To celebrate 10 years of NeuroTracker being used at the highest levels of human performance, the NeuroTracker Team is proud to share Experts Corner blogs by 10 thought leaders in performance, rehabilitation and cognitive assessment. Here we will introduce the experts and give a snapshots of their 2 cents on NeuroTracker, along with a key quote from each blog.

1. Dr. Leonard Zaichkowsky

Dr. Zaichkowsky has pioneered the field of sport psychology. As one of the world’s most distinguished sports scientists, he has worked with teams in the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB, Australian Rules Football, the Spanish national soccer team, and Olympic sports teams around the world. He is also a prolific author of an extensive range of scientific papers and books.

Here Dr. Zaichkowsky reveals just how much of elite sports performance resides between the ears.

The Perceptual-Cognitive Domain – a New Paradigm for Sports Performance

‘‘From my own experience as Director of Sports Science at the Vancouver Canucks, we found that there was almost a one to one correspondence with scores on NeuroTracker and decision-making accuracy on the ice. This really surprised the coaches and scouts. You can imagine just how valuable measures like this can be for identifying upcoming talents.’’

2. Mick Clegg

Mick is founder of Seed of Speed has been a performance coach for 38 years, and was Strength & Conditioning Coach for Manchester United Football Club from 2000 to 2011. He has been instrumental in the development of many of the world’s top football players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville, to name a few.

Based on his experience with super-elite athletes, Mick explains how training regimes should always be in the hot zone to capture true potential, and also just how crucial visual perception is on the sports field.

The Difference Between the Best and the Rest? The Brain

‘‘NeuroTracker is a really nice example of threshold training. It pushes each athlete’s speed processing limits every session.  The training effects show this actually speeds up brain waves, associated with greater alertness and mental focus.  More technologies should apply this conditioning principle, because in the zone is right where elite athletes need to be each and every time they train.’’

3. Julien Southon

Julien is a specialist in visual, cognitive and motor performance, and founder of Sport Your Brain. He applies his background in biology and psychology to training elite sports performance.

In this blog Julien covers the great value of being able to provide remote cognitive training programs to clients during confinement.

Unlocking Athletic Potential During COVID-19

‘‘The fact that NeuroTracker’s 3D-Multiple Object Tracking training improves the perception of human biological movement, i.e. the ability to read and interpret information from body language (position of the body, head, orientation of the hip), it is an excellent way to reduce the risk of sports injury related to errors in reading or anticipation by the player, such as with tackling in soccer or rugby.’’

4. Professor Jocelyn Faubert

Professor Faubert is Director of the Faubert Lab, as well as the scientific mastermind behind NeuroTracker. Deemed the ‘world’s preeminent expert in the field of visual perception’, he has worked on the neuroscience underpinning NeuroTracker for over 25 years.

Here Professor Faubert delivers insights on the radical transformations that digital therapeutics are bringing to the healthcare industry.

Q&A with Professor Faubert on the Future of Digital Health

‘‘There are so many independent researchers and institutes using NeuroTracker, a key reason why we’ve been selected by Bayer and other major health companies to partner with. You ideally you want scientific expertise to be merged with industry-specific expertise, and I think when it comes to companies in digital health, NeuroTracker sets the right standards to follow.’’

5. Dr. Roman Velasquez

Dr. Velasquez is founder of Neuro Peak Performance. utilizing his background as an interpersonal neurobiological neuroscientist and doctorate in leadership as a ‘Combat Sports Brain Performance Coach’. He applies the latest neuroscience technologies and methodologies to push the vanguards of athletic conditioning.

Here Dr. Velasquez provides an in-depth explanation of how neuroscience methodologies and technologies can elevate elite sports performance to another level.

Harnessing the Athletic Brain

‘‘NeuroTracker training adapts speed and complexity in a way that maximizes your sport cognitive training at every step.  Focus, concentration, and attention are not simple, they are complex inside your brain but they can be trained, and NeuroTracker enhances these key capabilities. It also provides unique functional measures of athletic performance.’’

6. Dr. Charles Shidlofsky

Dr. Shidlofsky, O.D., P.A., FCOVD, heads Neuro-Vision Associates of North Texas. A leader in his field, he specializes in vision rehabilitation and therapy, working with numerous elite sports team across the US.

Here Dr. Shidlofsky takes a deep dive into the neurovision side of conditioning elite athletes, and how it also yields data that is invaluable for cognitive profiling.

Taking on Next-Level Performance Training

‘‘From a more vision-specific perspective, NeuroTracker is an ideal spatial training tool. This is one reason I use NeuroTracker for my own ice hockey training. The great thing about NeuroTracking is that it forces athletes to be open in space, and that’s a critical skill to keep driving and improve.’’

7. Dr.Gerard M. DiLeo

Dr. DiLeo was Director of Pelvic Pain at the University of South Florida and is now a medical reviewer and contributor for Addictions.com. He is a published health author for McGraw-Hill, and has contributing health articles to media publications for over 30 years.

In this article Dr. DiLeo gives insights on how addiction is primarily a challenge related to impaired cognitive functions, and how efficacious interventions like NeuroTracker have great potential for recovery.

Unwiring and Re-wiring the Addicted Brain

‘‘Whether used in wellness, performance, learning, or addiction, NeuroTracker gives the brain the neural prowess that is either lacking or which needs improvement. It has proven useful in decision-making under changing circumstances, which can help prevent relapse when a rehabilitated person encounters triggers after treatment.’’

8. Rob Gronbeck

Rob is a Performance Psychology Coach, Researcher & Author and founder of The Brain Room, working with elite athletes across many sports in Australia. Rob is a veteran NeuroTracker coach and key member of the Flow Genome Project.

Having coached over 5,000 sessions, Rob takes us through his own NeuroTracker journey, revealing how 600 training sessions quadrupled his visual workload capacity.

Boosting Your Brain’s Processing Capacity

‘‘It is my belief that coaches, trainers, and athletes need to know that we can apply the same training principles we use in physical and skill acquisition for training the brain. NeuroTracker fits perfectly and allows us to do this seamlessly, while providing quantifiable metrics.’’

9. Sebastian Harenberg

Sebastian is a PhD holder in Kinesiology and Health Studies, and an Associate Professor in Exercise Science and Athletic Training at Ithaca College. He has publishes prolific research in medical and sports science journals.

Here Sebastian discusses his research which demonstrates the potential of NeuroTracker for profiling and potentially training laparoscopic surgeon skills.

A Fresh Perspective on Surgeon Development

‘‘We found that NeuroTracker baselines explained a significant amount of the variance in movement speed and efficiency with medical students performing a surgery simulation test. It’s promising to see a relationship between these two tasks. There are a lot of directions we could take with cognitive interventions.’’

10. Kate Allgood

Kate was recognized as one of the best female ice hockey players in Canada. With a double Masters degree specializing in sport psychology, Kate founded Quantum Performance – a high performance coaching firm specializing in mental training. She has also published several sports science books.

Here Kate underlines just how critical efficient attentional systems are for sports, breaking down in detail how NeuroTracker enhances several different types of attention, and how this transfers to performance.

Improving Performance with Better Attention

‘‘Through a scientific conditioning process, NeuroTracker builds up the raw tools for maintaining awareness and attention even in the highest pressure game situations. There is no limit to what type of dual-tasks can be combined, which can be used to push performance to extremely high levels.’’

We hope you found these insights educational and now have a glimpse into how perceptual-cognitive training is driving a new frontier in human performance. Feel free to explore any of the individual blog links for a more in-depth perspective!

Alternatively, if you are interesting in reading thoughts from athletes who have actually been coached with NeuroTracker, check out this blog.

7 Pro Athletes Give Their 2 Cents on NeuroTracker

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