Creative thinking involves distracting yourself from the problem at hand.
When you daydream, your mind "visualizes" things almost without any effort on your part. That means you already have the ability to visualize. Here I will outline from a neuroscience perspective why visualization is actually like daydreaming on purpose, and more importantly, how you can you can apply this knowledge to help you succeed in any endeavor.
Daydreaming is an Innate Ability
Everyone has the capacity to daydream. But here's the catch - it’s random by its very nature. It happens unexpectedly, and there's usually no specific purpose behind it. Images come and go as they please, often without any logical connection.
Visualization, however, is not random. It's not unexpected. It’s usually undertaken with a definite purpose or goal in mind before you begin. Images will still come and go, but now you're focusing on those images, on their relationship to each other, and on their significance to your underlying goal or purpose.
The Power of Visualization for Learning
In our previous Mpowered article on The Power of Beliefs, it was explained how the brain is the most complex structure in the known universe, and the most powerful super computer in the world. Through the remarkable nature of neuroplasticity, it is also highly adaptive with the right kind of stimulation.
Whether you think about doing something, or you actually do it, the same neural pathways are activated, triggering changes in brain state and learning. In fact, visualization can also create motor learning effects. Dreaming about playing tennis, for instance, can actually help you become a more skillful player.
To some extent this happens just simply watching other people perform tasks. This is because ‘mirror neurons’ actually simulate the experience internally. For example, one study showed that in comparison to hours actually player, golf caddies punch well above their weight making shots on the course, because their minds and bodies have simulated practice through watching others so much.
Your Brain is Primed to Help you Succeed
The reason this phenomenon exists is that the brain cannot distinguish between a real experience or one you imagined. The same thought patterns develop. With real vision it's possible to realize your dreams - no matter how big or far away they might seem. Whatever you want to achieve, you already have the power.
If you can imagine yourself doing something, there's no reason why you can't actually do it. And that brings us to another astonishing fact, which is that your brain is already geared for success!
Creating Mental Space for Breakthrough Moments
You may have experienced this yourself at one time or another. It happens when you're busy doing something, trying hard to find a solution to a problem, and getting nowhere. You're stuck and can't find a way forward. You know there's a simple solution, but for some reason you can't quite put your finger on it. Eventually you stop working, take a break, relax and start doing something completely different. Then, when you're not thinking about the problem, the solution just pops into your head.
The same thing happens when you're learning a new skill. Perhaps you're struggling with a difficult sports technique, or a second language, or trying to prepare a proposal for an important project. You work and work away at it, seeming to get nowhere. So, you stop, focus on something else, and forget about it for a while. And then, when you're busy with something else and no longer thinking about it, the information you need to move forward seems to appear out of nowhere.
Those of us who did a lot of motorway driving before COVID 19, often got good ideas on the road. Flashes of inspiration seemingly pop out of nowhere. This can also occur in the shower or even while shaving or brushing your hair. In his book The New Psycho-Cybernetics (updated by Dan Kennedy), author Maxwell Maltz explains the phenomenon like this:
Tapping Into the Unconscious Mind
Once again, we're back to the power of the human brain, and more specifically the unconscious mind. It's at the core of the process and the real engine behind this mechanism. While you're busy working away, looking for a solution, neurons are making connections. They're actively acquiring new data, linking together to assimilate all the information. And even when you consciously stop focusing on the problem at hand, your brain keeps right on going, working in the background to fill in the gaps and come up with an answer.
What's great about this mechanism is that we all have it, and it simply involves distracting yourself from the problem at hand.
It isn't reserved for scientists, artists, inventors or authors. Some people might make more frequent use of it than others, but everyone has the capacity to benefit from it. There are lots of different names for what's going on here, such as breakthrough moments, inspiration, ingenuity, revelation, spark, illumination, vision, insight, and flash of genius. Whatever you call them, they all have one thing in common: they give you the power to turn the things you imagine into reality.
Visualization Takeaways
Firstly, we’ve discussed how daydreaming is innately wired into your brain. Secondly, that visualization taps into this but in a focused way, and it can be harnessed to achieve your goals. Thirdly, your brain is a powerful simulator of reality, and allowing visualizations to literally adapt your mind and body. Lastly, once you start to visualize purposely, you can also tap into a natural success mechanism to help you achieve any goals, which is boosted when you allow your mind some mental space to unconsciously process solutions to overcome challenges to your goals.
With this simple recipe you can set yourself up for flashes of genius and beyond – so get ready to succeed at levels way past your dreams!
If you found this blog insightful, then also check out the previous Mpowered blog: The Power of Beliefs
Once you become mindful and aware of how flexible your interpretation of your experiences can really be, the more open your belief system becomes to the things you can choose to achieve
A surprising finding from neuroscience research is that our beliefs are based on only a tiny fragment of the sensory information available to us. Ultimately our view of reality is subjectively constructed. At Mpowered, we often share with our clients the power of belief, and how our amazing brain creates them, and ultimately, how our beliefs guide our behaviors. So in this article I'll cover the key concepts on how we form our beliefs, and the power our beliefs have in shaping who we are and what we do.
What do you see above?
‘Opportunity nowhere’ or ‘opportunity now here’…?
This is a great example of subconscious filtering. Even when such filtering is subtle, it can dramatically change the way we filter life's experiences, shaping everything we do. When we think of belief, we often think of faith. But at a more fundamental level, belief forms our very view of reality, and accordingly how we act in that reality.
How Our Brain Processes the Ingredients of Beliefs…
The brain is amazing, it is the most complex structure known to mankind, only weighing 2% of the body's total weight, yet taking up 20% of the body’s energy resources. With one hundred thousand chemical reactions happening in the brain every second of everyday, it is the most powerful super computer in the world. Yet unfortunately, it comes with no operating instructions!
So, let’s start at the beginning. We take in information from the world around us in via our different senses at a rate of about 2 million bits per second. That said, our brains simply cannot cope with this amount of information, so it filters this down to 134 bits per second using a few tricks up it’s sleeve. Namely this happens by generalizing, distorting and deleting the information deep in our unconscious mind. It then evaluates the data using our meta programs, being our past experiences, our values and current beliefs, so that the information fits with our current model of the world.
...and then Constructs Beliefs
This whole filtering process is done unconsciously, so we generally don’t get to choose how we filter information coming in from our environment. It is all done by the unconscious mind, focusing on only a tiny bit of the huge amount of data available. The goal is to help us achieve our outcomes and to create a version of the event that fits with our current model of the world, also known in neuroscience as the ‘internal model’. Next we internalize that hugely filtered and changed experience made up from our senses, to create the internal representation or belief about a particular event.
Once we have an internal representation or belief, we log that by applying labels to the experience which is the way we describe it to ourselves - either a good experience or bad experience.
Our Version of Experience
So what we process is a hugely diminished version of what creates our actual experience. Therefore, what we perceive to be real in our minds, is entirely drawn from this very limited pool of information. This means that, in essence, we create a simulation of our perceived reality, which is inherently subjective.
This explains why two people can have the same experience and interpret the situation entirely differently. Imagine if we asked an architect and a policeman to walk down a busy high street and asked them to describe what they noticed about it at the other end. Well the policeman is likely to tell us about the people, traffic and the potential for crime. Whereas an architect would probably tell us about the different styles and ages of the buildings. So if we listen to these two accounts, we probably wouldn’t know they were talking about the same experience. That’s because they have different internal representations.
Freeing Our Perceptions
What is most intriguing is how people cling on to very limiting beliefs, often providing evidence to support a narrow view of an experience - rather than challenging themselves in terms of how they interpret what it can actually mean. This is an easily learned habit to fall into, but it can also severely limit our potential to be aware and act on opportunities all around us.
The key take-away is that once you become mindful and aware of how flexible your interpretation of your experiences can really be, the more open your belief system becomes to the things you can choose to achieve - in literally any situation! It’s all about replacing limiting thought processes, with more empowering beliefs that support positive outcomes.
It's not about what’s right or wrong, it’s about what’s most useful to believe.
If you are interested in delving into the surprising ways we perceive reality on the sports field, then also check out this blog.
Whether good or bad, we can be sure that online games have been a huge part of the digital age, and that they can play a positive role in shaping a person’s personality, or social capability
There are numerous studies, and debates on the effects of online games on people’s social behaviors. This multitude of research claims that these games play a larger role in a person’s social life, apart from serving as a medium for entertainment, online games included. Their respective studies are designed to provide insight to those social effects, whether good or bad. And in this article, we’re going to check some of them out. So let's take a deep dive into on the impact of online games on social behaviors!
Origins of Online Gaming
Video games initially emerged as an alternative form of entertainment in the past. Whether it was to compete against a friend over high scores, or simply show off complicated combos in a fighting game, both are meant to pass the time, and enjoy interacting with friends. As time passed by, and technology evolved, so did video games. They became more complex, adapted to better graphics, and showed resemblance, if not hints, of realism.
This branched out into numerous genres, each serving its own purpose, and catering to specific niches. One of those branches is online games, which serves not only as a means to entertain oneself, but also a communication hub, where people from all over the world can interact in a single, virtual world.
Impact on the Human Mind
Contrary to common opinion and a lot of coverage in the media, gaming has been found scientifically to deliver a number of cognitive and psychological benefits. Some of these findings have been summarized by neuroscientists Daphne Bavelier and Jane McGonigal at key TED talks. The effects can vary depending on the type of game, for example 1st person shooters, like Call Of Duty, are known to be more beneficial than more casual online games, such as Minecraft Here we will break down what some of those specific benefits can be.
Spatial Awareness
Studies claim that playing online games have great influences on the players’ minds. Researchers claim that one of the things players benefit from online gaming is the improvement of their visual to spatial skill, or most commonly known as spatial awareness.
Spatial awareness is a person’s ability to become aware of objects in a certain space, in relation to the body’s position. It is a natural perception ability that allows a person to react to the objects within the environment. One good example of spatial awareness is the ability of a baby to recognize the fact that when they move towards an object, said object is moving towards them. Then the initial reaction of the toddler will be to reach for it when it is in arm’s reach.
Playing online games can improve one’s spatial awareness ability as game-play requires gamers to be reactive towards the game’s virtual environment, often looking out for traps, moving enemies, and surprise attacks. Even players taking on a support role are heavily focused on the health bar of their party members, and should be able to quickly react to it at a moment’s notice.
Researchers have done some cognitive tests on gamers, and non-gamers and have come to the conclusion that gamers tend to track multiple objects at once, and much faster than their non-gamer brethrens. They also found out that gamers can be quick to cancel out unnecessary objects in their environment, and focus more on the objective at hand. They also show more efficiency in switching from one task to another, also known as attentional flexibility.
Visual Analysis Skills
There are also studies claiming that online gamers have better visual analysis skills, and have more efficient problem solving skills by analyzing the environment. Researchers believe that these improvements are directly related to the intense mental activity that is related to players focusing their visual attention in the game’s environment, as well as suppressing distraction.
However there are little studies to show that playing online games have anything to do with having higher IQs, or how it could directly affect a person’s academic performance. And yet, schools are gradually using games as a means to educate children. It is rumored that it has something to do with children being attracted to a game’s visual effects, and engaging environment as opposed to the usual teaching methods.
Mental Health
Apart from innovative teaching methods, online games are being looked at as a possible solution to mental health problems such as improving the reading ability of dyslexic children, as these games have shown signs of greatly improving a player’s visual attention skill. Another is to treat people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or (PTSD), as there were also signs that playing war based first-person shooters are familiar environments for soldiers suffering from the said psychological disorder. Despite these implications, online games are not all fun, and with games, for every good thing, there is always the risk of a undesired effects.
Impact on Aggression
Other researchers claim that online games can also have negative impacts on players, especially those that are perceived as violent in nature, and often affect how players interact in real life. First-person shooter online games, action RPG games, horror games are often perceived as violent games. Studies relating to violence in games often make assessments that center on controlled and uncontrolled behaviors, more commonly known in the research field as internalized and externalized problems respectively.
Internalized vs. Externalized Behavioral Problems
Internalized problems pertain to behavioral problems such as anxiety, and depression, while externalized behavioral problems pertain to hyperactivity, and uncontrolled aggressive behaviors. How these behavioral problems impact players depend on the type of games players often spend their time with.
For example, playing games that are in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games genre, or MMORPG can lead to an increase in internalized behavioral problems such as depression or self-isolation. This may come from the emotion that they have better chances of forming relationships in MMORPGs, than in real life. So some players tend to isolate themselves from the real world, choosing then to satisfy their social needs inside a game. This is a common issue in Japan whereas some of their citizens, particularly males, often hide themselves from actual social contact, and would rather stay at home, and play games. Japan has coined these people as hikikomori.
On the other hand, playing first-person shooter games such as Doom, or violent action RPG games like God of War can create external behavior problems, especially in teens. This is made under the impression that the violent, and aggressive scenes of such games will affect a player’s mind to test the scenarios in real life. Researchers have also concluded that high levels of realism in violent games, or the more their visuals resemble real life aesthetics, the higher the chance players will exhibit aggressive behaviors.
But there are researchers who argue that there is no solid evidence that correlates violent video games, and aggressive behaviors. Often citing that majority of the people who displayed violent behaviors in real life have little to do with playing video games. There are also studies that claim most criminals often express their violent tendencies in the form of writing in journals, or take inspirations from books they’ve read.
Parents however are still concerned about the existence of violence in games, and how easy it is for their children who are still minors can access it. Although video game companies are taking measures to ensure that these games do not fall into the hands of less mature audiences. Regardless of the debate on whether online games do actually impact violent, or self-isolating behaviors, one can always agree that these games have brought people closer, and have formed another means of socialization.
Impact on Socialization
It is no secret that one of the many popular features of online games is its ability to connect with people around the world over the internet. No matter how far a friend can be, the distance could always be closed-in with just a login from the computer. It has combined two mediums, namely entertainment, and communication. Studies show that people who play online games, like MMORPGs tend to easily get along with strangers, as their social interaction in-game allows them to be aware of other people’s culture.
Opposed to some studies, there are people who exhibit great social skills that they acquired inside an online game, as these people, if found out they are in the same location, would often plan meet-ups, and partake in social activities, much like any normal person. There are also scenarios where intimate relationships were formed inside an online game, and end up in real-life marriages. People often perceive online gamers as very sociable people, and easy to get along with.
Studies believe that this is because of the nature of some MMORPGs that promote teamwork in order to achieve tasks, or accomplish goals. As opposed to single player games that would have only one player accomplish the challenges. There are also large raid missions present in popular MMORPGs that require four to sixteen players to be huddled up in one dungeon in an attempt to conquer it, these forces players who are mostly strangers in real life to communicate, finding common ground in trying to achieve the task at hand.
Whether good or bad, we can be sure that online games have been a huge part of the digital age, and that they can play a positive role in shaping a person’s personality, or social capability. And as online games continue to evolve, and their massive library continues to grow, like in the Steam Store, or in other gaming sites. We can be sure that online games will continue to have an impact on our social behaviors.
About 'Nash'
Nash is an article writer for the pop culture website Otakultura and a frequent contributor for Games.lol. He is an avid gamer, an experienced writer and a video editor.
If you are interested the competitive dimension of gaming, then also checkout our eSports blog special.
Discover the surprisingly therapeutic benefits of listening to a good tune!
Music has always been an antidote to negative emotions. People who want to relax and comfort themselves would always think of music as one of the options. Listening to music has great effects on people’s emotions. It is also helpful for your mental health. Here we will cover the different ways music is good for your mental health.
Connection of Music and Mental Health
Music has relaxing elements that can make people feel better. Most days, people who listen to their favorite song are happier. For people who are having a hard day, music can also be helpful in making them feel happier. This is why it works perfectly in improving mental health. The connection of music and mental health can be found on the matching benefits of the former to the brain functions and emotions.
What can it Do for Mental Health?
Music has always been working for people who have mental health issues. Children who are experiencing anxiety, depression and lack of self-esteem can take music lessons. It provides confidence, relaxation and even helps in emotional healing. For adults who have traumatic experiences, they also benefit from music. It helps relieve people from the negative feelings brought by stress and pressure.
What Happens when We Listen to Music?
There are a lot of benefits that we can get from music. Our mind also benefits from it in different ways. Here are the different effects of music to the mind:
It can Improve Memory
It has been proven many times that listening to music can help improve memory. This is evident in scenarios where students review with background music. While reading or doing something, music can actually boost your brain function. It is also good for babies who are still in the womb of their mothers. It has been proven that mothers who listen to classical music can help improve the brain function of their babies.
It can Help Treat Mental Illness
In cases where a person is experiencing mental health related conditions, music can be used as part of the therapy. For those who are experiencing depression and other conditions, good music can be a perfect distraction. The perfect song or music can provide comfort and can change the mood. It eases the brain and gives people peace. It may not be used as a major treatment but it can work wonders in the mind of the patient.
It Makes You Happier
There are days when it seems so hard to even get up from bed. There are also days when you feel like you cannot start your work. In times like this, you can listen to music. You will notice how your mood can change when you play an upbeat song or your favorite music. This is an effect that music can easily bring. Listening to motivational songs can also help you get through the day.
It Helps Relieve Stress and Anxiety
Stress is a normal part of a busy day. If you are an adult and you are working, you will never be able to get away from stress. But if you are going to integrate music in your daily activities, you will be able to relieve stress. This is also the same with anxiety. Whenever you feel anxious, listening to music can help create a good distraction.
It Strengthens Learning and Memory
Learning is better when you are going to listen to music. Some children and even adults easily feel sleepy when they are reading. This is something that you can work on if you are going to listen to music. It will enhance the memory and it can help you understand the things that you are reading.
It Helps Reduce Pain
Music therapy is an option for people who are experiencing chronic pain due to disease. There are specific types of music that are soothing. It does not really work in the healing but it helps in the reduction of pain.
It Helps Alzheimer’s Patients Remember
Music is known as one of the tools that are being used to help patients with Alzheimer’s enhance their memory. Studies have shown that music can help patients remember emotions and memories. This is why it is being used by caregivers. Patients who are willing to learn music lessons are also happier and more responsive.
Which Type of Music is good for Mental Health?
The answer to this question is relative. Firstly, this depends on the preference of the person. If you listen to your favorite song, you will surely feel much better. Motivational music, classical and other relaxing types of music are perfect for your mental health. If you want to relax and relieve stress, you should choose to listen to soothing music and avoid loud sounds.
Bottom Line
All in all, music is indeed a perfect tool that can be used to deal with depression and other mental health issues. Along with relaxing and resting, you can consider listening to music. You can also listen to it while you are busy doing other stuff. If you want to work on your confidence, you can learn to play an instrument. There are many different ways you can enjoy music, and it is easily accessible to almost everyone.
Key opinion leaders in different domains of human performance provide unique insights into the benefits of cognitive training with NeuroTracker.
To celebrate 10 years of NeuroTracker being used at the highest levels of human performance, the NeuroTracker Team is proud to share Experts Corner blogs by 10 thought leaders in performance, rehabilitation and cognitive assessment. Here we will introduce the experts and give a snapshots of their 2 cents on NeuroTracker, along with a key quote from each blog.
1. Dr. Leonard Zaichkowsky
Dr. Zaichkowsky has pioneered the field of sport psychology. As one of the world’s most distinguished sports scientists, he has worked with teams in the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB, Australian Rules Football, the Spanish national soccer team, and Olympic sports teams around the world. He is also a prolific author of an extensive range of scientific papers and books.
Here Dr. Zaichkowsky reveals just how much of elite sports performance resides between the ears.
‘‘From my own experience as Director of Sports Science at the Vancouver Canucks, we found that there was almost a one to one correspondence with scores on NeuroTracker and decision-making accuracy on the ice. This really surprised the coaches and scouts. You can imagine just how valuable measures like this can be for identifying upcoming talents.’’
2. Mick Clegg
Mick is founder of Seed of Speed has been a performance coach for 38 years, and was Strength & Conditioning Coach for Manchester United Football Club from 2000 to 2011. He has been instrumental in the development of many of the world’s top football players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville, to name a few.
Based on his experience with super-elite athletes, Mick explains how training regimes should always be in the hot zone to capture true potential, and also just how crucial visual perception is on the sports field.
‘‘NeuroTracker is a really nice example of threshold training. It pushes each athlete’s speed processing limits every session. The training effects show this actually speeds up brain waves, associated with greater alertness and mental focus. More technologies should apply this conditioning principle, because in the zone is right where elite athletes need to be each and every time they train.’’
3. Julien Southon
Julien is a specialist in visual, cognitive and motor performance, and founder of Sport Your Brain. He applies his background in biology and psychology to training elite sports performance.
In this blog Julien covers the great value of being able to provide remote cognitive training programs to clients during confinement.
‘‘The fact that NeuroTracker’s 3D-Multiple Object Tracking training improves the perception of human biological movement, i.e. the ability to read and interpret information from body language (position of the body, head, orientation of the hip), it is an excellent way to reduce the risk of sports injury related to errors in reading or anticipation by the player, such as with tackling in soccer or rugby.’’
4. Professor Jocelyn Faubert
Professor Faubert is Director of the Faubert Lab, as well as the scientific mastermind behind NeuroTracker. Deemed the ‘world’s preeminent expert in the field of visual perception’, he has worked on the neuroscience underpinning NeuroTracker for over 25 years.
Here Professor Faubert delivers insights on the radical transformations that digital therapeutics are bringing to the healthcare industry.
‘‘There are so many independent researchers and institutes using NeuroTracker, a key reason why we’ve been selected by Bayer and other major health companies to partner with. You ideally you want scientific expertise to be merged with industry-specific expertise, and I think when it comes to companies in digital health, NeuroTracker sets the right standards to follow.’’
5. Dr. Roman Velasquez
Dr. Velasquez is founder of Neuro Peak Performance. utilizing his background as an interpersonal neurobiological neuroscientist and doctorate in leadership as a ‘Combat Sports Brain Performance Coach’. He applies the latest neuroscience technologies and methodologies to push the vanguards of athletic conditioning.
Here Dr. Velasquez provides an in-depth explanation of how neuroscience methodologies and technologies can elevate elite sports performance to another level.
‘‘NeuroTracker training adapts speed and complexity in a way that maximizes your sport cognitive training at every step. Focus, concentration, and attention are not simple, they are complex inside your brain but they can be trained, and NeuroTracker enhances these key capabilities. It also provides unique functional measures of athletic performance.’’
6. Dr. Charles Shidlofsky
Dr. Shidlofsky, O.D., P.A., FCOVD, heads Neuro-Vision Associates of North Texas. A leader in his field, he specializes in vision rehabilitation and therapy, working with numerous elite sports team across the US.
Here Dr. Shidlofsky takes a deep dive into the neurovision side of conditioning elite athletes, and how it also yields data that is invaluable for cognitive profiling.
‘‘From a more vision-specific perspective, NeuroTracker is an ideal spatial training tool. This is one reason I use NeuroTracker for my own ice hockey training. The great thing about NeuroTracking is that it forces athletes to be open in space, and that’s a critical skill to keep driving and improve.’’
7. Dr.Gerard M. DiLeo
Dr. DiLeo was Director of Pelvic Pain at the University of South Florida and is now a medical reviewer and contributor for Addictions.com. He is a published health author for McGraw-Hill, and has contributing health articles to media publications for over 30 years.
In this article Dr. DiLeo gives insights on how addiction is primarily a challenge related to impaired cognitive functions, and how efficacious interventions like NeuroTracker have great potential for recovery.
‘‘Whether used in wellness, performance, learning, or addiction, NeuroTracker gives the brain the neural prowess that is either lacking or which needs improvement. It has proven useful in decision-making under changing circumstances, which can help prevent relapse when a rehabilitated person encounters triggers after treatment.’’
8. Rob Gronbeck
Rob is a Performance Psychology Coach, Researcher & Author and founder of The Brain Room, working with elite athletes across many sports in Australia. Rob is a veteran NeuroTracker coach and key member of the Flow Genome Project.
Having coached over 5,000 sessions, Rob takes us through his own NeuroTracker journey, revealing how 600 training sessions quadrupled his visual workload capacity.
‘‘It is my belief that coaches, trainers, and athletes need to know that we can apply the same training principles we use in physical and skill acquisition for training the brain. NeuroTracker fits perfectly and allows us to do this seamlessly, while providing quantifiable metrics.’’
9. Sebastian Harenberg
Sebastian is a PhD holder in Kinesiology and Health Studies, and an Associate Professor in Exercise Science and Athletic Training at Ithaca College. He has publishes prolific research in medical and sports science journals.
Here Sebastian discusses his research which demonstrates the potential of NeuroTracker for profiling and potentially training laparoscopic surgeon skills.
‘‘We found that NeuroTracker baselines explained a significant amount of the variance in movement speed and efficiency with medical students performing a surgery simulation test. It’s promising to see a relationship between these two tasks. There are a lot of directions we could take with cognitive interventions.’’
10. Kate Allgood
Kate was recognized as one of the best female ice hockey players in Canada. With a double Masters degree specializing in sport psychology, Kate founded Quantum Performance – a high performance coaching firm specializing in mental training. She has also published several sports science books.
Here Kate underlines just how critical efficient attentional systems are for sports, breaking down in detail how NeuroTracker enhances several different types of attention, and how this transfers to performance.
‘‘Through a scientific conditioning process, NeuroTracker builds up the raw tools for maintaining awareness and attention even in the highest pressure game situations. There is no limit to what type of dual-tasks can be combined, which can be used to push performance to extremely high levels.’’
We hope you found these insights educational and now have a glimpse into how perceptual-cognitive training is driving a new frontier in human performance. Feel free to explore any of the individual blog links for a more in-depth perspective!
Alternatively, if you are interesting in reading thoughts from athletes who have actually been coached with NeuroTracker, check out this blog.
Find out the many benefits of cognitive training for healthy aging.
It is a well-known fact that cognition and memory deteriorate with age. Sometimes, elderly people develop Alzheimer's disease and dementia, which can further compound the problem. However, a technique has been framed that can help someone with the problems above, and it is called Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST). The main aim is to make people who have dementia socialize and have a continuous learning curve despite their liabilities. This method has been approved by quite a few health care workers around the world.
How is it used?
It basically involves activities that are done following a particular theme and are either provided to a single individual or demonstrated to a group. Treatment centers like hospitals and different daycare places can be the areas of implementation of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy. Since it is a very simple form of intervention, it does not need a lot of expertise, and someone can even practice it at the comfort of their own without any help per se.
CST has had global implications in recent times, with many places in Europe adapting. Some places like the US is modifying the guidelines so that it suits their requirements.
What to expect?
The first thing that a group providing Cognitive Stimulation Therapy does is formulate a popular name for itself. The next thing is to have a song that can uplift everyone's mood in a session. It is followed by a small physical activity like a simple exercise that everyone can do. Following all of this, a communication may be initiated, and the facilitator may ask the people present in the group to talk about holidays or vacations that they might have gone to in the past.
This helps in refreshing the memories and brings forward new and innovative ideas. Since most of the participants are of the geriatric age group, they can be asked to compare many things to how it was during their time. The main aim of it is to stimulate learning and mental abilities and sometimes as simple as reading can do the job for you. There are no set rules for this; a group progresses as and when it happens.
How does it work?
Psychology professors Martin Orell and Amy Specter, and Bob Woods formulated this therapy for the first time in the 1990s when they wanted to find a non-pharmacological solution for dementia and Alzheimer's disease. They concluded that the benefits reaped from CST were almost equivalent to what was achieved through medications.
Thus, it can be said that it is quite an important treatment modality, irrespective of whether it is taken as an adjuvant to medicine. It is also an effective post-retirement. If you look for retirement communities near me on the Internet, you are more likely to get redirected to centers that use CST.
The scheduling of the class requires the group to assemble for two sessions in a week, and it is continued in this pattern for almost 7 weeks. Elderly people who have dementia can especially benefit from it. Sometimes, more challenging scenarios may get introduced. The health caregivers who implemented the CST also had found benefits as they improved their communication skill and the relationship that they formed with the people. Different sources of evidence suggest that CST has successfully improved the quality of life of many individuals.
What are the components?
The sessions generally last for around 45 minutes, and the activities are designed in such a way that it enhances the social interactive abilities of the people taking part in it. The group generally consists of 5-8 people. Various topics of interest include current affairs, recognition of faces and scenes, something related to art, categorization of different objects, using the money for brain wracking calculations, the retrospective recollection of events from childhood or other long term memories. All of them are planned for 7 weeks.
What are the benefits?
The benefits have quite a few scientific backings. People who enlisted for CST have shown signs of improvement in several aspects like their cognitive abilities, concentration and memory power, mood, and the ability to express themselves. The caregivers we're able to develop a cordial and more effective communication with their patients. Check with retirement communities nearby to see if they are already taking advantage of CST to help their residents.
As far as finances are concerned, CST is useful in that aspect and is not too heavy on the pocket and anyone can afford it. More than 55+ communities who enrolled for the 7 weeks course and follow it religiously have reported having an improved quality of life.
If you feel that you can potentially benefit from CST, do not wait anymore and do so immediately. The benefits of it are going to make it worth it.
About Holly
Holly is a pet lover who owns a dog and loves to write about everything related to pets. She is a frequent writer and contributor to top online pet publications and blogs, including Faith Based Assisted Living and Pet Friendly Senior Living.
If you'd like to learn more about the health benefits of cognitive interventions, also check out this blog.
Athletic performance specialist Rob Gronbeck reveals the next level in sports training.
A growing interest in the role of brain function in peak performance is reaching critical mass. In late 2016, The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) hosted The Performing Brain seminar. Head of Performance Psychology Kirsten Peterson said, “The brain may be the next frontier… in what we understand… where sport is going to be heading and what we can do to maximize performance…” and concluded with,
“I hope we’re all on the same page in wanting to learn more about that.”
Released around the same time, Pulitzer Prize nominated and best-selling book Stealing Firereports how Navy SEALS, Google, and Silicon Valley are combining neuropsychology, psychology, and technology in pursuit of flow and group flow to accelerate learning and performance.
Prior to both though were three series of Todd Sampson’s Redesign My Brain which beautifully illustrated practical applications of ‘brain function training’ to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks for an untrained person like safe cracking, underwater escapes, and tight rope walking over a Sydney highrise!!
Now please note I am not talking about ‘THE MIND’ which is what we say to ourselves, the memories and predictions we are consciously aware of in our stream of consciousness. This article and line of work is referring to the wet wear, the neurons, glia, synapses, neurotransmitters and axons which work to create that experience of consciousness and enable our behaviour and performances.
Therefore, if you change the brain, you change the conscious experience and behavior, right?
Now do we all need to go out and get a PhD in Neuroscience, a Masters in Sport Psychology or electrical bioengineering to navigate this brave new world? With the brain many of us feel like the picture below:
As humans we are in such rush to escape our inner demons as well as to gain an edge over our competition.
Do we simply trust crowd funded neuro-tech start-ups who promise to deliver us enhanced performance through brain stimulation, neurofeedback or some other method….?
or,
Do we trust in peer-reviewed academic research and science should we with their mounds of gold standard peer-review evidence to ensure we are making critical and evidence based decisions…?
It’s a delicious, tantalising and exciting dilemma which as a practicing performance psychology coach I have wrestled with these past 6 1/2 years.
This article reflects the key criteria I’ve used to decide (without all the facts) what is relevant and what is probably “neuro-bunk.”
Now despite the consciousness raising efforts of academics, authors and documentary maker’s, certain challenges in psychology remain.
Quantifying effectiveness, avoiding psychology stigma associated with Freud, talking therapy, electric shock treatment, and only beingconsidering when something is going wrong!
Struggling with those factors in my own practice, I decided to be the first in Australia to invest in NeuroTracker, a 3D multiple object tracking program, which was about as far from the image of traditional psychology as could be. It was performance driven, used 3D and 80-inch projection screens, integrating physical activities with the psychological. Since February 2014 never once has NeuroTracker failed to elicit a “WOW, that’s cool!” response from coaches and athletes. Try getting that with traditional sport psychology!
However, I had to be true to my scientist-practitioner roots in psychology and serve my clients from an evidence base. Thus, I was encouraged when Visual Tracking Speed (VTS) showed a credible research base from the University of Montreal and it appeared to be ‘not just lights and whistles’ like many online training ‘brain training’ programs.
VTS had been shown to differ according to performance ability, fitness, age, mTBI, influence biological motion processing, ADHD, and was featured in leading peer-reviewed Journals.
Further, changes in frontal and visual brain regions indicative of heightened focus and concentration were found after 1 hour of NeuroTracker training… and a very far transfer study found improved passing accuracy in soccer from 1 ¾ hours of training (Romeas & Faubert, 2016). I went ALL IN.
From a professional coach perspective, I turn to Matt Elliott, Director of Strong Minds Australia, and former NRL head coach, who also presented at the AIS Performing Brain seminar. His sage advice to practitioners of brain training in the high performing space goes,
“No matter what… programs must be (1) engaging, (2) effective, and (3) efficient.”
With NeuroTracker I could gain and maintain a client’s attention with novel 3D, make a noticeable difference to their VTS and brain function, and with 3–4 training sessions taking only 18–24 minutes per week, it took very little time from “core sporting” tasks.
While NeuroTracker ticked all those boxes the core aspects of performance psychology are cognitive and affective. As a cognitive-perceptual task NeuroTracker did not and could not claim to impact emotions (although often an athlete’s propensity for frustration, fixed mindset, or negative self-talk emerges which a performance coach then can get to work exploring).
Also, while the program suited dynamic action and team based sports it didn’t appear to be effective for static sports such as golf, baseball pitching, or cricket. Thus, began my next search to fill that void in my practice… developing an ‘equanimous brain’.
NeuroTracker influenced Concentration Power & Sensory Clarity, less so Equanimity. (image: Shinzen Young)
As Kotler and Wheal describe in Stealing Fire and Flow: Rise of Superman, altered states of flow are explained by ‘transient hypofrontality’ with a reduction in activity of the left-frontal lobes. Neurofeedback measures that brain wave activity however medical grade devices price from $3000 — $10000. Having already gone ‘all in’ with the NeuroTracker I struggled.
I wanted something portable, needed it under $1000 with no ongoing subscriptions, and which provided a valid measurement. I looked at the VERSUS, Emotiv EEG and Muse headsets (all quality equipment).
I decided Focusband met those criteria. Although,it’s developers used the term ‘mushin’ or “mind of no mind” instead of flow. Athletes’ learn in real-time when they are getting into/out of flow and getting out of/in their own way during a golf swing, conversion kick, or tennis serve via visual, auditory and tactile feedback.
Essentially, Focusband founders Graham and Henry Boulton are measuring a person’s ability to perform mindfully. Further, they guide clients to entermushin by applying awareness of breath, noticing of body sensations and practicing acceptance which are all pillars of a best-practice mindfulness approach. PGA World Number #1 Jason Day attributes much of his success to Focusband and I love the technology for the state of brain/mind one gets into... particularly useful for my Tetris training, meditation during the day (helps to nod off for a quick power nap), and while writing or studying.
A bonus of this technology is like Neurotracker’s VTS measure, mushinscores vary due to changes in an athlete’s sleep, nutrition, workload, fatigue and social stressors… and these measures are unfudgeable… where as these rating scales are!
Traditional recovery and wellness scales are open to false answers.
So, I’ve now got two performance psychology training technologies which measure and train different regions of the brain according to the different demands relevant for certain sports and are sensitive to fatigue, mood, stress and workload.
Due to their novelty they are (1) naturally engaging, (2) effectively elicit changes in the brain and subsequently performance, and (3) take less than half an hour to apply. However, performance is more than just our brain…. and that where we’re introducing the final piece of the performing brain enhancing technology.
Psychophysiology Meets the Fockers
Skin temperature, electrical conductance and heart beat all provide glimpses into our state before we are consciously aware of them.
Not many will know that the brain recieves more signals than it sends. Primarily throught he vagus nerve, so a key to changing the brain is to drive the brain through influencing signals going from the heart, muscles and lungs.
Once again, Todd Sampson showed the world how this kind of ‘emotional intelligence training’ (with Sue Langley) and biofeedback (with AIS Senior Recovery Physiologist Shona Halson) allowed him to perform death defying stunts. Hooked up to multiple sensors and using focusing and breathing techniques, Todd gradually increased his emotional coherence, a measure of heart rate variability (HRV) which indicates cardiovascular resilience. When the brain recieved those signals it ‘interpreted all is well.’
Wheal and Kotler also reported how HRV profiles of US submariners and Fortune 500 candidates were measured and accurately predicted who would gel with the team and who would zone out… and it was trainable! I realized I was doing my client’s a disservice not providing them a valid HRV and psychophysiology training option.
Thankfully, Thought Technology, a leader in the biofeedback and neurofeedback field for decades had just launched their eVu-TPS (triple processing sensor) in late 2016. It was portable, connected via Bluetooth, required no added subscriptions, was under $1000, and measured two other stress indicators: skin conductance and skin temperature.
Like the NeuroTracker and Focusband, eVu-TPS scores vary depending on variations in wellness though generally, TPS scores have an upward trend as, like Todd did, athletes and coaches learn to enter their rest and digest, contentment, clarity and acceptance states of mind-body more rapidly…. and remain there longer. See below for my own practical records with the TPS.
My own improvements from struggling to relax (left) to gaining physiological flow (right).
A limitation of the device is it must be stationary so is ideally suited for sports where breaks in play occur although using the device for regular monitoring of a person’s ability to switch off intentionally would be a useful metric.
Recently HRV biofeedback has shown promise in recovering from concussions, head trauma and PTSD so is another valid tool for the home grown human to keep abreast of further research.
More neuro-technologies are emerging in this growing marketplace and if I had unlimited funds I’d probably purchase and try them all out. However, like Dr Mike Martin, Head of Performance Psychology at NSWIS, said of his purchase of NeuroTracker and VERSUS EEG, “Looking back I’d probably get one piece of tech and master that…. Otherwise it gets overwhelming. Each tech goes deep.” I agree and..
I have successfully combined all three technologies to simultaneously train visual attention, flow brain-states, and HRV coherence. I believe this represents…
...the ultimate state for aspiring high performers to practice getting into: switched on, mindful and resilient.
In summary, I hope this article has illustrated how neuro-technologies are now capable of measuring and training cognitive and affective drivers of peak performance and has provided you with a range of decision making criteria to use when sifting through all the “neuro-bunk” out there.
The more of us out there using, benefiting from, and buying into the use of performance psychology technology, the better we will perform, and the more our friends, family, clients and fellow humans will be likely to follow our lead. After all, we are humans, and therefore are really in the leadership game, aren’t we?
Interested to find out more about how NeuroTracker can improve your overall cognitive performance? Check out Rob’s previous Expert Corner blog.
Discover the personal journey of an elite female hockey player evolving her training into the cognitive dimension of performance.
As a goaltender playing a high level of hockey, I believe cognitive training should be considered just as important as physical training. Out of the techniques available to train mental performance, I found I could use NeuroTracker to improve my focus, concentration, processing speed, decision making, puck tracking & overall on-ice performance. Sports are a game of inches and anything that gives you an extra inch you need when you need it is worth is weight in gold. I've found NeuroTracker enables you to take your mental game to that next level. In this blog I'll cover my actual experiences with this particular neurotechnology, and what I think it brings to the table for aspiring athletes wanting to get into the mental game of sports performance.
Getting Into Cognitive Training
As a high-performance athlete, I see the game of hockey is 90% mental. I have been using NeuroTracker for the past 5 years, after starting training with the tool as as a freshman in college. To access the technology I went to train with a Sport Vision trainer 3 times a week in Grand Forks, ND.
I found I was able to clearly track my improvement over time, and I just kept getting better and better. Being a goaltender, I saw my NeuroTracking translate into my performance on the ice. My visual processing felt quicker, and I noticed improvements in my game in only a few weeks.
My vision trainer would also tell me I needed to not get so tense and just relax. NeuroTracker taught me how to control my “hype-level” and forced me to find the optimal state that puts me “in the zone”. I now know that in order to play my best, my hype level needs to be a “7 out of 10”.
I transferred to the University of Wisconsin after two years, and so going directly to a Sports Vision trainer was no longer going to be possible. Luckily I was able to purchase a personal account I can run my own computers, so I now take NeuroTracker with me where ever I go!
Getting Into the Benefits
Mental readiness can make the difference between a goal against and a save. In the summer (off-season) I would use NeuroTracker as soon as I woke up, before my workout and skate. It always warmed-up my entire mental systems, and prepared my visual processes for performing at a high level throughout the day.
I also like to use it at night, when I have just had a long day, even though my eyes are tired. I feel it is very important to train your vision to perform even when fatigued. I would then compare my morning score with my evening score - the morning score was almost always higher!
During the season I used NeuroTracker pre-game for every single game I started - over 110 games! It gets my vision switched on for competition and dials in my mental focus. At first my teammates always wondered why I was walking around the locker room or my apartment with these 3D glasses on, but once they saw what I was doing and how its helped me, they were very intrigued.
By doing a session of NeuroTracker I can tell if I am ready to go or not quite dialed in, based off my trial score. If I don’t score higher than my current baseline, I will complete another session.
I have added in stick-handling while doing NeuroTracking to my post-season training routine. It's very challenging, but I think this is a next level training technique that can help me raise my game further. Adding in stick-handling, forces me to keep my head up and improve my fine motor-skills under pressure.
Cognitively the training adds another dimension, this is because I am multi-tasking and forced to hone my focus even more in order to get the targets correct. I think that this helps me also make better decisions with the puck on the ice, especially when I have players coming at me and pressuring me. I like the fact that NeuroTracker has research showing it can train my brain to predict human movement and make better decisions on the field in midst of dynamically changing play.
Getting Into Better Goaltending
As a goaltender I find some specific benefits with NeuroTracker. The first is that tracking multiple moving objects on NeuroTracker helps to simulate tracking the puck on the ice, as it battles through lots of traffic and bodies on the ice. This forces you to keep your mind in the present and block out any ongoing distractions and negative thoughts.
I actually listen loud music while I’m on NeuroTracker, I do this to simulate various distractions in a game, such as the crowd or opposing players. I also work on my breathing during sessions, the more tense you get the harder it is to track the moving targets. The same goes for a hockey game, the more tense you are – the less saves you will make.
Finally I practice my breathing during NeuroTracker and work on a deep breath in for 3 seconds and a deep breath out for 3 seconds. It's important to breathe out in stressful situations, and when I do this, I score much higher on my trials. In this way NeuroTracker scores give me important feedback on my internal mental state.
Overall, the biggest benefit for me is the improvement in my focus and concentration when making difficult saves. I find I have a 'laser- like' focus on the puck now. I am able to stay calm among the chaos of deafening crowds, bodies blocking my vision, particularly in what many people would call high pressure situations, like breakaways, overtime & shootouts.
Getting Into Peak Sports Performance
All athletes can benefit from using NeuroTracker. I think right now a lot of people aren’t aware of the benefits cognitive training can provide. It's interesting to look at the top athletes in sports, because they all now have some sort of specific cognitive training program that they follow. The best do what the rest aren’t prepared to do. Cognitive training helps you become part of the best.
I see Sports Vision Training and NeuroTracker becoming a large part of sport in the future. Many gyms and training centers already incorporate it into their facilities. My ice hockey training facility is planning to add a NeuroTracker component into all goalie's training sessions.
The idea is to run a NeuroTracker session before the skate to get the athlete in the zoned from the get-go, so they achieve the most out of each training session. And then also to run a session after training, to check for improvement or decline based off how their training session went.
I believe cognitive training and assessment is going to become equally important as physical training one day, and many people will invest just as much time mentally as they do physically because they recognize this need for reaching ones’ full potential.
Intelligent data analysis is rapidly changing healthcare as we know. Here you can discover how telehealth is being transformed.
Healthcare organizations are increasingly embracing technology. In the past few years, the industry has shifted from using the service-based healthcare model that primarily focuses on curing ailments, to a holistic outcome-based model. The latter explores different modalities while focusing on the causes of various ailments, and how to eliminate them.
Thanks to the uptake in technology, the industry collects and generates a high volume of data. Likewise, more healthcare organizations are leveraging big data to improve efficiency. According to Statista, the telehealth industry will be worth $41.2 billion by 2021. Big data will play a significant role in this surge. Here’s how big data is impacting the telehealth industry.
It Has Enhanced Remote Patient Monitoring
Telehealth experts point out that the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices are the future of health monitoring. These devices primarily depend on big data to perform the functions that they are designed for. They are connected to one another and to cloud health information systems to process data and alert medical teams about trends that require their intervention.
Medical devices that leverage big data have made remote patient monitoring a reality by providing medical teams with real-data on critical patient measurements, including heart rate and blood pressure. This allows healthcare providers to track patients’ health while keeping them out of hospitals. Besides, healthcare professionals can predict life-threatening events with more accuracy since smart devices provide real-time data.
Improved Healthcare Outcomes
The use of big data in telemedicine gives healthcare providers the information that they need to monitor the health statuses of patients under their care. Medics don’t have to wait for hospital visits to evaluate how the patients are faring. This helps to improve patients’ outcomes.
Indeed, some patients still need to make physical hospital visits. Nonetheless, remote patient monitoring alerts patients as well as practitioners when intervention is needed. If a patient suffers from heart disease, for instance, he/she will be notified to seek in-person medical attention when the heart rate is alarmingly high or low. Consequently, the number of unnecessary hospital visits will be reduced without compromising healthcare outcomes.
Big Data and Precision Medicine
In the medical field, the diagnosis process primarily relies on patients relaying their symptoms to a practitioner. On his/her part, the practitioner monitors the clinical signs of diseases. Tests are ordered to confirm the practitioner’s diagnosis so that a treatment plan is prescribed.
Telemedicine doesn’t primarily rely on the subjective symptoms that patients report. Instead, diagnosis is based on data collected from wearable devices. Besides, a doctor doesn’t need to be in the same geographical location as his/her patients to make a diagnosis.
The use of big data in telehealth ensures accurate diagnoses, and also takes medical providers into the sphere of precision medicine. Data collected from individual patients can be tapped into when preparing treatment plans. This data is always accurate, and thus helps practitioners to develop precise and personalized treatment plans for each patient.
Helps to Predict Infection Trends
The growing uptake of big data and AI algorithms in the medical industry has made it easier to predict infection trends. Big data can be an excellent tool for updating existing disease spread models, as well as designing new disease progression models. A data-driven insight into how diseases spread, can go a long way in eliminating the threat posed by infectious diseases.
Big Data and Specialist Medical Services
The healthcare industry generates vast volumes of data. More medical facilities and other organizations store patients’ EMRs and EHRs on the cloud. The greatest benefit of telehealth is that providers can access patient data remotely, and subsequently make diagnoses and prescriptions. This is also advantageous in cases where patients need to get referred to specialists who operate from a different geographical location.
Secure access to cloud-based medical data and resources ensures that physical location isn’t a variable when it comes to availing the best treatments possible. Besides, it’s beneficial to healthcare providers since it allows better scheduling of practitioners’ time with individual patients, thus enhancing the effectiveness of medical care.
Big Data and Telehealth: Are There Potential Setbacks?
Despite the incredible promise of telehealth, there are several setbacks that need to be overcome. For instance, telehealth solutions entail the transmission of large volumes of personal data. This potentially exposes patients to data breaches. Therefore, healthcare providers should undertake risk management when it comes to big data and telehealth.
The other setback in the adoption of telehealth is the issue of trust. Users still have a lukewarm perception towards the usefulness and validity and telehealth processes. Nonetheless, as the healthcare industry transitions into the unfamiliar in-home territory, more patients will embrace it.
The Big Takeaway
Technology is playing a crucial role in enhancing the healthcare experience. Big data, in particular, can improve the telemedicine experience for both providers and patients since it promotes a value-based healthcare delivery model.
Jordan MacAvoy, VP of Marketing
Bio: Jordan MacAvoy is the CEO and founder of TalPoint, the #1 marketplace that connects independent security, risk, privacy and compliance experts with businesses in need. Prior to founding TalPoint, Jordan served as the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Reciprocity, a leading Information Security focused GRC SaaS solution. Before Reciprocity, Jordan served in executive roles at Fundbox, a Forbes Next Billion Dollar Company, and Intuit, via their acquisition of the SaaS marketing and communications solution, Demandforce. He brings to the team two decades experience helping businesses solve challenging problems through the adoption of novel and innovative solutions. Jordan is a graduate of Boston University.
If you are interested in reading more about this topic, then check out this telehealth guide.
Learn how technology influences how physiological and psychological wellness.
Technology is a big part of our lives. From browsing the internet on our phones to using our laptops for work, most of us use some form of technology every day. Approximately 77% of American adults go online every day, Pew Research studies show. While digital devices have many benefits to them, they also can have a lot of downsides too. Overexposure for long periods of time can create a lot of health issues for people. That is why it’s important to form healthy technology habits and find ways to prevent problems that could arise. Read on for more information about the ways your technology is affecting aspects of your health and what you can do to fix them.
How Does Technology Affect on Physical Health?
One of the most common problems that can occur when a person has been overexposed to technology is eye strain. Looking at a small screen all day or even reading the tiny print on a laptop can cause your eyes to feel sore, itchy, and dry. These symptoms are generally a result of looking at a screen for too long or from blue light. Blue light is a type of light that is emitted from digital devices that can affect everything from your sight to how you sleep.
An easy way to prevent eye strain caused by blue light is to schedule breaks. Every so often look away from your digital device and let your eyes go unfocused. This will give them a break from constantly working and provide quick relief. If short breaks don’t help, a pair of blue light glasses is another route you can take. These glasses can prevent the harmful impact of blue light from worsening your eyesight.
Along with eye strain, posture issues are another common issue that occurs when using technology. Since many people have had to make an unexpected switch to working from home, they probably don’t have access to the same equipment and furniture that they had in the office. This can prove to be a problem if they are sitting in front of a laptop for hours without the proper computer, desk, and chair. Working on your couch can encourage slumping which leads to neck and lower back problems. To fix this, make sure your laptop is at eye level and get up frequently. This will help to prevent hunching and stop your body from getting stiff.
How Does Technology Impact Mental Health?
What you use your technology devices to access can have a huge impact on your mental state. Social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat can influence people to compare their lives and appearances to others. Often this sets unrealistic expectations for people and if their lives don’t look exactly like someone else’s it can create feelings on sadness, anxiety, and depression.
Aside from unrealistic standards, internet addiction is slowly becoming more prevalent. While the number of people is relatively low, 6% of the population is spending excessive amounts of time on the internet, which is a problem. Instead of being mentally checked into a conversation or focused on a task, people are checking notifications and scrolling through social media feeds. Not being present and focused can end up affecting your work life and personal relationships.
If the internet prevents you from focusing on the most important aspects of your life, consider trying a program designed to strengthen your cognitive abilities. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of the internet, but being aware of your use will help you manage the impacts it can have on your mental health.
How Does Technology Influence Sexual Health?
While most people can understand the effects technology can have on things like their eyes or self-esteem, they often overlook some of the more subtle effects it can have. How much a person uses a digital device or when they use it can be the subject of many arguments leading to intimacy issues between a person and their significant other. The more arguing that happens, the more stress both partners experience. Even after the fight has been worked out, stress can have an extreme physical effect on your body’s overall well being. This can cause performance issues in bed like erectile dysfunction (ED).
Men experiencing ED are also at higher risk of developing behavioral changes that contribute to anxiety. This health concern can be treated with a daily ED medication such as Cialis and can bring some peace of mind while easing any anxieties you have. Similarly, stress can also affect a woman’s libido by inhibiting sexual desire. To help, try something new in the bedroom to increase the excitement and make love-making stress free.
When it’s time to go to bed, try to limit how much you use your phone, tablet, or laptop. Not only does the light emitted at night have a negative effect on your eyes, it may also cause more arguments with your partner if they feel like you aren’t paying attention to them. Use your time in bed to pay attention to your partner, because your notifications will still be there in the morning.
Sports pyschologist and veteran NeuroTracker coach Rob Gronbeck reveals why cognitive training is the key to a better brain.
By Rob Gronbeck
In this blog I’m going to explore the concept of ‘threshold’ and why it’s crucial that we force ourselves to train and practice at the top reaches of our ability. I’ll also be explaining what it means to push our brains and bodies to the max, and how exploiting this can result in serious brain gains.
The Growth Zone
As a high-school student working at a supermarket checkout I prided myself on having the fastest items scanned per hour! Being a competitive athlete and gamer it was just another example of me wanting to be the best. My balance was always one of the most important factors to ensure I moved with grace and ease and yet also with speed and agility.
Now, 25 years later I still find myself working, training and practicing at threshold as it is where the growth occurs. I call it ‘The Growth Zone.’ In addition to stepping up to my personal thresholds I also guide my clients to practice being ‘on the brink.’ As a peak performance psychology coach I’m committed to increasing my own and my client’s thresholds of brain, breath, emotion, and the central nervous system performance. All important parts of the ‘performance brain’.
How to Increase Brain Speed
Let me explain with an example from working with football (soccer) clients for many years. I previously introduced the learning gains that can be achieved with NeuroTracker, the 3D multiple object tracking program used to measure a person’s “visual tracking speed.” The question, “how fast is my brain?” can be answered as the client tracks four yellow balls (targets) bounce, collide and pass by each other around a 3D screen while four identical yellow balls (distractors) share that space. See here for how it looks.
A person’s “visual tracking speed threshold” (VTS max) is computed by the NeuroTracker scoring algorithm as ‘the speed which the person can reliably keep track of all the targets for the duration of the trial.’ As a 2013 Nature article illustrated, professional athletes possessed a higher VTS max than amateur athletes in the NCAA system, while non-athletes showed a lower VTS max than both athlete groups.
The question then leads us to ask, “How can we increase our ‘brain speed’?” Thankfully the Nature article also showed a steady learning curve for all three groups the more they performed the task. Just like jogging, lifting weights, or practicing knitting the more they did it the better they were able to perform. This is an example of how deliberately training at threshold (which is what the NeuroTracker does once it has calculated your VTS max) causes increases in that threshold.
Not All Brains are the Same
A final and fascinating final piece worth also considering is the rate of increase as the professional athletes responded with more “brain gains” when compared to the amateur NCAA athletes and the non-athletes. The question, “how do I make my brain run faster?” now has a second answer. I hypothesize that professional athletes exercise their bodies more and as brain growth has been shown to be positively enhanced by the release of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) (called by Dr John Ratey ‘miracle grow for the brain’), it is the effect exercise has on the brain which causes faster adaptation and greater neuroplasticity.
Now what happened to those soccer clients of mine after they’d doubled and sometimes tripled their VTS max? What happened mirrored the results from a 2015 study with soccer players from the University of Montreal. After training on NeuroTracker for five weeks, completing 30 sets of 20 reps (eight second duration)…
…their passing accuracy improved from 59% to 74%.. a 15% increase, with more than a 40% reduction in decision-making errors...from just 90 mins of VTS max training.
I worked with a local soccer team for two years (2014 and 2016). Each time I worked with them they made the finals of their league. It appeared the more players trained their VTS max, the further they went into the finals. See here the graphs showing the stats. Now of course you can question many variables which may have caused that. New players, other teams, new coaches, right?
The 2014–2015 was led by one coach and stable team (losing one key player though), and the 2016–2017 team was led by a different coach and stable team. This infers a sizable effect from improving VTS max as on field results (due to improved passing accuracy) resulted in real wins when compared between two coaches. Both coaches had seasons where they had athletes training and not training their VTS max with me, which by chance created the perfect experimental control group design.
So how do we get ‘Brain Gains’?
How do we make our brains speed up? How can we stay focused for longer and perform better than ever? The answer - by training at our threshold and seeking to improve our maxes. Whether it’s max bench press, max breath hold or visual tracking speed max… when we step into the growth zone and face our thresholds our brains then become neuroplastic, create new connections, strengthen neural firing, and even become more energy efficient. The pathway to a better brain is by pushing it to it’s max!
About Rob Gronbeck
Interested to find out more about how NeuroTracker can improve your cognitive performance? Check my previous Expert Corner blog.
Top tips for turning your home into a place of wellness.
If you tend to toss and turn at night, your sleeping troubles could be due to stress, your health, or it may be the way your bedroom is currently structured. Whether you suffer from insomnia or experience occasional trouble getting a good night’s rest, there are some things you can do to enjoy a deeper, more restful sleep. One of the best things you can do for your health and well-being is to get adequate sleep each night. Read on to learn more about the importance of getting a good night’s sleep and how you can take proactive steps at home for a restful slumber.
The Importance and Benefits of Getting a Good Night’s Sleep
Lack of deep sleep can have a major negative impact on your health. When you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you’ll feel sluggish and moody the next day. Some side effects of missing out on sleep include fatigue, an inability to focus, and overeating. Some studies have shown that lack of sleep can actually contribute to obesity since it increases your levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that makes you feel hungry during the day. If you get enough hours of sleep each night, you’ll be more focused and alert. Lack of sleep can cause serious safety issues, such as car accidents or injuries at work. REM sleep provides plenty of benefits that can improve your health, including:
1. Improved learning and better brain function
2. Steady mood (no mood swings)
3. More energy – both physical and mental
4. Healthy heart and lung function
5. A stronger immune system
If you’re currently struggling with insomnia or find that you wake up several times throughout the night and can’t fall back to sleep, you can take proactive steps to create a more restful, relaxing environment. Practicing stress management techniques and learning how to deal with anxiety can help to improve sleep. Turning off your smartphone before bedtime will also promote a healthier sleep pattern.
Make Your Bed and Bedroom Comfortable
One way to get a good night’s rest is to create a soothing, comfortable sleeping environment. The wall color and bedding colors in your bedroom can have a significant impact on your ability to achieve a restful night of sleep. Consider changing your bedroom colors to soft pastels and neutral tones rather than bright, vibrant colors. Soft blue, gray, and tan can calm the mind and encourage your brain to slow down and rest. Add a few plants like Lavender or Golden Pothos to your bedroom to help promote better sleep. Houseplants are easy to care for and they clean the air and contribute to a soothing environment. When you shop for bedding, choose lightweight cotton sheets that are soft but also not too heavy. Look for pillows and mattresses that support your personal sleep style so you’re not putting too much pressure on the back and neck. Side sleepers and back sleepers tend to do well with memory foam, while stomach sleepers should look for hybrid mattresses or those with an innerspring coil system.
Lighting Tips
A consistent cycle of sunlight and darkness helps the human body produce melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep. If your bedroom is too bright, it can interfere with melatonin levels which will make getting a good night’s rest much more difficult. To combat this problem, use dimmer switches in the bedroom and turn the light levels lower at least two to three hours before bedtime. If you enjoy reading before you head off to dreamland, swap the bulbs in your table lamp from a bright to a low-wattage bulb. As the light in your bedroom dims, it naturally tells the body it’s time to get ready for rest. If the sunlight coming through your windows keeps you awake, use a set of blackout curtains. These heavy curtains can keep the sunlight from filtering in, so your bedroom stays nice and dark until you’re ready to wake.
Achieve the Ideal Temperature for Sleeping
Most people sleep better in cooler temperatures, so it’s important that you’re able to achieve the right temps in your bedroom. As you get ready to fall asleep, your body temperature starts to drop. When you keep your room cool at temperatures between 60 and 67 degrees, it helps cool your body down to encourage deeper sleep. If you have a warm bedroom, you can remedy the problem with a fan that you can aim to blow cool air on your body. Turn your home’s air conditioning system to a comfortable level that will keep you cool throughout the night. Avoid sleeping in heavy pajamas that can make you feel hot. Instead, switch to lightweight cotton or breathable linen for your bedtime outfits or a light summer blanket.
More Helpful Tips for Better Sleep
Struggling with insomnia and sleep difficulties can have a ripple effect on your health and your mental well-being. If you set up a comfortable bedroom that uses calming colors, cooler temperatures, and dim lights, this should help you fall asleep faster and for longer. However, there are plenty of other things you can do to experience a good night of rest at home. Here are some other things that may encourage solid sleep that lasts throughout the night:
Reduce noise in the bedroom
Loud noises can make slumber seem impossible. Create a consistent, soothing backdrop for your bedroom by using a fan or an app that produces white noise to help you drown out outside noise.
Stick to a bedtime routine
Do your best to wake up and go to bed at the same time every day and night. Try to associate your bedroom with sleeping only, and don’t use it to work or watch television since these activities can make it more difficult to calm the mind.
Avoid blue light from screens
Computers and smartphones produce “blue light,” which can interfere with sleep. Turn off your electronic devices at least a few hours before bedtime to help your body and mind understand that it’s time to prepare for sleep.
Practice relaxation techniques
Whether it’s a good book or a quick yoga session, try to relax your body and mind before bedtime. Meditation can clear your mind of the stress from the day, and it will also help you prepare for the day ahead.
Know what to avoid
Stop drinking caffeine in the late afternoon, since this stimulant can make sleeping extremely difficult. You should also avoid nicotine and eating late-night meals, both of which are known to disrupt sleep or make it more difficult. If you can, avoid taking naps and instead, just go to bed according to your current routine. Naps can cause you to wake in the middle of the night or make it more difficult to fall asleep at bedtime.
Sleeping Apps to Download
There are several apps for your smartphone that may help you get to sleep faster. These apps are designed to calm the mind and give you a sense of tranquility before you go to bed. Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, you can find these apps through your phone’s app store and give them a try. Here are a few of the most popular sleeping apps available today:
Calm
This app offers a variety of meditation practices you can try to help you feel calm before you go to bed. The app offers a unique new 10-minute meditation every day for users, so you’ll always have something different to try. It also features a variety of music selections that promote a calming feeling, and you can also pay for exercise videos, nature scenes, and sounds, or participate in a masterclass led by professional mindfulness experts.
Sleep Cycle
The Sleep Cycle alarm clock app uses sound analysis to identify your unique sleep cycle patterns. The app looks at sleep states and tracks your movement while you’re in bed. Smart Cycle then uses a wake-up phase that ends when you set your desired alarm time. Throughout the phase, it closely monitors signals from your body and then wakes you up softly when you enter the lightest sleep stage.
Headspace
If you’re new to the concept of meditation, the Headspace app is an excellent place to start. This app has a focus on mindfulness and provides detailed instructions to help you get started. Use your headphones when you use this app and enjoy calming meditations for all levels. Be sure to take advantage of the reminder system which will alert you when it’s time to participate in a new meditation session.
From a cooler bedroom to noise reduction, there are plenty of things you can do to help ensure you’re getting the sleep you need. With a good night’s sleep, you’ll feel stronger, more positive, and ready to face the day. Try these tips to see which ones may help you get back into a healthy sleep cycle.
About Rocio Espinoza
Rocio is a SEO Marketing Specialist and Content Marketer at Porch. She is passionate about wellness and fitness, and her hobbies are reading, writing, and music. This blog was originally posted on porch.com If you are interested in learning more ways to optimize your home environment for wellness, check out more blogs on Porch here.
Also, if you would like to learn about more ways to optimize your sleep quality, then also read our previous blogs.
The Founder of Sport Your Brain explains how he has found remote cognitive training to be an ideal solution for athletes during confinement.
As a graduate in Sports Psychology, I have been supporting and coaching professional and Olympic athletes for over 15 years in many disciplines such as basketball, handball, Soccer, Golf, Skeet Olympic, cycling and even motor sport. During my years of practice, I learned that physical training, mastery of technical and tactical components, medical and nutritional monitoring are important factors for success in sport. But is it enough? Here I’ll explain why I believe that athletic success is also dependent on cognitive performance, and how this can be achieved in confinement during COVID-19.
The Hidden Challenge to Human Performance
I have been able to meet or observe many talented, promising athletes who unfortunately have not managed to rise to the highest level. For most of these athletes, they could not reach their full potential, sometimes losing their competitive form at important events, or simply making the wrong choices in the crucial moments of a match.
I came to realize that a critical factor in these challenges of competing under pressure is the cognitive dimension of human performance. This is the reason why I have chosen to specialize in visual, cognitive and motor training for over the past 5 years. Conditioning these abilities in athletes is the key to unlocking their potential.
Leveraging Cognitive Training Technologies
As an academic, I am very attentive to advances in research in the field of sports sciences. My work and intervention methodologies follow this guideline and are based on the latest scientific work and publications in training or sports performance.
My scientific reading led me to follow the work of Professor Jocelyn Faubert and his collaborators on the impacts of NeuroTracker (3D-MOT) on cognitive functions. In 2017, I acquired a professional version of NeuroTracker to assess and develop, more precisely, the perceptual-cognitive functions of my athletes. I also use Neurofeedback, the FitLight trainer, and the Senaptec Sensory Station, in parallel with my visual-attention training protocols.
I am impressed with the effectiveness of NeuroTracker for the development of the attentional capacities of my athletes. I also find NeuroTracker’s Speed Threshold scores to be an excellent marker of physical and psychological fatigue. This is particularly interesting for apply strategies to reduce the risk of injury prevalence, or even regulating the demands of mental training.
Solutions for Athletic Training During Lockdown
In France, since March 17, 2020, the country has been placed in containment and all sports competitions have been stopped. Globally speaking, this unprecedented situation poses unique risks to athletes’ psychological health and mental game-shape.
For this reason, since the start of quarantine, I have been remotely interviewing each athlete on a weekly basis. This is mainly about providing a service for listening, counselling and psychological support. But naturally, I wanted to provide support more than this.
I realized that this extremely challenging period of confinement also brought a unique opportunity for each athlete to develop the mental side of their game. Within this framework, I have been delivering remote training for my athletes with the NeuroTrackerX platform. With this they benefit from visual-attention training at home, via custom programs that I manage remotely with the NeuroTrackerX platform.
4 Benefits of Remote NeuroTracker Training
This type of distance training program is particularly helpful during COVID-19 for the following reasons.
Maintaining Training Routine
Firstly, NeuroTracker allows the athlete to have a more structured week, where there is something structured they can do to maintain their athletics abilities. This can help a lot psychologically, because it’s very easy for sports men and women feel in limbo at this time.
Between the sessions of muscular strengthening, maintenance of physical condition and training of visual-attentional skills, the weeks and the days are more rhythmic. It certainly helps to be able to pursue precise training objectives. This is essential for the athlete to be comfortable from a perspective of commitment and mindset.
‘Training on the Couch’
Secondly, this type of cognitive training from a personal computer allows the athlete to continue ‘training on the couch’. This is extra useful for team sport athletes, as the majority of their traditional training is simply impossible during confinement.
The use of the NeuroTrackerX platform during this period of ‘forced rest’ opens up interesting perspectives in terms of development and the progression of players in terms of attention. Rather than experiencing ‘game rust’, athletes can attain new levels of mental abilities, which research has shown to be directly relevant to performance on the field.
Reducing Return-to-Play Injury Risks
Thirdly, the greatest risk the athlete will face after the quarantine is over, is the threat of injury. This has been shown by numerous studies published on the subject, especially after the 2011 Lockout in the NFL. Research has shown that cognitive status can play a central role in sports injuries. For example, concussions have been shown to expose athletes to the risks ACL injuries.
Indeed, training on NeuroTracker makes it possible to maintain and develop the attentional and alertness skills of the athlete, which is essential to avoid errors of attention and awareness during recovery training. This can be relevant both from impact or receiving injuries.
Anticipating Play Before it Happens
Finally, given the fact that NeuroTracker’s 3D-Multiple Object Tracking training improves the perception of human biological movement, i.e. the ability to read and interpret information from body language (position of the body, head, orientation of the hip), it is an excellent way to reduce the risk of sports injury related to errors in reading or anticipation by the player, such as with tackling in soccer or rugby.
Going Forward
For the sports world, the Coronavirus has brought immense challenges, but at the same time it is has also revealed new opportunities to evolve the ways in which we can condition human performance. NeuroTracker provides a nice role model which demonstrates that home cognitive training can be both practical and useful.
Hopefully this is just the beginning, and will lead to a slew of personalized Neurotechnologies that athletes can incorporate into their overall performance programs.
If you are interested in learning more about remote training solutions, check out the NeuroTracker telehealth guide.
Learn why addictions can be a risk factor for physical health.
Substance abuse causes a unique overlap of physical challenges, psychological stress, and immunological changes in a person. Add to that the current ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and there emerges a perfect storm of significant danger to patients struggling with substance abuse.
Physical Challenges
Those dependent and/or addicted to substances—from nicotine to prescriptions or illicit drugs—have a general deterioration in their health. This is because the normal checks and balances of the body are overridden. Homeostasis, the moment-by-moment adjustments made for these balances, becomes misdirected toward the needs imposed by the substance. This is why withdrawal is so unpleasant—physically and psychologically.
Psychological Stress
Being dependent or addicted to a substance creates a powerful stress-maker for an individual. Besides the fear of the significant physical discomfort that would result from running out, there is the additional stress that comes from the scheming and plotting of trying to acquire them, often in conflict with law enforcement and healthcare oversight (doctors, nurses, emergency departments, and pharmacies).
Stress releases hormones both acutely and over the long-term. Acutely, adrenaline—the “flight or fight” hormone, jacks up alertness which causes heart rate and blood pressure to rise to a challenge. Chronically, however, cortisol is released, which is anti-inflammatory at first but over time becomes inflammatory itself, taxing the immune system.
The Immune System
When the immune system is taxed, it is not a significant event because it happens every day. We are designed to engage it and are not the worse off for it. In fact, it’s a crucial part of our survival abilities. However, when the immune system is taxed continuously and the damaging effects of unremitting cortisol are in progress, one’s ability to use the immune system effectively is reduced; this is the reason why drug abusers suffer illnesses more frequently and are less capable to fight them with the typical fervor that other people can muster.
There is no better example of how immunosuppression can compromise one’s health than the HIV/AIDS viral illness. Although drug abuse does not create the tendency to fall ill as much as HIV/AIDS does, it still is a similar—and comparable—mechanism.
Enter COVID-19
COVID-19, the novel coronavirus which is a never-before seen challenge to our immune systems, takes advantage of people’s weaknesses. This is why it seems to target the elderly and those with predisposing conditions, like diabetes, heart disease, emphysema/COPD, or kidney failure.
In fact, most of the deaths from COVID-19 have been in just those groups of vulnerable individuals. But it is important to understand that substance abusers and the addicted are equally fertile targets for this new invader to our biology.
A Gumbo of Elements Targeting those Suffering Substance Abuse
Along with medically compromised persons, COVID-19 is also targeting those with alcohol abuse, and drug abuse patterns. While one’s immune system is already compromised by the immunosuppression that comes from chronic stress and cortisol in the system, COVID-19 also compromises the immune system further by reducing the number of lymphocytes for battle against pathogens (germs).
Additionally, those who abuse one substance are more likely to abuse others, so it is frequent that alcohol (impacting the liver’s function) and smoking/vaping (impacting the lungs) create a “double whammy” for such persons.
Conclusion
In a new world of new diseases that impact one’s immune system, one should not place him- or herself into a category that is already at the highest risk for mortality. Those suffering from a substance use disorder should pay special attention to the warning signs of COVID-19, because they clearly have targets on their backs. Suffering addiction is devastating enough, but the COVID-19 adds yet another unfair factor that puts their lives into jeopardy.
About SubstanceAbuse.com
This blog was provided by expert medical writers at SubstanceAbuse.com. Since 2006 SubstanceAbuse.com has been helping to bring awareness to substance abuse, dependence, and addiction. Their team of medical experts strive to help those struggling with substance use disorders get the information, and tools they need to overcome their dependencies. If you (or someone you know) needs to get help to put addiction behind you today, then start by visiting their website.
Veteran golf coach Jordan Fuller gives his 2 cents on how cognitive training translates to performance gains on the golf course.
Brain training programs have become a popular tool for improving cognitive capacities in athletes, and NeuroTracker is at the forefront of this surge. Systematic training programs with brain training tools look to affect executive functions of the brain. Given how important perceptual-cognitive skills are, especially in dynamic sports, training programs have been aimed at improving such skills.
Where Did the Technology Come From?
Developed in 2009, NeuroTracker was co-founded by Professor Jocelyn Faubert, in the Faubert Lab at the University of Montreal. Considered the world’s preeminent expert in visual perception, Professor Faubert’s goal with NeuroTracker was the application of neuroscience to improve cognitive abilities with real-world benefits for human performance.
It was first adopted by elite sports teams in the EPL, NHL, NFL and NBA, with the product being constantly evolved to meet the needs of athletes. The science behind NeuroTracker is not new, but was developed out decades of research at the Faubert Lab.
How Does it Work?
The workouts on NeuroTracker are very simple, the core of the program is similar to an immersive video game. The program can be run on personal computers, as well as large screens such as TVs and projectors for greater immersion.
Stereoscopic 3D is a key characteristic behind the product’s efficacy, rather than just the two-dimensional restrictions of a normal computer-based program. The use of 3D vision challenges your depth perception and spatial awareness in the same manner as real-world performance, and provides increased cognitive benefits.
Traditionally, this required special displays like a 3D projector or VR HMD. However, with the need for flexibility in today’s technological landscape, specialized anaglyph glasses have been developed, which convert a 2D display (such as a laptop), to a 3D display.
The task itself challenges you to track several dynamically moving targets at the same time. For athletes, this involves following 4 targets (3D balls), which randomly collide and bounce among another 4 distractors. The user is asked to keep track of them for 8 seconds, then identify them.
Get them correct and the speed will increase hand-in-hand with the difficulty, and vice versa if you get them wrong. This mean each session adapts to the athlete’s precise training needs at any given time.
What are the Benefits?
NeuroTracker essentially stimulates high-level mental resources across the brain, and can also include neurophysical training with dual-task programs for specific sports. Each session lasts around 6 minutes, and around 3 hours of total training has been shown to robustly improve executive functions, attention, working memory and response control, among other abilities. For real-world athletic performance, this has been demonstrated through reducing soccer player’s decision-making errors in competitive play, by almost half.
Depending upon what particular sport you’re playing, the goals are different, but NeuroTracker requires you to focus and react to what you’re seeing as if it was a real-world situation. The goal of the overall training process is that the program is capable of giving you a competitive edge while playing in your particular sport.
However, the developers claim that the improvements can also make a difference in other areas of your life, as well. The system is currently being used by many athletes around the world, as well the United States Military. For example, this blog covers it’s applied use in Mixed Martial Arts.
How Does it Apply to Golf
One of the many benefits to the use of the program is the improvement in focus. In particular, studies show clear gains in selective, sustained and distributed attention. Providing the ability to keep your attention on your key objectives on the field, or in the case of golfers, while on the course.
Sensory distractions are extremely important to avoid during a round of golf. By learning to hone your attention to one single item at a time, it can help you to tune out the outside world while focusing on your tee shot, making your way down the fairway, or setting up over that birdie putt.
The application for golfers can be immensely helpful, as staying focused on the course while being able to block out distractions, can be the difference in winning a tournament and being down lower on the leaderboard. Training your mind to block out any distraction while playing golf is a key skill that all successful golfers strive to perfect. As I covered in the Definitive Guide: The 17 Best Golf Tips Of All Time, this can also include the mental focus that is applied by experts in-between shots.
Another way to think about it, is that successful golfers have to rely on “tunnel vision” during their rounds. This is where the ability to eliminate distractions through the use of the NeuroTracker program can be facilitated, helping you to stay sharp and focused in the heat of battle on the course.
By training yourself to focus on one single item at a time, your golf game will benefit greatly, as all too often the biggest hurdle to a good next shot is the memory of a bad prior shot.
Here is your all-in-one guide to knowing how to keep your immune system in optimal shape.
It’s a more pertinent time than ever to improve your robustness to disease. This could be to increase resilience against a potential Coronavirus infection. Or, to reduce the risk of illness under the psychological, social and physical pressures of living in quarantine. It could also be to stay healthy, while limited medical care is available. Whatever the reason, here is a comprehensive guide to help you learn the most effective ways to boost your immune system for better health, both now, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Is it Even Possible to Improve Your Immune System?
Yes, and there are two answers to this question. The first is simple. There are many unhealthy lifestyle factors, such as smoking or chronic stress, which pose clear and specific risks on the integrity of your immune system. Changing unhealthy lifestyle habits is a clear way to reduce those risks.
The second answer is multifaceted, because your immune system is so complex. For instance, the composition of your immune system varies according to our age and genetic make-up. Moreover, there are literally hundreds of functionally different cell types involved in guarding against diseases, each with different roles to play. These roles include identifying invaders, relaying messages at a biological level, consuming whole bacteria (literally), or learning how your body should deal with unknown threats. Understanding these complexities is a major challenge for the modern medical sciences.
That said, there are many healthy lifestyle choices which are likely to improve your immune system, but more scientific research is needed to clarify which are the most important. Right now, there is no silver bullet.
For this reason, avoiding unhealthy lifestyle choices and practicing relevant healthy lifestyle habits is the best route to ensuring you can fend off diseases whenever needed. We will cover the landscape point by point, but first it is useful to understand a little bit more about how your body’s first line of defense actually works.
How Does the Immune System Work?
Your immune system is continuously generating new cells, and generally speaking, it does an amazing job of defending you against myriads of disease-causing microorganisms that you aren’t even aware of.
In simple terms, it does this by analyzing infectious diseases, and then at the cellular level, mounting a bioengineered counterattack. This is based on the weaknesses of particular viruses, bacteria or fungi. Or, with an innate response, it can occasionally flush out the virus (think runny nose). In some cases, these responses can result in a very rapid recovery, or even better, no noticeable symptoms at all.
Yet as we all know from getting sick, your wellbeing can be vulnerable to certain types of diseases. This all depends on what you are exposed to and your current health condition. The Achilles heel of our immune system is unfamiliarity with certain types of pathogens. This is because the immune system can’t always recognize a threat that it has not previously been exposed to.
Once a disease has been successfully identified and dealt with, it’s likely that your immune system will be much more effective at recognizing and fighting off that same disease, if it reoccurs. This is known as an acquired response, which kind of operates a like a SWAT team called in for emergencies.
How do Disease Fighting Drugs Work?
Antibacterial and other similar treatments that are prescribed orally or intravenously, work differently. Instead, other organisms, which are known to be the enemy of certain types of diseases, are introduced into your system. Then, the organisms themselves do the work in directly killing off the infecting cells. There are a few downsides to this approach.
Your immune system may not have the opportunity to adapt to the disease and build up a natural resistance for future exposure
With increasing exposure, the disease may mutate into a new disease which is resistant to any known treatments (currently the case with COVID-19)
Whatever the situation, it is more advantageous to build-up and maintain a balanced and well-functioning immune system, before being exposed to diseases. The bonus is that most of the things we can do to help your immune system, also go a long way to enhancing your overall health and longevity. For that reason, lets now explore what we can actually do.
What Can I do to Avoid Harming my Immune System?
In terms of what to avoid, protecting your immune system from harm overlaps with a common sense approach to health and longevity. In terms of the ‘don’ts’, here are a number of familiar lifestyle choices you should be aware of.
Smoking – even the risks of light smoking are well established in promoting many major diseases. In particular, there is an increased risk of heart disease, cardiovascular disease and respiratory tract infections. Not surprisingly, there is also increased risk of esophageal, stomach, and pancreatic cancer. There are many other immune and autoimmune disorders associated with smoking as well.
Excessive alcohol consumption - clinicians have long observed the negative impacts of drinking too much alcohol and disease susceptibility. These include increased risks of pneumonia, acute respiratory stress syndromes (ARDS), sepsis, alcoholic liver disease (ALD), certain cancers, and impaired recovery from infections.
A nutrient deficient diet – guidelines for the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of vitamins and minerals are based on the risks of developing major diseases. For example the RDA of 60 mg/d of vitamin C will keep you safe from scurvy. Falling below RDA levels, as typical with fast food diets, will directly impact your ability to fend off numerous forms of diseases. Also note that Triage Theory suggests that meeting RDA levels alone, may not be enough for protection from long term health risks such as heart disease. There is also some evidence that certain micronutrient deficiencies (including zinc, selenium, iron, copper, and folic acid) may negatively alter immune responses.
Obesity – being significantly overweight triggers a chronic inflammatory response. Obesity, like it’s opposite malnutrition, is known to impair immune function by altering leucocyte cell count.
Lack of exercise – you may be aware of recent research showing that prolonged sitting is correlated to shortened lifespan. A couch potato lifestyle has system wide effects across your body, including restricting blood flow and the movement of white blood cells. As such the latest science suggests that just a single workout can amplify our immunity.
Poor sleep quality – lack of sleep can increase the chances of being sick. Studies show that people who don't get quality sleep, or enough sleep, are more likely to get sick after being exposed to a virus. This can also influence recovery time from illnesses. However, what constitutes a good night’s rest can vary from person to person. This guide can help you identify the quality of your sleep.
Stress – people may not automatically associate mental state with physical illness. However, research in the field of psychoneuroimmunology has been finding evidence since the 1980s that chronic stress can impair immune functions, leaving the body vulnerable to infections. Little research has been done on acute stress (short lived), but according to the American Psychological Association, if you are feeling stressed, lonely or depressed, don’t be surprised if you come down with something.
These are seven negative lifestyle factors that have been identified as risks. However, more research may show that the other habits of unhealthy living, such as drug abuse, may well interfere with immune system function. The bottom line for your defense against diseases is that it is best to avoid anything that is already known to be harmful to your health.
Now that we have covered the things to avoid, let’s take a look at methods you can use to actively improve your immune system.
How can Improve my Diet?
A balanced diet will certainly help prevent the risk of nutrient deficiencies. However, to give your immune system an extra helping hand, there are a number of superfoods known to have beneficial properties. The good news is that you can grab most of these in your local grocery store. Here are eight superfoods to remember to include in your regular diet.
Citrus fruits – these are the go-to supplement for vitamin C. There is evidence that vitamin C can increase the production of white blood cells – the primary way your body fights infections. They are also packed with supportive vitamins and minerals, as well as the enzymes that are needed to help get the nutrients where they need to go.
Red bell peppers - gram for gram, bell peppers have the most vitamin C content of any fruit or vegetable. They’re also rich in beta carotene, which has been found to visibly make people look healthier.
Broccoli - One of the classic superfoods, this dark green is loaded with vitamins and minerals while being extremely light on calories. Packed with vitamins A, C, and E, as well as many other antioxidants and fiber, broccoli is considered a favorite among health fanatics.
Garlic - used by many civilizations for centuries to fight infections, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health suggests that garlic can also help lower blood pressure and improve the health of your arteries. In terms of immune-boosting properties, its significant concentrations of sulfur compounds are known to yield anti-inflammatory effects, as well as immunomodulation.
Ginger - can decrease nausea, reduce inflammation (think of a sore throat), help with chronic pain, and has some cholesterol-lowering properties. It’s a potent supplement, so it’s easy to add small amounts to food or drinks and still reap the rewards.
Spinach - as well as having vitamin C, spinach harbors a whole spectrum of antioxidants, and like peppers, it’s a good source of beta carotene. Light cooking actually helps bring out its vitamin A and other nutrients.
Yogurt – in its natural form this probiotic can supplement the health of your microbiome, which affects how much nutrition you actually absorb from your diet. Probiotics are also thought to stimulate your immune system and are high in vitamin D.
Turmeric - traditionally used as an anti-inflammatory, modern science has been finding turmeric to be a powerful health supplement. Recent research shows that with sufficient curcumin levels, turmeric can help with muscle damage and potentially even cancer treatment.
Its worth noting that you are more likely to achieve immune system benefits by combining a balanced diet with a range of superfoods, rather than simply trying to load-up on a single type of superfood.
There is a curve ball to mention when it comes to diet, because occasional fasting also has the potential to be an effective strategy. Prolonged fasting (3 days or more) forces the body to use stores of glucose and fat, yet also breaks down some of our white blood cells. This effect has been found to trigger stem cell-based regeneration of new immune system cells. These effects have not been found with intermittent fasting, which in contrast has shown some indications of negative effects on the innate immune system.
Supplements are often touted as panaceas for fending off disease. Yet most products found in health food shops lack sufficient evidence when it comes to immune functions, even though they may give the opposite impression.
Demonstrating whether a certain herb, for example, can enhance immunity is a highly complicated matter. This is especially true for determining what the biological mechanisms of any potential benefits could be. As we mentioned before, there is no silver bullet.
With that said, as far as early scientific research goes, there are some supplements that stand out as being promising. Here are the ones to look out for, with links to further information on each.
In addition, some vitamins are notable for playing a key role in disease resistance. Vitamin C in high doses is used as an established therapy in cancer treatment. Internal synthesis of vitamin C is also the primary response to sickness in almost all mammals. Vitamin D is associated with reduced risks of many life-threatening diseases, including heart disease. Vitamin B complexes play an integral part in the condition of your microbiome, allowing it to absorb and synthesize nutrients more efficiently.
Taking these vitamin supplements in combination with a balanced diet may be helpful, with negligible risks of side effects when the recommended dosage is followed.
How Important is Exercise?
A slew of research in recent decades has found exercise to be advantageous for a multitude of health benefits. However, for the immune system there have also been specific benefits discovered.
Physical activity may help flush bacteria out of the lungs and airways, reducing the chances of a cold or flu virus taking hold before your immune system responds. It is likewise known to improve cardiovascular circulation, speeding up your immune system’s highway throughout the body.
Exercise can increase your body’s levels of antibodies and help your ‘SWAT team’ response circulate more rapidly. At the same time, it is known to reduce stress hormones, which can hamper how responsive antibodies are.
Cardiovascular exercise creates significant fluctuations in body temperature, which can kick-start your immune system into high gear (like taking a sauna). This may discourage harmful bacteria from spreading throughout the body. The act of sweating also releases toxins out of your blood stream, reducing the chances of your immune response being predisposed.
Keeping physically fit is likely to be a very effective way to improve your overall resistance to infectious disease. A large study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that compared to sedentary individuals, people who exercised at least five days a week had almost half the risk of coming down with a cold. If they did get sick, they also reported less severe symptoms.
On the flip side, this does not mean that extreme amounts of exercise are going to give you an extra boost. There is on-going scientific debate as to whether or not high-intensity exercise actually has negative effects. For example, studies with marathon runners have reported a 2 to 6 fold increase in risk in developing a respiratory infection in the weeks following competition.
Can Mental Wellness Play a Role?
Modern medicine has discovered many interrelationships between mind and body, and it appears that mental wellbeing and the immune system may be one of those relationships.
Mindfulness meditation research is still in its infancy, but there are already a number of mechanisms of meditation being researched for their positive effects on our disease defenses. These include regulation of inflammatory proteins, gene expression, immune cell count, immune cell aging, and antibody response. Early findings are positive, but require replication studies to confirm.
Aside from direct benefits, meditation and mindfulness have been established as effective methods for controlling the harmful effects of stress. They are similarly linked to improvements in sleep quality. As we mentioned earlier, poor sleep quality and chronic stress are threats to the integrity of your immune functions. Perhaps most importantly, meditation is virtually free and accessible to everyone.
What are Common Myths about the Immune System?
As we’ve already covered, your immune system is far more complex than most of us would begin to imagine. Likewise, modern science shows that there are no silver bullets for disease prevention.
Aside from these points, there is still a common misconception that antibiotics are an effective cure-all for severe colds or flus. Increasing disease resistance to antibiotics means that these treatments need to be reserved for life threatening situations wherever possible. In addition, antibiotics are likely to attack your healthy microbiome bacteria, potentially increasing your disease susceptibility afterwards.
Lastly, does being cold give you a weak immune system? There are some mixed research findings across different types of populations, but the overall consensus is that there is a lack of evidence to support this. Instead, most experts agree that cold weather simply leads to more close contact with others indoors, making it easier for viruses to spread.
Key Takeaways
We have covered a lot of do’s and don’ts in this blog, but these 3 takeaways are fairly straight-forward to remember.
Avoid lifestyle habits that are known to have significant health risks
Practice a healthy lifestyle overall, to provide benefits to your immune system
To be able fight off infectious diseases more effectively, take an integrated approach, rather than rely on a single ‘cure-all’
If you’re looking for more information, here are some helpful resources.
Find out why remote cognitive training is practical solution for the mental challenges of lockdown.
This FAQ has been written due to a surge of interest following our recent telehealth webinar and blog.
Q. What is telehealth?
A. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. defines telehealth as the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long-distance health care between patients and professionals. Telehealth allows health professionals to cater to the needs of a much broader range of patients.
Q. What are examples of telehealth services?
A. Health education services, remote monitoring of vital signs, ECG or blood pressure, psychological monitoring, monitoring of drug administrations at home, and remote doctor-patient consultations.
Q. Is telehealth different to telemedicine?
A. Yes, telemedicine is specific to remote medical treatments and services, for example to manage home-based drug treatments. Telehealth is broader, as it also incorporates non-clinical services, such as ones focused on wellness and rehabilitation.
Q. Is telehealth restricted to video conferencing?
A. No it is not, however video conferencing is commonly used for real-time patient-provider consultations.
Q. What are the health risks from isolation during COVID-19 quarantine?
A. Primarily the risks are related to mental health. This international emergency brings societal and psychological pressures of anxiety, stress, and potentially despair. In addition, social isolation is a predictor of shorter lifespans due to reduced mental activity and lowered levels of neuroplasticity. This can also impact physical health, for example social isolation correlates with risks of increased inflammation levels.
Q. Why is telehealth relevant during COVID-19 quarantine?
A. Firstly, telehealth services can act as a bridge to reduce the pressures of social isolation. Secondly, telehealth services allow health professionals to connect directly with clients, even when medical centers are closed due to quarantine procedures.
Q. What are the career risks during COVID-19 quarantine?
A. Firstly, prolonged social isolation can lead to reduced mental capacities and wellness in ways that negatively affect a person's capacity to perform career work. Secondly, societal and psychological pressures combined with a lack of experience working independently from home can significantly affect motivation levels. Thirdly, home-based distractions, such as managing children, can reduce a worker's capacity to focus on work tasks and projects.
Q. What are the key advantages of telehealth?
A. Telehealth can leverage advanced digital therapeutics, combining health professional expertise with intelligent software in a way that personalizes health services to the needs of the individual on a 24/7 basis.
Q. How are digital therapeutics relevant to telehealth?
A. Digital therapeutics are expected to become a major new sector of the healthcare industry in coming years. As they typically combine the latest advancements in hardware technologies, with software innovations such as AI, they can provide personalized healthcare solutions that go well beyond traditional doctor-patient care.
Q. How is AI related to telehealth?
A. AI can utilize the large amounts of health data which are typically captured by digital therapeutic products like smart wearable devices, providing powerful medical analyses at very low cost.
Q. Why is NeuroTracker a tool for telehealth?
A. NeuroTracker is a role model tool for telehealth services. A member of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, NeuroTracker has very strong scientific validation for improving human performance and wellness in ways that are highly accessible, effective, efficient, and relevant across many different types of populations.
Q. What are the key benefits in using NeuroTracker for telehealth?
A. NeuroTracker provides sophisticated assessments of mental status combined with fast and effective improvement of mental performance.
Q. What is the main practical advantage of using NeuroTracker for telehealth?
A. Accessibility. NeuroTracker is an extremely simple task to understand and perform, it is also low cost, and can be performed on a normal home computer or laptop.
Q. Who can benefit from NeuroTracker telehealth services?
A. Older adults quarantined from their family members, may be facing a significant degree of social isolation and worry. Students, whose schools are closed, need an outlet for social interaction and innovative strategies to maintain academic engagement. Athletes, whose seasons have been canceled, must find other ways to keep their minds and bodies “in game-day shape.” Clinical patients whose appointments have been canceled, need alternative strategies maintain their regimens at home.
Q. What does a user need in order to access NeuroTracker at home?
A. A home user needs 4 things:-
1) a license for the NeuroTracker software (which can be assigned by a health professional)
2) a standard desktop computer or laptop (Mac or Windows OS)
3) an internet connection
4) a pair of NeuroTracker 3D glasses (included with the software license)
Q. What is the time commitment when using NeuroTracker for telehealth?
A. The frequency of training can vary greatly from user to user. However, a program for improving and maintaining wellness will typically include at least 3 NeuroTracker sessions per week (6-mins each) - around 20 minutes per week, or one hour per month.
Q. How much does NeuroTracker for telehealth cost each user?
A. The cost is typically determined by the telehealth service provider, influenced by the amount of time, expertise and resources they are committing on a per patient basis.
Q. How can I find out more information about using NeuroTracker for telehealth?
A. The NeuroTracker team is committed to helping professionals deliver telehealth services to clients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Simply contact us at info@neurotracker.netwith your needs and an appropriate team member will get back to you right away.
Q. What tools are needed to grow telehealth services?
A. Video conferencing software, a mail manager, and a Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM) are key tools needed to grow telehealth services at scale. More information about these can be found here.
Q. What are best practices for starting a telehealth program?
A. According to Chiron Health, best practices for businesses include setting clear service goals, involving your staff, becoming educated on local reimbursement rules and regulations, finding the right technology partner, actively marketing your telehealth services, asking for client feedback, and objectively measuring success outcomes.
Q. What are the disadvantages of Telehealth?
A. Due to the need to adopt new communication technologies and software, small businesses can find it challenging, in terms of costs and human resources, to get telehealth services properly setup at the outset.
Q. Who can bill for telehealth services?
A. Many governments and local health authorities are actively expanding the types of home health services that can be reimbursed. It is necessary to check what your relevant health authority covers on a regular basis. If you are eligible, you may need to submit submit professional telehealth service claims using the appropriate CPT or HCPCS code.
Q. What are some other telehealth information resources I can access?
Discover how scalable remote cognitive training and assessment is providing solutions for lockdowns.
For many people, the uncertainty of weeks or months of Coronavirus isolation is not just troubling, it can take a significant toll on mental health and well-being. It's safe to say, that in these current times, we urgently need to finds ways to maintain mental wellness at home, as well as sustain our mental performance abilities. With the aim of providing solutions when they’re needed most, we will discuss why NeuroTracker and similar remote services offer real telehealth opportunities, and how you can start growing your remote training offerings today.
What are the Challenges of COVID-19 Lockdowns?
When isolated and less mentally active than normal, our neuroplasticity is actually set to work against us – pruning away synapses and neural connections in a game of ‘use it or lose it’. This can also impact our physical health, with recent research showing that social isolation can increase our body’s inflammation levels.
Maintaining quarantine status amid an international emergency brings societal and psychological pressures of anxiety, stress, and potentially despair. Older adults quarantined from their family members, may be facing a significant degree of social isolation and worry. Students, whose schools are closed, need an outlet for social interaction and innovative strategies to maintain academic engagement. Athletes, whose seasons have been canceled, must find other ways to keep their minds and bodies “in game-day shape.” Clinical patients whose appointments have been canceled, need alternative strategies maintain their regimens at home.
As part of quarantine efforts, medical centers and clinics around the world have been shutting down. However, if these medical services can instead deliver telehealth solutions, then people can access supervised treatment in their homes, right when they need it most.
What are the Benefits of Telehealth?
Telehealth services use dedicated software and communications technologies to deliver health services remotely. The goal is to allow health professionals to remain connected with clients, even when face-to-face service is not an option. Telehealth allows health professionals to cater to the needs of a much broader range of patients.
The upside for the patient is the convenience of being managed by a health specialist, without needing to leave home. Fluid communication between parties is the oil which keeps the cogs of telehealth services working efficiency.
Here are 3 major advantages that telehealth brings to the table during COVID-19 lockdowns, illustrated with examples specific to NeuroTracker.
Leveraging Digital Therapeutics – as we have written before, digital therapeutics are the dawn of a new era of healthcare driven largely by evolutions in software capabilities and AI. NeuroTracker is a member of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance and a front-running neurotechnology, bringing innovations in neuroscience into everyone’s reach.
Personalized Services – the best telehealth practices merge the expertise of professionals together with intelligent software that can adapt to each person’s on-going needs. NeuroTracker allows clinicians to create custom training or rehabilitation protocols and assign them on an individual basis. In parallel with this, the software also automatically adapts and fine-tunes the difficulty of training to the precise needs of the person, every step of the way.
Constant Care – while a healthcare center can never be running 24/7, telehealth services can. For people working from home or caring for others, being able to run a 6-minute NeuroTracker session at any time, makes boosting mental abilities super convenient. And because a clinician can easily check on a client’s progress and interact with them at any given moment, training programs can be easily supervised.
How to Get Started with NeuroTracker
We currently have 3 NeuroTracker platforms, the Standalone version for in-center use only, the Cloud version for training through a web browser, and our new NeuroTracker X platforms, which expands the product’s functionality to meet telehealth needs. Here we’ll walk through the key steps for getting your users up and running remotely using some examples with NeuroTracker X.
1. Add a New User – when you are logged into your administrator’s dashboard, you can see all your current users on your organization page. From here, simply click the ADD USER button, fill in the user’s personal details and email, choose their starting program, and then click invite. NeuroTracker will now send the user an email which will take them through the sign-up and quick installation. You will be able to see them as an active user on your dashboard from the moment they get setup.
2. Your User’s Dashboard – with a single click you can view any of your users’ live personal dashboards from your administrator’s account. Your users simply click the GET STARTED button to run sessions, and they can see what’s lined up in the program on the top-left area, as well their performance data on the main interactive results chart.
3. Customizing a User’s Training Program – NeuroTracker X comes with a range of pre-loaded programs to cover a wide variety of performance, rehabilitation and wellness protocols. You can simply select a user and queue as many programs as you like, as well skip any programs previously lined-up. If you have the advanced version of NeuroTracker X, you can go one step further by designing your own custom programs. This includes mixing up everything from different session types, numbers of targets and tracking duration, to setting questionnaires and dual-tasks.
Ways to Take Telehealth to the Next Level
So we have covered how the NeuroTracker software can serve telehealth needs. However, if you want to reach a big audience remotely, you will need some key tools and know-how to help you get the job done.
Video Conferencing – to attract and manage users at scale, you should leverage a video communications tool. We recommend Zoom as a flexible yet easy-to-use tool, which can also stream conference calls via Facebook live.
Mail Manager – tools like Mailchimp will help you send out professional and media rich emails en masse, but with minimal time invested. They will also give you valuable statistics on how receptive or active your potential audience is.
Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM) – if you’re looking to really grow your telehealth business, then a CRM tool like Hubspot will be essential for keeping your operations on-track and professionally organized. It may take some time to setup properly, but it will make managing a growing client list much simpler.
Monitor New Regulatory and Insurance Policies – in a bid to support telehealth and telemedicine services during COVID-19 quarantines, many governing bodies are adapting their legislation on a weekly basis. You will need to keep an eye out for emerging opportunities for reimbursement and financial support specific to the telehealth services you provide.
Watch our NeuroTracker Telehealth Webinar
The NeuroTracker team recently presented a live webinar called ‘Telehealth Solution to Service Your Clients from Home’, which included guest speaker and neurovision expert Keith Smithson. To learn more about telehealth, as well as get insights on the new capabilities of the NeuroTracker X platform, watch the webinar recording below. Or if you have any questions for our team to answer on your telehealth needs, please email us at info@neurotracker.net
Pro hockey goalie Mike Santaguida pulls from his own experience to reveals the key secrets on how to get into flow under pressure.
As athletes we’re constantly being put into tough situations, and when it comes to distractions they seem to come in the dozens when we’re facing the biggest contests, and the biggest challenges of our careers. The most common questions I typically receive are, how can we overcome those challenges? How can we deliberately produce a state of flow that puts us in the best situation to be successful on the playing field? Here we’ll break down the steps for hacking flow states to get you into the peak performance zone when you need it.
Learning from Pro Hockey
Ice hockey is an extremely fast sport where acute mental focus is absolutely imperative. I’ve dedicated my entire life to ice hockey goaltending. In pursuit of harnessing the same skills the most elite athletes in the world use, I made it a mission to find the answer to these questions.
The difference between not just amateur’s and pro’s, but also champions and non-champions, is their ability to dial in their focus on the things that are going to help propel them to victory in the right moments.
They know how to block out all the noise to find and create flow in their game. It’s all about keeping their mind locked in on the contest, and on the next task in front of them.
How to Be In The Moment
I never really knew what being in the moment meant until I had an opportunity to make it on the national stage during the Canadian Junior A National Championship tournament (RBC Cup). With the stakes incredibly high, I realized that being in the moment meant having to ignore the pressure, put my mind in a reactive state, and be focused on the here and now. Most importantly, not to be caught up either in the future or the past.
Now what exactly does that entail? Well, I always like to say the outcome of contests in sport are never predetermined, despite what your odds might look like on paper. And typically, past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Put simply, it means to liberate your mind from living in the future or the past, to bring it to what’s happening here and now, and getting on with the mission at hand.
You have to trust that you’re prepared to make the right play, and the right decision, in those moments where the outcome of the contest are on the line. But how exactly can we deliberately attempt to bring our mind to the present, instead of being caught up in the future or the past?
How to Channel the Pressure of Big Games
All too often athletes can get themselves worked up and over anxious about upcoming contests. This is natural, because obviously we all want to be successful and rise to the challenge when those big moments come. Maybe your playoffs are coming up, you have a championship game, or you have some scouts or coaches, whether amateur or pro, coming to evaluate you.
It doesn’t matter where or when the contests take place. For different people, big contests come at different points. However, the reason we go wrong is because we typically change our approach, both mentally and physically. This is due to trying to compensate for the pressure, when in reality, this idea leads us down the wrong road.
I’ve learned to realize that if we can break the contest and the journey down into bite size amounts, try to win the little battles as often as possible, a little bit of good typically adds up to greatness over the length of the ride.
How to Embrace the Process
Having heard this cliché my entire career, I was never actually able to articulate what it meant. That was until the biggest challenge of my life was right in front of me. How was I going to do something I’ve never done - win a league, regional and national championship?
Well I realized that the answer simply lies within this question - how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
It sounds basic. Yet, when I was faced with the biggest challenge of my career, that’s the mentality which literally helped me break through, overcome the uncertainty, and traverse terrain I’d never been before. I needed to focus on just each step along the way, each rep along the way, and just doing each one as best I could. Again, not worrying about the past, or the future result.
How to Harness ‘Next Rep Mentality’
What’s the simplest way to overcome the biggest challenges you face in your career? It’s simply to focus on doing your next rep as best you can. Then, just rinse and repeat as many times as the contest or journey requires. You stay in this mindset until you get what you want, until you become a champion.
If your mind isn’t focused on the here and now when the pressure is truly on, and if you’re too busy caught up in the future or the past, your mind isn’t present in the moment. It isn’t ready to make the right read.
This means you aren’t ready to make the right play, or ready to make the right decision in those dire split seconds when the entire contest is on the line. When we break down our contests or journeys into small bites, and just focus on winning that next small battle in front of us, we typically get lost in the process. This is because all we’re thinking about is making the right play next. This is what flow is all about, getting consumed in moment to moment experiences.
Whether we temporarily falter, or we are on a roll, the mental repetition in your head never changes, and it allows us to find consistency. It allows us to find flow in our game. This way we’re zoned in on only the task at hand, instead of being misled by distractions that take us away from doing our job to our best ability.
How to Create Flow In Your Game
So knowing what we know now, how can we deliberately create a state of flow where we’re in a reactive state for each challenge at hand? The answer is to utilize the theory of mindfulness, learning how to thrive in the moment. And the way we’re able to deliberately center our focus and bring ourselves to the present, is to simply by just focusing on one chunk of experience at a time, and doing that next rep as best as you can.
Once you execute a rep on the playing field, move your mind to the next rep that’s inevitably going to come your way. How are you going to execute that rep? How are you going to fool your opponent? What exactly is he doing where you can take advantage of his inefficiency?
The only thing going through your mind should be what your potential next move is. It might sound Zen, but go with the flow and trust your training and instincts.
When we center our attention, it effectively puts us in creative solution-based mindset, ready to come up with answers regardless of the challenges that come our way.
The Bottom Line
Uncertainty in sports can be crippling for some people. In contrast, I’ve found that breaking performance down, step by step, can help you overcome some of the biggest challenges of your career. All you need to do is deliberately work toward bringing your mind into the moment, no matter what challenge you face.
As a goalie, it doesn’t matter whether you need to make 20 or 80 saves, or land 20 or 100 punches, all your mind is doing is executing that next rep to the best of your ability. You’re not worrying about any other variables, again, just executing the next rep in front of you as best you can.
If we can manage to be present in each moment throughout a competition, that mentality is what sets us up for success and puts us in a situation where we’re much more likely to succeed. The outcome of contests can sometimes come down to just a few miscues. But if you’re focused on the here and now, you have a powerful mindset to avoid the pitfalls of distraction and pressure. This is what puts us into a natural winning mindset, no matter what it takes to win.
A rising rodeo star gives fascinating insights into the mental demands of this extreme sport.
Although everyone has heard of Rodeo, not many people realize it is a sport that tests human performance in very unique ways. Here I’ll share a window into my journey in the world of Rodeo, as well as provide some insights as to why elite bull riding has surprising parallels with disciplines like ballet and martial arts.
Shooting for the Stars
I am a Bull Rider a Saddle Bronc Rider and a 3rd generation cowboy. When I entered the rodeo world at 7 years old, I started riding calf, and from there graduated to steer riding, then junior bull riding, and finally at 16 years old I started riding big bulls! Since I turned 19 years old this past year, I've been travelling to compete across Canada and the USA as a Professional Rodeo Athlete. My goal in 2020 is to be able to make it pro full-time, live from what I love doing, shoot for the stars and past them! My ultimate quest is to become the world champion.
A Rocky Road
In 2017 I had an accident where I suffered a major head trauma. In extreme sports this is part of the risks you have to be ready to accept. Initially doctors were predicting that I would never be able to live normally. However, from already having done years of training and competing, I was in the truly fortunate position of having a team of masters in my corner, both in the physical and mental side of performance. Using a combination of sports science based neurotechnologies, I was able to actively train to heal my brain completely. In just 8 months I was climbing on the back of a 2000 pounds animal athlete again.
Being able to get through that episode of my life taught me that I was blessed with God on side and that anything is possible. Even at 19 years old, I've faced many challenges, but they have only made me better, stronger and more serious about training hard both mentally and physically, to prepare myself for the next season. In fact, looking back to before the accident, I now enjoy life much more, really living at 110% with the confidence to match.
The Extreme Demands of Riding
Rodeo is an extreme sport, which means there are no half measures – you have to totally commit to riding or go home. Bull riding is judged on 100 points. It’s 50 points per judge, with a maximum of 25 for the bulls (his kick, agility, explosiveness, the changing of directions, speed), and a maximum of 25 for the rider (his control, style, technique, agility). You need to ride the bull for 8 seconds, at which time a buzzer goes off to dismount. It doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you think of watching the Olympics 100m final, you’ll realize a lot can happen when things are moving fast!
Though people usually see riding as a struggle or a fight between man and bull, the truth it is really a lot more like ballet, where you actually are dancing with the bull. There is certainly a form of art to it. Your focus, balance, power, speed and agility all need to be synchronized with the bull's every movement.
Reaction time has to be extremely fast and precise at the top level of Bull Riding. Just a micro decision-making error gets you in trouble very fast...before you know it, it's over. This is why years of dedicated training is crucial - the fundamentals have to be in place, so that it becomes an automatic skill.
Perception is Key
Proprioception, bodily kinesthetic intelligence, and visual perception get tested to the Nth degree in this sport. When a bull spins and changes direction it can happen extremely quickly, so you need to be reacting faster than you can actually think. This includes having a sixth sense about when you should get off. Dismounting needs to be synced very closely with how the bull bucks…otherwise you won’t be landing on your feet!
Believe it or not, we face up to 10G of gravity force when we ride bulls. This means your sensory perception has stay lucid enough to know how to remain exactly in the right position on the bulls back. Otherwise it's simply be impossible to hold on.
A competition bull weighs around ten times a rider's body weight - trying to out-force a bull is just plain impossible. What's really tough is that we always need to keep tracking the bull as it goes from jump to jump. This includes adjusting to the bull's rhythm and leveraging it's gravitational forces, so we go with its tremendous power, rather than against it.
When you factor in demands of acute sensory perception combined with precision timing and reactions, there are similarities with the disciplines of eastern martial arts. No matter how intense the ride is going to be, it’s paramount to be ready, calm, and 'in the zone' right out of the gates.
Being in the Moment
As well as having fast reactions, bull riders need to be razor sharp mentally. Accuracy in every micro decision is vital. This means you really need to be in the present, utterly existing in the moment. In this way you have to rely on your trained subconscious mind to relay all your mental preparations and channel them into 8 seconds of pure focus.
The subconscious mind has the ability to manage thousands of events at a time, sending nerve signals at over 100,000 mph, with enough computational bandwidth to process an average of 4,000,000,000 bits of information per seconds. Like it’s been shown that top tennis players have to execute serve returns, literally before they are conscious the ball is in the air, riders also have operate in a realm where the subconscious mind is primary.
Leveraging NeuroTracker
Originally I used NeuroTracker to help me regain competitive sharpness after my injury. As you can imagine from the demands of competitive riding that I have been talking about, I realized this was a great tool to improve many aspects of my performance.
In particular, I find it helps me train that all important skill of being able to get in the zone when I need to. This is because it is an incredibly efficient method for developing sharper perceptual-awareness, and to be able to process at lot of things happening all at once, without being overwhelmed. I can see how this tool can help athletes in any sport climb to a higher level. Conditioning your mental game is probably more important even than physical conditioning.
From my own experiences I also see it as a valuable way to assess performance readiness. Like other extreme sports, Rodeo can be very dangerous, especially for risks of concussions. When you make that decision to get back on the bull after recovering from injury, you have to be sure you are bringing along your A-game. Otherwise, chances are you’re going to get injured all over again. Because I know my NeuroTracker baselines in peak performance state, if I’m not 100% ready, then my speed threshold shows me.
I feel blessed to have NeuroTracker on my side, and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can achieve this season!
About Zac Bourgeois
Zac was national high-school bull riding champion, and is now a young and fast-rising professional Rodeo Athlete. Zac has a great Instagram page, where you can follow his story as he endeavors to make Rodeo history in 2020!
If you are interested reading more on extreme sports, then also check out this MMA Experts Corner blog by Dr. Roman Velasquez.
Professor Faubert had the pleasure of being interviewed for a Neuronfire podcast by Dr.David Bach, who introduced him as the 'world's preeminent expert in visual perception'. David Bach, MD, is a Harvard-trained neuroscientist and Founder and President of The Platypus Institute, a research institution focused on how to radically enhance cognitive functioning and the human experience. After reading research from the Faubert Lab in detail, Dr.Bach wanted to delve deeper into how visual based training can deliver improvements in cognitive abilities. Here we cover some of the key points discussed.
Nothing is as Obvious as it Seems
Professor Faubert started out his career decades ago in artificial intelligence and found that “…when it comes vision, nothing is as obvious as it seems”. The old thinking that brain functions like perception and cognition are separate is not true, it’s much fuzzier, and integrated in very complex ways.
When it comes to seeing, we detect energy through light waves, however, that information does not provide meaning. There are perceptual qualities that go beyond energy processes and require high-level cognitive functions to process the world around us. For instance differences in attention can literally change the way we interpret what we are looking at.
Elite Athletes
Professor Faubert’s interest in athletes evolved out of trying to understand the demands required to process dynamic scenes. These include everyday things like crossing the road, driving or navigating a shopping center. But it’s elite athletes who actually make a living from processing dynamic scenes, and have remarkably superior abilities.
The question is whether this is because they’re exposed to these kinds of scenes and simply get used to them, or if it is because their brains adapt to these demands at a fundamental level to get better at dealing with them.
What Makes Them Different?
To test this, Professor Faubert compared elite athletes to university students on NeuroTracker. What was found, unsurprisingly, was that elite athletes were initially better. However, the interesting thing is that elite athletes also got better at NeuroTracker much faster than university students, even though NeuroTracker was a new and neutral task to them. So their brains are somehow built to be more plastic, and more adaptive in learning to process dynamic scenes.
Real-World Transfer
The holy grail for Professor Faubert is if this kind of change in NeuroTracker ability (an abstract task), can achieve improvements in real life functions. So he trained soccer players on NeuroTracker and evaluated their performance in competitive play. He found a significant improvement in their passing decision-making accuracy, yet no difference found with controls.
Dr.Bach emphasized the importance of this kind of transfer to real life performance:
“…the studies are absolutely rock solid…(Professor Faubert) can take elite athletes, people who look at fast moving targets for a living, retrain their brain because of neuroplasticity, so that…their cognitive function allows them to see things more quickly. And that translates into a 15% improvement in passing efficiency. Now in professional sports where a 2% or 3% edge can make the difference, that’s an extraordinary finding. I’m excited about this. This work basically teaches us…that you can train even the world’s best visual brains to become better, and that translates directly to into performance improvements.”
The Pivotal Role of Plasticity
Neural plasticity is the brain’s ability to physically adapt to specific demands to perform better.
The big surprise for Professor Faubert was the finding that elite athletes have ‘residual plasticity’. He explained the meaning of this for world-class athletes,
“The fact that they are there…is because they are more plastic. I think that’s one of the criteria. You would think that this brain is optimal at the highest competitive level, that it’s reached its maximum potential. But maybe they are there because they can acquire new potential so much more rapidly and so more efficiently. It’s been fascinating actually.”
Beyond Athletes
Elderly populations are known to have natural changes in brain functions that lead to a reduction in real-life abilities. For example, when something is moving quickly they may not have the same capacity to track it at a cognitive level. For Professor Faubert, the question is, are these processes still plastic in older people?
“What’s very interesting is we did a study on just that. In fact, we saw no difference in the plasticity between the elderly and young adults. Of course, their abilities are much lower to start, but the progression rate was the same. We’ve shown that that change…actually transfers into something meaningful for them. We looked at their ability to read body movement cues. We saw that their ability…was improved dramatically.”
Dr.Bach and Professor Faubert concluded on the importance that this these kinds of improvements typically require only 2 hours of total training, and that cognitive training can be both practical and useful for improving almost anyone’s lives.
Two-time Stanley Cup champion Dan Carcillo explains the surprising challenges of competing at the highest echelons of the NHL.
Ice hockey is a great game, but it’s also a tough game. On the physical side, I was prepared to accept the massive amount of major injuries I sustained across a 12 year hockey career, along with the ensuing arthritis that now affects many parts of my body. I knew full well that these things came with the sport. In stark contrast, what I wasn’t ready for was the factors that led me to prolonged depression and even suicidal ideologies, due to the mental health complications derived from my 7 documented concussions.
Post-concussion syndrome can be surprisingly isolating for professional athletes. If you’re a sports celebrity, most people assume you’re living the dream, even if your day to day reality is more like living a nightmare.
Sleeping until 3pm, experiencing light sensitivity, slurred speech, insomnia, anxiety and depression, are all things I’ve had to face which culminated in life-threatening situations. This is something I didn’t understand was going to be part of my career. And that’s a problem, because as a pro hockey player, I was certainly never educated on the reality of these risks.
I also wasn’t aware of the long-term struggle. I actually started to change my life well before I retired, when I was 25. In the last 5 years of my career it helped me make it to the Stanley Cups Final 5 times with 3 different teams. Yet even today I consider myself in recovery, still learning how to manage symptoms and how to get through the difficult periods.
The Bigger Picture of Concussions
Almost all the media focus on the repercussions of mTBI’s is centered around CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy), which is only diagnosable post-mortem, making its true prevalence difficult to know. This is a big educational problem, because concussions are about far much more than CTE.
I’ve witnessed players suffering the effects of neurodegenerative diseases and experienced some of them first hand. It’s literally frightening just how much these can rob you of your short and long term memory, you’re ability to just even function, and in fact your very personality. This can happen even at a relatively young age.
It’s also not just about hockey, or even collision sports per se. Most concussions actually happen in daily life, anything from accidental falls to domestic violence. Pretty much everyone has someone in their family who has suffered the lasting effects of brain injuries, which commonly go undiagnosed. For me, concussions in sports is platform to raise awareness of the much broader importance of mental health and wellness generally.
Facing Up to the Changes Needed in Hockey
For the record I love hockey. I always have and always will. That said, I have no doubts at all that the NHL needs better concussion baselines, which is why I’ve been campaigning for changes in concussion protocols since my career years. I’ve been also calling out for the help which players need to be able to effectively recover from associated conditions like anxiety and depression.
Concussion baselines need to be far more robust than simple assessments that are vulnerable to cheating and have low diagnosis accuracy. They should be include assessments of balance, vestibular, autonomic, and cognitive systems under a proper sports medicine approach.
However, what’s is of paramount importance is providing true and accurate information that players and parents need to be to make the right decisions on whether or not they want to play the sport. If athletes fully understand the risks and are willing to take them, then it’s fair play.
The Path Forward
For those already suffering with the repercussions of brain injuries, I’ve learned that education and support is absolutely crucial to managing mental health issues. With the right kind of recovery help, which for me included plant medicines, my life was literally saved. My self-esteem and social relationships improved dramatically, especially in being more patient and understanding with my wife and children.
Today I’m currently doing 15 projects which involve creative entrepreneurship and advocacy work. This includes helping hockey players who have suffered concussions or physical abuse tell their stories, which played an instrumental role in the NHL becoming the last major North American sports league to create a code of conduct for players and coaches.
On retirement I created a charitable organization in the US called the Chapter 5 Foundation – representing the next chapter of athletes lives, and more personally, 5 was my the number of teammate and close friend Steve Montador. Tragically, Steve died from widespread CTE after being cleared from 19 concussions.
The foundation actively assists players who are struggling with post-concussion syndrome, anxiety or depression. It’s essentially transition program to help athletes get back into life after the game. You would be surprised how pro athletes need even very simple kinds of support. This is because most leave high school at 16 years, remaining insulated from normal life throughout their careers. You just don’t really mature as a person - when I retired at 30, I was still 16 inside.
The Uncharted Mental Health Tour
Right now, I’m proud to be in full swing with the Uncharted Mental Health speaking tour. Part of it is simply about telling my own story to provide people with authentic insights from a veteran hockey player’s perspective. However, we keep it very real and practical on the tour as well, especially when speaking at schools. I cover a lot about how to recognize the telltale signs and symptoms of brain injuries, and when to seek proper diagnosis and care. There are so many things we can do, instead of just reaching for the pill bottle.
I talk about my morning routine, stimulating my brain, my meditation practices and breathing methods. Also giving guidance on things like how sitting with yourself and understanding your own thoughts to be aware enough to feel free of judgement, and how to seek psychological self-empowerment. And then why self-regulating your lifestyle choices like diet, hydration, exercise, exposure to nature, and nurturing the right social relationships, are key life skills for taking control of your own psychological wellness on a daily basis.
The Uncharted Tour is a partnership with Ducky Brand Apparel, founded by elite junior hockey player Aidan Girduckis. Girduckis gave up an extremely promising NHL career at just 21 years old, after his own battle to overcome post-concussion syndrome. On a quest to help fund treatments for mental illness, the company donates 30% of all their revenue. It’s just a great initiative all round, which I’d love to see more of.
About Daniel Carcillo
As a pro hockey player, Dan had a prolific career competing at the highest echelons of the NHL, playing 429 games in the league. Most known as former player of the Chicago Blackhawks and a two-time Stanley Cup champion, he retired in 2015, to dedicating himself to mental health advocacy, both inside and outside of sports.
With remarkable authenticity, Dan speaks with his heart on his sleeve. As such as he has quickly become a leading voice for mental health awareness. Going further, he is also an instrumental catalyst for instituting change in sports and health legislation to address unmet mental health needs.
See how leaders in human performance have discovered totally different benefits to using this neurotechology.
Most people know about NeuroTracker from sports stars using the technology to up their game. However, NeuroTracker trains high-level cognitive functions in a top-down way, and this can transfer to all sorts of human performance domains. As we will see, this doesn’t just mean enhancing peak performers but also includes helping people attain mental abilities that we take for granted.
1. Boosting Sports Performance
It’s been almost 10 years since Manchester United F.C. – the world’s most popular sports team – began using the technology right out of the Faubert Lab. Since then pro athletes in major sports across different continents, have been getting in on the action to gain a competitive edge. In fact, the cognitive dimension of athletic performance is fast becoming the new way to attain sporting prowess.
A pinnacle example of a success story is Matt Ryan, the NFL MVP who the New York Times reported on as a disciple of the technology. In a rare interview, Ryan and told them that,
“We spend a lot of time working on our bodies, it’s equally important to have your mind operating on a high level. That’s key as a quarterback, to be able to see things and how they relate to each other really quickly, I think that’s exactly what NeuroTracker helps you do. I use it all year-round.”
The New York Times concluded that “NeuroTracker has grown into the most successful brain-training game in sports”. The most recent success story of leveraging this cognitive training is the Washington Capitals, who had pivotal NeuroTracker veterans help them claim the Holy Grail of ice hockey – the Stanley Cup.
Undoubtedly there will be an array of other cognitive technologies that will become standard training tools in the coming years, but for now, NeuroTracker is the only perceptual-cognitive method with peer-reviewed scientific validation, that has been demonstrated to enhance performance on the field.
2. Improving Educational Outcomes
Pioneering researchers at McGill University saw the potential for NeuroTracker to raise the attentional capacities of children. The goal was to help them overcome the challenges of learning difficulties in order to improve their performance in the classroom. Attention is considered a fundamental skill for academic learning, with inattention being a major challenge to learning, as well as a key behavioral problem for teachers managing a large class.
Their ground-breaking research shows that significant gains in core attention capacities can be made with just a few hours of NeuroTracker training. They also reported that educators and parents saw big changes in the attentiveness, motivation, and behavior of the students trained. On the back of this, there are now a range of top educational institutes putting in place training programs to improve the learning capacities of students in general. Revered educational strategist Dwayne Matthews is a key adviser on this program.
3. Enhancing Military and Law Enforcement Performance
Soldiers and police men and women have to deal with life-threatening scenarios on a regular basis. Often these play out under intense psychological pressure with complex and rapid decision-making demands. For these reasons, elite US and Canadian special-forces have been using NeuroTracker to heighten their situational awareness and split-second decision-making abilities. In unpublished research, these personnel were trained up to show that improved reactions in Close Quarter Battle scenarios, such as clearing a room of threats, can reduce casualty risks.
US law enforcement agencies, and most recently the Canadian Mounted Patrol, have been similarly started conditioning their forces’ abilities to focus under pressure. An on-going study will also see if NeuroTracker training can increase the number of cadets that graduate through academy programs.
Military and law studies and practices are not usually made publicly available. That said it’s reassuring to think that these personnel can make the right decisions, and avoid potentially life costly errors when performing in the field.
4. Increasing the Efficacy of Industry Training
From industry based skill-specific training to developing technical abilities in military or medical roles, getting individuals to perform to the correct standard whenever and wherever needed is a major challenge.
To this end, important technical jobs often require complex and costly training programs, such as advanced simulations and VR environments. But how do companies choose who gets this investment into their careers, and how do they ensure the training will be effective?
A giant in industry training, Rockwell Collins has been using NeuroTracker to assess trainees’ capacities to respond to training programs. Those who respond to NeuroTracker with steep learning rates show traits of high neuroplasticity and the cognitive flexibility to adapt to training generally.
Taking things one step further, they even studied jet pilots while performing live NeuroTracking when executing complex flight maneuvers. From the data, they can assess the optimal training load for an individual pilot so that their program can be adapted specifically to their needs. It’s also expected that the combined training will improve piloting skills over time.
This year Rockwell Collins and their collaborators presented the study and cockpit technology at ITSEC (a major training industry conference), winning an innovation award.
5. Human Performance Profiling
Professional sports teams are engaged in a profiling arms race to discover elite talent before their competitors. And for good reason too – high caliber athletes are pretty much worth their weight in gold these days. In sport of soccer, even transfer fees for players can reach in excess of $200m, with Barcelona F.C. paying $260m for Neymar last year. With those kinds of numbers, a hell of a lot of money can be made if talent can be spotted before it matures. For instance, during Cristiano Ronaldo’s rise to FIFA player of the year, Manchester United made a cool transfer profit of almost $130m.
The NFL and NHL combines are a hotbed for the latest tests to glean insights into potential for sporting excellence. This includes detailed medical assessments and batteries of physiological tests. However, in the past teams at the combines have also profiled athletes using NeuroTracker, in order to discover elite potential at the cognitive level. As well as being used for recruitment, data from these baselines are being tracked against career progress from youth to adult age. In a few years’, and for the first time ever, it should provide insights into just how much advantage can be gained from a mental edge.
Similarly, US Soccer have collaborated with NeuroTracker and the Faubert Lab to assess thousands of young professional players. At annual assessments, hundreds of athletes are baselined per day, and the results are cross referenced with all other tests and demographic data. In a large research project spanning years, data mining techniques are being utilized to discover what matters most during talent development. Early findings have indicated strong correlations between US Soccer scouts’ measure of potential talent, and NeuroTracker scores.
In a unique study with players in the NBA team Orlando Magic, NeuroTracker baselines were compared with on-court performance statistics over the course of a season. NeuroTracker scores turned to be a great predictor of which players performed better on the court, particularly for measures like assist ratios and turnovers. They also correlated with different levels of play for different court positions.
In a landmark study published in Nature Scientific Reports, hundreds of pro and collegiate team-sport athletes underwent 15 NeuroTracker sessions. The goal was to see if athletic success was a key determinant of mental performance.
The investigation showed that elite athletes in top NHL, EPL and Rugby teams, have superior cognitive capacities for perceiving complex and dynamic scenes. However, more importantly, it discovered for the first time that they also have much greater neuroplasticity, learning at far faster rates than amateurs.
As we have seen, neuroscience is now merging with sports science at an accelerating rate. It already looks to provide invaluable insights into the inherent abilities of sports stars, with much more to come.
To find out more about the transfer of NeuroTracker training to sports performance, check out this blog.
Neuroscientist and MMA professional coach Dr. Roman Velasquez delivers deep insights in the cognitive dimension of sports performance.
Everyone knows that the mental game is key with athletes, and in today’s competitive environment, the brain is considered the largest untapped resource in high performance sport. Though the question remains, ‘how to tap the immense potential of the human mind?’ As a devoted performance coach specializing in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), I’ve made it my career quest to discover the best methods available. Here we’ll cover the concepts behind the cognitive dimension of elite athleticism, why these abilities are highly trainable with the right Neurotechnologies and methodologies, and how to harness the athletic brain.
Why the Cognitive Dimension is Critical
Performance factors inside the octagon or boxing ring are many, however, brain processing speed is critical in combat sports. The faster your brain can process incoming information from its environment the quicker you will be, to not only react but be accurately responsive.
Increasing brain processing speed gives the athlete a clear advantage on focus capacity and focus endurance in managing and processing incoming information. But more important, is deciphering this information, giving it meaning and value, and executing a course of action in milliseconds. These are key brain performance factors, whether it is striking or attack avoidance in mixed martial arts or boxing.
Visual Processing is a Form of Overload for the Brain
Brain processing speed, neuro visual acuity, and movement coordination are key performance factors in fight sports. Your brain can learn and be conditioned to manipulate those sensory frequencies, and perceptively slow down your environment inside the cage. The performance benefits are greater responsiveness, decision-making accuracy, coordination precision, and avoidance of being overly impulsive under high-pressure.
The main reason why, is that all of your senses have different frequencies inside your brain. With specific neuro cognitive performance training your brain can reach enhanced levels of neuro-processing speed thresholds. Stimulating the Warrior’s brain for focus, concentration, and attention is key. In dynamic scenes, our retinas capture and deliver a stream of visual information to the brain at a rate of around 310 Gigabytes. The conscious mind however, is able to process around 120 bits of information per second. This is one reason why the brain’s attentional filtering systems are highly selective with this information, carefully guiding where we concentrate our mental focus.
Athletes Thrive in the Moment
Between stimuli and response there is a space, a gap. In that gap there is power to choose a response. In that gap is the brain’s ability to efficiently give meaning to incoming information, to process, manage, and choose a response; a precision action with speed and accuracy, without hesitation, freezing, or overthinking. This is paramount in combat sports, because you know that with one small decision error, you can be knocked out cold in an instant.
Attacks and attack avoidance inside the cage require fighters to be cognitively efficient, and yes, vision ranks high in the brain’s neural hierarchy. But it is not just about how well you see...it’s about how quickly you can obtain meaning from what you’re seeing. Your brain manages, deciphers, encodes, perceives, and manipulates all sensory information. The bottom line? Your brain’s processing speed determines your level of performance. This is because your motor cortex relies on these brain signals for action and coordinated outputs.
The Athletic Brain is an Efficient Brain
This may all sound a bit daunting. However we have two primary skills at our disposal. The first is harnessing our attention to make sure we get the most useful decision-making information that we can out of every bit of information we absorb. When it comes to athletic prowess, sports science shows that this a key trait which differentiates the best from the rest.
Even more important than is every athlete’s secret weapon – neuroplasticity. The nature of change in your brain over time, is specific to the experiences you engage in. Focus capacity and coordinated movement skills recruit dedicated neural circuitry, which is flexible enough to create new networks in flux. Everything is in flux. Everything is changing, and this includes your brain because it has the capability to rewire itself to perform under stressful conditions.
Neuroplasticity Provides Limitless Potential
We now know that neuroplasticity allows your brain to continually grow. This growth comes from the way your neurons connect with each other, creating new networks of communication. All neural links are shaped by stimuli, in other words by specific ‘experiences.’
There are 100 billion neurons in the human brain with trillions of connective networks that are continually changing with experiences. With this knowledge, traditional training and drills can be complimented by targeting specific brain functions. The brain needs stimulation beyond a certain threshold in order to leverage the brain’s natural neuroplasticity process. This provides a key opportunity to increase your sports performance cognitively, as well as physically.
Fighters Need Both Speed and Mental Robustness
These are the type of mental domains that we target with our specific neuro cognitive performance drills. For example, not only is muscle fatigue bad in a fight, but mental fatigue creates a whole beast of problems - like competition-losing mistakes! This is even detrimental for the athlete with great stamina and cardio.
The continuous, rapid, and ‘fight-game changing’ amount of micro-decisions a fighter needs to make in their high-pressure environment inside the cage will spike the cognitive load in their brain. Mental fatigue is very real! The fighter who can sustain these high levels of cognitive load and stay ahead of their opponent’s decisions are the ones who can turn things around and make needed adjustments when most needed.
Fighters must make these decisions constantly, at lightning speed, under pressure and with the highest of accuracy. Most mistakes happen when mental fatigue sets in. It occurs when the athlete’s brain is not able to efficiently process multiple information and an array of stimuli under high pressure and great physical demands. These are extreme cognitive loads, and require unique neuro cognitive performance training to rise to the challenge.
Leveraging Neurotechnologies is Key
Our the goal is to heighten key factors of mental performance in the fastest means possible. To achieve this we utilize the best in neuroscience technologies like Halo Sport, Muse, Emotive, and especially NeuroTracker. Identifying and strengthening neural pathways is key to creating mental flow based on focus capacity, concentration, and attention. NeuroTracker is a prime example of a practical and flexible neurotechnology that provides this type of neural strengthening so well.
Having emerged out of over 20 years of neuroscience research, NeuroTracker training adapts speed and complexity in a way that maximizes your sport cognitive training at every step. Focus, concentration, and attention are not simple, they are complex inside your brain but they can be trained, and NeuroTracker enhances these key capabilities. It also provides unique functional measures of athletic performance. We have integrated NeuroTracker as a foundation of our fight sport neuro cognitive performance training programs.
Every Brain is Different
In a competitive environment reaching the next level will require a different you. Athletes experience this difference, it’s different for everyone. Everyone is unique because of the way the brain is wired. Mental Flow differs from athlete to athlete, but it works. Mental performance dictates physical performance and the call to optimize brain-body integration has never been louder than today’s hyper competitive environment. Every elite level athlete seeks that one competitive advantage.
Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result! This is why performance data is key to intelligent performance conditioning. We have moved into an era where we can assess, measure, quantify, and train the brain to enhance human performance. We now know that optimizing neuro cognitive efficiency increases sport performance in so many ways.
Traditional views on training must be reexamined. A continued unfolding for modern day Warriors must include the neuro sport sciences. The brain is central to the body’s performance. If you’re still training like a decade ago, you need to level up your game. Get the mind right the body will follow. Fight-Sport Neuro Cognitive Performance Training is the future and the future is now.
You can gain insights into Dr. Roman Velasquez's unique methods at his Neuro Peak Performance website. You can also check out lots of his cutting-edge training methods in action on his YouTube Channel.
Elite athletes and skilled specialists from teams and organizations like these. All trademarks and logos are intellectual property and owned by the respective organizations listed, not NeuroTracker, and does not represent a direct endorsement by such organizations
**NeuroTracker is used in various peer reviewed medical research and applications under the guidance of a licensed medical professional. NeuroTracker is not intended to be substituted for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
