Could You Really Retrain Your Brain?

Ever hear you’re supposed to do crosswords to keep your brain sharp? Or Soduku. Or puzzles.

I’m sure it doesn’t hurt to do those exercises. Sure beats watching TV as brain stimulation.

The trouble is that those exercises are like doing short walks for your physical body. They can give you a mild boost. But those short walks are not going to get you ready for a bodybuilding competition.

The medical profession has come to the conclusion that nerve cells and brain connections can be rebuilt. They call it neuroplasticity. Of course they needed a longer name. The question is how to rebuild?

Let me go back 20 years. One of my sons  was about 7 years old and was having trouble in school. He was reading at about the 40th percentile. We thought he might be dyslexic or have some other learning disability.

My wife found a program called Learning Rx near us in Minnesota. It was about a 12 week program that my son did after school. They started with an assessment of his cognitive ability so they could focus in on certain areas where he was week.

In each session he was paired 1:1 with an instructor who pushed his brain hard. They did exercises that involved multitasking. Like doing math while moving your arms in a certain direction. Oh and there was a metronome in the background. The metronome pushed the student to improve their speed to complete the exercise.

The results were dramatic. Suddenly he could name all the Presidents from Obama to Washington. He could recite them forward and backwards.

His reading moved from the 40th percentile to the 97th percentile. We were sold!

Fast forward to about a month ago. A friend introduced me to a company called the Cognitive Function Development Institute (CFDI). When I talked to the owner, Jen Beyst, she told me how she used to own a Learning Rx franchise in Minnesota.

Small world.

Although it wasn’t the one that worked with my son, it was another one close by.

Jen and her husband took what they had learned at Learning Rx, applied some other neuroscience principles, and decided to start a business catering to more adult-sized problems.

Like cognitive decline. And anxiety. Depression and PTSD.

And there results have been equally amazing as Learning Rx.

When you first enroll at CFDI they give you a battery of tests to determine which part of your brain needs work. The specific areas they test include:

• Alerting - The ability to scan the world around you without being distracted

• Orienting - Being able to filter the relevant from the irrelevant in your surroundings

• Executive attention - What should I focus on first?

• Working memory - How can I use this information right now?

• Encoded memory - How well your brain stores information to use later

After CFDI figures out what are your weak spots, they design exercises to strengthen them. And they have the metronome to push you just as they did my son.

If you’re interested in what they might be able to do for you, check out their website. In many cases Medicare will pay for the training. And here’s a success story.