The Learning Success Blog

How would you like some advice about living the best life you can, for the rest of your life?

The eminent neuroscientist, Dr Michael Merzenich,  gave a couple of hundred people some tips on how to do just that. They attended his talk at the I Can Change My Brain conference in Melbourne on 26 February, 2016.

I was in the audience with a group of my colleagues from LearnFast.  

We went along to the conference to hear Dr Merzenich speak about the latest in neuroscience research, and how it can be used to grow brain power and manage brain health. We were especially interested in how the brain research can be used to improve learning for children, teenagers and adults of all ages.

This is a tale of two brain training companies, Lumosity and Scientific Learning Corporation. And how one, Lumosity, was prosecuted for making claims about brain training unbacked by science, and the other, Scientific Learning Corporation, used decades of solid research to develop and prove the effectiveness of Fast ForWord. 

Lumosity paid $2 million penalty for unfounded claims

Lumosity, one of the most visible providers of adult online brain training games around the world, was hit with a 2 million dollar penalty in 2016 by the US Federal Trade Commission, due to unfounded claims on the efficacy of it’s product. 

According to the USA Federal Trade Commission press release "Lumosity preyed on consumer’s fears about age related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease”.

Human Neurons Continue to Migrate After Birth.

Scientistis used to think that neurons in the human brain were pretty much set in place before birth.

In 2011, The University of California, San Francisco researchers found a few small groups of neurons still migrating after birth.

Now, new research has uncovered a mass migration that continues up to 3 months after birth.

These neurons are migrating to the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain responsible for advanced cognition.

These days, we’ve come to understand that we can train our brains.

Obviously, the physical benefits of exercise have been preached and promoted for years now. Funny thing is, it seems that exercise also helps our brains.

The combination of these two forms of training, mind and body, benefit our brains more than if one or the other is undertaken.

Turns out, physical exercise actually serves to improve memory, says a study conducted by the University of Texas Dallas. 

“The science of neuroplasticity is slowly but surely transforming how we think about ourselves and our brains, and how we can build a stronger brain that provides us with a better life,” said Dr Michael Merzenich.

He was speaking in a roundtable discussion with Professors Eve Marder and Carla Shatz following the trio’s receipt of the $1million 2016 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience.

The three scientists discussed how their work disrupted a central dogma of neuroscience and how it offers the promise of plasticity-based treatments for people who are struggling to learn, have brain damage or who have brains at risk of mental illness or dementia.

Dr David Rabiner, Research Professor at Duke University, USA is a world recognised expert on attention and ADHD.

He has developed a new approach to attention training called Nervanix Insight.  It uses neurofeedback (also known as EEG Biofeedback) to monitor and train attention skills.

According to scientific research, neurofeedback is the nonmedical approach for developing attention skills that has the strongest evidence for its effectiveness.

Traditional neurofeedback approaches generally use game-like activities that don’t have much resemblance to academic tasks that students need to focus on.

Scientific Learning Corporation’s Founders Discussion

This blog is an edited transcript of a panel discussion with the four neuroscientists who developed Fast ForWord and founded the Scientific Learning Corporation.

It took place at the Scientific Learning 20^th Anniversary Visionary Conference in San Diego, March 2016

The scientists are:

• Dr Michael Merzenich
• Dr Paula Tallal
• Dr Bill Jenkins
• Dr Steve Miller

The discussion covered the history of the science that underlies the Fast ForWord programs, starting with Dr Paula Tallal's research in 1973.

It was a wide-ranging discussion that looked both back to the past and also the future of educational neuroscience.

Language and reading are universal skills required by everyone across the world. And with English being such a dominant language, there are an increasing number of people looking for ways to improve their English literacy.

Peter Carabi, vice president of Global Business Development for Scientific Learning is in the privileged position of witnessing the effects of the Fast ForWord programs as they help people around the world with their language skills. He sees how this opens new opportunities for them and often completely changes the trajectory of young peoples’ lives.

The programs are based on neuroscience, and the concept that the brain is not fixed, but plastic, and has the capability to change itself. Peter describes it as one of the things that can give us all hope.

Colin Klupiec caught up with Peter at the biannual LearnFast summit in January 2016, on a sunny day in Manly on Sydney Harbour and recorded an interview for the Learning Capacity Podcast. Peter discussed English language learning and educational neuroscience.

Listen to the podcast.

Image if you had a piece of wearable technology that could "listen to your brain".  And use what it hears to help you to track your concentration while you study.

This might sound a bit like science fiction. But it's actually available now with the Clarity software and headset from the Nervanix Corporation.

It might surprise you to know that the technology behind it, known as EEG, is actually about 100 years old.

Dr Steve Miller is the chief science officer for Nervanix. He’s one of the driving forces behind the development of Nervanix Clarity.

Dr Miller explains how it all works in an interview on the Learning Capacity podcast.

He points out the significant implications for education. And how this new technology can enhance learning for all students involved in high value learning.

Listen to the podcast episode:

In my role as producer of the Learning Capacity podcast, I get to talk to many interesting people from around the world.

Occasionally, the tables get turned, and the people I meet start to ask me more questions than I ask them.

Nick Kenny, hosts a program on Sydney based community station Northside Radio, FM99.3. It’s named A Fair Call and is a political commentary and current affairs talk show. He invited me to join him on the program to discuss what learning capacity is, what I thought about current developments in the education system in Australia, and why I thought reading is so important.

He wasn’t afraid of asking tough questions, and it made for a very enjoyable discussion. The program was recorded, and I’m pleased to add it to the growing list of interviews that make up the Learning Capacity podcast.

Listen to the discussion: