Fit Brains

Fit Brains is an online platform focused on the area of brain health. The company offers online games, personalized tools that provide feedback recommendations and charts to improve brain fitness, and blogs and articles about brain health.

History
The company was founded by Michael Cole and co-founded by Dr. Paul Nussbaum and Mark Baxter in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company was started with seed money from six of British Columbia’s best-known New Media and Technology investors. In addition, the company is supported by Telefilm and National Research Council Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP).

Brain Health
Fit Brains's platform focuses on improving brain's five cognitive functions: Memory, Language, Concentration, Executive Functions (logic, reasoning), Visual and Spatial Skills.

Memory
The brain has the ability to encode and retain new information thereby permitting memory. Regardless of the type of stimuli the brain can process the information and remember it. It is thought the hippocampus, a structure that lies in the medial section of each temporal lobe (just under each temple) helps to encode information and transition new information into a long term or secondary storage area in the cortex. Without the hippocampus, the brain cannot encode and rapid forgetting of new material occurs. The memory system of the brain has the ability to recall information after delay and to retrieve information from long ago such as childhood experiences. As we get older our ability to spontaneously recall information erodes somewhat. Cueing and prompting helps the older brain recall normally. Diseases such as Alzheimer’s damages the hippocampus and results in a progressive loss of memory ability. Chronic stress has also been found to negatively affect memory and potentially induce damage to the hippocampus.

Language
Language is a primary and fundamental function of the brain. We use language so often to communicate and to survive that it is thought to be a “dominant” function related to the “dominant hemisphere”. In most persons this is the left hemisphere. Language is complex and includes expression, repetition, and comprehension. Language also involves “prosody” or the pitch and inflexion of the words. We use language when we listen, read, write, and sign. Our entire western civilization, if not the entire world, depends heavily on the use of language. A stroke of the dominant hemisphere can be damaging to the language system and cause significant problems for the victim.

Concentration
The brain has the ability to focus and to process a stimulus on both a superficial and more deep level. The allocation of mental energy to process information is referred to as attention and concentration. The more deeply one attends to a particular stimulus the better the information will be encoded, understood, and retained. Some suggest attention is primarily related to the frontal systems of the brain. However, attention is perhaps better considered a general brain function with multiple inputs from diverse regions. The brain stem is needed for basic arousal and ability to engage the cortex. Sensory systems across the cortex are then engaged and indeed the frontal system that may help to integrate and analyze the stimulus all are critical parts of attention.

Executive
Our brain has a type of maestro or CEO that we believe sits in the front part of the Cortex and helps to execute behavior. The executive system helps to organize, plan, structure, implement, inhibit and abstract. It is not a region that contributes to general intelligence, but it serves to provide a general choreography of behavior for the entire brain. Personality is thought to reside in the front part of the brain and damage to the executive system can result in depression or manic like symptoms. Many of the psychiatric illnesses are thought to be related to structural or chemical alterations in the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is the youngest and largest region of the Cortex.

Visual and Spatial
The brain has the ability to appreciate one’s position in space and to also understand other objects and their relationship in space. This skill is thought to be related to the function of the parietal lobe near the posterior of the cortex. Spatial skill becomes important as we navigate in the world, with driving, and with simple walks around the block. Sometimes we might get lost in an environment such as a parking garage that represents a type of spatial disorientation. The brain has the capacity to affix landmarks and cues to new environments to help us with spatial orientation. Alzheimer’s also affects the spatial skill of the brain often leading to a person getting lost and eventually requiring locked doors to prevent walking away.

Fit Brains Game Development

Fit Brains website offers nine online games that exercise specific area of the five cognitive functions. The table list the name and cognitive area:

Concentration Games
* Street of Dreams

Executive Games
* Sum Snap
* Travel Quest

Language Games
* Paradise Island
* Wild Word Garden

Memory Games
* Busy Bistro
* Crime Scene Shuffle

Visual Games
* Deep Sea Expedition
* Hidden Masterpiece

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See Also

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