SBIR-STTR Award

This effort is to develop an evidence-based scientific Brain Fitness Training (BFT) program to accelerate brain growth and improve cognitive function. The goal is to create a mobile computing technology that can be used during initial military training or pre-entry training to raise the domain general cognitive skills by US military recruits substantially (one standard deviation) in working memory, fluid intelligence, meta-cognitive ability, attention control, and affect management with a modest training investment (less than 40 hours). The project involves a synergy of neuroscience, cognitive training, molecular biology of neuron growth, brain imaging, and mobile computing. This proposal focuses on the development of the mobile technology for delivery, performance, motivation, and remote management of BFT. The project tests the effectiveness of computer based gaming, competition, and tracking to maintain intense and reliable effort to improve cognitive function. Experiments will examine whether Brain Fitness Training (BFT)using the method of Competitive Adaptive High Intensity Training (CAHIT) can accelerate brain growth and increase ability in both controlled laboratory and mobile computing applications.

Benefit:
The goal of the project is to substantially increase the cognitive ability of incoming personnel via developing domain general abilities that will improve recruit learning and cognitive effectiveness. Increasing the ability levels by one standard deviation would facilitate training and compensate for the often modest intellectual/brain development result of some recruits experience in US high schools. It would build cognitive strength to enable better performance under workload and improved ability to communicate and operate complex systems and social negotiations.

Keywords:
Individual differences, Individual differences, Brain fitness, Assessment, Training, abilities, Mobile computing

We propose to build a comprehensive system architecture which will provide a mechanism for researchers/educators/trainers, to extend their methods and designs from the confines of the research lab environment to the wide-scale and global applied use in the field or at home. We will expand our Phase I work (design, implementation, and evaluation of a mobile computing prototype brain fitness training program that enhances cognitive function and learning) to develop a complete system architecture in which tasks, covering multiple cognitive domains, can be downloaded and used for training/assessment on a host of mobile devices (iPod/iPad/Android) on a consistent platform to allow for sharing of tasks and data. The ability to collect data/monitor remotely from subjects/sailors worldwide will allow for a limitless subject pool , without the restricting factor of local demographic composition, and fast/efficient recruitment/data collection processes. We will use our expertise to develop this application with the ability to scale, to gain a positive reaction in field, and to run reliably and accurately. This expansion will allow the system to be used in a broad range of military and civilian security applications, including for jobs that impose high cognitive demand and workload as indicated in this solicitation.

Benefit:
We will provide industrial strength 0x9D software, rather than the typical graduate student ware 0x9D , that is robust, deployable and can operate at a scale of thousands of concurrent users. Tasks will be created under PSTs Quality Management System to ensure they have been rigorously tested (this level of testing is not feasible in most university research environments) and will eliminate the need for multiple projects to use DoD funds to reinvent the wheel 0x9D of task development. This will speed basic research progress and minimize time for design to DoD deployment of the most effective evidence-based training components. In the same way that Salesforce.com became the most trusted industry provider for cloud based Customer Relations Management (CRM) software and related services, PST has grown the expertise over its 25 year history to be uniquely positioned to become the industry standard for cloud based behavioral task administration and data collection services for both mobile and desktop computing.

Keywords:
far transfer, brain fitness training, Mobile computing, Near Transfer, working memory