Cognitive Labs

Microsoft has agreed to fund an institute dedicated to learning-related games - in particular, looking at titles such as WoW to see if there is any benefit.

Groups of veterans play WoW to improve attentiveness when they return from the warzones, natural for them since mostly they were playing it before they enlisted and also while they served.

However, keep in mind that this is not particularly new, though it seems to be reported by the MSM as if it were shockingly new. Microsoft in the UK has been studying benefits of games since the early 2000's.

Published research we're involved in (go here for an overview) and some of our theory-in-use studies, such as at E3 back in 2005, also bear out the benefits in terms of improvement on normative measures. Similar studies at UC-Irvine, Scripps, and Western Ontario do as well. With additional research at University of Texas, Austin showing improvement in IQ scores, cohort studies at secondary schools have reported enhanced SAT scores (significant), and athletes have reported an improved tennis game (in the case of two professionals) along with at least one all-star major league infielder who regularly hit over .300.

One would think with the exploding audience and engaging nature of cognitive gaming that it will remain a high-growth area for the next decade-plus. Time spent playing our games in 2009 is up well over 100% from the same period in 2008, to an average of 50.7 minutes per visit, which compares very favorably to most websites. During the same period, for example, visits to traditional media (newspaper) sites has declined as has the average time per session.

Labels: 100percent, 50.7, coglabs, kotaku, microsoft, minutes, session, tauren

Here's September for Cognitive Labs...over 622,000 visitors

Labels: 2008, alzheimers exercise brain canada, browsers, coglabs, september, traffic

See chrome below, in this export from net applications at the month's midpoint. It picked up .01 percent vs. our last measurement on cognitive labs.



In case you are wondering, Obigo is a kind of mobile browser.


Konqueror runs on most Unix-like systems and is an open source, Gnu-compliant browser.

iCab was developed from an Atari browser, believe it or not.

Opera mini has been shipped with 40 million mobile phones, and according to one estimate, has a 0.06 market share of all browsers, whereas on our site it has a .04 share.

According to Net Applications (and Wikipedia), Safari had approximately a 6.25% share of market in May, 2008. Here, it's twice that - over 12 percent.

IE, according to Net Apps, has about 72% market share overall in Q3 2008, while it is much less than this on cognitive labs - 42.64%. You can see from the graphic that IE peaked around 2002-2003, a time of reduced innovation, and has been declining ever since.



As far as IE is concerned, this doesn't bode well for a service offering that might try to rely on browser distribution as a mythical trojan horse to accelerate adoption and means the co. is swimming upstream and will have to use fish ladders to get to their goal.

Labels: chrome, coglabs, firefox, ie, konqueror, market, opera

(Atherton, CA) June 26, 2008. Peter Sealey, an expert in brand-marketing, has joined the Cognitive Labs board of advisors. Cognitive Labs is the fastest growing provider of science-based cognitive games.

Pete invented the concept of simplicity marketing, back to basics, and brand minimalism which today resonates with the digerati, whilst lampooning Hollywood's fear and trepidation of digital media's potential in Not On My Watch, and taught a famed course in digital marketing at the Haas School of Business...

"I'm delighted that Pete has decided to add his brand-building gusto and marketing vision to the Cognitive Labs project," said President Michael Addicott, "his is truly a superior genetic configuration for the deep understanding of these challenging and exciting times in which we live."

Here is his C.V.:

Dr. Peter Sealey is chairman and CEO of Sausalito Group, a brand consulting firm and one of the world's top marketing experts and business authors. Sealey was co-director of the Center of Marketing and Technology at the Haas School of Business, U.C. Berkeley from 1996 to 2006, has been a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and currently teaches entertainment marketing at the Drucker/Ito Center Graduate School of Management at Claremont University in Southern California. He consults to numerous top global corporations and Silicon Valley start-ups such as VeriSign, General Motors, Coke, Sony, Anheuser-Busch, Visa U.S.A., UPS, ImproveNet, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, The Eastman Kodak Company, Nokia and A.T. Kearney, Inc. He currently serves, or has served,on the Boards of Directors of cFares, Inc.,4Info, IMMI, inc., Reply!, StrongMail, Round Table Pizza, L90, Inc., MediaPlex, Inc., T/R Systems, United Parcel Service Capital, Learning Framework and Kinzan.com. He serves, or has served, on the Boards of Advisors of Intent MediaWorks, Facebook, Cognitive Labs, Rearden Commerce, Veoh Networks, Log Savvy, Inc., DiStreams, Inc., HomeGain.com, Space.com, AgentWare, Learning Framework, NetOyster, Zinio & eVoice.com.

Labels: advisoryboard, coglabs, digital, games, latimes, nytimes, sealey, watch

Ethical concern for the future: HIPAA vs. the Three Laws of Robotics: Discuss

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has just released their list of the 14 greatest challenges facing humanity.

About 4 of them involve action items/parameters that Cognitive Labs' is also working on (highlighted). The list follows:

-Make solar energy affordable
-Provide energy from fusion
-Develop carbon sequestration
-Manage the nitrogen cycle
-Provide access to clean water
-Reverse engineer the brain
-Prevent nuclear terror
-Secure cyberspace
-Enhance virtual reality
-Improve urban infrastructure
-Advance health informatics
-Engineer better medicines
-Advance personalised learning
-Explore natural frontiers

Among the predictions, not challenges, is the making of a sentient robot by the year 2029. In addition, nanobots will flow throughout the bloodstream, making minor corrections in cellular function to prevent malady. In the brain, the nanobots could prevent the accumulation of amyloid tangles.

Think of it as McAfee ViruScan for your body. There's no reason the Internet will not play a part; in fact application engines might exist that receive inputs from you (body and brain)or your computer (keyboard, voice, etc.) via the Internet 24/7 and collect data like a seismograph.
Blood sample? A nanobot can analyze the blood in real time and submit the data wirelessly to a medical database, either centrally located but more likely on your own computing platform. The era of symptoms and potential misdiagnosis or diagnostic 'dead reckoning' and fear of false positives may be then be at an end.

Labels: 14, coglabs, mcaffee, nanobot

Want to read about a 500-person study conducted over the Internet? The study showed that cognitive speed can be improved! A web-based toolset was used in the Cognitive Labs' research

Released: Spring 2005 at the Society of Neuroscience annual meeting.

Scroll down and read it.

Labels: coglabs, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, research

Cognitive Labs passes 2 million visitors in 2007...30 minutes ago. Pass the word to friends.

We reached one million here.

Labels: 2million, coglabs, cognitivelabs.com, visitors

More and more people are playing our games. We've broken through half a million monthly visits and are heading up from there.

I checked and we're actually up more than 40 fold, 40X or 4,000 percent since November 2005.


I think there is going to be a major push in human cognitive evolution in the coming years, diven by three vectors: the first is the focus on cognitive renewal itself. Second, the increasing awareness of the environment demo'd by Al Gore and others argues for more energy thrift and self-sufficiency, which may lead to an inward focus on locality and paradoxically and thirdly, the prophesied 'digital brain' being created between social networks and IM.

It's Lascaux Cave or predynastic slip ware pottery from Egypt (when people suddenly started painting recurring geometric shapes) all over again.

Labels: algore, blogs, coglabs, im, lascaux, november, visitors

Cognitive Labs has passed 1 million unique visitors in 2007, earlier today! Thanks for your help. Trailing 12 months is 1.4 million, forward 12 months is 4 million to 7 million visitors, following an S-curve.

Labels: alexa, brain, coglabs, rank, uniques, visitors

Real time DNA replication is featured in the following visualization video...Fascinating. Then test your brain

Labels: apoee4, coglabs, dna, DNA replication, myDNA, youtube

A coglabs user - how about another term: [experiencer] called us "more addicting than myspace" - this is a myspace fan, not a journalist or cognoscenti.

thanks for the positive vibes across the net

Labels: coglabs, myspace, web