A startup in San Francisco wants to create a video game that could help your brain get stronger, NPR reports. Adam Gazzaley, a professor of neurology at University of California, San Francisco, is working on a video game that will hopefully pass the FDA approval process so it can be prescribed to improve cognitive function.
There are already a lot of brain-training games and startups vying for consumers' attention, all promising to improve things like memory, attention, and speed. They have, by and large, received mixed reviews. Randall Engle, a psych professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told NPR that there's no proof they actually work. "There's very little research that's done that suggests that these things work," he said. "Over and over and over again, we just don't see any substantial benefit for these games."
But Gazzaley believes his project will be different. Rather than build upon one skill—simple math, recalling information, multitasking, etc.—his video game will be designed to challenge users across three domains of cognitive ability: memory, attention and goal management, which all overlap in the brain.
"If we created this—what we call a high-interference environment, with multitasking going on and lots of distraction," he said, "if we put pressure in that environment, we could see benefits in other aspects of cognitive control."
Plus, the video game could track a patient's progress more objectively than they themselves could, and could potentially be customized by the doctors who prescribe them to fit their patient's unique goals.
His idea has a lot of pushback—like the strongly-worded letter that Engel and 74 other scientists signed and sent to the brain-training big wigs. Gazzaley knows the argument well; he signed it.
So while he knows that putting his game through clinical trials will be a long and expensive process, he believes it will pay off. "I am cautiously optimistic about this," he said.
[via NPR]
