CogniFit - Individualized Training System™ (ITS)

Overview

Thanks to the brain’s neuro-plasticity and neuro-genesis, it is possible for people of all ages to rejuvenate and revitalize their cognitive abilities. But recent scientific evidence indicates that anyone who wants to enjoy these life-enhancing benefits must cultivate a rich and engaging lifestyle. And in order to reap the maximum benefits, they must make sure that they are challenged on a regular basis and with a wide variety of cognitive tasks. This is what the patented Individualized Training System™ (ITS) was designed to do.

ITS General Description

ITS is one of the primary reasons why CogniFit brain fitness programs are considered groundbreaking software. This patented feature enables the program to create a unique and personalized training routine for every user. It also allows the program to fully adapt the selection of tasks to match the user's needs throughout the training.

The Two Main Components of ITS

• Creating the training routine. After the baseline assessment is completed, users are given a list that ranks their tested abilities from best to worst. To create this list, the ITS compares each user’s assessment performance scores to a representative sample of others who are matched with the user based on demographic variables. Using these results, the program’s patented algorithms create a training routine that will provide enhanced training for weaker skills, and a maintenance-level training program for stronger skills.
• Machine learning adapts the training tasks to each user. Every training task is characterized by a rich and complex set of stages. Each stage presents different content and also varies the complexity of the tasks. In addition, each stage has several difficulty levels. Performance of the tasks is constantly monitored by the program, so users move up or down within the system of stages according to their level of performance. The adaptive nature of the ITS allows full accommodation of each user’s specific cognitive needs in all the trained tasks. It’s also bi-directional in the sense that users can progress up or move down the different stages, according to their current level of performance. This feature is important because it allows the program to ensure that everyone is always training at the correct level for each task. The training is never too easy, so users will always be challenged to improve, and never too hard, so they won’t be discouraged by the difficulty of the tasks.

Why ITS is Important

• ITS makes individualized training possible because it calculates the unique regimen of tasks that will provide the optimum training for every user. Since the cognitive profiles that are created by the baseline assessment can vary a great deal between individuals, the ITS can create a very large number of possibilities for a training routine, making sure that everyone will receive the training that best fit his or her needs.
• ITS adapts to each person’s required difficulty level in each task.
• ITS makes brain training more effective by constantly maintaining a level of challenge that will promote the development of new neurons connections.

ITS is Backed by CogniFit’s Large Database

Even though age-related cognitive decline happens to everyone, we’re all very different. Many factors can affect cognitive health, which means that each person’s cognitive profile is unique. So in order to provide the most reliable and accurate feedback in a baseline assessment, a brain fitness program must be backed up by a database that has the power to compare each person only to those who share the similar demographic variables.

The CogniFit database contains information gathered from more than 4,000,000 users who are characterized by several variables. Although this body of information remains strictly confidential, all CogniFit brain fitness programs can draw on it to create meaningful feedback and analysis for every user. This sophisticated scoring and ranking of abilities allows a sound foundation for creating well-designed, reality-based, and effective cognitive training.

Summary

Typically, competing products allow the user to determine the level of difficulty or the tasks that will be completed on a specific training day. Since most of us often tend to choose tasks or levels of difficulty that we feel comfortable with rather than those that might be more challenging,these products aren’t able to be as effective or efficient as CogniFit brain fitness programs. You simply don’t benefit as much from training that is self-selected. That’s why CogniFit brain fitness programs relieves users of the responsibility of choosing the difficulty of the tasks they will perform, just as a personal trainer uses her expertise to design a physical workout plan for their clients at the gym. With CogniFit brain fitness programs, the entire process is automated by ITS, so everyone who uses it receives the best training routine possible for maximum efficacy and improvement. All current CogniFit product use the ITS to calibrate the training programs.