Cognitive training: a real upside
The skills of our daily life are the result of a back-and-forth coordination between our brain and our body to reach peak performance, so much so that it is a mistake to separate the two. For example, a volleyball player who trains to lower their reaction time when spiking sees their improved abilities show up through an earlier motor gesture. This outcome is the result, among other things, of faster sensory integration and/or a more accurate selection of the information required to execute that gesture. In that way, they reduce the time pressure weighing on them during a match.
Having control over our brain therefore means having control over our actions. A big advantage of cognitive training is that it can be put to use even when we are injured (or even in lockdown due to Covid-19, but that’s another story). One favoured form of training in this kind of setting is motor imagery. This visualisation method aims at optimising movement through mental images. The clearest example of this method is the child who manages to ride a bike when they have never touched a handlebar. If you ask them how they did it, they will simply answer that they imagined themselves riding a bike. Humans are able to produce behavioural changes after mental training. So how about training your brain?
If you want to go further into motor imagery, here is a video that gives a clear introduction:
https://youtu.be/32dape5tzxA
How do you set up a routine?
Research in cognitive science shows the value that cognitive training can bring to sports performance. That said, cognitive training doesn’t escape the rules of training. To create a super-compensation effect on performance, you need to plan properly. That is, defining training-load periods. In this case, cognitive loads for our brain, in our schedule. It has also been shown that after a mental task lasting more than 30 minutes, we see a drop in endurance performance, accompanied by a rise in the perceived sense of effort. Yes, recovery is something you plan too.
How does it work in practice?
Once the objective is set, you have to choose your training tool. There’s no secret: your tool should fit your environment, your practice and, above all, be suited to your audience. One of the tools used for this kind of training is neurofeedback. Through the electroencephalogram (EEG), you can capture the brain’s electrical activity and design exercises to train it. Here is a video that explains how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCx-rk4PR0I
Be careful, your brain isn’t a muscle. In cognitive training, it isn’t only about increasing your brain’s capabilities. It also pushes the brain to use new strategies to reach a goal. From that point of view, it’s essential to let your subject explore them. Chess is an example in the field. To build their game strategy, a player must discover these strategies and learn to use them. Esport is a promising area for putting this kind of protocol in place. It is a cognitively dominant activity and offers a more favourable setting for this kind of training.
Cognitive training therefore opens up the prospects of progressing human performance. At AKIANI, sport is taken as a use case that is open enough, but also demanding and challenging enough, to transfer the tools and methods we develop towards industrial use cases. The goal is twofold: produce effective tools that are easy to put in place. Count on us to share the results of our major ongoing R&D work soon, which should arrive with the sun in late August.
