Computer-based brain training has been around for a long time. Increasingly it is being applied to help people who have schizophrenia. Read up on some personal stories of people who have used it here. Special thanks to Brandon and the others for sharing their stories.
Even after the voices go quiet, people with schizophrenia struggle to focus and think clearly. Can computerized brain training solve a problem that drugs have not?
Read the full story here:
for more information see this video of Prof Vinogradov of UCSF describing the effects of the Posit Science brain training on Sz patients (thanks to @NutsAboutU )
here is a website based on the cognitive games they are developing. These are also similar to games used in vision therapy. I talked about this here somewhere. Where family members of sz and sz have vision perception issues. My dd has been doing these type games in her therapy just a little more advanced and it has improved her learning ability in school - went from average to A student in six months of training. http://www.playattention.com/play-attention-cognitive-games/
wouldnât let me edit my above post - I went through and did all four free plus they give you four session trainers. This is as close as you can get to the professional paid training. The professional version we have is supposed to retrain the brain in its process of gathering and information processing input information. The main difference I see between the two is with ours you use 3D perception glasses (Red/Green) to improve each eye individually. But the setup with brainhq.com is the same from what I checked out -tracking, perception, memory, auditory.
I will test it against our current program and see if there is a dramatic difference in scoring relative to the 3D singular eye focus versus brainhqâs program. Our case may be a little different as we have already had testing and are in training for the visual/cognitive issues.
I spent an hour every day for 9 years to play my own edition of mind mapping game. The game is over now. The benefits? I become extroverted instead of introverted.
For many years I saw psychiatrists who kept telling me they didnât necessarily think that I was
schizophrenic - From 1997 right on up to about 2012 I finally concluded that I suffered from epistemophobia (Pandoraâs Infernal Box), due to cognitive dissonance, resulting from witnessing telepathy in action which I could not shrug off with down-to-earth explanations pertaining to sharing the same catalyst for our thoughts nor coincidence.
I, myself, was taking lucid notice of peculiar visions in my sleep; sometimes absurdly some of my monotonous dreams appeared to be a âcalibratingâ of sorts where I was repeating the same processes over and over yet I donât believe I was meant to be THAT conscious of it.
Iâm always second-guessing my reality and the people I encounter in it but I do so in a rational manner and the fact that some of us could be living a lie no longer frightens or frustrates me as much as it used tooâŚ
âŚbecause it could very well be our current existence may be a form of computer-assisted thinking using surrogates and virtual environment techniques. When considering Quantum Physics - a person may be told they are living in the year 2016 but if a simulation requiring technology perfected a few centuries later we could very well be in a simulation of the year 2016 during the year 4016.
Either way, not sure if this is where you were taking the train but will say for other Conspiracy Theorists; theyâve just had to sit tight and use these notions for sci-fi stories - ie; The X-Menâs âDanger Roomâ or Gene Rodenberryâs Holodeck. =)
Also check out this Steam game - itâs a short puzzle story called âTrauma.â about a woman undergoing a surgery after an accident.
A video of Prof Vinogradov of UCSF describing the effects of the Posit Science brain training on Sz patients. Itâs rather shocking how effective it is.
I can see this type of training helping those of us who avoid the world and people and hibernate away, to go out and interact with the world again, and I can see it helping with recognizing thoughts that are off the normal grid of accepted consensual reality, but I canât see how it will help with voices or visions or other schizophrenia symptoms. However, it is a good start and might get better and better from here. Hopefully.
This is an ongoing question that only more research can answer. It seems to be helping people - and like all things it likely helps some people more than others.
Brain plasticity (the ability to physically change and grow due to experiences) is definitely real.
Here is some recent news on this topic more generally:
Michael Merzenich has a plan for how to convince sceptics of the worth of his brain-training video games: prove that the software can help people with schizophrenia.
According to these articles multiple studies have shown sz is associated with brain structure abnormalities which set in over a period of years after the onset of the illness.