University of Oregon May Get Quicker

The University of Oregon is the latest school to adopt the Neurotracker training system. This system boasts the ability to help athletes train their brains to iterpret many moving objects at once. This ability could, in turn, accelerate the decision making process. According to their website,

NeuroTracker is a scientific innovation in perceptual-cognitive training developed by world-leading neurophysicist Dr.Faubert. NeuroTracker improves athletic performance by increasing player situational awareness and decreasing response time during play. The data can be used for player profiling and post-injury return to play timing assessment.

The 8 second session takes place in a dark room. The way it works is by displaying on a screen 8 3D yellow balls in motion. At a point in the exercise, 4 of the balls turn orange and then return back to yellow. The player must track the 4 balls that changed color, as all 8 yellow balls continue to move around across the screen. After 8 seconds they must identify which of the 4 balls changed color. If the player correctly selects the 4 balls, they complete the exercise again, but the balls move at a quicker pace. If they are not able to select the correct balls, the pace of ball movement slows.

One of the earliest adopters of this technology was Manchester United almost two years ago. Since then, various hockey, rugby, football and Olympic training centers have all adopted the system.

Beyond improving reaction time, this technology could also be a great step forward in identifying when an athlete has fully recovered from a concussion. Regarding post-concussion recovery, CogniSens (company marketing the technology) says, “Training on NeuroTracker quickly provides baselines that can reliably quantify and athlete’s normative perceptual-cognitive ability, and return to these levels can offer medical staff a quality indicator of return to performance level status in the post-concussion return to play stages…”

If this exercise really does improve agility, it could mean so much to the world of sports and possibly more to the medical community as a whole. I wonder if the application could be useful to help people with medical issues outside the arena, like those who have suffered a stroke. My one major reservation is that this exercise could become essentially a skill; with minimal if any actual improvement on the field. This reservation is similar to the question of whether or not exercises like crossword puzzles and Sodoku actually keep brains sharp…or just keep them sharp at doing crosswords and Sudoku. Regardless, in the world of sports, even if this only gave an athlete 1/8 of a second quicker response, this non-invasive exercise was probably worth it. Ref. neurotracker.net, wired.com Pic. Ref. neurotracker.net