NeuroTracker emerged out of 20 years of neuroscience research to enhance mental performance. It challenges you to track multiple targets moving dynamically in 3D space. Training adapts speed and complexity in a way that maximizes your cognitive training at every step. The most widely validated cognitive technology trusted by the world’s most elite athletes, military, & health professionals to increase brain performance.
Benefits
Using science to boost your mental performance
What the science says
Brain scans reveal that NeuroTracker training sustainably increases brainwave speeds, associated with heightened alertness and learning capacity. Peer reviewed research shows that NeuroTracker training significantly enhances attention, executive function, working memory and processing speed.
Attention
- Just 18 minutes of training per week boosts fundamental cognitive abilities
Executive function
- Think clearly with better planning and decision-making
Working memory
- Stay on top of multiple streams of information simultaneously
Processing speed
- Manage and understand more information to respond faster
Performance
Train like the Pros
Maximize your Potential
Reaching elite levels of human performance is mental just as much as physical. Training your mental abilities can provide an added edge in any situation. NeuroTracker training is designed to rapidly enhance the high-level cognitive abilities that are needed for better attention, awareness and decision-making performance – at any level!
Attention
- Focus on key play opportunities
- Filter out incoming sensory distractions
- Stay sharp under high-pressure demands
Awareness
- See more opportunities in any situation
- Interpret body language more effectively
- Perceptively slow down your environment
Decision-Making
- Respond more quickly and efficiently
- Improve your response accuracy
- Avoid overly impulsive actions
Wellness
Reach your goals
Maintaining wellness cognitively
Many factors affect our everyday ability to function well mentally. Stress and fatigue can impair thinking and reduce alertness. The natural effects of aging can slow down thought processes and narrow awareness. Cognitive conditions such as concussions or strokes can make normal mental tasks extremely challenging. NeuroTracker is a tool designed to help you overcome these challenges with increased alertness, awareness and attention for performing well on a daily basis.
Alertness
- Sharper thinking, responsiveness, and readiness to concentrate on the task at hand
Awareness
- Keep track of important things going on all around, even when feeling overwhelmed
Attention
- Filter out distractions, hone concentration, and maintain focus on what matters most
Top performance, wellness and learning professionals use NeuroTracker now you can too. By seeing your Cobblestone Physiotherapists and Chiropractors you will have the same access as the many professionals listed below!
Your Path to Improvement
NeuroTracker emerged out of 20 years of neuroscience research to enhance mental performance. It challenges you to track multiple targets moving dynamically in 3D space. Training adapts speed and complexity in a way that maximizes your cognitive training at every step.
Better performance starts with the brain.
5 Ways mTBIs Disrupt Vision
Of all the sensory information our brains process from moment to moment, vision dominates. In sports, for example, up to 90% of information coming in is processed by vision. This is why large areas of the brain are devoted to visual processing. The latest neuroscience research also reveals that vision is integrated with the ‘command centers’ of the brain, in the frontal lobe regions.
Here we’ll cover 5 keys ways visual performance can be disrupted by Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI).
1. Eye Tracking
When following an object in motion, such as a puck, soccer ball or an opponent, your eyes need to maintain focus while moving smoothly to maintain tracking. Concussions often affect the complex muscular system around the eyes. The result is jittery movements instead of precise pursuit movements, which leads to loss of focus. In turn, this creates visual noise making it much more difficult for the visual centers of the brain to interpret what is being seen.
For this reason, some vision assessments include eye-tracking tests, using a smooth pursuit task. If jittery eye movements are revealed, even if extremely subtle, it reveals a tell-tale sign that an individual is affected by mTBI, or a related cognitive impairment.
2. Peripheral Vision
Also known as side vision, peripheral vision is what is perceived around the outer edges of the visual field. Intuitively it seems simple to be aware of what’s going on around us, for example when driving a car or crossing a road. However, processing information across the peripheral visual field comes with a heavy mental load, particularly when the environment or perceiver is in motion.
In fact, it requires the activation of much larger neural networks compared to perception in the central field of vision. It’s also fundamental to balance, as the brain uses optic flow cues to understand it’s orientation in the world. This is why some advanced concussion assessments integrate balance tasks with stimulation of the peripheral vision, revealing effects of mTBIs that otherwise go unnoticed.
3. Visual Acuity
Visual acuity relates to clearly seeing, inspecting, identifying and understanding objects viewed at a near or far distance. It relies on accurate focus, requiring each eye to align precisely with an object being viewed. Dynamic visual acuity involves maintaining a clear focus on moving objects, including moving closer to, or further away from, the perceiver. This means both eyes must not only have accurate alignment but also maintain that accuracy simultaneously while changing viewing angles.
Similar to eye tracking issues, visual acuity places demands on fine grain ocular motor skills. Small impairments can significantly impair a person’s ability to focus on things in front of them. It’s a concern for athletes in post-concussion recovery phases. Particularly in team sports, fast changing, dynamic scenes place a constant strain on visual acuity. This stimulation can regress athletes back to being symptomatic after they had seemingly recovered.
4. Depth Perception
Depth perception is the ability to see the world in three dimensions, coupled with the ability to judge the relative distances of objects – how far or near they are. There are many perceptual processes involved which utilize visual cues such as stereoscopy, perspective, texture, and tonal gradients. These cues are processed in separate regions of the visual centers of the brain, then pieced together by higher-order visual systems to generate a realistic sense of distance for everything in the environment.
Again, perceiving depth with absolute or relative motion will complexify demands on the brain. Depth perception is a critical factor in how we navigate the world safely, especially when driving.
If a concussion impacts any of the processes used to interpret depth, then the world around can become a very confusing place. As depth perception is a high-level visual function, interventions like NeuroTracker are used by concussion specialists to stimulate recovery of lost function and to bring athletes back to Return-to-Play status.
5. Attention
It may not sound like a visual skill, but attention and vision actually go hand in hand. The vast river of sensory data that flows into our brain far outweighs what we can actually process. To be efficient, attentional systems are used to detect what information is critical to our needs, and what is not. The visual centers of the brain then filter out what’s unnecessary, and prioritize mental resources onto what’s most important.
When this ability to selectively filter and process visual information is impaired by the effects of a concussion, even everyday activities like walking through a shopping center can become overwhelming. This type of sensory overload can quickly trigger mTBI symptoms such as dizziness, nausea and headaches.
Training the brain’s visual attentional systems through the concussion recovery process requires a Goldilocks approach. Visual stimulation that’s not too little, or too much, can be used to build back attention over time, step-by-step. NeuroTracker is used in this way by clinicians, who adapt the difficulty of the task to the precise needs of the individual, on a case by case basis.
As we’ve seen, vision is a complex system which can be affected in many ways by a concussion injury. Vision care professionals, such as neuro-optometrists, can play an extremely important role in rehabilitating visual functions to aid recovery. Furthermore, a great deal of neuroscience research is being devoted to discovering new ways to assess and regains visual functions impacted by mTBIs.
How does NeuroTracker apply to the concussion recovery process?
NeuroTracker is a versatile rehabilitation tool that facilitates concussion rehabilitation in three distinct ways:
1. Post-concussion syndrome rehabilitation
NeuroTracker allows for stabilization, integration, and loading of the systems affected by concussion and brain trauma.
NeuroTracker session options can be personalized to provide controlled neurostimulation in short 6-minute sessions.
2. Injury assessment and Return-to-Play
NeuroTracker is sensitive to the changes in high-level cognitive function that occur when an individual sustains head trauma.
Following an injury, the drop in NT score can be used as an objective measure to help assess injury and determine safe RTP status.
3. Simple protocol, flexible treatment options
Trainers typically treat their patients with NeuroTracker twice a week for a month, for 15 to 20 minutes per visit.
The training can be administered inpatient, outpatient or remotely as a telemedicine application under supervision.
Beyond Recovery
Once patient has recovered, NeuroTracker can also be used for performance enhancement and readiness assessment. For advanced training, NeuroTracker can be combined with a variety of dual-tasks, such as balance or skill-specific exercises, which increase the difficulty and make the training relevant to performance objectives.
By measuring deviations from baseline scores, coaches can assess whether an athlete is cognitively ready to perform or whether their training load should be altered. This assessment can be performed daily by the athlete on a personal computer or tablet.
“Our goal is to make our therapies and rehabilitation strategies as functional as possible for the patient so that we can ensure transfer into the demands of their daily activities. This is where NeuroTracker has become an invaluable tool in our practice.”
– Scott Haller, Manual Practitioner, President of Shift Concussion Management