The Cognitive Research Platform: Introducing CogniFit for Researchers
CogniFit has been a trusted brain-training tool for over 20 years, helping millions of users strengthen the neural pathways that allow us to use some of our most important cognitive abilities; abilities such as memory, attention, focus, and more.
As CogniFit continues to grow, we are always exploring new ways to leverage our powerful technologies to help people—at home, in the classroom, in the clinician’s office, and beyond.
All of CogniFit’s products—both our selection of engaging brain games and training tasks, as well as our selection of cognitive assessments—have been developed through a collaboration between clinicians, psychologists, cognitive scientists, medical researchers, educators, and software engineers. And it is this foundation in scientific best practices which has allowed us to develop one of our most exciting new offerings: the Cognitive Research Platform.
A powerful Cognitive Research Platform for Scientific Investigation
Based on the same core cognitive training and assessment technology already being used and trusted by clinicians, teachers, and families across the globe, the new Cognitive Research Platform has been developed with the specific needs of research teams undertaking clinical, scientific, experimental studies in the areas of cognitive health and well-being in mind.
The platform offers all of the features that have made our other professional platforms, such as the Platform for Health Professionals and the Platform for Educators, so popular; features such as the ability to quickly and easily manage and track multiple users, create groups to organize interventions, and the ability to communicate with users—redesigned with the specific needs of researchers in mind. In addition to these features common across all of our professional tools, the Cognitive Research Platform also includes unique features designed specifically for researchers, such as the ability to assign participants to experimental and control groups with multiple cognitive training intervention options—participants can be assigned personalized training with algorithmically-adjusted difficulty, non-personalized “placebo” training set to the lowest difficulty each session, providing researchers the ability to study the effects of personalized cognitive training versus generic brain games—as well as easy to use methods for collecting and exporting data for analysis including indexed data related to each variable in the study and reference data for calculating fundamental information such as the Z-score.
Another unique aspect of the research platform is the ability for researchers to design investigations focused on specific brain conditions and pathologies (such as Depression, Parkinson’s, and ADHD) in addition to the general cognitive abilities available in the other professional and consumer platforms (such as Memory, Coordination, and Mental Arithmetic).
The Research Platform Opens Exciting New Doors for CogniFit
Though the Cognitive Research Platform is a relatively new venture for CogniFit, we are already seeing interest and, importantly, adoption of the platform in the research community.
Several studies are already underway, using the Cognitive Research Platform to investigate critical cognitive health issues such as how cognitive decline associated with aging can affect the workplace and how cognitive training can improve the productivity of age-diverse teams and how cognitive training can alleviate some of the most common secondary symptoms of Epilepsy such as changes in mood, difficulty sleeping, and cognitive and learning difficulties.
As we continue to build valuable partnerships with research teams across the globe, we are greatly increasing our ability to explore the role that cognitive training—not only for general cognitive abilities, but importantly, for specific brain conditions and pathologies—has in improving our cognitive health and well-being.
Developing this deeper understanding of the real-world impacts of specific cognitive abilities and brain conditions, and the effects that cognitive training can have, will allow us to continue to develop our core technologies, improve the efficacy of our current training and assessment tools, and create the next generation of CogniFit products for new segments of the cognitive health market.
Conclusion
We are fortunate to live in a world where the average person lives longer than ever before, where many of the physical ailments affecting humanity have effective remedies, and where nutritional food is readily available to so many of us.
And though we, as humans, still have plenty of work to do in these areas of physical health, the progress we have already made means that we are now able to focus more attention on the mental-health needs of a global population which is dealing more than ever with the effects of cognitive decline due to aging demographics, increased stress- and attention-related cognitive issues due to an always-on, always-connected culture in both our professional and personal lives, and more.
Our goal at CogniFit is to be a leader in this paradigm shift towards providing support and solutions for the increasingly important mental and cognitive health needs of the global community, and we believe that the Cognitive Research Platform is a key piece of this ongoing journey.
After receiving his undergraduate degree in psychology, Scott went on to work as a teacher and educational counselor while working towards his master’s degree. He has spent several years working with children and adults and has personal experience with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Dyslexia, and Depression.
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