Can brain fitness mobile apps really make you smarter?

Mobile brain fitness applications such as Vivity Lab’s Fit Brains aims to improve cognitive performance through frequent brain exercise games. This concept is based on previous research that frequent video gaming can produce transferrable cognitive improvement in another related cognitive task in the same domain (i.e. reaction speed while driving). Although the efficacy of mobile brain fitness application had been shown in elderly, more efficacy studies are needed for other populations. Vivity lab has a large user database describing user age, background, gaming behavior, and resulting game scores. This database, when properly analyzed, can produce useful information for future product development. In addition, several external researchers have used Fit Brains to investigate the efficacy of brain fitness applications in various subject pools such as football players recovering from concussion, but currently Vivity lab does not have the resources to provide data analysis services for these external efficacy studies. This internship will analyze existing database, establish data analysis services for external researchers, and use the resulting tools to create efficacy studies for Fit Brains. The outcome of this study will create new services and a framework for the company to empirically assess cognitive outcomes from future product developments.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Catharine Rankin

Student:

Conny Hsin-Cheng Lin

Partner:

Vivity Labs

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

University of British Columbia