Let's Retrain our Brains

What if we traded filling prescriptions to manage attention deficit disorders and improve cognitive function, turning instead to an FDA-approved videogame with success rates outpacing traditional treatments?

How about adapting our daily routines to include consistent, 20-minute walks in nature — rain, shine, sleet, or whatever the weather brings to the table. Consider the mental health benefits from “forest bathing” and losing ourselves to the meditative sights and sounds for offsetting anxiety and depression.
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Seem far out? Alternatives to medication for supporting better health have been rigorously researched and give people more care plan options. Some have been greenlighted by the FDA and are making a difference.

Our annual In-Value-Able conference explored these topics in a groundbreaking light.

Adam Gazzaley, PhD., is the David Dolby Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Gazzaley has served as a scientific advisor for dozens of companies, from Apple to General Electric. He holds multiple patents and is a prolific author of scientific articles, including a piece in Nature, dubbed “Game Changer.”

Dr. Gazzaley is the founder and executive director of Neuroscape and dedicated to designing and developing brain assessment and optimization tools that feel like play and deliver results. His team integrates closed-loop video games with software and hardware advances — virtual reality, cloud-based analytics and beyond — to help retrain the brain in a healthy way.

Stripping the concept down to the most low-tech explanation possible for a gigantic digital leap, you could say Dr. Gazzaley’s work is about user experience to regulate and improve the way our brains work.

“We’ve intentionally designed experiences to support our mental health, such as meditation and mindfulness practice,” he says. “Yet despite this rich history, most people don’t think about experience as medicine.”

Dr. Gazzaley has been focused on modern non-invasive experiential medicine for addressing cognitive impairments, brain function, and optimizing behavior rather than siloing diagnoses such as ADHD, autism, or dyslexia and assigning pharmacological and behavioral therapies for each.

What feels like a videogame is a scientifically vetted tool that exercises a brain phenomenon known as plasticity, meaning how the brain modifies its structure, chemistry, and function in response to experience.

Give the brain an experience. It will respond.

The first game the team designed is called NeuroRacer, which showed how gameplay can improve attention and short-term memory in older adults.

During his keynote, Dr. Gazzaley said 75% of adults who played NeuroRacer noticed a difference in how they interacted with the world following a six-week course of 30-minute sessions five days a week.

The over-the-counter download is prescriptive, intentional, and effective. NeuroRacer has more than 200,000 downloads and counting.

NeuroRacer advanced to a game called Endeavor, a game that trains the brain for task control, multitasking, and resisting distraction. EndeavorzOTC is a subscription-based videogame treatment available for download. The team also is the first FDA-authorized prescription video game treatment for children, EndeavorRx. An entirely different genre of the same format is MediTrain, targeting meditation and sustained attention. Body Brain Trainer is a game that instantly challenges you physically and cognitively to improve attention and physical fitness measures.

There are many ways we can modify our behaviors that are not clinical, invasive, costly, or induce side effects. As employers, with more tools available for advancing the health of our populations, we can give our employees more choices, more avenues for improving health outcomes.

User experience — or UX in the tech world — extends into every facet of our everyday lives. We can be intentional about options for finding respite and therapeutic benefits in simple pleasures like a walk in the park. Dr. Gazzaley shared his love for hiking and taking to nature for recharging.

There’s a prescription for nature, too — and it’s simple with lasting, positive effects.

Time in nature lowers stress, alleviates symptoms of anxiety and depression, encourages mindfulness, improves sleep, boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, and has been shown to reduce inflammation.

If a single 20-minute dose of nature does all that, what’s the obstacle?

For decades, doctors in countries across the globe have been prescribing a walk in the park instead of conventional medicine. New Zealand was among the first in the late 1990s. Green prescriptions are an established part of the government’s health offering. Five years ago, the United Kingdom committed the U.S. equivalent of $5.2 million to a two-year green prescription pilot program. And Japanese clinicians have been recommending forest bathing (shinrin yoku) since 1982, according to a World Economic Forum report.

Why wait for a formalized green prescription to roll out in the U.S. if you can build your own? Urban environments with green spaces provide exposure to sunlight and healthy doses of vitamin D. Most workplaces can deliver benefits, like encouraging movement, which is a mood enhancer and promotes clarity. And you don’t have to go alone. Join one of our Step It Up Challenges and promote it at your business.

A key takeaway from Dr. Gazzaley’s talk is the idea of plasticity.

We can retrain our brains. We can modify our behaviors. We are shaped by experience.

So, rather than asking, “What if?” shouldn’t we be asking, “Why aren’t we?”

About Health Action Council 
Health Action Council is a not-for-profit 501(c)(6) organization representing mid-and large-size employers that enhance human and economic health through thought leadership, innovative services, and collaboration. It provides value to its members by facilitating projects that improve the quality and moderate the cost of healthcare purchased by its members for their employees, dependents, and retirees. Health Action Council also collaborates with key stakeholders – health plans, physicians, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry – to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare in the community.