the Vancouver Canucks were using it, I figured Neurotracker might help with my modest efforts at Wednesday Night soccer. Even if it’s a 30+ league, it’s quite a competitive group, and each week there are always some plays I would like have another shot at, that I think about afterwards. If only I had …

I’m an OK player, recognized for good passing touch. But I have noticed these last couple of years that I have given away possession unnecessarily, more often than I should. It’s not about touch - it’s about bad passing decisions. I’m thinking the issues are rooted in awareness, prediction, field vision. Right in the sweet spot of what Neurotracker is supposed to help with.

So today I began my Neurotracker training, helped along by Jake, my training partner. He ran the system while I did my sessions, so I had an experienced and good-natured operator who helped make the experience that much more enjoyable.

And It Shall Begin...

I put on the 3D glasses and sat on a stool in front of the big 3D screen, just a few feet back. Jake started the program, and set my starting protocol, which all up took about 30 seconds. As he knows that I’m an OK athlete, he set the starting point at a higher challenge level than a typical starting point, tracking 4 balls for 8 seconds per run, instead of 3 ball for 6 seconds. He was tapping into my competitive side. I confess I was curious about how my score would come out.

The training started. In the 3D space, eight balls emerged, looking like yellow tennis balls hovering in space, pretty cool actually. Four of the eight balls then turned orange, further highlighted with a white halo. These were the ones I needed to follow. They turned back to yellow, now looking the same as the rest, and then all eight balls started moving in their 3D box. They bounced around, side to side, back to front, and off each other.

In the first round they were moving quite slowly however, so despite all the bouncing and collisions, and even though tracking the balls was completely new to me, I was able to follow them with ease. They suddenly stopped, and were then numbered by the system 1 to 8. Jake asked me to identify the 4 key balls by their numbers, and I rattled off the numbers knowing that I had ‘em.

I actually gave him the numbers in increasing order, rather than, say, reading left to right or just rattling off the numbers based on whatever was most top of mind. I was organizing them in my mind, which is an additional step. Jake warned me that doing it that way could make things harder at faster speeds, and just to rattle ‘em off in the fastest way possible, to help to not lose track. For instance, sometimes a key ball is hidden behind another in the 3D space, and leaning around to see the number can be just enough of a delay that you actually forget what the other balls were. You really gotta focus and move fast!

The Challenging Climb

We then moved to the next round, and it was noticeably faster. I got ‘em all again, but it was clearly harder. I could feel the difference in the challenge level, definitely out of my comfort zone though just in the second series. I could intuit that, if it kept accelerating, I might be OK for another round or two but would then blow past my threshold. It had me wondering about the pro athletes and Special Forces dudes and the speeds they can handle.

Sure enough, the next round started quickly, and I had trouble following the balls. I lost track of a couple right in the first second. It was very interesting to feel my mind work to reconstruct what just happened, all while still following the two balls I still had, to try to recover, and I think I did. But just when I thought I was OK, there was a big, messy collision in the middle of the box, and I lost a couple again. Sure enough, at the moment of reckoning, I got 2 out of 4 wrong.

When the first session ended, Neurotracker had narrowed it down to my threshold which was 1.83. Not bad, says young Jake, for an old dude like me. Thanks, man. Let me know if you need me to buy you a case of beer. Or show you how to shave. My results were quite consistent, though dropping a bit in the last session. That’s normal, says Jake, in part since the subject is usually tiring at this point.

And I was tired! It was less than 10 minutes all up, but I was exhausted, like after a full day in a challenging training course. I was even sweating a bit, despite the lack of movement. My brain felt like it was working hard to assimilate the session, forming new connections, the chemistry piling along. I’m writing this a few hours later, and I still feel that sensation, not unpleasant, but present. I can tell that something is going on in there.

Looking Forward

During the session, I began to think about the strategies people might use to follow the balls. Meanwhile I was inadvertently discovering ones that did not work! Looking too hard at a given ball made it hard to track the others. You kinda have to watch 'em all at once. There were times when the four balls (out of 8 bouncing around) were like a single group, not exactly moving together but still in association with each other. That worked really well, until one of those big collisions would happen.

So with one session under my belt I am intrigued, and definitely up for more.

The scientific basis is no doubt very different in terms of what Neurotracker achieves, but there was one thing that was reminiscent of the extreme focus involved when I would play Age of Empires, late at night. In that game, there was a pleasurable focus that would occur as you track about 40 things in parallel, reacting to all kinds of action. You are completely removed from your physical world, if not your daily troubles. Indeed one word for ‘entertain' in French is ‘distraire’ which also translates as ‘distracted’. I found parallels with Neurotracker, I enjoyed the sensation of extreme focus, and I am intrigued by this feeling in my brain, for now anyway!

Back to the science however, it will be very interesting to see how my scores improve with Neurotracker and how that might transfer to my soccer (Wednesday tonight!) and beyond. I’ll be back with observations on that very soon.

-JLJ

‍

Former football all-star Josh Freedland has launched a new company, Brain and Body Performance of Boston, to help athletes improve mental focus.

After sustaining a concussion himself during his career, Josh has been on a mission to find out more about the mental aspect of sports and how it relates to performance on- and off- the field. He is the best person to relate to athletes as he had over eight years of competitive football under his belt.

READ MORE about Josh's company and journey HERE.

You can also check out Josh's company website HERE.

‍

All big organizations consist of some team work, headed by a director or top manager to accomplish their missions, goals, vision and objectives of their organizations. Teams exist in all types of organizations from factories, financial institutions, retail, transportation, healthcare organizations, and educational institutions. However, executives often fail to sustain high performance of their own leadership teams. NeuroTracker training can actually help executives or any office worker to channel their mental focus, visual stimulus, concentration and awareness in the right direction to obtain good results for their respective teams and on their respective projects. The consistency of your performance depends on the types of methods used to leverage your stamina and endurance levels during a long working day.

How NeuroTracker Training Works For You?

NeuroTracker is an invention in neuroscience geared towards boosting visual performance of senior managers, CEOs and executives by improving their attention span in a competitive environment. Initially developed by Dr. Faubert at the Visual Psychophysics & Perception Lab at the University of Montreal, NeuroTracker uses 3D several object trails to separate and educate cognitive skills. (3D-MOT) also known as ’three-dimensional multiple object tracking’ is an invisible-cognitive educating system based on a 3D virtual environment.

In a first study of its kind to examine the effects of 3D-MOT training on attention, working memory, and visual information processing speed as well as using functional brain, twenty university-aged students were divided into a training (NT) and nonactive control (CON) group. Cognitive functions were tested using neuropsychological tests. Additionally, associated brain functions were measured through quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG). Results showed that 10 sessions of 3D-MOT training can boost attention, sharpen visual information speed, and working memory, instantaneously.

Furthermore, when the participant is not working, there is a long term effect on the neuroelectric brain function which continues to work on the cognitive processes long after. Therefore, for example whereby an executive or manager who has to sustain himself/herself through a complex project would benefit greatly from this type of training if done regularly for 3-5 minutes at a time. Even the shortest of time spent on the 3D-MOT does have remarkable effects on the cognitive elements of the brain.

This exercise enables them to push their visionary multi-tracking skills to beyond the limit and shut out any negativity that might blur their decision making skills.

Cognitive enhancement works both in the short-term and in the long-term and studies have shown the results for any office worker are huge and long term. Professional people, especially at the CEO level, can minimize the deleterious effects of sudden decisions in a dangerous working environment like construction, multitasking and age too. Meaning that as you get older the benefits of using this system will cushion the effect of any long-term harmful effects to the brain.

‍

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center partnered to host the "Human Dimension 2025 and Beyond: Mad Scientist Conference" from Oct. 27-28, 2015. The theme for the event was "Building Cohesive Teams to Win in a Complex World."

NeuroTracker was at the conference and our team, delivered a presentation titled "Building Cohesive Teams for the Far Future Operational Environment."

You can learn more how NeuroTracker benefits the military HERE

‍

A study done by the French Federation of Rugby (FFR) shows that players who have had NeuroTracker training show much better performance improvement on the field than those who have not. These findings were correlated with a study done by the University of Paris XI, which did a study involving Stade Toulousain, one of the highest ranked teams in Europe. These validated findings show that NeuroTracker is a useful tool for improving the performance of sports players, but it is also worth looking at how NeuroTracker results can be applied to other situations. This application, called far-transferability, is similar to the theory of Transfer of Learning.

The Basics of Transfer of Learning

Psychologists Edward Thorndike and Robert Woodworth. put forth the idea that humans learn, act, and perform based on their prior experiences. The Transfer of Learning theory states that one can become better in one area by improving in a closely related area. Far-transferability is when an individual can apply a skill learned in a prior experience to a seemingly different task. For example, being a good ice skater can translate into being a good skier; skiing and ice-skating are different and use different equipment but the brain uses its ability to maneuver on slippery surfaces from prior experiences and adapts quickly.

The Rugby Players and Far-Transferability

The studies mentioned above supported this theory. Those rugby players who had undergone NeuroTracker training showed that they could translate these skills to the field and to other areas. This type of far-transferability was shown in how players acted off the field. They showed marked improvement in decision-making, were more aware of their peripheral vision, and were more mentally focused.

Making use of NeuroTracker to transfer learned skills to real-life situations made the players react more quickly to new situations since they already had a base understanding. The idea is that by using NeuroTracker training, people can be more prepared for any new situations and handle them in a more knowledgeable manner. Imagine having a tool that allows you to be a better athlete, do better at school, and be a safer driver! Well, you don't have to imagine anymore because that's exactly what NeuroTracker can do!

‍

Q: Describe The NeuroTracker?

A: Well, it’s a virtual system that allows sports people to sharpen their perceptual and cognitive abilities for optimum performance. It’s a scientific innovation, invented by world leading neurophysicist Dr. Jocelyn Faubert from the University of Montreal, which gauges and improves cognitive performance in sports and daily activities.

Q: How would you describe it to a novice?

A: In a nutshell, it’s a 3D multiple-object tracking system that was designed to isolate and train attentional mechanisms related to vision. This training enhances the scanning speed of a visual scene and increases attention span. NeuroTracker uses a large 3D display, to improve and train athletes’ tracking skills by challenging their visionary perceptions to tracking many targets at various speeds.

Q: How does NeuroTracker help athletes?

A: An athlete's performance, amateur or professional, consists of a broad range of cognitive skills. This includes processing speed, efficiency of the learning, working memory, and level of attention. A training routine should include drills to improve cognitive skills, just as good nutrition helps muscular development.

Q: I'm concerned that this doesn't have the same intensity as a real game.

Being able to conquer these skills in a non-competitive environment is a good start. Then you can add physical and sport-specific challenges to increase the intensity of your training. You can keep adding layers of intensity until it equals or exceeds the cognitive load of a real game.

Q: How long is each session on NeuroTracker?

A: If you’re worried by how long these sessions might be, well, don’t because they only last for 3-5 minutes at a time. The effects for anyone who undertakes this, especially athletes, are dramatic because there is a speedy brain development process that ensures targeted cognitive stimulation.

Q: Is this only limited to team sports?

Experiments have shown that such intense training may have positive effects in some activities of daily living (Legault and Faubert, 2012). Further in-depth research in other areas of sports, even like car racing (Faubert, Bellavance and Hirsch, 2013) has shown improved decision-making.

‍

Un cerveau entraîné

Issu de travaux menés à l'Université de Montréal, le logiciel NeuroTracker est utilisé par des sportifs professionnels, des militaires et des élèves ayant des troubles d'apprentissage pour développer leurs facultés mentales.

Cliquez ici pour regarder le vidéo de La Presse+.

‍

How sport is learning from special forces snipers & Navy Seals

by Alec Fenn - BBC Sport

Snipers and Navy Seals would appear to have little in common with Premier League footballers, but techniques used by the US Special Forces to perform better under pressure are helping world-class athletes gain a mental advantage over their rivals.

Technology used to train the elite military to stay calm as they pull the trigger has been adopted by an Olympic gold medal-winning Team GB athlete, while several clubs in English football's top flight have bought a brain-training device normally used to help improve the peripheral vision of marksmen in battle.

Scanning the brains of Navy Seals has also revealed the power of meditation in developing the mental muscle of both combatants and athletes, and a new piece of naval-funded research could help solve the mystery of unfulfilled talent in sport in the years ahead.

The battle for marginal gains has never been as fierce.

READ MORE

‍

This study aimed to measure the capacity of older participants to improve their tracking speed thresholds (NeuroTracker), to investigate if age related cognitive decline can be reversed with a training intervention known to be directly relevant to the effects of healthy aging.

What Was Studied

20 healthy younger adults (mean age 24 years old) and 20 healthy older adults (mean age 67 years old) performed 15 NeuroTracker training sessions distributed over 5 weeks.

What Was Found

Both groups obtained benefit from training with a similar rate of progression. Though the older group started off at a significantly lower level than the younger group, they obtained speed thresholds that were similar to those of untrained younger adults by the end of the training program. Furthermore, towards the end of the training program the rate of learning appeared to have slowed for the younger group, yet the older group still showed a strong learning curve, suggesting greater improvements with continued training.

Takeaways

In conclusion, although healthy older people show a significant age-related deficit in the NeuroTracker task, they respond strongly to training effects and demonstrate an ability to fully reverse age-related functional decline with a short intervention of NeuroTracker training.

‍

Reference: Isabelle Legault et al. ‘Healthy older observers show equivalent perceptual-cognitive training benefits to young adults for multiple object tracking’ Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 4, 2013.

Looking for more information on NeuroTracker research? Feel free to contact us.

This study aimed to assess the learning capacities of elite athlete populations compared to amateur athletes and non-athlete university students on a neutral cognitive task (NeuroTracker).

What Was Studied

308 participants were tested on 15 distributed NeuroTracker sessions, grouped as 102 elite level team-sport athletes consisting of 51 professional soccer players (English Premier League), 21 professional ice hockey players (National Hockey League) and 30 professional rugby players (French Top 14 Rugby League). 173 elite amateurs consisted of 136 NCAA university sports programs (USA), and 37 European Olympic training centre. Finally, 33 non-athlete university students (Université de Montréal) were also included in this study.

What Was Found

The results showed a clear distinction between the level of athletic performance and corresponding fundamental mental capacities for learning an abstract and demanding dynamic scene task. Elite athletes showed significantly higher baselines than the other groups, along with substantially superior learning rates. The amateur athletes group similarly showed superior learning rates over the non-athletes’ student group.

Takeaways

The findings with these large study populations demonstrate that NeuroTracker is a valuable tool for investigating the advanced cognitive learning characteristic of athletes, shown for the first time in this research domain.

‍

Reference: Jocelyn Faubert. ‘Professional athletes have extraordinary skills for rapidly learning complex and neutral dynamic visual scenes’ Scientific Reports 3, 1154 (2013).

Looking for more information on NeuroTracker research? Feel free to contact us.

This study aimed at investigating if age-related cognitive decline in functional capacities can be reversed with a short cognitive intervention (NeuroTracker training). Biological Motion Perception (BMP) involves complex interpretations of human-based movement and body language, essential for interpreting social stimuli and managing complex scenes such as in crowds or sports activities. Young adults cannot read BMP at less than 1 meter, whereas with healthy older people it is typically lost at 4m (a critical risk for collision avoidance). This research focused on testing if the capacities of young adults could be regained.

What Was Studied

41 older adults with mean age of 68 years old were divided into trained, active control (placebo), and passive control (no training) groups. They were measured on a standardised BMP post training, which consisted of 15 NeuroTracker sessions distributed over 5 weeks.

What Was Found

Only the NeuroTracker trained group showed transfer to BMP, who demonstrated substantial improvements in processing BMP at 4m. 

Takeaways

The conclusion was a clear and positive transfer of perceptual-cognitive training onto a socially relevant ability in the elderly.

‍

Reference: Isabelle Legault & Jocelyn Faubert. ‘Perceptual-cognitive training improves biological motion perception: evidence for transferability of training in healthy aging’ NeuroReport 23(8) 469-473, 2012.

Looking for more information on NeuroTracker research? Feel free to contact us.

For all but the most in-the-know CBD consumer, the labels on CBD tinctures can be a bit confusing. Is 15 mg per serving good for me? Is 50 mg per day considered a lot or a little? And then there's the big one - just what exactly are the different types of CBD? You'll find different descriptors on each bottle, but what do these descriptors mean? What makes the broad spectrum different from isolate? This article will touch on each type of CBD and then explain more in-depth about broad-spectrum CBD options.

What Are the Different Types of CBD?

There are three different types of CBD, and to understand them, we need a little background on CBD itself. CBD is the acronym for "cannabidiol,” one of hemp's many beneficial plant compounds. It's a close relative of THC, but unlike THC, it does not have a psychoactive effect on the human body.

CBD can be processed in many ways, including CO2 extraction, ethanol extraction, and alcohol extraction. What comes out at the end depends on how highly the hemp is processed.

• Full Spectrum CBD is the least processed. It is the first fruit of extraction and offers the full spectrum of plant compounds. This includes terpenes, cannabinoids, essential oils, and omega fatty acids.

• Broad Spectrum CBD takes an extra step to remove all THC from the compound.

• CBD Isolate is the most processed form of cannabidiol. The extraction process takes it down to its molecular form and leaves nothing but pure CBD.

Is Broad Spectrum CBD a Good Choice for Me?

Broad-spectrum CBD is an excellent medium choice for the CBD consumer. There are pros and cons to CBD isolate, and full-spectrum and broad-spectrum sort of meet them in the middle.

Full-spectrum CBD offers the best potential benefits due to what scientists call "the entourage effect." The many cannabinoids, terpenes, fats, and oils of the hemp plant work together synergistically in your body to maximize results. But full-spectrum has trace amounts of THC. On the other hand, CBD isolate certainly has not even a trace of THC - but it also doesn't offer the wide variety of plant compounds that enhance and uplift the efficacy of CBD.  

Broad-spectrum CBD offers enough of the other plant compounds for the entourage effect but removes the THC for those who don't want it in their blend. This is a good option for THC-averse or people worried about their employment status.

THC amounts in full-spectrum (less than 0.03%) are not enough to cause a high or be illegal but can cause a false positive on a THC drug test in higher amounts. Sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry.

What to Know About Broad Spectrum CBD Tincture

Now we'll take a look at 3 essential points about broad-spectrum CBD tinctures that will help you select the right type for you.

1. It Comes in Different Strengths

You can purchase broad-spectrum CBD tinctures in a variety of strengths. This allows for greater flexibility in dosing. Some less potent options come in 10 mg-25 mg per serving. Other higher-potency options will offer as much as 50 mg-200 mg per serving.

Because the FDA does not regulate CBD, there's no official dosing chart. And this is okay because, honestly, your dose is a pretty individual thing. If you're new to CBD, the best practice is to start small (10 mg-25 mg dose) and see how it makes you feel. You can dose up as needed.

CBD has a good safety profile and has only a few mild possible side effects. To give you an idea of how much CBD is considered typical, take a look at these numbers (these are based on a person weighing about 150 lbs):

• A low dose of CBD is around 15-30 mg

• A moderate dose of CBD is around 31-75 mg

• A high dose is anything 75 mg or above

It's best to talk to your doctor about starting a CBD regimen. They may be able to help you come up with an effective dosing schedule.

2. It's Easy to Take

CBD products come in many forms, from soft gels to gummies. But oil tinctures are an extremely versatile way to get your CBD. It comes in many flavors that lend themselves to sublingual (under the tongue) dosing. Simply fill the dropper to the desired amount, squirt under the tongue, and hold for about 30 seconds. Or you can even get a bit more creative.

• Mix CBD oil in a cup of tea or a glass of morning juice

• Add CBD oil to a fruit smoothie

• You can use CBD oil as a substitute for oil used in baking to create a variety of tasty CBD edibles. CBD brownies, anyone?

3. Not All Broad-Spectrum Tinctures are Created Equal

Broad-spectrum CBD oil tinctures are a great way to get your CBD, but not just anyone will do. In a vast, unregulated marketplace, it's crucial to make sure you purchase a product from a trusted brand. Here are a few things to look for when buying a broad-spectrum CBD oil tincture:

• Look for third-party test results from independent labs. This is the only way to ensure that the company selling the product is being honest about the potency and purity of their product.

• Find a company that is reputable and well-known for quality. Look for awards, accolades, and mentions in mainstream publications.

• Check the reviews. Look at the reviews on the company website and search for mentions in third-party reviews.

• Don't be pulled in by brands that offer dirt-cheap products. Quality ingredients and third-party testing cost money. If you have trouble affording CBD products, look for brands that offer loyalty discounts or assistance programs.

With these guidelines, you should easily find a brand of broad-spectrum CBD that works well for you. Happy hunting!

‍

Brain health is becoming an increasingly important topic in modern times. However, not many people are aware of the everyday ways you can keep your mind both healthy and sharp. Here we’ll run through 5 things you can do on a daily basis to keep your grey matter optimized for health and performance, whatever your age.

1. Exercising

In recent decades the health sciences have been finding exercise to be a panacea for physical and mental wellbeing. There are a number different benefits to working out.

Firstly, engaging in rigorous activity enhances your cardiovascular system, which is responsible for supplying sufficient oxygen to your brain. A lack of brain oxygenation in aging is associated with many forms of cognitive decline. Physical activity also stimulates chemical changes in the brain that enhance learning, mood and thinking.

Secondly, if doing exercise outdoors, exposure to daylight allows our skin to rapidly synthesize vitamin D. Vitamin D is known to be the wonder vitamin for overall health and disease prevention, as well as playing a central role in regulating nerve cell growth between neurons, and boosting neurotransmitters. In fact, some of the latest medical findings in the US suggest it may strongly suppress symptoms in patients infected with COVID-19. Additionally, sunlight via the retina enhances our emotional state through stimulating feel good hormones.

Thirdly, when playing sports, complex motor-skill learning is induced. Rather than just training your muscular system, this gives your brain and central nervous a serious workout too. And if playing tactical or team-based sports like basketball, soccer or tennis, your perceptual-cognitive and decision-making systems are also put to the test.

A landmark study published in Nature revealed that elite athletes have highly adaptive brains geared for rapid learning of new skills. This could be related to the intensive cognitive workouts they sustain throughout the careers.

Takeaway – try to take some time out of every day to do some exercise, preferably outdoor sports. However, something as simple as having a routine of walking or cycling to work will still be beneficial for your mental acuity.

2. Taking on New Learning Challenges

Your brain thrives from learning. Learning stimulates neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, testing our grey matter to keep in peak shape in order to keep adapting and growing. A key aspect is the degree of challenge involved in learning a particular skill. Research has found that longer term challenges offer significant long-term benefits. Classic examples of such activities include learning a new language or learning to play a musical instrument.

However even novel skills, such as learning to juggle or ride a unicycle, still tax the brain significantly. The most important thing is to be engaged in constant learning, and when you plateau, move onto a new challenge. Even socializing with new people engages many high-level cognitive systems, giving your mind a continuous workout and increasing longevity. The benefit is that your mind is then primed to perform on a daily basis, no matter what you are faced with.

Takeaway – take on learning new and novel tasks whenever you can, stick with them while still challenging, but move on once the challenge plateaus.

3. Maintaining a Healthy Diet

Previously we covered superfoods for your brain, however brain health and performance involves everything you eat. Therefore, the most important goal is achieving a balanced diet, particularly in terms of varied vitamin and mineral intake.

For example, if you are moderately low on vitamin K, your body cannot code proteins involved with removing plaque growth along your arteries. This is directly related to an increased risk of heart disease, along with restricting blood flow between the ears.

Stocking the health store shelves alongside supplements, ‘brain boosting’ nootropics have been seeing a big rise in last 5 years, with myriads of new products coming onto the market each year. Overall, the scientific jury is still out for most of them, awaiting more compelling evidence to support their actual cognitive effects.

That said there are exceptions, such as omega-3 supplements, which have shown benefits of improvement in brain functions, particularly for people with mild cognitive decline and depression. Omega-3 fatty acids can be eaten in their natural form by keeping the skin on fish, with some research showing this form has greater benefits for tuning up your thinking skills.

Takeaway – it’s advice we’ve all heard before, ‘eat a balanced diet’. Consuming a variety of healthy foods will go a long way to giving your brain the nutrition it needs to stay in shape.

4. Getting Good Quality Sleep

Quality sleep is one of the big topics when it comes to overall wellness. Not only does a sound night’s rest physically rejuvenate your brain and body, dreaming involves simulating reality both mentally and physically. When you dream, you learn.

Psychologically, dreaming is known to be a critical factor for our mental health. If you don’t get REM for many days, the side effect risks could even include death. On the positive side, good sleep has been shown in many studies to boost our long-term memory capacities. This is because the act of sleeping itself has direct a role in the consolidation of memory, which is essential for learning and retaining new information.

Other research in recent years has validated the trend for elite athletes to engage in sleep training. For example, a Stanford University study found that almost a full second was shaved off basketball players' sprint times and free throw shooting improved by almost 10% when players extended their sleep time.

Takeaway – getting enough sleep, and good quality sleep, literally improves how your perform each and every day.

5. Engaging in Cognitive Training

While there has been much debate over the transfer effects of the many types of brain training applications on the market, there are a number of companies who have established strong evidence that the right kind of cognitive training provides real-world benefits. As we covered previously, NeuroTracker has been deemed to be a role-model neurotechnology, with a plethora of peer-reviewed studies demonstrating wide benefits to mental performance.

Though the majority of people wouldn’t typically consider a training program to sharpen their minds, cognitive training has become standard practice for professional athletes, along with many people interested in healthy aging. What do these two groups have in common? Just one thing, they want to better their brains. The question is, who doesn’t?

The latest research shows that cognitive training programs can be highly practical and convenient to fit into a daily routine. For instance, findings with NeuroTracker show that just one 6-minute session per day on a personal computer or laptop, transfers to robust gains in real-world performance in a matter of weeks. This has been corroborated in EEG based studies with positive and sustained improvements in brainwave activity throughout many regions, indicating a heightening of neuroplasticity.

Takeaway – to sharpen your mind in a highly efficient manner, take on a cognitive training program and make it part of your daily routine.

Upwards and Onwards

It’s common for people to think that some level of cognitive decline is inevitable from as young as 30 years old, however neuroscience tells us it’s time to think again. We’ve covered 5 simple and practical ways to tweak your daily routines to optimize your brain functions and mental sharpness. While each of these are effective, the biggest benefits will come from the synergy of incorporating several or all of these into your daily life. Good luck!

If you’re interested in learning more about brain health and fitness, checkout our blogs covering specific topics.

5 Ways to Boost Your Neurogenesis

7 Ways to Harness Your Neuroplasticity

9 Superfoods for Your Brain

‍