Benefit From Cognitive Training Benefits Can Be Predicted

Cog­ni­tive per­for­mance can be improved, but peo­ple do vary in abil­ity.

A study recently showed that the brain activ­ity in the dor­sal stria­tum part of the brain at the beginning learning a com­plex video game could accu­rately predict improvement. In the study, 34 young people with lit­tle expe­ri­ence in video games play were taught to play a com­plex video game. After ini­tial instruc­tion, they played the game while their brains were being scanned. For approximately 38 days, they com­pleted 10 two-hour train­ing ses­sions, play­ing the game without the scanner. A sec­ond fMRI scan sim­i­lar to the first one was then done.

The results showed that the pat­terns of activ­ity in the dor­sal stria­tum recorded before the start of train­ing were very pre­dic­tive of the suc­cess at excelling at the video game.  It was found that the activ­ity in the dor­sal stria­tum was higher for the better learners than for the poorer learn­ers. The cor­re­la­tion between improve­ment in score and activ­ity in this brain region was significant.

The poor and good learn­ers dif­fer in their level of activ­ity in the dor­sal stria­tum and also in the activ­ity pat­terns in this brain region. This data allowed the researchers to pre­dict which sub­jects would be good learn­ers just by observing their brain activ­ity before the train­ing sessions began.

Interestingly, train­ing with the same video game (Space Fortress) has been shown to improve flight con­trol pro­fi­ciency in novice pilots. Since train­ing can be costly, both in both cost and time factors, being able to deter­mine before train­ing who would ben­e­fit the most from it could lower training expense.

These results are important also for those wanting to boost spe­cific mind performance areas such as attention, memory, etc. The best brain train­ing should be tailored to the indi­vid­ual and their objectives. Being able to deter­mine what kind of train­ing would ben­e­fit the person the most would be very helpful in decid­ing which train­ing to use.