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m NeuroTracker: Attention Training & Skill Integration

NeuroTracker measures how effectively an individual is improving attention and integrating expertise

What is NeuroTracker? NeuroTracker is an immersive 3D training system that was designed to isolate the core mental mechanisms of attention and train them intensively. This training improves the individual’s ability to process what they see more quickly, allows them to focus for longer and strengthens their ability to regulate emotional responses. Published peer-reviewed research has demonstrated training transfer to real-world improvements (see here). Training improvements allow better decision-making, and NeuroTracker can also be used to measure the cognitive integration of expertise during the training process.

Who can benefit from NeuroTracker? Various studies have shown that improvements are seen across age groups (see here). Benefits are also cross modal, meaning that additional senses, such as auditory attention, improve with training (see here). Attention & decision-making under stress training and measurement of skill integration is required across a broad range of environments, such as athletic, military and law enforcement, emergency first responders and technical & executive training.

Why do we want to improve attention? Attention is a prerequisite to effective learning and decision-making. Attention includes the ability to understand events, make decisions fast and resist emotional responses. Attention needs to be trained as it can deteriorate greatly under pressure – mental resources demanded become bottlenecked, and cognitive ability is severely restricted, affecting decision-making. NeuroTracker also improves decision making under stressful conditions:

Dealing with time pressure – improved distributed attention allows access to more sources of information, faster.

Following fast movement – improved dynamic attention optimizes perception of fast moving objects or situations.

Emotional regulation – control emotional responses and remain calm under pressure.

What do we mean by pressure? Pressure is any activity that is undertaken simultaneously with decision-making. This can physical (e.g. stick handling in sport, weapon manipulation for soldiers etc.) or more abstract (making notes while discussing strategy, following multiple readings on a set of dials etc.). NeuroTracker expands the mental resources available to handle the intensive simultaneous demands of attention and other activities – this means that with training, an individual can maintain their full attention while performing a secondary task.

Integrating attention training and other skills NeuroTracker training progresses from general to specific training tasks – starting with the fundamental attention training. NeuroTracker training then advances to include a secondary skilled activity. Expertise training with an additional attention pressure is the optimal way to integrate expertise with decision-making, as it expands the brain’s mental resources to deal with the additional attentional demands placed upon it. This ensures that the individual learns how to complete a relevant task while not compromising their ability to make quick and effective decisions.

Measuring integration effectiveness NeuroTracker measures the extent of integration by quantifying the individual’s attention levels when NeuroTracker is combined with additional training. If NeuroTracker scores are significantly lower than the users’ elevated cognitive baseline, then this means that the brain is expending greater amounts of processing power on the additional task, reducing the effectiveness of attention and therefore situational awareness and decision-making capabilities. When scores are closer to the users’ elevated cognitive baseline, cognitive resources have been expanded and are sufficient to integrate the additional task – decision-making ability is more effective.

Summary NeuroTracker improves attention, decision-making under pressure and the integration of additional skill training. Training scores can be used to measure the progress of integration, giving an indication of how effectively an individual can make decisions under pressure.